Power and Electrical Engineering

Engineers at Purdue University have developed a technique that could result in more accurate “ultra-wideband” radio signals for ground-penetrating radar, radio communications and imaging systems designed to see through walls.

The researchers first create laser pulses with specific “shapes,” which precisely characterize the changing intensity of light from the beginning to end of each pulse. The pulses are then converted into electrical signals for various applications.

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Your car’s engine loses 70 percent of its energy as waste heat — but Australian and Oregon scientists may have figured out an efficient way not only to recover that lost energy, but to at long last capture the power-producing potential of geothermal heat.

The trick is to convert it to electricity — and a promising way to accomplish this, the researchers have discovered, involves using extremely thin nanowires to potentially more than double the efficiency of thermoelectri

The newest Fraunhofer developments in hydrogen technology can be seen at the Hydrogen + Fuel Cells Stand at the Hanover Trade Fair. The Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Sintered Materials IKTS will display durable SOFC stacks with a power of 1 kWel. The fuel cells are intended for application in distributed power supplies and can be operated with either fossil fuels or biogas. In addition, an extremely thin Ag/Zn micro-battery for integration in sensor cards will be presented.

Scientists have been able to follow the flow of excitation energy in both time and space in a molecular complex using a new technique called two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy. While holding great promise for a broad range of applications, this technique has already been used to make a surprise finding about the process of photosynthesis. The technique was developed by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Univ

University of California scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory working with a researcher from Chonnam National University in South Korea have found that magnetic fluctuations appear to be responsible for superconductivity in a compound called plutonium-cobalt-pentagallium (PuCoGa5). The discovery of this “unconventional superconductivity” may lead scientists to a whole new class of superconducting materials and toward the goal of eventually synthesizing “room-temperature” superconductors.

As gasoline prices climb ever higher and the U.S. Senate backs oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the possibility of a hydrogen economy — where drivers tank up on clean-burning hydrogen fuel — gleams more brightly. But two Northwestern University engineers stress the need to get more out of the fuel we are already using.

“A hydrogen economy is not a perfectly clean system,” said Scott A. Barnett, professor of materials science and engineering. “You