Specially designed carbon nanotube sheets, dubbed “buckypaper,” can increase in width when stretched. The buckypaper can also increase in both length and width when uniformly compressed. Illustration of the oppositely directed lateral bending on forming a nanotube sheet strip into a ring, when the Poisson’s ratio is positive (left) or negative (right). No lateral bending …
Recently the Secretary of the Department of transportation put a proposal to mildly accelerate fuel standards from 3% per year to 4.5% per year up to 2015. However this was a ploy to put circumvent the Clean Air act and block California and several other states from adopting more aggressive car and truck fuel standards. …
People talk about nuclear power being deadly and dangerous. They can list some radiation leaks and spills.Where are the deaths in those incidents ? How much is the radiation above background levels ? Did the leak have more radiation than an equal amount of wine or seawater ? With my coal examples below plenty of …
Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen is focusing on municipal solar power plants of 2 – 10 megawatts in size. Companies have come to realize that they can avoid most of the bureaucratic snags involved in building plants that produce over 50 megawatts. Furthermore, by grouping their panels into small lots, they’ve been able to grab small …
Bob Metcalfe (ethernet coinventor) gave a keynote speech, “Toward Terabit Ethernet.” Metcalfe had told his audience not only that optical networks would soon deliver 40- and 100-gigabit-per-second Ethernet–standards bodies are now hammering out the technical specifications–but also that 1,000-gigabyte-per-second Ethernet, which Metcalfe dubbed “terabit Ethernet,” would emerge around 2015. The move from 100 gigabit ethernet …
A simple-to-make “superlens” can focus 10 times more sharply than a conventional lens. It could shrink the size of features on computer chips, or help power gadgets without wires. No matter how powerful a conventional lens, it cannot focus light down to more than about half its wavelength, the “diffraction limit”. So far they have …
Carnival of Space Week 51 is up at astroengine. I contributed my article on the Finnish solar wind riding electric sail, which is nearing readiness for flight testing Centauri Dreams talks more about the electric solar space sail. Colony Worlds talks about the need for ants for space colonies. Bees could have problems with the …
There are Combined license applications for 15 nuclear plantsthat have been received by the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 34 plants from 23 applications are expected by 2010 China has 21 reactors under or about to start construction and another 18 should start construction after that. 35 nuclear plants are under construction right now in the …
GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Europe’s biggest drugmaker, agreed to buy Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. for about $720 million, adding an experimental treatment derived from red wine that’s thought to slow the effects of aging. Glaxo will pay $22.50 a share in cash for Sirtris, the London-based drugmaker said in an e-mailed statement. The offer is 84 percent more …
Short-term exposure to current levels of ozone in many areas is likely to contribute to premature deaths, says a new National Research Council report, which adds that the evidence is strong enough that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should include ozone-related mortality in health-benefit analyses related to future ozone standards. The Full text of the …
This photograph shows a side-by-side comparison between Purdue’s structure (right) and a structure that results when a template is not used. Researchers at Purdue have developed a “self-assembling” technique to create a “nearly perfect two-dimensional colloidal crystal,” or a precisely ordered layer of particles, a critical step toward growing three-dimensional crystals for use in optical …