Energy & Green Tech

Researchers harvest electricity from wood soaking in water

Water and wood may one day be all that's needed to provide electrical power for a household. At a time when energy is a critical issue for many millions of people worldwide, scientists in Sweden have managed to generate electricity ...

Energy & Green Tech

Water out of thin air: California couple's device wins $1.5M

It started out modestly enough: David Hertz, having learned that under the right conditions you really can make your own water out of thin air, put a little contraption on the roof of his office and began cranking out free ...

Engineering

Using softened wood to create electricity in homes

A multi-institutional team of researchers has found that it is possible to use a type of fungus to soften wood to the point that it could be used to generate electricity. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, ...

Engineering

Building a transistor out of treated wood

A team of organic chemists and engineers from Linköping University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, both in Sweden, has demonstrated that working transistors can be made from treated wood. The results have been published ...

Engineering

In Scandinavia, wooden buildings reach new heights

A sandy-colored tower glints in the sunlight and dominates the skyline of the Swedish town of Skelleftea as Scandinavia harnesses its wood resources to lead a global trend towards erecting eco-friendly high-rises.

Engineering

How wood is making a comeback in construction

We've been using wood to build things for a very long time. According to the recently discovered remains of a half-a-million-year-old wooden structure in Africa, we've been building with wood before we were even fully human. ...

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Wood

Wood is an organic material; in the strict sense it is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of trees (and other woody plants). In a living tree it conducts water and nutrients to the leaves and other growing tissues, and has a support function, enabling woody plants to reach large sizes or to stand up for themselves. However, wood may also refer to other plant materials with comparable properties, and to material engineered from wood, or wood chips or fiber.

People have used wood for millennia for many purposes, primarily as a fuel or as a construction material for making houses, tools, weapons, furniture, packaging, artworks, and paper. Wood can be dated by carbon dating and in some species by dendrochronology to make inferences about when a wooden object was created. The year-to-year variation in tree-ring widths and isotopic abundances gives clues to the prevailing climate at that time.

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