To enable radio reception in electric vehicles, manufacturers must install filters and insulate cables, since electrical signals will otherwise interfere with music and speech transmissions. Now, using new calculation methods, researchers are paving the way for pure listening pleasure while also helping to lower the associated costs.

Listening to the radio even in an electric vehicle

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The least expensive way for the Western US to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to help prevent the worst consequences of global warming is to replace coal with renewable and other sources of energy that may include nuclear power, according to a new study.

Advanced power-grid research finds low-cost, low-carbon future in Western U.S.

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Imagine being able to use electricity to power your car and it’s not an electric vehicle. Researchers have for the first time demonstrated a method for converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuel isobutanol using electricity.

Electricity and carbon dioxide used to generate alternative fuel

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Intensive research around the world has focused on improving the performance of solar photovoltaic cells and bringing down their cost. But very little attention has been paid to the best ways of arranging those cells, which are typically placed flat on a rooftop or other surface, or sometimes attached to motorized structures that keep the cells pointed toward the sun as it crosses the sky. Now, a team of researchers has come up with a very different approach: building cubes or towers that extend the solar cells upward in three-dimensional configurations.

New dimension for solar energy: Innovative 3-D designs more than double the solar power generated per area

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Butterfly wings may rank among the most delicate structures in nature, but they have given researchers powerful inspiration for new technology that doubles production of hydrogen gas — a green fuel of the future — from water and sunlight.

Butterfly wings’ ‘art of blackness’ could boost production of green fuels

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A geophysics researcher wants to look inside the sun. More accurately, she wants to simulate the sun to study plasma flows associated with sunspot cycles. With the help of simulations scientists recently warned about a series of solar storms in early March, concerned that it could affect global positioning systems, power grids, satellites and airplane travel.

Plasma flows may shed light on predicting sunspot cycles

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Technology alone won’t help the world turn away from fossil fuel-based energy sources, says a sociologist. A shift in political and economic policies to is needed to embrace the concept that continued growth in energy consumption is not sustainable, experts say.

Focus on technology overlooks human behavior when addressing climate change

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Dye-sensitized solar cells that use carbon nanotube thin films as transparent electrodes offer significant cost savings

Dye-sensitized solar cells that use carbon nanotube thin films as transparent electrodes offer significant cost savings

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A fogbank is the least useful location for a telescope, yet today’s space observatories effectively operate inside one. That’s because Venus, Earth and Mars orbit within a vast dust cloud produced by comets and occasional collisions among asteroids. After the sun, this so-called zodiacal cloud is the solar system’s most luminous feature, and its light has interfered with infrared, optical and ultraviolet observations made by every astronomical space mission to date.

NASA’s Goddard, Glenn Centers look to lift space astronomy out of the fog

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