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Building scientific innovation into the construction sector

Public release date: 2-Jul-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: EPSRC Press Office
pressoffice@epsrc.ac.uk
01-793-444-404
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Two of the UK's Innovation and Knowledge Centres (IKCs), which work closely with industry on research to radically change the construction and management of infrastructure, and to use the surfaces of buildings as solar power stations, are to receive a further 3.8 million of collaborative research funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The funds are to build on their achievements in accelerating the commercialisation of world class science and emerging technologies. The Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC), which is based at the University of Cambridge, will receive nearly 2.2 million to:

• develop a team dedicated to deploying novel technologies and processes
• scale up and standardise technologies for early adoption by industry
• develop wider applications for technologies
• extend the range of sectors that research is directed towards

The Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings (SPECIFIC) based at Swansea University will receive 1.65 million to:

• expand its solar energy research - working with the universities of Bath and Oxford
• commercialise solar water purification technology with Surrey University
• work with the University of Manchester on bio-inspired coatings
• commercialise a heated floor tile

This new funding brings the combined investment from the EPSRC and the Technology Strategy Board, the UK's innovation agency, in each Centre to over 9 million.

The IKCs are a key component of the UK's approach to the commercialisation of emerging technologies through creating early stage critical mass in an area of disruptive technology. IKCs are able to achieve this through their international quality research capability and access to companion technologies needed to commercialise research.

Based in a university they are led by an expert entrepreneurial team. While continuing to advance the research agenda, they create impact by enhancing wealth generation of the businesses with which they work.

###

For media enquiries contact:

The EPSRC Press Office, Tel: 01793 444 404, e-mail: pressoffice@epsrc.ac.uk

Notes to Editors:

1. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK's main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences. EPSRC invests around 800 million a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change. The areas covered range from information technology to structural engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone's health, lifestyle and culture. EPSRC works alongside other Research Councils with responsibility for other areas of research. The Research Councils work collectively on issues of common concern via Research Councils UK. http://www.epsrc.ac.uk

2. The Technology Strategy Board

The Technology Strategy Board is the UK's innovation agency. Its goal is to accelerate economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy. For more information please visit http://www.innovateuk.org.

3. Innovation and Knowledge Centres

Innovation and Knowledge Centres are centres of excellence with five years' funding to accelerate and promote business exploitation of an emerging research and technology field. Their key feature is a shared space and entrepreneurial environment, in which researchers, potential customers and skilled professionals from both academia and business can work side-by-side to scope applications, business models and routes to market.

Invitations to submit to a third call for Innovation and Knowledge Centres were sent to university Vice-Chancellors in October 2009 following a call announcement at Innovate '09.

This call built on the successes of the previous four IKCs which were funded through a pilot call in November 2005 and a subsequent call in 2007:

• Advanced Manufacturing Technologies for Photonics and Electronics - Exploiting Molecular and Macromolecular Materials at the University of Cambridge
• Ultra Precision and Structured Surfaces at Cranfield University
• Regenerative Therapies and Devices at the University of Leeds
• Centre for Secure Information Technologies at Queen's University Belfast

4. Swansea University Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings

Every day more solar energy falls on the Earth's surface than the whole of human kind will use in 27 years. At this point we do little to harvest this energy. Buildings are major consumers of energy and yet they are often clad in metal and glass, both materials which can be capable of sophisticated engineering. In the UK annual production of metal and glass for construction of the outside faces of buildings is running at around 300 million square metres per annum.

The aim of SPECIFIC is to rapidly adapt excellent small scale devices that have been demonstrated in UK universities, scale up their application and ensure their stability so that the outsides of buildings can become active surfaces, essentially converting buildings into power stations. The key feature will be to combine technologies such that the panels will generate, store and release energy. This will create a whole new manufacturing sector for the UK as well as making a serious contribution towards our renewable energy targets and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

In the first two years SPECIFIC has developed a full pilot manufacturing facility to enable the manufacture of one square metre panels of functional coated materials on any substrate (glass, steel, aluminium, plasterboard, wood) which can be applied to buildings at demonstration scale. These production facilities build on the world class labs that were part of the nine month start-up phase for the IKC.

