#Potato power: the spuds that could light the world Mashed, boiled, baked or fried? You probably have a preference for your potatoes.
Haim Rabinowitch, however, likes his spuds acked For the past few years, researcher Rabinowitch and colleagues have been pushing the idea of otato powerto deliver energy to people cut off from electricity grids.
Hook up a spud to a couple of cheap metal plates, wires and LED bulbs, they argue, and it could provide lighting to remote towns and villages around the world.
but ingenious trick to make potatoes particularly good at producing energy. single potato can power enough LED lamps for a room for 40 days,
claims Rabinowitch, who is based at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The idea may seem absurd,
Still, Rabinowitch and his team have discovered that actually launching potato power in the real world is much more complex than it first appears.
the basic principles are taught in high school science classes, to demonstrate how batteries work. To make a battery from organic material,
all you need is two metals an anode, which is the negative electrode, such as zinc,
and a cathode, the positively charged electrode, such as copper. The acid inside the potato forms a chemical reaction with the zinc and copper,
and when the electrons flow from one material to another, energy is released. This was discovered by Luigi Galvani in 1780
when he connected two metals to the legs of a frog, causing its muscles to twitch.
But you can put many materials between these two electrodes to get the same effect.
Alexander Volta, around the time of Galvani, used saltwater-soaked paper. Others have made arth batteriesusing two metal plates and a pile of dirt
or a bucket of water. Super spuds Potatoes are preferred often the vegetable of choice for teaching high school science students these principles.
Yet to the surprise of Rabinowitch, no one had studied scientifically spuds as an energy source. So in 2010, he decided to give it a try,
along with Phd student Alex Goldberg, and Boris Rubinsky of the University of California, Berkeley. e looked at 20 different types of potatoes,
explains Goldberg, nd we looked at their internal resistance, which allows us to understand how much energy was lost by heat.
They found that by simply boiling the potatoes for eight minutes it broke down the organic tissues inside the potatoes,
reducing resistance and allowing for freer movement of electronsthus producing more energy. They also increased the energy output by slicing the potato into four or five pieces,
each sandwiched by a copper and zinc plate, to make a series. e found we could improve the output 10 times,
which made it interesting economically, because the cost of energy drops down, says Goldberg. t low voltage energy,
says Rabinowitch, ut enough to construct a battery that could charge mobile phones or laptops in places where there is no grid,
no power connection. Their cost analyses suggested that a single boiled potato battery with zinc and copper electrodes generates portable energy at an estimated $9 per kilowatt hour,
which is 50-fold cheaper than a typical 1. 5 volt AA alkaline cell or D cell battery,
which can cost $494 per kilowatt hour. It also an estimated six times cheaper than standard kerosene lamps used in the developing world.
Which raises an important question why isn the potato battery already a roaring success? In 2010, the world produced a staggering 324,181, 889 tonnes of potatoes.
They are the world number one non-grain crop, in 130 countries, and a hefty source of starch for billions around the world.
They are cheap, store easily, and last for a long time. With 1. 2 billion people in the world lacking access to electricity, a simple potato could be the answeror so the researchers thought. e thought organisations would be interested,
says Rabinowitch. e thought politicians in India would give them out with their names inscribed on them.
They cost less than a dollar. Yet three years on since their experiment why haven governments, companies or organisations embraced potato batteries?
he simple answer is they don even know about it, reasons Rabinowitch. But it may be complicated more than that.
First, there the issue of using a food for energy. Olivier Dubois, senior natural resources officer at the United nations Food and agriculture organisation (FAO),
says that using food for energy like sugar cane for biofuels must avoid depleting food stocks and competing with farmers. ou first need to look at:
are there enough potatoes to eat? Then, are we not competing with farmers making income from selling potatoes?
he explains. o if eating potatoes is covered, selling potatoes is covered, and there some potatoes left, then yes, it can work In a country like Kenya,
the potato is the second most important food for families after maize. Smallholder farmers produced around 10 million tonnes of potatoes this year,
yet around 10-20%were lost in postharvest waste due to lack of access to markets, poor storage conditions,
and other issues, according to Elmar Schulteeldermann, potato science leader for subaharan Africa at the International Potato Center in Nairobi, Kenya.
