Terra Magnetica

Last week, a technical consulting company called Ricardo, based in the UK, issued a press release on its Kinergy concept for a “high-speed, hermetically-sealed flywheel energy storage system concept with a highly innovative and patented magnetic gearing and coupling mechanism“. What immediately drew my attention to the concept, is the use of a permanent magnet [...]

Last week, I spent over an hour with Ed Cowle, CEO of U.S. Rare Earths, Inc., a privately-held rare earths junior mining company, and Jack Lifton, Founding Editor of The Jack Lifton Report and a consultant to U.S. Rare Earths. The discussion was prompted by an earlier post over at the RareMetalBlog Web site, concerning [...]

[Updated: 03/09/10 & 11/23/09.]
The Times Online has just published a story on a technology that apparently “has the potential to revolutionise the renewable energy industry by making wind power cheaper and more reliable and greatly increasing the efficiency of wind turbines for electricity companies.”
The driver behind the work, conducted by Dr Markus Mueller and Dr. [...]

Earlier today, Science Daily published an article on the use of magnets by a researcher at NIST, Javier Atencia, to create a “new, inexpensive, reusable and highly efficient microfluidic connector“.
Microfluidics involves the control of fluids in very small channels and containers. According to the article:
The NIST connector employs a ring magnet with a O-ring gasket [...]

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 discussing [...]

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 [...]

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 magnets.
Stronger [...]

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 [...]

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 materials [...]

The Defense Metals Technology Center [DMTC], based in North Canton, Ohio, is hosting its 2nd Annual Strategic Materials Conference [SMC] during Feb 1-2, 2010 in Cleveland, Ohio.
According to the DMTC Web site:
The Defense Metals Technology Center (DMTC) was formed in January, 2007 in order to establish an industrial base capable of affordably producing such strategic [...]