A new study from North Carolina State University indicates that even a sharp increase in the use of electric drive passenger vehicles (EDVs) by 2050 would not significantly reduce emissions of high-profile air pollutants carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides.
"EDVs" is a catch-all term that includes hybrid, plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles.
Photovoltaic energy conversion offers one of the best means for the future of renewable energy in the world. The efficiency of solar cells depends heavily upon the light-absorbing materials they use. Photovoltaic systems based on lead halide perovskite are a new, revolutionary type of device with efficiencies currently exceeding 16%. However, a detailed description of how these solar cells turn light into electrical current is still lacking.
Picture the Louvre pyramid: the iconic glass pyramid that serves as main entrance and skylight to the landmark museum. The pyramid is illuminated at night, creating a magical ambience. Imagine strolling next to it while a video about the museum is projected on the glass in front of you, adding information while preserving the elegance of the structure. This seems like a scene taken from The Avengers or other sci-fi movies: although some technology for transparent displays exists, in practice it has many limitations.
When the temperature rises on Baffin Island, in the Canadian high Arctic, ancient Polytrichum mosses, trapped beneath the ice for thousands of years, are exposed. Using radiocarbon dating, new research in Geophysical Research Letters has calculated the age of relic moss samples that have been exposed by modern Arctic warming. Since the moss samples would have been destroyed by erosion had they been previously exposed, the authors suggest that the temperatures in the Arctic are warmer than during any sustained period since the mosses were originally buried.
Pandemrix is an influenza vaccination, created in 2009 to combat H1N1, known as Swine Flu. Now, a team of Swedish clinicians testing the vaccine for links to immune-related or neurological diseases have linked Pandemrix to an increased risk of narcolepsy in young adults.
Using a population-based prospective cohort study, the team analyzed data from regional vaccination registries and national health registries, covering seven healthcare regions and 61% of the Swedish population.
A Virginia Tech research team has developed a battery that runs on sugar and has an unmatched energy density, a development that could replace conventional batteries with ones that are cheaper, refillable, and biodegradable.
The findings from Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering, were published today in the journal Nature Communications.
A novel examination of the long-lasting consequences that World War II had on continental Europeans finds that living in a war-torn country increased the likelihood of a number of physical and mental problems later in life.
WASHINGTON D.C. Jan. 17, 2014 -- The capacitors of electronic circuits function something like batteries – storing electrical charge that can be quickly dumped to power devices like camera flashes. So-called "supercapacitors" take the energy-storing abilities of capacitors a step further, storing a far greater charge in a much smaller package.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Humans and some of our hominid ancestors such as Homo erectus have been walking for more than a million years, and researchers are close to figuring out how we do it.
A carbon nanotube sponge capable of soaking up water contaminants, such as fertilisers, pesticides and pharmaceuticals, more than three times more efficiently than previous efforts has been presented in a new study published today.
The carbon nanotube (CNT) sponges, uniquely doped with sulphur, also demonstrated a high capacity to absorb oil, potentially opening up the possibility of using the material in industrial accidents and oil spill clean-ups.
The results have been published today, 17 January, in IOP Publishing's journal Nanotechnology.
From northwest Denmark, circa 1500-1300 BC, to the Swedish island of Gotland as late as the first century AD, Nordic peoples were imbibing an alcoholic "grog" or extreme hybrid beverage rich in local ingredients, including honey, bog cranberry, lingonberry, bog myrtle, yarrow, juniper, birch tree resin, and cereals including wheat, barley and/or rye—and sometimes, grape wine imported from southern or central Europe.
From 2000 to 2010, about 1,900 cyclones churned across the top of the world each year, leaving warm water and air in their wakes – and melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.
That's about 40 percent more of these Arctic storms than previously thought, according to a new study of vast troves of weather data that previously were synthesized at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC).
Thousands of chemicals serving a variety of human needs flood into sewage treatment plants once their use life has ended. Many belong to a class of chemicals known as CECs (for chemicals of emerging concern), which may pose risks to both human and environmental health.
Arjun Venkatesan, a recent doctorate and Rolf Halden, professor and director of the Center for Environmental Security at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, have carried out meticulous tracking of many of these chemicals.
MADISON, Wis. — Using a plant-derived chemical, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have developed a process for creating a concentrated stream of sugars that's ripe with possibility for biofuels.
"With the sugar platform, you have possibilities," says Jeremy Luterbacher, a UW-Madison postdoctoral researcher and the paper's lead author. "You've taken fewer forks down the conversion road, which leaves you with more end destinations, such as cellulosic ethanol and drop-in biofuels."
Geologic time is shorthand for slow-paced. But new measurements from steep mountaintops in New Zealand show that rock can transform into soil more than twice as fast as previously believed possible.
The findings were published Jan. 16 in the early online edition of Science.
"Some previous work had argued that there were limits to soil production," said first author Isaac Larsen, who did the work as part of his doctoral research in Earth sciences at the University of Washington. "But no one had made the measurements."