Gravity Light-Awesome

Kerosene lamps used in off-grid, rural areas are a major problem. They're bad for people's health and the environment's. One startup's solution is to tap another, greener resource, something we all have in abundance: gravity.

The invention, GravityLight, does exactly what the name suggests: It keeps a light going through the power of gravity. As an attached weight falls, it pulls a cord through the center of the light, powering a dynamo. That dynamo converts the energy from the falling weight into power for the light. (It's the same idea as a hand-cranked device, just more vertical.) The weight can be set in a few seconds, and as it slowly reaches Earth, enough energy is generated to keep a light working for 30 minutes. As long as it's set every 30 minutes, it makes for a green, battery-free, continuous stream of light. Other, similar devices like battery chargers could be used through the same process, too.

The inventors say the gadgets can be sold now for less than $10, which would make a return on investment for owners three months after dumping kerosene lighting. And speaking of investments, the group has already shattered the goal for its Indiegogo campaign, meaning we'll hopefully see these in action soon.

Science of Beer

I treated myself to my first beer making kit, but I do not think I will give it a try until the weather is warmer, there appears to be a lot of cooking involved and I have heard that it may have a slightly overwhelming aroma.  This will be a good spring/summer project.  

InfoGraphic from Popular Science

Science Scene - VisLabit

A team of Italian engineers is gearing up for a high-tech road rally that should impress even the outside-the-box dreamers over at DARPA: an 8,000-mile journey from Italy to China, with nobody behind the wheel. The three-month convoy will be the longest test of driver-less vehicle ever conducted, taking the cars through twisting mountain passes, Moscow traffic, and harsh Siberian weather before ending up in the sprawling roadways of Shanghai in October.


To follow their progress, click here.


Of course, when we say there's nobody behind the wheel, that's not entirely accurate. The project includes two electric-powered "driverless" vans, each of which will carry two technicians. One of them will always be in the driver seat ready to press the red "oh sh*t!" button and take control should the car's laser scanners, cameras, and software get into a situation that might turn dangerous.

Each van will work in tandem with a manned leader van that will drive ahead and give its driverless counterpart cues on where it's going next. But the driverless vehicle will be responsible for negotiating traffic and responding to the environment and obstacles around it. Only one driverless van and leader vehicle will operate at a time; the other pair will be hauled behind on a truck. The vans require an eight-hour charge after every few hours on the road, so even traveling at speeds between 30-37 miles per hour -- not very fast but not a crawl either -- the going will be very slow.


The transcontinental trek is more of a stress test for driverless technology than a demonstration, and the project leaders concede that the cars will likely need quite a bit of help from humans. But the 100 terabytes of information collected en route will go a long way toward helping the driverless technology maker, VisLab, improve its intelligent systems and artificial vision.


The idea is that someday 100 percent driverless technology could be used to freight cargo across continents autonomously or to reduce troop risk by running driverless military supply convoys, goals more or less congruent with those put forth by DARPA when it created the Urban Challenge several years ago. Of course, there's one more immediate challenge facing the team: Where, exactly, does one charge up a next-gen electric vehicle in the middle of Siberia?

Milano July 20, 2010
Roma July 22, 2010
Parma July 26, 2010
Belgrade July 28, 2010
Kiev Aug 5, 2010
Karkov Aug 9, 2010
Rostov Aug 12, 2010
Moscow Aug 17-19, 2010
Niznij Novgorod Aug 22, 2010
Saratov Aug 26, 2010
Samara Aug 29, 2010
Kazan Sept 1, 2010
Ufa Sept 4, 2010
Celiabinzk Sept 7, 2010
Jekaterinburg Sept 10, 2010
Tjumen Sept 13, 2010
Omsk Sept 17, 2010
Novosibirsk Sept 21, 2010
Kemerovo Sept 24, 2010
Khorgas Oct 5, 2010
Xi’an Oct 21, 2010
Shanghai Oct 28, 2010 


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Science Scene - RoboCat

In case you missed this a couple of weeks ago, .....

