416
Gravitational waves, Einstein, & Nobel Prizes.
514
Sometimes scientific and engineering discoveries can seem more like magic than the products of disciplined investigations.
Nothing could be closer to this than the results announced by materials researchers at MIT. They have just produced photovoltaic (PV) cells printed directly onto special copy paper like you would find in any office printer. The result produced is Paper power, you might say.
[caption id="attachment_5620" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Solar PV paper ...
420
MIT study says: One degree hotter, one percent poorer
By Reilly Capps
(I'm a little busy just now sleeping on couches. This was originally posted in August 2009)
Wanna visit a nice, well-off country this summer? The kind with indoor plumbing and a high tourist survival rate?
Better bring a sweater.
Of the 20 richest countries per capita, you can ski in at least 14. These are places like Sweden, Canada, and Australia. Only one really hot country, oil-slathered Qatar, slithers ...
475
Biodiesel is probably the most immediately available alternative energy resource besides applying efficiency to electric power usage. From home-grown production of biodiesel using waste cooking oils to advanced production of algae based lipids that can be converted into diesel in a chemical plant, there is a biodiesel product for everyone. The country singer, Willie Nelson, has been a huge fan of its use and helped develop a truck stop, BioWillie for truckers.
Engineers at MIT-- in ...
498
Biology, mathematics, and chemistry, were like playing for me-- physics, however, was a big stretch. I barely passed exams on vectors, forces, and electric currents in my college physics class. Years later, I toured a physics research lab in Colorado where they were trying to create artificial photosynthesis using a solid gold aspen leaf attached to a couple of wires. I thought the physics guys were crazy attempting to duplicate the process that powers life on Earth when green plants do it ...
539
On Abbey Road The Beatles sang:
Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the Sun, here comes the Sun
and I say it's all right
We should all be singing "it's all right" after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced the creation of transparent solar cells. If this new MIT technology proves amenable to industrial scale, we could see the entire surface area of a building's windows turn into ...