A Case Western Reserve University proposal for a low-cost, energy-efficient method to extract the strategic metal titanium from ore has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy for contract negotiations. This one-year project will be funded by ARPA-E at about $675K through the program on Modern Electro/Thermo-chemical Advances in Light-metal …
Naked mole rats live long lives—about 30 years—and stay healthy until the very end. Now biologists at the University of Rochester have new insights into the animal’s longevity—better-constructed proteins. Proteins are involved in nearly all functions of an animal cell, and consequently, are essential to all organisms. But before proteins can do their job, they …
A site is indicating that the foundations of a Broad Group 100 story (J100) factory mass produced skyscraper has been laid. Broad Group is famous for building 15 story buildings in 6 days and 30 story building in 15 days. They are also getting permits to build a 200+ story skyscraper that would be world’s …
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), through Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC (LLNS), has been awarded more than $45 million to develop and deliver a state-of-the-art laser system for the European Union’s Extreme Light Infrastructure Beamlines facility. The design goal for the “High repetition-rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System” (HAPLS) calls for peak powers greater than one …
A compact new generation optical amplifier has been constructed by physicists from the Laser Centre of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Physics of the Warsaw University. The apparatus is extremely efficient and small enough to fit on a desktop and is able to generate over …
The U.S. is overtaking Russia as the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, a startling shift that is reshaping markets and eroding the clout of traditional energy-rich nations. U.S. energy output has been surging in recent years, a comeback fueled by shale-rock formations of oil and natural gas that was unimaginable a decade …
Researchers create blinking DNA probes that could help overcome longstanding limits of optical microscopy. It is an inexpensive and easy-to-use new microscopy method to simultaneously spot many tiny components of cells. The DNA-based microscopy method could potentially lead to new ways of diagnosing disease by distinguishing healthy and diseased cells based on sophisticated molecular details. …
Swinburne University of Technology researchers have shown the potential of a new material for transforming secure optical information storage. By focusing an ultrashort laser beam onto the graphene oxide polymer, the researchers created a 10-100 times increase in the refractive-index of the graphene oxide along with a decrease in its fluorescence. (The refractive index is …
Conventional biofuels are either too expensive to compete with fossil fuels or they release so much carbon dioxide that they’re hardly worth making—or both. The UCLA advance, which increases the amount of biofuel that can be made from sugar by 50 percent, could make it cheaper to produce biofuels from a variety of sources, especially …
The 2012 Semiconductor Industry roadmap is forecasting that gates will be just 5.9 nanometers long in 2026. There will be big issues to overcome in terms of handling the leakage from tunneling electrons. Tunneling FETs (TFETs) would be an option to magnify and use the tunneling as part of the design. Tunneling is already used …
A study from Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory [PDF] found that 89 percent of survey respondents rarely or never used the thermostat to set a weekday or weekend program. Seventy percent were not set at all. The energy savings for software-based, digital thermostats range from about 15 to 30 percent. The first generation of two-way digital …