I found this great news story about a architect that plans on building several building around the World that will shape shift and
transform the way the buildings look and is also uses green energy like solar and wind energy in order to run the building power. I am just still learning about this first of its kind building but from what I can tell the first one will be built in Dubai. I would love to go see this building in action once it is fully built and functioning because it is really a great idea thanks to my friend
unmanned for pointing out this news story.
Investors and utilities intent on building solar power plants are
increasingly turning to solar thermal power, a comparatively low-tech
alternative to photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight directly into
electricity. This month, in the latest in a string of recent deals,
Spanish solar-plant developer Abengoa Solar
and Phoenix-based utility Arizona Public Service announced a
280-megawatt solar thermal project in Arizona. By contrast, the world's
largest installations of photovoltaics generate only 20 megawatts of
power.
In a solar thermal plant, mirrors concentrate sunlight onto some
type of fluid that is used, in turn, to boil water for a steam turbine.
Over the past year, developers of solar thermal technology such as
Abengoa, Ausra, and Solel Solar Systems have picked up tens of millions
of dollars in financing and power contracts from major utilities such
as Pacific Gas and Electric and Florida Power and Light. By 2013,
projects in development in just the United States and Spain promise to
add just under 6,000 megawatts of solar thermal power generation to the
barely 100 megawatts installed worldwide last year, says Cambridge, MA,
consultancy Emerging Energy Research.
The appeal of solar thermal power is twofold. It is relatively low cost at a large scale: an economic analysis released last month
by Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California's
Energy Institute, notes that solar thermal power will become cost
competitive with other forms of power generation decades before
photovoltaics will, even if greenhouse-gas emissions are not taxed
aggressively.
Solar thermal developers also say that their power is more valuable
than that provided by wind, currently the fastest-growing form of
renewable energy. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, wind
power costs about 8 cents per kilowatt, while solar thermal power costs
13 to 17 cents. But power from wind farms fluctuates with every gust
and lull; solar thermal plants, on the other hand, capture solar energy
as heat, which is much easier to store than electricity. Utilities can
dispatch this stored solar energy when they need it--whether or not the
sun happens to be shining. "That's going to be worth a lot of money,"
says Terry Murphy, president and chief executive officer of Solar Reserve,
a Santa Monica, CA, developer of solar thermal technology. "People are
coming to realize that power shifting and 'dispatchability' are key to
the utility's requirements to try to balance their system."
Lab-on-a-chip devices that manipulate tiny volumes of liquid in microscopic channels promise to speed up drug discovery, medical diagnostics, and genomic analysis. But current lab-on-a-chip devices use bulky external pumps and valves to control the liquids. An innovation by MIT researchers could eliminate the need for external pumps and valves and lead to cheaper, larger-scale systems for sorting through vast numbers of possible chemical combinations.
The researchers have designed complex intersecting channels that direct tiny bubbles to various locations on the microfluidics chip. Several types of intersections act as different types of logic gates, like those on computer chips. "One of the biggest limitations of microfluidics is, you have beautiful little devices with channels and reactions, but there's no room for the control systems required to make them work," says Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, who reported this work with his graduate student Manu Prakash in Science last week. "With our new work, the controls are part of the microfluidic system itself."
This is a smart design for controlling droplets on a chip, says Mathieu Joanicot, who does microfluidics research at chemical company Rhodia's Laboratory of the Future, in Pessac, France. "Because you will no longer need the pumps and valves outside the chip for control, it makes [lab-on-a-chip devices] more robust and compact," he says.
In one type of microfluidic logic gate, two channels approach an intersection, and two exit it, with exit A being slightly wider than exit B. If bubbles approach the intersection one at a time, they always leave through exit A because it offers less resistance. But if two bubbles from opposite channels reach an intersection at the same time, one will take path A and the other will be forced to take exit B.
The researchers have also designed small chambers that temporarily hold bubbles until another bubble arrives, as well as ladder-shaped channels that synchronize the flow of two bubbles so that they can arrive at a logic gate or at a reaction site at the same time. Electronic devices control the frequency with which bubbles enter the microfluidic chip. Read the entire article at Technology Review http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/18174/
Concrete is the most widely used man-made material, and the manufacture of cement--the main ingredient of concrete--accounts for 5 to 10 percent of all anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas involved in global warming. But now, researchers at MIT studying the nanostructure of concrete have made a discovery that could lead to lower carbon-dioxide emissions during cement production.
