Better lectricity access has little impact on climate
Laxenburg, Austria (SPX) Oct 21, 2014 -
Improving household electricity access in India over the last 30 years contributed only marginally to the nation's total carbon emissions growth during that time, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
"Energy access is fundamental to development: it brings improvements to all aspects of life, including education, communication, and health," says IIASA res ...
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Goldilocks principle wrong for particle assembly
New York NY (SPX) Oct 21, 2014 -
Microscopic particles that bind under low temperatures will melt as temperatures rise to moderate levels, but re-connect under hotter conditions, a team of New York University scientists has found. Their discovery points to new ways to create "smart materials," cutting-edge materials that adapt to their environment by taking new forms, and to sharpen the detail of 3D printing.
"These findi ...
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Social trust eroded in Chinese product-tampering incident
Urbana IL (SPX) Oct 17, 2014 -
For about a decade, Chinese consumers weren't getting what they paid for when they purchased Wuchang, a special brand of gourmet rice that has a peculiar scent. The quality was being diluted when less expensive rice was aromatized, added to the packages of the high-quality rice, and sold at the premium price. Researchers at the University of Illinois studied how the tampering scandal affected th ...
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Catalysts for hydrogen fuel cells cab be synthesized in microwave oven
Umea, Sweden (SPX) Oct 17, 2014 -
Swedish and Chinese researchers show how a unique nano-alloy composed of palladium nano-islands embedded in tungsten nanoparticles creates a new type of catalysts for highly efficient oxygen reduction, the most important reaction in hydrogen fuel cells.
Their results are published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
The world's rapidly growing demand for energy and the r ...
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Brighter energy-saving flat panels using carbon nanotubes
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 17, 2014 -
Even as the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics has enshrined light emitting diodes (LEDs) as the single most significant and disruptive energy-efficient lighting solution of today, scientists around the world continue unabated to search for the even-better-bulbs of tomorrow.
Enter carbon electronics.
Electronics based on carbon, especially carbon nanotubes (CNTs), are emerging as successors ...
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Superconducting circuits, simplified
Boston MA (SPX) Oct 21, 2014 -
Computer chips with superconducting circuits - circuits with zero electrical resistance - would be 50 to 100 times as energy-efficient as today's chips, an attractive trait given the increasing power consumption of the massive data centers that power the Internet's most popular sites.
Superconducting chips also promise greater processing power: Superconducting circuits that use so-called J ...
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Physicists build reversible laser tractor beam
Canberra, Australia (SPX) Oct 21, 2014 -
Laser physicists have built a tractor beam that can repel and attract objects, using a hollow laser beam that is bright around the edges and dark in its centre.
It is the first long-distance optical tractor beam and moved particles one fifth of a millimetre in diameter a distance of up to 20 centimetres, around 100 times further than previous experiments.
"Demonstration of a large sc ...
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