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Renowned architect William McDonough, a leader in the movement for sustainable architecture and product design, spoke at Vanderbilt University Sept. 26, 2006.

"As the fastest growing energy technology in the world, solar energy continues to account for more and more of the world's energy supply. Currently, most commercial photovoltaic power comes from bulk semiconductor materials. But in the past few years, scientists have been investigating how semiconductor nanostructures can increase the efficiency of solar cells and the newer field of solar fuels. "

A new process that simultaneously combines the light and heat of solar radiation to generate electricity could offer more than double the efficiency of existing solar cell technology, say the engineers who discovered it and proved that it works. The process, called 'photon enhanced thermionic emission," or PETE, could reduce the costs of solar energy production enough for it to compete with oil as an energy source.

Given a few simple rules and some major computing power, animated characters adopt a human-like gait - and soon robots could too

Helium balloons are known for pulling things up, but they could be a great way to drag defunct satellites down to Earth, a team of engineers says.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 6, 2010) - Plants are good at doing what scientists and engineers have been struggling to do for decades: converting sunlight into stored energy, and doing so reliably day after day, year after year. Now some MIT scientists have succeeded in mimicking a key aspect of that process.

Last night, Google announced that it has agreed to invest heavily in a proposed $5 billion, 350-mile power transmission backbone that would provide infrastructure for future offshore wind projects along the mid-Atlantic coast. But even with the backing of one of the world's mightiest tech companies, various financial investment firms, and many important officials in government, the transmission line is going to be something of a technological trick.

China and other nations are beginning to challenge U.S. supercomputing leadership, something that has implications for every aspect of U.S. leadership in science and product development, say experts.

In a world of rapidly accelerating change, from iPads to eBooks to genetic mapping to MagLev trains, we can't help but wonder if technology is our servant or our master, and whether it is taking us in a healthy direction as a society.* What forces drive the steady march of innovation?* How can we build environments in our schools, our businesses, and in our private lives that encourage the creation of new ideas--ideas that build on the new technology platforms in socially responsible ways?Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson look at where technology is taking us. One of the co-founders of Wired Magazine, Kelly's new book, What Technology Wants, makes the argument that technology as a whole is not a jumble of wires and metal but a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies. Johnson's new book, Where Good Ideas Come From, explains why certain spaces, from 18th-century coffeehouses to the World Wide Web, have an uncanny talent for encouraging innovative thinking.

If NASA ever gets a clear directive for interplanetary exploration, a new Hundred-Year Starship could be their version of the Mayflower. And like the first pilgrims, Martian explorers might set sail with the knowledge they would never return home.

During the past 15 years, the World Wide Web has created remarkable new methods for harnessing the creativity of people in groups, and in the process has created powerful business models that are reshaping our economy. As the Web has undermined old media and software companies, it has demonstrated the enormous power of a new approach, often referred to as Web 2.0. In a nutshell: the secret to the success of bellwethers like Google, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter is that each of these sites, in its own way, has learned to harness the power of its users to add value to-no, more than that, to co-create-its offerings.

The U.S. Department of Interior approved on Monday a permit for Solar Millennium, LLC to build the largest solar energy project in the world - four  plants at the cost of one billion dollars each - in southern California. The project is expected to generate up to 1,000 Megawatts of energy, enough electricity to annually power more than 300,000 single-family homes, more than doubling the solar electricity production capacity of the U.S. Once constructed, the Blythe facility will reduce CO2 emissions by nearly one million short tons per year, or the equivalent of removing more than 145,000 cars from the road. Additionally, because the facility is "dry-cooled," it will use 90 percent less water than a traditional "wet-cooled" solar facility of this size. The Blythe facility will also help California take a major step toward achieving its goal of having one third of the state's power come from renewable sources by the year 2020. The entire Blythe Solar Power Project will generate a total of more than 7,500 jobs, including 1,000 direct jobs during the construction period, and thousands of additional indirect jobs in the community and throughout the supply chain. When the 1,000 MW facility is fully operational it will create more than 220 permanent jobs. Adapted from materials provided by Solar Millennium, LLC.

Scientists have developed a new type of holographic telepresence that allows the projection of a three-dimensional, moving image without the need for special eyewear such as 3-D glasses or other auxiliary devices. The technology is likely to take applications ranging from telemedicine, advertising, 

The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program, which flourished for nearly three decades under the aegis of Princeton University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, has completed its experimental agenda of studying the interaction of human consciousness with sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes, and developing complementary theoretical models to enable better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality.

Professor Andre Geim, who along with his colleague Professor Kostya Novoselov won the 2010 Nobel Prize for graphene - the world's thinnest material, has now modified it to make fluorographene - a one-molecule-thick material chemically similar to Teflon. Fluorographene is fully-fluorinated graphene and is basically a two-dimensional version of Teflon, showing similar properties including chemical inertness and thermal stability.

"Brazil has done more than any other country over the past five years to cut global warming emissions by dramatically reducing its deforestation. Destroying tropical forests is responsible for about 15 percent of global warming pollution, and Brazil had been the biggest source of deforestation pollution. Its reduction is a stunning turnaround.

Large quantities of antihydrogen atoms were first made at CERN eight years ago by two other teams. Although they made antimatter they couldn't store it, because the anti-atoms touched the ordinary-matter walls of the experiments within millionths of a second after forming and were instantly annihilated-completely destroyed by conversion to energy and other particles.

This method may potentially be suitable for designing novel light sources resembling lasers that work in the x-ray range. Among other applications, they might allow building more powerful computer chips.

The layout of the interior spaces and the distribution of opaque and glazed cladding surfaces are optimized for minimal energy loss, maximum natural daylighting, and selective solar gain. This energy optimization combined with extensive building integration of photovoltaic and solar thermal systems allow the house to produce a net annual surplus of energy, more than is needed to supply the house and its electric vehicles.

This site charts the development of electronic musical instruments from 1870 to 1990. For the purposes of this project electronic musical instruments are defined as instruments that synthesise sounds from an electronic source.