September 28, 2011

Good Morning,

A company in Georgia claims that it is in development of a new fuel source that could power vehicles. The main ingredients: agricultural waste and water! Check out all the details in the third article.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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U.S. women in science to get support

WASHINGTON - The U.S. National Science Foundation says it's embarking on a 10-year plan to provide greater work-related flexibility to women in research careers. Among the practices to be inaugurated are moves to allow researchers to delay or suspend their research grants for as long as one year so they can care for a newborn or newly adopted child or fulfill other family obligations, a release from the White House said Monday. "Too many young women scientists and engineers get sidetracked or drop their promising careers because they find it too difficult to balance the needs of those careers and the needs of their families," NSF Director Subra Suresh said. "This new initiative aims to change that, so that the country can benefit from the full range and diversity of its talent." NSF, a source of federal grants for many fields of basic research crucial to U.S. technology development and job creation, is calling on universities and research institutes to adopt similar policies for their employees and grantees, the White House said.


Turtles found laying 'heat-proof' eggs

EXETER, England - Some sea turtles have evolved to lay "heat-proof" eggs to cope with hot sands on the beaches of their habitats, British scientists say. University of Exeter researchers studied green turtles nesting on Ascension Island, a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean. They found that eggs laid by turtles nesting on a naturally hot beach were able withstand high temperatures better than eggs from turtles nesting on a cooler beach just a few miles away, a university release said Monday. A darker sand makes the warm beach 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than a nearby beach with white sand, researchers said. "We believe this is the first time that adaptation to local environmental conditions has been demonstrated in sea turtles, which is all the more remarkable because the beaches in question are just 6 kilometres [3.7 miles] apart," research leader Jonathan Blount said. Most female turtles nest on the same beaches where they themselves hatched, so populations can adapt to specific nesting locations and conditions, the researchers said.


Motor fuel from wood and water?

KENNESAW, Ga. - A Georgia company says it is developing a process to turn agricultural waste into vehicle fuel and other useful chemicals -- and the main ingredient is water. The company, Renmatix, says the process involves treating wood chips, switchgrass and the non-edible parts of crops with compressed water heated to very high temperatures, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The so-called cellulosic biomass process could reduce U.S. reliance on oil imports for gasoline in favor of a less expensive source of energy, the newspaper said. The biomass is comprised mostly of sugars that can be processed to make ethanol, other fuels or chemical feedstocks, but the sugars are extremely hard to extract. In the Renmatix process, hardwoods are put into a small, pressurized chamber with high-temperature water to release and harvest one class of sugars, after which the remaining material is pumped into a second pressurized vessel where a longer treatment releases the remaining sugars. The company began operating a pilot plant in Kennesaw, Ga., in 2009 that processes 3 tons of mixed wood chips a day into useful sugars.


New material for 'bendable' solar cells

EVANSTON, Ill. - A new material for solar cells -- a transparent conductor made of carbon nanotubes -- could revolutionize the way solar power is harvested, U.S. scientists say. The material could be an affordable and flexible alternative to current technology, which is mechanically brittle and reliant on a relatively rare mineral, a release by Northwestern University said Tuesday. Northwestern researchers said the material's mechanical flexibility could allow solar cells to be integrated into fabrics and clothing, creating portable energy for everything from personal electronics to military operations. Solar cells require a transparent conductor layer that allows light to pass into the cell and electricity to pass out, so the conductor must be both electrically conductive and optically transparent. Indium tin oxide, the material predominantly in use currently, is mechanically brittle and relies on the relatively rare and expensive element indium. The Northwestern team has created an alternative to indium tin oxide using single-walled carbon nanotubes, tiny, hollow cylinders of carbon just one nanometer in diameter. Because carbon nanotubes are flexible they could lead to new applications in solar cells such as military tents incorporating the flexible solar cells into tent material to provide power directly for soldiers in the field, or the cells could be integrated into clothing, backpacks or purses for wearable electronics. "With this mechanically flexible technology, it's much easier to imagine integrating solar technology into everyday life, rather than carrying around a large, inflexible solar cell," materials scientist Mark C. Hersam said.


New computer memory uses nanotechnology

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - U.S. experts say a new kind of computer memory using nanotechnology could be faster than current technology and use far less power than flash memory devices. Scientists at Purdue University say the technology combines silicon nanowires with a "ferroelectric" polymer, a material that switches polarity when electric fields are applied. That change can be read as 0 or 1, allowing digital circuits to store information in binary code, a university release said Tuesday. The new technology is called FeTRAM, for ferroelectric transistor random access memory. "We've developed the theory and done the experiment and also showed how it works in a circuit," doctoral student Saptarshi Das said. The FeTRAM is nonvolatile storage, meaning information stays in memory when the computer is powered down. "You want to hold memory as long as possible, 10 to 20 years, and you should be able to read and write as many times as possible," Das said. "It should also be low power to keep your laptop from getting too hot. And it needs to scale, meaning you can pack many devices into a very small area. The use of silicon nanowires along with this ferroelectric polymer has been motivated by these requirements."

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