Beautiful nature image — triangular snowflakes

I didn’t know snowflakes come in all sorts of geometric shapes.

From the link:

The beautiful six-fold symmetry of snowflakes is the result of the hydrogen bonds that water molecules form when they freeze.

But snowflakes can form other shapes too when the growth of the crystal is perturbed on one side. In theory, diamonds, trapezoids and other irregular shapes can all occur. And yet the one most commonly observed (after hexagons) is the triangle. The puzzle for is why? What process causes deformed snowflakes to become triangles rather than say squares or rectangles?

Semiconducting nanowires are coming

With all the news about nanotechnology and wiring that’s been coming out over the last year or so, this release is no surprise.

The release:

November 26, 2009

Nanowires key to future transistors, electronics

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -

Nanowire formation
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caption below

A new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips using tiny structures called semiconducting nanowires are closer to reality after a key discovery by researchers at IBM, Purdue University and the University of California at Los Angeles.The researchers have learned how to create nanowires with layers of different materials that are sharply defined at the atomic level, which is a critical requirement for making efficient transistors out of the structures.

 

“Having sharply defined layers of materials enables you to improve and control the flow of electrons and to switch this flow on and off,” said Eric Stach, an associate professor of materials engineering at Purdue.

Electronic devices are often made of “heterostructures,” meaning they contain sharply defined layers of different semiconducting materials, such as silicon and germanium. Until now, however, researchers have been unable to produce nanowires with sharply defined silicon and germanium layers. Instead, this transition from one layer to the next has been too gradual for the devices to perform optimally as transistors.

The new findings point to a method for creating nanowire transistors.

The findings are detailed in a research paper appearing Friday (Nov. 27) in the journal Science. The paper was written by Purdue postdoctoral researcher Cheng-Yen Wen, Stach, IBM materials scientists Frances Ross, Jerry Tersoff and Mark Reuter at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y, and Suneel Kodambaka, an assistant professor at UCLA’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Whereas conventional transistors are made on flat, horizontal pieces of silicon, the silicon nanowires are “grown” vertically. Because of this vertical structure, they have a smaller footprint, which could make it possible to fit more transistors on an integrated circuit, or chip, Stach said.

“But first we need to learn how to manufacture nanowires to exacting standards before industry can start using them to produce transistors,” he said.

Nanowires might enable engineers to solve a problem threatening to derail the electronics industry. New technologies will be needed for industry to maintain Moore’s law, an unofficial rule stating that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles about every 18 months, resulting in rapid progress in computers and telecommunications. Doubling the number of devices that can fit on a computer chip translates into a similar increase in performance. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to continue shrinking electronic devices made of conventional silicon-based semiconductors.

“In something like five to, at most, 10 years, silicon transistor dimensions will have been scaled to their limit,” Stach said.

Transistors made of nanowires represent one potential way to continue the tradition of Moore’s law.

The researchers used an instrument called a transmission electron microscope to observe the nanowire formation. Tiny particles of a gold-aluminum alloy were first heated and melted inside a vacuum chamber, and then silicon gas was introduced into the chamber. As the melted gold-aluminum bead absorbed the silicon, it became “supersaturated” with silicon, causing the silicon to precipitate and form wires. Each growing wire was topped with a liquid bead of gold-aluminum so that the structure resembled a mushroom.

Then, the researchers reduced the temperature inside the chamber enough to cause the gold-aluminum cap to solidify, allowing germanium to be deposited onto the silicon precisely and making it possible to create a heterostructure of silicon and germanium.

The cycle could be repeated, switching the gases from germanium to silicon as desired to make specific types of heterostructures, Stach said.

Having a heterostructure makes it possible to create a germanium “gate” in each transistor, which enables devices to switch on and off.

The work is based at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center and Purdue’s Birck Nanotechnology Center in the university’s Discovery Park and is funded by the National Science Foundation through the NSF’s Electronic and Photonic Materials Program in the Division of Materials Research.

PHOTO CAPTION:
Researchers are closer to using tiny devices called semiconducting nanowires to create a new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips. The researchers have grown the nanowires with sharply defined layers of silicon and germanium, offering better transistor performance. As depicted in this illustration, tiny particles of a gold-aluminum alloy were alternately heated and cooled inside a vacuum chamber, and then silicon and germanium gases were alternately introduced. As the gold-aluminum bead absorbed the gases, it became “supersaturated” with silicon and germanium, causing them to precipitate and form wires. (Purdue University, Birck Nanotechnology Center/Seyet LLC)

Self-assembling spherical solar cells

Via KurzweilAI.net — Pretty interesting solar concept. There is still a lot of innovation going on in the solar space.

Origami Solar Cells

Technology Review, Nov. 25, 2009 Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed self-assembling spherical solar cells capable of capturing more sunlight than flat ones. If they prove practical, the devices could be wired up into large arrays that have the same power output as conventional cells, but that save on materials costs by using less silicon. (PNAS)   Read Original Article>>

Bringing strategic management theory to bear on today’s economy

In surprising news, this release claims the current economy is too complex for macroeconomics. (Psst, it’s not really surprising at all.)

The release:

Strategic management theory offers fresh take on the economic crisis

New research published in Strategic Organization

Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC (November 24, 2009) – The recent financial crisis and resulting global economic downturn has been the most defining global economic event since the Great Depression. Now research which appears in the November issue of Strategic Organization, published by SAGE, illustrates new ideas and philosophies in economics from strategic management, uncovering the micro-level underpinnings of the macro-level events we witness today.

Macroeconomics experts have used traditional theories to understand the causes of the economic crisis and offer new schemes and ideas for recovery. These discussions about fiscal and monetary policy dominated much of the conversation about the crisis and what to do about it, according to one of the authors Peter Klein, from the Division of Applied Social Sciences, University of Missouri.

Klein and his co-authors argue that macroeconomics is not equipped to offer full solutions to this crisis. Its basic assumption is that factors of production, firms, and industries in the economy are homogeneous and interchangeable. Research in strategic management has consistently shown that the assumption that the economy is made up of homogeneous or interchangeable factors of production is incorrect.

Strategic management theory—with its emphasis on heterogeneously distributed and rather immobile and inelastic resources and capabilities—is ready to open the debate to new ideas for the recovery.

