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." »

As physician-guided robots routinely operate on patients at most major hospitals, the next generation robot could eliminate a surprising element from that scenario -- the doctor.Feasibility studies conducted by Duke University bioengineers have demonstrated that a robot -- without any human assistance -- can locate a man-made, or phantom, lesion in simulated human organs, guide a device to the lesion and take multiple samples during a single session. The researchers believe that as the technology is further developed, autonomous robots could some day perform many more simple surgical tasks."Earlier this year we demonstrated that a robot directed by artificial intelligence can on its own locate simulated calcifications and cysts in simulated breast tissue with high repeatability and accuracy," said Kaicheng Liang, a former student in the laboratory of Stephen Smith, director of the Duke University Ultrasound Transducer Group at the Pratt School of Engineering and senior member of the research team. "Now we have shown that the robot can sample up to eight different spots in simulated human prostate tissue." »

Electrons are negatively charged elementary particles. They form the shells around atoms and ions. This or something similar is what you will find in text books. Soon, however, this information may have to be supplemented.The reason is that many physicists believe that electrons have a permanent electric dipole moment. An electric dipole moment is usually created when positive and negative charges are spatially separated. Similar to the north and south poles of a magnet, there are two electric poles. In the case of electrons, the situation is much more complicated because electrons should not actually have any spatial dimension.Despite this, an entire range of physical theories that go beyond the standard model of elementary particle physics are based upon the existence of dipole moment. These theories in turn would explain how the universe in the form that we know it could have been created in the first place. According to prevailing theories, the big bang some 13.7 billion years ago would have had to have created just as much matter as antimatter. Since both obliterate each other, nothing would have remained. In reality, however, more matter than antimatter was actually created. An electric dipole moment of the electron could explain this imbalance.Up to now, nobody has successfully proven the existence of this assumed tiny dipole moment. Existing methods are simply not sensitive enough. A small piece of ceramic is set to change this soon. »

By imaging the cell walls of a zinnia leaf down to the nanometer scale, energy researchers have a better idea about how to turn plants into biofuels.In a paper appearing online in the journal Plant Physiology, a team from Lawrence Livermore led by Michael Thelen, in collaboration with researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, has used four different imaging techniques to systematically drill down deep into the cells of Zinnia elegans.Zinnia is a common garden annual plant with solitary daisy like flower heads on long stems and sandpapery, lace shaped leaves. The leaves of seedlings provide a rich source of single cells that are dark green with chloroplasts and can be cultured in liquid for several days at a time. During the culturing process, the cells change in shape to resemble the tube-like cells that carry water from roots to leaves. Known as xylem, these cells hold the bulk of cellulose and lignin in plants, which are both major targets of recent biofuel research.Using different microscopy methods, the team was able to visualize single cells in detail, cellular substructures, fine-scale organization of the cell wall, and even chemical composition of single zinnia cells, indicating that they contain an abundance of lignocellulose. »

Because they can remove carbon dioxide from the flue gases of coal-burning facilities such as power plants, solid materials containing amines are being extensively studied as part of potential CO2 sequestration programs designed to reduce the impact of the greenhouse gas.But although these adsorbent materials do a good job of trapping the carbon dioxide, commonly-used techniques for separating the CO2 from the amine materials -- thereby regenerating them for re-use -- seem unlikely to be suitable for high-volume industrial applications.Now, researchers have demonstrated a relatively simple regeneration technique that could utilize waste steam generated by many facilities that burn fossil fuels. This steam-stripping technique could produce concentrated carbon dioxide ready for sequestration in the ocean or deep-earth locations -- while readying the amine materials for further use."We have demonstrated an approach to developing a practical adsorption process for capturing carbon dioxide and then releasing it in a form suitable for sequestration," said Christopher Jones, a professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.The research was reported online June 23, 2010 in the early view version of the journal ChemSusChem. The work was supported by New York-based Global Thermostat, LLC., a company that is developing and commercializing technology for the direct capture of carbon dioxide from the air.s designed to reduce the impact of the greenhouse gas. »

While prospectors and geologists have been successful in finding diamonds through diligent searching, one University of Houston professor and his team's work could help improve the odds by focusing future searches in particular areas.Kevin Burke, professor of geology and tectonics at UH, and his fellow researchers describe these findings in a paper appearing July 15 in Nature, the weekly scientific research journal.Burke's team found that kimberlites, which are rare volcanic rocks that include diamonds, owe their origin to occasional pulses of hot mantle rock -- called mantle plumes -- that have risen through the entire thickness of the Earth's mantle from deep down next to the core, or innermost part, of the planet. This core/mantle boundary lies at a depth of about 2,000 miles. While the idea there might be mantle plumes rising from the core/mantle boundary was first suggested about 40 years ago, it is only within the past few years that evidence of plumes coming all the way from this boundary to the Earth's surface has been clearly demonstrated by Burke's group."Our approach is new, because it combines observations of the Earth's deep interior from seismology with evidence of how tectonic plates have moved about on the Earth's surface during the past 500 million years," Burke said. "I have been interested in mantle plumes from the core/mantle boundary since they were first hypothesized in 1971. About 10 years ago, I realized there might be a link between the seismically defined structure at the core/mantle boundary and volcanic rocks at the Earth's surface that had been suggested to be linked to mantle plumes. I immediately realized how the existence of that link could be tested, and it was then that I came in contact with Trond Torsvik in Norway, who proved to be uniquely qualified to carry out the required tests." »

The movement of long chain polymers through nanopores is a key part of many biological processes, including the transport of RNA, DNA, and proteins. New research reported in The Journal of Chemical Physics, which is published by the American Institute of Physics, describes an improved theoretical model for this type of motion.The new model addresses both cylindrical pores and tapering pores that simulate the α-hemolysin membrane channel. "Current models do not take into account the motion of the polymer inside the pore," says author Anatoly Kolomeisky of Rice University. "The leading monomer can move back and forth many times before it finally crosses the line to the other side of the membrane. Not accounting for this behavior introduces errors into predictions."By improving the boundary conditions for polymer movement inside the pore, researchers demonstrated a significant increase in total time in the pore compared to earlier models. In modeling a tapering pore, they confirmed that translocation occurs faster when the polymer enters the wide side of the pore.Possible technological applications include advances in DNA sequencing and the development of biosensors using membranes. "To design an effective sensor, it is essential to understand what you are observing and how the molecule reaches the detector," says Kolomeisky. »