New Enzyme Allows Plants to Grow in Dry and High CO2 Conditions
Increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and reduction of water resources are two major problems on our planet. Despite these degradation processes, researchers at the University of California San Diego have discovered some plant enzymes able to solve these two problems simultaneously.
In other words, these special enzymes can allow plants to save water while consuming more carbon dioxide. In this way water resources will be saved and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will be reduced.
New Catalyst May Allow Exploitation of Natural Gas at Low Costs
Natural gas is an exhaustible energy source and today methane is used excessively. That’s why researchers announced that natural gas resources will disappear in 130 years. In areas where natural gas is exploited and used excessively, it could disappear in 60 years. Also gas exploitation involves huge costs. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research have found a way to obtain natural gas cheaper.
Polystyrene Replaced with Eco-friendly Starch
Chemically speaking polystyrene is actually an aromatic polymer, produced from the aromatic monomer styrene, a liquid that is obtained in chemical industry from petroleum. Polystyrene is the most common material in many objects we use daily. Maybe you remember those white pieces of polystyrene used to protect packaged products.
Stressed Plants Could Negatively Influence the Climate
On “My Green Treasure” we talked several times about the factors influencing climate evolution and global warming. We strive to present some unusual factors that were not so popular lately. Today I want to start from the next idea: plants can positively influence the climate but on the other hand could lead to an intensification of global warming process.
Recently Discovered Plastic Material can Conduct Electricity
On MyGreenTreasure we talked several times about plastics with special properties, properties that are very useful in increasing efficiency of various products. In this post I will present a special plastic material, recently discovered that could change many things in our future life.
$40 Air Filter Could Reduce Fuel Consumption by 20%
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Nowadays, researchers find different ways to improve the efficiency of our cars, by reducing consumption, increasing power or change car design (lines and shapes). Sometimes big discoveries may come from small countries. Same thing happened with the product I will present in this post.
OLED Technology Evolution and New OLED Applications
In this post I will present some historical data about the well known lighting system OLED, some OLED applications, and the OLED’s evolution. First OLED systems( Organic Light Emitting Diode Display) were used in 1960. When OLED appeared, display technology was revolutionized, because this new system was more efficient than usual displays.
Global Climate Could be Influenced by Jellyfish Movements in Water
Global warming problem is a very complicated problem today, a problem influenced by many factors, a problem that can be solved with a huge effort, with willpower, technology and also with love for nature.
“Escherichia coli” Bacteria Have Potential To Solve Mathematical Problems
Science evolves every day and researchers found many things that can lead to a better future. Nowadays, science is so advanced that today we have thousands of PC models available in different sizes and performances. In this area recently a team of researchers found a new type of computer, bacterial computer, which is actually the DNA studies result on Escherichia coli bacteria, a new form of life which can solve mathematical problems (eg.Hamiltonian Path Problem).
Advanced LED Lightbulb Made from Salmon DNA
Biological materials have often proved that are very efficient in various technological processes, and when they were used was even observed an increase in the obtained product efficiency. Same thing happened at the University of Connecticut, where researchers have managed to create a LED lightbulb from salmon DNA, adding fluorescent dye to salmon DNA, they bring to life a new material with a bright white light shade.
World’s Highest Efficiency in Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells
The majority of silicon wafers used for solar cells are Czochralski(CZ) single crystalline and directional solidification, or cast, multicrystalline (mc) material.The split between the two types of wafer is presently about 55% mc-Si and 45% CZ-Si.Until 1995 CZ wafers represented 60% of the substrates used by industry and mc-Si wafers around 25%.The fast scale up of commercially available multicrystalline wafers changed the picture rapidly.The remained of the silicon substrates used by the industry are non-wafered sheets or ribbons that are of different types and have recently gained significant production figures, following long development phases.
Sanyo Electric Co. recently announced that they have surpassed the old record, creating the world’s highest efficiency silicon solar cells.HIT solar cells are 23% more efficient than normal solar cells, which means that Sanyo Electric Co. increased rate of solar cell efficiency by 0.7%.The secret of this improvement was based on reduction in optical absorption loss.
“The company stated that their new HIT solar cells consists of a single thins layer of a crystalline silicon sandwiched in between two layers of high quality ultra-thin amorphous silicon layers. These layers improve the quality of the heterojunction and also allow more sunlight to hit the power generating silicon surface. Other than this, a reduction in resistance loss also allowed Sanyo to make the cells highly efficient.” – www.ecofriend.org
Diamonds Used to Produce Solar Electricity
When I first read the title of this article I said: This is not possible! How to build a photovoltaic system with diamonds? It is not too expensive? Not require advanced technology too? And then I found out that Dr. Neil Fox from the University of Bristol’s School of Chemistry using thermionic energy converters (TECs), managed to create an efficient solar system (equipped with some parabolic dishes), able to generate a large amount of electricity (multi-megawatts).“The plan is to make use of devices called thermionic energy converters (TECs), which carry special electrodes using nano-particles of industrial diamond powered, which isn’t that expensive and is readily available as well. TECs are commonly used in spacecrafts where they require temperature well above 1,500˚C to produce sufficient electricity to power the craft.” - www.ecofriend.org
Solar Powered Nano Sensors-Pollution Detector System
Pollution is a process that is present today in many places on earth.People have tried and still trying to reduce as much as possible this pollution process and the effects of this global phenomenon.But how people will know where they have to intervene most? Until now this thing was done statistically or with many previous studies and analysis.
