Less than a year ago, we have been talking about Chunlei Guo, a researcher that, along with his assistant Anatoliy Vorobyev, has demonstrated how by nano-sculpturing metals with a powerful laser, can make liquids flow upwards, defying gravity.
Researchers from Princeton University, Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry in Japan, using Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, have discovered how in a superconducting material, at a nano-scale level, regions with stronger superconductivity helped regions with weaker superconductivity survive when exposed to higher temperature.
Regenerative braking systems are an essential part of any electric/hybrid car, making it more efficient by taking advantage that energy can be relatively easy-recoverable when converted to electricity. Regenerative suspension systems are yet another approach to this class of mechanisms, continuously recovering the vibrational energy that occurs due to road irregularities, vehicle acceleration and braking.
In the renewable energy field, wind turbines have played an important step, but today the future of wind energy may come from the underground. The compressed-air energy storage plants could be the solution. Air is pumped into large underground formations where it can be used later to deliver the large amount of energy that it previously received.
Usually, Li-Ion batteries have carbon (graphite) electrodes, and the performance that we already know, which is not good enough for our cars at this moment. Georgia Institute of Technology researchers developed a new, high-performance anode based on a silicon-carbon nanocomposite material that could well improve the usability of Li-Ion batteries.
Sanyo, a giant Japan-based company has opened two solar parking lots in Tokyo. These solar-powered panels can charge about 100 electric hybrid bicycles. Using lithium-ion batteries, the system has enough power left over to also illuminate the parking lot with LED lights at night.
The 1st Int'l Rechargeable Battery Expo held in Tokyo at the beginning of March was pleased to announce a lot of battery manufacturers interested in future technologies, in new developments for various industries.
A team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology have invented a new type of solar cell whose active ingredients are nanometer-sized silicon wires. The solar cell they prototyped thus uses only a small fraction of the silicon used to make conventional solar cell, the rest being made of a polymer.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found a new way to produce hydrogen by using ambient noise to turn water into usable hydrogen fuel. The process harvests small amounts of waste energy in the form of stray vibrations and noise from the environment to break the chemical bonds in water and generate hydrogen and oxygen.
Using cheaper materials and latest technology scientists have managed to create a new type of concentrating array, three times cheaper and four times more efficient than any other solar cells. Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology have explained why this technology is so efficient by listing some key components and explaining how they work.