The idea that resources, firms, and industries are different from each other, that capital and labor are specialized for particular projects and activities, and that people (human capital), are distinct, is constantly encountered in strategic management theory and practice. That macroeconomic models assume factors of production in an economy are homogeneous is interesting, the authors point out, because this assumption creates problems for macroeconomics in both explaining the current crisis, and in deriving solutions.

The Bush Administration bailout and stimulus program in 2008 and continuing through the Obama Administration in 2009 represent a complex mixture of programs, designed to rescue failing banks, strengthen the financial sector, and appear to help homeowners. The same programs have been copied in the European Community throughout 2008.

The Obama Administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included both stimulus and infrastructure spending. The latter was designed to target particular industries, regions, technologies, and business practices for government support and to provide incentives for particular kinds of business and consumer behavior (e.g., to invest in new “green industries”. The EU plan copied this two-step approach on a smaller scale).

The article focuses on the macroeconomic stimulus itself, and—particularly in the US—the financial-sector bailout measures that followed. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Congress in September 2008 that radical steps were needed “to avoid a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets that threaten American families’ financial well-being, the viability of businesses both small and large, and the very health of our economy.”

The US government’s restructuring plans for the financial and automobile industries, and potentially for other sectors are likely to run into problems due to their basis in macroeconomic principles, the authors warn.

What should governments do during an economic downturn? The authors believe it is critical to avoid policies that generate poor investment in the first place. They argue strongly that basic heterogeneity of individuals, fiirms, industries, and regions cast doubt on the macroeconomic stimulus policies governments currently preach.

The authors discuss how just as strategic management theory has much to offer in understanding the crisis, the crisis has also thrown certain important weaknesses in current strategic management theory into sharp relief. Strategic management theory must extend its focus on heterogeneous capabilities to include the capabilities to handle major, anticipated shocks. Resourceful entrepreneurs and business managers urgently need us to do so, the authors state.

Adapting to external change is an important theme in strategic management research. Performance depends not only on resources and capabilities involved in production and market exchange, but also on the ability of business to influence political decision makers. In this climate, entrepreneurs may need to become skilled political lobbyists, taking advantage, and influencing the direction of the political debate.

Strategic management scholars have much to offer, and they must now engage in meaningful debate on how management theory can help resolve the current crisis, because the future, both immediate and long term, is at stake.

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Heterogeneous Resources and the Financial Crisis: Implications of Strategic Management Theory by Rajshree Agarwal, Jay B. Barney, Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein is published today in Strategic Organization, published by SAGE. The article will be free online for a limited period fromhttp://soq.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/7/4/467

SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. www.sagepublications.com

Beautiful space image — Centaurus A

Amazing …

This image of the central parts of Centaurus A reveals the parallelogram-shaped remains of a smaller galaxy that was gulped down about 200 to 700 million years ago. The image is based on data collected with the SOFI instrument on ESO’s New Technology Telescope at La Silla. The original image, obtained by observing in the near-infrared through three different filters (J, H and K) was specially processed to look through the dust, providing a clear view of the centre. The field of view is about 4 x 4 arcminutes.

Getting closer to quantum computing

The latest in quantum computing news:

UCSB physicists move 1 step closer to quantum computing

		IMAGE: This is David Awschalom from the University of California — Santa Barbara. Click here for more information.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have made an important advance in electrically controlling quantum states of electrons, a step that could help in the development of quantum computing. The work is published online today on the Science Express Web site.

The researchers have demonstrated the ability to electrically manipulate, at gigahertz rates, the quantum states of electrons trapped on individual defects in diamond crystals. This could aid in the development of quantum computers that could use electron spins to perform computations at unprecedented speed.

Using electromagnetic waveguides on diamond-based chips, the researchers were able to generate magnetic fields large enough to change the quantum state of an atomic-scale defect in less than one billionth of a second. The microwave techniques used in the experiment are analogous to those that underlie magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology.

The key achievement in the current work is that it gives a new perspective on how such resonant manipulation can be performed. “We set out to see if there is a practical limit to how fast we can manipulate these quantum states in diamond,” said lead author Greg Fuchs, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSB. “Eventually, we reached the point where the standard assumptions of magnetic resonance no longer hold, but to our surprise we found that we actually gained an increase in operation speed by breaking the conventional assumptions.”

While these results are unlikely to change MRI technology, they do offer hope for the nascent field of quantum computing. In this field, individual quantum states take on the role that transistors perform in classical computing.

		IMAGE: This is postdoctoral researcher Greg Fuchs in the lab of UCSB’s Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation. Click here for more information.

“From an information technology standpoint, there is still a lot to learn about controlling quantum systems,” said David Awschalom, principal investigator and professor of physics, electrical and computer engineering at UCSB. “Still, it’s exciting to stand back and realize that we can already electrically control the quantum state of just a few atoms at gigahertz rates –– speeds comparable to what you might find in your computer at home.”

 

 

 

 

###

The work was performed at UCSB’s Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation, directed by Awschalom. Co-authors on the paper include David. M. Toyli and F. Joseph Heremans, both of UCSB. Slava V. Dobrovitski of Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University contributed to the paper.

The search engine as teacher

Who’d a thunk it?!?

The release:

Search engines are source of learning

Search engine use is not just part of our daily routines; it is also becoming part of our learning process, according to Penn State researchers.

The researchers sought to discover the cognitive processes underlying searching. They examined the search habits of 72 participants while conducting a total of 426 searching tasks. They found that search engines are primarily used for fact checking users’ own internal knowledge, meaning that they are part of the learning process rather than simply a source for information. They also found that people’s learning styles can affect how they use search engines.

“Our results suggest the view of Web searchers having simple information needs may be incorrect,” said Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology. “Instead, we discovered that users applied simple searching expressions to support their higher-level information needs.”

Jansen said the results of this study provide useful information about how search engine use has evolved over the past decade and clues about how to design better search engines to address users’ learning needs in the future. He and Brian Smith, associate professor information sciences and technology and Danielle Booth, former Penn State student, published their findings in the November issue of Information Processing and Management.

“If we can incorporate cognitive, affective and situational aspects of a person, there is the potential to really move search performance forward,” Jansen said. “At its core, we are getting to the motivational elements of search.”

