Nanotubes May Reach A Meter Long With New Technique

An odako grown at Rice University shows single-walled nanotubes lifting an iron and aluminum oxide “kite” as they grow while remaining firmly rooted in a carbon base. (Credit: Image courtesy of Rice University)

With products that range from carpets to kites, you’d think Rice University chemist Bob Hauge was running a department store.

What he’s really running is a revolution in the world of carbon nanotechnology.

In a paper published this month in Nano Research, Hauge’s Rice University team describes a method for making “odako,” bundles of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) named for the traditional Japanese kites they resemble. It may lead to a way to produce meter-long strands of nanotubes, which by themselves are no wider than a piece of DNA.

Hauge, a distinguished faculty fellow in chemistry at Rice’s Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and his co-authors, graduate students Cary Pint and Noe Alvarez, explained the odako after which the bundles are named are gigantic kites that take many hands to fly, hence the many lines that trail from them.

In this case, the lines are nanotubes, hollow cylinders of pure carbon. Individually, they’re thousands of times smaller than a living cell, but Hauge’s new method creates bundles of SWNTs that are sometimes measured in centimeters, and he said the process could eventually yield tubes of unlimited length.

Large-scale production of nanotube threads and cables would be a godsend for engineers in almost every field. They could be used in lightweight, superefficient power-transmission lines for next-generation electrical grids, for example, and in ultra-strong and lightning-resistant versions of carbon-fiber materials found in airplanes. Hauge said the SWNT bundles may also prove useful in batteries, fuel cells and microelectronics.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090729144030.htm

Evidence Of Liquid Water In Comets Reveals Possible Origin Of Life

Comet Hale-Bopp. The watery environment of early comets, together with the vast quantity of organics already discovered in comets, would have provided ideal conditions for primitive bacteria to grow and multiply, experts argue. (Credit: iStockphoto/Kenneth C. Zirkel)

Comets have contained vast amounts of liquid water in their interiors during the first million years of their formation, a new study claims.

The watery environment of early comets, together with the vast quantity of organics already discovered in comets, would have provided ideal conditions for primitive bacteria to grow and multiply. So argue Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleagues at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology in a paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

The Cardiff team has calculated the thermal history of comets after they formed from interstellar and interplanetary dust approximately 4.5 billion years ago. The formation of the solar system itself is thought to have been triggered by shock waves that emanated from the explosion of a nearby supernova. The supernova injected radioactive material such as Aluminium-26 into the primordial solar system and some became incorporated in the comets. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe together with Drs Janaki Wickramasinghe and Max Wallis claim that the heat emitted from radioactivity warms initially frozen material of comets to produce subsurface oceans that persist in a liquid condition for a million years.

Professor Wickramasinghe said: “These calculations, which are more exhaustive than any done before, leaves little doubt that a large fraction of the 100 billion comets in our solar system did indeed have liquid interiors in the past.

Comets in recent times could also liquefy just below their surfaces as they approach the inner solar system in their orbits. Evidence of recent melting has been discovered in recent pictures of comet Tempel 1 taken by the “Deep Impact” probe in 2005.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090730141658.htm

Human Aging: Is It an Accident of Evolution?

“Everyone has assumed we age by rust. But how do you explain animals that don’t age? Some tortoises lay eggs at the age of 100, there are whales that live to be 200 and clams that make it past 400 years.”

Stuart Kim, PhD, Stanford University professor of developmental biology and genetics

Prevailing theory of aging challenged by Stanford University Medical School researchers. Their discovery contradicts the prevailing theory that aging is a buildup of tissue damage similar to rust. The Stanford findings suggest specific genetic instructions drive the process. If they are right, science might one day find ways of switching the signals off and halting or even reversing aging.

 

“We were really surprised,” said Stuart Kim, who is the senior author of the research.

Kim’s lab examined the regulation of aging in C. elegans, a millimeter-long nematode worm whose simple body and small number of genes make it a useful tool for biologists. The worms age rapidly: their maximum life span is about two weeks.

Comparing young worms to old worms, Kim’s team discovered age-related shifts in levels of three transcription factors, the molecular switches that turn genes on and off. These shifts trigger genetic pathways that transform young worms into social security candidates.

