Competing to create a more energy-efficient air conditioner

A University of California, Davis, challenge to build more energy efficient air conditioning has spurred a major global manufacturer to build a rooftop air conditioner that is 40 percent more energy-efficient than conventional ...

Water evaporated from trees cools global climate

Scientists have long debated about the impact on global climate of water evaporated from vegetation. New research from Carnegie's Global Ecology department concludes that evaporated water helps cool the earth as a whole, ...

Keeping cool with quantum wells

University of Tokyo researchers have announced a new approach for electrical cooling without the need for moving parts. By applying a bias voltage to quantum wells made of the semiconductor aluminum gallium arsenide, electrons ...

Did early mammals turn to night life to protect their sperm?

Humans are diurnal—we are active in the day and sleep at night. But diurnalism is by far the exception rather the rule in mammals. About 250-230 million years ago, the mammalian ancestors, called the therapsids, became ...

A nanokelvin microwave freezer for molecules

When a highly diluted gas is cooled to extremely low temperatures, bizarre properties are revealed. Thus, some gases form a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate—a type of matter in which all atoms move in unison. Another ...

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