When Oscar the cat lost both his hind paws in a farming accident, it was feared he'd have to trundle around in one of those wheeled-cat apparatuses. But Noel Fitzpatrick, a neuro-orthopedic veterinary surgeon in Surrey, pioneered a groundbreaking technique instead, installing weight-bearing bone implants to create a bionic kitty.


Custom-engineered metal implants -- called intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics (ITAPs) -- are fastened directly to Oscar's little ankle bones, inside his fuzzy little legs. From there they protrude directly through the skin and fur, using a biomimicking design inspired by the way that deer's antlers anchor to bone and then extend out through the skin. Prosthetic paws attach to the ends of the implants and let Oscar walk normally.








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Science Scene - Waterbox

Plants lose heat to the air at night, and the cool surface of the leaves sucked water droplets from the warm, humid air. Nature’s watering system.  I wish there were more people looking for ways to move forward such as this man has.  Love the name as well.

Today, one third of the world’s population lives where water is scarce or of poor quality, a number that’s expected to jump to two thirds by 2025. Making matters worse, in some areas deforestation and overfarming have led to eroded soil that can no longer support many crops. Hoff designed his Groasis Waterboxx with this in mind—it’s a plant incubator that’s made from plastic or a biodegradable material and designed to cool faster than the night air, like his lilies. The box is coolest at its top, the part that has the most contact with the open air. Water condenses on the cover and flows down into a small holding tank, where it’s trapped, along with any rainwater. The collected water and the box itself keep the plant and its roots hydrated and protected.

How the Groasis Waterboxx Works: Water condenses on the box's cool top, collects in a tank, and drips into the soil to hydrate the plant. Paul Wootton

At the same time, a candle-like wick on the bottom of the box slowly drips small doses of the water into the soil and root system underneath, providing enough for the plant’s first year of life but still leaving the roots thirsty enough to grow strong and deep. The box can easily be lifted up off the ground, over the top of the plant, and reused.

In 2006 Hoff took 25 Waterboxxes to Morocco’s Sahara desert, and after a year, 88 percent of the trees he treated had green leaves, while 90 percent of those watered weekly (the traditional local method) died under the scorching sun. He is conducting more experiments with 20,000 Waterboxxes in difficult terrains in places like Pakistan and Ecuador this year.

Hoff is hoping to recruit people to buy a few Waterboxxes from his Web site (groasis.com) to see how the invention works in other regions he hasn’t reached. “Everywhere you look, there’s space to plant,” he says. “But I can’t do this alone.”

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Science Scene - Pedal Power

Bored guests at a certain Crowne Plaza hotel can now skip the pricey mini-bar and hop on an exercise bike, generate some electricity, and earn some meal vouchers. The hotel in Copenhagen started the free meal idea as a way to boost guests' fitness and shrink their carbon footprint, according to the BBC.


The bikes are hooked up to generators that require guests of average fitness to pedal for about 15 minutes to create 10 watt-hours of electricity. iPhones attached to the handlebars display the amount of power being generated.

Hitting the 15-minute mark earns lucky exercisers a $36 meal voucher, and that's presumably on a repeatable reward system. But a hotel spokeswoman said that she doubted people would exploit the initiative for free meals. Oh, Denmark ... not that we're frowning on the highly generous offer.

No restaurant in the US could stay in business doing this, basically, our country will do anything to get things for free. Guess the price of power in Denmark is a lot higher than here. $154/hour, not a bad gig if you can get it.

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Science Scene - Molten Metal Batteries

Molten metal batteries may be the future for larger grid-scale batteries. MIT engineers have created devices that can provide up to 20 times as much current as lithium-ion batteries with the same electrode area. The new battery simply consists of tanks filled with three liquid layers kept at 1,292 degrees F (700 degrees C). Molten magnesium sits on top, and antimony sits on the bottom (picture to left is similar design but uses sodium sulfer for the electrodes). The middle layer consists of a compound mixture of the two outer layers.
Charging the battery with electricity breaks down the middle layer, and thus enlarges the upper and lower layers, while discharging reverses the process, in a chemical reaction that releases electrons to provide power. Once running, the battery also creates enough self-sustaining heat to keep everything molten.
A battery as large as a shipping container could deliver a megawatt of electricity, or enough to power about 10,000 100-watt light bulbs for several hours. Its cheaper material costs compared to lithium make it a more cost-effective candidate for scaling up the power grid. The molten metal battery technology could provide part of a newer energy infrastructure that supports a growing variety of renewable energy sources.

