Tag Archives: future
FUTUREWATCH: Solar Cells Made From Carbon
Stanford University researchers have built a solar cell made completely from carbon, which will make solar much cheaper to manufacture and easy to install. It would be painted onto a roof as a coating, giving it the ”potential to deliver high performance at a low cost,” says chemical engineering Professor Zhenan Bao. It could also be painted on [...]
In Focus: The Smart Highway
Designers and urban planners around the world are constantly looking for ways to connect citizens to the skyscrapers, restaurants and museums around them. Vast amounts of money are spent designing parks, boutique retail spaces and condominiums. So how come our roads don’t get that kind of attention? That was the kind of question running through [...]
FUTUREWATCH: Self-Healing Concrete
Researchers at Delft Technical University in the Netherlands have developed a bacterial additive for concrete, the most widely used building material in the world, which could dramatically extend the life of concrete-framed buildings, and thereby save billions. Cracking, or ‘spalling’ in traditional concrete (caused by the freeze/thaw effect of rainwater expanding and contracting inside hairline [...]
FUTUREWATCH: Nissan’s Steer-by-Wire Car
Using software-controlled electrical wires to control the tires, Nissan’s prototype steer-by-wire car could be in main dealer showrooms as early as next year. The system effectively removes the need for mechanically linked steering as it sends an electronic signal to a computer module that then directs the movement of the wheels in response. The system [...]
The California Canopy House by Michael Jantzen
The California Canopy House was designed to embrace Southern California’s sunny temperate climate. As a result, the structure is primarily made of a series of large, overlaping, curved and slotted canopies. Thesecanopies shade the majority of the enclosed portion of the house. They, along with fence-like extentions of theenclosed portion of the house, form shaded [...]
Lanai: Future Solar Eco Lab
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison purchased close to 98 percent of the 141 square-mile Hawaiian island of Lanai for $500 million four months ago from billionaire David Murdock in June for an undisclosed price. On the island, Ellison owns “two resorts and golf courses, a variety of commercial and residential structures and vast acres of [...]
The Future of Epitaxy Technology
Epitaxy is one of the fundamental processes used to make all kinds of semiconductor devices: LEDs, power electronics and, of course, microchips. The term epitaxy means, roughly speaking, “adding order” and that’s exactly what it does. Hot gases react on a surface to “grow” a layer that precisely matches the underlying crystal structure. Epitaxy was [...]
Mexican President Felipe Calderon Inaugurates Large Scale Solar Plant
Mexican President Felipe Calderon inaugurated a large-scale solar power plant that he touted as the region’s first, a pilot facility in the northwestern state of Baja California that features 4,000 photovoltaic panels and 1 MW in generating capacity. The current president of Mexico Felipe Calderon Hinojosa has inaugurated a large-scale solar power plant in the [...]
CleanTech PatentEdge Launches First Online Green Patent Database
For over a year now I’ve had the pleasure of using a beta version of CleanTech PatentEdge, a powerful database of green technology patents and published applications. Now you can use it too! IP Checkups, the Berkeley patent analytics firm that created CleanTech PatentEdge, recently announced the official launch of the database. The only comprehensive online [...]