February 27, 2006, 8:10 PM CT

High-Tech Sieve Sifts for Hydrogen

Whether it's used in chemical laboratories or the fuel tanks of advanced automobiles, hydrogen is mostly produced from natural gas and other fossil fuels. However, to isolate the tiny hydrogen molecules, engineers must first remove impurities, and the currently available methods can require substantial equipment or toxic chemicals.

Now, in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Science, engineers have announced the development of a simpler, safer material that can potentially assist, and in some places replace, existing processing methods. The rubbery, plastic film, similar to membranes already in use in biomedical devices, has applications for isolating not only hydrogen, but also natural gas itself.

"Our team originally set out to design membranes to purify hydrogen produced from coal," said co-author and National Science Foundation awardee Benny Freeman of The University of Texas. "We felt that a good improvement would be to design membranes more permeable to impurities than to hydrogen," he added. Until now, existing membranes had the opposite property--they were more permeable to hydrogen than to impurities.

Freeman collaborated in this research with colleagues at both The University of Texas at Austin and the Research Triangle Institute in Research Triangle Park, N.C.........

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February 26, 2006, 11:43 PM CT

Pilotless Chopper Takes To The Sky

Israel is known for its unmanned aircrafts and recently also its unmanned vehicles. A little less known is the attempt to develop an unmanned mini-helicopter that has been going on over the past seven years and has only recently become commercially available.

Developing an unmanned helicopter is a complex task; the main problems are maintaining the craft stable even in rough weather conditions and creating a simple interface for controlling the helicopter that will not require a long training period. Eventhough pilotless helicopters have been in development for the last several years in the U.S. and around the world, the craft developed by the Israeli company Steadicopter is the cheapest, simplest and most versatile of its kind. The unique craft uses GPS, gyroscopes and various other "off-the-shelf" instrumentation to guide and control the helicopter. The craft can come in a variety of configurations that can fit military and security applications such as: mine detection, stealth scouting, border patrol and police surveillance, as well as civilian applications such as high voltage line inspection, media coverage and agriculture purposes.

The Steadicopter craft is small - approximately 17 pounds (8kg), 59 inches in length (1.5m) and can be easily controlled by a laptop up to a range of about 3 miles (5km). It has a unique system that overcomes stabilization and flight control problems using an algorithm that was developed by Tuvia Segal, Steadicopter CEO. The chopper can stay in the air for 90 minutes (even more with an extra fuel tank), navigate using pre-defined GPS coordinates and relay information back using day and night (thermal) cameras.........

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February 26, 2006, 11:03 PM CT

New Technology To Extend Product's Shelf Life

The Israeli company Hefestus has developed a unique technology that can significantly extend the shelf life of various products such as fruits and vegetables, fish and meat, grains and even flowers and medical drugs. Until recently the most common method for packaging foods and other products was MAP, or Modified Atmosphere Packaging. In MAP, air inside the package is replaced by inert gas mixtures (mainly Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide), eliminating or reducing food spoilage. Low levels of oxygen prevent the evolution of organic germs and molds. One of the common ways of reducing the oxygen levels inside a package is by using a vacuum method. The main problem is that creating a vacuum can damage delicate products during the packaging process.

The technology developed by Hefestus is called SLB, or Shelf Life Booster. As per the company, unlike all other MAP sealers the modified atmosphere is achieved using one fully automatic vacuum free machine. Hefestus SLB is based on its own patented technology which uses centrifugal gas flow to remove oxygen from each package and then insert a gas mixture suitable for each product in order to maximize its shelf life. For instance, the company demonstrated how fresh grapefruit can be preserved for up to four months using its technology and the grapefruit will still be as fresh as at the time they were picked. Another example is fish which can be preserved fresh without freezing for only a day and a half using existing technology, but can be preserved for up to 20 days without freezing using SLB technology. This last procedure recently cleared the strict German Standard Institution (DIN).........

