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A team of researchers working at Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois, has found a way to dramatically reduce friction between two macroscopic scale surfaces—to near zero. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes how they accidently discovered the method and why they believe it might be useful for real world applications. As most people are aware, friction causes energy loss and wear and tear on mechanical parts—lubricants such as oil are used to help reduce friction and to dissipate heat, but scientists would really like to find a way to prevent it from happening in the...

Spiders sprayed with water containing carbon nanotubes and graphene flakes have produced the toughest fibers ever measured, say materials scientists. Spider silk is one of the more extraordinary materials known to science. The protein fiber, spun by spiders to make webs, is stronger than almost anything that humans can make. The dragline silk spiders use to make a web’s outer rim and spokes is amazing stuff. It matches high-grade alloy steel for tensile strength but is about a sixth as dense. It is also highly ductile, sometimes capable of stretching to five times its length. This combination of strength and...

A team of researchers working in Italy has found that simply spraying a spider with a carbon nanotube solution can cause the spider to spin stronger webs. In their paper they have uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, the team describes their experiments with both graphene and nanotube solutions and what happened when they sprayed it on ordinary spiders. As the researchers note, while silk production using silkworms has been quite successful, doing the same to harvest silk from spiders has not, (because of their territorial traits, the complex nature of the silk they make and their cannibalistic tendencies) which...

New carbon emissions standards that were proposed last year for coal-fired power plants in the United States would substantially improve human health and prevent more than 3,000 premature deaths per year, according to a new study. The study, led by researchers at Syracuse and Harvard Universities, used modeling to predict the effect on human health of changes to national carbon standards for power plants. Researchers calculated that the changes in the E.P.A. rule could prevent 3,500 premature deaths a year and more than 1,000 heart attacks and hospitalizations from air-pollution-related illness. Charles T. Driscoll, a professor of environmental systems engineering...

Engineers at the University of Maryland have created a battery that is made entirely out of one material, which can both move electricity and store it. "To my knowledge, there has never been any similar work reported," said Dr. Kang Xu of the Army Research Laboratory, a researcher only peripherally related to the study. "It could lead to revolutionary progress in area of solid state batteries." Envision an Oreo cookie. Most batteries have at either end a layer of material for the electrodes like the chocolate cookies to help move ions though the creamy frosting – the electrolyte. Chunsheng Wang,...

Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order to bring down emissions to 40% below 1990 levels, in the next 15 years. The US state was already one of the most ambitious in its previous targets and has forced companies to pay for their carbon pollution. Mr Brown said the new target must be met for the sake of future generations. He called the plan "the most aggressive benchmark enacted by any government in North America to reduce dangerous carbon emissions". There were few details about how he intends to meet this target, but the governor has previously talked about increasing...

The Vatican has gathered religious leaders, scientists, politicians and businessmen under one roof to agree that acting on climate change is a "moral and religious imperative for humanity". This was the essence of a declaration signed by the attendees of a one-day meeting hosted yesterday by the Holy See. It outlines a vision for the future of the planet, including the adoption of low-carbon energy systems, a shift of investment away from the military and towards sustainable development, and the transfer of money from the rich to the poor. The meeting was organised by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG2Xo571v8Q Nope. That's the answer. Oh sure, there are other words said. But the answer is nope. Just nope. Nope nope nope. It's the question that is the thing. No, not Mark Knoller's question, although kudos to him for asking it. The question is "do the elites who demand Americans give up creature comforts in the name of Global Scaring put the same inconveniences and restrictions on themselves? Nope. Do politicians and millionaire busybodies and celebrity "scientists" do without, go without, and forego activities that increase their carbon footprint in order to preserve the earth from certain destruction, as they...

Better for states not to comply with the EPA’s plans than to go along and absolve the feds of accountability for the mess. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) set off a firestorm recently when he advised states not to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. Yet that advice isn’t as radical as his detractors make it sound. As a state public utilities commissioner who deals with the effects of federal regulations on a regular basis, I also recommend that states not comply. ... While the short-term effects may be painful, the long-term consequences of submitting...

