Feb
14
A Catalyst Breakthrough With Organic Molecules
February 14, 2013 | 1 Comment
We usually think of catalysts as metals, often the rare and expensive platinum. So when chemists at Boston College announce they’ve designed a new class of organic molecule catalysts triggered by the charge of a single proton, one’s attention is seized. The team reports in the most recent edition of the journal Nature the new […]
Feb
13
The Hunt For Dark Energy Begins
February 13, 2013 | Leave a Comment
The matter we see around us such as houses and trees, people and pets, and all the stars and galaxies make up only a few percent of everything in our cosmos. If you could fill a bucket with the mass and the energy content of our universe, the visible matter would fill only a small […]
Feb
12
A Better Thin Film Electrical Conductor
February 12, 2013 | 2 Comments
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UI) researchers have devised a method of making ferroelectric thin films with exceptional performance. The new material has improved properties, but also has entirely new properties. Most notably, the films have a built-in electric field, called an intrinsic potential. This means that it can perform some functions without needing an […]
Feb
11
EEStor Lives!
February 11, 2013 | 6 Comments
Now two weeks out from a press release EEStor has met the goal of getting under the radar of the media. A quick look at Google News finds almost nothing. Still, the stockholders of Canada’s Zenn Motors are thrilled. Zenn is a “hibernating” company now, as its electric car building has long since ceased. The […]
Feb
8
A New Bio Oil Production Process Breakthrough
February 8, 2013 | 3 Comments
Researchers at Aarhus and Aalborg University in cooperation with the firm Steeper Energy Ltd. have developed a new and innovative process that can efficiently convert “all kinds” of biomass to bio-crude oil. Called HydroThermal Liquefaction (HTL), the process product is sufficiently similar to fossil crude oil that a simple thermal upgrade and existing refinery technology […]