Silver-Based Material Offers High Thermoelectric Performance
Researchers from the Center for Emergent Matter Science and the Univ. of Tokyo Graduate School of Engineering report on a silver-based layered material with high thermoelectric performance that holds promise for high-efficiency thermoelectrics that operate at room temperature.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/silver-based-material-offers-high-thermoelectric-performance
Earth’s Center is 1,000 C Hotter than Thought
Scientists have determined the temperature near the Earth’s center to be 6,000 C, 1,000 degrees hotter than in a previous experiment run 20 years ago. These measurements confirm geophysical models that the temperature difference between the solid core and the mantle above, must be at least 1,500 C to explain why the Earth has a magnetic field. The scientists were even able to establish why the earlier experiment had produced a lower temperature figure.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/earth%E2%80%99s-center-1000-c-hotter-thought
![Today in Lab History: April 26, 1879- Sir Owen RichardsonSir Owen Richardson was an English physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1928 for “his work on the thermionic phenomenon [electron emission by hot metals] and especially for the discovery of the law named after him.”Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/09/today-lab-history](http://24.media.tumblr.com/ee64586bd1588e16cd55138ba9bb492d/tumblr_mlv62djZx21qd8y55o1_250.jpg)
Today in Lab History: April 26, 1879- Sir Owen Richardson
Sir Owen Richardson was an English physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1928 for “his work on the thermionic phenomenon [electron emission by hot metals] and especially for the discovery of the law named after him.”
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/09/today-lab-history
Rivers Are ‘Horizontal Cooling Towers’
Running two computer models in tandem, scientists from the Univ. of New Hampshire have detailed for the first time how thermoelectric power plants interact with climate, hydrology and aquatic ecosystems throughout the northeastern U.S. and show how rivers serve as “horizontal cooling towers” that provide an important ecosystem service to the regional electricity sector — but at a cost to the environment.
The analysis, done in collaboration with colleagues from the City College of New York (CCNY) and published online in the current journal Environmental Research Letters, highlights the interactions among electricity production, cooling technologies, hydrologic conditions, aquatic impacts and ecosystem services, and can be used to assess the full costs and tradeoffs of electricity production at regional scales and under changing climate conditions.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/rivers-are-horizontal-cooling-towers
Model Helps Solve Softening Steel Problem
Sandia National Laboratories researchers Lisa Deibler and Arthur Brown had a ready-made problem for their computer modeling work when they partnered with the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Kansas City Plant to improve stainless steel tubing that was too hard to meet nuclear weapon requirements.
When steel is too hard it becomes brittle, so the plant ended up getting new tubing. However, Deibler says KCP needed a backup in case it couldn’t find replacements in time to meet deadlines.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/model-helps-solve-softening-steel-problem
Hot Water Preserves Produce
Nothing is more frustrating than finding the perfect cucumber or head of lettuce at the farmers market, paying top-dollar for it, and then… tossing it out a week later when it has gone moldy or slimy in the refrigerator.
No doubt one reason so many of us eat too many convenience foods and too few fruits and vegetables is that it can be hard to get our busy schedules in sync with the produce we bring home with the best of intentions.Food scientists, however, have discovered a remarkably effective way to extend the life of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables by days or even a week. It doesn’t involve the chlorine solutions, irradiation or peroxide baths sometimes used by produce packagers. And it’s easily done in any home by anyone.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/hot-water-preserves-produce
A new study looking at 11,000 years of climate temperatures shows the world in the middle of a dramatic U-turn, lurching from near-record cooling to a heat spike.
Research released in the journal Science uses fossils of tiny organisms to reconstruct global temperatures back to the end of the last ice age. It shows how the globe for several thousands of years was cooling until a dramatic spike in the 20th century.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/03/heat-spike-unprecedented-11000-years
Sunlight-Powered Prototype Sterilizes Medical Equipment
Using sunlight, researchers and students at MIT are trying to change how medical equipment is sterilized in remote clinics — and a pilot project in Nicaragua has begun to show promising results.
In that nation, a mostly rural population of six million is served by some 11 hospitals, dozens of health centers, and some 1,300 “health posts” that provide emergency care, obstetric services and the occasional baby delivery. Most of these posts, staffed by nurse practitioners, either lack equipment to sterilize surgical tools and bandages or have kerosene-powered autoclaves. Often, nurses resort to boiling tools or swabbing them with alcohol, or must travel long distances for proper sterilization at larger centers or hospitals.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/02/sunlight-powered-prototype-sterilizes-medical-equipment
Hot Air Makes Safer Chicken
Poultry producers can reduce bacterial cross-contamination in poultry cages by treating the cages with forced air that’s been heated to 122 F, according to a study by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists.
