Lee Bruno

The drinking-water pipe network in the United States extends more than 700,000 miles -- four times the length of the national highway system. Much of the infrastructure is more than 100 years old. It is estimated by the American Water Works Association that U.S. water utilities will need to invest $250 billion over the next 30 years to replace the aging pipes, many of which leak. That typically involves digging up streets, which is costly. Enter a new platelet technology being tested by Yorkshire Water in the UK. It was developed by a company called Brinker, which was spun off from the University of Aberdeen. (It's estimated that about a third of London's drinking water is lost through leaking pipes.) The technology is already used by the natural gas...

The problem for scientists and engineers has been that in order to tune a catalyst to do what is desired, you need to know how it adapts during a reaction. Trouble is, watching catalysts in action has escaped the reach of scientists until now. With the aid of powerful spectroscopy technology, U.S. Department of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists observed catalysts restructuring themselves in response to various gases swirling around them. The spectroscopy helps provide a window into these reactions for tuning catalysts. These insights are expected to help improve pollution control as well as fuel cell technologies. Smarter catalysts hold promise for removing toxins from water and helping feed...

Nanoparticles are all the rage for a variety of different applications, ranging from treatments for cancer to use in automobile sensors. Trouble is, the manmade nanomorsels have been raising concern about side effects in humans and the environment. A University of Missouri research team has devised a method for creating nanoparticles that don't have negative side effects. And the work has garnered the scientists international recognition. The team found that when you submerge gold salts into water and then add soybeans, gold nanoparticles are created. The procedure is simple but can be used in creating very complex nanoengineered components. The beauty of this green process...

One big problem of converting to solar generated electricity is what to do when the sun goes down. To ensure electrical current on the grid doesn't sharply fall off, requires an industrial-scale electrical storage system to smooth out short term fluctuations. It's a problem at the heart of realizing a renewable energy economy. There's an added urgency for storage systems when considering the California Public Utilities Commission recently mandated that retail sellers of electricity purchase 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2010, and the New York Public Service Commission is mandating 24 percent by 2013. The quest for a large-scale electrical storage system is a...