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National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research funded this research.

Carbon nanotube supercapacitors

Flawed carbon nanotubes may lead to supercapacitors.

From the link:

Most people would like to be able to charge their cell phones and other personal electronics quickly and not too often. A recent discovery made by UC San Diego engineers could lead to carbon nanotube-based supercapacitors that could do just this.

In recent research, published in Applied Physics Letters, Prabhakar Bandaru, a professor in the UCSD Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, along with graduate student Mark Hoefer, have found that artificially introduced defects in nanotubes can aid the development of supercapacitors.

“While batteries have large storage capacity, they take a long time to charge; while electrostatic capacitors can charge quickly but typically have limited capacity. However, supercapacitors/electrochemical capacitors incorporate the advantages of both,” Bandaru said.

Of course I mostly ran this post just to add to the excuse for running this awesome image of a carbon nanotube. Earlier this week I featured an incredible image of graphene. We’re getting some just simply amazing looks into the atomic world right now. And it’ll only get better.

Carbon nanotubes could serve as supercapacitor electrodes with enhanced charge and energy storage capacity (inset: a magnified view of a single carbon nanotube).

Credit: UC San Diego

The medibots are coming

Via KurzweilAI.net — This is a concept that combines a lot of elements — excitement, concern, fear, hope and quite a bit of creepy.

Medibots: The world’s smallest surgeons

New Scientist Health, Nov. 20, 2009 Advances in robotics could revolutionize healthcare, pushing the limits of what surgeons can achieve, from worm-inspired capsules to crawl through your gut, and systems swallowed in pieces that assemble themselves inside the body, to surgical robots that will soon be ready to embark on a fantastic voyage through our bodies, homing in on the part that’s ailing and fixing it from the inside. Swimming camera capsule (The Royal College of Surgeons / Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna)   Read Original Article>>

Beautiful nature image — the scales of a moth

Looks like wrapping paper ribbon.

Mr. David Millard
Sunset moth wing scales. David Millard, Austin, Tex., U.S.A.

Cheap, efficient solar cells

Via KurzweilAI.net — This sounds like good news. I’m looking forward to lower cost solar options to hit the market. There’s a lot of news in the space, but not much has translated to the real world. The general public will eventually tire of hearing about the latest and greatest solar ” breakthrough” (and I know I’m as guilty as anyone on that front) without seeing anything tangible. People can only be told the turn at the corner is coming soon so many times.

Thin-Film Solar with High Efficiency

Technology Review, Nov. 19, 2009 Solar cells made from cheap nanocrystal-based inks have the potential to be as efficient as the conventional inorganic cells currently used in solar panels, but can be printed less expensively, says Solexant, which expects to sell modules for $1 per watt, with efficiencies above 10 percent.   Read Original Article>>

Wolfram Alpha developing elements of AI?

Via KurzweilAI.net — This sure sounds a lot like artificial intelligence to me.

Innovation: The dizzying ambition of Wolfram Alpha

New Scientist Tech, Nov. 17, 2009 Stephen Wolfram wants Wolfram Alpha to generate knowledge of its own. Alpha has been exposed to more utterances than a typical child would hear in learning a new language, allowing it to get smarter at understanding how people phrase their requests, he says. “You’ll be able to ask it a question, and instead of it using knowledge that came out of a method invented 50 years ago it will invent a new method on the fly to answer it.”   Read Original Article>>

The stimulus package and science

Scientific research wasn’t left out of this year’s stimulus plan to the tune of $21 billion, and a federal website tracks all that stimulus.

From the link:

The stimulus plan passed by the US Congress earlier this year provided $21 billion for scientific R&D to be allocated through the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and other agencies. (The full text of the bill is available in this large pdf file.) The debate still rages amongst politicians and economists about just how many jobs the $787 billion bill has created. In the meantime, the government has launched an interesting website detailing where that scientific R&D money went.

Call it propaganda–the site is called ScienceWorksForUS–but it’s interesting to browse through the detailed list and see which research projects were funded and for how much.

Moving nanoscale objects with light

This finding is important toward creating working nanoscale machines.

The release:

Nov. 16, 2009

Small optical force can budge nanoscale objects

By Bill Steele

Scanning electron micrograph of two thin, flat rings of silicon nitride, each 190 nanometers thick and mounted a millionth of a meter apart. Light is fed into the ring resonators from the straight waveguide at the right. Under the right conditions optical forces between the two rings are enough to bend the thin spokes and pull the rings toward one another, changing their resonances enough to act as an optical switch.
Image from Cornell Nanophotonics Group

With a bit of leverage, Cornell researchers have used a very tiny beam of light with as little as 1 milliwatt of power to move a silicon structure up to 12 nanometers. That’s enough to completely switch the optical properties of the structure from opaque to transparent, they reported.

The technology could have applications in the design of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) — nanoscale devices with moving parts — and micro-optomechanical systems (MOMS) which combine moving parts with photonic circuits, said Michal Lipson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The research by postdoctoral researcher Gustavo Wiederhecker, Long Chen, Ph.D. ‘09, Alexander Gondarenko, Ph.D. ‘10, and Lipson appears in the online edition of the journal Nature and will appear in a forthcoming print edition.

Light can be thought of as a stream of particles that can exert a force on whatever they strike. The sun doesn’t knock you off your feet because the force is very small, but at the nanoscale it can be significant. “The challenge is that large optical forces are required to change the geometry of photonic structures,” Lipson explained.

But the researchers were able to reduce the force required by creating two ring resonators — circular waveguides whose circumference is matched to a multiple of the wavelength of the light used — and exploiting the coupling between beams of light traveling through the two rings.

A beam of light consists of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, and these fields can pull in nearby objects, a microscopic equivalent of the way static electricity on clothes attracts lint. This phenomenon is exploited in “optical tweezers” used by physicists to trap tiny objects. The forces tend to pull anything at the edge of the beam toward the center.

When light travels through a waveguide whose cross-section is smaller than its wavelength some of the light spills over, and with it the attractive force. So parallel waveguides close together, each carrying a light beam, are drawn even closer, rather like two streams of rainwater on a windowpane that touch and are pulled together by surface tension.

