A new nanotech catalyst

developed by McGill University Chemists Chao-Jun Li, Audrey Moores and their colleagues offers industry an opportunity to reduce the use of expensive and toxic heavy metals.

Catalysts are substances used to facilitate and drive chemical reactions. Although chemists have long been aware of the ecological and economic impact of traditional chemical catalysts and do attempt to reuse their materials, it is generally difficult to separate the catalyzing chemicals from the finished product. The team’s discovery does away with this chemical process altogether.

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What if it were possible to go to the store and buy a kit to quickly and accurately diagnose cancer, similar to a pregnancy test?

A University of Missouri researcher is developing a tiny sensor, known as an acoustic resonant sensor, that is smaller than a human hair and could test bodily fluids for a variety of diseases, including breast and prostate cancers.

“Many disease-related substances in liquids are not easily tracked,” said Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MU. “In a liquid environment, most sensors experience a significant loss of signal quality, but by using highly sensitive, low-signal-loss acoustic resonant sensors in a liquid, these substances can be effectively and quickly detected — a brand-new concept that will result in a noninvasive approach for breast cancer detection.”

Kwon’s real-time, special acoustic resonant sensor uses micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS), which are tiny devices smaller than the diameter of a human hair, to directly detect diseases in body fluids. The sensor doesn’t require bulky data reading or analyzing equipment and can be integrated with equally small circuits, creating the potential for small stand-alone disease-screening systems. Kwon’s sensor also produces rapid, almost immediate results that could reduce patient anxiety often felt after waiting for other detection methods, such as biopsies, which can take several days or weeks before results are known.

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Biogas from refuse produces 95 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline,

according to a new research report. With a few simple improvements to the biogas plants, the figure can rise to 120 per cent — i.e. biogas becomes more than climate neutral. This can be compared with the standard figures used today, which indicate that biogas produces 80 per cent lower emissions than gasoline.

A research group at the Lund University has calculated the figures on behalf of the Swedish Energy Agency after having analysed a biogas plant in Skåne. The case study will make it easier to study and optimise other biogas facilities. In Sweden there are some 20 similar plants, producing biogas for use in cars and other vehicles. As much vehicle gas is produced by sewage treatment works that produce biogas from sewage sludge.

“The plant we have studied is fairly representative of an average biogas plant that processes waste and manure. In our study we have calculated emissions for the entire production chain and included both direct and indirect emissions. What is particular to our study is that we have included indirect factors that have not previously been taken into account, for example how the ground is affected when mineral fertiliser is replaced with bio-fertiliser. In addition, methane leaching from the plant is measured and not based on standard data that is often otherwise used in this kind of analysis,” points out Mikael Lantz, doctoral student in Environmental and Energy Systems Studies at Lund University.

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European researchers are creating technology that will treat neighbourhoods like a miniature power grid,

sharing energy generated at each house according to need. Allied to a host of other developments, the concept promises huge energy savings.

European researchers at the Beywatch project will create ’smart’ homes that balance energy needs within the neighbourhood and even generate electricity and hot water at each household.

Beywatch — which stands for Building Energy Watcher — will achieve this through a comprehensive, integrated chain of technologies and innovations that work at every level of the grid, from light switchs to power stations.

It is developing ultra-high efficiency home appliances and smart home and neighbourhood information networks for monitoring and control, and real-time links with the energy provider.

It includes in-home power and hot water generation using combined photovoltaic and thermal solar panels, neighbourhood level load-balancing for the grid, and it will even develop innovative exploitation plans to identify feasible business models that will make the system’s commercialisation possible.

Combined, Beywatch’s efforts will provide a best-of-breed smart energy network, reduce energy demand, maximise resource efficiency and minimise costs.

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Posh cars already learn how you like your seat and steering wheel adjusted.

The next generation of cars may be smart enough to learn how you drive and warn you when you’re not driving safely.

Drivers go to school to learn to anticipate emerging situations and respond appropriately. Why shouldn’t cars do the same? That’s the question Florentin Wörgötter and his colleagues at the EU-fundedresearch programme DRIVSCO asked themselves three years ago.

Their answer was that, with state-of-the-art sensors, image processors, and learning algorithms, a car that smart could be built.

The result, now tested in a prototype vehicle, is a system that tracks a driver’s every move, matches those actions with what it “sees” down the road, and learns how that driver normally handles situations such as upcoming curves or other vehicles ahead.

With its infrared headlights, stereo cameras, and advanced visual processing the system can actually see better at night than a human driver. It has proved its worth by providing early warnings of hazards a human driver had not yet seen or reacted to.

“What we wanted was a system that learns to drive during the day by correlating what it sees with the actions a driver takes,” says Wörgötter. “Then at night the system could say, ‘Slow down, a curve is coming up!’ — a curve the human didn’t see. Now we have a prototype that does this.”