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February 24, 2006, 9:52 PM CT

X-ray Specs No Longer Required

A new optical effect has been created in a London laboratory that means solid objects such as walls could one day be rendered transparent, researchers report today in the journal Nature Materials.

Scientists from Imperial College London and the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, have pioneered the technique which could be used to see through rubble at earthquake sites, or look at parts of the body obscured by bone.

The effect is based on the development of a new material that exploits the way atoms in matter move, to make them interact with a laser beam in an entirely new way.

The work is based on a breakthrough which contradicts Einstein's theory that in order for a laser to work, the light-amplifying material it contains, commonly a crystal or glass, must be brought to a state known as 'population inversion'. This refers to the condition of the atoms within the material, which must be excited with enough energy to make them emit rather than absorb light.

Quantum physicists, however, have long predicted that by interfering with the wave-patterns of atoms, light could be amplified without population inversion. This has previously been demonstrated in the atoms of gases but has not before been shown in solids.

In order to make this breakthrough, the team created specially patterned crystals only a few billionths of a metre in length that behaved like 'artificial atoms'. When light was shone into the crystals, it became entangled with the crystals at a molecular level rather than being absorbed, causing the material to become transparent.........

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February 23, 2006, 11:53 PM CT

Ultracold Test Produces Quantum Mix

In the bizarre and rule-bound world of quantum physics, every tiny speck of matter has something called "spin" -- an intrinsic trait like eye color -- that cannot be changed and which dictates, very specifically, what other bits of matter the speck can share quantum space with. When fermions, the most antisocial type of quantum particle, do get together, they pair up in a wondrous dance that enables such things as superconductivity.

For the first time, scientists at Rice University have succeeded in creating and observing an elusive and long-sought quantum state - a superfluid of fermions with mismatched numbers of dance partners. Despite more than 40 years of theoretical musings about what would occur in such a case, the result -- a cluster of matched pairs surrounded by a cloud of would-be dance partners -- was largely unexpected.

The research, which appears online this week, is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Science, together with a paper from MIT reporting related results. The experiments offer physicists a new window into two of the least understood and most intriguing phenomena in physics - superconductivity and superfluidity.

Both phenomena result from a change in the phase of matter. Anyone who has seen ice melt has seen matter change phases, and when electrons, atoms and other specs of matter change quantum phases, they behave just as differently as do ice and water in a glass.........

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February 22, 2006, 11:12 PM CT

Alternate Method To Dispose Nuclear Liquid Waste

An alternate method of processing certain liquid wastes into a solid form for safe disposal has been developed by scientists at Penn State University and the Savannah River National Laboratory. The solidified form has been called a hydroceramic and is an improved alternate to other forms and processes. This research is reported in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

The new process uses low temperatures (less than or equal to 90 degree C) to solidify and stabilize high alkali, low-activity radioactive waste. The resulting form is a hydroceramic, which is strong, durable and has the potential to tie-up and hold minor radioactive components in its zeolitic structure. The preparation is similar to the rock formation process that occurs in nature.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is currently storing approximately 80 million gallons of radioactive waste in underground tanks at two sites: the Hanford Reservation in Richland, Washington and the Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina. The simulant used in the study duplicated the composition of selected supernates at both sites. The supernate is one of the two kinds of waste found in the waste tanks. It coexists with a small amount of highly radioactive sludge which has settled to the bottom of the tank. The liquid supernate makes up most of the volume, but contains only a fraction of the radioactivity.........

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February 22, 2006, 11:04 PM CT

Wireless 'wear And Tear' Sensor

Sensors which are able to predict when mechanical parts in machinery and transport will breakdown before they actually do could be introduced by 2010, slashing maintenance costs across the manufacturing, automotive and plant machinery industries.

Researchers at The University of Manchester are to develop a new type of wireless sensor which will be able to remotely monitor mechanical parts and systems. The aim is to produce a sensor which can be seamlessly fitted inside gearboxes, motors, diesel engines, wheel bearings and door mechanisms, in which faults can occur.

