(21 Oct 2017) LEADIN:
Forget plugging in to charge up your new electric car, engineers are now working towards a future where you never need to plug in ever again.
Continue reading “Self charging car batteries mean you’ll never need to plug in” »
Imagine having your cell phone start to charge when you walk into a room, or your electric car charge as you drive over a particular strip of land. It’s like a sort of ambient charging environment surrounds you.
Harnessing the power of magnetic fields.
New technology could boost the efficiency of solar power systems by converting waste heat into light.
By Amanda Froelich The furniture retailer is looking at using biodegradable mycelium “fungi packaging” as part of its efforts to reduce waste and increase recycling. …
Developing synthetic materials that are as dynamic as those found in nature, with reversibly changing properties and which could be used in manufacturing, recycling and other applications, is a strong focus for scientists.
In a world-first, researchers from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Ghent University (UGent) and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have pioneered a novel, dynamic, reprogrammable material—by using green LED light and, remarkably, darkness as the switches to change the material’s polymer structure, and using only two inexpensive chemical compounds. One of these compounds, naphthalene, is well known as an ingredient in moth repellents.
The new dynamic material could potentially be used as a 3D printing ink to print temporary, easy-to-remove support scaffolds. This would overcome one of the current limitations of the 3D process to print free-hanging structures.
Tesla’s new Roadster is going to come with an optional ‘SpaceX package’ that will include cold air thrusters to improve performance.
Now CEO Elon Musk says that the thruster will be hidden behind the license plate.
There’s no doubting that graphene, a single layer of graphite with the atoms arranged in a honeycomb hexagonal pattern, is one of science’s most versatile new materials. Capable of doing everything from filtering the color out of whisky to creating body armor that’s stronger than diamonds, graphene exhibits some truly unique qualities. However, while some mainstream uses of graphene have emerged, its use remains limited due to the challenge of producing it at scale. The most common way to make graphene still involves using sticky tape to strip a layer of atoms off ordinary graphite.
That’s something that researchers from the University of Rochester and the Netherlands’ Delft University of Technology have been working to change. They’ve figured out a way to mass produce graphene by mixing oxidized graphite with bacteria. Their method is cost-efficient, time-efficient, and sustainable — and may just make graphene a whole lot more available in the process.
“In our research, we have used bacteria to produce graphene materials on a bulk scale, and we showed that our material is conductive, and both thinner and able to be stored longer than chemically produced graphene materials,” Anne Meyer, professor of biology at the University of Rochester, told Digital Trends. “These properties demonstrate that our bacterial graphene would be well suited for a variety of applications, such as electrical ink or lightweight biosensors. Our approach is also incredibly simple and environmentally friendly compared to chemical approaches. All we have to do is mix our bacteria with the graphene precursor material, and leave them sitting on the benchtop overnight.”
