Sunday 27 July 2014

Improving the cost and efficiency of renewable energy storage

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A major challenge in renewable energy is storage. A common approach is a reaction that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen, and uses the hydrogen as a fuel to store energy. The efficiency of ‘water splitting’ depends heavily on a solid substance called a catalyst. However, only the surface of the catalyst acts on the reaction, while its bulk is inactive. This restricts how much catalyst can be used, and limits the efficiency of water splitting in energy systems. Publishing in Nature Communications, EPFL scientists have developed a new method for maximizing the catalyst’s contribution by chemically ‘peeling off’ only its active surface and excluding its bulk from the reaction. Their data, which show 2.6- to 4.5-fold increase in water-splitting efficiency, pave the way for cheaper and more efficient renewable energy storage. Because of the natural inconsistency of sunlight and wind, using them for energy purposes requires devices that can store that energy in the form of hydrogen for later use. These devices are based on a reaction called ‘photoelectrochemical water-splitting’, because it uses solar or wind energy to break water into molecular oxygen (O2) and hydrogen (Η2), the latter of which can be stored away as fuel for later use.

The post Improving the cost and efficiency of renewable energy storage has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Pale Blue Dot Print

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: pale blue dot, carl sagan, earth, astronomy, cosmology, voyager 1

The world famous photograph of earth taken 3.7 billion miles away from home as Voyager 1 exited the solar system with Carl Sagan's beautiful words overlaid beneath it.

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AUDIO: How to count butterflies for science

Science Focus

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Sir David Attenborough has urged the public to look for butterflies as part of the Big Butterfly Count 
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 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28365329#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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The battle for hearts and minds on climate change will be fought across generations

Science Focus

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The Conversation

Last week there was a bit of a hullabaloo when it was discovered that the international program director for Greenpeace, Pascal Husting, was flying to work from Luxembourg to Amsterdam a few times a month. Sensible arguments could be made for this arrangement and in the bigger picture this cannot be considered an important issue. And on some level, it just didn't seem fair to single out Husting in this way.

It wasn't fair. But politics and campaigning aren't fair.

You cannot have a senior member of an organization taking regular short haul flights for a group that has in the past asked its...

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/264365/the-battle-for-hearts-and-minds-on-climate-change-will-be-fought-across-generations
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What’s behind your blood type?

Science Focus

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When my parents informed me that my blood type was A+, I felt a strange sense of pride. If A+ was a top grade in school, then surely A+ must also be the most excellent of blood types—a biological mark of distinction.

It didn’t take long for me recognize just how silly that feeling was, but I didn’t learn much more about what it really meant to have A+. By the time I was an adult, all I really knew was that if I should end up in a hospital in need of blood, the doctors there would need to make sure they transfused me with a suitable type.

And yet there remained some nagging questions. Why do 40 percent of Caucasians have Type A, while only 27 percent of Asians do? Where do different blood types come from, and what do they do?

Read 59 remaining paragraphs | Comments

 
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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/pJtjPPZebM8/
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Eagle Nebula, Pillars of Creation Oval Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: breathtaking astronomy images, eglneb, young stars clusters, star forming nebulae, messier 16 ngc 6611, pillars of creation, inspirational, eagle nebula, heavens, stars, eso, european southern observatory, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A breathtaking outer space picture showing a spectacular three-colour composite mosaic image of the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16, or NGC 6611). It's based on images obtained with the Wide-Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory.

At the centre, the so-called “Pillars of Creation” can be seen and this wide-field image shows not only the central pillars, but also several others in the same star-forming region, as well as a huge number of stars in front of, in, or behind the Eagle Nebula.

The cluster of bright stars to the upper right is NGC 6611, home to the massive and hot stars that illuminate the pillars. The “Spire” - another large pillar - is in the middle left of the image.

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image code: eglneb

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Rho Ophiuchi Wide Field

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Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Trifid Nebula, Messier 16 Room Graphic

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: breathtaking astronomy images, star forming nebulae, trfdnbl, nebulae, star factory, trifid nebula, clusters of stars, factories for stars, star nurseries, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic picture from our universe featuring the massive star factory known as the Trifid Nebula.

It was captured in all its glory with the Wide-Field Imager camera attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
So named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, the Trifid Nebula is a rare combination of three nebulae types that reveal the fury of freshly formed stars and point to more star birth in the future. The field of view of the image is approximately 13 x 17 arcminutes.
It's an awe-inspiring, breathtaking image that reveals some of the wonder that is our universe.

