Rice University physicists (from left) Liyang Chen, Panpan Zhou and Doug Natelson and colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Connecticut found evidence of electron pairing -- a hallmark feature of superconductivity -- at temperatures and energies well above the critical threshold where superconductivity occurs. The research appears this week in Nature.
Optical micrographs showing transition of stage-2 GIC to stage-1 HOPG GIC. Reflected light. The stage-2 areas are greenish-white. The stage-1 areas are blue. The red-colored areas are the mixed stage. Note, the greenish tint of graphite surface on panels (a,b) is the artifact of the digital processing; the actual color is almost white. The white shapeless feature on the right of the micrographs is an air bubble. Acquired with the SPI-3 HOPG sample.
Pumped storage hydropower uses dual-reservoir "storage" systems to improve the availability of energy by pumping and releasing water between the reservoirs to generate electricity to meet peak demands. To accelerate pumped storage hydropower implementation, SwRI is developing different strategies for efficiently building the reservoirs, illustrated here with an upper reservoir sited atop a mesa and a lower reservoir created by damming canyons below.
(a) Schematic illustration of the ion concentration profiles with asymmetric transmembrane temperature differences. (b) Electric power under different temperature differences. (c) At small transmembrane concentration intensities, both positive and negative temperature differences contribute to the electric power. At high transmembrane concentration intensities, a negative temperature difference promotes the power extraction and a positive temperature difference hinders the electric power.