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Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed and tested an all-solid lithium-sulfur battery with approximately four times the energy density of conventional lithium-ion technologies that power today's electronics.
The ORNL battery design, which uses abundant low-cost elemental sulfur, also addresses flammability concerns experienced by other chemistries.
The new ionically-conductive cathode enabled the ORNL battery to maintain a capacity of 1200 milliamp-hours (mAh) per gram after 300 charge-discharge cycles at 60 degrees Celsius. For comparison, a traditional lithium-ion battery cathode has an average capacity between 140-170 mAh/g. Because lithium-sulfur batteries deliver about half the voltage of lithium-ion versions, this eight-fold increase in capacity demonstrated in the ORNL battery cathode translates into four times the gravimetric energy density of lithium-ion technologies, explained Liang.
Although the team's new battery is still in the demonstration stage, Liang and his colleagues hope to see their research move quickly from the laboratory into commercial applications. A patent on the team's design is pending.
Researchers in the U.S. have doubled the shelf life of strawberries, using a new device that could soon be commercialised for home refrigerators.
A team from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Sensor Electronic Technology, Inc. (SETi) demonstrated that low irradiance ultra-violet (UV) light exposure of strawberries in low temperature and very high humidity – typical home refrigerator conditions – can delay spoilage over long periods. The researchers developed a novel device incorporating light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that emit UV at wavelengths found in sunlight transmitted through Earth's atmosphere.
The results, to be presented next week at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO: 2013), are significant because previous attempts using traditional UV light sources for storage of produce resulted in severe drying, and it was unknown if the advantages of long exposure to low-level UV light would be effective against rot.
LEDs are now commonplace thanks to their long life and energy efficiency, and their ability to span the wavelength range from near UV to infrared. The full UV spectrum, however, had presented challenges for LED manufacturers – until recently. SETi developed a special technology to fabricate UV LEDs across the entire UV spectrum from UVA to UVC. This flexibility allowed them to tune the emitted light to the wavelengths most effective for this application.
Can engineers develop a more flexible, eco-friendly plastic for packaging?
(Phys.org) —The idea of '"going green" for one person can mean anything from driving a hybrid car to simply recycling glass bottles. But Barbi Wheelden, a doctoral student in chemical engineering, is thinking more globally. She's seeking a way for manufacturers to use a more eco-friendly and biodegradable plastic in their packaging.
Wheelden is using a component called polylactide, a bio-based plastic that comes from any crop with a starch, such as corn or sugar. However, polylactide (also known as PLA) itself is too brittle, making it necessary to blend a more flexible polymer or other plasticizing additive with it in order to use it for flexible packaging. She's researching how to come up with a bio-based, eco-friendly plasticizer so that PLA can be used for an even broader range of applications.
"My goal is to create a more flexible, tougher polylactide blend," she says.
The U.S. Army is poking around the market for their next high-speed helicopter. It recently chose the JMR MPS design put forth by AVX Aircraft Company, for their Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator (JMR-TD) program.
The AVX design is the third to join the Army's program, with veteran helicopter makers Bell and a joint Sikorsky/Boeing already in the mix. By the program's end, the U.S. Army will have their new attack chopper. And if all goes well, the new bird might just be a replacement not only for the Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk, but for the Boeing AH-64 Apache as well.
AVX's JMR MPS features a sleek, low-drag profile, which incorporates a number of weapons bay doors that function to conceal payload until the appropriate moment. Targets may be entirely unaware if the helicopter is an assault aircraft or a similarly-designed cargo variant
Going up? Elevators can now carry people to the top of a kilometre-high skyscraper in a single run. The key is the development of a super-light and super-strong lift-hoisting cable. The sheer weight of the steel cable that hoists today's elevators has prevented them going any higher than 500 metres in one go.
That means, for instance, that people in Dubai's 828-metre-high Burj Khalifa tower, currently the world's tallest building, have to switch lifts to go above the 500-metre mark. But lifts in the nascent Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – due to top out above 1 kilometre in 2019 – could use the new technology to zoom to the top in one go.
