Companies Look To Promise Of High-Altitude Wind Power.

The AP (5/30, Lindsay) reports experts such as Cristina Archer, an atmospheric scientist at the California State University in Chico, say "there's 'not a doubt anymore' that high-altitude winds will be tapped for power," but the specifics remain hazy. According to one estimate from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the commercial application of such technology is roughly a decade away. Additionally, above 2,000 feet these power systems would encounter an array of federal air-space regulations which would need to be addressed. "And each turbine concept awaits extensive testing on its reliability, durability and effectiveness," said Fort Felker, director of NREL's National Wind Technology Center, adding that "keeping the turbines operating autonomously over long periods in changing weather may be the biggest obstacle." The AP notes that researchers are developing varying approaches to address this problem.

Commercial Spaceflight Could Offer Opportunities For Researchers.

Popular Science (5/18, Boyle) reports, "The transition away from the shuttle is promising for experimenters, as a new generation of privately built and operated spacecraft is poised to take over." With commercial spaceflight, "scientists will no longer need to apply to NASA to do their experiments" or "join the astronaut corps to get to space in person, a paradigm shift that could make cutting-edge research much more widely accessible." However, "scientists at universities and private research institutions could face some new legal questions," as "tourist spacecraft companies could conceivably craft contracts that ensure a royalty-free license to any new discoveries made on their ships" as well as "royalties if the owner derived any revenues from the invention."

Electrode Improvements Could Put Ultracapacitors On Par With Batteries.

Technology Review (5/4) reports that Nanotune, a California-based startup company, says it "has developed a way to make electrodes that results in ultracapacitors with five to seven times as much storage capacity as conventional ones." This, the company says, would put its ultracapacitors roughly on par with batteries, with the potential to eventually exceed the energy storage of batteries. In tests using different types of electrolytes, the company says it has achieved storage levels of 20-35 watt-hours per kilogram. "At 40 watt-hours per kilogram, the ultracapacitors would be an improvement over the batteries used in some hybrid vehicles," Technology Review notes.

ORNL Research Discovers More Efficient Way To Produce Solar Power.

William Pentland writes for Forbes (5/3), the according to research carried out by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, "solar cells designed with 3-D nanocone tips can boost the light-to-power conversion efficiency of photovoltaics by a whopping 80%." Pentland says that "the new technology solves significant performance problems resulting from the inefficient migration of electron charges associated with solar photons." Jun Xu, a member of ORNL's Chemical Sciences Division, said of the research, "The important concept behind our invention is that the nanocone shape generates a high electric field in the vicinity of the tip junction, effectively separating, injecting and collecting minority carriers, resulting in a higher efficiency than that of a conventional planar cell made with the same materials."

Pittsburgh To Host Engineering Sustainability Conference.

WDUQ-FM Pittsburgh (4/11, Nootbaar) reported on its website, "More than 300 academicians, engineers, architects and designers will gather in Pittsburgh over the next two days to showcase innovations in sustainable design at the 2011 Engineering Sustainability conference." The event will focus on how sustainable design incorporates a wide array of disciplines, organizers said. "When you talk about sustainability and you are an architect or an urban planner you are looking at large link scale things; communities, cities and regions, and then we have folks that are looking at sustainability from a molecular design perspective or from a device perspective," said Eric Beckman, co-director at the University of Pittsburgh's Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation. "Beckman says the event also looks at sustainable engineering at all stages of development."