The question of what causes aging has spawned competing schools, with one side claiming that inborn genetic programs make organisms grow old. This theory has had trouble gaining traction because it implies that aging evolved, that natural selection pushed older organisms down a path of deterioration. However, natural selection works by favoring genes that help organisms produce lots of offspring. After reproduction ends, genes are beyond natural selection’s reach, so scientists argued that aging couldn’t be genetically programmed.

The alternate, competing theory holds that aging is an inevitable consequence of accumulated wear and tear: toxins, free-radical molecules, DNA-damaging radiation, disease and stress ravage the body to the point it can’t rebound. So far, this theory has dominated aging research.

But the Stanford team’s findings told a different story. “Our data just didn’t fit the current model of damage accumulation, and so we had to consider the alternative model of developmental drift,” Kim said.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/human-aging-is-it-an-accident-of-evolution-a-galaxy-insight.html

A New Approach to Fusion

Power pistons: General Fusion’s reactor is a metal sphere with 220 pneumatic pistons designed to ram its surface simultaneously. The ramming creates an acoustic wave that travels through a lead-lithium liquid and eventually accelerates toward the center into a shock wave. The shock wave compresses a plasma target, called a spheromak, to trigger a fusion burst. The thermal energy is extracted with a heat exchanger and used to create steam for electricity generation. To produce power, the process would be repeated every second.   Credit: General Fusion

General Fusion, a startup in Vancouver, Canada, says it can build a prototype fusion power plant within the next decade and do it for less than a billion dollars. So far, it has raised $13.5 million from public and private investors to help kick-start its ambitious effort.

Unlike the $14 billion ITER project under way in France, General Fusion’s approach doesn’t rely on expensive superconducting magnets–called tokamaks–to contain the superheated plasma necessary to achieve and sustain a fusion reaction. Nor does the company require powerful lasers, such as those within the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to confine a plasma target and compress it to extreme temperatures until fusion occurs.

Instead, General Fusion says it can achieve “net gain”–that is, create a fusion reaction that gives off more energy than is needed to trigger it–using relatively low-tech, mechanical brute force and advanced digital control technologies that scientists could only dream of 30 years ago.

It may seem implausible, but some top U.S. fusion experts say General Fusion’s approach, which is a variation on what the industry calls magnetized target fusion, is scientifically sound and could actually work. It’s a long shot, they say, but well worth a try.

“I’m rooting for them,” says Ken Fowler, professor emeritus of nuclear engineering and plasma physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading authority on fusion-reactor designs. He’s analyzed the approach and found no technical showstoppers. “Maybe these guys can do it. It’s really luck of the draw.”

The prototype reactor will be composed of a metal sphere about three meters in diameter containing a liquid mixture of lithium and lead. The liquid is spun to create a vortex inside the sphere that forms a vertical cavity in the middle. At this point, two donut-shaped plasma rings held together by self-generated magnetic fields, called spheromaks, are injected into the cavity from the top and bottom of the sphere and come together to create a target in the center. “Think about it as blowing smoke rings at each other,” says Doug Richardson, chief executive of General Fusion.

On the outside of the metal sphere are 220 pneumatically controlled pistons, each programmed to simultaneously ram the surface of the sphere at 100 meters a second. The force of the pistons sends an acoustic wave through the lead-lithium mixture, and that accelerates into a shock wave as it reaches the plasma, which is made of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium.

http://www.technologyreview.com/business/23102/

Carbon Gold Promote Strict Regulations With World’s First Biochar Methodology

Today the world’s first biochar methodology has been published for public consultation by the Voluntary Carbon Standard. This ground breaking paper has been submitted by the UK based biochar project developers Carbon Gold. They are confident that their methodology will help create an ethical and sustainable structure for a potential biochar offsetting industry. This method of turning waste biomass into charcoal has been lauded as a miracle solution to rising carbon emissions, but skeptics have also warned that there is plenty of room for error and exploitation.

Organic Farming + Carbon Offsets = Carbon Gold
Carbon Gold may not ring any bells for you, but the big names behind this new company certainly will. Two very successful UK eco-entrepreneurs are now selling the biochar dream, one being Craig Sams, founder of Green + Blacks chocolate and the other being Dan Morrel founder of Future Forests, now The Carbon Neutral Company, one of the world’s first carbon offsetting businesses. Together they are uniting their experience and skills, in organic farming and carbon offsetting respectively, to commercialise the use of biochar, which could be sold by farmers for carbon credits.

