High-Tech Electronics Made from Autumn Leaves
Northern China's roadsides are peppered with deciduous phoenix trees, producing an abundance of fallen leaves in autumn. These leaves are generally burned in the colder season, exacerbating the country's air pollution problem. Investigators in Shandong, China, recently discovered a new method to convert this organic waste matter into a porous carbon material that can be used to produce high-tech electronics. The advance is reported in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.
Photosynthesis Discovery Could Help Design More Efficient Artificial Solar Cells
A natural process that occurs during photosynthesis could lead to the design of more efficient artificial solar cells, according to researchers at Georgia State University.
New X-Ray Laser Technique Reveals Magnetic Skyrmion Fluctuations
A new way of operating the powerful X-ray laser at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has enabled researchers to detect and measure fluctuations in magnetic structures being considered for new data storage and computing technologies.
The Outsized Role of Soil Microbes
Three scientists have proposed a new approach to better understand the role of soil organic matter in long-term carbon storage and its response to changes in global climate and atmospheric chemistry.
New Results Reveal High Tunability of 2-D Material
A science team at Berkeley Lab has precisely measured some previously obscured properties of a 2-D semiconducting material known as moly sulfide, which opens up a new avenue to applications. "That provides very important guidance to all of the optoelectronic device engineers. They need to know what the band gap is" in orderly to properly connect the 2-D material with other materials and components in a device, Yao said. Obtaining the direct band gap measurement is challenged by the so-called "exciton effect" in 2-D materials that is produced by a strong pairing between electrons and electron "holes" - vacant positions around an atom where an electron can exist. The strength of this effect can mask measurements of the band gap. Nicholas Borys, a project scientist at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry who also participated in the study, said the study also resolves how to tune optical and electronic properties in a 2-D material. "The real power of our technique, and an importa
A Low-Cost Method for Solar-Thermal Conversion That's Simpler and Greener
Researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a simple, low-cost, and environmentally sound method for fabricating a highly-efficient selective solar absorber (SSA) to convert sunlight into heat for energy-related applications. The team used a "dip and dry" approach whereby strips coated with a reactive metal are dipped into a solution containing ions of a less reactive metal to create plasmonic-nanoparticle-coated foils that perform as well or better than existing SSAs, regardless of the sun's angle.
Trash to Treasure: The Benefits of Waste-to-Energy Technologies
Using landfill waste to produce energy generates less greenhouse gases than simply letting the waste decompose. The study highlights the benefits of food waste as a potential source of energy.
UNLV Preps to Again Shine at International Solar Homebuilding Contest
Team Las Vegas readying 'Sinatra', its aging-in-place solar home for the prestigious U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon competition.
PPPL Physicist Discovers That Some Plasma Instabilities Can Extinguish Themselves
PPPL physicist Fatima Ebrahimi has for the first time used advanced models to accurately simulate key characteristics of the cyclic behavior of edge-localized modes, a particular type of plasma instability. The findings could help physicists more fully comprehend the behavior of plasma, the hot, charged gas that fuels fusion reactions in doughnut-shaped fusion facilities called tokamaks, and more reliably produce plasmas for fusion reactions.
Carbon Nanotubes Worth Their Salt
Lawrence Livermore scientists, in collaboration with researchers at Northeastern University, have developed carbon nanotube pores that can exclude salt from seawater. The team also found that water permeability in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with diameters smaller than a nanometer (0.8 nm) exceeds that of wider carbon nanotubes by an order of magnitude.
Radiological Crimes Investigation
The results of the fifth and latest Collaborative Materials Exercise of the Nuclear Forensics International Technical Working Group, a global network of nuclear forensics experts, will be discussed at the American Chemical Society's national meeting in Washington D.C. on August. 24.
High-Resolution Modeling Assesses Impact of Cities on River Ecosystems
New mapping methods developed by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory can help urban planners minimize the environmental impacts of cities' water and energy demands on surrounding stream ecologies.
Avoiding Disruptions that Halt Fusion Reactions
New supercomputing capabilities help understand how to cope with large-scale instabilities in tokamaks.
