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Something for the ACT! It costs just ~$5000.

nice indeed! just have to find a good project for it ...

Here we explore the electrochemical performance of pyrolyzed skins from the species A. bisporus, also known as the Portobello mushroom, as free-standing, binder-free, and current collector-free Li-ion battery anodes. At temperatures above 900 °C, the biomass-derived carbon nanoribbon-like architectures undergo unique processes to become hierarchically porous. Basically they burned a Portobello mushroom and used it as a battery... now thats an multidisciplinary advanced concept

The material the team used in these initial proof-of-concept experiments did make use of one biological component - chloroplasts, the light-harnessing components within plant cells, which the researchers obtained from spinach leaves.

Amazing engineering feat: 1 nm transistor. Besides we can argue Moore law is still OK, dennard scaling is gone and with it the performance boost, as alluded subtly. Link article: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6308/99.full

An international team of scientists led by Liang-shi Li at Indiana University has achieved a new milestone in the quest to recycle carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere into carbon-neutral fuels and others materials.

for our new office?

" The ultimate goal of the Shanghai Institute: to build a molten-salt reactor that could replace the 1970s-era technology in today's nuclear power plants and help wean China off the coal that fouls the air of Shanghai and Beijing, ushering in an era of cheap, abundant, zero-carbon energy."

"... they are looking to use the nanotree structure to mimic photosynthesis in a device that not only harnesses the power of the sun to produce hydrogen fuel, but also captures CO2 from the atmosphere to reduce carbon emissions at the same time."

Two independent teams have made ultrathin, cabon-based membranes with extraordinary properties that could be used in a range of applications, from water filtration to petroleum processing.

Aerographite. This post was originally published on Mashable. German scientists have developed a sturdy material called Aerographite made mostly of air, opening up huge implications for the future development of electronics. The jet-black, non-transparent porous carbon material - which was created by scientists at Kiel University and Hamburg University of Technology - was detailed in the July edition of scientific journal Advanced Materials .

A wide scale 8 year experiment in China on combating desertification seems to have been successful. Instead of using cyanobacteria blooms in the sea, the tested method proposes to spray them on the boundaries of desert/farmland every few days, so that the carbon they capture stays on the ground. It is useful in fixing the organic material against wind erosion only complementary to planting hardy grasses. Very fast result, nevertheless. Could be classified as a geoengineering activity.

130 km2 as next step will be quite an area

DeSimone and his team have been working with PFPE for years, and during their research, the crew found that another polymer electrolyte, polyethylen glycol or PEG, and PFPE could combine to dissolve salt, and potentially function as an electrolyte. When his team attached the PFPE to dimethyl carbonate, an electrolyte traditionally used in batteries, the resulting PFPE-DMC was a polymer that could move a battery's ions with insane levels of efficiency while remaining stable.

photos here. http://www.likecool.com/World_s_first_carbon_nanotube_computer--Tech--Gear.html

Some sort of organic carbon has been detected by the sampling of Curiosity; the contamination source was isolated and the signal persists. The scientists suggest as a source meteorites transporting interstellar matter, or maybe some sort of ancient life whose biomass production only survived cosmic radiation as it was buried underground. a big deal: six relevant articles were published simultaneously online: http://www.sciencemag.org/site/extra/curiosity/index.xhtml?utm_content=&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=Science&utm_source=shortener

Mars Society, which advocates for manned exploration of the Red Planet, has released its requirements for the six volunteers who will be expected to spend 12 months at the society's Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Canada's Devon Island, which is about 1,450 kilometers from the North Pole, beginning in July 2014. Crewmembers will spend most of their time doing science, studying things such as carbon release from the permafrost and human performance in extreme conditions. If they want to go outside their base, they'll have to wear a spacesuit. If something breaks, they're the ones who are going to have to fix it.

CliSAP: Mr. Held, several hundred researchers worked for several years on preparing the recently published third part of the Assessment Report, without pay and on top of their normal duties. The result was a work over two thousand pages long. Was it worth it? An overview of the uncertainties when it comes to estimating investments in low carbon. Maybe there is room for computational management projects in there?

With the first ever production of synthesized "solar" jet fuel, the EU-funded SOLAR-JET project has successfully demonstrated the entire production chain for renewable kerosene obtained directly from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide (CO2), therein potentially revolutionizing the future of aviation. This process has also the potential to produce any other type of fuel for transport applications, such as diesel, gasoline or pure hydrogen in a more sustainable way.

Waves of electrons have been bent backward in a sheet of graphene, allowing physicists to focus electrons the way a lens focuses light. Electrons coursing through a sheet of carbon atoms exhibited negative refraction, bending at angles not seen in nature. By exploiting this unusual bending, the researchers created a lenslike device to focus the electrons to a tiny point. The new technique could help physicists learn how to manipulate electrons in the tight confines of miniaturized electronic devices, where the particles often behave like waves.

Dissolving in sodium hydroxide vs freeze-drying... which one for you?