The researchers found that the building blocks of concrete are particles just a few nanometers in size, and that these nanoparticles are arranged in two distinct manners. They also found that the nanoparticles' packing arrangement drives the properties of concrete, such as strength, stiffness, and durability. "The mineral [that makes the nanoparticle] is not the key to achieving those properties … rather, it's the packing [of the particles]," says Franz-Josef Ulm, a civil- and environmental-engineering professor at MIT who led the work. "So can we not replace the original mineral with something else?" The goal is to formulate a replacement cement that maintains the nanoparticles' packing arrangement but can be manufactured with lower carbon-dioxide emissions.
Cement manufacture gives rise to carbon-dioxide emissions because it involves burning fuel to heat a powdered mixture of limestone and clay at temperatures of 1,500 ºC. When cement is mixed with water, a paste is formed; sand and gravel are added to the paste to make concrete. But scientists do not fully understand the structure of cement, Ulm says.
The biggest mystery is the structure and properties of the elementary building block of the cement-water paste, calcium silicate hydrate, which acts as the glue holding together all the ingredients of concrete. "All of the macroscopic properties of concrete in some way are related to what this phase is like at the nanometer level," says Jeffrey Thomas. Continue reaeding the entire story at Technology Review http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/18153/
Unwanted reflections limit the performance of light-based technologies, such as solar cells, camera lenses, and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). In solar cells, for example, reflections mean less light that can be converted into electricity. Now researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), in Troy, NY, and semiconductor maker Crystal IS, in Green Island, NY, have developed a new type of nanostructured coating that can virtually eliminate reflections, potentially leading to dramatic improvements in optical devices. The work is published in the current issue of Nature Photonics.
The researchers showed that they can prevent almost all reflection of a wide range of wavelengths of light by "growing" nanoscale rods projected at specific angles from a surface. In contrast, conventional antireflective coatings work best only for specific colors, which is why, for example, eyeglasses with such coatings still show faint red or green reflections. Fred Schubert, professor of physics and electrical, computer, and systems engineering at RPI and one of the authors of the study, says that the material stops reflections from nearly all the colors of the visible spectrum, as well as some infrared light, and it also reduces reflections from light coming from more directions than conventional coatings do. As a result, he says, the total reflection is 10 times less than it is with current coatings.
Applied to a solar cell, the new coating would increase the amount of light absorbed by a few percentage points and convert it into electricity, Schubert says. A more remarkable 40 percent improvement could be seen in LEDs, he says, in which a large amount of light generated by a semiconductor is typically trapped inside the device by reflections. The work is part of a growing effort among researchers to alter the properties of materials, such as their optical properties, by controlling nanoscale structures. Read ghe entire article at Technology Review http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/18265/
Most people don't think of the human body as a machine, but Subra Suresh does. A materials scientist at MIT, Suresh measures the minute mechanical forces acting on our cells.
Medical researchers have long known that diseases can cause -- or be caused by -- physical changes in individual cells. For instance, invading parasites can distort or degrade blood cells, and heart failure can occur as muscle cells lose their ability to contract in the wake of a heart attack. Knowing the effect of forces as small as a piconewton -- a trillionth of a newton -- on a cell gives researchers a much finer view of the ways in which diseased cells differ from healthy ones.
[Click here for images of this process.]
Suresh spent much of his career making nanoscale measurements of materials such as the thin films used in microelectronic components. But since 2003, Suresh's laboratory has spent more and more time applying nanomeasurement techniques to living cells. He's now among a pioneering group of materials scientists who work closely with microbiologists and medical researchers to learn more about how our cells react to tiny forces and how their physical form is affected by disease. "We bring to the table expertise in measuring the strength of materials at the smallest of scales," says Suresh.