New WVU Study Provides Roadmap to Lower Methane Emissions for Future Heavy-Duty Natural Gas Vehicle Fleet
A new study published today (August 23) in the Journal of Air and Waste Management Association builds upon recent heavy-duty natural gas vehicle methane emission measurements to model methane emissions from a future, much larger vehicle fleet. This study, conducted by researchers at West Virginia University's Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines, and Emissions, comes as the price of natural gas has decreased, leading to interest in natural gas as a cleaner replacement for diesel in heavy-duty vehicles.
Stretchable Biofuel Cells Extract Energy From Sweat to Power Wearable Devices
A team of engineers has developed stretchable fuel cells that extract energy from sweat and are capable of powering electronics, such as LEDs and Bluetooth radios. The biofuel cells generate 10 times more power per surface area than any existing wearable biofuel cells. The devices could be used to power a range of wearable devices.
ShAPEing the Future of Magnesium Car Parts
Magnesium -- the lightest of all structural metals -- has a lot going for it in the quest to make ever lighter cars and trucks that go farther on a tank of fuel or battery charge.Magnesium is 75 percent lighter than steel, 33 percent lighter than aluminum and is the fourth most common element on earth behind iron, silicon and oxygen.
Research Center Established to Explore the Least Understood and Strongest Force Behind Visible Matter
Science can explain only a small portion of the matter that makes up the universe, from the earth we walk on to the stars we see at night. Stony Brook University and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) have established the Center for Frontiers of Nuclear Science to help scientists better understand the building blocks of visible matter. The new Center will push the frontiers of knowledge about quarks, gluons and their interactions that form protons, neutrons, and ultimately 99.9 percent of the mass of atoms - the bulk of the visible universe.
Cyborg Bacteria Outperform Plants When Turning Sunlight Into Useful Compounds (Video)
Photosynthesis provides energy for the vast majority of life on Earth. But chlorophyll, the green pigment that plants use to harvest sunlight, is relatively inefficient. To enable humans to capture more of the sun's energy than natural photosynthesis can, scientists have taught bacteria to cover themselves in tiny, highly efficient solar panels to produce useful compounds.
Scientists Create 'Diamond Rain' That Forms in the Interior of Icy Giant Planets
In an experiment designed to mimic the conditions deep inside the icy giant planets of our solar system, scientists were able to observe "diamond rain" for the first time as it formed in high-pressure conditions. Extremely high pressure squeezes hydrogen and carbon found in the interior of these planets to form solid diamonds that sink slowly down further into the interior.
Nanotechnology Moves From the Clean Room to the Classroom
The U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and United Scientific Supplies, Inc. are introducing high school students to nanoscience with a new hands-on product.
Discovered: A Quick and Easy Way to Shut Down Instabilities in Fusion Devices
Article describes use of second neutral beam injector to suppress instabilities on the NSTX-U
Researchers Create Molecular Movie of Virus Preparing to Infect Healthy Cells
A research team has created for the first time a movie with nanoscale resolution of the three-dimensional changes a virus undergoes as it prepares to infect a healthy cell. The scientists analyzed thousands of individual snapshots from intense X-ray flashes, capturing the process in an experiment at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Nanotechnology Gives Green Energy a Green Color
Solar panels have tremendous potential to provide affordable renewable energy, but many people see traditional black and blue panels as an eyesore. Architects, homeowners and city planners may be more open to the technology if they could install colorful, efficient solar panels, and a new study, published this week in Applied Physics Letters, brings us one step closer. Researchers have developed a method for imprinting existing solar panels with silicon nanopatterns that scatter green light back toward an observer.
New 3-D Simulations Show How Galactic Centers Cool Their Jets
Scientists at Berkeley Lab and Purdue University developed new theories and 3-D simulations to explain what's at work in the mysterious jets of energy and matter beaming from the center of galaxies at nearly the speed of light.
Are Your Tweets Feeling Well?
Study finds opinion and emotion in tweets change when you get sick, a method public health workers could use to track health trends.