Scientist Says Blowing Bubbles Could Cool the Earth

Earth Cooling Bubbles

As anyone who has ever left an open can of soda out too long knows, some things are just better with a little fizz, and the world's oceans may be no exception. One physicist from Harvard University thinks that he's found a solution that may help curb the rate of global warming--and it comes in the form of tiny bubbles pumped into our planets water sources. Such microscopic bubbles, says the scientist, act as "mirrors made of air," reflecting sunlight from the water, generating a cooling effect that could be quite dramatic.

According to a report from Science, micro-bubbles are a naturally occurring phenomenon, and their 'undershine' already contributes to tiny fraction of the total amount of sunlight reflected back to space. The physicist, Russell Seitz, believes that pumping more bubbles into oceans will increase the reflectivity enough to cool the planet considerably - all without further damaging aquatic ecosystems.

Read more at: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/03/scientist-says-blowing-bubbles-could-cool-the-earth.php

Charge your cell phone by plugging in your jeans: Fabric Batteries

Fabric Batteries for Clothes that Can Conduct Electricity

Breakthrough:
A carbon-nanotube dye that can turn fabrics into batteries to make clothes that conduct electricity. All you have to do is dip a piece of fabric in a solution infused with tiny tubes of carbon, and it turns into a battery. Simply coating a piece of cotton or polyester with the formulation transforms it into a high performance energy storage device that is a boost to the emerging field of wearable electronics.

The approach was first demonstrated by Stanford University in 2009 on plain copying paper, but now it has been applied to textiles for the first time. “Wearable electronics represent a developing new class of materials... which allow for many applications and designs previously impossible with traditional electronics technologies," the authors wrote in the journal Nano Letters. The research could pave the way to unobtrusive wearable electronics for use in health monitoring systems, the fashion and gaming industries, and for any application that requires computers.

A team led by Prof Yi Ciu incorporated single-walled carbon nanotubes - cylinders of carbon about a billionth of a meter across – into the textiles by a simple dying process. The dye is made by dispersing carbon nanotubes in water and using sodium dodecylbenzenesulphonate as a surfactant. The material is dipped into the mixture and then dried in an oven at 120 degrees Celsius for ten minutes to remove water.

The conductivity of the material is increased by simple mechanical pressing and boosted still further by increases in the number of dipping and drying steps. The fabric maintains its properties when stretched and pulled and there is no decrease in conductivity - even when it is rinsed in water. Cotton proved to be up to 3 times better for energy storage than man-made fibers as its porous nature allowed for better ion transport.

Experts believe the technology could be commercialized in a short space of time, and that its uses will not be limited to just energy storage devices. According to Peidong Yang, a professor of chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley it has the potential to be a low-cost flexible electrode for any electrical device.The Stanford researchers say the next stages of their research are to use the approach with materials that can store more energy, and then demonstrate how to integrate the textile energy storage devices into clothes.

Read more at: http://www.tcetoday.com/tcetoday/newsdetail.aspx?nid=12465

Genetically Engineered Tadpoles glow to indicate Pollution

Genetically Engineered Glowing Tadpoles Detect Pollution

A new environmental monitoring system. Tadpoles have been genetically engineered to express a protein that lights up like a fairground in the presence of pollutants.

Researchers in France and a University of Wyoming professor have developed an innovative application of the technology by genetically engineering tadpoles to monitor heavy metal pollution in water. The system offers a way of rapidly detecting the physiological effects of environmental pollutants and is cheaper and more convenient than traditional means.

In this new approach African clawed frog tadpoles (Xenopus laevis) are modified with jellyfish genes so that they fluoresce when exposed to toxins. They light up in response to dosages that could be harmful to a human, and can indicate the presence of several different types of chemicals at the same time. Some tadpoles have been engineered to glow in the presence of metals, and others in response to plastics.

The scientists involved in this project are already looking to future applications for their tadpole technology. They believe the genetically engineered animals could be deployed to detect toxins in food. Foodstuffs could be turned into liquid and put into the aquarium.

In addition, future genetically engineered tadpoles could fluoresce different colors depending on the pollution they encounter. This requires genes that fluoresce different colors such as some coral genes that glow red.

Read more at: http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2009/12/28/engineered-glowing-tadpoles-detect-pollution.html

A cost-effective solution to make city buses cheaper and greener

Ultracapacitors Make City Buses Cheaper, Greener

Buses with ultracapacitors stop at recharging stations, which double as bus stops, to recharge in less than a minute. A fleet of 17 buses near Shanghai has been running on ultracapacitors for the past three years, and in October 2009 that technology came to the Washington, DC, for a one-day demonstration. Chinese company Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Company, along with its US partner Sinautec Automobile Technologies, predict that this approach will provide an inexpensive and energy efficient way to power city buses in the near future.

