Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:32:41 GMT

China's Dangerous Web Domains

A recent report by antivirus software vendor McAfee Inc. has found that some of the most dangerous domains on the Internet are in China. That may not be good for companies setting up Internet-based business there.

In an article on the report, Associated Press Technology Writer Jordan Robertson this:McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are ".hk" (Hong Kong), ".cn" (China) and ".info" (information).

Of all ".hk" sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of ".cn" sites and 11.7 percent of ".info" sites that way.While the "cn" and "hk" domains get registered in China, the servers using them can be anywhere.

The "ro" (Romania) and "ru" (Russia) domains were also rated as high risk.

Posted by: Greg Cruey      Read more     Source

June 26, 2008, 8:35 PM CT

Porous Nanostructures For Better Fuel Cells

For 5,000 years or so, the only way to shape metal has been to "heat and beat." Even in modern nanotechnology, working with metals involves carving with electron beams or etching with acid.

Now, Cornell scientists have developed a method to self-assemble metals into complex nanostructures. Applications include making more efficient and cheaper catalysts for fuel cells and industrial processes and creating microstructured surfaces to make new types of conductors that would carry more information across microchips than conventional wires do.

The method involves coating metal nanoparticles -- about 2 nanometers (nm) in diameter -- with an organic material known as a ligand that allows the particles to be dissolved in a liquid, then mixed with a block co-polymer (a material made up of two different chemicals whose molecules link together to solidify in a predictable pattern). When the polymer and ligand are removed, the metal particles fuse into a solid metal structure.

"The polymer community has tried to do this for 20 years," said Ulrich Wiesner, Cornell professor of materials science and engineering, who, with colleagues, reports on the new method in the June 27 issue of the journal Science. "But metals have a tendency to cluster into uncontrolled structures. The new thing we have added is the ligand, which creates high solubility in an organic solvent and allows the particles to flow even at high density"......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

June 26, 2008, 8:29 PM CT

Standards Set for Energy-Conserving LED Lighting

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in cooperation with national standards organizations, have taken the lead in developing the first two standards for solid-state lighting in the United States. This new generation lighting technology uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of incandescent filaments or fluorescent tubes to produce illumination that cuts energy consumption significantly.

Standards are important to ensure that products will have high quality and their performance will be specified uniformly for commerce and trade. These standards-the most recent of which published last month-detail the color specifications of LED lamps and LED light fixtures, and the test methods that manufacturers should use when testing these solid-state lighting products for total light output, energy consumption and chromaticity, or color quality.

Solid-state lighting is expected to significantly reduce the amount of energy needed for general lighting, including residential, commercial and street lighting. "Lighting," explains NIST scientist Yoshi Ohno, "uses 22 percent of the electricity and 8 percent of the total energy spent in the country, so the energy savings in lighting will have a huge impact".

Solid-state lighting is expected to be twice as energy efficient as fluorescent lamps and 10 times more efficient than incandescent lamps, eventhough the current products are still at their early stages. Ohno chaired the task groups that developed these new standards......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

June 23, 2008, 7:00 PM CT

Discovery could enable development of faster computers

Physicists at UC Riverside have made an accidental discovery in the lab that has potential to change how information in computers can be transported or stored. Dependent on the "spin" of electrons, a property electrons possess that makes them behave like tiny magnets, the discovery could help in the development of spin-based semiconductor technology such as ultrahigh-speed computers.

The researchers were experimenting with ferromagnet/semiconductor (FM/SC) structures, which are key building blocks for semiconductor spintronic devices (microelectronic devices that perform logic operations using the spin of electrons). The FM/SC structure is sandwich-like in appearance, with the ferromagnet and semiconductor serving as microscopically thin slices between which lies a thinner still insulator made of a few atomic layers of magnesium oxide (MgO).

The researchers found that by simply altering the thickness of the MgO interface they were able to control which kinds of electrons, identified by spin, traveled from the semiconductor, through the interface, to the ferromagnet.

