ARRA “Retrofit Ramp-Up” To Jump Start an Energy Efficiency Industry
| ‘Ultra-primitive’ Particles Found In Comet Dust Dust samples collected from the stratosphere have yielded an unexpectedly rich trove of relics from the ancient cosmos, scientists report. The dust includes presolar grains and material from interstellar molecular clouds. This “ultra-primitive” material likely wafted into the atmosphere after the Earth passed through the trail of an Earth-crossing comet in 2003, giving scientists a rare opportunity to study cometary dust in the laboratory. |
| Breakthrough In Development Of Tiny Biological Fuel Cells Researchers have developed a successful way to grow molecular wire brushes that conduct electrical charges, a first step in developing biological fuel cells that could power pacemakers, cochlear implants and prosthetic limbs. |
| Electrical Engineers Go Head To Head With Genius On Music Playlists Electrical engineers recently pitted Genius — the music recommendation system in Apple’s iTunes — against two experimental music recommender systems. Genius appears to capture acoustic similarities among songs within the same playlist, the researchers found. The electrical engineers also discovered that the music recommender they built from scratch can generate song playlists that human subjects thought were as good as those that Genius generates. |
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| Flexible Solar Strips Light Up Campus Bus Shelter Engineering researchers in Canada have developed a tiling technique to create flexible solar cell panels. It is being tested on the curved roof of a campus bus shelter to power interior lighting. |
| Interactions Between Massless Particles May Lead To Speedy, Powerful Electronic Devices Researchers have discovered novel electronic properties in two-dimensional sheets of carbon atoms called graphene that could one day be the heart of speedy and powerful electronic devices. The new findings, previously considered possible by physicists but only now being seen in the laboratory, show that electrons in graphene can interact strongly with each other. The physicists discovered that the fractional quantum Hall effect in graphene is even more robust than in standard semiconductors. |
| New Generation Of Solar Cells Promises Efficiency Scientists have produced thin film solar cells made from compound semiconductors which are already reaching a 12 percent efficiency. Thin film solar cells are considered the next generation of solar cells and are expected to be considerably cheaper because they need much less material and energy in their production than todays photovoltaic modules. |
| ARRA “Retrofit Ramp-Up” To Jump Start an Energy Efficiency Industry The U.S. Department of Energy is announcing a new $450 million program designed to catalyze a nationwide energy upgrade that could save $100 million annually in utility bills for households and businesses. The Recovery Act’s “Retrofit Ramp-Up” program will try new models for rolling out energy efficiency to homes and businesses on a large scale. |