The researchers created a structure consisting of two thin, flat silicon nitride rings about 30 microns (millionths of a meter) in diameter mounted one above the other and connected to a pedestal by thin spokes. Think of two bicycle wheels on a vertical shaft, but each with only four thin, flexible spokes. The ring waveguides are three microns wide and 190 nanometers (nm — billionths of a meter) thick, and the rings are spaced 1 micron apart.

When light at a resonant frequency of the rings, in this case infrared light at 1533.5 nm, is fed into the rings, the force between the rings is enough to deform the rings by up to 12 nm, which the researchers showed was enough to change other resonances and switch other light beams traveling through the rings on and off. When light in both rings is in phase — the peaks and valleys of the wave match — the two rings are pulled together. When it is out of phase they are repelled. The latter phenomenon might be useful in MEMS, where an ongoing problem is that silicon parts tend to stick together, Lipson said.

An application in photonic circuits might be to create a tunable filter to pass one particular optical wavelength, Wiederhecker suggested.

The work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Cornell Center for Nanoscale Systems. Devices were fabricated at the Cornell Nanoscale Science and Technology Facility, also supported by NSF.

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Incredible nanotech image — graphene

I’ve done lots of blogging on the nanomaterial graphene, and here’s an incredible image of the atom-thick sheet of carbon:

A graphene sheet stretched across a gap in a semiconductor chip. Image: Kirill Bolotkin

And here’s a link to the PhysOrg article accompanying the image.

From the link:

Not only is this the thinnest material possible, but it also is 10 times stronger than steel and it conducts electricity better than any other known material at room temperature. These and graphene’s other exotic properties have attracted the interest of physicists, who want to study them, and nanotechnologists, who want to exploit them to make novel electrical and mechanical devices.

“There are two features that make graphene exceptional,” says Kirill Bolotin, who has just joined the Vanderbilt Department of Physics and Astronomy as an assistant professor. “First, its molecular structure is so resistant to defects that researchers have had to hand-make them to study what effects they have. Second, the electrons that carry electrical charge travel much faster and generally behave as if they have far less mass than they do in ordinary metals or superconductors.”

Nuclear power may not be the answer

And the reason might really surprise you — we’re running out of uranium. There’s a lot of talk about building new nuke plants — an idea I like — to help wean the west off of OPEC, et. al. What may come as a shock to many is uranium, the power source for nuclear plants, is going to offer just as many headaches in terms of shortages and being beholden parts of the world with reserves as petroleum provides right now.

Looks like it’s time to redouble the alternative power efforts if we want energy relatively free of the whims of geopolitics.

From the link:

Perhaps the most worrying problem is the misconception that uranium is plentiful. The world’s nuclear plants today eat through some 65,000 tons of uranium each year. Of this, the mining industry supplies about 40,000 tons. The rest comes from secondary sources such as civilian and military stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium. “But without access to the military stocks, the civilian western uranium stocks will be exhausted by 2013, concludes Dittmar.

It’s not clear how the shortfall can be made up since nobody seems to know where the mining industry can look for more.

NASA’s Wise ready for launch

Hot from the inbox:

NASA’s Wise Eye Gets Ready To Survey the Whole Sky

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or Wise, is chilled out, sporting a sunshade and getting ready to roll. NASA’s newest spacecraft is scheduled to roll to the pad on Friday, Nov. 20, its last stop before launching into space to survey the entire sky in infrared light.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)

Wise is scheduled to launch no earlier than 9:09 a.m. EST on Dec. 9 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It will circle Earth over the poles, scanning the entire sky one-and-a-half times in nine months. The mission will uncover hidden cosmic objects, including the coolest stars, dark asteroids and the most luminous galaxies.

“The eyes of Wise are a vast improvement over those of past infrared surveys,” said Edward “Ned” Wright, the principal investigator for the mission at UCLA. “We will find millions of objects that have never been seen before.”

The mission will map the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with sensitivity hundreds to hundreds of thousands of times greater than its predecessors, cataloging hundreds of millions of objects. The data will serve as navigation charts for other missions, pointing them to the most interesting targets. NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory, and NASA’s upcoming Sofia and James Webb Space Telescope will follow up on Wise finds.

“This is an exciting time for space telescopes,” said Jon Morse, NASA’s Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Many of the telescopes will work together, each contributing different pieces to some of the most intriguing puzzles in our universe.”

Visible light is just one slice of the universe’s electromagnetic rainbow. Infrared light, which humans can’t see, has longer wavelengths and is good for seeing objects that are cold, dusty or far away. In our solar system, Wise is expected to find hundreds of thousands of cool asteroids, including hundreds that pass relatively close to Earth’s path. Wise’s infrared measurements will provide better estimates of asteroid sizes and compositions — important information for understanding more about potentially hazardous impacts on Earth.

“With infrared, we can find the dark asteroids other surveys have missed and learn about the whole population. Are they mostly big, small, fluffy or hard?” said Peter Eisenhardt, the Wise project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Wise also will find the coolest of the “failed” stars or brown dwarfs. Scientists speculate it is possible that a cool star lurks right under our noses, closer to us than our nearest known star, Proxima Centauri, which is four light-years away. If so, Wise will easily pick up its glow. The mission also will spot dusty nests of stars and swirling planet-forming disks, and may find the most luminous galaxy in the universe.

To sense the infrared glow of stars and galaxies, the Wise spacecraft cannot give off any detectable infrared light of its own. This is accomplished by chilling the telescope and detectors to ultra-cold temperatures. The coldest of Wise’s detectors will operate at below 8 Kelvin, or minus 445 Fahrenheit.

“Wise is chilled out,” said William Irace, the project manager at JPL. “We’ve finished freezing the hydrogen that fills two tanks surrounding the science instrument. We’re ready to explore the universe in infrared.”

JPL manages Wise for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission was competitively selected under NASA’s Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More information about the Wise mission is available online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/wise

Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO
AP Archive:  http://photoarchive.ap.org/
PRN Photo Desk photodesk@prnewswire.com
Source: NASA

Web Site:  http://www.nasa.gov/

Beautiful nanotech image — photovoltaic solar cell

This is a nice gallery of nanotech images from New Scientist. Here’s the description from the series, “Chemist George Whitesides has collaborated with MIT and Harvard photographer-in-residence Felice Frankel to produce No Small Matter, a book of images of the micro and nanoworld.”