Monbiot’s Warning
Both Sams and Morrell, whilst evangelical about the benefits of biochar as a way to sequester carbon and enrich soil fertility, are well aware of the potential pitfalls an unregulated market could fall into. George Monbiot’s polemical article on biochar in The Guardian a few months ago painted an alarming image of biochar enthusiasts turning 1.4 billion hectares of the planet’s surface into charcoal, taking over valuable crop fields and exploiting indigenous people’s land .

Sustainable + Ethical Methodology
Naturally Monbiot is deeply skeptical of any silver bullet solution to climate change and so should we be, but Carbon Gold is stepping into the ring on the right foot with a methodology and a statement of principals which aims to create a “sustainable, social and environmental policy under which any biochar project should be developed.” If the Voluntary Carbon Standard approves the Methodology then all future biochar projects can be independently verified and certified as ethical and sustainable.

Assessing Carbon Emissions
Carbon Gold’s Biochar Methodology has been developed in collaboration with greenhouse house gas emissions assessors Ecometrica and claims to “set out the carbon accounting methods and detailed instructions on how to calculate the reduced or avoided emissions from a biochar project.” The accompanying Statement of Principals adds that all projects will only use “biomass feedstocks derived from surplus biomass that is a by-product of agricultural or forestry activities and which would otherwise be burned or left to decay.”

Respecting Indigenous Land Rights
We are also impressed by the stated social principals which guarantee local employment and training, health and safety, and land rights, paying “due regard to the principles enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of Indigenous People.” We look forward to hearing more from Carbon Gold about the potentials uses of appropriate technologies and community supported implementation of biochar projects. It looks like Carbon Gold are setting off in the right direction, but will this methodology be enough to allay Monbiot’s fears of being surrounded by a blackened charcoal landscape?

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/biochar-methodology.php

http://www.carbon-gold.com/

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/biochar_an_answer.php

Just How Many Trillions of Dollars Can Energy Efficiency Save Us?

Energy efficiency is always touted at the primary (and easiest) option for saving both money and the environment. Yet so many people are slow to latch on. Perhaps a new figure put out by the latest McKinsey Report will get people to make a mad dash towards energy efficiency.

We Could Save $1.2 Trillion Over Next 10 Years
According to the latest figure put out by McKinsey, if we invested $520 billion over 10 years in energy efficiency measures from weatherizing homes to better power systems, we’ll see a savings of $1.2 trillion by 2020 – a return of $680 billion. Plus, that other great side effect of making big strides towards saving the planet. Just how big a stride? Well…

The reduction in energy use would also result in the abatement of 1.1 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually – the equivalent of taking the entire U.S. fleet of passenger vehicles and light trucks off the roads.

We Already Have Tools We Need for Energy Efficiency
Best of all, we don’t need to sit around waiting for new technology. The report shows that we can use existing tech and practices to make the changes necessary for such big savings.

As reported on CNET, “If we do nothing, we will waste $1.2 trillion of energy,” McKinsey partner Ken Ostrowski said in a press conference on Wednesday. “Over a decade, (the up-front investment) would be $50 billion a year, which is about five times what we invest today. That investment pays back–it’s one of the few that generate environmental benefits and economic cost returns.”

Big Energy Savings In Homes, Businesses and Industrial Sectors
Could the importance of energy efficiency be hammered home more clearly than that? Homes and businesses could save 28% of their current spending, and the industrial sector could save 20% by doing just the basics that we already know about. For instance, standby power is 6-8% of the total energy consumption – and we already have technology to cut back on these issues.

Getting Everyone On Board for Energy Efficiency
The report outlines five opportunities that will help us overcome some of the barriers and realize savings, including showing everyone that energy efficiency is honestly as big a deal as TreeHuggers make it out to be, get everyone over the hump of not wanting to spend money upfront to make changes that will help them realize future savings, and better align everyone involved in energy from utilities to government agencies to manufacturers to consumers.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/just-how-many-trillions-of-dollars-can-energy-efficiency-save-us.php

A Better Way to Rank Expertise Online

New software distinguishes between experts and spammers, showing who can be trusted.