Study results appear in the June 13 issue of Physical Review Letters

Experimental results:

The spin of an electron is represented by a vector, pointing up for an Earth-like west-to-east spin; and down for an east-to-west spin......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

June 19, 2008, 9:15 PM CT

Tiny refrigerator taking shape to cool future computers

Researchers at Purdue University are developing a miniature refrigeration system small enough to fit inside laptops and personal computers, a cooling technology that would boost performance while shrinking the size of computers.

Unlike conventional cooling systems, which use a fan to circulate air through finned devices called heat sinks attached to computer chips, miniature refrigeration would dramatically increase how much heat could be removed, said Suresh Garimella, the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

The Purdue research focuses on learning how to design miniature components called compressors and evaporators, which are critical for refrigeration systems. The researchers developed an analytical model for designing tiny compressors that pump refrigerants using penny-size diaphragms and validated the model with experimental data. The elastic membranes are made of ultra-thin sheets of a plastic called polyimide and coated with an electrically conducting metallic layer. The metal layer allows the diaphragm to be moved back and forth to produce a pumping action using electrical charges, or "electrostatic diaphragm compression".

In related research, the engineers are among the first to precisely measure how a refrigerant boils and vaporizes inside tiny "microchannels" in an evaporator and determine how to vary this boiling rate for maximum chip cooling......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

April 28, 2008, 5:27 PM CT

'Sticky nanotubes' hold key to future technologies

Scientists at Purdue University are the first to precisely measure the forces mandatory to peel tiny nanotubes off of other materials, opening up the possibility of creating standards for nano-manufacturing and harnessing a gecko's ability to walk up walls.

So-called "peel tests" are used extensively in manufacturing. Knowing how much force is needed to pull a material off of another material is essential for manufacturing, but no tests exist for nanoscale structures, said Arvind Raman, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue.

Scientists are trying to learn about the physics behind the "stiction," or how the tiny structures stick to other materials, to manufacture everything from nanoelectronics to composite materials, "nanotweezers" to medical devices using nanotubes, nanowires and biopolymers such as DNA and proteins, he said.

Flexible carbon nanotubes stick to surfaces differently than larger structures because of attractive forces between individual atoms called van der Waals forces.

"Operating in a nanoscale environment is sort of like having flypaper everywhere because of the attraction of van der Waals forces," Raman said. "These forces are very relevant on this size scale because a nanometer is about 10 atoms wide"......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:59:35 GMT

Oncology Diagnostics By AviaraDx

Innovations on cancer diagnostics are what AviaraDx, Inc. brought to the market.


© AviaraDx, Inc.


Two new oncology tests have been launched for the classification of metastatic cancer and identification of patients with estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer who are at high risk of recurrence and also those unlikely to respond favorably to standard adjuvant endocrine therapy.

The said tests are the following:

AviaraDx, Inc.

Assists physicians in diagnosing metastatic cancer types based on a 92-gene expression assay that is capable of classifying 39 tumor types as well as 64 cancer subtypes. The results help clinicians quickly identify the primary tumor site and avoid unnecessary repetitive imaging and immunohistological procedures in attempting to establish the cancer origin. Successful cancer classification is critical for physicians to select the appropriate treatment regimen.

AviaraDx, Inc.

Assists physicians in determining the optimal treatment for patients with ER positive, node-negative breast cancer by using two newly developed gene-based biomarkers to evaluate the risk of recurrence and probable response to endocrine therapy. The test is the first tool designed to identify the 10 to 20% of ER positive breast cancers that will relapse within five to 10 years when treated with standard endocrine therapy, enabling oncologists to recommend more aggressive regimens to help improve clinical outcomes.

Here's the good news though: The tests (based on proprietary AviaraDx molecular technologies) are New York state-approved and available through the company's CAP-certified CLIA laboratory. [Both can utilize small formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples easily available from imaging-guided needle biopsies.]

