You are browsing the archives of 2008 December.

A new breed of piezoelectric generators for roads, railways and airline runways.

Some people think the road to tomorrow’s most practical alternative energy source will be embedded with piezoelectric crystals capable of converting the mechanical strain of on-road vehicles into electrical current or voltage. Haim Abramovich, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, is one of these thinkers. Testing piezoelectrics in roads Abramovich is the CEO and cofounder of Innowattech, a privately-held Technion spin-off established to develop and market what Innowattech’s website describes as “a new breed of piezoelectric generators.” Abramovich says these devices- called Innowattech Piezo Electric Generators or “IPEGs” - can harvest mechanical energy created by changes in weight, motion, vibration and temperature, and convert it to electrical current. Innowattech claims to be the first firm to demonstrate industrial-scale piezoelectric solutions and vows its IPEGs can use piezoelectric principles to “harvest” energy from traffic moving across roads, railways and airline runways. The firm has created three different versions of IPEGs specifically for this purpose (see diagram above). In January 2009, the firm’s roadway IPEG will be put to the test on a 100-meter strip of four-lane highway in northern Israel. Innowattech claims the roadway, embedded with a network of IPEGs installed just below its surface, will generate up to 400 kilowatts of power that can be transferred to the public grid or used locally for special projects like lighting. Piezoelectrics vs. solar and wind According to Innowattech, IPEGs offer these advantages over other “green” alternative energy sources:

●    IPEGs are easy and inexpensive to install. Embedded between a road’s layers, they are mounted with electronic cards to store traffic-generated energy. The system is usually covered with a layer of asphalt, but concrete or composite concrete and asphalt can also be used. Because systems can be installed when new roads are laid or when regular maintenance work is performed on existing surfaces, installation costs are substantially less than those incurred with either wind or solar systems, Innowattech says.

●    IPEGs do not require the development and dedication of vast new areas of public space.

●    IPEGs can be used anywhere there’s heavy vehicle traffic and are not restricted to specific climates, weather, time of day or geographic areas.

●    Once installed, IPEGs require little or no maintenance.

●    Specially programmed IPEGs have the ability to make roads “smart,” enabling real-time reports to be generated on the number, weight, frequency and distances between the vehicles using the road.

Innowattech has competition. In December, the East Japan Railway Co. began testing piezoelectric “devices” installed in front of ticket windows at select train stations in Japan. Activated by the footsteps of people buying train tickets, the EJRC’s devices are expected to produce 1,400 kilowatts of power - sufficient to feed all the lights and displays in the station, the EJRC says. Tests are slated to continue through February 2009.

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Recently we noted that Steven Chu, a real scientist and experienced administrator, has been selected to run the Department of Energy. This week, we got a chance to talk with American Ceramic Society president John Kaniuk, who offered his opinion:

“Steven Chu is an admirable choice to lead DOE. As the former director of the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the recipient of a Nobel Prize in physics, he is a highly regarded research scientist and much respected by academic researchers and scientists alike. “Just as importantly, Chu has also shown an ability to find a common ground with industry, working with companies like BP to develop alternative energy sources and public-private research and funding opportunities. His ability to navigate and produce results in both worlds – the world of science-academic research and the commercial-industrial world – make him a public official that ACerS membership – comprised of individuals from the same worlds – can very much relate to.”

John Holdren

The incoming administration in the past few days has made several other announcements related to science. Physicist John Holdren has been selected to serve as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Holdren is a professor and director of the program on Science, Technology and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and is the director and president of the Woods Hole Research Center

Jane Lubchenco

Harold Varmus

Holdren, along with Harold Varmus and Eric Lander will serve as co-chairs of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Varmus won a Noble Prize for his cancer research and was director of the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton administration. Lander is the founding director of the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard, and has played an important role in mapping the human genome.

Eric Lander

Finally, Obama recruited Jane Lubchenco to be the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Lubchenco is an environmental scientist and ecologist and a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Jain delves into glass science at Tuskegee University.

To encourage more African-Americans to adopt science and engineering careers, the NSF-funded International Materials Institute for New Functionality in Glass at Lehigh University is commencing an outreach program at Tuskegee University in Alabama, where the student body is predominantly black.

