And no, I’m not taking the piss. Urine, a very versatile waste among other things, has been found useful in all sorts of fields, from curing jellyfish stings, to saving ones life in the desert by soiling a turban to cool the head, or more commonly used as a fertilizer. Most of us, however, just dump [...]
When the ultra-strong glass was invented more than 40 years ago, it was labeled as interesting, but a manufacturing use for it was hard to find. This glass is about three times harder than regular glass, while it’s also thinner (about as thin as a dime). The so called Gorilla glass will probably be worth [...]
Superconductivity occurs when the natural electrical resistance is exactly 0; it occurs in certain materials at very low temperatures. According to the Cambridge University youtube channel: The first in a new range of powerful superconductors which could revolutionise the production of machines like hospital MRI scanners and protect the national grid have been developed by [...]
Parts of the car’s bodywork could double up as it’s batter in a not so far away future; at least that’s what the people involved in the 3.4 million project believe. They are working on a prototype that can store and discharge electrical energy; the material is also light and very hard. Ultimately, this will [...]
I was writing a while ago that major biofuel production is not really that far away and the good news is things seem to be moving in that direction. The importance of biofuels has been underlined as a possible solution to fight the crisis, but the big problem was that creating such alternative fuels required [...]
Researchers from Yale University succeeded in what seemed to be an impossible task: they’ve created a transistor from a single molecule. In case you don’t know, a transistor is a “semiconductor device commonly used to amplify or switch electronic signals” (via wikipedia). The team showed that using a single benzene molecule attached to gold contacts [...]
Physicists from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) have demonstrated what they claim to be the first universal programmable quantum information processor that will be able to run any program allowed by quantum mechanics (the set of principles that describe the atomic and subatomic matter). They managed to accomplish this using two quantum bits [...]
The first experiments with this laser (Linac Coherent Light Source) have been given the green light at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The illuminating of objects and processing speed will take place at an unprecedented scale, promising groundbreaking research in physics, chemistry, biology and numerous other fields. “No one has ever had [...]
When it’s really hot and sunny outside, a black roof gets really hot, while a white roof reflects rays from the sun and keeps the house cooler. During the wintertime, a black roof absorbs more heat and helps you save more energy, but in the summer, that can be a really pain. Luckily enough, some [...]
Researchers have figured out a way to ‘plug’ into electrical power generated by trees. It’s a well known fact for years that plants can conduct electricity (humans can too, take care kids), and now scientists from MIT found out just how much they can pack up: 200 millivolts of electrical power (=0.2 volts). The lemon [...]
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
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