Nobel Prize In Physics

Nobel Prize In Physics

Three honored for developing fundamental theory that explains why matter persists
Elizabeth K. Wilson

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics pays homage to symmetry breaking, an abstruse but critical theory in physics that explains why matter should have persisted after the Big Bang. Developed in the 1960s and '70s, symmetry breaking also led to predictions about new types of quarks, which are subatomic particles that make up particles such as protons and neutrons.

The prize will be shared by three researchers. Yoichiro Nambu, 87, of the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, will receive half the $1.4 million prize for, in the words of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, "the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics."

The other half of the prize will be shared by Makoto Kobayashi, 64, of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, and Toshihide Maskawa, 68, of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Japan's Kyoto University, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."

Kobayashi, who was reached by phone in Japan during a press conference at the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm announcing the prize, said he was "very glad" to have been honored. "It was a surprise—I did not expect it," he said.

Symmetry breaking is one of the cornerstones of the so-called standard model, which unites theories of matter and three of the four fundamental forces in nature—the electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear forces—professor Lars Bergström, secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said at the conference, which was broadcast over the Web.
The theories also have implications for chemistry, notes Richard L. Hahn, a nuclear chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. "The concepts of symmetries and symmetry breaking are fundamental to our understanding of the universe in which we live and to all of the sciences, chemistry as well as physics," he says. "The eventual creation of the chemical elements in the early stages ... of the universe is also tied to these processes."

The ultimate importance of symmetry breaking is illustrated by the events that occurred after the Big Bang, when a slight imbalance or spontaneous "breaking" of symmetry between matter and antimatter particles allowed what we know as regular matter to establish a predominant presence over antimatter in the universe. If that had not occurred, matter and antimatter would have existed in equal amounts, and the particles would have simply annihilated each other.
"Because of this small breaking...we can sit here," Bergström said.
Source: C&EN

China and India's energy problems

China and India's energy problems

It took some time today. In two long articles, Reuters talk about the future of energy in China, and India's Vice President of the draft speech at the conference are all for energy. Both, the issue of energy efficiency and economic growth, and the amount of energy to the problem have a common point.Reuters coverage of China starts that Beijing suburb east ring road 5 line from the story of the Sinopec gas station has begun. The gas station is unable to supply gasoline to the truck in the raw, and saying go somewhere another. Trucks say, we do not go anywhere, because we can not move without gasoline. At the end of the article, the recent drastic increase in the wholesale of diesel per liter up 5.29 yuan to 6.23 yuan. Then, Sinopec stand has a shorter raw of trucks, because of the impact of energy policy, it is said.China is blessed with natural resources is likely, if per capita it is not. China’s coal is the world's third largest reserve, and, in 2007, the China)s production was accounted for 40 percent of the world. However, if used as it does, coal would be disappearing in 80 years, oil in 15 years, and natural gas in 30 years. China’s energy consumption per GDP is three time an eight times of the United States and Japan. That has been we are paying attention.The Chinese government has a plan the current energy per 10,000 yuan GDP, equivalent to about 1,460 dollars , to be go down to a 20 percent cut in 2010.

That means , in 2005, TCE was the equivalent of 1.22 tons of coal and will be 0.98 tons in 2010. In the 11th Five-Year Energy Development Plan, for 2005-2010, the growth of energy consumption reduced to 3.5 percent and, energy consumption in 2010 will be to 2,446,000,000 tons of coal equivalent.Vice-President of India has touched on this point, but it is not match with our sense. According to him, Indian to earn a dollar GDP1 with 0.16kg of oil equivalent using electricity, China's response 0.23kg, the United States 0.22kg, and the world's average of 0.21kg. The loss of power problem, it is important for India. It is now 36 percent loss in India and it is worse than the world average of 28 percent.Both of the two articles have, on renewable energy, a lot of character. Both the development of hydropower is considered as a major pillar of renewable energy. China's nuclear power is also still planning on going to be room for expansion.