The potatoes that don make it to the market could easily be turned into batteries. Pithy answer Yet in Sri lanka
for instance, the locally available potatoes are rare and expensive. So a team of scientists at the University of Kelaniya recently decided to try the experiment with something more widely available,
and free plantain piths (stems). Physicist KD Jayasuriya and his team found that the boiling technique produced a similar efficiency increase for plantains
and the best battery performance was obtained by chopping the plantain pith after boiling. With the boiled piths, they found they could power a single LED for more than 500 hours,
provided it is prevented from drying out. think the potato has slightly better current, but the plantain pith is free,
it something we throw away, says Jayasuriya. Despite all this, some are sceptical of the feasibility of potato power. n reality,
the potato battery is essentially like a regular battery you buy at the store, says Derek Lovley at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst. t just using a different matrix. While the potato helps to prevent energy being lost to heat,
it is not the source of the energy that actually extracted via the corrosion of the zinc. t sacrificial the metal is degrading over time,
says Lovley. This means you have to replace the zinc and of course the potato or plantain pith over time.
Still, zinc is quite cheap in most developing countries. And Jayasuriya argues that it could still be more cost effective than a kerosene lamp.
A zinc electrode that lasts about five months would cost about the same as a litre of kerosene
which fuels the average family home in Sri lanka for two days. You could also use other electrodes, like magnesium or iron.
But potato advocates must surmount another problem before their idea catches on: consumer perception of potatoes.
Compared with modern technologies like solar power, potatoes are perhaps less desirable as an energy source. Gaurav Manchanda, founder of One Degree Solar,
which sells micro-solar home systems in Kenya, says people buy their products for more reasons than efficiency
and price. hese are all consumers at the end of the day. They need to see the value in it,
not only in terms of performance, but status, he explains. Basically, some people might not want to show off their potato battery to impress a neighbor.
Still, it cannot be denied that the potato battery idea works and it appears cheap. Advocates of potato power will no doubt continue to keep chipping away e
#How X-ray vision will fuel better car engines When particle accelerators hit the headlines, it's usually
when they are used to probe big questions about the fundamental nature of matter, space and time.
Less well-known, perhaps, is their use in more down-to-earth science the kind of research that hopes to have an impact on our day-to-day lives.
and youl find researchers trying to better understand how modern car engines work, which they hope will help find cleaner,
more efficient ways of burning petrol and Diesel fuel injection has been the subject of research for more than 20 years,
if it can help reveal details about fuel injection that haven been seen before. Like its much larger sibling at Cern, the circular particle accelerator at Argonne shoots electrons around its 0. 7-mile (1. 1-km) circumference at a tiny fraction below the speed of light.
In one of these labs, called ector 7 Dr Christopher Powell, an engine research scientist at Argonne, stands amid a jumble of stainless steel machinery, coloured tubes, wires,
and computer monitors. He is investigating the precise details of what happens when fuel injection systems squirt petrol or diesel into the cylinders
which house the pistons that drive internal combustion engines. It's a process that lasts around one millisecond
and occurs many times a second in a running engine. Understanding how the fuel is dispersed
The high energy X-rays Powell uses in the experiment exit the particle accelerator through a hatch before travelling along a steel pipe,
from standard ones used in today's cars to experimental designs. Injector gadget This process allows the flow of droplets of fuel to be imaged in a way that is not possible with ordinary light or lasers, for example.
Using visible light presents challenges similar to those of using car headlights in fog which consists of droplets of water suspended in the air,
just like a jet of fuel sprayed from an injector. ou turn on the headlights and the light just reflects back into your eyes,
Powell shows me a video of what looks like some children building blocks being pushed together. It is actually a very close up X-ray of the tip of a fuel injector, taken through the injector's steel body.
It shows the individual components in action with the valve moving to release the high-pressure fuel.
Powell says their presence was identified unknown until recently using this high-energy X-ray imaging technique. hat was something interesting we discovered just a few months ago,
X-rays transformed medicine by allowing doctors to see inside living bodies. Powell and others hope that by using X-rays to probe the inner workings of engines in fine detail,
#Giving net lessons to the world's poorest The last few years has witnessed a revolution in online learning,
many people are turning to the internet to educate themselves, switch careers, or change their life.
says Jamie Alexandre at the Foundation for Learning Equality, but the fact that two-thirds of the world population still doesn have access to the internet means that a large proportion of people are excluded from this.
And it the proportion of the world that would most benefit from this: the poor and disadvantaged.
KA Lite, their platform, allows students to do exercises, watch videos, and it tracks their progress.