From the first image, my favorite:

Sun catchers

This is a close-up of the top side of a photovoltaic solar cell. The cell converts the energy from the sun’s photons into electrical energy by taking advantage of the photo-electric effect. This cell is made of a wafer of crystalline silicon.

Light is absorbed by the wafer and creates charge that is collected by silver conductor lines, shown in the image as the gold-coloured strip. The cell is coated with silicon nitride which acts as an anti-reflective surface, preventing light energy from bouncing away and giving the cell its blue-violet colour.

Rather than attaching solar panels to our roofs, recent research suggests that in the future we could paint solar cells on to our houses, removing the need to rely on expensive silicon wafers.

(Image: Felice Frankel)

CO2 capture and geothermal energy

More green tech backed with Department of Energy money. Sounds interesting if nothing else.

From the link:

Backers of this as-yet-unproven concept secured a big endorsement and much-needed cash with the U.S. Department of Energy’s recent award of $338 million in federal stimulus funds for geothermal energy research. Some $16 million of the funds will be shared by nine carbon dioxide-related projects led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and other national labs, Sunnyvale, CA-based combinatorial chemistry firm Symyx Technologies, and several U.S. universities.

The idea: Carbon dioxide that’s cycled through hot regions kilometers underground can efficiently bring heat to the surface, where it can be used to generate electricity. The likelihood is that the process would leave lots of carbon dioxide underground, and thus out of the atmosphere, according to Symyx project leader and materials scientist Miroslav Petro. “You’re sequestering CO₂ and at the same time generating power from it.”

DoE putting money into lithium-sulfur batteries

Lithium-sulfur batteries are an alternative to lithium-ion batteries with three times the storage. Early prototypes were pretty dodgy, but more research is now going on supported by Department of Energy grant money.

From the link:

Earlier this year we reported on several advances geared toward addressing these problems, and noted that these advances had caught the eye of the chemical giant BASF, which is now working to bring lithium-sulfur batteries to market. But challenges remain, including bringing down costs. Now the Department of Energy has also taken an interest in the technology. This week Sion Power Cooperation (which is working with BASF) announced that it has received a three-year, $800,000 DOE grant to further develop the lithium-sulfur batteries for electric vehicles.

Immerse In The Future expo coming to LA and Second Life

Via KurzweilAI.net — I’ll just let this speak for itself …

IMMERSE IN THE FUTURE

KurzweilAI.net, Nov. 13, 2009 The latest in immersive media, 3D domes, neurofeedback art, virtual worlds and other cutting-edge media formats and their potential as tools for transformation will be explored at IMMERSE IN THE FUTURE: A VISIONARY EVENING OF ARTS, MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY, Monday, November 16th in Los Angeles and in Second Life. The event will include presentations by the LA Opera; Kathy Eldon, Founder of Creative Visions Foundation; John Raatz, Founder of GATE; Ed Lantz, Founder of IMERSA and Vortex Immersion Media and the c3: Center for Conscious Creativity, followed by an inspiring keynote by noted author and futurist, Jerome Glenn, the Director of the Millennium Project offering insights on the future of arts,media and entertainment and their effects on global culture. Glenn will also announce a partnership with c3 to create an international group of futuristic artists and mediavisionaries, and institutions, to become the Global Arts and Media Node for the Millennium Project’s “State of the Future” report. More info

There’s water on the moon

That’s right — H2O –confirmed by NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.

The release from today’s inbox:

NASA’S LCROSS Impacts Confirm Water In Lunar Crater

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif., Nov. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Preliminary data from NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater. The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)

The LCROSS spacecraft and a companion rocket stage made twin impacts in the Cabeus crater Oct. 9 that created a plume of material from the bottom of a crater that has not seen sunlight in billions of years. The plume traveled at a high angle beyond the rim of Cabeus and into sunlight, while an additional curtain of debris was ejected more laterally.

“We’re unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor and, by extension, the solar system,” said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“The moon harbors many secrets, and LCROSS has added a new layer to our understanding.”

Scientists long have speculated about the source of significant quantities of hydrogen that have been observed at the lunar poles. The LCROSS findings are shedding new light on the question with the discovery of water, which could be more widespread and in greater quantity than previously suspected. If the water that was formed or deposited is billions of years old, these polar cold traps could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data. In addition, water and other compounds represent potential resources that could sustain future lunar exploration.

Since the impacts, the LCROSS science team has been analyzing the huge amount of data the spacecraft collected. The team concentrated on data from the satellite’s spectrometers, which provide the most definitive information about the presence of water. A spectrometer helps identify the composition of materials by examining light they emit or absorb.

“We are ecstatic,” said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact. The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water.”

The team took the known near-infrared spectral signatures of water and other materials and compared them to the impact spectra the LCROSS near infrared spectrometer collected.

“We were able to match the spectra from LCROSS data only when we inserted the spectra for water,” Colaprete said. “No other reasonable combination of other compounds that we tried matched the observations. The possibility of contamination from the Centaur also was ruled out.”

Additional confirmation came from an emission in the ultraviolet spectrum that was attributed to hydroxyl, one product from the break-up of water by sunlight. When atoms and molecules are excited, they release energy at specific wavelengths that can be detected by the spectrometers. A similar process is used in neon signs. When electrified, a specific gas will produce a distinct color. Just after impact, the LCROSS ultraviolet visible spectrometer detected hydroxyl signatures that are consistent with a water vapor cloud in sunlight.

Data from the other LCROSS instruments are being analyzed for additional clues about the state and distribution of the material at the impact site. The LCROSS science team and colleagues are poring over the data to understand the entire impact event, from flash to crater. The goal is to understand the distribution of all materials within the soil at the impact site.

“The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The data is that rich,” Colaprete said. “Along with the water in Cabeus, there are hints of other intriguing substances. The permanently shadowed regions of the moon are truly cold traps, collecting and preserving material over billions of years.”

