Harnessing darkness for practical use, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a laser power detector coated with the world's darkest material -- a forest of carbon nanotubes that reflects almost no light across the visible and part of the infrared spectrum.NIST will use the new ultra-dark detector, described in a new paper in Nano Letters, to make precision laser power measurements for advanced technologies such as optical communications, laser-based manufacturing, solar energy conversion, and industrial and satellite-borne sensors.Inspired by a 2008 paper by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) on "the darkest man-made material ever," the NIST team used a sparse array of fine nanotubes as a coating for a thermal detector, a device used to measure laser power. A co-author at Stony Brook University in New York grew the nanotube coating. The coating absorbs laser light and converts it to heat, which is registered in pyroelectric material (lithium tantalate in this case). The rise in temperature generates a current, which is measured to determine the power of the laser. The blacker the coating, the more efficiently it absorbs light instead of reflecting it, and the more accurate the measurements. »

Sleek design and ease of use are just two of the main reasons consumers are increasingly attracted to tablets and e-readers. And these devices are only going to get better -- display technology improvements are on the way.Several e-reader products on the market today use electrophoretic displays, in which each pixel consists of microscopic capsules that contain black and white particles moving in opposite directions under the influence of an electric field. A serious drawback to this technology is that the screen image is closer to black-on-gray than black-on-white. Also, the slow switching speed (~1 second) due to the limited velocity of the particles prevents integration of other highly desirable features such as touch commands, animation, and video.Researchers at the University of Cincinnati Nanoelectronics Laboratory are actively pursuing an alternative approach for low-power displays. Their assessment of the future of display technologies appears in the American Institute of Physics' Applied Physics Letters. »

Researchers have taken one more step toward understanding the unique and often unexpected properties of graphene, a two-dimensional carbon material that has attracted interest because of its potential applications in future generations of electronic devices.In the Aug. 8 advance online edition of the journal Nature Physics, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) describe for the first time how the orbits of electrons are distributed spatially by magnetic fields applied to layers of epitaxial graphene.The research team also found that these electron orbits can interact with the substrate on which the graphene is grown, creating energy gaps that affect how electron waves move through the multilayer material. These energy gaps could have implications for the designers of certain graphene-based electronic devices."The regular pattern of energy gaps in the graphene surface creates regions where electron transport is not allowed," said Phillip N. First, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Physics and one of the paper's co-authors. "Electron waves would have to go around these regions, requiring new patterns of electron wave interference. Understanding such interference will be important for bi-layer graphene devices that have been proposed, and may be important for other lattice-matched substrates used to support graphene and graphene devices." »

It was a perfect STORRM. On Tuesday, July 20, NASA and its industry partners Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., successfully demonstrated a new sensor technology that will make it easier and safer for spacecraft to rendezvous and dock to the International Space Station.This new docking navigation system prototype consists of an eye-safe lidar Vision Navigation Sensor, or VNS, a high-definition docking camera, as well as the avionics and flight software. Both sensors will provide real-time three-dimensional images to the crew with a resolution 16 times higher than the current space shuttle sensors. This next generation system also provides data from as far away as three miles -- three times the range of the current shuttle navigation sensor."You are looking at the future of rendezvous and docking right here," said David L. Taylor, president and CEO of Ball Aerospace, as he welcomed dozens of NASA and industry engineers to the demonstration.The hardware will be tested by astronauts aboard STS-134, the last planned shuttle mission, currently scheduled for February 2011, as part of the Sensor Test for Orion Relative Navigation Risk Mitigation (STORRM) Development Test Objective (DTO). On Flight Day 11 of the mission, the shuttle crew will conduct an unprecedented on-orbit maneuver; they will undock from the space station and then re-rendezvous with the station on an Orion-like approach. »

That age-old question, "where did life on Earth start?" now has a new answer. If the life between the mica sheets hypothesis is correct, life would have originated between sheets of mica that were layered like the pages in a book.The so-called "life between the sheets" mica hypothesis was developed by Helen Hansma of the University of California, Santa Barbara, with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). This hypothesis was originally introduced by Hansma at the 2007 annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology, and is now fully described by Hansma in the September 7, 2010 issue of Journal of Theoretical Biology.According to the "life between the sheets" mica hypothesis, structured compartments that commonly form between layers of mica--a common mineral that cleaves into smooth sheets--may have sheltered molecules that were the progenitors to cells. Provided with the right physical and chemical environment in the structured compartments to survive and evolve, the molecules eventually reorganized into cells, while still sheltered between mica sheets. »

Wielding two claws, a motor and a tail that swings like a grandfather clock's pendulum, a small robot named ROCR ("rocker") scrambles up a carpeted, 8-foot wall in just over 15 seconds -- the first such robot designed to climb efficiently and move like human rock climbers or apes swinging through trees."While this robot eventually can be used for inspection, maintenance and surveillance, probably the greatest short-term potential is as a teaching tool or as a really cool toy," says robot developer William Provancher, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Utah.His study on development of the ROCR Oscillating Climbing Robot is set for online publication this month by Transactions on Mechatronics, a journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and American Society of Mechanical Engineers.Provancher and his colleagues wrote that most climbing robots "are intended for maintenance or inspection in environments such as the exteriors of buildings, bridges or dams, storage tanks, nuclear facilities or reconnaissance within buildings."But until now, most climbing robots were designed not with efficiency in mind, only with a more basic goal: not falling off the wall they are climbing."While prior climbing robots have focused on issues such as speed, adhering to the wall, and deciding how and where to move, ROCR is the first to focus on climbing efficiently," Provancher says. »

