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 […]
As the cost of clean technology continues to fall, the world added record levels of renewable energy capacity in 2016, at an investment level 23 per cent lower than the previous year, according to new research published by UN Environment, the Frankfurt School — UNEP Collaborating Centre and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Global Trends […]
Adjusting solar panel angles a few times a year makes them more efficient With Earth Day approaching, new research from Binghamton University-State of New York could help U.S. residents save more energy, regardless of location, if they adjust the angles of solar panels four to five times a year. “Regardless of the perks of renewable […]
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 […]
Desktop scanners can be hijacked to perpetrate cyberattacks A typical office scanner can be infiltrated and a company’s network compromised using different light sources, according to a new paper by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the Weizmann Institute of Science. “In the paper, “Oops! I Think I Scanned Malware,” we demonstrated how […]
Hackers are able to decipher PINs and passwords just from the way we tilt our phone when we are typing in the information. Cyber experts at Newcastle University, UK, have revealed the ease with which malicious websites, as well as installed apps, can spy on us using just the information from the motion sensors in […]
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 […]
According to a study by computer science researchers at Karlstad University, few people know how their personal data are collected, used, shared and accessed. The new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), coming into effect in 2018, will include higher demands on the possibility for users to access their own personal information. Within a year […]
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 […]
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 […]