LCROSS was launched June 18 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as a companion mission to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO. Moving at a speed of more than 1.5 miles per second, the spent upper stage of its launch vehicle hit the lunar surface shortly after 4:31 a.m. PDT Oct. 9, creating an impact that instruments aboard LCROSS observed for approximately four minutes. LCROSS then impacted the surface at approximately 4:36 a.m.

LRO observed the impact and continues to pass over the site to give the LCROSS team additional insight into the mechanics of the impact and its resulting craters. The LCROSS science team is working closely with scientists from LRO and other observatories that viewed the impact to analyze and understand the full scope of the LCROSS data.

For information about LCROSS, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/lcross

Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO
AP Archive:  http://photoarchive.ap.org/
PRN Photo Desk photodesk@prnewswire.com
Source: NASA

Web Site:  http://www.nasa.gov/

Biodegradable organic transistors

Via KurzweilAI.net — This may prove to be a major medical breakthrough once some practical applications get into actual practice and spur on additional innovation.

Biodegradable Transistors

Technology Review, Nov. 13, 2009 Fully biodegradable organic transistors have been fabricated by researchers at Stanford University. They could be used to control temporary medical implants placed in the body during surgery, and help monitor the healing process from inside the body.   Read Original Article>>

News for heavy cell phone users

Via KurzweilAI.net — And not that great of news ….

Wireless Phones Can Affect The Brain, Swedish Study Suggests

Science Daily, Nov. 11, 2009 A study at Orebro University in Sweden indicates that mobile phones and other cordless telephones have at two biological effects on the brain: increased content of the protein transthyretin in the blood-cerebrospinal-fluid barrier (part of the brain’s protection against outside influences), and various health symptoms reported by children and adolescents, with the connection strongest regarding headaches, asthmatic complaints, and impaired concentration.   Read Original Article>>

Silicon nanowires

Carbon gets most of the nanotech ink, but here’s some news on silicon nanowires.

The release:

Understanding mechanical properties of silicon nanowires paves way for nanodevices

		IMAGE: These are silicon nanowires used in the in-situ scanning electron microscopy mechanical testing by Dr. Yong Zhu and his team. Click here for more information.

Silicon nanowires are attracting significant attention from the electronics industry due to the drive for ever-smaller electronic devices, from cell phones to computers. The operation of these future devices, and a wide array of additional applications, will depend on the mechanical properties of these nanowires. New research from North Carolina State University shows that silicon nanowires are far more resilient than their larger counterparts, a finding that could pave the way for smaller, sturdier nanoelectronics, nanosensors, light-emitting diodes and other applications.

It is no surprise that the mechanical properties of silicon nanowires are different from “bulk” – or regular size – silicon materials, because as the diameter of the wires decrease, there is an increasing surface-to-volume ratio. Unfortunately, experimental results reported in the literature on the properties of silicon nanowires have reported conflicting results. So the NC State researchers set out to quantify the elastic and fracture properties of the material.

“The mainstream semiconductor industry is built on silicon,” says Dr. Yong Zhu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at NC State and lead researcher on this project. “These wires are the building blocks for future nanoelectronics.” For this study, researchers set out to determine how much abuse these silicon nanowires can take. How do they deform – meaning how much can you stretch or warp the material before it breaks? And how much force can they withstand before they fracture or crack? The researchers focused on nanowires made using the vapor-liquid-solid synthesis process, which is a common way of producing silicon nanowires.

		IMAGE: Dr. Yong Zhu and his research team stand front of a scanning electron microscope. From left to right, they are Feng Xu, Qingquan Qin and Yong Zhu. Click here for more information.

Zhu and his team measured the nanowire properties using in-situ tensile testing inside scanning electron microscopy. A nanomanipulator was used as the actuator and a micro cantilever used as the load sensor. “Our experimental method is direct but simple,” says Qingquan Qin, a Ph.D. student at NC State and co-author of the paper. “This method offers real-time observation of nanowire deformation and fracture, while simultaneously providing quantitative stress and strain data. The method is very efficient, so a large number of specimens can be tested within a reasonable period of time.”

As it turns out, silicon nanowires deform in a very different way from bulk silicon. “Bulk silicon is very brittle and has limited deformability, meaning that it cannot be stretched or warped very much without breaking.” says Feng Xu, a Ph.D. student at NC state and co-author of the paper, “But the silicon nanowires are more resilient, and can sustain much larger deformation. Other properties of silicon nanowires include increasing fracture strength and decreasing elastic modulus as the nanowire gets smaller and smaller.”

The fact that silicon nanowires have more deformability and strength is a big deal. “These properties are essential to the design and reliability of novel silicon nanodevices,” Zhu says. “The insights gained from this study not only advance fundamental understanding about size effects on mechanical properties of nanostructures, but also give designers more options in designing nanodevices ranging from nanosensors to nanoelectronics to nanostructured solar cells.”

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The study, “Mechanical Properties of Vapor-Liquid-Solid Synthesized Silicon Nanowires,” was co-authored by Zhu, Xu, Qin, University of Michigan (UM) researcher Wei Lu and UM Ph.D. student Wayne Fung. The study is published in the Nov. 11 issue o fNano Letters, and was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and NC State.

Boneworms

Let’s just leave this one at science fact and the ocean still leave science fiction behind.

The release:

10 November 2009
MBARI News Release

A motley collection of boneworms

This photograph shows a female of an as yet un-named boneworm in the genus Osedax, which has been carefully removed from the whale bone in which it was growing. This worm has green, feathery palps, which extract oxygen from seawater. At its lower end are an ovisac and bulbous “roots,” which would normally be embedded in the whale bone. Image: © 2009 Greg Rouse

It sounds like a classic horror story—eyeless, mouthless worms lurk in the dark, settling onto dead animals and sending out green “roots” to devour their bones. In fact, such worms do exist in the deep sea. They were first discovered in 2002 by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), who were using a robot submarine to explore Monterey Canyon. But that wasn’t the end of the story. After “planting” several dead whales on the seafloor, a team of biologists recently announced that as many as 15 different species of boneworms may live in Monterey Bay alone.

After years of study, the researchers have begun to piece together the bizarre story of the boneworms, all of which are in the genus Osedax. The worms start out as microscopic larvae, drifting through the darkness of the deep sea. At some point they encounter a large dead animal on the seafloor. It may be a whale, an elephant seal, or even the carcass of a cow that washed out to sea during a storm. Following chemical cues, the tiny larvae settle down onto the bones of the dead animal.