A bus with ultracapacitors uses 40% less electricity compared to an electric bus with lithium-ion batteries, and requires just one-tenth the energy cost of a typical diesel-fuelled bus, which would save about $200,000 during the life of the vehicle. Plus, the buses are environmentally friendly: "Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet, it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel when used to charge an ultracapacitor," said Dan Ye of Sinautec.

The biggest advantage of ultracapacitors is that they can fully recharge in less than a minute, unlike lithium-ion batteries which can take several hours. The downside of ultracapacitors is that they currently have a very short range, providing a distance of only a few miles, due to the fact that ultracapacitors can store only about 5% of the energy that lithium-ion batteries can hold.

Although their short range makes ultracapacitors impractical for cars, city buses have to stop frequently anyway.

The two companies hope that this is just the beginning for ultracapacitor buses. The company that makes the Shanghai buses, Foton America Bus Co, based in Tennessee, plans to deliver another 60 buses to the Chinese city in early 2010. The new buses will have ultracapacitors manufactured by Shanghai Aowei that supply 10-watt hours per kilogram, compared with the current ultracapacitors that have an energy density of six watt-hours per kilogram. Other US cities, including New York City, Chicago, and some towns in Florida, have also expressed interest in trailing the buses.

A cost-effective solution to make city buses cheaper and greener

Ultracapacitors Make City Buses Cheaper, Greener

Buses with ultracapacitors stop at recharging stations, which double as bus stops, to recharge in less than a minute. A fleet of 17 buses near Shanghai has been running on ultracapacitors for the past three years, and in October 2009 that technology came to the Washington, DC, for a one-day demonstration. Chinese company Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Company, along with its US partner Sinautec Automobile Technologies, predict that this approach will provide an inexpensive and energy efficient way to power city buses in the near future.

A bus with ultracapacitors uses 40% less electricity compared to an electric bus with lithium-ion batteries, and requires just one-tenth the energy cost of a typical diesel-fuelled bus, which would save about $200,000 during the life of the vehicle. Plus, the buses are environmentally friendly: "Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet, it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel when used to charge an ultracapacitor," said Dan Ye of Sinautec.

The biggest advantage of ultracapacitors is that they can fully recharge in less than a minute, unlike lithium-ion batteries which can take several hours. The downside of ultracapacitors is that they currently have a very short range, providing a distance of only a few miles, due to the fact that ultracapacitors can store only about 5% of the energy that lithium-ion batteries can hold.

Although their short range makes ultracapacitors impractical for cars, city buses have to stop frequently anyway.

The two companies hope that this is just the beginning for ultracapacitor buses. The company that makes the Shanghai buses, Foton America Bus Co, based in Tennessee, plans to deliver another 60 buses to the Chinese city in early 2010. The new buses will have ultracapacitors manufactured by Shanghai Aowei that supply 10-watt hours per kilogram, compared with the current ultracapacitors that have an energy density of six watt-hours per kilogram. Other US cities, including New York City, Chicago, and some towns in Florida, have also expressed interest in trailing the buses.

Bio-inspired computer networks self-organise and learn

Bio-inspired computer networks self-organise and learn

European researchers have developed an innovative computing platform. The European PERPLEXUS project draws on another hot topic in research: self-organising wireless networks which can adapt to the job in hand.

This idea began with an earlier European project, POEtic, which developed a processor based on a large number of identical sub-units or cells. Depending on the current task, each cell can vary its function by changing its internal wiring; at a higher level, links between cells can also be made or broken. Until now, such flexibility has only been available from chips that are externally programmed. The ubichip, in contrast, works out the necessary wiring for itself.

Another branch of the project involved a fleet of small but sophisticated all-terrain robots fitted with ubichips. The researchers developed a new strategy in the field known as collective robotics, whose premise is that groups of robots which communicate with one another are more effective than the same robots acting individually.

In this case, the researchers looked at how foraging robots locate an important place such as a collection point for items they have picked up. Each robot displays a coloured beacon and carries a video camera which can see other robots’ beacons. Robots change the colour of their beacons to signal that they have successfully found the target, and nearby robots copy this behaviour.

The result is a gradient of beacon colours which guides other robots towards the target, rather as in an unfamiliar shopping mall where you might locate a particular store by following a trail of people carrying distinctive plastic bags. According to Pérez-Uribe, this technique is promising for situations where navigation by fixed coordinates or GPS is impossible.

Read more at: http://www.perplexus.org/

Office A4 Sheets into toilet roll in half an hour

Turn waste office paper into toilet paper

While many environmentalists hope that we can eventually have a paperless office, one company in Japan has developed a machine that shreds paper and then converts the waste into readily usable toilet paper.