Once fitted, the sensors would enable the 'health' of the parts to be remotely monitored by computers which would then use the data to predict when parts require maintenance or need replacing - before they fail.

Dr Andrew Starr, who will lead the Manchester side of the Europe-wide project, said: "By monitoring the condition of major parts we will be able to predict when they require maintenance and when they need replacing before they fail. This will dramatically reduce the delay and cost caused by impromptu break downs, and we hope it will also lead to a much more efficient service for customers.........

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February 22, 2006, 10:52 PM CT

Universities And Internet

Universities played a unique role in the diffusion of Internet technology in the mid-1990s, as per a paper reported in the recent issue of the International Journal of Industrial Organization.

"The Internet, which a number of people view as the most important technology of the last 15 years, moved from universities to the public in an unusual way," says Avi Goldfarb, a professor at the University of Toronto's Joseph L. Rotman School of Management. He points out that there has been little empirical research on the role of universities in diffusing technology. "Most technologies that are invented in universities move through research journals or through business partnerships. The Internet followed a different pattern, in that students brought it to the public".

Goldfarb analysed data from nearly 105,000 surveys and found that even when controlling for factors like age, industry and tech-savviness, the impact of a mid-1990s university education on Internet use was much higher than for other time periods. The effect is not limited to students from that period, but has been transferred to members of their households, regardless of age. "In other words, universities taught a generation of students to use the Internet and they in turn taught their families".

Source: University of Toronto........

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February 21, 2006, 9:53 PM CT

Superconductivity And Transmission

The power grid of the future will likely include devices made from high-temperature superconducting (HTS) wires based on a technology developed jointly by ORNL and industry. Within the next two years American Superconductor Corporation plans to commercialize an HTS wire based on ORNL's RABITS- (rolling assisted, biaxially textured substrates) technology, which was licensed in 2000 to the Massachusetts-based company. The wire will be used to make cables that can help electric utilities deliver more power with greater voltage control and current density.

Thus, RABITS- will help utilities meet increasing demands without building additional transmission towers or installing new underground rights-of-way under crowded city streets.

Ten years ago, ORNL developers of RABITS- demonstrated that crystallographic texture could be introduced into metal by rolling and annealing the metal into a thin tape, and that the texture can be transferred to a superconductive oxide coating through buffer layers deposited on the metal substrate. The buffer layers also block unwanted coating-substrate chemical reactions. The resulting orientation of crystals in the superconductive oxide, such as yttrium-barium-copper oxide (YBCO), allows the coated tape to conduct large electrical currents without resistance at liquid nitrogen temperature (77K).........

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February 21, 2006, 9:29 PM CT

MIT develops Battery For Hybrid Cars

Scientists at MIT have developed a new type of lithium battery that could become a cheaper alternative to the batteries that now power hybrid electric cars.

Until now, lithium batteries have not had the rapid charging capability or safety level needed for use in cars. Hybrid cars now run on nickel metal hydride batteries, which power an electric motor and can rapidly recharge while the car is decelerating or standing still.

But lithium nickel manganese oxide, described in a paper would be published in Science on Feb. 17, could revolutionize the hybrid car industry -- a sector that has "enormous growth potential," says Gerbrand Ceder, MIT professor of materials science and engineering, who led the project.

"The writing is on the wall. It's clearly happening," said Ceder, who said that a couple of companies are already interested in licensing the new lithium battery technology.

The new material is more stable (and thus safer) than lithium cobalt oxide batteries, which are used to power small electronic devices like cell phones, laptop computers, rechargeable personal digital assistants (PDAs) and such medical devices as pacemakers.

The small safety risk posed by lithium cobalt oxide is manageable in small devices but makes the material not viable for the larger batteries needed to run hybrid cars, Ceder said. Cobalt is also fairly expensive, he said.........

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