Once settled, the boneworms grow quickly, like weeds after a rain. One end of each worm develops feathery palps, which extract oxygen from seawater. The other end of the worm develops root-like appendages that grow down into the bone. Bacteria within these roots are believed to digest proteins and perhaps lipids within the bones, providing nutrition for the worms.

Soon the worms become sexually mature. Strangely enough, they all become females. Additional microscopic larvae continue to settle in the area. Some of these larvae land on the palps of the female worms. These develop into male worms. But they never grow large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Somehow these microscopic male worms find their way into the tube that surrounds the female’s body. Dozens of them share this space, not eating at all, but releasing sperm that fertilize the female’s eggs. Eventually the female worm sends thousands of fertilized eggs out into the surrounding water, and the cycle begins again.

 

This photo shows the skull of a dead whale on the seafloor—the preferred habitat for boneworms. Image: © 2006 MBARI

Dr. Robert Vrijenhoek, an evolutionary biologist at MBARI, has been fascinated with these worms ever since he and his colleagues first discovered their unusual lifestyles and bizarre reproductive habits. Vrijenhoek has been trying to find out how widespread and genetically diverse these worms are. He would also like to know how they manage to find and colonize the bones of dead whales in the vast, pitch-black expanse of the deep seafloor.

Between 2004 and 2008, Vrijenhoek’s research team towed five dead whales off of Monterey Bay beaches and sank them at different depths within Monterey Canyon. Every few months, coauthor Shannon Johnson and others on the team would send one of MBARI’s remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) down to study the worms and other animals that had colonized the whale carcasses.

To their surprise, the different whale carcasses yielded different types of boneworms. One whale carcass hosted three or four different types of worms. After examining all of the worms, coauthor Greg Rouse concluded that most of them were entirely new to science. The researchers also discovered that the worms would colonize cow-bones placed on the seafloor, which showed that the worms were not limited to feeding on dead whales.

 

Most female boneworms have long, graceful “palps” that wave in the ocean currents. Image: © 2008 Greg Rouse

In their recent paper in the journal BMC Biology, Vrijenhoek and his coauthors describe the results of extensive DNA analyses on all the different types ofOsedax worms that have been discovered so far (including two species found off Sweden and Japan). This work suggests that these worms could belong to as many as 17 different species, most of which have yet to be named. None of the worms appear to interbreed, despite the fact that some of them grow side by side.Based on their appearance and similarities in their DNA, the researchers divided the boneworms into several groups. Some of the worms have feathery palps, which may be red, pink, striped, or even greenish in color. Others have bare palps. One type of boneworm has no palps at all. Its body forms a single, long, tapering tube, which curls at the end like a pig’s tail. This worm has evolved to live in the seafloor sediment near a dead whale. It sends long, fibrous “roots” into the mud, presumably in search of fragments of bone on which to feed.

 

These unusual boneworms live in seafloor sediment and send roots into the sediment, presumably to digest fragments of bone. Image: © 2005 MBARI

Knowing how fast the DNA of these worms changes (mutates) over time, the researchers can calculate how long it has been since worms in the genus Osedaxfirst evolved as a distinct group. Using one possible estimate of mutation rates, the researchers hypothesized that this group could have evolved about 45 million years ago—about the time the first large open-ocean whales show up in the fossil record. Alternatively, the worms may have evolved more slowly, which would suggest that the genus is much older, and first evolved about 130 million years ago. If this second estimate is correct, the worms could have feasted on the bones of immense sea-going reptiles during the age of the dinosaurs.

Eventually the researchers will give all these new worms their own species names. First, however, they must collect enough samples of each possible species for additional laboratory analysis and distribution to type-specimen collections. Like a classic horror story, the macabre saga of the boneworms will continue to thrill marine biologists for years to come.

This research was sponsored by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

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Journal article:
A remarkable diversity of bone-eating worms (Osedax; Siboglinidae; Annelida). Robert C Vrijenhoek, Shannon B Johnson and Greg W Rouse BMC Biology (in press).

Related links:

• Images related to this news release
• Video of Boneworms in Monterey Bay on YouTube
• BioMed Central news release on this article
• 2004 MBARI news release announcing the discovery of the boneworms.
• Dr. Vrijenhoek’s first-hand description of the discovery of the boneworms
• Dr. Vrijenhoek’s web page
• Coauthor Greg Rouse’ web page at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Related journal articles:

• Rouse GW, Wilson NG, Goffredi SK, Johnson SB, Smart T, Widmer C, Young CM, Vrijenhoek RC (2009) Spawning and development in Osedax boneworms (Siboglinidae, Annelida). Marine Biology156, 395-405.
• Vrijenhoek, RC, Johnson, S, Rouse, GW, 2008. Bone-eating Osedax females and their “harems” of dwarf males are recruited from a common larval pool. Molecular Ecology 17, 4535-4544.
• Vrijenhoek RC, Collins PC, Van Dover CL (2008) Bone-eating marine worms: habitat specialists or generalists? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 275, 1963-1964.
• Jones WJ, Johnson SB, Rouse GW, Vrijenhoek RC (2008) Marine worms (genus Osedax) colonize cow bones. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 275, 387-391.
• Goffredi SK, Johnson SB, Vrijenhoek RC (2007) Genetic and potential function of microbial symbionts associated with newly discovered species of Osedax polychaete worms. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 73, 2314-2323. Link to PDF
• Braby CE, Rouse GW, Johnson SB, Jones WJ, Vrijenhoek RC (2007) Bathymetric and temporal variation among Osedax boneworms and associated megafauna on whale-falls in Monterey Bay, California. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers 54, 1773-1791. Link to PDF
• Rouse GW, Goffredi SK, Vrijenhoek RC (2004) Osedax: Bone-Eating Marine Worms with Dwarf Males.Science 305: 668-671.

