Dr. Erez Allouche, assistant professor of civil engineering at Louisiana Tech University, and associate director of the Trenchless Technology Center, is conducting innovative research on geopolymer concrete and provide ways to use a byproduct of waste from power plants coal and help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Inorganic polymer concrete (geopolymer) is a new kind of [...]

In a feat of reverse engineering, Christian Braudrick University of California at Berkeley and three authors have managed to build and maintain a scale model of life meandering gravel river bed in the laboratory. Their results point to the importance of vegetation to reinforce the banks and, surprisingly, the importance of healthy living sand in [...]

After a recent rain, Baltimore’s Inner Harbor is blocked with an eclectic mix of garbage – bottles of soda and a big purple ball, sticks and dirt, candy wrappers and recessed television. “The Bay right now is the water more dead than he ever has – and that is the experience of the boatman did [...]

Good news for your utility bills and the environment: New University of Florida research shows that landscape shrubs need much less water to establish healthy roots of what you might expect. “We finally have our irrigation recommendations for the establishment of shrubs back up with science. We need less watering than many people think,” said Ed [...]

In the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference (Hamburg, Germany), IMEC presents a mechanical stacked GaAs / Ge multijunction solar cells. This is the technology demonstrator promising first novel IMEC to produce mechanically stacked, high-efficiency multijunction solar cells, with a view to efficiency above 40%. At the top of the stack is a contact side of [...]

In the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference (Hamburg, Germany), IMEC has a large area solar conversion efficiency of 18.4%. Compared to the standard i-PERC process of the cell, solar cell includes a transmitter IMEC shallow front advanced metallization using copper coating. The results were obtained in the large area of cells (125cm2), demonstrating the industrial [...]

How to plan for rising sea level, an abstract concept for many Californians still drew serious consideration of engineers, designers and urban planners from the Netherlands and the U.S. at a symposium on Monday. A panel of experts sponsored by the Dutch government submitted a report outlining strategies to address sea level rise in San [...]

A toxin produced by freshwater algae has won a lot of media in recent years but a new University of Florida study shows that there is little reason to worry about your presence in the lakes of Florida. The researchers analyzed the water taken from 187 lakes in 38 counties during a period of one [...]

Scenes from rural areas of the Pacific Northwest, where Kansas State University geographer Lisa Harrington interviewed civic and business leaders about what sustainability means to them. Credit: Photos by Lisa Harrington, Department of Kansas State University geography. From the titles of books for real estate developments, it is easier to find things it claims to [...]

Researchers have determined precisely how fluid boils in tiny “microchannels,” creating formulas and models that will help engineers design systems to cool high-power electronics in electric and hybrid cars, aircraft, computers, and other applications. Here, Purdue University doctoral student Tannaz Harirchian holds up special chips provided by Delphi Electronics and Safety that she and Professor [...]

Students from the Boston Architectural College (BAC) and Tufts University have presented a completely solar house, the Chamber of Curio, as New England’s entry into the Solar Decathlon competition. Entry is one of 20 designs of the university student teams competing for this year’s award for best solar house design. The solar house will be [...]

This week, Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) offers a new look at its 50,000 square-foot data center in Redmond, Washington, consolidating servers in the research unit of the technology giant and laboratories. The announcement follows reports in July that Microsoft is building a data center in Brazil to support the company’s software, plus services strategy, expected to open [...]

The quantity of venture capital going into clean technology dropped sharply in the early months of the present year. According to figures released today by the Cleantech Group, venture investments in the sector are down 48 p.c in First-quarter of 2009, compared to a year before. Investments had also fallen in the final quarter of [...]

Sue Servant decided it was time to chop the twine on carbon-based fuels.   So when her aging gas furnace required replacing, she turned to the Earth for a solution. She installed a geothermal system–also called a ground-source heat pump, a water-source heat pump, or geo-exchange system–which lately started heating and cooling her Cambridge, Mass. [...]

Algae biofuel outfit GreenFuel Technologies has laid off nineteen folks, or about half its staff, another sign of the difficulty that fledgling alternative fuels face. A company representative confirmed the staff reduction on Mon. and recounted one of GreenFuel’s 2 major customers–the Aurantia cement factory in Spain–remains a consumer. GreenFuel has developed a technique for [...]

The Large three of Detroit are not the sole ones singing the praises of electrical automobiles this week. The US military on Mon. expounded an initiative to doubtless replace up to 28,000 gas-powered automobiles at more than 155 armed forces installations with Neighborhood Electrical Vehicles ( NEVs ) in the approaching years. NEVs are not [...]

Worried about the carbon footprint of your Google searches? A Harvard Varsity physicist asserts an everyday search on a desktop PC generates about seven grams of CO2. So , performing 2 searches is comparable to bringing a kettle to boil, according to a brief Sun. in The Times of London. While that won’t sound like [...]

Toyota Motor Sales pronounced an expanded dedication to electrical autos on Sat. , divulging plans to turn out an all-electric town automobile by 2012 and a wider fleet of gas-electric hybrids. At the northern US World vehicle Show ( NAIAS ) in Detroit, Toyota displayed a concept car called the FT-EV, a battery-powered four-seat compact [...]