One of Suresh's recent studies measured mechanical differences between healthy red blood cells and cells infected with malaria parasites. Suresh and his collaborators knew that infected blood cells become more rigid, losing the ability to reduce their width from eight micrometers down to two or three micrometers, which they need to do to slip through capillaries. Rigid cells, on the other hand, can clog capillaries and cause cerebral hemorrhages. Though others had tried to determine exactly how rigid malarial cells become, Suresh's instruments were able to bring greater accuracy to the measurements. Using optical tweezers, which employ intensely focused laser light to exert a tiny force on objects attached to cells, Suresh and his collaborators showed that red blood cells infected with malaria become 10 times stiffer than healthy cells -- three to four times stiffer than was previously estimated.
The rest of the story can be found here http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=emergingtech&id=16475
The treatment begins with an injection of an unremarkable-looking clear fluid. Invisible inside, however, are particles precisely engineered to slip past barriers such as blood vessel walls, latch onto cancer cells, and trick the cells into engulfing them as if they were food. These Trojan particles flag the cells with a fluorescent dye and simultaneously destroy them with a drug.
Developed by University of Michigan physician and researcher James Baker, these multipurpose nanoparticles -- which should be ready for patient trials later this year -- are at the leading edge of a nanotechnology-based medical revolution. Such methodically designed nanoparticles have the potential to transfigure the diagnosis and treatment of not only cancer but virtually any disease. Already, researchers are working on inexpensive tests that could distinguish a case of the sniffles from the early symptoms of a bioterror attack, as well as treatments for disorders ranging from rheumatoid arthritis to cystic fibrosis. The molecular finesse of nanotechnology, Baker says, makes it possible to "find things like tumor cells or inflammatory cells and get into them and change them directly."
Researchers at Stanford University have added one more trick to carbon nanotubes' repertoire of accomplishments: a way to fight the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Chemistry professor Hongjie Dai and his colleagues have used carbon nanotubes to transport RNA into human white blood cells that defend the body from disease, making the cells less susceptible to HIV attack.
The recently discovered technique of RNA interference (RNAi)--using snippets of RNA to shut down disease-causing genes--could be an important weapon against diseases such as cancer and AIDS. (See "Prescription RNA.") Researchers have shown that one way to combat HIV with RNAi is to switch off a gene that controls the expression of receptor proteins on the surface of white blood cells known as T cells; the virus binds to this receptor and then enters and infects the T cells. If interfering RNA could turn off the receptors, the virus would have no point of entry into the cells. However, RNA can't easily cross cell membranes and enter cells on its own, and researchers are trying to find a way to get the RNA into cells more efficiently.
In a paper now online in the journal Angewandte Chemie, Dai and his colleagues at Stanford's Division of Infectious Diseases describe attaching RNA to carbon nanotubes, which enter T cells and deliver the RNA. When the researchers placed T cells in a solution of the carbon nanotube-RNA complex, receptor proteins on the cell surfaces went down by 80 percent. Carbon nanotubes are known to enter many different types of human cells, although researchers don't understand exactly how they do it. Some experts suspect that because of their long, thin shape, nanotubes enter cells much as a needle passes through skin.
Another great way to use this technology I recommend anyone interested in learning more about this great method to check out the link http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/18228/
Researchers at Harvard University have shown that nanowire transistors can be at least four times speedier than conventional silicon devices. The principal researcher, chemistry professor Charles Lieber, says this could lead to inexpensive, high-performance, flexible electronic circuitry for cell phones and displays. It could also save space and further increase speed, he says, by allowing memory, logic, and sensing layers to be assembled on the same chip.
Nanowires have been considered a promising contender for use on future logic chips because of their very small size (about 10 nanometers wide) and because they can be made without complicated lithography, says Peidong Yang, professor of chemistry at University California, Berkeley. Until now, though, the performance of nanowire-based transistors has lagged far behind that of other potential nano devices, such as carbon nanotubes, and even conventional devices. But the new Harvard research suggests that nanowires have surpassed conventional transistors and nearly caught up with nanotubes.
This may give nanowires an edge over carbon nanotubes (see "Carbon Nanotube Computers"). Nanowires are made with regular crystal structures and uniform electronic properties -- a level of predictability essential for manufacturing high-performance electronics. Nanotubes, however, come in batches of different sizes and structures, each of which can perform very differently -- so until a good sorting method can be found, it will be difficult to use nanotubes in high-end processors.
