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Greener Path To Iron Production
droplet of molten iron held by a magnet
The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) announced recently that the team, led by Donald R. Sadoway of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has shown the technical viability of producing iron by molten oxide electrolysis (MOE). "What sets molten oxide electrolysis apart from other metal-producing technologies is that it is totally carbon-free and hence generates no carbon dioxide gases -- only oxygen," said Lawrence W. Kavanagh, AISI vice president of manufacturing and technology. The work was funded by the AISI/Department of Energy Technology Roadmap Program (TRP). The TRP goal is to increase the competitiveness of the U.S. steel industry while saving energy and enhancing the environment. As per the AISI, the MIT work "marks one of TRP's breakthrough projects toward meeting that goal". Unlike other iron-making processes, MOE works by passing an electric current through a liquid solution of iron oxide. The iron oxide then breaks down into liquid iron and oxygen gas, allowing oxygen to be the main byproduct of the process. Electrolysis itself is nothing new -- all of the world's aluminum is produced this way. And that is one advantage of the new process: It is based on a technology that metallurgists are already familiar with. Unlike aluminum smelting, however, MOE is carbon-free......... Posted by: Kevin Permalink Source Freenigma Adds Privacy To Mail
Today, all your e-mails are stored and sent around the planet in plain text. And today you have no control over what happens to your private or business e-mail conversations and you can't prevent others from reading them. Get your privacy back! Encrypt your private and business e-mails to protect your freedom, privacy and your business secrets. Actually, we support not only Google Mail, but all large webmail services: encrypt your e-mails in Google Mail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail and others. Exchange encrypted content with your friends and business partners. One freenigma account can be used for all supported webmail systems!........ Posted by: Kevin Permalink Source What Can You Turn Me Into?
I specialize in vampires, skeletons, demons, and zombies, but I can try to do other types of creatures, as well. Just let me know what you want to become and I'll do my best to bring your spooky fantasy to life (or death!). WILL I LOOK MODERN OR "OLD-FASHIONED"? This is really up to you. I can do it either way. I recently did a full-color photo of a person in modern clothes and it turned out quite well! Of course it helps greatly that the background was creepy looking, so I recommend you pose in front of something that will add atmosphere......... Posted by: Kevin Permalink Source Ether returns to oust dark matter
Nineteenth-century physicists believed that just as sound waves move through air, light waves must move through an all-pervading physical substance, which they called luminiferous ("light-bearing") ether. However, the Michelson-Morley. experiment failed to find any signs of ether, and 18 years after that, Einstein's special relativity argued that light propagates through a vacuum. The idea of ether was abandoned but not discarded altogether, it seems. Starkman and colleagues Tom Zlosnik and Pedro Ferreira of the University of Oxford are now reincarnating the ether in a new form to solve the puzzle of dark matter, the mysterious substance that was proposed to explain why galaxies seem to contain much more mass than can be accounted for by visible matter. They posit an ether that is a field, rather than a substance, and which pervades space-time. "If you removed everything else in the universe, the ether would still be there," says Zlosnik. This ether field isn't to do with light, but rather is something that boosts the gravitational pull of stars and galaxies, making them seem heavier, says Starkman. It does this by increasing the flexibility of space-time itself. "We usually imagine space-time as a rubber sheet that's warped by a massive object," says Starkman. "The ether makes that rubber sheet more bendable in parts, so matter can seem to have a much bigger gravitational effect than you would expect from its weight." The team's calculations show that this ether-induced gravity boost would explain the observed high velocities of stars in galaxies, currently attributed to the presence of dark matter......... Posted by: Kevin Permalink Source Tiny Ion Pump To Cool Hot Computer Chips
The device, which uses an electrical charge to create a cooling air jet right at the surface of the chip, could be critical to advancing computer technology because future chips will be smaller, more tightly packed and are likely to run hotter than today's chips. As a result, tomorrow's computers will need cooling systems far more efficient than the fans and heat sinks that are used today. "With this pump, we are able to integrate the entire cooling system right onto a chip," said Alexander Mamishev, associate professor of electrical engineering and principal investigator on the project. "That allows for cooling in applications and spaces where it just wasn't realistic to do before". The micro-pump also represents the first time that anyone has built a working device at this scale that uses this method, Mamishev added. "The idea has been around for several years," he said. "But until now it hasn't been physically demonstrated in terms of a working prototype". Mamishev and doctoral students Nels Jewell-Larsen and Chi-Peng Hsu presented a paper on the device at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics/American Society of Mechanical Engineers Joint Thermophysics and Heat Transfer Conference earlier this summer and are scheduled to give an additional presentation this fall. In addition, the UW researchers and collaborators with Kronos Advanced Technologies and Intel Corp. have been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Seattle-based Washington Technology Center for the second phase of the project......... Posted by: Kevin Permalink Source Green Apple
