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Two test flights of Boeing Co's (BA.N) 787 Dreamliner have not revealed the cause of the battery malfunctions that grounded the jets, leaving it to focus on low-tech interim fixes, the Wall Street Journal said, citing government and industry officials. More test flights are planned, including efforts to assess potential fixes, although no significant new clues emerged to help pinpoint the cause of the problem, the Journal said. Boeing is now considering putting the lithium ion batteries in a sturdier container to stop heat, flames and toxic chemicals from escaping if the power packs overheat, the newspaper said. People familiar...

A fire that broke out last week in a Boeing 787 Dreamliner could have been hot enough to melt the carbon-fiber reinforced plastic that makes up the plane’s shell, according to the results of tests the Federal Aviation Administration performed last year. In the FAA tests, which the agency performed at its site in Atlantic City a year after it certified the Dreamliner, the temperature of the battery fires reached as high as 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The plane’s polymer skin melts at 649 degrees, according to its manufacturer, Victrex Energy of West Conshohocken, Pa. It also burns at high temperatures....

With the revelation that All Nippon Airways replaced defectivelithium ion batteries 10 times,Japan Air Lines replaced“quite a few,” andUnited Airlines replaced “multiple batteries,” in the months preceding the smoke emergency that grounded their Dreamliners, is there anything that can be said about the technology that can overcome its now-horrible reputation? Boeing has worked on the 787 for 10 years or so, with an ample amount of time to determine what kind of battery technology would be functional with the“super-efficient” jet with “exceptional environmental performance.” Had the Chicago-based manufacturer –and its airline customers – concerned themselves more with achievable plans that...

(Reuters) - China's largest auto parts maker won U.S. government approval to buy A123 Systems Inc (AONEQ.PK), a maker of electric car batteries, despite warnings by some lawmakers that the deal would transfer sensitive technology developed with U.S. government money. The sale of the lithium-ion battery maker to a U.S. unit of Wanxiang Group was approved by a U.S. government committee on foreign investment, according to a statement from the Chinese company. Last month, Wanxiang's U.S. unit agreed to pay $257 million for A123's automotive battery business and related assets in a bankruptcy auction, beating U.S. rival Johnson Controls Inc...

Police hunt for men dressed as Oompa-Loompas after attack on 28-year-old as he left kebab house • Man was left with cuts to his face, nose and lip, as well as two black eyes • Police are now hunting the two men dressed as the fictional factory workers Two men dressed as Oompa-Loompas from the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory are being hunted by police after they allegedly attacked a man on a night out. The pair - who had painted orange faces and dyed green hair and were wearing hooped tops like the characters in the 1971...

A nanogenerator made from inexpensive materials harvests mechanical energy and produces enough power to charge personal electronics. The phenomenon that causes a painful shock when you touch metal after dragging your shoes on the carpet could someday be harnessed to charge personal electronics. Researchers at Georgia Tech have created a device that takes advantage of static electricity to convert movement—like a phone bouncing around in your pocket—into enough power to charge a cell phone battery. It is the first demonstration that these kinds of materials have enough oomph to power personal electronics. Excess energy produced when you walk, fidget, or...

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A new study by R.L. Polk & Co. shows that the overall percentage of hybrids sold into the new vehicle market has fallen from 2.9 percent to 2.4 percent over the past three years. Moreover, approximately two-thirds of hybrid owners who returned to the market in 2011 did not buy another hybrid. "Intuitively, you would expect the numbers to be higher, given how many hybrid vehicles are available in the market place today," Brad Smith, director of Polk's loyalty management practice, told us. Polk's study revealed that only 35 percent of hybrid owners chose to purchase a hybrid again when...

A team of Stanford and Canadian Light Source researchers have developed an ultrafast rechargeable battery from non-toxic materials. This new rechargeable battery uses nanostructures to update a century-old idea: the nickel-iron bat-tery. Those early batteries, developed by Thomas Edison in 1901 to power electric cars, have been out of favour for a while. In addition to taking a long time to recharge, they just weren’t as powerful as other sources. There are, however, compelling reasons to improve the batteries’ efficiency. “Nickel-iron batteries are attractive because they are cheap and, relative to other battery materials like lithium, they are not very...

A spray-on battery could revolutionise technology - allowing for slimmer gadgets, and household gizmos with built-in power supplies. The lithium-ion battery, which can be painted on to virtually every surface, works by 'spraying on' the chemical layers which form a battery. The new battery could make solar gadgets practical by building up their storage, without hefty long-life batteries building up their bulk. It has already been tested on bathroom panels, producing a steady 2.4 volts and being recharged by a solar cell, says Nature's Scientific Reports. Hailed as a 'paradigm changer' by creators at Rice University the technology could one...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - A Florida teenager was convicted Tuesday of aggravated battery in a horrific 2009 attack on a middle school classmate who was drenched in rubbing alcohol and set on fire. Matthew "Zeke" Bent was accused of orchestrating the attack on Michael Brewer and charged with second-degree murder. The six jurors, who deliberated for just over a day, had the option of finding him guilty of a lesser offense.

