Weaning cars and trucks off of gasoline and diesel made from fossil fuels is a difficult task. One promising solution involves biodiesel, which comes from natural oils and fats, but it is costly. Using a microwave and catalyst-coated beads, scientists have devised a new way to convert waste cooking oil into biodiesel that could make it more affordable. They report how they did it in ACS' journal Energy & Fuels.
Tech
Famous athletes and celebrities promoting charities made silicone wristbands cool more than a decade ago. Now, scientists have developed another use for the colorful, comfortable bands: figuring out what chemicals people are exposed to on a daily basis. The cover article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, reports how these trendy accessories could already be helping people.
New research from North Carolina State University finds that player behavior in narrative role-playing games (RPGs) reflects specific character roles - even if the game tells players nothing about the character's role. The finding is relevant to both game designers and gaming researchers who study player behavior in RPGs.
TORONTO, April 19, 2016 - Researchers have developed a new tool that will improve how clinicians can identify women at high risk of developing pre-eclampsia, and who should take acetylsalicylic acid, also known as Aspirin, after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Clinical practice guidelines recommend that women at high risk take low-dose (baby) ASA daily starting at 12 to 20 weeks of pregnancy.
There is no evidence to suggest that lasers pointed at airplane cockpits damage pilots' eyesight. But obviously if directed at critical moments, the dazzle from the beam and ensuing distraction could prove disastrous for crew and passengers, say leading eye specialists in an editorial published online in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.
In a bid to disentangle the hype, amid the rising number of cases of laser pointers directed at aircraft--more than 1500 over the past 12 months in the UK alone--the specialists set out in which circumstances eyesight can be damaged.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Jeffrey Grossman thinks we've been looking at coal all wrong. Instead of just setting it afire, thus ignoring the molecular complexity of this highly varied material, he says, we should be harnessing the real value of that diversity and complex chemistry. Coal could become the basis for solar panels, batteries, or electronic devices, he and his research team say.
Americans used less energy overall in 2015 than the previous year, according to the most recent energy flow charts released by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Each year, the Laboratory releases energy flow charts that illustrate the nation's consumption and use of energy. Overall, Americans used 0.8 quadrillion BTU, or quads, less in 2015 than in 2014. (A BTU or British Thermal Unit is a unit of measurement for energy; 3,400 BTU is equivalent to about 1 kilowatt-hour).
WASHINGTON, DC - April 19, 2016 - Cities have their own distinct microbial communities but these communities don't vary much between offices located in the same city, according to a new study. The work, published this week in mSystems, an open access journal from the American Society for Microbiology, offers insight into what drives the composition of microbes in built environments.
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 19, 2016 - Despite their hefty price tag, smartphones have an average consumer lifetime of about three years. The lithium ion batteries that power them, however, can last for about five years -- meaning that just about every discarded smartphone generates e-waste and squanders the battery's twilight years. To cut down on the environmental waste and provide storage for rural communities, researchers at Kyung Hee University in Seoul have proposed a model for recycling unspent lithium ion batteries into energy storage units for solar-powered LED lamps.
Polymer solar cells can be even cheaper and more reliable thanks to a breakthrough by scientists at Linköping University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). This work is about avoiding costly and unstable fullerenes.
Polymer solar cells have in recent years emerged as a low cost alternative to silicon solar cells. In order to obtain high efficiency, fullerenes are usually required in polymer solar cells to separate charge carriers. However, fullerenes are unstable under illumination, and form large crystals at high temperatures.
Worldwide growing data volumes make conventional electronic processing reach its limits. Future information technology is therefore expected to use light as a medium for quick data transmission also within computer chips. Researchers under the direction of KIT have now demonstrated that carbon nanotubes are suited for use as on-chip light source for tomorrow's information technology, when nanostructured waveguides are applied to obtain the desired light properties. The scientists now present their results in Nature Photonics. DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON. 2016.70
Conventional 3D displays, such as stereo displays with glasses and glass-free autostereoscopic displays, show two-dimensional images for each eye. Therefore, users experience incongruity and eyestrain owing to these pseudo-3D images. A holographic display produces an exact copy of the wave front of scattered light from an object, and hence, a realistic 3D display is expected. Holographic displays can reconstruct realistic 3D images, thereby eliminating the need for special glasses.
RICHLAND, Wash. - An unexpected discovery has led to a rechargeable battery that's as inexpensive as conventional car batteries, but has a much higher energy density. The new battery could become a cost-effective, environmentally friendly alternative for storing renewable energy and supporting the power grid.
A team based at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory identified this energy storage gem after realizing the new battery works in a different way than they had assumed. The journal Nature Energy published a paper today that describes the battery.
Liquid crystals, discovered more than 125 years ago, are at work behind the screens of TV and computer monitors, clocks, watches and most other electronics displays, and scientists are still discovering new twists--and bends--in their molecular makeup.
Erosion after severe wildfires can be the dominant force shaping forested mountainous landscapes of the U.S. Intermountain West, suggests a new research paper by two University of Arizona geoscientists.
The study is the first to assess the impact of wildfires on such landscapes by combining several different ways to measure short-term and long-term erosion rates, said study co-author Jon Pelletier, a UA professor of geosciences.