your home Seamus Curran, head of the nanotechnology laboratory at NMSU, has managed a 5.2 percent energy efficiency level, a significant increase from the average 3 to 4 percent.

Summary:

Imagine being able to "paint" your roof with enough alternative energy to heat and cool your home.

Those ideas sound like science fiction -- particularly in the wake of the rising costs of fossil fuel.

But both are on the way to becoming reality because of a breakthrough in solar research by a team of scientists from New Mexico State University and Wake Forest University.

Nanotechnology, or molecular manufacturing, refers to the ability to build things one atom at a time.

The relatively low energy efficiency levels produced by organic solar cells have been a drawback.

The announcement was made at the Santa Fe Workshop on Nanoengineered Materials and Macro-Molecular Technologies, which opened Sunday and continues through Friday.

Danish researchers develop hydrogen tablet; stores hydrogen in inexpensive and safe material September 21, 2005 Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have invented a technology which may be an important step towards the hydrogen economy: a hydrogen tablet that effectively stores hydrogen in an inexpensive and safe material.

At the Technical University of Denmark, DTU, an interdisciplinary team has developed a hydrogen tablet which enables storage and transport of hydrogen in solid form.

Their research raises the possibility that household pests like mosquitoes, rats, cockroaches and flies could be used as biofuel sources.

Epstein's process has the potential to address a number of these issues by "creating an easily storable intermediate energy source form from metal ore, such as zinc oxide," according to a release from the Weizmann Institute of Science."

"This means we are closer to making organic solar cells that are available on the market," Curran said.

New Mexico Economic Development Department Secretary Rick Homans added, "This breakthrough pushes the state of New Mexico further ahead in the development of usable solar energy, a vital national resource.