Xian Jiaotong University

The team’s experiments showed that the efficiency of heat transfer using these treated surfaces could be increased by 30 percent Scalable nanopatterned surfaces designed by MIT researchers could make for more efficient power generation and desalination. Many industrial plants depend on water vapor condensing on metal plates: In power plants, the resulting water is then

YOU don’t have to be a climate scientist these days to know that the climate has problems. You just have to step outside. The United States is now enduring its warmest year on record, and the 13 warmest years for the entire planet have all occurred since 1998, according to data that stretches back to

Should everyone get a minimum inheritance at birth? How about a government-guaranteed income or job? In the face of a growing income gap, we may need to get revolutionary. If you’re going to talk about solutions to inequality in America and globally and don’t want to piss anyone off, one of the best things to

Researchers discover long sought after mechanism in human cells that could help treat diseases caused by viruses, including influenza and Ebola A team of researchers, co-led by a University of California, Riverside professor, has found a long-sought-after mechanism in human cells that creates immunity to influenza A virus, which causes annual seasonal epidemics and occasional

For the past ten years, Hamburg-based SkySails has been engineering and producing what are essentially giant kites, designed to help ships reduce their fuel use by catching the wind and pulling them across the surface of the ocean. The system was put into regular shipping use for the first time in 2008, when one of the

There may be a lot more vulnerability in the population to a new swine influenza virus than was first thought There may be a lot more vulnerability in the population to a new swine influenza virus than was first thought, new Canadian research suggests. It has been believed that while children and teens are probably

A two-stage power management and storage system could dramatically improve the efficiency of triboelectric generators that harvest energy from irregular human motion such as walking, running or finger tapping. The system uses a small capacitor to capture alternating current generated by the biomechanical activity. When the first capacitor fills, a power management circuit then feeds

Image via CrunchBase M.I.T. chemist Dan Nocera hopes to launch a distributed energy revolution via sunlight, water and a cheap catalyst Dan Nocera is a salesman who doesn’t need the sale. For his entire career, he’s pursued a simple question: Just how do plants take sunlight, combine it with water and get energy out of