Websites where users can organize and share information are flourishing, but it can be hard to know which users and information to trust. Now a team of European researchers has developed an algorithm that ranks the expertise of users and can spot those who are using a site only to spam.

The technique works in a way similar to Amazon’s reputation engine or the ratings of Wikipedia pages, but it evaluates users based on a new set of criteria that makes intuitive assumptions about experts.

The algorithm draws on a method applied in ranking Web pages, but takes it an interesting step further, says Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, who was not involved with the work. “It distinguishes between ‘discoverers’ and ‘followers,’” Kleinberg says, “focusing on users who are the first to tag something that subsequently becomes popular.”

The new work focuses on collaborative tagging systems such as Delicious, a social bookmarking website, and Flickr, a photo-sharing site. These sites let users add relevant keywords to “tag” Web links or photos and then share them. Normally, users are ranked by how frequently or how recently they add content to the system. “It’s quantity over quality, so the more you do, the more credit you get,” says Michael Noll, a researcher in computer science at Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, and a researcher on the new software. “But the fact is [that] quantity does not imply quality.”

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/23100/

Mining Social Networks for Clues

The dangers of posting sensitive personal information on social-networking sites are well known, but a researcher has now revealed how data mining these sites can dig up undisclosed personal information.

On Wednesday, in a presentation at the Black Hat computer-security conference in Las Vegas, Nitesh Dhanjani detailed how the information posted on social websites like Facebook and Twitter can be mined to find out a person’s whereabouts and activities.

Dhanjani showed data-collection programs that can be created using the programming tools released by such sites. For instance, he showed how to track the movements of politicians and celebrities using Twitter, by mining the service for relevant geographical information. Earlier this year, Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra was criticized for posting information on Twitter that revealed his location while traveling in Iraq.

Dhanjani also showed how to work out what software a person uses to post to Twitter; this information could help an attacker hack into that person’s account, he said.

Sensitive business information can also be revealed by mining social-network connections, Dhanjani said. For example, if there’s a rumor that two companies are in talks for a merger, an interested party could watch the business-networking site LinkedIn for connections between company employees. If a higher-than-average number of connections start forming, this might help to confirm the rumors.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23101/

‘Clunkers’ auto rebate plan so popular that it’s broke

New-car shoppers appear to have already snapped up all the $1 billion that Congress appropriated for the “cash for clunkers” program, leading the Transportation Department to tell auto dealers Thursday night to stop offering the rebates.

But a White House official said the program had not been suspended, creating confusion about its status. The program offers $3,500 to $4,500 for people who trade in an old car for a new one with higher fuel economy.

In a statement issued Thursday evening, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said: “We are working tonight to assess the situation facing what is obviously an incredibly popular program. Auto dealers and consumers should have confidence that all valid CARS transactions that have taken place to date will be honored.”

The program, formally known as the Car Allowance Rebate System, was scheduled to be offered until Nov. 1, or as long as the money was available. But the program was so successful that it has exhausted all the money allocated within the first week. Dealers have submitted applications on behalf of consumers seeking rebates on about a quarter-million vehicles.

The National Automobile Dealers Association surveyed its members in recent days and warned the Transportation Department on Thursday that it had a very large backlog of applications, said Bailey Wood, a spokesman for the association.

http://news.cnet.com/Clunkers-auto-rebate-plan-so-popular-that-its-broke/2100-11389_3-6249938.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

PICTURES: Venice “Ancestor” City Revealed

Aerial pictures of croplands taken in near-infrared light (left) help highlight the contrast between plants growing on top of structures such as walls and building foundations and those growing over canals long since filled in with sediment. Such images allowed researchers to map the extent and layout of Altinum’s remains.

“If you look at it from the air, you see the geometry of these plants, which show underground the geometry of the structure,” said Mozzi, co-author of the July 2009 study.

—Image courtesy Andrea Ninfo, Alessandro Fontana, Paolo Mozzi, and Francesco Ferrarese via Science/AAAS

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/photogalleries/venice-ancestor-city-altinum-pictures/photo3.html