With at least 20 buildings more than 500 metres high on architects' drawing boards around the world, and more expected as megacities proliferate, lift maker Kone Corporation of Espoo, Finland, has been engineering ways to move people up and down them in more convenient and less energy-intensive ways. In London yesterday it revealed its solution: UltraRope.
Instead of interwound steel hawsers, Kone's hoisting line comprises four carbon-fibre tapes sealed in transparent plastic about 4 centimetres wide and 4 millimetres thick. It's more like a belt than a rope and looks like a school ruler shot through with magnetic tapes.
UltraRope beats steel for tensile strength but weighs only one-seventh as much. "That's a tremendous amount of steel you won't have to move around the building," says Kone's head of technology, Johannes de Jong. "And it will last longer than steel too."
UltraRope will also save energy. Simulating its use in a 640-metre-high building, Kone found that the elevator used 11 per cent less electrical power than a steel-cabled version.
Kone's main rival, Otis Elevator of Farmington, Connecticut, is also looking at carbon fibre for use in future ultra-tall buildings. However, the US company is thinking of using the material to strengthen steel cables.
"UltraRope is one of the biggest breakthroughs since the advent of the [Otis] safety elevator 150 years ago," says Antony Wood, executive director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat in Chicago.
"The biggest limiting factor in building higher until now has been the steel rope weight – and we have reached the limit of that technology at 500 metres."
Gorilla Glass for cars tipped for lighter, quieter automobiles - SlashGearGorilla Glass is used in millions of handheld products, including smartphones and tablets. The glass offers a stronger, more durable build that makes it scratch-resistent and less likely to break. While it’s mostly meant for consumer electronic devices, we could be seeing Gorilla Glass make its way into the auto industry as soon as next year.
However, while durability is the selling point behind Gorilla Glass, auto makers seem to want it due to its lightweight design and soundproofing abilities. According to Corning senior vice president Jeffrey Evenson, Gorilla Glass would help reduce a car’s overall weight, boosting fuel economy by up to a few percentage points depending on how much Gorilla Glass is used.
Since most auto makers are looking for more ways to make lighter vehicles in order to improve fuel economy, Gorilla Glass could be a viable way to accomplish that. Plus, the glass could also kill two birds with one stone and provide a quieter interior for drivers, something that’s a significant factor for a lot of car buyers.
Dr. Alamgir Karim holds a strip of the polymer thin film that can now be produced at an industrial level for use in a wide range of applications.
(Phys.org) —Think about windows coated with transparent film that absorbs harmful ultraviolet sunrays and uses them to generate electricity. Consider a water filtration membrane that blocks viruses and other microorganisms from water, or an electric car battery that incorporates a coating to give it extra long life between charges.
The self-assembled copolymer block film that makes it all possible is now being fabricated with intricately organized nanostructures, giving them multiple functions and flexibility on a macroscale level never before seen. Gupreet Singh, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Akron College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, led a team of researchers to devise a method that enables the films to assemble themselves and allows them to serve as templates or directly as end products. The films can be embedded with nanoparticles that enable everything from data storage to water purification.
Today the Linear Collider Collaboration published its Technical Design Report [PDF] for the International Linear Collider (ILC) - a proposed 31-kilometer electron-positron collider that will both complement and advance beyond the physics of the Large Hadron Collider.
In three consecutive ceremonies in Asia, Europe and the Americas, the authors officially handed the report over to the international oversight board for projects in particle physics, the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA). The report presents the latest, most technologically advanced and most thoroughly scrutinized design for the ILC.
In findings that could help overcome a major technological hurdle in the road toward smaller and more powerful electronics, an international research team involving University of Michigan engineering researchers, has shown the unique ways in which heat dissipates at the tiniest scales.