It is open source, so anyone can download it, download the content to fill in the gaps,
and then deploy that into any classroom, home orphanage, or any facility around the world.
when they get immediate feedback on work. Teachers get more empowered as they can respond to students and tailor lessons.
There are several initiatives trying to connect the entire world to the internet, but the needs of unconnected communities need to be addressed now,
says Alexandre. If we wait, they will be left behind. Jamie Alexandre spoke to BBC Future at The Atlantic Meets The Pacific conference n
#Moocs data offers promise of perfect teaching One day, Sebastian Thrun ran a simple and surprising experiment on a class of students that changed his ideas about how they were learning.
The students were doing an online course provided by Udacity, an educational organisation that Thrun co-founded in 2011.
Thrun and his colleagues split the online students into two groups. One group saw the lesson presentation slides in colour,
and another got the same material in black and white. Thrun and Udacity then monitored their performance.
But what matters is that the data was unequivocal and crucially it challenged conventional assumptions about teaching,
and improved for students. It was an early example of a trend promising to transform online education the exploitation of huge amounts of data about how people actually learn.
Artificial intelligence underpinning online courses can log every click and keyboard stroke a student makes, and this is revealing patterns of learning behaviour that are difficult, if not impossible,
for teachers to see in a traditional classroom. Equipped with this information course designers can adapt their materials,
and deliver the ultimate in targeted teaching. Could this lead to the perfect, personalised lesson?
This wealth of data is only available thanks to the recent rise in popularity of Moocs (massive open online courses),
which offer anyone with access to the internet the chance to sign up for university courses and study them for free.
These online courses, hosted by the likes of Udacity, Coursera and edx, have been the subject of much hype in recent months,
as institutions debate whether this will save or endanger the traditional university degree. But arguably the real novelty they offer has been missed.
Many critics dismiss Moocs as simply online videos of lectures and so nothing new. Yet Moocs greatest impact may come from
what they can teach the teachers: offering a unique opportunity to monitor student behaviour during lessons in unprecedented detail.
You can even monitor mouse clicks. e collect tracking data such as whether they press pause or play at certain parts of a video,
says Chuong Do, a software engineer and leader of the data analytics team at Coursera. For starters, such data helps Coursera group participants into different types of student,
such as those who watch all the lectures and complete all the assignments, others who lose interest over time,
and those that like to watch the videos but have no interest in completing any homework.
Perhaps surprisingly Coursera has discovered there is also a group of students who complete all of the homework assignments without watching any of the lectures. his was unexpected,
but maybe there are people who are interested really in earning a Coursera certificate, or who have read the material already
and are just using it as a way of brushing up. Such information will allow people to adapt courses for different subgroups of students.
In particular, it provides clear and sometimes surprising signals about the presentation style that works best for students,
as Udacity trial with black-and-white slides revealed. Motivation exercise According to Rene Kizilcec a Phd student at the Lytics Lab at Stanford university, the style of presentation on a computer screen can make a big difference to learning.
For example, the lecture videos that make up the bulk of teaching in Moocs often contain an inset of the instructor in one corner of the slides.
Kizilcec wondered whether these inset videos, which are expensive to produce, actually help students to learn,
or are simply a distraction. Kizilcec looked at whether the video of the instructor should be placed in the corner of every slide,
or if it students would be equally happy if it disappeared and reappeared intermittently. By monitoring over 21
000 participants on a Coursera course over a ten-week period, he found that students fell into two camps.
Those participants who had expressed previously a preference for learning visually with an emphasis on text
and graphics experienced less mental effort and were less likely to drop out of the course
when the instructor face appeared intermittently. But those students who preferred to be taught verbally were much better off with the instructor face permanently in one corner of the screen. hat this result suggests is need a for adaptive systems,
says Kizilcec. Mooc data is also revealing how to best motivate students online. Joseph Jay Williams and other researchers at Stanford university
alongside Jascha Sohl-Dickstein at nonprofit online education provider Khan academy, added messages above mathematics problems on the Khanacademy. org website to keep students motivated
while undertaking assignments. They found that positive messages such as"this might be a tough problem,
but we know you can do it, "had little effect on student performance. But when they added notes emphasising that intelligence can be improved with effort,
such as"remember, the more you practice the smarter you become, "they found that students attempted a greater number of problems
and were more likely to get them right. A similar attempt by Coursera to encourage students to finish their course by reminding them of what homework assignments they had yet to complete
actually led to a drop in student retention when participants felt harassed, says Do. But the company got a much better response
when they lipped ininformation within an email that focused more on the positive achievements students had made that week,
with a chart showing what percentage of assignments they had completed and how many lectures they had watched.
