Posts tagged energy

A resurrected hover vehicle won’t fly through dense forests as effortlessly as the “Star Wars” speeder bikes from “Return of the Jedi,” but its intuitive controls could someday allow anyone to fly it without pilot training.

The aerial vehicle resembles a science fiction flying bike with two ducted rotors instead of wheels, but originates from a design abandoned in the 1960s because of stability and rollover problems. Aerofex, a California-based firm, fixed the stability issue by creating a mechanical system controlled by two control bars at knee-level that allows the vehicle to respond to a human pilot’s leaning movements and natural sense of balance.

(Source: futurenow321)

A woman with an artificial arm has been given the sense of touch following a pioneering operation to reroute some of her nerves. Claudia Mitchell, 27, lost her left arm in a motorcycle accident three years ago, but can now feel her missing hand after having nerves from her lost limb rerouted to her chest.

Now, when she touches something with her artificial hand she can feel it through a device attached to her chest.

During a four-hour operation, surgeons moved nerves from her shoulder, which normally ferry signals from the hand to the brain, and redirected them to muscles in her chest area.

Four months after surgery, a patch of skin on her chest was able to feel touch, temperature and pain sensations as if they were coming from different parts of her hand and wrist.

(Source: futurenow321)

Algae based biofuel is a new energy source that has been getting a lot of attention lately. Certain types of algae contain natural oils that can be readily distilled into a vegetable oil or a number of petroleum like products that could serve as drop in replacements for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Dunaliella salinais a type of halophile green micro algae especially found in sea salt fields. Interestingly this algae grows bright pink and can produce up to 35% in lipids(oils) that could one day power your car. Luckly for us we have plent of salt water in the world.

(Source: futurenow321)

Probably one of my favorite inventions, a machine that can suck out the moisture in the air, filter it and sterilize it, serving it up either hot or cold. Producing up to 7 gallons of pure water using half the the electricity of your microwave. Whats better is its available to the public for a affordable price $1200. Whether your trying to get a little extra water at your cabin or trying to prevent world hunger this is the machine for you. Water wells can cost anywhere between $6000-10000, and theres no guarantee you will hit water, especially where its most needed the desert. It is my believe that if this machine was sold on the mass market like walmart, and  costco the price would dramatically come down to $600 and efficiently go up to 10 or more gallons of water per day.

(Source: futurenow321)

Sapphire Energy, the Sorrento Valley company that’s on a mission to turn algae into the fuel of the future for cars and jets, is on a roll.

And Cynthia “C.J.” Warner who joined the company in 2009 as president and was tapped as CEO this year should know.

Last month, the company completed $144 million in financing from Arrowpoint Partners and Monsanto. Original investors include Bill Gates (Cascade Investment), VenRock (Rockefeller family ventures) and Britain’s Wellcome Trust.

Next month, Sapphire launches its new “green crude farm” in Luna County, N.M., where it will begin to grow multiple acres of algae in open ponds. The goal for the demonstration plant is 100 barrels a day by 2015 and by 2018 a projected 5,000 to 10,000 barrels a day.

(Source: futurenow321)

Squishing a stack of virus sheets generates enough electricity to power a small liquid crystal display. With increased power output, these virus films might one day use the beating of your heart to power a pacemaker, the researchers behind them say.

Piezoelectric materials build up charge when pushed or squeezed. These materials may be familiar to you: they generate the spark in a gas lighter, and motors powered by such materials vibrate some cell phones. Piezoelectric materials made of metals or polymers require large inputs of energy to build up a charge. Bone, DNA, and protein fibers are weakly piezoelectric, but it’s hard to efficiently organize these materials on a large scale to yield electricity.

To handle this organizational issue, Seung-Wuk Lee, of the University of California in Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and his colleagues looked for a biomaterial that had intrinsic order and was easy to make. They settled on the M13 bacteriophage, a rod-shaped virus that only infects bacteria. One bacterium can produce one million copies of the virus within four hours, so starting material isn’t a problem. And the virus neatly arranges itself in stacked rows when spread on a surface.

