Technology, Science News!

Orange peels, newspapers may lead to cheaper, cleaner ethanol fuel Scientists may have just made the breakthrough of a lifetime, turning discarded fruit peels and other throwaways into cheap, clean fuel to power the world's vehicles.

Researchers create highly absorbing, flexible solar cells with silicon wire arrays Using arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded in a polymer substrate, a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology has created a new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons.

Marriage of microfluidics and optics could advance lab-on-a-chip devices With a silicone rubber "stick-on" sheet containing dozens of miniature, powerful lenses, engineers at Harvard are one step closer to putting the capacity of a large laboratory into a micro-sized package. The marriage of high performance optics with microfluidics could prove the perfect match for making lab-on-a-chip technologies more practical.

Navistar work to increase semi-truck fuel efficiency Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has teamed with Navistar Inc., NASA's Ames Research Center, the US Air Force and industry to develop and test devices for reducing the aerodynamic drag of semi-trucks.

Material scientists turn light into electrical current using a golden nanoscale system Material scientists have created a system, using nano-sized molecules of gold, that induces and projects electrical current across molecules, similar to that of photovoltaic solar cells.

New sensor exploits traditional weakness of nano devices By taking advantage of a phenomenon that until now has been a virtual showstopper for electronics designers, a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Panos Datskos is developing a chemical and biological sensor with unprecedented sensitivity.

Breakthrough for mobile television Long Term Evolution, the new mobile telecommunications standard, will revolutionize mobile Internet. High transmission rates will soon be possible on mobile devices.

New single-chip reconfigurable multi-standard wireless transceiver in 40nm CMOS Research partners Renesas Technology Corp. and M4S present a complete transceiver with RF, baseband and data converter circuits in 40nm low-power CMOS. The fully reconfigurable transceiver is compatible with various wireless standards and applications, including the upcoming mobile broadband 3GPP-LTE standard.

PCs around the world unite to map the Milky Way Combined computing power of the MilkyWay@Home project recently surpassed the world's second fastest supercomputer.

Millimeter-scale, energy-harvesting sensor system developed A 9 cubic millimeter solar-powered sensor system developed at the University of Michigan is the smallest that can harvest energy from its surroundings to operate nearly perpetually.