There you go. Read more.

[Thanks to Laura Baumgartner for the hat tip!] Posted by: Gloria Gamat      Read more     Source

April 10, 2008, 8:06 PM CT

Waterman Award to UCLA's 'Mozart of Math'

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is proud to announce that 32-year-old Terence Tao, a professor of mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles, will receive its 2008 Alan T. Waterman Award. Called a "supreme problem-solver," and named one of "the Brilliant 10" researchers by Popular Science (October 2006), Tao's extraordinary work, much of which has been funded by NSF through the years, has had a tremendous impact across several mathematical areas. He will receive the award at a black tie dinner program at the U.S. Department of State on May 6.

The annual Waterman award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by NSF. Candidates may not be more than 35 years old, or seven years beyond receiving a doctorate, and must stand out for their individual achievements. In addition to a medal, the awardee receives a grant of $500,000 over a 3-year period for scientific research or advanced study in their field.

Terence Tao was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1975. His genius at mathematics began early in life. He started to learn calculus when he was 7 years old, at which age he began high school; by the age of 9 he was already very good at university-level calculus. By the age of 11, he was thriving in international mathematics competitions. Tao was 20 when he earned his doctorate from Princeton University, and he joined UCLA's faculty that year. UCLA promoted him to full professor at age 24. Tao now holds UCLA's James and Carol Collins Chair in the College of Letters and Science. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society and the Australian Academy of Sciences (corresponding member)......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:55:37 GMT

Origami Space Flight

Japanese scientists and origami masters hope to launch a paper airplane from space and learn from its trip back to Earth. It''s no joke. A prototype passed a durability test in a wind tunnel this month, Japan''s space agency adopted it Wednesday for feasibility studies, and a well-known astronaut is interested in participating.

In the picture above, a 2.8 inches long and 2 inches wide Space Shuttle-shaped paper plane is seen in a wind tunnel before a durability test at a Tokyo University laboratory. Posted by: Gerard      Read more     Source

March 18, 2008, 4:54 AM CT

Fake Diamonds Help Jet Engines Take The Heat

Ohio State University engineers are in the process of developing a technology to coat jet engine turbine blades with zirconium dioxide -- usually called zirconia, the stuff of synthetic diamonds -- to combat high-temperature corrosion.

The zirconia chemically converts sand and other corrosive particles that build up on the blade into a new, protective outer coating. In effect, the surface of the engine blade constantly renews itself.

Ultimately, the technology could enable manufacturers to use new kinds of heat-resistant materials in engine blades, so that engines will be able to run hotter and more efficiently.

Nitin Padture, professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State, said that he had military aircraft in mind when he began the project. He was then a professor at the University of Connecticut.

"In the desert, sand is sucked into the engines during takeoffs and landings, and then you have dust storms," he said. "But even commercial aircraft and power turbines encounter small bits of sand or other particles, and those particles damage turbine blades".

Jet engines operate at thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, and blades in the most advanced engines are coated with a thin layer of temperature-resistant, thermally-insulating ceramic to protect the metal blades. The coating -- referred to as a thermal-barrier coating -- is designed like an accordion to expand and contract with the metal......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

March 9, 2008, 4:59 PM CT

Skewered Pumpkins

We encounter valves every day, whether in the water faucet, the carburetor in our car, or our bicycle tire tube. Valves are also present in the world of nanotechnology. A team of scientists headed by J. Fraser Stoddart and Jeffrey I. Zink at the University of California, Los Angeles, has now developed a new nanovalve. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, the researchers reveal what is special about it: In contrast to previous versions, which only function in organic solvents, this valve operates in an aqueous environment and under physiological conditions-prerequisites for any application as a gate for nanoscopic drug-transport agents, which need to set their cargo free at the right place and time.

