The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN could change physics the way we know it. James Pinfond, from the University of Alberta, made a theory according to which magnetic monopoles could exist - unleashing the way for new kinds of energy.
Russell Seitz, a physicist at the Harvard University, has thought of an ingenious way to fight global warming by cooling the planet by parts. The ingenious way Seitz wants to do this is by pumping vast swarms of tiny bubbles into the sea to increase its reflectivity.
A group of Japanese researchers led by Saki Sonoda, associate professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, have built a prototype of a solar cell that can harvest ultraviolet, visible and infrared light as well. This wide-band solar cell could offer tremendous increases in efficiency.
Aminosilicones are regularly used in hair-conditioning shampoos and fabric softeners, but recently they show usefulness in fighting global warming by filtering carbon dioxide out of flue gases from coal plants.
Water desalination is very important in areas where earthquakes, tsunamis or other natural catastrophes occurred. Usually, these areas are located near the sea or the ocean, and desalinizing the water could definitely save lives.
Idling your car at a stoplight is always damaging your plans of saving fuel and the air quality. I know someone who lives close to a stoplight and he says the air is much more polluted there than in other areas.
It looks like the CalTech guys are not the only ones involved in such inventions, as a company called "Wind Harvest International" says they can double the ourput of large horizontal axis wind farms by placing one-megawatt VAWTs between them, in a way that would boost their power output.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has built a robot that will help the R&D of thin film solar cells, analyzing possible defects faster and more accurate than any other existing system. It is called the PDIL (Process Development and Integration Laboratory).
University of Michigan researchers, at their Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems, have just created highly efficient some energy-harvesting devices that use the energy from surrounding arbitrary, non-periodic vibrations.
Cun-Zeng Ning and Alian Pan, from Arizona State University, have discovered and fabricated the first quaternary semiconductor nanowire materials, by alloying two binary semiconductors (ZnS + CdSe) - Zinc Sulfide and Cadmium Selenide, and obtained ZnCdSSe.
