Green tech

No, it's not some kind of futuristic crossbow, though we would certainly understand if you thought it was. This weird-looking contraption is the "Loopwing Wind Turbine," a wind-powered energy source designed for home use and scheduled for official introduction at Japan's Eco-Products 2006 Exhibition. Treehugger says the device's wing design operates with "low vibration" but notes that the specs are vague--"43 percent power performance at optimum wind speeds," whatever that means. Still, we're reasonably sure it has more guts than the recently discovered wind-operated lamp.

Mascoma, a start-up developing ways to convert wood chips to ethanol, has said that it intends to build initial production plants in New York and other spots in the northeast U.S.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company on Wednesday announced a partnership with Tamarack Energy which will work with Mascona to site and develop the plants. It raised a second round of $30 million in funding earlier this month.

Mascoma is designing microbes and production techniques for making what is called cellulosic ethanol, a fuel made from woody substances like wood chips or grasses.

Corn-based ethanol is already being manufactured … Read more

No, these aren't the X-ray specs offered in comic books. Researchers at Northrop-Grumman are developing a technology that purportedly will enable small cameras to look through clothing and other materials, according to a report in EE Times.

It is being designed for security officials so they can detect weapons or other items at airports. This technology, known as passive millimeter-wave (PMMW) technology, can also peer through clouds.

Northrup will discuss the technology at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco in February. The ISSCC is one of the premier events in the semiconductor world.

Past conference highlights … Read more

Researchers at Rice University have found that carbon nanotubes will pass through the bloodstream of animals in lab tests, an early indication that nanotubes might one day be used to deliver medicine.

In the tests, the researchers found that the nanotubes injected into lab animals mostly ended up in the liver within 24 hours, with a few samples ending up in the kidneys.

"We sampled tissues from a dozen organs, and found significant amounts of nanotubes only in the liver," Bruce Weisman, a professor of chemistry, said in prepared statement. "The liver naturally removes drugs or compounds … Read more

One small step for man, one giant leap for video chat. On November 28, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Reiter will converse with space enthusiasts, live via the Web, from the International Space Station some 250 miles above Earth.

Reiter is now in the closing stages of the Astrolab Mission, Europe's first long-duration mission to the International Space Station.

Tuesday's chat--which is being organized at ESA's European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, in partnership with German Internet service provider T-Online--will let German-speaking space fans get firsthand information from Reiter as he flies over Russia at a speed … Read more

Researchers at MIT and Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers in Germany have come up with a plastic that can assume three different shapes when different levels of heat are applied. At room temperature, for instance, a plastic tube might have a diameter of 4.5 millimeters.

Heat it to 40 degrees Celsius and it might go 6.8 centimeters. Heat it again to 60 Celsius and it might contract to a size between the two other diameters. You could also get plastic sheets that form shapes at one elevated temperature and then anchor themselves at a higher temp. The … Read more

The Blu-ray people face a big problem: those blue lasers are a pain to make.

Shimei Semiconductor has developed a blue LED grown on a silicon substrate, according to EE Times. Now, blue LEDs are grown on a sapphire substrate.

The prototype LED emits 450-nanometer wavelength blue light.

Shimei says it plans to start popping samples out for manufacturers in April. It is preparing production lines capable of churning out three million of these a month. Shimei will also examine the possibility of producing red and green LEDs with their technology.

General Motors later this month will take the wraps off an unusual hybrid car in which the gas motor serves as a generator to produce electricity.

The company, which is facing tough competition from Toyota and Honda, will unfurl the car at the Los Angeles Auto Show later this month, according to the L.A. Times.

The car essentially starts out running on electric power. The gas engine then serves as a generator to recharge the battery. One problem with electric cars, particularly the fated EV1 from GM, is that they can't go too far without battery charges. The … Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif.--You can't do it all yourself, so cell phone giant Nokia has opened a second university lablet. This one's here in Palo Alto, down the street from Stanford University.

The lablet, similar to one located near MIT, will essentially serve as an incubation center where Nokia researchers can collaborate with academics and students at Stanford. Nokia will also likely use the university as a market research facility; right next door you have a few thousand people in the 18-25 demographic for testing purposes. (Foothill Junior College is nearby too, but it doesn't have the … Read more