Researchers have discovered a tungsten carbide-based catalyst which converts cellulose directly into ethylene glycol, an intermediate product which can be readily converted into different types of fuel. This discovery uses the cellulose from plants directly, not its fruit or vegetables (basically the waste material like stalks, branches and leaves). The process does not rely on sugars being fermented. It is a direct chemical process which takes cellulose and coverts it to alcohols quickly, efficiently and in one step.
The Pontiac Solstice concept car doesn't have any
windshield wipers heck it doesn't even have the windshield, but it
looks great in person. Sporting a ruby red body the SD-290 racing
concept car is a highly modified version of the regular Pontiac
Solstice production model. Basically Pontiac stripped off the top of
the car leaving just a small windscreen to protect the driver-side.
Two University of New Mexico hospital workers
have been fired after they posted patient pictures on MySpace. The
workers used their cell phone cameras to take close-up pictures of
injuries and then posted them to their private MySpace pages for their
friends and coworkers to see. So far no charges have been filed and
the photos have been deleted from MySpace and from the workers’ cell
A research team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has developed a new type of liquid lens that rapidly changes focus through sound wave energy. The lens is extremely light weight, durable and may have future applications in cell phones and other low-power, high speed stationary cameras for security at speeds in excess of 1080p HD captures today.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has introduced a beta program which allows KML files to be downloaded into Google Earth for display. The data files contain a wide range of climate information primarily centered around the north and south poles. Files showing sea ice trends, floating buoy tracks, snow cover, brightness, infrared, wind, temperature, atmospheric pressure, iceberg tracks and more are updated daily.
Students at MIT participating in the annual MADMEC (Making And
Designing Materials Engineering Contest) have devised a zero-input
energy solution which allows solar panel arrays to track the sun's
movement thereby increasing solar panel efficiency by 38% over
stationary panels. The three-person team of Forrest Liau, Vyom Sharma, Geroge Whitfield, all Materials Science graduate students, won top honors and a $10,000 prize for their invention.
CERN reported the second major hiccup in getting its Large Hadron
Collider(LHC) up to speed. A “large” helium leak, likely caused by a
faulty electrical connection between two magnets, was detected on
Friday. The repairs require the LHC to warm up, which means that the
entire system will be offline for at least two months.
Physicist Stephen Hawking helped unveil what may be most scary clock in
the world. The Corpus Clock, located at the University of Cambridge,
visualizes the belief that time will always be against us. A
grasshopper/locust sits atop the dial, eating away every second of our
life, swallowing minutes and hours with pleasure. You could get very
depressed watching this $2 million clock tick away – or you may see
this time-eater as an image to highlight the value of every second that
is given to us.
The lowly and much reviled African locust could prevent needless car crashes. Researchers at
Volvo and the University of Newcastle are studying anti-collision
mechanisms in the locust and hope the information will help build
faster and more efficient braking systems.
Online auction giant eBay is looking to unload
StumbleUpon. According to TechCrunch, an anonymous source says eBay
has recruited Deutsche Bank in the hopes of finding a suitable buyer
for the venerable website that allows people to recommend their
favorite websites. There’s no word on how much eBay wants, but it
spent $75 million last year in purchasing StumbleUpon.
Alternative energy sources used in automobiles today generally come in
two forms. Those which work with or in place of gasoline, like ethanol
E85, and more exotic forms, like compressed hydrogen, that can be
dangerous. A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor is looking to
change that. His proposal converts non-edible "waste plant material"
directly into green gasoline through a simple, yet economical chemical
The new Google Chrome Web browser, which saw a quick spike in browser market share when it was first released before later settling in,
apparently continues to do well at one particular and prominent Web
site in the United Kingdom. This is from WebTrends, an online metrics
Election day isn't until November 4, 2008, and yet already politicians
are using math to determine that McCain is ahead by 28 electoral
votes. One forecast model shows Democrat Senator Barrack Obama
weighing in at 255.2 (47%), while Republican Senator John McCain pulls
in a hefty 282.8 (53%) or about 27 more votes. A recent Gallup poll
shows the popular trend reversed - Obama receiving 48% of the vote with
McCain receiving 44%. If those votes could translate directly into the
electoral college, it would be Obama 210 and McCain 192 (the remaining
votes would go to 3rd party candidates). So, do we believe the model
or the poll?
It was reported yesterday that a 30-ton transformer used to power
cooling stations for portions of the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC)
gigantic superconducting magnets failed last Thursday, just one day
after the LHC went online.
Background – The inner workings of the first and second generation
iPhones are largely based on off-the-shelf parts from third-party
suppliers, but we are feeling the wind of change. Several puzzle pieces
have fallen into place and begin to reveal the bigger picture behind
Apple's $278 million acquisition of P.A. Semi. Apple is believed to be
in a deal with Imagination, ARM and Samsung to enable the design of a
custom chip for future mobile devices. Everything is shaping up to a
scenario in which Apple will design its own system-on-chip (SoC)
devices, based on ARM blueprints and PowerVR SGX graphics cores, while
Samsung will manufacture the chips. The SoC could translate into a more
capable engine driving the handset, shader-based 3D graphics for mobile
games and HD video decoding for improved multimedia capabilities.