Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:10:00 +0000

A new battery prototype has emerged in Japan that turns waste material into electricity.  Sony’s battery is paper-powered and still in the early stages of development, but it may be a new way to charge your cell phone if it is commercialized in the future.  Maybe we’ll finally have a purpose for that stack of [...]

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 17:52:47 +0000

Cool, sexy, and fun are words seldom associated with a home thermostat. Typically it’s turn the dial to the temp you want and forget it. Nest Labs, inventors of the Nest Learning Thermostat have, quite literally, re-engineered the way I think about heating and cooling my home. It’s little surprise that it took some talented [...]

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 18:42:32 +0000

Benedict Arnold has nothing on your average bacteria. Battles between the one-celled organisms rage on all day and all night between different species and individuals. So why did a paper from Nature Publishing Group generate articles calling bacteria “Benedict Arnold”? (The articles in question can be found here.) Before answering that question, I should start [...]

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 19:33:00 +0000

Since this is my first post, I feel I should introduce myself before I dive in. My name is Andy Scarpelli and I’m a third year graduate student in the Interdepartmental Biological Sciences (IBiS) Program here at Northwestern University. I work in a chemical and biological engineering lab, which means I get to experience science [...]

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:25:39 +0000

As much as ten watts of power is dissipated as heat every time someone takes a step.  Mobile devices like phones use between one and fifteen watts.  Sound promising? Nature News reports on developing technology that would make charging your electronics on the go a walk in the park.  Tom Krupenkin and Ashley Taylor, mechanical [...]

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:35:01 +0000

Extensive research has gone into figuring out how to harness hydrogen as a fuel source for cars and homes, and a new discovery has found a way that nature does it.  Nicole Dubilier of the Max Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology led the team of researchers at the Logatchev hydrothermal vent field located 3,000 meters–almost [...]

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:58:35 +0000

The mostly widely used substrate, or support material, for solar cells today is glass.  Now, a new technology developed by a team of researchers at MIT allows solar cells to be printed on inexpensive and readily available substrates, like paper – almost as cheap as printing a photograph.  This ability to print solar cells on [...]

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:58:01 +0000

Given the summer we’ve had here in Chicagoland, many of us are now well versed in power-outage protocol. Flashlight? Check. Extra batteries? Check. Whale oil? Wait—whale oil? What does that have to do with anything? As it turns out, quite a bit. Like I mentioned in my previous post, last week I had the opportunity [...]

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:30:21 +0000

Last week, I had the privilege of attending a few sessions at the Summer Institute on Sustainability and Energy, an eight-day experience for graduate and undergraduate students hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago and supported by a number of other groups and institutions, including the Initiative for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern.  While [...]

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:34:35 +0000

My husband and I have just finalized our trip to Machu Picchu, realizing a dream I have held for quite some time. At the end of August it finally comes true: 10 days in Peru, complete with a four-day trek, hot spring soaks, Amazon River boat rides. Sparkling green mountains, ancient ruins, weaving cultures. Guinea [...]