Applied Physics

One thing that would make the cultural transition to cleaner fuels easier would be gasoline that works with current engine technology. Reporting in Chemistry & Sustainability, Energy & Materials, a group of researchers have made a breakthrough in the development of this "green gasoline" - a liquid identical to standard gasoline yet created from sustainable biomass sources like switchgrass and poplar trees. It may be five to 10 years before green gasoline arrives at the pump or finds its way into a fighter jet but the breakthrough by George Huber of the University of Massachusetts-…

You may never have heard of the Perkins high-speed diesel engine but the system is still used in numerous buses, taxis, ambulances, fire engines and ships of today. Autobiographical notes written by the Lancashire inventor of the engine have been recovered from a garage in Manchester after lying forgotten for 25 years. University of Manchester historian Dr. Yaakov Wise -- who made the discovery -- says the Charles Chapman manuscript gives a unique insight into that 1932 "world beater." Dr Wise, who worked at the legendary Perkins Engines where Chapman was based was given the document in 1983…

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $65 million grant to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) to develop Kraken, a state of the art supercomputer. Kraken will enhance the computational power of the TeraGrid, the world's largest, most powerful and comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research. "Like the gargantuan sea monsters Kraken, which inspired the naming of this supercomputer, the possibilities in scientific and engineering advances it enables are enormous, limited only by the confines of human imagination and vision beyond the…

CALGARY, Canada, April 2 /PRNewswire/ -- First Calgary Petroleums Ltd. ("the Company", "FCP", "First Calgary") reminds all shareholders to protect their investment and vote only the BLUE proxy in favour of First Calgary's current management team, board of directors, strategy and growth plans. We recommend shareholders vote early on April 3, 2008 so that their proxies are counted prior to First Calgary's April 4, 2008, 10:00 a.m. (MDT) proxy cut-off. Visit http://www.fcpl.ca for more information. The board of directors of First Calgary has a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best…

LAS VEGAS, April 1 /PRNewswire/ -- - Company Combines Smartphone Design Expertise and Manufacturing Muscle, Showcasing New Devices with High-End Features and Mass Consumer Appeal Velocity Mobile, a collaboration between one of the world's largest notebook computer manufacturers and a team of veteran wireless designers and engineers, today announced that it is showcasing its first Microsoft Windows Mobile phones at CTIA Wireless 2008. With an emphasis on ease-of-use, sleek and attractive design, and high-end features, Velocity Mobile aims to shift the way people view and use smartphones,…

VIENNA, Austria, April 1 /PRNewswire/ -- - Erwin Fritsch Appointed as CEO The supervisory Board of ATB Austria Antriebstechnik AG (ISIN AT0000617832) has approved the introduction of a new organisational structure and related changes on the Management Board. In the interests of organisational clarity, each of the factories and brands in the ATB Group will come under one of two core businesses - Project Motors and Industrial Motors. At the same time all shared services (e.g. Finance and Accounting, and Controlling) will be centralised and run on a group-wide basis, so as to exploit the…

Researchers at the University of Rochester have digitally reproduced music in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3 file - a a 20-second clarinet solo encoded in less than a single kilobyte. The achievement, announced today at the International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing held in Las Vegas, is not yet a flawless reproduction of an original performance, but the researchers say it's getting close. "This is essentially a human-scale system of reproducing music," says Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-creator of the…

Plants, crops and trees naturally absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) during photosynthesis and then pump surplus carbon through their roots into the earth around them. In most soils, this carbon can escape back to the atmosphere or enters groundwater. Knowing this, a team from Newcastle University aims to design soils that can remove carbon from the atmosphere, permanently and cost-effectively using soils containing calcium-bearing silicates. Calcium silicates are minerals that occur naturally in many different rocks and also in artificial materials such as concrete. The team believe…

NYKÖPING, Sweden, March 31 /PRNewswire/ -- The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has selected the UK Nuclear Waste Management Limited (UK NWM) as successful bidder for the management of the UK Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR). Studsvik has a 15 per cent share in the consortium. The contract is signed today and effective as of tomorrow. One element of the contract commissions the consortium to develop a national Low Level Waste Strategy. This opens the way for large scale treatment of UK low level waste including the safe recycling of large amounts of low-level metallic waste. Multimedia…

CALGARY, Canada, March 28 /PRNewswire/ -- First Calgary Petroleums Ltd. ("FCP", "the Company") today announced that ISS/RiskMetrics and Glass Lewis, two leading independent proxy advisory firms, have rejected dissident shareholder proposals to oust Richard Anderson, President and CEO of First Calgary Petroleums. Furthermore, both advisory firms have supported the FCP slate of directors. Gar Emerson, Chairman of First Calgary Petroleums, said, "We are pleased with ISS and Glass Lewis' recommendation that shareholders vote in favour of FCP's management team and against Waterford Finance…