While much nanotechnology leverages solid-state devices, here we present the analysis of designs for hybrid organic-inorganic biomimetic devices, “protocells,” based on assemblies of natural ion channels and ion pumps, “nanoconductors,” incorporated into synthetic supported lipid bilayer membranes. These protocells mimic the energy conversion scheme of natural cells and are able to directly out...

Wind power production has been under the main focus for the past decade in power production and tremendous amount of research work is going on renewable energy, specifically on wind power extraction. Wind power provides an ecofriendly power generation and helps to meet the national energy demand when there is a diminishing trend in terms of non-renewable resources. This paper reviews the modeli...

Wind turbines form complex nonlinear mechanical systems exposed to uncontrolled wind profiles. This makes turbine controller design a challenging task (Athanasius & Zhu, 2009). As such, control of wind energy conversion systems (WECS) is difficult due to the lack of systematic methods to identify requisite robust and sufficiently stable conditions, to guarantee performance. The problem becomes ...

With the use of a specially developed incubation chamber the rates of motility, respiration, and fructolysis were measured simultaneously on semen samples. By inhibiting the respiration with antimycin A, and/or the fructolysis with 2-deoxyglucose, the rates of each of the two ATP-producing pathways could be reduced independently. In this way the ratio of the amount of free energy produced by re...

We theoretically evaluate the prospect of using electrokinetic phenomena to convert hydrostatic energy to electrical power. An expression is derived for the energy conversion efficiency of a two-terminal fluidic device in terms of its linear electrokinetic response properties. For a slitlike nanochannel of constant surface charge density, we predict that the maximum energy conversion efficiency...

Understanding how to engineer nanomaterials for targeted solar-cell applications is the key to improving their efficiency and could lead to breakthroughs in their design. Proposed mechanisms for the conversion of solar energy to electricity are those exploiting the particle nature of light in conventional photovoltaic cells, and those using the collective electromagnetic nature, where light is ...

Thermophotovoltaics (TPV) converts the radiant energy of a thermal source into electrical energy using photovoltaic cells. TPV has a number of attractive features, including: fuel versatility (nuclear, fossil, solar, etc.), quiet operation, low maintenance, low emissions, light weight, high power density, modularity, and possibility for cogeneration of heat and electricity. Some of these featur...

In 2008 the U.S. Department of Energy set a target of 20% wind energy by 2030. To date, induction-based turbines form the mainstay of this effort, but turbines are noisy, perceived as unattractive, a potential hazard to bats and birds, and their height hampers deployment in residential settings. Several groups have proposed that artificial plants containing piezoelectric elements may harvest wi...

The time-average wave power that is absorbed from an incident wave by means of a wave-energy conversion (WEC) unit, or by an array of WEC units-i.e. oscillating immersed bodies and/or oscillating water columns (OWCs)-may be mathematically expressed in terms of the WEC units' complex oscillation amplitudes, or in terms of the generated outgoing (diffracted plus radiated) waves, or alternatively,...