Most attempts to improve the quality of image sensors have focused on making them more sensitive to low light. A newly-developed organic CMOS sensor from Fuji and Panasonic goes in the other direction. It increases the sensor’s saturation level — while at the same time reducing noise. The result is a ground-breaking 88dB of signal-to-noise (s/n), about 12dB above the typical value for conventional silicon sensors.
A UK aircraft engine claimed to be the most efficient in the world faced its toughest test on Friday.
A Trent XWB, produced by Rolls Royce, was fitted to the new Airbus A350, which made its debut flight from Toulouse, France.
The new engine includes novel technologies designed to shave off weight and minimise fuel consumption.
If you've ever owned a wireless charger for your smartphone, you know the feeling of having to go back to a plug. Wires suddenly feel ungainly or childish. Charging your stuff wirelessly, on the other hand — well that's from the future.
That's exactly the way of thinking that led Bosch to create their awesome new wireless charger — for your car. You just pull into the garage, park above their wireless charger and walk away. Of course, only EV owners need apply. You can't exactly pick up a charger in the hopes that it will somehow fill your Model A with gasohol. Get with the times already.
-- Implement HWRF GSI V3.7 one-way hybrid EnKF-3DVAR data
assimilation with GDAS forecasts as first guess and 80-member GFS
EnKF forecasts for ensemble covariances, assimilation of all
conventional data and provision to assimilate real-time inner-
core TDR/FL/SFMR/Dropsonde recon datasets
-- Improve storm size correction in the vortex initialization,
modified filter domain and use GFS vortex when the storm is
weaker than 16 m/s
-- Upgrade the nest movement algorithm using 9 parameters based
on NCEP tracker
-- Redesign nest-parent interpolations for improved treatment of
nest boundaries
-- Increase frequency of physics calls from 180 sec. to 30 sec.
and increase size of the third domain from 5-deg x 5.5-deg to
6-deg x 6.5-deg
-- Modify GFS PBL to include variable critical Richardson number
-- Fix bug for GFDL radiation
-- Remove flux truncation from HWRF to POM
-- Improve HWRF Unified Post Processor to reduce domain
discontinuities in the simulated satellite imagery products
The model has been extensively tested with a combination of all
the upgrades listed above for a 3-year sample of cases. The
results showed impressive and remarkable results. For Atlantic
basin track, the HWRF is improved by ~5-15% and now appears
competitive with the GFS. For intensity, the model reduces errors
by ~15%, has demonstrated skill greater than that of the NHC
official forecast and greater than that of the statistical
models. Similar improvements are noted for the Eastern North
Pacific basin as well.
There are no changes to existing products or their contents.
There will be an increase of roughly 1GB in product size due to
expanded size of the third domain. The grid is not changing, but
additional points will now have non-missing values.
More details about the HWRF-POM are available at:
Let's see if the model gets better after this upgrade.
Implementation of IFS cycle 38r2
IFS cycle 38r2 introduces higher vertical resolution in the high-resolution (T1279) forecast and data assimilation of the operational runs at 00 and 12 UTC (HRES) as well as the 06 and 18 UTC cycles of the Boundary Conditions (BC) optional programme. The number of model levels increases from the current 91 levels (L91) to 137 levels (L137).
There is no change in the vertical extent of the model, i.e. the model top remains unchanged at 0.01 hPa. Also the pressure levels remain unchanged.
The vertical resolution of the ensemble (ENS) and seasonal (SEAS) forecasts remain unchanged at L62 and L91, respectively.
The date of implementation is Tuesday 25 June 2013.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have joined the quest to develop a driverless car. And at first sight, the Cadillac looks like any other SUV on the road.
According to Professor Raj Rajkumar and his Carnegie Mellon team, the Cadillac prototype is the most advanced example of driverless technology yet produced. Rajkumar believes that driverless cars will one day be the norm, and that is a good thing, because they remove human drivers – who are the single biggest cause of traffic accidents.