Japan planning space-based solar power plant

Via KurzweilAI.net — Space-based solar collection gets a lot of ink and now it looks like it might even get a test run.

apan eyes solar station in space as new energy source

AFP, Nov. 8, 2009 The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to collect solar power in space and send it to Earth by 2030 using laser beams or microwaves, and has created a consortium (the Institute for Unmanned SpaceExperiment Free Flyer) that includes Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp. (Japan Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer)   Read Original Article>>

Texting and driving just don’t mix — even hands-free

An interesting blog post from Dan Ariely, a visiting professor at MIT’s Media Library on the “tiny irregularities” of texting while driving:

Sad story out in the New York Times describing growing concerns about texting while driving. In Britain, a woman was sentenced to a 21-month sentence after it was found that she had been texting while driving, which resulted in the death of a 24-year old design student. In many ways, texting while driving illustrates a case in which tiny, individual irrational decisions can accumulate and cause widespread suffering, not only for the individuals who are texting, but their unsuspecting victims. Unlike cases of drunk driving, in which the driver’s decision making abilities are impaired, drivers who text are at their full wits to wait until they’ve pulled over to check their texts, and yet in the process they routinely underestimate the risk they impose to themselves and others.

The professor was quite wrong, however, on one aspect of the issue:

… we can hope that cell phone companies are continuing to explore voice activation technologies that can read text messages aloud and also transcribe them from voice — thereby by-passing the problem altogether.

In researching web content I created for an insurance website, I came across this research that finds hands-free listening  to mobile devices is not much safer than hands-on cell phone use because the issue is the distraction of the usage, not merely taking eyes off the road ahead (all bold text my emphasis):

Five states currently ban the use of hand-held cell phones in favor of hands-free devices while driving. However, several studies have shown that there is little difference between the two when it comes to minding the road ahead. Both hand-held and hands-free devices involve listening. The act of listening is what distracts drivers from paying attention to the road. A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University placed participants in a functional MRI scanner that allowed researchers to observe brain activity while the subjects “drove” on a computerized roadway. Without distractions, the area of the brain that lit up most was the area involved in spatial perception (knowing where you are and what’s around you). When the same subjects were tasked with listening to and correctly answering a series of questions as they drove, the area of the brain that lit up most was the area involving language comprehension, while activity in the spatial perception area of the brain decreased by as much as 37 percent. Multitasking places high demands on the brain.

Solar energy and the artificial leaf

Very interesting solar breakthrough, or near to it at least. Plus more on the state of the solar industry.

The release:

Chemists describe solar energy progress and challenges, including the ‘artificial leaf’

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5, 2009 — Scientists are making progress toward development of an “artificial leaf” that mimics a real leaf’s chemical magic with photosynthesis — but instead converts sunlight and water into a liquid fuel such as methanol for cars and trucks. That is among the conclusions in a newly-available report from top authorities on solar energy who met at the 1st Annual Chemical Sciences and Society Symposium. The gathering launched a new effort to initiate international cooperation and innovative thinking on the global energy challenge.

The three-day symposium, which took place in Germany this past summer, included 30 chemists from China, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was organized through a joint effort of the science and technology funding agencies and chemical societies of each country, including the U. S. National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society. The symposium series was initiated though the ACS Committee on International Activities in order to offer a unique forum whereby global challenges could be tackled in an open, discussion-based setting, fostering innovative solutions to some of the world’s most daunting challenges.

A “white paper” entitled “Powering the World with Sunlight,” describes highlights of the symposium and is available along with related materials here.

“The sun provides more energy to the Earth in an hour than the world consumes in a year,” the report states. “Compare that single hour to the one million years required for the Earth to accumulate the same amount of energy in the form of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are not a sustainable resource, and we must break our dependence on them. Solar power is among the most promising alternatives.”

The symposium focused on four main topics:

• Mimicking photosynthesis using synthetic materials such as the “artificial leaf”
• Production and use of biofuels as a form of stored solar energy
• Developing innovative, more efficient solar cells
• Storage and distribution of solar energy

   

The scientists pointed out during the meeting that plants use solar energy when they capture and convert sunlight into chemical fuel through photosynthesis. The process involves the conversion of water and carbon dioxide into sugars as well as oxygen and hydrogen. Scientists have been successful in mimicking this fuel-making process, termed artificial photosynthesis, but now must finds ways of doing so in ways that can be used commercially. Participants described progress toward this goal and the scientific challenges that must be met before solar can be a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Highlights of the symposium include a talk by Kazunari Domen, Ph.D., of the University of Tokyo in Japan. Domen described current research on developing more efficient and affordable catalysts for producing hydrogen using a new water-splitting technology called “photocatalytic overall water splitting.” The technology uses light-activated nanoparticles, each 1/50,000 the width of a human hair, to convert water to hydrogen. This technique is more efficient and less expensive than current technologies, he said.

Domen noted that the ultimate goal of artificial photosynthesis is to produce a liquid fuel, such as methanol, or “wood alcohol.” Achieving this goal would fulfil the vision of creating an “artificial leaf” that not only splits water but uses the reaction products to create a more usable fuel, similar to what leaves do.

Among the “take-home messages” cited in the report:

• There’s no single best solution to the energy problem. Scientists must seek more affordable, sustainable solutions to the global energy challenge by considering all the options.
• Investing in chemistry is investing in the future. Strong basic research is fundamental to realizing the potential of solar energy and making it affordable for large-scale use.
• Society needs a new generation of “energy scientists” to explore new ways to capture, convert, and store solar energy.

   

“The meeting was an experiment worth trying,” said Teruto Ohta, executive director of the Chemical Society of Japan.

Conference organizers expressed hope that the symposium will be the first of several to tackle “the global challenges of the 21st century and the indispensible role that the chemical sciences play in addressing these issues,” said Klaus Mullen, president of the German Chemistry Association.

“Building on the success of this first symposium, we’re now gearing up for the future, convening top chemical scientists to address other, equally pressing global challenges,” said Julie Callahan of the ACS Office of International Activities and principal investigator on the project. “It is an exciting time to be a chemist!”

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The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 154,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Here’s one way to work out health care solutions

Via KurzweilAI.net – I’d say the X Prize has moved private space travel a good ways down the path to commercial viability.

Peter Diamandis: the joy of taking risks

New Scienist Space, Nov. 4, 2009 Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, wants to use our competitive instincts to make the world a better place–his latest: a heath care prize.   Read Original Article>>