Enormous blades could lead to more offshore energy in US

Posted Posted in Technology, Wind Energy

A new design for gigantic blades longer than two football fields could help bring offshore 50-megawatt (MW) wind turbines to the United States and the world. Sandia National Laboratories’ research on the extreme-scale Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotor (SUMR) is funded by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program. The challenge: Design a […]

Economic Case for Wind, Solar Energy in Africa

Posted Posted in Solar Energy, Technology

To meet skyrocketing demand for electricity, African countries may have to triple their energy output by 2030. While hydropower and fossil fuel power plants are favored approaches in some quarters, a new assessment by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has found that wind and solar can be economically and environmentally […]

payment

New quantum gadget could make contactless payment more secure

Posted Posted in Hacking, Technology

A prototype gadget that sends secret keys to encrypt information passed from a mobile device to a payment terminal, could help to answer public concerns around the security of contactless and wireless transactions, a new Oxford University collaboration has found. Despite being a leader in the digital world, and mobile payments available on everything from […]

overmolding technology

Flexible electronic devices with roll-to-roll overmolding technology

Posted Posted in Electronics, Technology

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has, for the first time, performed all manufacturing stages for a flexible in-moulded LED foil -in roll-to-roll process. The purpose of this demo is to prove the suitability of the technique for the highly cost-effective manufacture of products such as flexible LED displays containing printed electronics. All smart electronics […]

magnetic fields

Controlling soft robots using magnetic fields

Posted Posted in Electronics, Technology

A team of engineering researchers has made a fundamental advance in controlling so-called soft robots, using magnetic fields to remotely manipulate microparticle chains embedded in soft robotic devices. The researchers have already created several devices that make use of the new technique. “By putting these self-assembling chains into soft robots, we are able to have […]