Two thirds of the rural population in developing countries are without electricity. This leaves limited options for lighting. Many turn to kerosene or paraffin oil. It is estimated that 88 billion liters of kerosene are burned purely for light. One liter of kerosene is estimated to produce 3kg CO2 when burnt. Research has shown that …
For the first time ever, scientists have used light energy to create a rare molecular uranium nitride (U-N) complex containing a discrete terminal U-N unit, where the nitrogen atom is bonded only to the one uranium atom, versus prior work where the nitrogen atom has always been bonded to two or more uranium atoms. Scientists …
In October, British researchers supported by the U.K. government will attempt to pump water a kilometer into the air using little more than a helium balloon and a rubber hose. The experiment, which will take place at a military airfield along England’s east coast, is meant as a test of a proposed geoengineering technique for …
1. Nvidia’s next generation graphics card (Kepler) will not be released until 2012. Kepler will be succeeding the Fermi architecture and use a 28 nm production process. Kepler cards will triple the dual-precision floating point performance of Fermi and hit up to 6 dp GFlops, while its successor Maxwell (scheduled for a 2013 release) is …
1. Astronomers studying observations taken by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission have discovered the first known “Trojan” asteroid orbiting the sun along with Earth. Trojans are asteroids that share an orbit with a planet near stable points in front of or behind the planet. Because they constantly lead or follow in the same …
Melanie Swan covered the 40th annual meeting of the American Aging Association held June 3-6, 2011 in Raleigh NC USA. They covered emerging concepts in the mechanisms of aging. Many usual topics in aging were covered such as dietary restriction (DR), inflammation, stress resistance, homeostasis and proteasome activity, sarcopenia, and neural degeneration. Newer methods like …
The cost to construct a Stratospheric Shield with a pumping capacity of 100,000 tons a year of sulfur dioxide would be roughly $24 million, including transportation and assembly. Annual operating costs would run approximately $10 million. The system would use only technologies and materials that already exist—although some improvements may be needed to existing atomizer …
Researchers at Princeton University developed a technique for generating a laser beam out of nothing but air. They focus a pump laser on a distant point in the air and another laser beam comes back. The image shows a pulse of infra-red light from this “air laser.” The center region represents the highest intensity; the …
Thermal Energy Storage for concentrated solar power research 21 pages) * One of the Solar Program goals is to reduce the cost of thermal energy storage to $15/kWh thermal * Capital cost of storage could be reduced with new concepts Performance * Thermal energy storage (TES) is a key performance advantage of CSP * TES …
Ad Support : Nano Technology Netbook Technology News Computer Software Hi, this is your occasional correspondent, Joseph Friedlander writing for Next Big Future on Professor Bolonkin’s ideas (and some of my own) on patent reform. Key insight: the massive lion’s share of the benefits of invention—if any (most inventions are unsuccessful)—should go to encourage inventors, not …
Ad Support : Nano Technology Netbook Technology News Computer Software Researchers have discovered the yield-boosting power (up to 60% more yield) of a single gene, which controls when plants make flowers and that works in different varieties of tomato and, crucially, across a range of environmental conditions. The team made the discovery while hunting for genes …