Tag: physical sciences
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Gov’t Agencies, Companies Partner on Better Wind Forecasts
Two U.S. companies are working with the Department of Energy and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to improve wind forecasting that can help wind power providers better plan and deliver electric power. AWS Truepower in Albany, New York and WindLogics Inc. in Saint Paul, Minnesota won grants last fall to deploy atmospheric measurement systems…
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Grad Student Improves Solar Collector, Starts Company
A masters degree candidate at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands developed a new type of hybrid solar collector with higher efficiency and longer lifespan than the current hybrid systems. Stefan Roest, who recently completed his degree in sustainable energy technology at Delft, also helped start Eternal Sun, a company to bring solar test…
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Wood Products Offered As Part of Carbon Control Strategy
Taking advantage of the full life-cycle of forests and wood products offers opportunities for greater control of carbon emissions, according to an analysis by a team of researchers from the U.S. and Sweden. Their paper appears in the June issue of the journal Carbon Management. The review, by Bruce Lippke, University of Washington professor emeritus…
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Researchers Develop Low-Energy Cardiac Defibrillation
Scientists from Germany, France, and the U.S. have developed a new process to regulate dangerous fluctuations in heart rhythms with far less energy and pain than current methods. The team’s findings appear in the current issue of the journal Nature (paid subscription required). The regular human heartbeat is controlled by the heart’s electrical system. An…
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Grant Awarded for Mind-Machine Engineering Research Center
National Science Foundation announced an $18.5 million grant to establish an Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering based at University of Washington in Seattle. The grant is for five years of funding, with an option for another five years. The new center is expected to research robotic devices that interact with, assist, and understand…
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Engineers Develop Nanotech Solar Thermal Fuel Cell
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a process for storing solar energy in the form of heat with a material based on carbon nanotubes. A description of the process by engineering professor Jeffrey Grossman and postdoc Alexie Kolpak appears online in the journal Nano Letters (paid subscription required). Grossman and Kolpak’s methods involve…
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Quick Color-Change Lens Technology Leads to New Company
A professor of chemistry and colleagues at University of Connecticut in Storrs have devised a process for quick-changing, variable colors in films and displays, such as sunglasses. Greg Sotzing and one of his colleagues started a company called Alphachromics Inc. to commercialize the technology for consumer sunglasses lenses and military goggles. Transition lenses normally use…
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Solar Panels Resembling Ivy to be Installed at University
Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology (SMIT), a company in Brooklyn, New York, has developed solar panels that resemble ivy leaves and assembles them in arrays to cover a building’s walls. The first U.S. installation of SMIT’s solar array is, of course, a college campus: University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Solar Ivy, as SMIT calls…
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Challenge Seeks Method to Estimate Powder Flow
InnoCentive, in Waltham. Massachusetts, that conducts crowdsourcing contests for sponsoring companies, has posted a new challenge seeking a method to estimate the “flowability” of powder blends based on the physical properties of the mixture. The challenge has a prize of $20,000 and a deadline of 7 September 2011. Powders can be difficult materials for which…
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University Develops Tiny, Lens-Free Camera
A postdoc engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York developed a microscopic camera that fits on the head of a pin, contains no lenses or moving parts, and costs pennies to make. The prototype by Patrick Gill and his colleagues is described in the current issue of the journal Optics Letters (paid subscription required).…