The searchfor new raw materials for making biodiesel fuel has led scientists to an unlikely farm product -- butter.In a new study in ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, they report that butter could be used as an eco-friendly feedstock, or raw material, for making diesel fuel.Michael Haas and colleagues cite rising global demand for biodiesel, and the desire to expand the feedstock base, as motivating factors for their research. The United States alone has committed to producing 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022, a major increase from the current annual production level of about 11 billion gallons. Most of that was ethanol. Biodiesel production, now approaching 1 billion gallons annually in the U.S., is also slated to increase.As researchers seek additional and affordable feedstocks for biodiesel production, these scientists turned to butter, one billion pounds of which are produced annually. Could surplus, spoiled, or nonfood-grade butter be used to make biodiesel at competitive prices?In an effort to find out, the scientists recovered the fat from a quarter-ton of butter and converted it into the fatty acid esters that constitute biodiesel. They found that the resulting material met all but one of the official test standards for biodiesel. The study concluded that with further purification or by blending with biodiesel from other feedstocks butter biodiesel could add to the supply of biobased fuel for diesel engines. »

In an international first, physicists of the University of Innsbruck, Austria have experimentally observed a quantum phenomenon, where an arbitrarily weak perturbation causes atoms to build an organized structure from an initially unorganized one. The scientific team headed by Hanns-Christoph Nägerl has published a paper about quantum phase transitions in a one dimensional quantum lattice in the scientific journal Nature.With a Bose-Einstein condensate of cesium atoms, scientists at the Institute for Experimental Physics of the University of Innsbruck have created one dimensional structures in an optical lattice of laser light. In these quantum lattices or wires the single atoms are aligned next to each other with laser light preventing them from breaking ranks. Delete using an external magnetic field allows the physicists to tune the interaction between the atoms with high precision and this set-up provides an ideal laboratory system for the investigation of basic physical phenomena. "Interaction effects are much more dramatic in low-dimensional systems than in three dimensional space," explains Hanns-Christoph Nägerl. Thus, these structures are of high interest for physicists. It is difficult to study quantum wires in condensed matter, whereas ultracold quantum gases provide a versatile tunable laboratory system. And these favorable experimental conditions open up new avenues to investigate novel fundamental phenomena in solid-state or condensed matter physics such as quantum phase transitions. »

Nanomaterials are poised for widespread use in the construction industry, where they can offer significant advantages for a variety of applications ranging from making more durable concrete to self-cleaning windows. But widespread use in building materials comes with potential environmental and health risks when those materials are thrown away.Those are the conclusions of a new study published by Rice University engineering researchers this month in ACS Nano, published by the American Chemical Society."The advantages of using nanomaterials in construction are enormous," said study co-author Pedro Alvarez, Rice's George R. Brown Professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "When you consider that 41 percent of all energy use in the U.S. is consumed by commercial and residential buildings, the potential benefits of energy-saving materials alone are vast."But there are reasonable concerns about unintended consequences as well," Alvarez said. "The time for responsible lifecycle engineering of man-made nanomaterials in the construction industry is now, before they are introduced in environmentally relevant concentrations."Alvarez and co-authors Jaesang Lee, a postdoctoral researcher at Rice, and Shaily Mahendra, now an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, note that nanomaterials will likely have a greater impact on the construction industry than any other sector of the economy, after biomedical and electronics applications. They cite dozens of potential applications. For example, nanomaterials can strengthen both steel and concrete, keep dirt from sticking to windows, kill bacteria on hospital walls, make materials fire-resistant, drastically improve the efficiency of solar panels, boost the efficiency of indoor lighting and even allow bridges and buildings to "feel" the cracks, corrosion and stress that will eventually cause structural failures. »

Engineers at the University of Hertfordshire are working on a dual fuel rocket which could provide technology suitable for a rocket for Mars and will have a negative carbon footprint.Eur Ing Ray Wilkinson and MSc student Sathyakumar Sharma from the University of Salford are using their experience of hybrid fuels and Sathyakumar's part-time experience at the Indian Space-Research Organisation to develop a rocket which will be fuelled by a mixture of carbon dioxide (CO2) and aluminium.The rocket will take CO2 and turn it into carbon, which is the opposite of what most existing rockets do.The researchers plan to complete the technology demonstrator by September this year when they should have a rocket motor which uses fine aluminium powder and therefore ignites easily and the decision to mix this with CO2 means that it if it did provide the basis for a rocket suitable for a mission to Mars, it could refuel from the atmosphere on the planet."The idea is that a Mars rocket (not this one) could save a lot of cost and mass by not taking with it the propellants it needs for its return flight. One method of doing this is to use an easily available Martian resource, carbon dioxide, as a propellant, and burn it with aluminium or magnesium powder," said Eur Ing Wilkinson. "However, this is new technology so research needs to be done to prove it will work and to develop it fully. A test has been done in the laboratory already in Purdue University, USA, but we aim to be the first in the world to build a flight-capable motor, and to demonstrate the feasibility with a low-altitude flight (maybe a mile high) of a small rocket." »