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In an attempt to mimic the photosynthetic systems found in plants and some bacteria, scientists have taken a step toward developing an artificial light-harvesting system (LHS) that meets one of the crucial requirements for such systems: an approximately 100% energy transfer efficiency. Although high energy transfer efficiency is just one component of the development of a useful artificial LHS, the achievement could lead to clean solar-fuel technology that turns sunlight into chemical fuel.

Going the farthest distance might sound like a foot race. But this past weekend, it meant stretching the boundaries of fuel efficiency as student teams competed in the fifth annual Shell Eco-marathon Americas, a challenge for students to design, build and test fuel-efficient vehicles that travel the farthest distance using the least amount of energy. High school and university students from Canada and the United States competed in the two-day street course challenge in downtown Houston.

In the search for better ways to make more energy-efficient buildings, Leidy Klotz isn't exactly looking for ways to improve the engineering. He's seeking ways to improve the engineer.

"The unique facility looks and behaves like an actual house, and has been built to U.S. Green Building Council LEED Platinum standards-the highest standard for sustainable structures. The two-story, four-bedroom, three-bath Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility incorporates energy-efficient construction and appliances, as well as energy-generating technologies such as solar water heating and solar photovoltaic systems. "

The exploitation and utilization of new energy sources are considered to be among today's major challenges. Solar energy plays a central role, and its direct conversion into chemical energy, for example hydrogen generation by water splitting, is one of its interesting variants. Titanium oxide-based photocatalysis is the presently most efficient, yet little understood conversion process. In cooperation with colleagues from Germany and abroad, scientists of the KIT Institute for Functional Interfaces (IFG) have studied the basic mechanisms of photochemistry by the example of titania and have presented new detailed findings.

In a solar cell, sunlight hits a light-harvesting material, causing it to release electrons that can be harnessed to produce an electric current. The new MIT research, published online this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, is based on findings that carbon nanotubes - microscopic, hollow cylinders of pure carbon - can enhance the efficiency of electron collection from a solar cell's surface.

For many practical applications involving lasers, it's important to be able to control the direction of the laser beams. Just ask Han Solo, or the captain of the Death Star. Researchers from North Carolina State University have come up with a very energy-efficient way of steering laser beams that is precise and relatively inexpensive.

Scientists at Oxford University and The University of Sheffield have demonstrated that natural silks are a thousand times more efficient than common plastics when it comes to forming fibres. 

Lowering energy consumption associated with computer data storage (specifically, cloud computing) and saving millions of dollars are possible now, thanks to new memory technology, a field that researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have been exploring through a four-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded in 2009 titled, "Large: Storage Class Memory Architecture for Energy Efficient Data Centers."

On the other hand, humanity's malignant effect on the environment has accelerated the rate of extinction for plants and animals, which now reaches perhaps 50,000 species a year. But even here there was some good news. We reversed our first man-made global atmospheric crisis by banning chlorofluorocarbons -- by 2015, the Antarctic ozone hole will have shrunk by nearly 400,000 square miles. Stopping climate change has been a slower process. Nonetheless, in 2008, the G-8 did commit to halving carbon emissions by 2050. And a range of technological advances -- from hydrogen fuel cells to compact fluorescent bulbs -- suggests that a low-carbon future need not require surrendering a high quality of life. Technology has done more than improve energy efficiency. Today, there are more than 4 billion mobile-phone subscribers, compared with only 750 million at the decade's start. Cell phones are being used to provide financial services in the Philippines, monitor real-time commodity futures prices in Vietnam, and teach literacy in Niger. And streaming video means that fans can watch cricket even in benighted countries that don't broadcast it -- or upload citizen reports from security crackdowns in Tehran. Perhaps technology also helps account for the striking disconnect between the reality of worldwide progress and the perception of global decline. We're more able than ever to witness the tragedy of millions of our fellow humans on television or online. And, rightly so, we're more outraged than ever that suffering continues in a world of such technological wonder and economic plenty. Nonetheless, if you had to choose a decade in history in which to be alive, the first of the 21st century would undoubtedly be it. More people lived lives of greater freedom, security, longevity, and wealth than ever before. And now, billions of them can tweet the good news. Bring on the 'Teenies.

By taking advantage of the properties of periodic systems, physicists have described how to efficiently time-reverse ultrashort electromagnetic pulses. Since a time-reversed pulse evolves as if time runs backwards, time reversal eliminates any distortions or scattering that occurred at earlier times, regardless of the medium the pulse has propagated through.

A University of Washington project sees a role for programmers to reduce the energy appetite of the ones and zeroes in the code itself. Researchers have created a system, called EnergJ, that reduces energy consumption in simulations by up to 50 percent, and has the potential to cut energy by as much as 90 percent. They will present the research next week in San Jose at the Programming Language Design and Implementation annual meeting.

Investing $40 billion annually in the forest sector is needed for the world to transition into a low carbon, resource-efficient green economy, according to a UN report released here Sunday.

Many energy researchers and environmental advocates are excited about the prospect of gaining more efficient large-scale biofuel production by using large grasses like miscanthus or switchgrass rather than corn. They have investigated yields, land use, economics and more, but one key factor of agriculture has been overlooked: water.

Google recently announced that it will help fund groundbreaking research by computer scientists and economists at Tel Aviv University.  The Blavatnik School of Computer Science is attempting to help computers make better decisions using a term they dubbed "regret." Head of the program Professor Yishay Mansour began this project earlier this year at the International Conference on Learning Theory in Haifa, Israel.  He and the other researchers are working on algorithms that would allow computers to learn from their past failures in an effort to make better predictions.  This is referred to as "minimizing virtual regret" by Mansour. "If the servers and routing systems of the Internet could see and evaluate all the relevant variables in advance, they could more efficiently prioritize server resource requests, load documents and route visitors to an Internet site, for instance," says Mansour.

City buildings create their own microclimates. Ignoring these variations can make life uncomfortable for inhabitants and prevent buildings from achieving true energy efficiency, according to Evyatar Erell, a professor of architecture at Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev."Even when architects design a green building, it may not make the best use of the environment because other buildings get in the way," he said.

Bloomberg's office says the new initiatives include plans to build solar power plants on capped landfills and launch a loan program to help property owners pay for green energy efficiency upgrades.

High-performance nanotech materials arrayed on a flat panel platform demonstrated seven to eight times higher efficiency than previous solar thermoelectric generators, opening up solar-thermal electric power conversion to a broad range of residential and industrial uses, a team of researchers from Boston College and MIT report in the journal Nature Materials.

More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes soil to release the potent greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, new research published in this week's edition of Nature reveals. "This feedback to our changing atmosphere means that nature is not as efficient in slowing global warming as we previously thought," said Dr Kees Jan van Groenigen, Research Fellow at the Botany department at the School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, and lead author of the study.

No less than one third of a car's fuel consumption is spent in overcoming friction, and this friction loss has a direct impact on both fuel consumption and emissions. However, new technology can reduce friction by anything from 10% to 80% in various components of a car, according to a joint study by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in USA. It should thus be possible to reduce car's fuel consumption and emissions by 18% within the next 5 to 10 years and up to 61% within 15 to 25 years.