Really neat story youu should read it all by going to this link http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=nanotech&id=17008
Stem cells are a promising therapy for stroke and other brain injuries--they can sprout into healthy neurons and may be able to re-establish brain activity in brain-injured patients. While preliminary animal research shows promise, there's often a common hurdle: adult stem cells have a hard time growing in damaged areas and tend to migrate to healthier regions of the brain.
That makes sense, says Thomas Webster, associate professor of engineering at Brown University, because healthy neurons emit proteins that attract stem cells away from diseased, inactive areas. What's needed is an "anchor" to keep stem cells fixed to the damaged areas, where they can then differentiate into working neurons, he says.
Webster and his collaborators in South Korea found a possible anchor in carbon nanotubes: tiny, highly conductive carbon fibers that not only act as scaffolds, helping stem cells stay rooted to diseased areas, but also seem to play an active role in turning stem cells into neurons.
Just how this works isn't clear, but the researchers say their initial results could someday be engineered into a stem cell delivery device for stroke therapy.
Get teh entire story at Technology Reviews website or by clicking on this link http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=nanotech&id=17525
A team of researchers at MIT and the University of Hong Kong have developed a biodegradable liquid that can quickly stop bleeding.
Composed of peptides, the liquid self-assembles into a protective nanofiber gel when applied to a wound. Rutledge Ellis-Behnke, research scientist in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and Kwok-Fai So, chair of the department of anatomy at the University of Hong Kong, discovered the liquid's ability to stop bleeding while experimenting with it as a matrix for regrowing brain cells in hamsters.
The researchers then conducted a series of experiments on various mammals, including rodents and pigs, applying the clear liquid agent to the brain, skin, liver, spinal cord, and femoral artery to test its ability to halt bleeding and seal wounds.
"It worked every single time," said Ellis-Behnke. They found that it stopped the bleeding in less than 15 seconds, and even worked on animals given blood-thinning medications.
The wound must still be stitched up after the procedure; but unlike other agents designed to stop bleeding, it does not have to be removed from the wound site.
The liquid's only byproduct is amino acids: tissue building blocks that can be used to actually repair the site of the injury, according to the researchers. It is also nontoxic, causes no immune response in the patient, and can be used in a wet environment, according to Ellis-Behnke. A paper outlining the findings is available online and will be published in the December issue of Nanomedicine.
Ellis-Behnke believes that first responders, say, on a battlefield or at a traffic accident, will save more lives with the nanosolution. Yet the most significant application may be in surgery, he says, especially on the liver and brain.
In fact, as much as half of the time during any operation is spent "doing some sort of bleeding control," says Ellis-Behnke. Consequently, such a liquid could "fundamentally change the pace of the operation."
Check out the entire story by clicking on this link or pasting it into your browsers window http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=nanotech&id=17597
Researchers have helped to smooth the way for memory chips that are 10 to 100 times denser than today's devices, by developing a way to cut down on friction at the nanoscale. The method could have far-reaching implications for both micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS), which are used for storage and other applications in communications and computing.
Liquid lubricants do not work at the nano scale; as a result, tiny mechanical devices can wear out too fast to be practical. Now physicists at the University of Basel in Switzerland have developed a dry "lubrication" method that uses tiny vibrations to keep parts from wearing out.
The method, described in the current issue of Science, could be particularly useful for a new class of memory devices, pioneered by IBM with its Millipede technology, which uses thousands of atomic force microscope tips to physically "write" bits to a surface by making divots in a polymer substrate and later reading them. The "nano lube" could also find uses with tiny rotating mirrors that might serve as optical routers in communications and mechanical switches, replacing transistors in computer processors, so cutting power consumption.
Devices based on NEMS and MEMS are some of the most promising new nanotechnologies. Yet the commercialization of applications such as Millipede -- which could store well over 25 DVDs in an area the size of a postage stamp -- has been held up in part by wear caused by friction. Indeed, friction is a particular problem in micro- or nanodevices, where contacts between surfaces are tiny points that can do a lot of damage.
Read the entire article at Technology Reviews website http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=nanotech&id=17179
Despite all their useful electronic properties, as well as their flexibility and strength, carbon nanotubes have proven very difficult to manipulate and arrange into patterns. Scientists have tried everything from growing them on wafers to depositing them on a substrate from a chemical solution. But all these methods are complicated and time consuming.
