The battery is the biggest limitation for electric vehicles (EV). Tesla, General Motors, Nissan and others install heavy batteries that limit vehicle range and performance. The batteries take up as much as 15% of the vehicle’s total weight.
Researchers develop cheaper, longer-lasting futuristic copper foam batteries
Prieto Battery’s copper foam.
Power plants, wind farms, and smartphones all suffer from the same basic ailment — they lack cheap, reliable, long-life batteries to store large amounts of energy for when the sun goes down, the wind stops blowing, or the device is unplugged for a long time.
Stanford engineers successfully build world’s first carbon nanotube computer
Researchers unveil the first working computer built entirely from carbon nanotube transistors.
A group of researchers at Stanford University have moved a step closer to answering the question of what happens when silicon, the standard material in today’s microelectronic circuits, reaches its fundamental limits for use in increasingly small transistors.
Continue reading… “Stanford engineers successfully build world’s first carbon nanotube computer”
Scientists create first smartphone attachment that can detect a single virus, nanoparticles
UCLA smartphone virus scanner
Scientists have finally developed a technology that makes it possible to avoid a trip to the doctor. The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science scientists have created a lightweight, virus-detecting device that attaches to a common smartphone and is able to scan the human body for human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) particles. The troublesome virus is the root of various illnesses, including birth defects like deafness and brain damage. HCMV can also expedite the death of adults who have HIV, a weak immune system and those who have undergone organ transplants, making early detection of the virus useful.
Researchers demonstrate new method for harvesting energy from light
Hybrid optoelectronic nanostructures with controlled variation in photoconduction properties.
University of Pennsylvania reasearchers have demonstrated a new mechanism for extracting energy from light, a finding that could improve technologies for generating electricity from solar energy and lead to more efficient optoelectronic devices used in communications.
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Researchers levitate nanoscale diamonds with a laser beam
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPHJyaUDiVI[/youtube]
University of Rochester researchers recently demonstrated how beams of light can actually levitate nanoscale diamonds. And while they’re not actually suggesting that we construct a light-driven hoverboard made of the precious gems, the things we might be able to do with floating diamonds are pretty cool in their own right.
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Scientists create battery using wood
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htkm6cw94x8[/youtube]
University of Maryland engineers are currently working on a battery made of wood, an innovative, low-cost, environmentally friendly idea. The research team used tiny wood fibers from yellow pine trees to make test batteries — and we mean seriously tiny, the tree fibers are a thousand times thinner than a piece of paper. They use sodium rather than lithium, so the team imagines this battery working best in a large-scale environment, like for storing solar energy at a power plant.
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A nanotechnology fix for nicotine dependence
The research effort will attempt to design a vaccine conferring immunity to nicotine, using nanotechnology.
At Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, Yung Chang and her colleagues have launched an ambitious new project designed to attack nicotine dependence in a radically new way.
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How to cram 1,000 terabytes onto a single DVD
Researchers have developed a technique using nanotechnology to increase the data storage capacity of a DVD from a measly 4.7GB to 1,000TB.
The 4.7 GB DVDs have slowly started to fade into obscurity thanks to Blu-ray. But is it going to make a comeback? Three Chinese scientists have discovered a breakthrough process that could, at least in theory, allow a DVD to store a whopping 1,000 TB—or a full petabyte—of data. Suck on that, Blu-ray.
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The future of medicine is wearable, implantable, and personalized
As doctors and scientists continue to make huge leaps in terms of genome sequencing and scanning devices, everything about your medical treatment is going to change.
There are approximately 7 billion human beings on Earth and each of us is special and unique. We are the walking, talking instantiation of the 3 billion instances of four nucleotides (abbreviated GATC) that constitute our unique genome’s DNA. Just as important, the interplay of that DNA with the environment and our individual lifestyles determines our susceptibility and predisposition to diseases.
Continue reading… “The future of medicine is wearable, implantable, and personalized”
IBM makes world’s smallest movie ever
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0[/youtube]
The world’s smallest movie made by IBM Research has carbon monoxide atoms being moved around on a copper surface with a scanning tunneling microscope. The 250-frame stop-motion film, entitled “A Boy and His Atom,” uses discrete atoms to draw a stick-figure-like boy that bounces on a trampoline and plays catch with an individual atom “ball.”
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Electricity-creating fabric could be everywhere soon
David Carroll, nanotechnologist at Wake Forest University.
Nanotechnologist, David Carroll, is working on a simple material that he thinks will soon be a part of everything you own. Carroll’s research group at Wake Forest University developed a flexible fabric that makes electricity from heat or movement. It could revolutionize cheap, renewable energy.
Continue reading… “Electricity-creating fabric could be everywhere soon”