Three principal concepts have developed considerable momentum and are the focus for the next phase of the project;

(1) the 'hot tile' concept is a functional coating that uses DC electricity to heat raised access floor panels common in most buildings such as offices, schools, hospitals and supermarkets built in the last 15 years. It allows for new build and retrofitting of a low energy electrical heating system that can eliminate the need for a gas connection and wet trades.

(2) a new heat treatment method has been applied to a titanium dioxide coating used as part of the photovoltaic development which is able to sinter the film (making it robust) whilst at the same time retaining the crystal structure and surface area required for high photoactivity. This has been used as a single coat solar water purification coating which has reduced the decolouration time of dyed water from eleven hours to four minutes. This has obvious applications in developing countries where UK textiles are manufactured.

(3) emerging PV technologies; the centre has developed an innovative solid state dye sensitised solar cell design in conjunction with BASF. Much of the learning in this project (in terms of electrode design and device optimisation) is directly transferable to other emerging solar cell types such as the earth abundant PV made of copper, zinc, tin and sulphur (attractive since it contains no rare or toxic elements) or the perovskite meso-scopic solar cell first reported in 2012. Much of this work will be conducted at the IKC funded by a recently announced 6 million grant from the Welsh Government under the Ser Cymru (Welsh Stars) programme. In addition, in a side project the team have developed a novel self-cleaning surface based on hydrophobins which can be applied to provide an ultra-hydrophobic or hydrophilic surface. These have obvious applications in solar devices on buildings as well as a number of other areas and a fourth strand of work with Manchester University in a one year feasibility study entitled Bio-Coat.

5. University of Cambridge Smart Infrastructure and Construction

Research at the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) focuses on innovative use of emerging technologies in sensor and data management (e.g. fibre optics, MEMS, computer vision, power harvesting, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Wireless Sensor Networks) coupled with emerging best practice in the form of applying the latest manufacturing and supply chain management approaches to construction and infrastructure. It aims to develop completely new markets and achieve breakthroughs in performance. The outputs of the Centre will provide the construction industry and infrastructure owners and operators with the means to ensure that very challenging new performance targets can be met. Furthermore, the potential breakthroughs will make the industry more efficient and profitable. They will give UK companies a competitive advantage in the increasingly global construction market. CSIC works closely with a large network of industry partners in developing the Centre's strategic direction and in collaborative projects. To date, the Centre has over 30 demonstration projects and case studies. In this Tranche 2 funding stage the team seek to build on the research and demonstration projects carried out in the Core programme and the Tranche 1 Collaborative Projects, with a strong focus on developing the outputs of these projects to be market ready, through development of the technologies into products and through standardisation of the deployment of sensor technologies in infrastructure environments and of the analysis of the data produced.

The Centre has created an 'incubator team' who will carry out product development activities and will deploy sensor technologies in the field, further demonstrating and refining CSIC's capability and demonstrating the value of this capability to the market. The team will be constituted so that it can respond rapidly to client demand for demonstration and deployment of technologies and interpretation of data, creating maximum value for our industry partners.

This will result in a number of outputs designed to catalyse widespread uptake in the infrastructure industry, including:

1) Specific commercialisation opportunities for the technologies through joint ventures, spin outs or licensing of IP;

2) Consulting services, deploying sensors to assist clients e.g. in monitoring sensitive structures during construction, understanding live performance of assets or designing new assets efficiently based on data from monitored assets;

3) Development of best practice guidance for structural health monitoring of assets, deployment of sensor networks, and analysis of data; and

4) Development of training packages for industry In addition to this, CSIC will carry out further research to expand the capability of the Centre's technologies into new areas, as identified by its industry partners through meetings and workshops.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 2-Jul-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: EPSRC Press Office
pressoffice@epsrc.ac.uk
01-793-444-404
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Two of the UK's Innovation and Knowledge Centres (IKCs), which work closely with industry on research to radically change the construction and management of infrastructure, and to use the surfaces of buildings as solar power stations, are to receive a further 3.8 million of collaborative research funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The funds are to build on their achievements in accelerating the commercialisation of world class science and emerging technologies. The Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC), which is based at the University of Cambridge, will receive nearly 2.2 million to:

