China 'Segway copycat' buys Segway company
Beijing (AFP) April 15, 2015 -
A Chinese firm which makes self-balancing two wheeled scooter-like vehicles has bought its US rival Segway, it said Wednesday - only months after being accused of copying its designs.
Segway, founded by the inventor of the quirky vehicles, last year sought US government action against Ninebot and several other Chinese manufacturers, alleging "violation" of its patents.
Ninebot said on a ...
more
Japan court blocks restarting of two nuclear reactors
Tokyo (AFP) April 14, 2015 -
A Japanese court on Tuesday issued a landmark injunction against the restarting of two atomic reactors, after the country's nuclear watchdog had given the green light to switch them back on.
The district court in the central prefecture of Fukui made the temporary order in response to a bid by local residents to halt the restart of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the Takahama nuclear power p ...
more
X-ray study images structural damage in lithium-ion batteries
Hamburg, Germany (SPX) Apr 15, 2015 -
Charging lithium-ion batteries too quickly can permanently reduce the battery capacity. Portions of the energy storage structure are thereby destroyed and deactivated. These structural changes have been visualized for the first time by DESY researcher Dr Ulrike Bosenberg along with her team at DESY's X-ray source PETRA III.
Their fluorescence studies show that even after only a few chargin ...
more
Solution-grown nanowires make the best lasers
Madison WI (SPX) Apr 15, 2015 -
Take a material that is a focus of interest in the quest for advanced solar cells. Discover a "freshman chemistry level" technique for growing that material into high-efficiency, ultra-small lasers. The result, disclosed Monday, April 13 in Nature Materials, is a shortcut to lasers that are extremely efficient and able to create many colors of light.
That makes these tiny lasers suitable f ...
more
Burying the climate change problem
London, UK (SPX) Apr 15, 2015 -
Burying the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, has been mooted as one geoengineering approach to ameliorating climate change. To be effective, trapping the gas in geological deposits would be the for the very long term, thousands of years. Now, a team in Brazil, writing in the International Journal of Global Warming has reviewed the risk assessments for this tech ...
more
Team develops a hyper-stretchable elastic-composite energy harvester
Daejeon, South Korea (SPX) Apr 15, 2015 -
A research team led by Professor Keon Jae Lee of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has developed a hyper-stretchable elastic-composite energy harvesting device called a nanogenerator.
Flexible electronics have come into the market and are enabling new technologies like flexible displays in mobile phone, wea ...
more
Inkjet-printed liquid metal could bring wearable tech, soft robotics
West Lafayette IN (SPX) Apr 15, 2015 -
New research shows how inkjet-printing technology can be used to mass-produce electronic circuits made of liquid-metal alloys for "soft robots" and flexible electronics.
Elastic technologies could make possible a new class of pliable robots and stretchable garments that people might wear to interact with computers or for therapeutic purposes. However, new manufacturing techniques must be d ...
more
