The ingredients for a multibillion-dollar global technology race sit on a table here in this Milwaukee suburb. They make the process seem pretty simple: Two strips of specially coated foil and a thin, plastic-like material called a separator are carefully wrapped together in a layered spiral that technicians here call the "jelly roll."

Engineers have constructed a solar array smaller than a dime out f 20 solar cells, each cell tinier than a quarter of this lowercase "o."

A few UK scientists have done a smart thing; they’ve combined the proposals of G8 policymakers for combating climate change with actual data on the status of play in the carbon cycle. The resulting study (pdf) is interesting not only because of this highly useful approach but also because it focuses on atmospheric carbon dioxide and its impact on the environment in the far future.

Earth scientists are attempting to predict the future impacts of climate change by reconstructing the past behavior of Arctic climate and ocean circulation. In a November special issue of the journal Ecology, a group of scientists report that if current patterns of change in the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans continue, alterations of ocean circulation could occur on a global scale, with potentially dramatic implications for the world's climate and biosphere.

Humanoid robots have been used to show that that functional hierarchy in the brain is linked to time as well as space. Researchers from RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan, have created a new type of neural network model which adds to the previous literature that suggests neural activity is linked solely to spatial hierarchy within the animal brain. Details are published November 7 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology.

The question today is: Can Web 2.0 Revolutionize Corporate Responsibility, or what's sometimes known as CSR? Web 2.0 is interactive online video, it's interactive Web; it's social networking. Rather than things going linearly, they are more information and interaction coming from all directions.

China is promoting a plan to dramatically boost the flow of greenhouse gas-cutting technology from wealthy economies to developing countries.

The plan will be discussed during a two-day conference in Beijing from Friday, but its content has not yet been officially released.

A scientist has predicted that later this century, nuclear-powered aircraft will be transporting millions of passengers around the world.

According to a report in The Times, the scientist in question is Ian Poll, Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Cranfield University, and head of technology for the Government-funded Omega project.

A new carmaker has a plan for cheap, environmentally-friendly cars an air-powered car.

It may be available sooner at a price tag that will hardly be a budget buster. The vehicle may not run like a speed racer on back road highways, but developer Zero Pollution Motors is betting consumers will be willing to fork over $20,000 for a vehicle that can motor around all day on nothing but air and a splash of salad oil, alcohol or possibly a pint of gasoline.

Emissions of a greenhouse gas that has 17,000 times the planet-warming capacity of carbon dioxide are at least four times higher than had been previously estimated. Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is used mainly by the semiconductor industry to clean the chambers in which silicon chips are made.