“Humans get distracted. Over 93 percent of accidents in cars happen due to human error. People are distracted, they are sleepy maybe angry, looking at something else or they may even be drunk. If we can basically take the human out of the driving equation distractions will go away and computer will not get distracted because they are not human. So, therefore we can minimize those accidents and we can slowly take those accidents towards zero,” says Rajkumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering.
File this one under “woah.” The DesignLine LED HDTV from Philips is nothing more than a sheet of glass available in numerous sizes and appears to be a thin mirror when switched off. The TV’s design allows for it to be hung or leaned against any wall for a truly contemporary look. Check out a video demonstration below and look for them to hit retailers towards the end of the summer.
Today in the journal Nature, researchers at MIT's Media Lab report a new approach to generating holograms that could lead to color holographic-video displays that are much cheaper to manufacture than today's experimental, monochromatic displays. The same technique could also increase the resolution of conventional 2-D displays.
Using the new technique, Daniel Smalley, a graduate student in the Media Lab and first author on the new paper, is building a prototype color holographic-video display whose resolution is roughly that of a standard-definition TV and which can update video images 30 times a second, fast enough to produce the illusion of motion. The heart of the display is an optical chip, resembling a microscope slide, that Smalley built, using only MIT facilities, for about $10.
Phys.org) —The market for thin, flexible, printed electronic circuits is potentially huge. Although tremendous advances have been made in printing organic semiconductors like thin-film transistors (TFTs), one of their present limitations is a relatively high operating voltage requirement. 3D printed lithium-ion batteries with acceptable single-cell potentials (~3V) have been previously demonstrated, at least on small scales. The main concerns though, are that even with hermetic packaging, the raw materials for these cells still pose inherent safety and reliability risks. For wearable devices, which are a major application for flexible printed devices, a more versatile technology has been sought. A new study in Applied Physics Letters describes recent experiments with a different battery chemistry—Zn-MnO2. Using special fabrication techniques, a 10-cell series configuration of the battery was able to generate peak voltages of 14 volts, and a capacity of up to 0.8 mA h.
Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have shrunk a high-energy particle accelerator from the length of two football fields to just 1 inch.
In comparison to the conventional 2 GeV accelerators which span two football fields, the tabletop accelerator built by physicists at The University of Texas Austin accelerates electrons over a distance of about one inch. Courtesy of Rafal Zgadzaj
The latest tabletop particle accelerator, built by physicists at The University of Texas at Austin, can generate energy and speeds hitherto reached only by major facilities hundreds of meters long.
The results represent a huge step towards standardizing multi-gigaelectronvolt laser plasma accelerators in labs worldwide. (A gigaelectronvolt is the amount of energy gained or lost by an electron as it moves across an electric potential difference of 1 billion volts. Deep breath. OK.)
MBDA’s high-energy laser weapon uses highly sensitive, four-channel mirror optics to track targets and adjust the laser beam.
MBDA Germany is claiming a world’s first in the development of high-energy laser weapons after coupling together four commercially available 10kW-industrial lasers to achieve a 40kW weapon that can intercept and destroy incoming rockets, artillery and mortars (RAM). Small aerial vehicles, such as UAVs, are also on MBDA’s target list, but the company says power supply challenges still preclude adding lasers to aircraft for defensive purposes.
“We are leading the world in this technology,” claimed Peter Heilmeier, head of market and business development, MBDA Germany. He described several successful tests since 2008, including one in the Bavarian mountains in 2011 that fired a 10kW-laser beam toward a target at a slant distance of 2,350 meters (7,700 feet) and an altitude gain of 1,000 meters (3,300 feet). The source comprised two 5kW lasers; MBDA’s patented beam-coupling technique achieved good beam quality. That performance would be sufficient to bring down, for example, a UAV.
“High-power laser weapons will soon provide an answer to conventional and asymmetric threats,” said Heilmeier. “They are characterized by precision at long ranges, minimum operating costs and the avoidance of collateral damage.” Other advantages include minimal logistics (no need to store and transport ammunition) and the possibility to scale the weapon and the power of its response to an approaching target.