The researchers first tested the virus to see if it was piezoelectric. Instead of pushing on the virus and measuring a current, they looked for the opposite effect. They electrified a film made with the virus and watched for mechanical motion. The scientists saw the helical proteins covering the virus twist.

To understand why the virus is piezoelectric, we need to look at its structure. About 2700 copies of a helical protein stretch along the length of the virus, tipping out from that central axis about 20°. Each helix has a positively charged end and a negatively charged end. The amount of this charge difference and the distance between the two charged areas sets up an electric dipole, which runs along each helix.

Normally these dipoles cancel each other out because the proteins are symmetrically arranged around the outside of the virus—the amount of negative charge around the virus surface balances out the amount of positive charge. But when the virus is squished from above, its rod shape elongates into an oval, and the dipole moments become uneven. One area of the virus coat can now hold negative charges while another builds positive charge. Establishing that charge difference causes current to flow along the virus.

Since the structure of the coat proteins is well known, the researchers engineered the virus to increase its piezoelectric properties. They added four extra negatively charged amino acids, specifically a string of glutamates, to one end of the helical surface protein. That increased the charge difference between the positive and negative ends of the helix, thus raising the amount of electrical energy it produced when squished.

Next, the scientists sandwiched sheets of engineered virus between two gold electrodes about the size of a postage stamp. When pushed with a thumb, the virus stack produces 6 nA of current with 400 mV of potential. That’s about one-quarter the voltage of an AAA battery. Combining two of these stacks provides enough energy to bring up a “1” on a small liquid crystal display.

(Source: futurenow321)

Tucked away in the House Armed Services Committee’s proposed Pentagon budget is a provision that could bring the U.S. military’s ambitious foray into biofuels to a screeching halt.

Earlier this week, the Republican-led committee voted to ban the Department of Defense from purchasing alternative fuels that cost more than “traditional” fossil fuels.
That would eliminate several emerging biofuels that have undergone successful testing by the Air Force and Navy over the past year on aircraft and ships.

The Army has also been developing alternative fuel technologies for ground vehicles, such as a high tech steam engine that can run on a variety of fuels, including biofuels.

The Air Force has been test-flying a 50-50 blend of camelina and jet fuel in public displays of its high-performance Thunderbirds demonstration team. Camelina is a weedy plant in the mustard family.

The Navy has been testing a variety of biofuels in ships and aircraft, including its own Blue Angels aerial demonstration team. Along with camelina, the Navy’s tests include algae and waste grease.

Just last month, the Army officially opened the Ground Vehicle Power and Energy Laboratory, a new research complex in Michigan for developing alternative fuels and new vehicle technologies. Public education and outreach for the new laboratory will be anchored by a traveling vehicle and fuel showcase called the “Green Warrior Convoy.”

A halt to DOD’s biofuel purchases would be a particular blow to the Navy, which has spent the entire year on an all-out effort to launch a Green Strike Group by mid-June, in time to participate in the multinational Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) maritime exercise.

Every member of the Green Strike Group, including both ships and aircraft, will be powered with the help of non-fossil fuels. Though the group is anchored by a nuclear-powered carrier, the intent is to showcase the effectiveness of biofuels.

The Strike Group is an intermediate step toward launching a full Great Green Fleet in 2014.

(Source: futurenow321)

For the past 19 months, the Turanor PlanetSolar has been on a voyage around the world powered only by 38,000 SunPower solar cells. On May 4, the boat will return to Monaco, completing a trip that it began in September of 2010. The 537 square meters of solar panels power six banks of lithium-ion batteries. On a good day towards the end of the trip, they could charge up the batteries by a full 50 percent. On a bad day, they might only get 10 percent more juice before dusk.
The trip was not intended to prove that solar-powered ships are ready for the commercial primetime, but like many first-time journeys, to prove to future engineers that the feat could be accomplished and now need only to be optimized. Perhaps they also provided new (and green!) inspiration.

(Source: futurenow321)