JinkoSolar Opens Solar Module Factory in Cape Town, South Africa
Shanghai, China (SPX) Aug 13, 2014 -
JinkoSolar Holding has announced that it has opened a solar module factory in Cape Town, South Africa.
Located in 2 Evans Avenue, Epping Industrial 1, Cape Town, the factory covers an area of 5,000m2.and has annual production capacity of 120MW. JinkoSolar invested a total of approximately USD7.5 million in the factory which is expected to create 250 jobs.
Modeled after its state-of-t ...
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Disney develops method to capture stylized hair for 3-D-printed figurines
Zurich, Switzerland (SPX) Aug 13, 2014 -
Perhaps no aspect of 3D printing has captured the popular imagination more than personalized figurines with the facial features of real people. Now, researchers at Disney Research Zurich and the University of Zaragoza have developed a method that can incorporate an individual's hairstyle as well.
The researchers will present their new method at ACM SIGGRAPH 2014, the International Conferen ...
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NOKERO unveils the Prima N202 at American Renewable Energy Day
New York NY (SPX) Aug 13, 2014 -
Nokero International will be unveiling its 9th solar powered bulb, Prima N202, at Aspen's American Renewable Energy Day Conference. Nokero is continuing to provide a better quality of life and economic opportunities for those without electricity with the launch of the Prima N202.
Since its inception, Nokero has distributed their solar-based products to more than 120 countries worldwide, wh ...
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Learning from origami to design new materials
Amherst MA (SPX) Aug 13, 2014 -
A challenge increasingly important to physicists and materials scientists in recent years has been how to design controllable new materials that exhibit desired physical properties rather than relying on those properties to emerge naturally, says University of Massachusetts Amherst physicist Christian Santangelo.
Now he and physicist Arthur Evans and polymer scientist Ryan Hayward at UMass ...
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Photo editing algorithm changes weather, seasons automatically
Providence RI (SPX) Aug 13, 2014 -
We may not be able control the weather outside, but thanks to a new algorithm being developed by Brown University computer scientists, we can control it in photographs.
The new program enables users to change a suite of "transient attributes" of outdoor photos - the weather, time of day, season, and other features - with simple, natural language commands. To make a sunny photo rainy, for e ...
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Pairing old technologies with new for next-generation electronic devices
London, UK (SPX) Aug 13, 2014 -
UCL scientists have discovered a new method to efficiently generate and control currents based on the magnetic nature of electrons in semi-conducting materials, offering a radical way to develop a new generation of electronic devices.
One promising approach to developing new technologies is to exploit the electron's tiny magnetic moment, or 'spin'.
Electrons have two properties - cha ...
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Carbon dioxide 'sponge' could ease transition to cleaner energy
San Francisco CA (SPX) Aug 13, 2014 -
A sponge-like plastic that sops up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) might ease our transition away from polluting fossil fuels and toward new energy sources, such as hydrogen. The material - a relative of the plastics used in food containers - could play a role in President Obama's plan to cut CO2 emissions 30 percent by 2030, and could also be integrated into power plant smokestacks in t ...
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Japan's economy shrinks after sales tax rise
Tokyo (AFP) Aug 13, 2014 -
Japan's economy suffered its biggest quarterly contraction since the 2011 quake and tsunami as a sales tax rise slammed the brakes on growth, data showed Wednesday, throwing into question plans for another increase next year.
The 1.7 percent dip in gross domestic product for the second quarter - or a 6.8 percent contraction at an annualised rate - gave the clearest picture yet of the impa ...
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Amazon unveils card payment reader, challenging Square
New York (AFP) Aug 13, 2014 -
US online giant Amazon unveiled a new payment card reader for mobile devices Wednesday in challenging a system pioneered by Square.
The e-commerce giant unveiled its "Amazon Local Register," described as "a secure card reader and mobile app that provides local businesses with the tools they need to quickly and easily accept credit and debit cards from a smartphone or tablet and keep track of ...
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Temporary battery tattoo turns human sweat into electricity
San Francisco (UPI) Aug 13, 2013 -
Scientists continue to unveil impressive innovations at the American Chemical Society's annual conference, currently being held in San Francisco. The latest is a removable tattoo that doubles as a miniature battery - turning human sweat into storable electricity.
The device is meant to be worn during a trip to the gym. It can monitor a person's progress during exercise routines while s ...
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BMW's Chinese dealers fined over price-fixing
Beijing (AFP) Aug 14, 2014 -
Four Chinese dealers for German auto maker BMW have been fined about 1.6 million yuan ($260,000), authorities have said, as the government steps up a high-profile anti-monopoly campaign involving a number of foreign brands.
The dealers in Wuhan in the central province of Hubei have been ordered to pay the penalties for "forming a price alliance", provincial authorities said in a statement We ...
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Solar Cells Tested on Flexible Array Design
Cleveland OH (SPX) Aug 15, 2014 -
On the campus of NASA Glenn Research Center, rows of solar arrays are a permanent part of the landscape. But this summer, a very different kind of solar array arrived at the lab.
Deployable Space Systems (DSS) of California has developed a flexible solar array design that can unfurl in space to generate spacecraft power supplies and then retract for delicate maneuvers and docking to other ...