Credit: M. M. Alvarez, T. Shinbrot, F. J. Muzzio, Rutgers University, Center for Structured Organic Composites......... Posted by: Tom Permalink Source 'Father of molecular medicine,' Vernon Ingram dies at 82
In a photo from 2002, Professor Vernon Ingram holds up cell cultures
A memorial service has been scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 10th at 2 p.m. in Wong Auditorium (E51). A reception will follow at Ashdown House. Ingram was best known for his discovery, during the 1950s, that a single amino acid substitution is responsible for the molecular abnormality that leads to sickle cell anemia. The find was "one of the absolutely seminal discoveries in the history of molecular biology," said Graham Walker, MIT professor of biology. Walker, who was Ingram's friend and colleague for 30 years, said that Ingram was "one of the greatest men I have met in my life. An extraordinary scientist, an extraordinary intellect, and an absolutely wonderful human being". In recent years, Ingram focused his research on neuroscience, particularly Alzheimer's disease. Though in his 80s, he still ran a small laboratory at MIT and was constantly pursuing new research, Walker said. "He was a dyed-in-the-wool, inveterate experimentalist," Walker said. "He was going at full speed right up until the end". Ingram and his wife, Elizabeth, served as housemasters at Ashdown House from 1985 until a few years ago......... Posted by: Kevin Permalink Source high-friction micro-fibers
Scanning electron micrograph of an array of 20 micron long, 0.6 micron diameter polymer fibers. Scale bar represents 10 microns.
Credit: (Image courtesy of the Fearing Group, UC Berkeley) High friction materials can prevent sliding under high loads or steep inclines. The researchers found that the synthetic array of polypropylene fibers could hold a quarter to a glass slide inclined at an 80 degree angle, yet is not "sticky" like adhesive tape. The fibers, packed 42 million per square centimeter, each measured a mere 20 microns long and 0.6 microns in diameter, or about 100 times thinner than a human hair. One micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter. The micro-fiber array is described in the Aug. 19 issue of Physical Review Letters. "We think the result represents an important milestone in our ongoing research project to understand gecko adhesion," said Ronald Fearing, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and principal investigator of the project. The scientists are careful to point out that unlike gecko hairs, the micro-fiber array does not exhibit adhesion. Adhesion describes the resistance of an object to being pulled off a surface, while friction describes the resistance to being dragged or slid along a surface. Thus, a person should not use a micro-fiber suit to attempt Spiderman stunts......... Posted by: Kevin Permalink Source "Frozen" Natural Gas Discovered Below Seafloor
Contrary to established expectations of how gas hydrate deposits form, IODP expedition co-chief Michael Riedel, of McGill University, Montreal, confirms, "We found anomalous occurrences of high concentrations of gas hydrate at relatively shallow depths, 50-120 meters below the seafloor". The science party used the drilling facility and laboratories of the U.S. research vessel, JOIDES Resolution, on a 43-day expedition in Fall 2005 during which they retrieved core samples from a geological area known as the (northern) Cascadia Margin. Gas hydrate deposits are typically found below the seafloor in offshore locations where water depths exceed 500 meters, and in Arctic permafrost regions. Gas hydrate remains stable only under low temperature and relatively high pressure......... Posted by: Tyler Permalink Source MIT ranks 1st in engineering
MIT shares the number four slot with Caltech and Stanford. Princeton, Harvard and Yale, respectively, are ranked the top three schools. Among the key criteria for judging schools is selectivity as gauged by the lowest acceptance rate (MIT's is 14 percent), and class size as gauged by the highest proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (MIT's is 68 percent). MIT's School of Engineering is the top-rated undergraduate program in engineering nationally, and the Sloan School of Management ranks second in undergraduate business programs. In engineering specialties, MIT was ranked first in more disciplines than any other school -- five out of 12. In undergraduate engineering specialties, MIT ranked first in aerospace/aeronautical/astronomical; chemical; computer engineering; electrical/electronic/communications; and mechanical engineering. In environmental/environmental health engineering, MIT ranked second, and the Institute ranked fourth in civil engineering, tied with Stanford and University of Texas at Austin. MIT tied for fourth with Georgia Institute of Technology in biomedical engineering and tied for second with the University of California at Berkeley in materials engineering......... Posted by: Kevin Permalink Source |
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