Based on this morning's quarterly earnings call, the financial numbers are pointing in the wrong direction for lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems, a company founded 10 years ago based on technology developed at an MIT lab. A123 posted a net loss of $125 million, $40 million more than it lost in the previous quarter. It only brought in $11 million in revenue, down from $40 million in the previous quarter and $18 million a year ago. Meanwhile, its cash is dwindling, down from $187 million at the end of last year to $113 million at the end of the first...

For more than a decade, scientists have tried to improve lithium-based batteries by replacing the graphite in one terminal with silicon, which can store 10 times more charge. But after just a few charge/discharge cycles, the silicon structure would crack and crumble, rendering the battery useless. Now a team led by materials scientist Yi Cui of Stanford and SLAC has found a solution: a cleverly designed double-walled nanostructure that lasts more than 6,000 cycles, far more than needed by electric vehicles or mobile electronics. “This is a very exciting development toward our goal of creating smaller, lighter and longer-lasting batteries...

One of the auto industry's most closely guarded secrets, the enormous cost of batteries for electric cars, has spilled out. Speaking at a forum on green technology, Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally indicated battery packs for the company's Focus electric car costs between $12,000 and $15,000 apiece. "When you move into an all-electric vehicle, the battery size moves up to around 23 kilowatt hours, [and] it weighs around 600 to 700 pounds," Mulally said at Fortune magazine's Brainstorm Green conference in California. "They're around $12,000 to $15,000 [a battery]" for a type of car that normally sells for about...

SEATTLE - A 16-year-old boy from West Seattle says he was held hostage and beaten for hours, all because of the color of his skin. Shane McClellan says two men kicked and whipped him at gunpoint - and told him they singled him out because he is white. Tim McClellan, Shane's father, says he barely recognized his son after the brutal assault. "I didn't know if he was alive or dead," Tim McClellan said. The incident happened as Shane McClellan was walking home from a birthday party at a friend's house Tuesday around 2 a.m. Shane says two men called...

Scientists in Hong Kong have reported, in ArXiv, their experiments to make a graphene battery that they say generates an electrical current by drawing on the ambient thermal energy in the solution in which it is immersed. Researchers led by Zihan Xu of the Department of Applied Physics and Materials Research Centre at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, attached silver and gold electrodes to a graphene sheet, typically 7 mm x 7 mm in area, mounted on a silicon substrate. The assembly was then immersed in a saturated solution of copper chloride (CuCl2), and was found to produce an electrical...

Envia has figured out how “to improve energy density at the anode and cathode and store more lithium.” In short, he claims to have doubled energy density and halved the cost of lithium-ion batteries. And he says that his breakthrough isn’t theoretical—packs are already built on an automotive scale and are being tested by automakers around the world. It’s impossible to verify all that, and Kapadia won’t tell me which automakers he’s working with, though GM is presumably one of them. Specifically, Envia says it has reached an energy density of 400-watt-hours per kilogram in auto-grade lithium-ion cells, and achieved...

With the auto industry pining for a battery breakthrough to lower electric vehicle costs, Envia Systems has some interesting performance data to share. The five-year-old company today is expected to disclose technical details of its batteries which executives say could lead to cutting EV battery pack prices in half in three or four years. Envia Systems' batteries are being evaluated by a number of automakers, including its largest investor General Motors, according to CEO Atul Kapadia. Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57384864-76/startup-envia-battery-promises-to-slash-ev-costs/#ixzz1ncFoCgDL

PROVIDENCE, RI, January 30, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street movement threw condoms on Catholic schoolgirls, refused to allow a Catholic priest to give a closing prayer, and shouted down a pro-life speaker at a Rhode Island right to life rally on Thursday, according to its organizer. The event marked the third time protesters associated with the movement have disrupted a pro-life meeting in a week. About two-dozen members of Occupy Providence hiked from Burnside Park to the 39th Annual Pro-Life State House Rally organized by the Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee on Thursday. Protesters...

2011 saw huge advances in solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, and these advancements will continue into 2012. In fact 2012 could be the year that renewable energy sources start to seriously compete with traditional fossil fuels, at least that is the hope in the battle to reduce carbon emissions and our dependence on dwindling oil stocks. However a major problem with renewable energy sources is that they can rarely provide consistent power levels, due to a myriad of factors outside of human control. Eric Wesoff, an industry analyst with Greentech Media, explains that, “A wind farm only works...