In order for pharmaceuticals to affect only the target diseased organ, suitable nanopackaging is mandatory to bring the drug to the target area and release it only there. One example of a good nanoscopic packaging agent is a tiny sphere of porous silica. Its pores can be filled with the drug and closed with tiny controllable valves.

The researchers attached stem-shaped molecules onto the surface of the porous spheres and filled the pores with guest molecules. At neutral to acidic pH values, they stacked cucurbituril molecules onto these "stems". Cucurbituril is a fat, ring-shaped molecule reminiscent of a pumpkin that has both ends hollowed out. The resulting supramolecular structure, which resembles a skewered pumpkin and is known to chemists as a pseudorotaxane, blocks the pores, so that the guest molecules cannot exit. The nanovalve is closed......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:09:37 GMT

Groundbreaking Technology in Spam Prevention

According to Ferris Research, spam can cost over $500 per user a year. Even with spam filters in place, they claim it still costs $140 per user a year. It also results in lost productivity and higher IT costs. InformationWeek is offering an interesting white paper detailing a groundbreaking new anti-spam technology used in the Abaca Email Protection Gateway. The new approach involves analyzing the relationship between sender and receiver and claims it can block 99 percent of incoming spam. Check it out for yourself here and leave a comment letting us know what you think. Posted by: Sue Walsh      Read more     Source

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:07:57 GMT

Transparent toaster

I know there are fancy toasters out there, but essentially most toasters work in the same way, whether you paid $10 for your little machine or $300. You set the timer, put the slice of bread in, and it pops out when done. If it''s not quite toasty enough, you put it back in. If it''s burned and inedible, you throw it out and start over with a new piece of bread.

But here''s a concept product that not only takes the guess work out of toasting, but also turns something common into a bit of visual interest for your kitchen. The Transparent Toaster toasts your bread or pastry (using "heating glass technology," whatever that is) in plain view so you can watch it to be sure it comes out just right

Via Ananova (but no information about the designer or prospects for making this into a commercial product). This tiip comes from Emily. Posted by: Sarah      Read more     Source

December 20, 2007, 9:36 PM CT

Proton Camera

Lab researchers, working with Teledyne Imaging Sensors, have built the world's fastest camera, and it has just won an R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine as one of the 100 most technologically significant products of 2007.

Made from two bonded microelectronic chips, the "Camera on a Chip" can capture 2.8 million frames per second. A normal motion picture camera captures 24 frames per second.

The camera produces movies of ultra-short (sub-microsecond) processes, mostly induced by powerful high explosives. These processes are studied using a remarkable imaging technique known as proton radiography, in which high-energy protons pass through an explosives-driven object to a screen, where they produce a blue "shadowgraph," essentially a two-dimensional representation of the object.

The camera takes pictures of the shadowgraphs in as little as 50 billionths of a second per frame, freezing images of the object's high-speed motions and storing up to three of them "on-chip" at one time. Several cameras can be used together to make a movie of tens of frames or more.

With very high sensitivity in both the visible and near-visible frequencies, the camera can also be used for a number of other applications, including studies of internal-combustion engines, vehicle-impact tests, and armor-penetration experiments; laser-beam identification of minerals on Mars; and location of fast-moving targets in space......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

December 12, 2007, 10:04 PM CT

Nanoscale Details of Photolithography Process

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have made the first direct measurements of the infinitesimal expansion and collapse of thin polymer films used in the manufacture of advanced semiconductor devices. It's a matter of only a couple of nanometers, but it can be enough to affect the performance of next-generation chip manufacturing. The NIST measurements, detailed in a new paper,* offer a new insight into the complex chemistry that enables the mass production of powerful new integrated circuits.

The smallest critical features in memory or processor chips include transistor "gates." In today's most advanced chips, gate length is about 45 nanometers, and the industry is aiming for 32-nanometer gates. To build the nearly one billion transistors in modern microprocessors, manufacturers use photolithography, the high-tech, nanoscale version of printing technology. The semiconductor wafer is coated with a thin film of photoresist, a polymer-based formulation, and exposed with a desired pattern using masks and short wavelength light (193 nm). The light changes the solubility of the exposed portions of the resist, and a developer fluid is used to wash the resist away, leaving the pattern which is used for further processing.

