Late last week the US Department of Energy [DoE] awarded $9.6 million in grants for six Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy [ARPA-E] projects as a means to “accelerate innovation in clean energy technologies, increase America’s competitiveness and create jobs”. Notable among the grants was a $2.25 million grant to GE Global Research, of Niskayuna, NY, for [...]
Continue reading...10. February 2010
In 1984, the magnetic materials research community in Europe was at a formidable crossroads. The latter part of 1983 had seen industrial research groups in the USA and Japan simultaneously announce the discovery of a promising new permanent magnet material, based on the neodymium-iron-boron [Nd-Fe-B] alloy system. This long-sought successor to the ever more expensive [...]
Continue reading...25. January 2010
Earlier this week, MIT’s Technology Review published a story on a new magnetic tape material which, combined with a novel tape-reading technology, can produce data storage capacities of 35 Tb per cartridge – over 40 times higher than current tape storage systems. The research was conducted at IBM’S Zurich Research Labs in Switzerland, in conjunction [...]
Continue reading...6. January 2010
Hello folks – Happy New Year! My apologies for the long delay in posting a new article here at Terra Magnetica – let me get things back on track with some news from R & D Magazine, on a new paper-based magnetic material that may have potential for low cost fabrication applications. A team of [...]
Continue reading...16. November 2009
Over the past few days, Australia’s ABC Radio National broadcast not one, but two items on rare earth metals, to both of which I heartily recommend listening. The first item was broadcast on the Breakfast program on Friday, and lasts a little over 6 minutes. It’s an introductory piece on the subject, but spends significant time [...]
Continue reading...15. November 2009
As you may already know by now, the Magnetics 2010 conference will be held January 28-29, 2010 at the Disney Hilton in Orlando, Florida. Per the folks organizing the conference, the conference “will feature an interactive exhibit hall, the chance to attend pre-conference workshops, unmatched networking/business opportunities and more than 20 technical presentation“. The Conference [...]
Continue reading...14. November 2009
My thanks to RareMetalBlog’s Ian London for pointing this article out: Oct. 27, 2009 – by Tracey Bryant – The University of Delaware has won a $4.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) to lead a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research project to develop the next generation of high-performance permanent [...]
Continue reading...12. November 2009
Last weekend, Democrat US Senator Chuck Schumer of NY made headlines with his comments on a recent plan to fund a wind farm in Texas, using Federal stimulus money to pay for Chinese-built wind turbines. Rare metals commentator and analyst Jack Lifton has posted a new article on the subject, called “The Rare Earth Crisis [...]
Continue reading...12. November 2009
UK Press Association – A “highly innovative” fridge which will use magnets to cool food is being developed as a more environmentally-friendly alternative to current technology, the Carbon Trust has said. The trust, along with white goods manufacturer Whirlpool, is backing the project to develop a domestic refrigerator based on the scientific principle that certain [...]
Continue reading...6. November 2009
Earlier today, I was pleased to learn that the Organizing Committee of the 21st International Workshop on Rare Earth Permanent Magnets and the Applications [REPM10] announced their first Call for Abstracts. This meeting takes places in Bled, Slovenia from August 29 to September 2, 2010. Held every two years, the Workshop was inaugurated in 1974 [...]
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5. September 2010
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