• develop a team dedicated to deploying novel technologies and processes
• scale up and standardise technologies for early adoption by industry
• develop wider applications for technologies
• extend the range of sectors that research is directed towards

The Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings (SPECIFIC) based at Swansea University will receive 1.65 million to:

• expand its solar energy research - working with the universities of Bath and Oxford
• commercialise solar water purification technology with Surrey University
• work with the University of Manchester on bio-inspired coatings
• commercialise a heated floor tile

This new funding brings the combined investment from the EPSRC and the Technology Strategy Board, the UK's innovation agency, in each Centre to over 9 million.

The IKCs are a key component of the UK's approach to the commercialisation of emerging technologies through creating early stage critical mass in an area of disruptive technology. IKCs are able to achieve this through their international quality research capability and access to companion technologies needed to commercialise research.

Based in a university they are led by an expert entrepreneurial team. While continuing to advance the research agenda, they create impact by enhancing wealth generation of the businesses with which they work.

###

For media enquiries contact:

The EPSRC Press Office, Tel: 01793 444 404, e-mail: pressoffice@epsrc.ac.uk

Notes to Editors:

1. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK's main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences. EPSRC invests around 800 million a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change. The areas covered range from information technology to structural engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone's health, lifestyle and culture. EPSRC works alongside other Research Councils with responsibility for other areas of research. The Research Councils work collectively on issues of common concern via Research Councils UK. http://www.epsrc.ac.uk

2. The Technology Strategy Board

The Technology Strategy Board is the UK's innovation agency. Its goal is to accelerate economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy. For more information please visit http://www.innovateuk.org.

3. Innovation and Knowledge Centres

Innovation and Knowledge Centres are centres of excellence with five years' funding to accelerate and promote business exploitation of an emerging research and technology field. Their key feature is a shared space and entrepreneurial environment, in which researchers, potential customers and skilled professionals from both academia and business can work side-by-side to scope applications, business models and routes to market.

Invitations to submit to a third call for Innovation and Knowledge Centres were sent to university Vice-Chancellors in October 2009 following a call announcement at Innovate '09.

This call built on the successes of the previous four IKCs which were funded through a pilot call in November 2005 and a subsequent call in 2007:

• Advanced Manufacturing Technologies for Photonics and Electronics - Exploiting Molecular and Macromolecular Materials at the University of Cambridge
• Ultra Precision and Structured Surfaces at Cranfield University
• Regenerative Therapies and Devices at the University of Leeds
• Centre for Secure Information Technologies at Queen's University Belfast

4. Swansea University Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings

Every day more solar energy falls on the Earth's surface than the whole of human kind will use in 27 years. At this point we do little to harvest this energy. Buildings are major consumers of energy and yet they are often clad in metal and glass, both materials which can be capable of sophisticated engineering. In the UK annual production of metal and glass for construction of the outside faces of buildings is running at around 300 million square metres per annum.

The aim of SPECIFIC is to rapidly adapt excellent small scale devices that have been demonstrated in UK universities, scale up their application and ensure their stability so that the outsides of buildings can become active surfaces, essentially converting buildings into power stations. The key feature will be to combine technologies such that the panels will generate, store and release energy. This will create a whole new manufacturing sector for the UK as well as making a serious contribution towards our renewable energy targets and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

In the first two years SPECIFIC has developed a full pilot manufacturing facility to enable the manufacture of one square metre panels of functional coated materials on any substrate (glass, steel, aluminium, plasterboard, wood) which can be applied to buildings at demonstration scale. These production facilities build on the world class labs that were part of the nine month start-up phase for the IKC.

Three principal concepts have developed considerable momentum and are the focus for the next phase of the project;

(1) the 'hot tile' concept is a functional coating that uses DC electricity to heat raised access floor panels common in most buildings such as offices, schools, hospitals and supermarkets built in the last 15 years. It allows for new build and retrofitting of a low energy electrical heating system that can eliminate the need for a gas connection and wet trades.