Exactly what happens at the interface between the exposed and unexposed photoresist has become an important issue for the design of 32-nanometer processes. Most of the exposed areas of the photoresist swell slightly and dissolve away when washed with the developer. However this swelling can induce the polymer formulation to separate (like oil and water) and alter the unexposed portions of the resist at the edges of the pattern, roughening the edge. For a 32-nanometer feature, manufacturers want to hold this roughness to at most about two or three nanometers......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:24:25 GMT

Petfinder Goes Primetime

Wanting to find the ideal pet for your wired home? Then go the hi-tech way of finding a pet with Petfinder.



Or you can wait to see Petfinder on your home theater screen. Yes, the very popular website Petfinder is going to become a television series. All 13 programmes are about finding a pet from your nearest shelter a comfy and happy home.

BTW this looks to be the first time a website has spawned a television program. There have been many examples where websites have been made about television programs but this is a first. Posted by: Elwyn Jenkins      Read more     Source

December 10, 2007, 10:30 PM CT

MIT creates oil-repelling materials

MIT engineers have designed a class of material structures that can repel oils, a novel discovery that could have applications in aviation, space travel and hazardous waste cleanup. Such materials could be used to help protect parts of airplanes or rockets that are vulnerable to damage from being soaked in fuel, like rubber gaskets and o-rings.

"These are vulnerable points in a number of aerospace applications," said Robert Cohen, the St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering and an author of a paper on the work that appeared in the Dec. 7 issue of Science.

"It would be nice if you could spill gasoline on a fabric or a gasket or other surface and find that instead of spreading, it just rolled off," Cohen said.

Creating a strongly oil-repelling, or "oleophobic" material, has been challenging for scientists, and there are no natural examples of such a material.

"Nature has developed a lot of methods for waterproofing, but not so much oil-proofing," said Gareth McKinley, MIT School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and a member of the research team. "The conventional wisdom was that it couldn't be done on a large scale without very special lithographic processes".

The tendency of oils and other hydrocarbons to spread out over surfaces is due to their very low surface tension (a measure of the attraction between molecules of the same substance)......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

November 27, 2007, 10:17 PM CT

Fatigue effects in silicon

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a mechanical fatigue process that eventually leads to cracks and breakdown in bulk silicon crystalsa phenomenon thats especially interesting because it long has been thought not to exist. Their recently published* results have important implications for the design of new silicon-based micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) devices that have been proposed for a wide variety of uses.

Siliconthe backbone of the semiconductor industryis one the worlds most heavily studied materials, and it has long been thought to beimmune to fatigue from cyclic stresses because of the nature of its crystal structure and chemical bonds. And indeed, conventional tests have validated this. Recent research into silicon MEMS devices, however, has revealed that these microscopic systems that incorporate tiny gears, vibrating reeds and other mechanical features do seem to develop stress-induced cracks that can lead to failure. Why this happens at the microscopic scale is a matter of debate. One school of thought holds that the effect is purely mechanical, due to friction, and the other argues that it essentially is caused by corrosiona chemical effect. Because the effect has only been noticed at submicrometer scales, it has been difficult to determine which theory is correct......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:40:43 GMT

Control Your Seasonal Lighting with a Remote

Tired of climbing behind the Christmas Tree, or walking from outlet to outlet to turn on your seasonal lighting. Don't climb around any more, you need the INSTEON Wireless Remote.


The remote comes in a kit with several controllers each of which fit into an outlet. To turn lighting on simply use the remote to control all outlets from one location. The remote can still control an outlet from 150' away.

