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Jiaozhou Bay Bridge Opens in China
China opened the Jiaozhou Bay bridge opened to traffic on October 16. The bridge is 26.4 miles long and ranks among the world’s longest. It links China's eastern port city of Qingdao to Huangdao island.
BYOD Advances with Cautious Steps
Companies continue to wrestle with how best to manage technology and productivity, the Internet of Things and related bring-your-own-device (BYOD) issues.
Carbon Nanotube Light Source Could Cut Power Consumption
Scientists from Tohoku University in Japan have developed a type of energy-efficient flat light source based on carbon nanotubes with power consumption of around 0.1 Watt for every hour's operation, about a hundred times lower than that of an LED.
In-Wheel Motors: The 19th Century Technology That's Thoroughly Modern
In-wheel motors are nothing new. The earliest U.S. patent dates back to 1884 and detailed an in-wheel electric motor for locomotives. The concept was further developed by Ferdinand Porsche in 1900 when he introduced a wheel hub motor for an electric car dubbed the Lohner Porsche.
New DOE Rules to Focus on Energy Use in Federal Buildings
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) says it is pursuing a suite of initiatives to strengthen federal energy management through increased focus on measuring energy use in federal buildings and energy efficient building design.
Smart Lithium-ion Battery Warns of Fire Hazard
Stanford University scientists have developed a "smart" lithium-ion battery that gives warning before it overheats and ignite. The technology is designed for conventional lithium-ion batteries.
World Bank Launches Global Infrastructure Initiative
The World Bank launched the Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF) on October 9 in an effort to bring together governments, development institutions and private investors to form public-private partnerships for $1 trillion in infrastructure needs over the next six years.
Cheniere LNG Project Receives FERC Staff OK on Environment
Staff at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a final environmental impact statement (EIS) on October 8 for the Cheniere liquefied natural gas export terminal in Texas and concluded that impacts would be avoided or minimized and would not be significant.
Google Leaps Into Quantum Computing
As the technology of computing has evolved, the limitations of “classical” computers have grown more apparent. Many problems are so unwieldy they would take several times the age of the universe to solve. It’s becoming increasingly clear that more processing isn’t enough.
NIST Quantum Probe Enhances Electric Field Measurements
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Michigan have demonstrated a technique based on the quantum properties of atoms that directly links measurements of electric field strength to the International System of Units (SI).
Solar PV Installations Lifted by Demand in China and the U.S.
Global photovoltaic (PV) solar installations will rise to 45.4 gigawatts (GW) in 2014, with 32% of this total, or 14.4 GW, coming in the fourth quarter, according to IHS Technology.
Addressing the Stranded Light Hydrocarbon Problem
Exploitation of shale formations has produced an abundance of natural gas and natural gas liquids that are significantly lowering the economic value of ethane.
Can Thermoelectric Generators Compete Against Solar Photovoltaics?
Long before James Watt perfected his steam engine in 1776, people had been trying to convert heat into usable power. In today’s electricity-powered world, that generally is achieved by using steam or gas-fired turbines and attached generators.
Energy Department’s APRA-E Launches Two New Programs
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced two new programs.
Three Trends Shaping the Human-Machine Interface
As manufacturing and extraction industries worldwide become more complex and increasingly automated, the efficacy of human machine interfaces (HMI), the portals through which operators exchange data with networks, becomes more significant.
Volvo Debuts 450-hp Four-cylinder Engine
Swedish automaker Volvo introduced its High Performance Drive-E concept powertrain on September 7. The small two-liter, four-cylinder engine produces 450 horsepower (hp) with the help of three turbochargers. The engine represents an improvement on the original Drive-E engine revealed last year,
Imaging Innovation Could Detect Acoustically Invisible Cracks
The next generation of aircraft could be thinner and lighter thanks to the development of a new imaging technique that could detect damage previously invisible to acoustic imaging systems.
ISA Instrumentation Symposium Issues Call for Abstracts
The Program Committee of the 61st International Instrumentation Symposium has issued a Call for Papers inviting authors, innovators, thought leaders and other professionals in the instrumentation field to submit abstracts for presentation at the conference.
Energy Storage for Flexible Electronic Devices
Researchers have found that crumpling a piece of graphene "paper" — a material formed by bonding together layers of the two-dimensional form of carbon — can yield new properties that could be useful for creating stretchable supercapacitors to store energy for flexible electronic devices.
Utility Plans to Add More Renewable Energy, Retire Coal Units
U.S. electric utility Ameren Missouri filed a 20-year plan that would retire 1,800 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired power plants and add 400 MW of wind power, 45 MW of solar, 28 MW of hydroelectric and 5 MW of landfill gas.