The energy generated from our oceans could be doubled using new methods for predicting wave power. Research led by the University of Exeter, published (27 June) in the journal Renewable Energy, could pave the way for significant advancements in marine renewable energy, making it a more viable source of power.
Tech
Modern research tools like supercomputers, particle colliders, and telescopes are generating so much data, so quickly, many scientists fear that soon they will not be able to keep up with the deluge.
"These instruments are capable of answering some of our most fundamental scientific questions, but it is all for nothing if we can't get a handle on the data and make sense of it," says Surendra Byna of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's (Berkeley Lab's) Scientific Data Management Group.
Stanford University scientists have breathed new life into the nickel-iron battery, a rechargeable technology developed by Thomas Edison more than a century ago.
Designed in the early 1900s to power electric vehicles, the Edison battery largely went out of favor in the mid-1970s. Today only a handful of companies manufacture nickel-iron batteries, primarily to store surplus electricity from solar panels and wind turbines.
June 26, 2012 – The promise of ultrafast quantum computing has moved a step closer to reality with a technique to create rewritable computer chips using a beam of light. Researchers from The City College of New York (CCNY) and the University of California Berkeley (UCB) used light to control the spin of an atom's nucleus in order to encode information.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Cooling systems that use a liquid that changes phase — such as water boiling on a surface — can play an important part in many developing technologies, including advanced microchips and concentrated solar-power systems. But understanding exactly how such systems work, and what kinds of surfaces maximize the transfer of heat, has remained a challenging problem.
Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have invented a new toilet system that will turn human waste into electricity and fertilisers and also reduce the amount of water needed for flushing by up to 90 per cent compared to current toilet systems in Singapore.
Dubbed the No-Mix Vacuum Toilet, it has two chambers that separate the liquid and solid wastes. Using vacuum suction technology, such as those used in aircraft lavatories, flushing liquids would now take only 0.2 litres of water while flushing solids require just one litre.
For companies in Germany, web accessibility has never been a compelling issue until now – this was also confirmed by a series of tests conducted in 2011 by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT in Sankt Augustin. The scientists at the Web Compliance Center used their analysis tools to test the "web compliance" – or adherence to international web standards – among the Internet sites of German companies listed on the DAX. The outcome: 90 percent of the websites exhibited substantial flaws.
A team of UCLA researchers has created the most powerful high-performance nanoscale microwave oscillators in the world, a development that could lead to cheaper, more energy-efficient mobile communication devices that deliver much better signal quality.
A lifestyle that features fresh foods and limited use of products likely to contain environmental chemicals has been shown to reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), such as BPA and phthalates, in a small population study. EDCs are linked to a number of adverse health complications including neuro-developmental delays, behavioral issues and fertility problems. They are produced by the millions of pounds per year and found extensively in a range of products that contain certain plastics.
The leaking of environmentally damaging pollutants into our waters and atmosphere could soon be counteracted by a simple mathematical algorithm, according to researchers.
Presenting their research today, 26 June, in IOP Publishing's journal Inverse Problems, the researchers, from Université de Technologie de Compiègne, believe their work could aid efforts to avoid environmental catastrophes by identifying the exact location where pollutants have been leaked as early as possible.
Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London have discovered a mechanism that controls the way that organisms breathe or photosynthesise, potentially paving the way for improved biofuel production.
Writing in the journal PNAS, Dr Lu-ning Lu and Professor Conrad Mullineaux from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences report that by exposing cells to different light conditions, they have changed the way in which electrons are transported.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have found a way to create much slimmer thin-film solar cells without sacrificing the cells' ability to absorb solar energy. Making the cells thinner should significantly decrease manufacturing costs for the technology.
The Rio+20 summit on promoting jobs, clean energy and a more sustainable use of our planet's resources closed today after three days of talks. During the summit, the role of Earth observation in sustainable development was highlighted.
Tightening or relaxing the tension on a drumhead will change the way the drum sounds. The same goes for drumheads made from graphene, only instead of changing the sound, stretching graphene has a profound effect on the material's electrical properties. Researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland have shown that subjecting graphene to mechanical strain can mimic the effects of magnetic fields and create a quantum dot, an exotic type of semiconductor with a wide range of potential uses in electronic devices.
In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago, various strategies were deployed to prevent 4.9 million barrels of light crude oil from fouling the waters and reaching the shores. A team of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) researchers found that nature also played a role in the dispersal process as marine microbial communities responded to the oil plume that made its way from the wellhead at a depth of 5,000 feet to the surface of the water.