University of California Archives – The Green Optimistic

Honeywell’s Shroud Turbochargers Improving Fuel Economy

Benji Jerew — Wed, 29 May 2013 17:03:55 +0000

Legislators are pushing for higher fuel economy to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but this typically means smaller engines with less power. For most Americans, less power isn’t an acceptable form of transportation, which keeps sales of vehicles with better fuel economy lower than it should be. Automakers are working hard to develop engines that are […]

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Record-Breaking Efficiency for Polymer Solar Cells Achieved by UC Researchers

Ovidiu Sandru — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 03:03:19 +0000

University of California researchers led by Yang Yang, professor of materials science and engineering, have developed a polymer solar cell that achieves a 10.6 percent efficiency. The discovery comes at less than a year since the same research group reached an 8.6 percent efficiency, in July. So far, polymer solar cells have been traditionally inefficient. Yang’s […]

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Unxepected Discovery Proves Magma More Potent Than Geothermal Reservoirs

Mike Sandru — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 19:05:10 +0000

Scientific breakthroughs have been known to come by accident, not necessarily after a nice, long study: look at Newton's apple! This is roughly what happened at the Krafla volcano in Iceland: instead of testing geothermal energy harvesting, the team of researchers discovered the amazing power of magma.

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Researchers Found An Enzyme That Could Get Gasoline From Thin Air

Mike Sandru — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 20:52:27 +0000

"This organism is a very common soil bacteria that is very well understood and has been studied for a long time. But while we were studying it, we realized that the enzyme has some unusual behavior", said Markus Ribbe, a scientist at the University of California.

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Solexant's Single Layer Thin Film Solar Cell Proves Both Efficient and Cheap

Cristi — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:53:46 +0000

A San Jose, California based company called Solexant has started the development of a thin film solar cell which is cheap and very efficient. Solexant is very confident that their serial production thin film solar cell will have and efficiency increase of 10% compared to silicon based cells.

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