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POPSFirst paper based transistor Furthermore, electric characterization of devices showed that the hybrid FETs’ performance outpace those of amorphous silicon TFTs, and rival with the actual state of the art of oxide thin film transistors. These results suggest promising new disposable electronics devices, like paper displays, smart labels, smart packaging, bio-applications, RFID tags, among others. te
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POPSVaTech, D.O.E, Russians, collaborators study rare microorganism that produces hydrogen So we finally found a clean energy solution ? guess not - no2liberals writes "I’m all for new sources of energy, but one has to look at the downside. The only emission from hydrogen as a fuel is water vapor, which happens to be the single greatest greenhouse gas. Do we really want vehicles and power plants spewing more of the gas that traps 80% of all radiant heat within the first thirty feet of atmosphere?"
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POPSNanopaper soaks up oily spills Makes you wonder what else there is that can do a good or better job than ordinary paper. If it's a matter of cost, technological advances are reducing prices all of the time.
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POPSOppose Climate Alarmist Gore: Sign Free Petition Worried about high food prices, Congress tries to push the biofuel industry to use nonfood crops. Chicago - America's love affair with corn-based ethanol is cooling – at least in Washington. Some legislators blame the rising use of corn as a biofuel as a key factor behind high food prices. Others want to freeze the federal mandate on biofuels production at current levels, reversing legislation passed just a few months ago that increases it through 2022. Still others are pushing to shift tax incentives away from corn-based to cellulose-based ethanol in the nearly completed farm bill. These moves represent a dramatic backlash against corn ethanol, which until a few months ago was widely viewed as a boon for both farmers and consumers. Many experts worry that Washington's new skepticism will undo important progress the US has made in replacing foreign oil with domestic energy alternatives. http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0501/p03s03-usec.html
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POPSCongress Considers Cellulose Ethanol In the Cato-at-Liberty blog post "Wishful Thinking on Cellulosic Ethanol," Indur Goklany, author of the Cato book The Improving State of the World, writes: "If cellulosic ethanol proves to be as profitable as its backers hope, farmers will divert even more land and water to producing the cellulose instead of food. All this means we'll be more or less back to where we were. Food will once again be competing with fuel. And land and water will be diverted from the rest of nature to meet the human demand for fuel.
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POPSControversial genetic engineering aim for new energy source Environmentalists say such work can be risky, because lignin provides trees with structural stiffness and resistance to pests. Even some scientists working on altering wood composition acknowledge that reducing lignin too much could lead to wobbly, vulnerable trees.
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POPSTwinkie Ingredients Deconstructing the Twinkie is like trying to deconstruct the universe. We think the millions of people … would agree that Twinkies just taste great.—David Leavitt, Vice President Snack Marketing at Hostess.
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POPSEngineered Microbes Boost Yeast-Tolerant Ethanol Improving yeast-ethanol tolerance is difficult because it is a complicated trait involving many genes. To tailor the expression of many genes at once, Stephanopoulos uses a process to induce random mutations in the genes for master regulator proteins. Each of these proteins controls the expression of multiple genes, so by altering them, Stephanopoulos sets off a cascade of changes in gene expression widespread enough to alter a trait like ethanol tolerance. The researchers randomly changed these proteins in a large yeast population, which led to some with an increased tolerance for ethanol.
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POPSThe plug-in hybrid-vehicle era begins For years, hobbyists and a few companies have been adding bigger battery packs to hybrid vehicles, which have both battery power and an internal combustion engine, and plugging them into electrical outlets. The idea of the "plug-in hybrid" has now caught the attention of government officials and researchers, who note that gas consumption would plummet if drivers could rely almost exclusively on electricity for average daily driving of about 33 miles.
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POPSWill Cellulosic Ethanol Take Off? That's good news because many experts estimate that corn-ethanol producers will run out of land, in part because of competing demand for corn-based food, limiting the total production to about 15 billion gallons of fuel. (Already, corn-ethanol plants--existing and planned, combined--have a capacity of about 11 billion gallons.) The greater productivity of cellulosic sources should eventually allow them to produce as much as 150 billion gallons of ethanol by 2050, according to a report by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Cellulosic-ethanol companies are hopeful that they can meet this goal.
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POPSCheaper, Cleaner Ethanol from Biotech Corn If the researchers are able to overcome some of these challenges, the biotech corn could lead to more-efficient production of ethanol, starting by making better use of corn kernels. Much of the corn kernel contains cellulose that isn't converted into ethanol in conventional ethanol plants. Some developers are considering adding equipment to existing ethanol plants for processing this corn-grain cellulose.
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POPSPlastics from Sugar Previous methods use an acidic catalyst, and the chemical reactions take place in a water-based solution, producing high levels of impurities.
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