(2) a new heat treatment method has been applied to a titanium dioxide coating used as part of the photovoltaic development which is able to sinter the film (making it robust) whilst at the same time retaining the crystal structure and surface area required for high photoactivity. This has been used as a single coat solar water purification coating which has reduced the decolouration time of dyed water from eleven hours to four minutes. This has obvious applications in developing countries where UK textiles are manufactured.

(3) emerging PV technologies; the centre has developed an innovative solid state dye sensitised solar cell design in conjunction with BASF. Much of the learning in this project (in terms of electrode design and device optimisation) is directly transferable to other emerging solar cell types such as the earth abundant PV made of copper, zinc, tin and sulphur (attractive since it contains no rare or toxic elements) or the perovskite meso-scopic solar cell first reported in 2012. Much of this work will be conducted at the IKC funded by a recently announced 6 million grant from the Welsh Government under the Ser Cymru (Welsh Stars) programme. In addition, in a side project the team have developed a novel self-cleaning surface based on hydrophobins which can be applied to provide an ultra-hydrophobic or hydrophilic surface. These have obvious applications in solar devices on buildings as well as a number of other areas and a fourth strand of work with Manchester University in a one year feasibility study entitled Bio-Coat.

5. University of Cambridge Smart Infrastructure and Construction

Research at the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) focuses on innovative use of emerging technologies in sensor and data management (e.g. fibre optics, MEMS, computer vision, power harvesting, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Wireless Sensor Networks) coupled with emerging best practice in the form of applying the latest manufacturing and supply chain management approaches to construction and infrastructure. It aims to develop completely new markets and achieve breakthroughs in performance. The outputs of the Centre will provide the construction industry and infrastructure owners and operators with the means to ensure that very challenging new performance targets can be met. Furthermore, the potential breakthroughs will make the industry more efficient and profitable. They will give UK companies a competitive advantage in the increasingly global construction market. CSIC works closely with a large network of industry partners in developing the Centre's strategic direction and in collaborative projects. To date, the Centre has over 30 demonstration projects and case studies. In this Tranche 2 funding stage the team seek to build on the research and demonstration projects carried out in the Core programme and the Tranche 1 Collaborative Projects, with a strong focus on developing the outputs of these projects to be market ready, through development of the technologies into products and through standardisation of the deployment of sensor technologies in infrastructure environments and of the analysis of the data produced.

The Centre has created an 'incubator team' who will carry out product development activities and will deploy sensor technologies in the field, further demonstrating and refining CSIC's capability and demonstrating the value of this capability to the market. The team will be constituted so that it can respond rapidly to client demand for demonstration and deployment of technologies and interpretation of data, creating maximum value for our industry partners.

This will result in a number of outputs designed to catalyse widespread uptake in the infrastructure industry, including:

1) Specific commercialisation opportunities for the technologies through joint ventures, spin outs or licensing of IP;

2) Consulting services, deploying sensors to assist clients e.g. in monitoring sensitive structures during construction, understanding live performance of assets or designing new assets efficiently based on data from monitored assets;

3) Development of best practice guidance for structural health monitoring of assets, deployment of sensor networks, and analysis of data; and

4) Development of training packages for industry In addition to this, CSIC will carry out further research to expand the capability of the Centre's technologies into new areas, as identified by its industry partners through meetings and workshops.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-07/eaps-bsi070213.php

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OS X Mavericks preview: Calendar

While OS X Mavericks' look and feel won't change quite as radically as iOS 7's when it debuts this fall, there are some welcome changes for users who aren't fond of skeuomorphic design elements. Calendar is getting a nice facelift in Mavericks and some new functionality too. We got a bit of a preview during the WWDC 2013 keynote, and now we've got a bit more info to share with you.

First of all, those stubborn artifacts of a physical desktop calendar are gone - there are no more torn page fragments at the top of the calendar and the title bar has a flatter appearance. "Streamlined" is the word Apple uses to describe it, and that's accurate: It looks cleaner.

From the top down, the next obvious change is the placement of the navigation buttons and the date - they've been reversed in weekly, monthly, and yearly views, to give you a clearer visual cue to show what time period you're looking at.