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image code: trfdnbl

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
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New tool, savings for manufacturing hard materials

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“Machining,” in particular the process of cutting hard, brittle materials during manufacturing, can be difficult, often because the cutting tool, typically made of single crystal diamond, the hardest material known, can wear out. Also, machining can take a long time. Scientists at Western Michigan University thought they could improve upon it by designing new technology that could speed up the system and make the cutting tool last longer. The idea not only was to create a superior end product, but also to save time and money doing so. “The biggest issue with diamond cutting is that diamonds are expensive,” says John Patten, chair of the manufacturing engineering department at the university and director of its Manufacturing Research Center. “If you can find a way to soften the material it is cutting, that is, expose the diamond to a softer material, it doesn’t wear as much, so you don’t have to replace it as often, having to shut down the machine when you do.” Patten and his research colleague, Deepak Ravindra, with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), developed the new Micro-LAM (Laser Assisted Machining) process, which adds a focused laser to the high pressure diamond cutter. Heat from the

The post New tool, savings for manufacturing hard materials has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Dumbbell Nebula in Taurus Oval Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: awesome astronomy images, inspirational, dmbblneb, vulpecula constellation, intense ultraviolet radiation, messier 27 ngc 6853, heavens, stars, dumbbell nebula, the fox constellation, european southern observatory, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A great photo from deep space featuring the Dumbbell Nebula - also known as Messier 27 or NGC 6853. It's a typical planetary nebula and is located in the constellation Vulpecula (The Fox).

The distance is rather uncertain, but is believed to be around 1,200 light-years. It was first described by the French astronomer and comet hunter Charles Messier who found it in 1764 and included it as no. 27 in his famous list of extended sky objects.

Despite its class, the Dumbbell Nebula has nothing to do with planets. It consists of very rarefied gas that has been ejected from the hot central star (well visible on this photo), now in one of the last evolutionary stages. The gas atoms in the nebula are excited (heated) by the intense ultraviolet radiation from this star and emit strongly at specific wavelengths.

This image is the beautiful by-product of a technical test of some FORS1 narrow-band optical interference filters. They only allow light in a small wavelength range to pass and are used to isolate emissions from particular atoms and ions.

In this three-colour composite, a short exposure was first made through a wide-band filter registering blue light from the nebula. It was then combined with exposures through two interference filters in the light of double-ionized oxygen atoms and atomic hydrogen. They were colour-coded as “blue”, “green” and “red”, respectively, and then combined to produce this picture that shows the structure of the nebula in “approximately true” colours.



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Image code: dmbblneb

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
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Glowing Stellar Nurseries RCW120 Room Stickers

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: nebulae, gstlnrsr, breathtaking astronomy images, star nurseries, star clusters, ionised gas clouds, galaxies and stars, starfield rcw120, european southern observatory, star forming regions, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic astronomy picture featuring a colour composite image of RCW120.

It reveals how an expanding bubble of ionised gas about ten light-years across is causing the surrounding material to collapse into dense clumps where new stars are then formed.

The 870-micron submillimetre-wavelength data were taken with the LABOCA camera on the 12-m Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope. Here, the submillimetre emission is shown as the blue clouds surrounding the reddish glow of the ionised gas (shown with data from the SuperCosmos H-alpha survey). The image also contains data from the Second Generation Digitized Sky Survey (I-band shown in blue, R-band shown in red).

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image code: gstlnrsr

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
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Turbulent Star-Birth Region Selection Case For The iPad Mini

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


tagged with: hubble, nasa, stars, star, galaxy, galaxies, space, astronomy, telescope, beautiful, photos, nebula, nature, landscapes

In commemoration of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies. The three-dimensional-looking image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head "pillars of creation," and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars. The high-energy radiation blazing out from clusters of hot young stars already born in NGC 2074 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away. Another young cluster may be hidden beneath a circle of brilliant blue gas at center, bottom. In this approximately 100-light-year-wide fantasy-like landscape, dark towers of dust rise above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of the molecular cloud. The seahorse-shaped pillar at lower, right is approximately 20 light-years long, roughly four times the distance between our Sun and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy. It is a fascinating laboratory for observing star-formation regions and their evolution. Dwarf galaxies like the LMC are considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies. This representative color image was taken on August 10, 2008, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulfur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen. Source: NASA.

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