Or if you want, you can use the remote to automate lights to turn on and off as required. Use the remote to review the power patterns and see a panel indicating when certain outlets are to be powered off or on.

The INSTEON Wireless Remote starter kit is available from Amazon for $129 which provides a saving of up to $75 should you have purchased these items separately. Posted by: Elwyn Jenkins      Read more     Source

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:33:11 GMT

The iPod Touch is Actually a PDA

Apple's marketing machine may be bunching in the new iPod touch with the other iPods, but the fact is that Apple's new iPhone-without-the-phone is a PDA.

Aside from the built-in Calendar, Contact, and Calculator apps, the iPod touch has WiFi, a decent web browser. It's also not a stretch to think that the third party apps that work on the iPhone could work here too. And 8GB and 16GB is a lot room for data, a lot more than your typical smartphone or PDA.

It's also thin. Thanks to the few standalone PDAs on the market, this will be the first time I'll use the term PDA anorexia (compared to the many many times I've used that for smartphones).

Granted, the iPod touch has no built-in camera. And adding in Bluetooth would've been nice. But once again, the genius of Apple's presentation wins the day. By categorizing this PDA as a portable media player, Apple's managed the expectations of its buyers. "A PDA that can play music" doesn't sound as good as "A music player that can surf the web, supports third party apps, and has basic organizer functions." Posted by: Rico Mossesgeld      Read more     Source

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 03:50:18 GMT

What to do with the old computer?

So you have upgraded your computer and want to know what to do with the old beast?


"Creative Uses for "Old" Computers: Here's What You Can Do With Your Used Computer" is a very inventive article outlining what ways you can use your old computer around your "wired" home.

You can read the article for the details but here are the suggested ways you can use your old computer, in short:

 Trade it in for a new computer with Hewlett Packard Donate the old computer to charity Use your old computer as a print/file server Listen to tunes from it Watch TV from it Create a live weather station Store digital photos on it Create a work station in the kitchen Designate the living room as the family workstation Turn it into a workstation for visitors Set it up solely as a data center Use it as a live web cam for security purposes Use it as an experimental computer Create a mobile computer for your RV, van or boat

Have you other interesting options? Posted by: Elwyn Jenkins      Read more     Source

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 20:19:55 GMT

Converting Organic Waste into Useful Cooking Fuel

Students at the MIT have given an answer to the ill-effects of deforestation with a mechanism with which they can convert organic waste, such as sugarcane waste, into useful cooking fuel.

Deforestation does has harmful effects on the environment but it also acts as a silent killer for those who rely on wood charcoal to cook their food. Now a team of MIT students is working to bring affordable and eco-friendly cooking fuel to developing countries like Haiti. The technique makes use of organic waste such as sugarcane waste and then processes it to convert it into charcoal briquettes.

These students have formed a company named Bagazo to produce and distribute the product to villagers in Haiti. The team will now be travelling to Haiti later this month to conduct a market survey and then meet with potential investors. They also hope that this project will appeal to all who want to serve people and make money as well.

Their charcoal making process does not only rely on sugarcane waste, but also work with plant wastes like banana leaves and corncobs. Several families in these villages use wood charcoal or dung cakes to cook food, these are hard to obtain and also produce more smoke which leads to lung problems in these villagers. Bagazos products makes use of organic waste so the fuel burns longer and also produces less smoke than its counterparts.

They however have developed a mechanism which converts organic waste into fuel in just three steps. The first step includes carbonizing organic waste in a drum in a low-oxygen environment, which prevents it from turning into ash. Then the powder is mixed with a binder so that it holds together, then the resultant is pressed into briquettes with a simple machine press. The process takes up to three hours in converting the waste into charcoal briquettes. The team is now hoping to automate the process so as to speed the production.

The team is currently focusing on Haiti; however, they are also interested to bring the project to Africa and India.