Both have a point of how to curb coal-fired to be saved. It is going to say with a common point.For bio-fuels, Vice President of India has an important point. First, solar and bio-fuel dependence on the land, his saying “land intensity”, are his concern. For example, cover with solar power in Japan and 250 million people are said to be sacrificed. Shikoku Island in Japan is comparable to the population and land on this point. Also, for a scattered collection of bio-fuels, Google saying is that the intelligence network of transmission lines is required and it may be arevolution.ReferencePhilippines●081004A Philippines, Manila BulletinERC pegs WESM prices at NPC TOU rates for Oct.

billinghttp://www.mb.com.ph/BSNS20081004136998.htmlLaos●081004B Laos, .alertnet.orgLaos dams threaten homes, incomes and fish, say campaignershttp://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/20316/2008/09/3-151757-1.htmIndia●081004C India, pib.nic.inVice President Inaugurates ‘India Energy Conference’http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=43332China●081004D China, china.org.cnChina's road to energy securityhttp://www.china.org.cn/business/news/2008-10/04/content_16564426.htm

SOURCE

Mixed predictions on hydrogen car

Monday, 6 October 2008

US carmaker Ford says the mass production of hydrogen-fuelled cars is unlikely for at least 20 years, a forecast at odds with other carmakers targeting an earlier transition.Cars running on hydrogen fuel cells are seen as the eventual replacement for fossil fuel cars, with gasoline-eclectic hybrids and fully electric “plug in” cars seen as transitional technologies along the way because of range limitations.Hydrogen fuel cells create electricity under a chemical process using hydrogen and oxygen. The only emission from the process is water vapour and only small amounts of hydrogen are needed to go along way. While the technology has already produced prototypes and plans by some carmakers for commercial models by 2010, the cost of hardware and the lack of a distribution network for the refuelling of cars is seen as a major barrier.“I have not seen a viable, affordable plan to convert an economy to hydrogen, it could well take until 2030,'' Greg Frenette, Ford's lead hydrogen engineer, told Bloomberg.General Motors and Honda are far more optimistic in their outlook and have small numbers of hydrogen cars on the road in testing programmes in the US. GM says the distribution challenge is being overcome and is working with local government to install filling stations in its trial areas.GM says its targeting 2010 for the availability of a cost-completive technology. Honda says mass production may be possible within ten years. The technology should be competitive on range and speed within five years, but not on cost, said Masaaki Kato, chief of Honda’s research unit.

Bloomberg 3/10/08
SOURCE

Online Scientific Repository Hits Milestone

Online Scientific Repository Hits MilestoneWith 500,000 Articles, arXiv Established as Vital Library Resource

ITHACA, N.Y. (October 3, 2008) . Reinforcing its place in the scientific community, the arXiv repository at Cornell University Library reached a new milestone in October 2008. Half a million e-print postings . research articles published online . now reside in arXiv, which is free and available to the public.

arXiv is the primary daily information source for hundreds of thousands of researchers in many areas of physics and related fields. Its users include the world's most prominent researchers in science, including 53 Physics Nobel Laureates, 31 Fields Medalists and 55 MacArthur Fellows, as well as people in countries with limited access to scientific materials. The famously reclusive Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman posted the proof for the 100-year-old Poincare Conjecture solely in arXiv.

Journalists also use the repository extensively to prepare articles for the general public about newly released scientific results. It has long stood at the forefront of the open-access movement and served as the model for many other initiatives, including the National Institute of Health?fs PubMedCentral repository, and the many institutional DSpace repositories. arXiv is currently ranked the No. 1 repository in the world by the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities.
"arXiv began its operations before the World Wide Web, search engines, online commerce and all the rest, but nonetheless anticipated many components of current 'Web 2.0' methodology," said Cornell professor Paul Ginsparg, arXiv's creator. "It continues to play a leading role at the forefront of new models for scientific communication."

arXiv encompasses publications in physics, mathematics, statistics, computer science and quantitative biology. Researchers upload their own articles to arXiv, and they are usually made available to the public the next day. A team of 113 volunteer moderators from around the world screen submissions and recommend whether they should be included in the repository.
More than 200,000 articles are downloaded from arXiv each week by about 400,000 users, and its 118,000 registered submitters live in nearly 200 countries, including Suriname, Sudan and Iraq. Fifteen countries host mirrors of the main site, which is located on Cornell's campus in Ithaca, N.Y.