Also gone is the one pixel-wide table grid that's used in Mountain Lion's Calendar for Week, Month and Year layouts. Days in Mavericks are instead separated with white space, with a one-pixel border to separate them vertically. The net result is a cleaner, less cluttered look.

Continuous scrolling is a new feature in Mavericks Calendar. In the monthly view, this means that you can scroll vertically from week to week (the current week gets a colored horizontal line across the top to help you return to it quickly; you can also just click the Today button). In Mountain Lion Calendar, you can horizontally scroll, in weekly or daily views. The scrolling in daily mode is abrupt, replacing each day's events as you scroll; weekly will snap to the next week's events. Now it's smoother and more continuous.

The new look and feel of Calendar will be a welcome change for users who are increasingly accustomed to gesture-based controls for all aspects of the OS X interface, but Calendar gets some really functional enhancements, too. The Inspector is where you'll see the greatest changes.

Many of us now receiving information about social events through friends and family linked through Facebook. OS X Mavericks lets you connect to your Facebook account, and if you've said yes to events you've learned about through Facebook, they'll be displayed on a separate Facebook Events calendar.

The Maps app is coming to OS X, and Calendar's Inspector now ties into that data to provide you with a small map showing your meeting location. That's only a thumbnail, though, so if you need walking or driving directions, you can click on the image and the Maps app will automatically open and plot the way.

What's more, Calendar automatically pads your events with travel time, so you can be sure to have enough time to get to where you're going. It also ties in to weather information so you can see how you'll need to dress. The Inspector also supports autocompletion of fields to save you typing.

OS X Mavericks is still a moving target which won't ship until the fall, so we'll see if Apple introduces any new features to Calendar between now and then. But even if nothing else happens, these changes will be welcome improvements for users who rely on Apple's calendaring application to manage their schedules.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/2bwUaQsteNI/story01.htm

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Vine graces Amazon Appstore, gives Kindle Fire HD's front-facing cam a workout

Sure, the Kindle Fire HD may only have a front-facing camera, but its solitary shooter is about to start flexing more than its video chat muscles. Vine has just arrived on Amazon's Appstore, and it's ready for owners to download and churn out as many six-second video clips as they please. Hit the source link below to grab ahold version 1.2 of the free app.

Filed under: Tablets

Comments

Via: The Next Web

Source: Amazon

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/f3UjLAMGwWM/

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Superconductor created from solvent

July 1, 2013 ? A study led by Washington State University researchers has turned a fairly common non-metallic solvent into a superconductor capable of transmitting electrical current with none of the resistance seen in conventional conductors.

"It is an important discovery that will attract a lot of attention from many scientific communities -- physics, chemistry, and materials science," said Choong-Shik Yoo, a professor of chemistry and Institute for Shock Physics. The National Science Foundation-funded discovery, which grows out of research by Yoo doctoral student Ranga Dias, appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The field of superconductivity has a wide variety of potentially revolutionary applications, including powerful electromagnets, vehicle propulsion, power storage and vastly more efficient power transmission.

Three years ago, Yoo used super-high pressures similar to those found deep in Earth to turn a white crystal into a "super battery," or what he called "the most condensed form of energy storage outside of nuclear energy."

This time, Yoo saw how carbon disulfide subjected to high pressure and cold started to act like a metal, taking on properties like magnetism, a high energy density, and superhardness as its molecules reassembled in three-dimensional structures like those found in diamonds.

Typically, non-metallic molecules are too far apart from each other-three times farther apart than metal molecules -- for electrical energy to move across them. But Yoo and his colleagues, including researchers at the Carnegie Institution of

Washington, compressed the compound in the small, compact space of a diamond anvil cell to 50,000 atmospheres, a pressure equivalent to that found 600 miles into Earth. They also chilled the compound to 6.5 degrees Kelvin, or nearly -447 F.

The pressure and temperature not only brought the carbon disulfide molecules together but rearranged them into a lattice structure in which the natural vibrations of the molecules can help electrons move so well the material becomes a resistance-free superconductor.

