(Wind tunnel Colorado (USA). Image: UGR.)

The U.S. government has launched a facility called the Wind Tunnel is unique in the world, the Colorado School of Mines (Golden, Colorado). The project has been responsible for the researcher of the UGR Jose Maria Terres Nicoli, who along with Tissa Illangasekare of Colorado State University (USA), worked 4 years at this facility. The funding has made ​​the Department of Defense U.S., the U.S. Air Force Office for Science Research (AFOSR) and the U.S. Army Research Office .

The new wind tunnel is the world’s first research system allows detection of land mines, responsible for many casualties in the military in humanitarian operations carried out around the world.

This tunnel is called the “boundary layer” and is similar to the UGR opened in late 2004. Has, however, a number of capabilities that make it unique. Among these we would highlight the potential for simulation of extreme weather conditions, to study the interaction of wind with the topsoil and the simulation of rain.

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(A village in northern Morocco. Image: CENTA)

Juan Jose Salas, coordinator of Water Technologies of the Foundation Center, has been appointed to the management committee of the specialist in systems for small-scale purification of the International Water Association (IWA). Thus, the consolidating its international position CENTA to be present in one of the largest institutions within the sector reference worldwide.

The panel aims to find sustainable solutions on purification for small communities, both in the sanitation and the reuse of reclaimed water. The last lines of work have been focused towards the treatment of wastewater in small industry. The group’s director is Simon Gonzalez, professor of the Engineering Institute of the Autonomous University of Mexico. The committee is composed of ten renowned researchers worldwide in the field of water treatment in small towns.

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(Equipment for detecting drugs. Image: DICYT)

Each country transposing the rules governing the presence of drugs in food for the whole of the EU governing the same criteria, but not everyone has the technical means to detect these products. So the research group Qualimetrics Chemometrics and University of Burgos (UBU) has addressed the problem by analyzing some of the techniques employed. Celia Reguera, author of the study, which is his doctoral thesis, DiCYT explained that “sometimes, even we do not have big budgets, so we wonder whether it could continue the investigation into a drug without having large equipment. ”

There is a limit permitted in food drugs, so that the procedures developed by this team of scientists “are analytical techniques which allow cost savings in instrumentation and reagents.” This allows for optimization of resources from small laboratories for analysis and control of food, to countries with lesser budgets for such scientific work but must also comply with the parameters set by Brussels. The dissertation was directed by María Cruz Ortiz and Ana Herrero.

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Convert the light radiation into electricity in a controlled manner is what promises a new type of coupling at the nanoscale particles consist of colloidal quantum dots that are related to nano particles of fullerenes.

“This is the first demonstration of a hybrid material organic / inorganic system that functions as a donor-bridge-acceptor of electrons for the conversion of sunlight into electricity,” said Mircea Cotlet, researcher at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, lead author of ‘report appeared in the magazine article Angewandte Chemie.

By varying the length of the molecules and link the quantum dot size, researchers can control the frequency and amplitude of the fluctuations in the electron transfer at the level of individual dimers.

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It is known that one of the worst places to be on a hot summer day is about leaving the outside of an air conditioner. This is because in order to cool the interior of buildings, these devices extract heat from the interior to spew into the atmosphere. However, not being ideal machines, the amount of heat discharged into the atmosphere is more removed from inside the buildings (some up to 30% more). In a way, the price paid to maintain pleasant interior temperature is a further warming of the urban atmosphere. In recent years, the number of buildings with air conditioning has been increasing rapidly in many Spanish cities, particularly in commercial areas, and most buildings already have such facilities. The question then arises: does the heat generated by air conditioners is large enough to modify the urban climate?

A study by Francisco Salamanca, CIEMAT researcher, public research body under the Ministry of Science and Innovation, funded by the Ministry of Environment, Rural and Marine Affairs, suggests that air temperature in a city like Madrid could rise to 1, 5-2 degrees centigrade due to air conditioning in summer.

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Climate change poses a major challenge for the management of water resources. Traditionally, water planning and water management have been based on consideration of the hydrological system as a relatively stable and static. However, climate change involves changes in the hydrological cycle and increases the level of uncertainty in managing water resources.

Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, led by Professor Consuelo Varela Ortega, participated in the research project NeWater (New Approaches to Adaptive Water Management under Uncertainty) Of 6 th Framework Programme European Commission, under which we have compared different strategies for adaptation to climate change in six river basins in the world: three in Europe (Guadiana, Elbe and Rhine), two in Africa (Orange and Nile) and one in Asia (Amu Daria).

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Neiker-Tecnalia has installed a biomass boiler (using wood and other organic waste as fuel) and thermodynamic plates, with the aim of air conditioned greenhouses dedicated to intensive cultivation. This method is able to reduce costs and improve crop yields, so can be picked seasonal produce throughout the year. This project seeks an alternative to regular oil boilers, which emit large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and are very costly to the farmer, because of the high price of petroleum fuels.

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These techniques are “sensitive to the resistivity of subsoil,” the Ogaya Xenia responsible for the work of the Department of Geodynamics and Geophysics, University of Barcelona. The research will characterize the natural emissions of carbon dioxide in the town of Burgos Hontomin and track the experimental injection of the greenhouse gas underground.

Ogaya to DiCYT explains, when an increase in CO2 underground, “is an increase of resistibidad” the land. The resistibidad, as defined by the researcher, is “the opposition to the passage of electrical current” that has one element. Increasing carbon dioxide in a particular area, such as where to be injected to prevent their emission into the atmosphere, the gas travels to other components that were in the basement, such as an aquifer reserves. Water is best transmitter power than CO2, so that by analyzing the capacity of the field to carry the current, one can assume a greater presence of carbon dioxide at a given time.

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