Recently Queensland University of Technology has been awarded a $ 1.3 million for the invention of a solar powered nano sensors system, able to detect and monitor environmental pollution.The main advantage of this system is represented by a lower energy consumption,perfectly adjusted for high performances.Another similar system is named GIS(Geographic Information System).”GIS use geographical coordinates of various locations on the planet, store them in special tables in order to be analyzed.This program is very useful in many fields: transportation, real estate, planning, public safety, ecology, environmental protection, environmental events.” – http://www.mygreentreasure.com/2009/04/gis-environmental-monitoring-system/
Solar powered nano-sensors: “The sensors are contained in self-contained boxes which could be placed where needed. The devices are tiny carbon tubes with a diameter of a few millionths of a millimeter, which will be covered with hair-like sensing modules. This unique structure increases the sensitivity of the detector, since it increases the exposed surface area. The energy-efficient sensors will be powered by a new kind of solar cell developed in Australia by Dyesol that would transmit data to monitoring stations using radio or a UMTS system.” – www.ecofriend.org
Wind Powered Plastic Mutant Robot
Wind energy is one of the main sources of alternative energy, and until now researchers have tried to use it in many applications to reduce electricity consumption and to protect the environment.But this energy source can be used also for production of “art works”. In the next movie you will see a concrete example of a robot powered by wind energy, made with cheap plastic materials,moving due to a quite “simple” system.This robot give the impression of a real living creature movement.The Smallest Bulb in the World, 100.000 Times Narrower Than the Edison Bulb
A team of researchers from UCLA, lead by Chris Regan, professor of physics and astronomy, developed the world’s smallest light bulb that could help prepare more energy efficient lighting systems in the future.This new revolutionary bulb, is 100,000 times narrower and 10,000 times shorter than the bulb made by Edison.This bulb is just 100 atoms wide and the filament is made with a single carbon nanotube.
This bulb is so small that if it is stopped you can’t see it with the naked eye, and if it is lit we only could see a point of light.In conditions of the economic crisis, this product could solve many problems that until now were solved with a large consume of electricity.This bulb also may help researchers develop a new and revolutionary technology that could be seen in each of our homes.
MIT Low Power Display Cuttlefish Inspired
Nature has always demonstrated that it represents the bases of all tchnologies development.This thing was proved many times before, by people,through their inventions inspired by natural elements around us.MIT recently did the same thing,creating a low-power display, inspired by a cuttlefish.This screen use less than one-hundredth the power of conventional TV displays.The “cuttlefisf technology” was possible developing electronic ink displays.Researchers have analyzed how the masters of camouflage from the underwater, change their appearance, secreting some chemicals which give color to the outer membrane.Similar with this natural process, researchers have created the low-power display technology.
NASA’s New SMART Helicopters
“A SMART Rotor using piezoelectric actuators to drive the trailing edge flaps was tested in the 40- by 80-foot tunnel in 155-knot wind to simulate conditions the rotor design would experience in high-speed forward flight. The rotor also was tested at cruise speed conditions of 124 knots to determine which of three trailing edge flap patterns produced the least vibration and noise. One descent condition also was tested.Results showed that the SMART Rotor can reduce by half the amount of noise it puts out within the controlled environment of the wind tunnel. The ultimate test of SMART rotor noise reduction capability would come from flight tests on a real helicopter, where the effects of noise that reproduces through the atmosphere and around terrain could be evaluated…” – www.sciencedaily.com
Electromagnetic People Killer.Mobile Phone.
The mobile phones, called also cellular phones, are an integrating part of modern telecommunications, which offer the possibility of maintaining the continual communication without affecting the movement liberty.In many countries, more than half of the population uses mobile phones and the market develops fast.The prognosis shows that in 2009 will be, in the entire world, 1,9 bilion of surscribers of the mobile telephony services.Because of this reason it was necessary the installation of an increased number of basis station.The basis stations are radio antennas of low power that communicate with the users apparatus.At the beginning of 2000, they were about 2000 basis stations functioning in Great Britain and about 82.000 locations destined to the cellular telephony in the United States, each location including one or more basis stations.
On the pollution effects due to the mobile telephones were made numerous studies, the results of recent studies regarding the effects of the exposure to the electromagnetic fields of radio frequency (RF) on human beings are supplied by the World Health Organization, the Royal Society of Canada and by a committee of experts in Great Britain.
The RF fields get in the tissues exposed to depths that depend on frequency – until 1 cm at the frequencies used by mobile phones.The RF energy is absorbed in the body and produces tissues heating which is dispersed normally through the thermo adjustment mechanism of the body.All the proved effects of the exposure to RF are clearly connected to the heating.While the RF energy can interact with alive tissues at low levels to produce a significant heating, none of the studies did not put into evidence the unwanted effects on health at exposure levels under the authorized limits through international directives.
More studies on animals exposed to the RF fields similar to these emitted by the mobile phones have not found any proof that RF produce or favor brain tumors.While a study made in 1997 revealed the increase of the rate at which the lymphomas were developed at the mice genetically modified, the implications of this result on health are still ambiguous.Nowadays there are running more studies to confirm this observation and to determine any revelance to human cancer.Three epidemologic recent studies have not found any convincing proof of the increase of cancer risk or any other disease along with the use of the mobile phones.
BORPower Organic Lubricants Obtained Using Nanotechnology
I’m pretty sure you heard that nanotechnology is the biggest discovery of the XXI century.Any product made using nanotechnology is absolutely amazing (some science art-work),and renerally this kind of products have revolutionized the science.Electricity Shoe Generator for Your Mobile Phone
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