Future of Green Gasoline - Hydrocarbons Replace Ethanol? - Fuel Economy - Popular Mechanics

Future of Green Gasoline - Hydrocarbons Replace Ethanol? - Fuel Economy - Popular Mechanics

Hydrogen, ethanol and even compressed air all have the shrink-wrapped sheen of the bright, green future. But gasoline? At $1 per gallon?

Researchers at UMass Amherst recently published a new method of refining hydrocarbons from cellulose, paving the way to turn wood scraps into gasoline, diesel fuel, Tupperware—anything, essentially, that’s normally refined from petroleum. Many scientists have been working on ways to turn everything from corn stalks to tires into ethanol, sidestepping some of the problems inherent to making fuel from corn and other food products. But ethanol has a number of liabilities, regardless of the source. For instance, it requires automotive engines to be modified and contains less energy than gasoline, driving down fuel economy.

Turning cellulose into gasoline is tricky. Unlike raw crude, which is made up mostly of hydrocarbons to begin with, plant material contains a great deal of oxygen woven into its molecular structure. “Crude oil looks more similar to gasoline than biomass does,” says George Huber, lead author of the new study. “So the challenge is how do you efficiently remove the oxygen and make these compounds that look like gasoline or diesel fuel? And how do you do it in the fewest number of steps and in the most economical way?”

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Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

The winter sun sets in mid-afternoon in Kolobrzeg, Poland, but the early twilight does not deter people from taking their regular outdoor promenade. Bundled up in parkas with fur-trimmed hoods, strolling hand in mittened hand along the edge of the Baltic Sea, off-season tourists from Germany stop openmouthed when they see a tall, well-built, nearly naked man running up and down the sand.

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Chocolate bar shown to lower cholesterol

Chocolate bar shown to lower cholesterol

“Eating two CocoaVia dark chocolate bars a day not only lowered cholesterol, it had the unexpected effect of also lowering systolic blood pressure,” said John Erdman, a U. of I. professor of food science and human nutrition.

The study, funded in part by Mars Inc., the company that makes the bars, was published in this month’s Journal of Nutrition.

Erdman attributes the drop in cholesterol numbers (total cholesterol by 2 percent and LDL or “bad” cholesterol by 5.3 percent) to the plant sterols that have been added to the bar and the drop in blood pressure to the flavanols found in dark chocolate.

Erdman says that some people will assume the study is flawed because of Mars’ funding role.

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Second Family of High-Temperature Superconductors Discovered -- Cho 2008 (417): 1 -- ScienceNOW

Second Family of High-Temperature Superconductors Discovered -- Cho 2008 (417): 1 -- ScienceNOW

Researchers in Japan and China have discovered a new family of high-temperature superconductors--materials that conduct electricity without any resistance at inexplicably high temperatures. Physicists around the world are hailing the discovery of the new iron-and-arsenic compounds as a major advance, as the only other high-temperature superconductors are the copper-and-oxygen compounds, or cuprates, that were discovered in 1986. Those older materials netted a Nobel and ignited a firestorm of research, but physicists still don't agree about how they work, leaving high-temperature superconductivity the biggest mystery in condensed matter physics. Some researchers hope the new materials will help solve it.

"It's possible that these materials will provide a cleaner system to work with, and suddenly [the physics of] the cuprates will become clearer," says Hai-Hu Wen, a physicist at the Institute of Physics (IoP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. But Philip Anderson, a theorist at Princeton University and a Nobel Laureate, says that the new superconductors will be more important if they don't work like the old one. "If it's really a new mechanism, God knows where it will go," he says.

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Technology Review: The $100 Genome

Technology Review: The $100 Genome

It currently costs roughly $60,000 to sequence a human genome, and a handful of research groups are hoping to achieve a $1,000 genome within the next three years. But two companies, Complete Genomics and BioNanomatrix, are collaborating to create a novel approach that would sequence your genome for less than the price of a nice pair of jeans--and the technology could read the complete genome in a single workday. "It would have been absolutely impossible to think about this project 10 years ago," says Radoje Drmanac, chief scientific officer at Complete Genomics, which is based in Mountain View, CA.

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Panasonic Develops New Fuel Cell Cogeneration System

Panasonic Develops New Fuel Cell Cogeneration System

Panasonic today announced it has developed a home-use polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) cogeneration system. The cogeneration system features the world's highest power-generating efficiency of up to 39% Lower Heating Value (LHV), durability of 40,000 operation hours and 4,000 start-stop times, and a predicted lifetime of over 10 years.

The company has developed a home-use fuel cell cogeneration system that is planned for early commercialization as a next-generation energy supply system. Based on the results of large-scale field testing conducted between fiscal 2006 and fiscal 2008, a new system has been developed with upgraded energy-saving features and enhanced reliability. Further field testing is scheduled in fiscal 2009 ending March 31, 2009.

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UCLA researchers design nanomachine that kills cancer cells

UCLA researchers design nanomachine that kills cancer cells

Researchers from the Nano Machine Center at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA have developed a novel type of nanomachine that can capture and store anticancer drugs inside tiny pores and release them into cancer cells in response to light. Known as a "nanoimpeller," the device is the first light-powered nanomachine that operates inside a living cell, a development that has strong implications for cancer treatment.

UCLA researchers reported the synthesis and operation of nanoparticles containing nanoimpellers that can deliver anticancer drugs March 31 in the online edition of the nanoscience journal Small.

The study was conducted jointly by Jeffrey Zink, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Fuyu Tamanoi, UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics and director of the signal transduction and therapeutics program at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Tamanoi and Zink are two of the co-directors for the Nano Machine Center for Targeted Delivery and On-Demand Release at the California NanoSystems Institute.

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Technology Review: Micromanaging RNA

Technology Review: Micromanaging RNA

A biopharmaceutical company in Denmark has designed a drug that blocks a specific microRNA strand involved in replicating hepatitis C, as well as in regulating cholesterol. The company, Santaris Pharma, is the first in the world to successfully test the technique in monkeys.

Researchers have recently found that microRNA plays a key part in regulating genetic transcription. MicroRNA are tiny segments of RNA, and while they do not produce proteins like RNA and DNA, they have the ability to bind with messenger RNA, the deliverer of the genetic "instructions" that are required for protein synthesis. Scientists have found that when microRNA block certain messenger RNA, they also prevent genetic orders from being carried out. If these orders are meant to protect the body from disease, preventing their delivery via microRNA may result in a host of disorders, including cancer, cardiovascular and neuro-related disorders, and viruses such as hepatitis C.