The Washington Post Energy and Environment Obama to visit Florida Everglades on Earth Day — to talk about climate change Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google Plus Share via Email Share on WhatsappShare on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Tumblr Resize Text Print Article Comments 4 By Chris Mooney April 18 at 6:20 AM A bird flies over the sensitive ecological landscape of the Everglades National Park, home to many endangered and rare plants on March 16, 2015 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Saturday morning, President Obama gave a speech on climate change...

A new study debunks the theory that melting permafrost in the Arctic region will release a “carbon bomb” that will cause catastrophic global warming. “The data from our team’s syntheses don’t support the permafrost carbon bomb view,” A. David McGuire, a climate scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, said in a statement. News reports have hyped up the study saying melting Arctic permafrost could release lots of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere — only adding to worries that global warming will get out of control....

American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) is preparing to close six coal-fired power plants in four states on May 31 to comply with stricter federal emissions standards. Columbus, Ohio-based AEP recently gave notices of the closures to the states and to workers at the Philip Sporn, Kammer and Kanawha Valley plants in West Virginia, the Muskingum River Plant in Ohio, the Tanners Creek Plant in Indiana and the Glen Lyn Plant in Virginia. The notices are required by the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. More than 250 workers will be affected by the plant shutdowns, which were announced by...

Next they'll be banning singing in the 5-minute-or-less-shower. Singing in the shower blots out the sounds of jet engines overhead transporting carbon footprint Sasquatch to their next jet stop Overlooked in the Barack and Michelle Obama same-day separate flights to L.A.: Their indelible Sasquatch carbon footprints. “President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama flew to Los Angeles on Thursday for TV appearances but took separate flights, collectively costing taxpayers at least $1 million. (FoxNews. March 15, 2015) “The president went to appear live on comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show on ABC, while the first lady went to Warner Bros.’ studios...

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival is happening now in Austin, Texas. Running from March 9 to 22, it’s a massive film, interactive and music festival that is nearly 20 years old. The festival brings together designers, developers, investors, entrepreneurs and politicians for panels and discussions about technology and innovation. For the third time in the last few years, Al Gore, founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, spoke at the festival on Friday. Naturally, his interactive discussion focused on addressing the climate crisis. The former vice president focused on the need to “punish climate-change deniers, saying politicians should...

Buckybomb shows potential power of nanoscale explosives Mar 05, 2015 by Lisa Zyga Enlarge Molecular configuration of an exploding buckybomb. Credit: ACS (Phys.org)—Scientists have simulated the explosion of a modified buckminsterfullerene molecule (C60), better known as a buckyball, and shown that the reaction produces a tremendous increase in temperature and pressure within a fraction of a second. The nanoscale explosive, which the scientists nickname a "buckybomb," belongs to the emerging field of high-energy nanomaterials that could have a variety of military and industrial applications. The researchers, Vitaly V. Chaban, Eudes Eterno Fileti, and Oleg V. Prezhdo at the University of...

A short paper recently released by the Heritage Foundation takes a look at the expected manufacturing job losses as a result of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan. Predictably, they are significant. Using a social cost of carbon (SCC) equal to $37 per ton, the Heritage Energy Model (HEM) was used to determine the economic impact such climate regulations would have on the U.S. economy down to the state and, most interestingly, even to a congressional district level. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Rust Belt, home to what remains of the country’s once dominant industrial sector, can expect to see the largest losses...

Global Warming is real and is definitely caused by human-produced carbon . . . pencil lead, that is....adjustments are the dominant factor in the global warming trend....The obvious intent of adjustments is to create the illusion of a dramatic global warming signal in recent times.

7000 ft below the city of Decatur, Illinois, population 74,710 people, is a high pressure reservoir which contains 1 million tons of CO2. From the press release: "One of the largest carbon sequestration projects in the U.S., the Illinois Basin – Decatur Project (IBDP) has reached its goal of capturing 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and injecting it deep underground in the Mount Simon Sandstone formation beneath Decatur, Illinois. The project is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of carbon capture and storage. IBDP director Robert Finley talked about the million-ton milestone with News Bureau physical sciences editor Liz...

‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” The Bard was right, and it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that we have reached just such a point. We have a unique opportunity to end the rancorous debate about climate change, a debate that is poisoning the air — the political air, that is — and inhibiting progress on two fronts: progress on addressing the possibility that we are on the road to...