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Science Scene - NASA's Future

I know that there has been a lot of coverage the past few days, but just in case you missed it, here is a high level look at the new direction.  I think it makes good sense in the current economic environment, going to the moon [Alice :o)] can be done by private enterprise.  We need to go where no man has gone before [could not resist].

NASA's Orion crew capsule, which was part of the cancelled Constellation program, has been revived as an escape pod for the International Space Station. A smaller version of the capsule could launch on an Atlas or Delta rocket and eliminate the need to buy a multimillion-dollar Russian Soyuz spacecraft for emergency crew escape, Florida Today reports.


President Obama's plan for the U.S. space agency would also make a commitment to a specific heavy-lift launch rocket by 2015. That rocket would have the ability to send missions beyond Earth orbit to destinations that might include Mars.

The president's budget scrapped NASA's original plan to return humans to the moon within the decade, and has refocused the space agency on developing technologies for space exploration beyond Earth orbit. It also supports commercial launches by the private space industry to deliver cargo and crew to the space station.

Obama will also announce plans on Thursday to bring 2,500 more jobs to Florida's Space Coast than the cancelled NASA moon program. That could help soothe the sting of more than 8,000 jobs lost at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida due to the impending shutdown of NASA's shuttle program and the demise of Project Constellation.

Another part of the president's plan puts $2 billion over the next five years toward making Kennedy Space Center a 21st century spaceport with lower launch costs for private companies and the U.S. Department of Defense. Obama added the goal of making Florida's I-4 corridor the "Silicon Valley of Space," Florida Today notes.

Those sound like sweet words to our ears, if the plan can really pull that off. We're not complaining about NASA's future including some robo-astronauts, either.

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Science Scene - One Ugly MoFo

This monstrosity surfaced on the Web this week, after first surfacing attached to a remotely operated undersea survey sub. While this 2.5-foot specimen is indeed more monstrous than most of its species, it's really just a harmless, friendly giant isopod, a sea scavenger that dwells in the deep, cold waters of the oceans.


Resembling giant woodlice, isopods are oceanic bottom-feeders, dining mostly on whale carcasses and the like. The vast majority of them are found at depths below 1,200 feet, so they are not generally sought out in any commercial capacity and therefore we don't see them very often. However, we hear isopod is something of a delicacy in Taiwan, where its white, lobster-like meat is boiled and enjoyed in seaside restaurants.



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Science Scene - Wireless Light Switches

Most houses require hundreds of feet of electrical wire to connect light switches to a main power source. Popular Science's green house project has installed a wireless lighting system called Verve that uses radio waves instead of copper wiring to command all the lights and outlets in the house. The system not only saves copper (imagine the savings in a skyscraper) but also allows flexible light switch location(s).


A small module inside each light switch harvests energy from the motion of turning the switch on or off and uses it to transmit radio signals up to 300 feet away to a central 10-channel controller that’s hardwired to the fuse box. Since the switches generate their own power, they require no batteries, wires or messy electrical channels carved into my brand-new insulated wall panels.

Other whole-home lighting control systems offer more programming options, but they’re also more expensive and cost more to install because of all the wiring. At $3,500, Verve runs me only a bit more than the price of a home’s worth of fancy dimmers. The downside? The system is designed mostly for new construction—retrofits get messy and costly because they require ripping out wires.

http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2010-01/green-dream-swappable-switches

Green Navy

Militaries have a tough, often messy job to do, and as such taking steps to polish their green credentials generally isn’t a high priority. But the potential cost savings – not to mention the tactical advantages – of going green are not lost on U.S. Armed Forces’ top brass. The Army has pursued “zero footprint” base camps, and the Air Force is looking into a variety of alternative propellants that could be turned into jet fuel. Now the Navy is going green, signing a memorandum of understanding with the USDA to demo a Green Strike Group of biofuel- and nuclear-powered vessels by 2012.