Now researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY and the University of Oulu in Oulu, Finland, have come up with a simple way to make carbon nanotube patterns on a flexible substrate: they disperse multi-walled carbon nanotubes in water and use a commercial desktop inkjet printer to lay down a design on paper and plastic surfaces.
The method, say the researchers, could be used to mass-produce flexible conductive circuits, and one day lead to low-cost, roll-up displays, radio-frequency identification tags for tracking goods, and gas sensors.
"You can design patterns on the computer and if you want to change the pattern, just print out a new circuit," says Robert Vajtai, a researcher at the Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center. The ink preparation was the trickiest part, he says. Carbon nanotubes are normally hydrophobic, which means they repel water, making them hard to disperse evenly in an aqueous solution. The researchers added carboxyl groups, which are attracted to water, to the multi-walled carbon nanotubes. The resulting carbon nanotube-water dispersion can be used as printer ink; the researchers used it to print designs with lines as narrow as 70 micrometers. The nanotube patterns conduct electricity after multiple runs of the paper or plastic sheet through the printer.
Read the entire article at technology review
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=nanotech&id=17460
One of the leading candidates for a technology that could make computers smaller and more powerful is based on transistors made from semiconducting nanowires. But until now, circuits made with such transistors have been impractical, because they were too power hungry and too difficult to manufacture. Now researchers at Caltech have built efficient nanowire-based circuits using a process they believe could be reliable enough for mass production.
The first applications, which could be available commercially in five years, will probably be in ultrasensitive, inexpensive sensors that could detect and measure hundreds of different cancer markers or pathogens in a small sample, such as a single drop of blood. Eventually, the nanowire-based electronics could be used in processors for computing.
Nanowire logic is part of a growing effort to find new ways to produce computer chips after conventional methods run into physical limits. Other possibilities include carbon-nanotube transistors and molecular electronics, which would use organic molecules as transistors; but while those technologies have their own advantages, nanowires can be made of silicon, the material chip makers are used to working with. And they can more easily be made into arrays with consistent electronic properties.
Read more at http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=nanotech&id=17534
Nano World: Advanced circuits
CHARLES Q. CHOI
An international team of university and industry scientists has discovered a way to improve nanoparticles used to make advanced circuits. These findings could help improve the reliable large-scale manufacture of high quality chips, experts told UPI's Nano World.
When it comes to making advanced circuitry, the silicon wafers they are based on must be as free of defects and flat as possible. Nanoparticles made of ceria, or cerium dioxide, are some of the abrasives used to smoothen out these wafers.
As the size of the circuitry features shrink to pack more computing power into microchips, the industry has to defects down to ensure mass manufacture of chips remains viable. This remains especially true as inventors develop electronic structures only nanometers or billionths of a meter in size, the scale of molecules. The problem is that ceria nanoparticles synthesized by existing techniques are irregularly faceted crystals, the sharp edges of which are prone to scratching the silicon wafers, explained researcher Zhong Lin Wang, a materials scientist in nanotechnology at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
For superior performance, nanoparticles that are perfect spheres are ideal because they would act like ball bearings, polishing the silicon surface without scratching it. After three years of research, Wang and his colleagues in the United States, Britain and China have now developed a way of creating spherical ceria nanoparticles at large scales.
In tests of their spherical nanoparticles on silicon wafers, the researchers said they could reduce polishing defects by 80 percent. These nanoparticles are currently under evaluation for use in the processing of next-generation chips, Wang said. He and his colleagues describe their findings in the June 9 issue of the journal Science.
Creating spherical nanoparticles is a challenge because it takes more energy for the crystals to assume a stable, round shape than faceted ones. To overcome this challenge, the researchers incorporated titania, or titanium dioxide, into the mix. They dissolved cerium and titanium precursors in an alcohol solvent and sprayed the solution in a fine mist into a combustion chamber, where it was lit on fire and instantaneously combusted to form a nanoparticle smoke.
By keeping titanium concentrations relatively high and maintaining the flame temperature at roughly 2500 degrees C, the investigators were able to enable the crystallization of a ceria core while keeping the titania shell that developed in a molten state. This molten shell helps stabilize the surface of the crystal as it grows, helping it to reach a round shape.
More here http://www.reed-electronics.com/semiconductor/articleXml/LN394699991.html