Via: MIT Posted by: Jolly      Read more     Source

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:22:27 GMT

Nanotechnology-based Flexible Hydrogen Sensors

With hydrogen vehicles already embracing carbon-reduction footprints, global warming seems to be moving a step further with its nobility its sensors.

The now available hydrogen sensors may soon be replaced by a newly developed flexible sensor, which is not only comparatively cheaper but also explores the world of nano-technology! Thanks the researchers at the U.S. Argonne National Laboratory.

What could help make the sensors cheaper is the use of only palladium nanoparticles instead of pure palladium.

But, of course this will not compromise on its pure-palladium-like efficiency. To add to, it can be used in many applications ranging from aircraft to portable electronics. To detect a hydrogen leakage caused by even tiny pinholes in the space shuttle pipe, the new technology can be of great use.

This is how the new flexible hydrogen sensor is fabricated:

The new sensing devices is fabricated by using a two-step process separated by hig] h and low temperatures. First, at around 900 degrees C, researchers grow SWNTs [single-walled carbon nanotubeson a silicon substrate using chemical vapor deposition. Then, researchers transfer the SWNTs onto a plastic substrate at temperatures lower than 150 degrees C using a technique called dry transfer printing.

And the result:-

The new sensors are highly sensitive, thus fast responding and quick recovering. The plastic sheets it uses help reduce the overall weight, increasing the mechanical flexibility as well as shock resistance.

Thus, its wide range - as well as sensitive and affordable - applications seem to be making the hydrogen (or eco-friendly) vehicles gradually affordable to more and more people who are environmentally conscious, but could not serve it because of the hard-to-meet costs.

Image Posted by: Irani      Read more     Source

July 30, 2007, 7:33 PM CT

Think Pink To Produce "Green" Solar Energy

When it comes to producing earth-friendly solar energy, pink may be the new green, as per Ohio State University researchers.

Researchers here have developed new dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) that get their pink color from a mixture of red dye and white metal oxide powder in materials that capture light.

Currently, the best of these new pink materials convert light to electricity with only half the efficiency of commercially-available silicon-based solar cells -- but they do so at only one quarter of the cost, said Yiying Wu, assistant professor of chemistry at Ohio State.

And Wu is hoping for even better.

"We think that one day, DSSC efficiency can reach levels comparable to any solar cell," he said. "The major advantage of DSSCs is that the cost is low. That is why DSSCs are so interesting to us, and so important".

Pink is a typical color for DSSCs. Most use dyes containing ruthenium, which has a red color; the metal oxide powder that turns the mix pink is most often titanium oxide or zinc oxide, which are both whitish in color. But Wu's materials are novel in that he's using more complex metals and exploring different particle shapes to boost the amount of electricity produced.

In a recent issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), he and his team report that they have made a new DSSC material using zinc stannate......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 22:46:15 GMT

Paint-on Solar Cells: Let Walls Power Your Home

Gone are the days when we used to paint our walls with glossy paints and then with vinyls. A new technique will change the face of the walls and allow you to beautify your walls with solar cells.

The technique has been developed by researchers at the New Jersey Institute of technology. These researchers claim to have developed a way to create a solar cell that can be painted on flexible plastic sheets. To achieve solar cells these researchers have used a complex combination of carbon nanotubes and carbon Buckyball molecules to create a series of snake-like patterns which can conduct electricity.

When sunlight falls on the surface of this paint it excites the polymer backing, which in turn releases electrons. Buckyball molecules catch electrons but they cannot transmit them. For transmitting electrons in a flow researchers have used carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes act as a copper wire to conduct the free flowing electrons, thus generating electricity.

Researchers also hope that the technique will not be expensive and will be easy to implement. Once the material is painted on walls, ceiling or on the roof top it can provide enough electricity to power your home. This technology will someday allow homeowners to paint sheets of the material with a machine that will not be much different from an ink-jet printer and all you will have to do is just paste them on your walls and enjoy free power.

Via: Inhabitat Posted by: Jolly      Read more     Source