Disparity calls for action “African-Americans make up 13 percent of America’s population but hold just four percent of the academic positions in science and engineering, according to a NSF study,” says IMI’s director and principal researcher, Himanshu Jain. Jain and Carlo G. Pantano, IMI’s co-principal investigator, say the IMI sees this disparity as a “call for action.” Responding to that call, both researchers recently spent two weekends teaching a short course on glass science and engineering at Tuskegee. Jain, a Lehigh professor of materials science and engineering, and Pantano, a professor of materials science and engineering and director of the Materials Research Center at Penn State, say Tuskegee students and faculty responded enthusiastically to this first endeavor. Initially, Jain and Pantano planned to present their lectures as part of an existing physics course at Tuskegee. But, because students from so many different departments expressed interest in attending, sign-ups far surpassed attendance limitations.

Course contents As a result, the professors decided to offer an entirely independent short course. Lectures were divided into two parts and given on two successive Fridays and Saturdays. Jain taught nine one-hour lectures the first weekend, and Pantano followed by teaching eight sessions the second week. Associate professors from Tuskaegee’s physics department - Prakash C. Sharma and Akshaya Kumar - finally chose student attendees based on grades and statements of interest. In the end, 15 undergraduate and graduate students in physics, aerospace science and engineering, chemical engineering and mathematics, and from the Center for Advanced Materials, were selected to enroll. Lectures were supplemented with demonstrations and videos as Jain and Pantano introduced Tuskegee students to fundamentals and applications of structure, properties, processing and the manufacturing of glass. One of the course highlights was a series of hands-on demonstrations developed at IMI and using one form of glass - hard candy made of sucrose, water and corn syrup - as a paradigm for the better-known form of “window” glass made of soda, lime and silicate. Also popular was a video on the art and science of glassblowing, which helped students relate glass science to the visual and practical effects of viscosity and colorants.

Response encouraging “The students who attended the course were highly motivated and interested in learning the subject,” Jain says. “Many had stereotypical ideas about glass but were happily surprised by its numerous attributes, advantages and applications in advanced technology - in spite of its being one of the oldest man-made materials.”For their part, the students gave the course excellent ratings. Jain concluded that the short course succeeded in generating interest in glass science and engineering, and would like to see it applied to other branches of science as well. Jain, Pantano and the Tuskegee faculty are planning to turn the lectures into a regular course to be taught through live lectures and distance learning. The partnership between Tuskegee and IMI also promises to enhance research into glass science through an ongoing collaboration between Kumar and Hassan Moawad, an IMI visiting scientist from the University of Alexandria in Egypt. In addition, many Tuskegee students expressed interest in taking part in NSF’s Research Experience for Undergraduates programs at Lehigh and PSU. “Our partnership has opened doors for attracting bright African-American students to Penn State and Lehigh to pursue careers in science and engineering,” says Jain. “Once word gets around, I hope we have a steady flow of these excellent students. The resources of IMI will ensure that they gain the international experience that is becoming increasingly important with the globalization of science and technology.”

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This is from a series of really excellent videos about each of the elements in the periodic table. The series is being led by Brady Haran from the University of Nottingham. No - Brady isn’t the one with the wild hair. The one with the hair is Martyn Poliakoff, a chemistry professor at the university. Haran is primarily a videographer who works closely with the University, and recently received recognition for another award-winning series and website, Test Tube, that documents the ups and downs of being a scientist.

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Sometime in the near future, a visit to the dentist for teeth cleaning may involve putting such a fine polish on your choppers that harmful bacteria slide off before they can do harm. A recent study in the Journal of Dental Research shows that ultrafine polishing with silica nanoparticles may lead to a big leap in cavity and oral disease prevention. Researchers Igor Sokolov and Ravi M. Gaikwad at the Clarkson University Center for Advanced Materials Processing (Potsdam, New York) have been able to show that these nanoabrasives allow teeth to become “slippery,” allowing for the bacteria to be removed before damage to the enamel occurs. Simple rinsing may do the job. The approach uses techniques developed in the semiconductor industry (chemical mechanical planarization). Silica particles have been used for tooth polishing in the past, but at much large sizes. polishing with nanosized particles has not been reported. The researchers hypothesized that such polishing may protect tooth surfaces against the damage caused by cariogenic bacteria, because the bacteria can be removed easily from such polished surfaces. The Clarkson researchers’ findings were published in the October issue of the Journal of Dental Research, the dentistry journal with the top worldwide scientific impact index. Sokolov is a professor of physics, chemical and biomolecular science, and director of Clarkson’s Nanoengineering and Biotechnology Laboratories Center. This is one of the first research projects performed in the recently established NABLAB. Gaikwad is a graduate student in physics.

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