According to a new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the consumption of energy from renewable sources recently topped both the current and the historical consumption levels for nuclear energy. The shift was immediately caused by nuclear outages that coincided with the high-water season for hydropower generation.
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Duke engineers have already shown that they can "cloak" light and sound, making objects invisible. Now, they have demonstrated the theoretical ability to significantly increase the efficiency of ships by tricking the surrounding water into staying still.
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Looking to nature for their muse, researchers have used a common protein to guide the design of a material that can make energy-storing hydrogen gas. The synthetic material works 10 times faster than the original protein found in water-dwelling microbes, the researchers report in the August 12 issue of the journal Science, clocking in at 100,000 molecules of hydrogen gas every second.
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In what it calls a “fundamental breakthrough in heat transfer technology for microelectronics,” the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories has developed the “Sandia Cooler” – aka, the Air Bearing Heat Exchanger – a device that uses significantly less energy to cool computing equipment than previous devices.
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Microsoft has published a research paper that proposes installing servers used for cloud computing into homes and businesses, instead of in vast data centers. The idea being, that because such servers generate so much heat, why not use them to heat homes, instead of wasting even more energy by cooling the air in centralized locations.
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A designer metamaterial has shown it can engineer emitted "blackbody" radiation with an efficiency beyond the natural limits imposed by the material's temperature, a team of researchers led by Boston College physicist Willie Padilla report in the current edition of Physical Review Letters.
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A novel application of carbon nanotubes, developed by MIT researchers, shows promise as an innovative approach to storing solar energy for use whenever it's needed.
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A novel application of carbon nanotubes, developed by MIT researchers, shows promise as an innovative approach to storing solar energy for use whenever it’s needed.
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Last week, the Gemasolar power plant near Seville, Spain, became the first commercial solar thermal power plant to supply uninterrupted power for a full 24 hours, according to builders Torresol Energy. In contrast to photovoltaic solar cells, which use the sun’s light to generate electricity, solar thermal plants use the sun’s heat to run steam turbines and generate electricity.
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Debate about America’s energy supply is heating up: gas prices are rising, ethanol is under attack and nuclear power continues to struggle in the shadow of the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
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