Plants are extremely efficient converters of light into energy, more or less setting the bar for researchers creating photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight into electricity. As such, researchers are constantly trying to mimic the tricks that millions of years of
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A University of Michigan researcher thinks we can triple the fuel economies in our petroleum-powered vehicles in the next 25 years. All we need to do is replace horsepower with brainpower.
John
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Remember earlier this month when the government said it thought only a quarter of the oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster was still in the water? Think again. Two new studies conclude things are still quite dire in the Gulf, estimating not only that 79 percent of
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File this under news you can raise a glass to: Researchers at Edinburgh Napier University have figured out how to turn the leftovers from one of Scotland's biggest exports into biofuel. Made from byproducts of the whisky-making process, the scotch-derived
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Tagging trees with embedded RFID tags not only helps logging companies keep track of the origin and destination of timber on the truck, but it helps keep companies honest and aids in the prosecution of illegal logging operations. But those RFID chips, unless they're expensively
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In a patriotic dairy-to-diesel demonstration project proving the breadth of fatty materials that can be converted into useable fuels, a Philadelphia biodiesel producer and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have turned a 362 kilogram butter sculpture of Ben Franklin
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Cryonic technology could help meet the world's peak energy demands as well as cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, a new study says. No, not by freezing excess humans -- by
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The Population Reference Bureau has projected that in 2011, the planet Earth will be home to more than seven billion living humans. At current growth rates, we'll top 9 billion in 2050. By that year, the population of Africa is expected to double, and that
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American motor engineering prides itself on muscle while German engineering is known for speed and precision, but neither of these century-old crafts can stand up to the multi-millennia advantage that evolution enjoys over them. Now Australian scientists have unlocked the design details of
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Though the sun offers us a couple options for exploiting its energy -- light and heat -- we've always had to choose to use one at a time, because solar-energy technology hasn't been able to capture both typs of radiation simultaneously. Stanford researchers say that's about to change, however.
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As particle physicists gather this week for a conference in Paris, they're reporting progress toward finding the elusive Higgs boson, with two groups suggesting a Higgs discovery may not be far off.
Physicists from Fermilab in Illinois announced they combined the results of two experiments
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A new underwater kite being developed in Sweden could be a low-cost, low-impact method for harnessing ocean energy. Swedish start-up Minesto has obtained US$2.5 million to start testing the kite in Northern Ireland next year.
The kite, called Deep Green, is able to capture tidal energy at
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There are currently more than 60,000 taxis cruising around Japan, a number that accounts for 20 per cent of the country's CO2 emissions. To promote environmental health, the Japanese government has joined with Better Place, a US firm specialising in electric
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Smart house tech is about to go a step beyond your average energy-efficiency monitoring systems. What about a house that prepares a fresh pot of coffee when you wake up, plays your favorite music without being told to, and sets the thermostat to your ideal setting? Now that's
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True to its aeronautic roots, NASA is evaluating a new generation of supersonic airplane designs to see whether they can reduce sonic-boom levels.
Boeing
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While Toyota and Volkswagen – the world’s two biggest car makers – are locked in a battle for global sales leadership over the next decade, driven by a new generation of hybrid and electric cars, Japanese maker Honda is working on technology that may well leapfrog them both. Most big
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Cryonic technology could help meet the world's peak energy demands as well as cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, a new study says. No, not by freezing excess humans -- by
Read more...
Remember earlier this month when the government said it thought only a quarter of the oil from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster was still in the water? Think again. Two new studies conclude things are still quite dire in the Gulf, estimating not only that 79 percent of
Read more...
With huge quantities of rare-earth elements valuable to high-tech industries like lithium-ion battery production, will Afghanistan become the "Saudi Arabia" of the future?
Right now, every mining company CEO in the world has one thing on the mind: Afghanistan.
Yesterday,
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The future of community bike systems may not require much pedaling at all; Sanyo has just installed two "Solar Parking Lots" that serve as solar charging stations for 100 Eneloop electric hybrid
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Over five years ago, scientists succeeded in teleporting information. Unfortunately,
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As particle physicists gather this week for a conference in Paris, they're reporting progress toward finding the elusive Higgs boson, with two groups suggesting a Higgs discovery may not be far off.
Physicists from Fermilab in Illinois announced they combined the results of two experiments
Read more...
It?s amazing no one thought of it before: nuclear fusion from a levitating tire-sized magnet
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Looking for new energy solutions, scientists are increasingly embracing the idea of cold fusion, once considered a junk science along the lines of alchemy. "Cold fusion" describes the nuclear fusion of atoms at close to room temperatures, as opposed to the epic temperatures
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The future of community bike systems may not require much pedaling at all; Sanyo has just installed two "Solar Parking Lots" that serve as solar charging stations for 100 Eneloop electric hybrid
Read more...
Viruses generally get a bad rap, but they can also be very helpful little machines. For instance, bacteriophages have been engineered to clear up infections that seemed otherwise untreatable, and genetic material from viruses has been used to ease
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General Motors touted the automatic driving mode of its two-wheel electric car when it unveiled the vehicle last month in Shanghai, China. Now there's a video that
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A laser-obsessed entrepreneur whose mosquito-zapping project demoed at the TED 2010 conference has bigger plans for energy beams. Tom Nugent envisions using lasers to deliver energy over long distances -- whether that means juicing up an aerial drone's batteries or beaming solar space power
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While Toyota and Volkswagen – the world’s two biggest car makers – are locked in a battle for global sales leadership over the next decade, driven by a new generation of hybrid and electric cars, Japanese maker Honda is working on technology that may well leapfrog them both. Most big
Read more...
After lots of talk and testing, Japanese researchers are ready to go space sailing. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced its intention to launch its first "space
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