"It represents an incredible model for scholarly communication that transcends borders, publishers and time," said Anne R. Kenney, Cornell's Carl A. Kroch University Librarian. "We bring operational stability and a demonstrated track record of stewardship to this invaluable open-access resource."

Ginsparg developed arXiv in 1991, when he was working for Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. When Ginsparg came to Cornell as a faculty member in 2001, the repository came with him and is now a collaboration between Cornell University Library and Cornell?fs Information Science Program. The Library maintains the repository; information science handles research and development.

The repository is continually evolving, adding links to other repositories and RSS feeds. New facilities are being developed to ease the submission process for authors and support the addition of articles from conference management systems. The new query-and-retrieval interface allows others to build additional services onto arXiv, such as an iPhone interface.
"We're excited to not only sustain and grow arXiv, but also to make it an integral part of the global scholarly communications infrastructure," he said arXiv manager Simeon Warner, who has been working on the project for nearly a decade."

===See arXiv.org for more details
Courtesy: Prof. S Arunachalam

First Fuel Cell-Powered Plane Presented in Germany

Written by Ariel Schwartz
Published on October 1st, 2008

Last night, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) demonstrated the world’s first manned airplane that can fly exclusively with the use of a fuel cell. The fuel cell, which is based on polymer electrolyte membranes (PEM), generates power for the motor glider’s electric engine.PEM fuel cells are both simple and safe— they can operate between 120 and 180 C, only need a simple cooling system, don’t require humidification, and and can tolerate hydrogen gas impurities.

While the DLR’s demonstration is promising, its technology requires significantly more testing before it can be used commercially. And when PEM fuel cells are ready for aircraft use, they probably will only be used in small planes.

The DLR isn’t the first organization to test fuel cells for flight— this past April, Boeing flew a plane for 20 minutes on power generated solely by onboard fuel cells. But unlike the DLR’s plane, the Boeing model used lithium-ion batteries for takeoff.

While fuel cells may not be used to power aircraft anytime soon, they could be used in the near
future for auxiliary power-generation in small planes.

Source: http://cleantechnica.com/2008/10/01/first-fuel-cell-powered-plane-presented-in-germany/

Half of Global Electricity To Come From Renewables IEA Says

by David Appleyard, Editor, Renewable Energy World Magazine
Paris, France [RenewableEnergyWorld.com]

Nearly 50% of global electricity supplies must come from renewable energy sources in order to cut CO2 emissions in half by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says in its latest study, “Deploying Renewables: Principles for Effective Policies.”

Meeting these very ambitious objectives to “minimize significant and irreversible climate change” will require unprecedented political commitment and effective policy design and implementation, the IEA said. The IEA is also urging governments to adopt effective policies based on five key design principles to accelerate the exploitation of the “large potential for renewable energy.”Nonetheless, the IEA also recognizes the scale of such an undertaking, saying in a statement, “this is a huge challenge and part of the entire energy revolution we need to achieve.”

Commenting at the launch of the study, Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the IEA, said, “Only a limited set of countries have implemented effective support policies for renewables and there is a large potential for improvement. Several countries have made important progress in recent years in fostering renewables, with renewable energy markets expanding considerably as a result. However, much more can and should be done at the global level - in OECD member countries, large emerging economies and other countries - to address the urgent need of transforming our unsustainable energy present into a clean and secure energy future.”

READ MORE...
Courtesy: Dr S Vasudevan

Solar Paint on Steel Could Generate Renewable Energy Soon

by Jane Burgermeister, European Correspondent
London, UK [RenewableEnergyWorld.com]

In three years, buildings covered in steel sheets could be generating large amounts of solar electricity, thanks to a new photovoltaic paint that is being developed in a commercial partnership between UK university researchers and the steel industry.

A laboratory built to develop the new solar technology that replicates plant's photosynthesis is due to start work on October 30th in Shotton, North Wales.

"If the solar cell paint can be successfully brought to the market, it could spell big changes when it comes to the future production of electricity," said Steve Fisher, spokesperson of the Corus Group, the Anglo-Dutch steel manufacturing group that is believed to be pouring tens of millions of euros into the venture.

READ MORE...

Courtesy: Dr S Vasudevan