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Environmental Engineers Use Algae To Capture Carbon Dioxide

Engineers have designed a simple, sustainable and natural carbon sequestration solution using algae. A team at Ohio University created a photo bioreactor that uses photosynthesis to grow algae, passing carbon dioxide over large membranes, placed vertically to save space. The carbon dioxide produced by the algae is harvested by dissolving into the surrounding water. The algae can be harvested and made into biodiesel fuel and feed for animals. A reactor with 1.25 million square meters of algae screens could be up and running by 2010.

Global warming’s effects can be seen worldwide, and many experts believe it’s only going to get worse. In fact, America is by far the largest contributor to global warming than any other country — releasing a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide — the primary cause of global warming. But now engineers have found a natural way to eliminate one of the worst contributors to our environment’s decay.

What’s coming from power plants, traffic jams and industrial smog is causing our ozone to disappear, ice caps to melt, and temperatures to rise. The latest international report says carbon dioxide responsible for 60 percent of the greenhouse gases.

Now engineers say a simple, sustainable and natural solution may come from algae. “If this sort of technology can be developed, it can be deployed anywhere there’s sunlight,” David Bayless, a professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio University in Athens, tells DBIS.

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In research that gives literal meaning to the term “power suit,”

University of California, Berkeley, engineers have created energy-scavenging nanofibers that could one day be woven into clothing and textiles.

These nano-sized generators have “piezoelectric” properties that allow them to convert into electricity the energy created through mechanical stress, stretches and twists.

“This technology could eventually lead to wearable ’smart clothes’ that can power hand-held electronics through ordinary body movements,” said Liwei Lin, UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering and head of the international research team that developed the fiber nanogenerators.

Because the nanofibers are made from organic polyvinylidene fluoride, or PVDF, they are flexible and relatively easy and cheap to manufacture.

Although they are still working out the exact calculations, the researchers noted that more vigorous movements, such as the kind one would create while dancing the electric boogaloo, should theoretically generate more power. “And because the nanofibers are so small, we could weave them right into clothes with no perceptible change in comfort for the user,” said Lin, who is also co-director of the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center at UC Berkeley.

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Long Term Evolution, a new mobile telecommunications standard, is poised to revolutionize mobile Internet.

High transmission rates will soon be possible on mobile devices. For this purpose Fraunhofer researchers at HHI Berlin developed the cross-layer design SVC over LTE — a coding method that offers HD films in real-time in the appropriate format for cell phones or netbooks.

The experts are presenting their solution in a live demonstration at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Clumsy page layouts, slow page load times of podcasts and videos: Today’s mobile surfing on the Internet can be really a hassle. The available bandwidths on mobile phone networks vary widely, due to the number and mobility of the users, the location within the mobile network cell, or the capacity of the terminal. Particularly in bandwidth-intensive services, like video streaming, transmissions are frequently subject to disconnections, gaps or interruptions.

The mobile telecommunications standard of tomorrow — Long Term Evolution, or LTE for short — will change everything. It has a higher performance capacity than UMTS, and reaches download speeds being comparable to landline-based DSL broadband network. Not only e-mails and Internet traffic, particularly videos and mobile television benefit from LTE as the breakthrough for mobile Internet technology.

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Online social networking sites could solve many problems plaguing information dissemination and communications when disaster strikes

according to a report from US researchers in a recent issue of the International Journal of Emergency Management.

In the wake of natural, disasters such as the Haiti earthquake, major events, such as the Hudson plane crash, and terrorist activity, online services, have become increasingly prominent as useful tools to get the news out faster than traditional media, to provide timely information sources, and even to re-connect people affected directly or indirectly as events unfold.

But, are social networking tools, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and ad hoc sites set up in the wake of a major event really useful tools or are they simply riding a publicity wave?

According to Connie White, of the Institute for Emergency Preparedness at Jacksonville State University in Alabama and colleagues there and at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, online social networks permit the establishment of global relationships that are domain related or can be based on some need shared by the participants. They have investigated whether or not the social network paradigm can be used to enable individuals and organizations to collaborate in mutually beneficial ways, in all stages of emergency management: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.

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A new University of California, Davis, study by a top ecological forecaster says it is harder than experts thought to predict when sudden shifts in Earth’s natural systems will occur — a worrisome finding for scientists trying to identify the tipping points that could push climate change into an irreparable global disaster.

“Many scientists are looking for the warning signs that herald sudden changes in natural systems, in hopes of forestalling those changes, or improving our preparations for them,” said UC Davis theoretical ecologist Alan Hastings. “Our new study found, unfortunately, that regime shifts with potentially large consequences can happen without warning — systems can ‘tip’ precipitously.

“This means that some effects of global climate change on ecosystems can be seen only once the effects are dramatic. By that point returning the system to a desirable state will be difficult, if not impossible.”

The current study focuses on models from ecology, but its findings may be applicable to other complex systems, especially ones involving human dynamics such as harvesting of fish stocks or financial markets.

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