The process requires you to add water, and it requires about 30 minutes to thin out the paper and generate one roll of toilet paper. This 'TP' looks far from snuggly soft, but it's undeniably a significant step towards a greener office space. The entire process is automated, so it's definitely a big convenience.

The 'White Goat' as it's called is not a contraption that you're likely to squeeze under your desk however. It's mammoth size (1.8m tall and 600kg) would definitely be a better fit in your server room if you have one.

It's set to go on sale this summer in Japan for a price of about US$100,000.

Check out the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i51zo3LA70U&feature=player_embedded

Read more at: http://www.gizmag.com/waste-paper-in-toilet-paper-out/14048/

G-Speak will make the mouse obsolete

G-Speak will make the mouse obsolete

The mouse may soon become obsolete, with interfaces that interpret gestures rapidly approaching a stage at which they can be released for general consumers.

A new system being developed by Oblong Industries harnesses gesture technology that uses special surfaces and displays that can track hand movements, providing the operator is wearing the special conducting gloves. The system works with images and videos, and has been dubbed the “G-Speak” spatial operating environment (SOE).

In a G-Speak environment everything on screen can be directly manipulated by gestures such as pointing, and the system simplifies the control of real-world objects such as robots or vehicles, and allows physical tools and interfaces to be used as input devices. G-speak controls applications through hand poses, pointing, and hand movements, with input from several hands simultaneously being fully supported. Hand and finger motions are tracked to an accuracy of 0.1 mm at 100 Hz.

Check out the full video (its only 3 min!): http://www.physorg.com/news186646144.html

A new technology transforms lip movements into a computer-generated voice

The sound of silence: an end to noisy communications: A new technology unveiled at the CeBIT fair transforms lip movements into a computer-generated voice for the listener at the other end of the phone.

It has happened to almost everyone. You are sitting on a train or a bus and someone right next to you is annoyingly shouting into his or her mobile phone. But those days could soon be past with "silent sounds", a new technology unveiled at the CeBIT fair on Tuesday that transforms lip movements into a computer-generated voice for the listener at the other end of the phone.

The device, developed by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), uses electromyography, monitoring tiny muscular movements that occur when we speak and converting them into electrical pulses that can then be turned into speech, without a sound uttered. "We currently use electrodes which are glued to the skin. In the future, such electrodes might for example by incorporated into cellphones," said Michael Wand, from the KIT. The technology opens up a host of applications, from helping people who have lost their voice due to illness or accident to telling a trusted friend your PIN number over the phone without anyone eavesdropping -- assuming no lip-readers are around.

"Native speakers can silently utter a sentence in their language, and the receivers hear the translated sentence in their language. It appears as if the native speaker produced speech in a foreign language," said Wand. The translation technology works for languages like English, French and Gernan, but for languages like Chinese, where different tones can hold many different meanings, poses a problem, he added.

The engineers have got the device working to 99 percent efficiency, so the mechanical voice at the other end of the phone gets one word in 100 wrong, explained Wand. "But we're working to overcome the remaining technical difficulties.” he said.

Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program: Running tracks made of shoe

Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program

Established in the early 1990s, Nike's Reuse-A-Shoe program collects old, worn-out athletic shoes for recycling, transforming them into Nike Grind, a material used in creating athletic and playground surfaces as well as select Nike products

Since the launch of its Reuse-A-Shoe program in 1990, Nike has recycled more than 21 million pairs of athletic shoes to create public basketball courts and athletic tracks around the world. Its new Considered Design approach aims to reduce waste and eliminate toxins from its factories, further reducing its carbon shoe print.

Check out how shoes are re-used: http://www.nikereuseashoe.com/

Dolphins can turn off and on diabetes

Image by jurvetson via Flickr

Dolphins have the ability to turn off and on diabetes, scientists have found, a discovery that could help medical researchers to treat type 2 diabetes.

Dolphins can induce diabetes when there is little food around and turn it off when food is abundant, the researchers found. They believe it is a unique ability and results from the mammal's need to maintain high blood sugar levels to feed its big brain.

They also believe that humans had the ability but lost it through evolution and that studying dolphins could lead to techniques to re-activate it.
A team lead by Dr Venn-Watson regularly studied the blood samples of the dolphins off the San Diego coast and found that they could induce type II diabetes at times of fasting and then almost immediately turn it off again when food became available.

"Dolphins in the ocean go in to feast or famine situations. They will eat a bunch of fish at once and then they may go a while and fast and not eat. During that fasting state they need a mechanism to keep sugar pumping around their blood," she said.

Dr Venn-Watson believes that the ability dates back to when dolphins reverted from land animals to sea animals 55 million years ago and had to adapt to a protein-only fish diet, the Telegraph reported.

There was evidence that humans have done the same during the last ice age when they had to rely on a protein rich diet because all carbohydrate rich foods had been frozen, she said.

Read more at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8523412.stm