While being transported in coops on trucks, poultry that have bacteria such as Campylobacter can contaminate, through their feces, other poultry that are free of pathogens. Those disease-causing bacteria can then be passed on to the next group of birds during the next trip, and so forth, unless the cycle is broken. Campylobacter is a foodborne pathogen that can be present in raw or undercooked poultry. Since the bacteria are commonly found in the digestive tracts of poultry, they’re readily deposited onto coops and trucks when contaminated animals are transported to processing plants.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/hot-air-makes-safer-chicken
Method Treats Heat Like Light
An MIT researcher has developed a technique that provides a new way of manipulating heat, allowing it to be controlled much as light waves can be manipulated by lenses and mirrors.
The approach relies on engineered materials consisting of nanostructured semiconductor alloy crystals. Heat is a vibration of matter — technically, a vibration of the atomic lattice of a material — just as sound is. Such vibrations can also be thought of as a stream of phonons — a kind of “virtual particle” that is analogous to the photons that carry light. The new approach is similar to recently developed photonic crystals that can control the passage of light, and phononic crystals that can do the same for sound.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/method-treats-heat-light
Extreme Heat, Pressure Team to Make Biofuel
Add a bunch of toggle switches, electronics, pipes, a sturdy frame and some very thick bolts together and you have a bio-oil gasifier. It will allow Iowa State researchers to combine two thermochemical technologies to produce the next generation of fuels from renewable resources such as corn stalks and wood chips.
First, biomass is fed into a fast pyrolysis machine where it’s quickly heated without oxygen. The end product is a thick, brown oil that can be divided and further processed into fuels. Researchers sometimes describe bio-oil as “densified biomass” that’s much easier to handle and transport than raw biomass. Second, the bio-oil is sprayed into the top of the gasifier where heat and pressure vaporize it to produce a combination of (mostly) hydrogen and carbon monoxide that’s called synthesis gas.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/10/extreme-heat-pressure-team-make-biofuel
Governments and institutions should focus on developing adaption policies to address and mitigate against the negative impact of global warming, rather than putting the emphasis on carbon trading and capping greenhouse-gas emissions, argue Johannesburg-based Univ. of the Witwatersrand geoscientist Jasper Knight and Stephan Harrison from the Univ. of Exeter.
“At present, governments’ attempts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions through carbon cap-and-trade schemes and to promote renewable and sustainable energy sources are probably too late to arrest the inevitable trend of global warming,” the scientists write in a paper published online in the scientific journal, Nature Climate Change.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/10/climate-change-can%E2%80%99t-be-stopped-cutting-emissions
Something about September keeps bringing out the record heat in the world. The globe last month matched a record for the hottest September, set in 2005. It was the third time since 2000 that the world set or tied a heat record for September. In addition to 2012 and 2005, previous hot September records were set in 2003. And these records go back to 1880.
Last month’s average temperature was 60.2 F worldwide, which is 1.2 degrees above normal, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says. NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt says it may be worth studying why September, more than other months, keeps setting world records. It might be the lengthening of the Northern Hemisphere summer as a result of man-made global warming and continual loss of Arctic sea ice that indirectly helps cool other parts of the world, says Univ. of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/10/world-matches-september-heat-record-again
Heat Improves Yield, Lowers Costs of High-Energy Biofuel
Perhaps inspired by Arizona’s blazing summers, Arizona State Univ. scientists have developed a new method that relies on heat to improve the yield and lower the costs of high-energy biofuels production, making renewable energy production more of an everyday reality.
ASU has been at the forefront of algal research for renewable energy production. Since 2007, with support from federal, state and industry funding, ASU has spearheaded several projects that utilize photosynthetic microbes, called cyanobacteria, as a potential new source of renewable, carbon-neutral fuels. Efforts have focused on developing cyanobacteria as a feedstock for biodiesel production, as well as benchtop and large-scale photobioreactors to optimize growth and production.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/09/heat-improves-yield-lowers-costs-high-energy-biofuel
Convection Breakthrough Can Help Cooling, Heating Systems
An international team of physicists is working to ascertain more about the fundamental physical laws that are at work in a process known as convection, which occurs in a boiling pot of water as well as in the turbulent movement of the liquid outer core of the Earth. The team’s new finding specifies the way that the temperature of a gas or liquid varies with the distance from a heat source during convection. The research is expected to eventually help engineers with applications such as the design of cooling systems, for instance, in nuclear power plants.
Guenter Ahlers, professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara, worked with his team at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Goettingen, Germany, on this important discovery about turbulent convection. The results were published Physical Review Letters, and are available online now.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/09/convection-breakthrough-can-help-cooling-heating-systems