Yoo's research provides new insight into how superconductivity works in unconventional materials, an area that has intrigued scientists for several decades, he says. These unconventional materials are typically made of atoms with lower atomic weights that let them vibrate at higher frequencies, increasing their potential as superconductors at higher temperatures.

Yoo acknowledges that electronic materials are not about to be cooled to near absolute zero or subjected to extreme pressures. But he said this work could point the way to creating similar properties under more ordinary conditions, much as science paved the way to make synthetic diamonds at lower temperatures and pressures.

"This research will provide the vehicle for people to be clever in developing superconductors by understanding the fundamentals that guide them," said Yoo.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/rLWDmxojqAk/130701151600.htm

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Blast in Pakistani city of Quetta kills 20: police

DEAR ABBY: My husband and I have been married for eight years. When we married, we both drank and smoked. My husband quit smoking five years ago, and I have continued to smoke off and on. If he catches me with a cigarette it becomes an argument, and it's either I quit or we're done!I love my husband, but I find it difficult to be honest about this. I don't see the big deal if I smoke a cigarette. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blast-pakistani-city-quetta-kills-20-police-170739433.html

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The quantum secret to alcohol reactions in space

June 30, 2013 ? Chemists have discovered that an 'impossible' reaction at cold temperatures actually occurs with vigour, which could change our understanding of how alcohols are formed and destroyed in space.

To explain the impossible, the researchers propose that a quantum mechanical phenomenon, known as 'quantum tunnelling', is revving up the chemical reaction. They found that the rate at which the reaction occurs is 50 times greater at minus 210 degrees Celsius than at room temperature.

It's the harsh environment that makes space-based chemistry so difficult to understand; the extremely cold conditions should put a stop to chemical reactions, as there isn't sufficient energy to rearrange chemical bonds. It has previously been suggested that dust grains -- found in interstellar clouds, for example -- could lend a hand in bringing chemical reactions about.

The idea is that the dust grains act as a staging post for the reactions to occur, with the ingredients of complex molecules clinging to the solid surface. However, last year, a highly reactive molecule called the 'methoxy radical' was detected in space and its formation couldn't be explained in this way.

Laboratory experiments showed that when an icy mixture containing methanol was blasted with radiation -- like would occur in space, with intense radiation from nearby stars, for example -methoxy radicals weren't released in the emitted gases. The findings suggested that methanol gas was involved in the production of the methoxy radicals found in space, rather than any process on the surface of dust grains. But this brings us back to the problem of how the gases can react under extremely cold conditions.

"The answer lies in quantum mechanics," says Professor Dwayne Heard, Head of the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds, who led the research.

"Chemical reactions get slower as temperatures decrease, as there is less energy to get over the 'reaction barrier'. But quantum mechanics tells us that it is possible to cheat and dig through this barrier instead of going over it. This is called 'quantum tunnelling'."

To succeed in digging through the reaction barrier, incredibly cold temperatures -- like those that exist in interstellar space and in the atmosphere of some planetary bodies, such as Titan -- are needed. "We suggest that an 'intermediary product' forms in the first stage of the reaction, which can only survive long enough for quantum tunnelling to occur at extremely cold temperatures," says Heard.

The researchers were able to recreate the cold environment of space in the laboratory and observe a reaction of the alcohol methanol and an oxidising chemical called the 'hydroxyl radical' at minus 210 degrees Celsius. They found that not only do these gases react to create methoxy radicals at this incredibly cold temperature, but that the rate of reaction is 50 times faster than at room temperature.

To achieve this, the researchers had to create a new experimental setup. "The problem is that the gases condense as soon as they hit a cold surface," says Robin Shannon from the University of Leeds, who performed the experiments. "So we took inspiration from the boosters used for the Apollo Saturn V rockets to create collimated jets of gas that could react without ever touching a surface."

The researchers are now investigating the reactions of other alcohols at very cold temperatures. "If our results continue to show a similar increase in the reaction rate at very cold temperatures, then scientists have been severely underestimating the rates of formation and destruction of complex molecules, such as alcohols, in space," concludes Heard.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/isF70kH0e8w/130630145004.htm

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