Cutting Edge

A new project from General Motors will examine ways that Chevy Volt batteries could get a second life helping provide renewable energy.

Joining forces with power grid supplier ABB Group, GM will study whether it can reuse batteries that formerly powered Volt electric cars to store energy created by wind and solar power generators. The goal is to find cost-effective and creative ways to improve the efficiency of the country's electrical grid, the automaker said today in a statement. The Volt, priced at $41,000 before a federal tax credit, is set to launch later this year.

Specifically, the … Read more

Switzerland's Solar Impulse is ramping up for its next flight--this one designed to see how well it plays with other aircraft.

With weather conditions expected to be favorable, Solar Impulse co-founder and pilot Andre Borschberg will fly the solar plane from its home base in Payerne, Switzerland, tomorrow between 8 and 11 a.m. Central European Summer Time and land at Geneva between 12:30 and 1 p.m.

After Borschberg and fellow Solar Impulse founder Bertrand Piccard speak with the media and invited guests for a special information session, Borschberg will pilot the plane back home to Payerne … Read more

A new organization led by major CEOs is hoping to make the U.S. more competitive around the world by putting the focus on education.

Announced by President Obama yesterday as part of his "Educate to Innovate" campaign, Change the Equation is a nonprofit group whose goal is to improve education in the key areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Founded by former Intel Chairman Craig Barrett and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns among other chief executives, and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation, the group's membership includes 100 key industry … Read more

New tests of carbon nanotubes--those tiny cylinders expected to revolutionize medicine, electronics, warfare, and more--reveal that, ounce-for-ounce, they are 117 times stronger than steel and 30 times stronger than Kevlar used in bicycle tires and bulletproof vests.

The nanotubes, roughly 50,000 of which add up to the width of an average strand of human hair, are already known for their strength. But this latest research, led by Stephen Cronin, electrical engineering assistant professor at the University of Southern California, tested individual carbon nanotubes of various lengths and widths by applying what is being rather unscientifically described as "… Read more

Boeing has won an $89 million government contract to build and fly an unmanned solar-powered plane that can--eventually--stay aloft continuously for up to five years. Yes, that's five years.

The defense contractor will develop the SolarEagle aircraft for the Vulture II program run by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA. Scheduled to get off the ground for its first demo flight in 2014, the plane will likely serve as an electronic sensor and military communications platform. But it could eventually turn into a less expensive alternative to communications and reconnaissance satellites.

"SolarEagle … Read more

A new database and software, called ChIP Enrichment Analysis, or ChEA, is set to revolutionize how researchers identify drug targets and biomarkers, developers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York reported in today's issue of Bioinformatics.

The team says that until ChEA was developed, no centralized database integrated results from, for instance, ChIP-seq and ChIP-chip experiments (these are used to identify how "transcription factor" proteins might regulate all genes in humans and mice). Now this new computational method should help streamline how scientists analyze these gene expression experiments.

"Our program allows researchers to … Read more

Space Adventures, the company that brokered eight private flights to the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft, is working with Boeing to launch wealthy space tourists and other non-NASA fliers aboard a capsule under development by the U.S. aerospace giant, officials announced Wednesday.

The Boeing CST-100 capsule, being designed to launch atop Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rockets, Boeing's Delta 4, or the SpaceX Falcon 9, is intended to carry NASA and European Space Agency astronauts to and from the International Space Station under a NASA initiative to encourage development of private-sector spacecraft.

Under a separate memorandum of … Read more

Fancy a ride to the International Space Station? Boeing will offer space tourism flights in low Earth orbit aboard its Crew Space Transportation-100 (CST-100) spacecraft, expected to be operational by 2015, the company said Wednesday.

Boeing says it has agreed to market the flights through Space Adventures, which has already flown seven private individuals to the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Extra seats on the CST-100 will be available to private individuals, companies and nongovernmental organizations.

The CST-100 can carry seven people on missions up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) above the Earth's surface. It will deploy … Read more

Four veteran astronauts were named Tuesday to train for a rescue flight aboard the shuttle Atlantis if the crew of NASA's final currently planned mission, scheduled for launch in February, gets stranded in orbit. If not, and if Congress approves funding, NASA hopes to launch the crew for real next June on a final flight to deliver spare parts and supplies to the International Space Station.

But it is not yet clear when differences between the House and Senate versions of NASA's fiscal year 2011 budget will be resolved or when a decision will be made about whether … Read more