There is a right way and a wrong way to dispose of our nuclear effluence and I'm pretty sure just dumping it into the Columbia River isn't the right way. Plutonium takes a closer look at the economic and environmental costs of our Cold War arms race. More »
Programmable "correlated" electromagnet array technology from Correlated Magnetics Research (CMR) was recently selected by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers as one of the 2011Innovations That Could Change the Way You Manufacture.
In a standard dye sensitized solar cell, an organic molecule adsorbed on the surface of a porous electrode absorbs light and then initiates the charge separation process eventually leading to generation of photocurrent. While the dye appears to have "sensitized" the large bandgap material, it never actually does, because only the dye molecules absorb the light and generate the carriers, the large bandgap material primarily serves the function of a conducting channel to take the electrons out. While wide bandgap materials alone can not absorb the sun light efficiently, it has been predicted that if two large bandgap materials with type-II band alignment form coaxial nanowires, the effective indirect bandgap could be substantially smaller than either of the individual materials. After a few years effort, one research team has now demonstrated a real functional device that exhibits the key feature of the idea: the use of two large bandgap materials to make a solar cell behaving like a small bandgap material.
Researchers gather to discuss the state of their field and the potential for new treatments.
GN11 will address challenges and opportunities for nanotechnology, and delineate how companies can incorporate green nanotechnology into its products and processes. The meeting will focus on two key research areas where reduction to practice has the most potential to significantly advance the field. It will highlight state-of-the-art in materials and characterization challenges, and biological impacts of nanotechnology.
The first truly simultaneous X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer covering almost all elements of the periodic table in one run.
At Pittcon 2011, Bruker launches the e-FlashHR, a high resolution, high sensitivity detector for electron backscatter diffraction analysis (EBSD) on third party electron microscopes.
Elan Drug Technologies (EDT), the leading drug delivery unit of Elan Corporation, plc, announced that the first injectable product using EDT's NanoCrystal technology has been approved by the European Commission.
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory shined a low-power laser - similar in intensity to ones used in office laser pointers - into a solution of gold and carbon nanoparticles suspended in water. Unexpectedly, they found that the carbon nanoparticles decomposed or deformed to create a kind of "glue" that enabled the creation of long gold and carbon chains that assembled continuously wherever the laser was pointed.
Argonne National Laboratory and Nalco Company, with headquarters in Naperville, Ill., have reached a licensing agreement for an electrodeionization technology that will help significantly reduce the cost of producing clean energy and of the chemicals and water used in industry. The separations technology can process biomass-based feedstocks into biofuels and chemicals.
Scientists at CSIRO have developed a simple but effective technique for growing and adding value to an exciting new group of smart materials which could be used in areas such as optical sensing and drug storage and delivery.
Motion control specialist PI (Physik Instrumente) and piezo ceramics specialist PI Ceramic are planning to invest approximately $13 million for the third extension of their piezo ceramics factory and R+D center in Thuringia over the next three years.
TTM Co. Ltd today announced they are showcasing the MTRAN and NANOTIM thermal solutions to conferees attending the annual Semi Therm conference in San Jose, March 20-24.
A major milestone in microfluidics could soon lead to stand-alone, self-powered chips that can diagnose diseases within minutes. The device, developed by an international team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Dublin City University in Ireland and Universidad de Valparaiso Chile, is able to process whole blood samples without the use of external tubing and extra components.
Researchers at Berkeley Lab have been able to enhance spontaneous magnetization in special versions of the popular multiferroic material bismuth ferrite. What's more, they can turn this magnetization "on/off" through the application of an external electric field, a critical ability for the advancement of spintronic technology.
Controlling climate change, abandoning dependency on fossil fuels, and creating the conditions for sustainable development will require as great a transformation as our ancestors accomplished over tens of thousands of years in moving from agrarian to urban societies. "Nanotechnology: Engines On" is a new book about how Nanotechnology is contributing to solve this vital challenges.
In early March 2011 we had the chance to go to Puerto Rico for a few days. It was great to get some sun and the food there was fantastic (if you don’t mind fried…well, everything). We had a car for one day and decided to go to a stretch of beach not too far away from San Juan, Condado and the Isla Verde area. This stretch of beach is called Piñones and the best thing about this area are all the street food vendors that line up along the side of the road.
We've seen a flood of Android phones so far in 2011. We got our first whiff of the coming deluge in January when we went to the Consumer Electronics Show and saw around a dozen really impressive models on the show floor, all with big displays, 4G radios, beefy processors and promises of epic battery life. Some had interesting add-ons, like big physical keyboards for thumb commandos, or the Motorola Atrix's whacky full-sized laptop dock. More »
Today, at 23:21 UT (19:21 p.m. Eastern US time), the Sun’s odometer resets, and it once again finds itself at the celestial coordinates of 0h0m0s Right Ascension, 0°0m0s declination.
Or, in other words, it’s the vernal equinox!
A lot of folks will say this is the first day of spring. I think it makes more sense to call this the mid-point of spring — as do many countries — but I’m less inclined to argue about it as much as I used to. What the heck; it’s getting warmer in the northern hemisphere after quite a long and adventurous winter, and I went biking in the sunshine yesterday. It’s sure starting to feel like spring. Good enough for me!
In real terms, the equinox means a few things, too:
Day and night are about the same length (12 hours each)… although the Earth’s non-circular orbit and atmospheric distortion mess that up a bit.
The Sun rises pretty much due east and sets due west.
In the northern hemisphere the length of daylight is increasing the fastest. That sounds funny, but it’s not too hard to understand. In the northern hemisphere, just after the winter solstice, ...