For full article, go to Popular Science.

Science Scene - PTSD Diagnosis Methodology at Hand?

With so many troops rotating into and out of two different war zones, mental health experts in the U.S. are urgently trying to understand the causes – and a means to assuage or prevent – post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now, a group of researchers at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis VA Medical Center may have unlocked the secret to objective PTSD diagnosis: a biomarker in the brain that diagnoses the condition with more than 90 percent accuracy.


The Minnesota research group used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure the magnetic fields in the brains of a group of a few hundred people, about a third of which were U.S. veterans. MEG employs 248 sensors that record neural activity on a millisecond-to-millisecond basis, far faster than other brain scanning methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging or CT scans, which can only capture activity every few seconds.

Using that millisecond-to-millisecond data, researchers were able to identify biological trends in the brain that accurately identified those suffering from PTSD more than 90 percent of the time. A larger study is needed before researchers can call the results airtight, but better-than-90-percent efficacy offers a lot of promise. By helping doctors identify PTSD cases early on, steps can be taken to minimize the effects of the disorder on troops returning from combat theaters, greatly enhancing quality of life for tens of thousands of servicemen and servicewomen.

Details originally posted at Popular Science.

Israel Developing Semi-Lethal Sonic Cannon To Control Rioters

When I say the headline above in the title, my immediate reaction is how can something be semi-lethal?  I know that this technology has been around for a while with the potential for crowd control and weaponization.  Lets hope it is used in a non-lethal manner.

A desert people have developed a new weapon that uses sound instead of bullets. But this time, it will be used to control crowds instead of fighting giant worms or devious members of House Harkonnen. The Israeli Defense Ministry has contracted for the production of sonic-boom stun-guns called "Thunder Generator cannons," which they hope to use in crowd-control situations.


The cannons are built by farming company PDT Agro, which originally designed the sound blasters as a means of warding birds away from crops. Eventually, someone realized the powerful sonic blasts could do the same to people.

The weapon runs on LPG, a common cooking gas, which mixes with oxygen to generate powerful bursts of sound. Each sound burst lasts around 300 milliseconds, and generates a shockwave that travels from the cannon at almost six times the speed of sound.

Although it's intended to be less than lethal, the Thunder Generator cannon can cause death to people within 30 feet of the blast. For people farther away than 30 feet, the sonic boom will deafen them and knock them back, and hopefully disperse an unruly crowd.

The Israeli military hopes to use the sound blaster as an alternative to the rubber bullets and caustic chemicals they currently deploy against rioting Orthodox settlers and rock-throwing Palestinians alike. Either way, it sounds less dangerous than a weirding module.

Science Scene - Bombproof Wallpaper

This entry was inspired by a brief article in the April 2009 Popular Science Magazine.

Franklin, MA - Berry Plastics Corporation, the industry's leading manufacturer of flexible films and tapes, has introduced X-FLEX Blast Protection System, an innovative, peel-and-stick solution that is designed specifically to absorb energy and mitigate debris hazards during a significant blast event.

Developed through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) of the US Army Corp of Engineers and Engineered Protective Systems of Berry Plastics Corporation, this new stretch-and-catch system uses the technology of elastomeric material to retrofit walls and greatly enhance the ability to mitigate secondary debris hazards associated with blast loads.

U.S. Troops might soon be protecting their bunks with these bombproof sheets of peel-and-stick plastic. These sheets are a composite tape made from polyurethane reinforced with aramid, a heat-resistant fiber used in body armor. Soldiers simply slap the 1/5 inch thick adhesive sheets to their walls, rendering them able to withstand shrapnel and small explosions.