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New test reveals purity of graphene
Houston TX (SPX) Aug 15, 2014 -
Graphene may be tough, but those who handle it had better be tender. The environment surrounding the atom-thick carbon material can influence its electronic performance, according to researchers at Rice and Osaka universities who have come up with a simple way to spot contaminants.
Because it's so easy to accidently introduce impurities into graphene, labs led by physicists Junichiro Kono ...
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Geothermal Industry Asserts Technology as Beneficial and Affordable
Reno NV (SPX) Aug 15, 2014 -
Nearly 300 industry leaders gathered in Reno last week for the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) National Geothermal Summit. The leading forum for Western State policy discussions, the National Geothermal Summit brought together the industry for a dialogue with state and federal policy makers.
The industry met to discuss such issues as moving geothermal forward in Nevada; utility perspec ...
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Solar Power, Origami-Style
Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 15, 2014 -
As a high school student at a study program in Japan, Brian Trease would fold wrappers from fast-food cheeseburgers into cranes. He loved discovering different origami techniques in library books.
Today, Trease, a mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, thinks about how the principles of origami could be used for space-bound devices.
"This is ...
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Juwi Will Build 50-Megawatt Wind Farm in Uruguay
Worrstadt, Germany (SPX) Aug 15, 2014 -
juwi has announced that it has sold the project rights for one of the largest wind farms in the company's history and its first in South America, and has retained responsibility for building the wind farm. The wind farm will have a total installed capacity of 50 MW and is expected to achieve commercial operation in mid 2015.
The wind farm is located in Cerro Largo, next to the town of Melo ...
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Bald ambition: Chinese county exports human hair to Africa
Taihe, China (AFP) Aug 14, 2014 -
Long, black and lucrative: sacks bulging with human hair spill onto the streets of a rural county whose farmers have helped make China the world's biggest exporter of products made from the material.
As dawn broke over the morning market in Taihe, vendors bringing hairy wares from across China haggled with dozens of buyers, and tempers frayed.
"We have to bargain for hair," said buyer Li ...
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Cisco to cut 6,000 jobs in streamlining
New York (AFP) Aug 13, 2014 -
US computer networking giant Cisco Systems said Wednesday it plans to slash some 6,000 jobs, or eight percent of its global workforce in the coming year.
Chairman and chief executive John Chambers called the move a "limited restructuring" that will allow Cisco to "reinvest cost savings in key growth areas."
Chief financial officer Frank Calderoni said the move to streamline comes with C ...
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Robo-cook: android restaurant boots up in China
Kunshan, China (AFP) Aug 14, 2014 -
It's more teatime than Terminator - a restaurant in China is electrifying customers by using more than a dozen robots to cook and deliver food.
Mechanical staff greet customers, deliver dishes to tables and even stir-fry meat and vegetables at the eatery in Kunshan, which opened last week.
"My daughter asked me to invent a robot because she doesn't like doing housework," the restaurant' ...
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Electric cars fail to rev up car-mad Germans
Berlin (AFP) Aug 13, 2014 -
Germans are mad about cars and Germany is ranked the most fuel-efficient country on the planet, but when it comes to electric vehicles, Europe's top economy is in the slow lane.
And moves by the government last week to try to jump-start public interest in the technology are unlikely to change much, experts say.
In 2009, Chancellor Angela Merkel set an ambitious target for one million e ...
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Electrons moving in a magnetic field exhibit strange quantum behavior
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Aug 12, 2014 -
The dynamic behavior of electrons in magnetic fields is crucial for understanding physical processes, such as the quantum Hall effect, which are important in many areas of solid state physics, including electrical conductivity. Yet, there is much that remains unknown about exactly how electrons behave in a magnetic field.
In research published in Nature Communications, researchers Franco N ...
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Robots to up-end the world of work, for good and bad
Washington (AFP) Aug 06, 2014 -
Robots and artificially intelligent devices will take over many jobs now done by people, and experts are divided as to whether their spread will do human society more good than harm.
The Pew Research Center said experts see a growing role for self-driving cars, delivery drones, robotic workers, smartphone-based assistants and even algorithmic journalism by 2025.
But they are divided on w ...
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Light pulses control graphene's electrical behavior
Boston MA (SPX) Aug 05, 2014 -
Graphene, an ultrathin form of carbon with exceptional electrical, optical, and mechanical properties, has become a focus of research on a variety of potential uses. Now researchers at MIT have found a way to control how the material conducts electricity by using extremely short light pulses, which could enable its use as a broadband light detector.
The new findings are published in the jo ...
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Self-assembly of gold nanoparticles into small clusters
Berlin, Germany (SPX) Aug 07, 2014 -
Researchers at HZB in co-operation with Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin (HU, Berlin) have made an astonishing observation: they were investigating the formation of gold nanoparticles in a solvent and observed that the nanoparticles had not distributed themselves uniformly, but instead were self-assembled into small clusters.
This was determined using Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) at B ...
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Robots inspired by origami can fold selves, walk away
Washington (AFP) Aug 07, 2014 -
It starts out laying flat, like a sheet of paper. Then it springs up, almost lifelike, and folds into moveable parts much like origami art. And then it crawls away.
This new kind of robot could someday be used in space exploration, to slide into collapse sites to aid search and rescue, or to speed up manufacturing on assembly lines, experts said Thursday.
While this particular machine's ...
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