Friday, 25 May, 2012

By tweaking the conventional recipe, researchers have sped up electricity movement in a lithium battery by 100X. Want to charge your electric car in minutes or your phone in seconds?

Oils in spent coffee grounds are easily converted into biodiesel — a renewable source of transportation energy. Bottoms up for CofFuel?

Did the arrival of 4,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons of space junk start the formation of organic molecules roughly 4 billion years ago? “Could be,” says a new study from Japan…

Frosty questions: Are some snowflakes identical? How do flakes form, and how does weather affect their shape? How does ice in the atmosphere affect weather and climate? And where does the jet stream fit in this picture?

Plug-in hybrids mean more than just extra spending cash for drivers, though. They could offer a new path through the maze of the electric grid, and help to boost the use of alternative energy.

Could carbon storage help control warming? The oil industry already injects CO2 into deep rocks. Is it possible to capture CO2 from coal plants, and pump it deep underground?

Global warming gets worse. Petroleum grows scarce. Should we start making biofuels bigtime? If so, should we get the ethanol from corn, or from plant wastes?

As missiles get faster, the Navy can’t continue to rely on dumb armor. What can ship designers learn from dirt and beanbags?

The Why Files looks at kinesiology, sports medicine, psychology and some ancient Olympic history, brought to life.

How do volcanoes work (p. 2)? How do we predict them (p. 3)? How do they change the landscape (p. 4)? How does life return after the eruption (p. 6)?