Stanford University researchers have made a discovery that could signal the arrival of laptop batteries that last more than a day on a single charge. The researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to give rechargeable lithium ion batteries — used in laptops, iPods, video cameras, and mobile phones — as much as 10 times more charge. This potentially could give a conventional battery-powered laptop 40 hours of battery life, rather than 4 hours
IBM, Nokia, Sony and Pitney Bowes are expected to announce Monday that they have put 31 inventions into an Eco-Patent Commons
designed to make these Earth-friendly manufacturing and waste-reduction processes more widely available
Contrary to earlier predictions, Duke University engineers have found that a three-dimensional sound cloak is possible, at least in theory. Such an acoustic veil would do for sound what the invisibility cloak
previously demonstrated by the research team does for microwaves — allowing sound waves to travel seamlessly around it and emerge on the other side without distortion
One of the greatest challenges neurologists face is successful delivery of drugs to the brain. This is because a special filtering layer of tissue, called the blood brain barrier, protects the brain and spinal cord. Kumar and his colleagues from Harvard Medical School have developed a potentially revolutionary drug delivery method, taking advantage of a known master infiltrator of the brain: the virus responsible for rabies, also known as the rhabdovirus
Spinal cord damage blocks the routes the brain uses to send messages to the nerve cells that control walking. For years, doctors believed that the only way injured patients could walk again was to regrow the long nerve highways that link the brain and base of the spinal cord. Now, for the first time, a UCLA study shows that the central nervous system can reorganise itself and follow new pathways to restore the cellular communication required for movement
A failed effort to soften the noise from British military helicopters led to a breakthrough enabling surfaces from mobile telephone screens to car roof liners to be turned into stereo speakers. The technology was sold to Cambridge-based NXT, which christened it SurfaceSound
and arranged for it to be crafted into Toyota cars, Gateway computers, greeting cards and more
Space shuttle astronauts will attempt an unprecedented in-orbit repair of key Hubble Space Telescope instruments during the servicing mission scheduled for August 2008. The repairs, along with the addition of two new instruments, will make Hubble 90 times as powerful as it was after its flawed optics were corrected in 1993
Your next laptop could have a continuous power battery that lasts for 30 years without a single recharge thanks to work being funded by the US Air Force Research Laboratory. The breakthrough betavoltaic power cells are constructed from semiconductors and use radioisotopes as the energy source. As the radioactive material decays it emits beta particles that transform into electric power capable of fueling an electrical device like a laptop for years
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have found a way of using sunlight to recycle carbon dioxide and produce fuels like methanol or gasoline. The Sunlight to Petrol project essentially reverses the combustion process, recovering the building blocks of hydrocarbons
Bill Gates and the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences this week donated $30 million to an ambitious telescope that researchers say will be able to survey the entire sky every three nights — something never done before. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Project got $20 million from the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences and $10 million from Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates. Expected to see its first light
in 2014, the 8.4m LSST will survey the entire visible sky deeply in multiple colors every week with its 3 billion-pixel digital camera, probing the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy and opening a movie-like window on objects that change or move
The longest-running search for radio signals from alien civilisations is receiving 500 times more data from an upgraded telescope and better frequency coverage than project planners anticipated, meaning the SETI@home project is in dire need of more desktop computers to help crunch the data
Carbon may be losing its monopoly over the nanoworld. According to the latest calculations, tubes built out of the element boron could have many of the same properties as carbon nanotubes. And for some electronic applications, they should even be better than carbon
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently reported that two research teams have developed a new porous foam of an alloy that changes shape when exposed to a magnetic field. The NSF states that this new material is able to remember its original shape after it’s been deformed by a physical or magnetic force. This polycrystalline nickel-manganese-gallium alloy is potentially cheaper and lighter than other materials currently used in devices ranging from sonar to precision valves. It also could be used to design biomedical pumps without moving parts and even for space applications and automobiles — via Slashdot
Scientists in Britain have come up with a solution for making electronic gadgets completely waterproof, using a type of coating that repels liquids. The technology has, up until now, been used for military gear, but the makers of Ion-Mask are already in discussion with three mobile phone manufacturers with a view to using the coating on their products — via Gizmodo
Scientists believe they have found the underlying reasons why knots are so common in the universe. This research helps us understand how knotty arrangements in various molecules lead to biological patterns, as in certain proteins — via Slashdot
The Annals of Improbable Research, a scientific publication that hosts the annual Ig Nobel awards, has decided to offer its publication free online. According to the journal Web site, visitors can view HTML articles with low-res images or download low-res PDFs for free. High-resolution PDFs and traditional on-the-toilet-readable paper-and-ink
issues are still available for a subscription fee
Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones and countless other devices. The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travellers
MIT scientists have found a way to induce cells to form parallel tube-like structures that could one day serve as tiny engineered blood vessels. The researchers found that they can control the cells’ development by growing them on a surface with nano-scale patterning
Researchers in a remote Indonesian jungle have discovered a giant rat that is about five times the size of a typical city rat and a tiny possum
It doesn’t seem like an ideal place to promote solar energy, but foggy San Francisco has come up with an ambitious plan to encourage businesses and homeowners to tap the sun’s power for their energy needs. The program announced Tuesday would offer companies and residents government-funded loans and rebates to offset the costs of installing solar panels
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