If this trend continues, then, students could soon be receiving the ultimate in personalised teaching,
with unique lessons targeted exactly to their needs, motivations and learning style. The education technology start-up Knewton, for example, has developed an adaptive learning system that instantaneously alters the way it presents information to students based on
what it gleans about their individual learning style as they interact with it It also possible that student behaviour
and progress could be monitored in even more detail than today. For example, some researchers are working on using facial recognition to identify via webcam
whether students are following the lesson or frowning in confusion. All of which promises a future in which teachers can adapt at a glance to how different students respond to everything from string theory to Shakespeare
whether they are in a classroom or not. How students may feel about this level of monitoring,
however, is less clear l
#Emergencies inspire new apps to answer crisis calls Like many residents of Nairobi in Kenya,
I learnt about last month armed attack of the Westgate Mall from friends and acquaintances.
Minutes after the attack began, a flood of text messages, emails and tweets arrived. Messages such as re u okay??
or tay away from Westgate! packed my inbox as they did for many others in the city.
While most people stayed away, I rushed to the scene to report on the unfolding attack.
It was impossible to keep up with all the responses, and equally challenging to send out my own queries to friends,
and emails as long as batteries lasted desperately hoping for rescue, or information on a passage to safety.
Nearly three quarters of humans on this planet are tethered practically to their mobile phones. Yet it is only during emergencies that we realise how precious this connection is to our lives.
Perhaps reassuringly, a series of technologies are now emerging that promise to make it easier to reach loved ones
and share vital news during emergencies be armed it attacks or natural disasters. Early signs suggest that the rise in mobile phone ownership is beginning to mitigate the impact of emergencies and natural disasters.
Last year saw the lowest number of deaths and people affected by disasters for a decade, according to the 2013 World Disasters Report from the International Federation of Red cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
but argues that technology played a significant role in reducing the human toll specifically ownership of phones,
For example, when Typhoon Bopha struck the Philippines less than a year ago, Galeta explains, housands of lives were saved
because 99%of the population has access to a mobile phone and could receive early warnings
And in the US, Wireless Emergency Alerts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency now warn people of severe weather and other hazards
with a special sound and vibration on their phones. The UK government is also piloting both SMS
and ell broadcasttechnology to send emergency alerts to phones in areas at risk of flooding or industrial accidents.
twitter, phone or email, during Kenya 2007-2008 post-election violence. Distress alert During the Westgate siege, Hersman and
However, the Ping website also allows one person to send out a mass text message to a preprogrammed list of contacts, saying, essentially, re you safe?
the same message is sent then via secondary and tertiary channels, like email, Twitter and Whatsapp. f it doesn't hear from the primary person,
it goes to their next contact and tries them as a backup says Hersman, ust in case the guy/gal had a late night drinking session
and is just not waking up, their spouse or roommate can check in for them. Ping responses are filed into three categories:
Their first product, Usalamame App for Android, introduces a digital anic buttonwidget to your phone home screen that sends a distress message with your exact location to preselected contacts.
One advantage of the app is that unlike other similar products such as Redpanic Button for iphones,
it doesn require internet connection. If your data signal or GPS is switched off, Usalama pinpoints your nearest location by using your cell service provider,
and sends that information via a text message to your recipients. The company also offers a portable PS Panic Buttondevice,
says Phil Talbot, director of communications at The british Red cross. ny means that can increase communication
says Talbot. ften they are more traditional technologies, like mobile phones. It is impossible to prevent many emergencies and natural disasters from happening,
but by becoming better connected, there are promising signs that we can cope better in a crisis
glitzy malls, money, and of course, oil. Saudi arabia discovered oil in 1938, only six years after becoming a unified country.
In 2012, the Kingdom raked in a staggering $311bn in oil revenues as much as Iraq, Kuwait, UAE,
As early as 2030, according to a Citigroup report. And without it, the current Saudi economy could grind to a halt.
To prevent this it has undertaken recently a remarkably ambitious and expensive plan to become a world leader in technology
and innovation by kicking its oil habit, shifting away from decades of single-commodity dependency and moving towards a knowledge-based economy by 2025.
universities and entrepreneurship centres in every corner of the country like the King Abdulla City for Atomic and Renewable energy, near the capital Riyadh,
Part of the plan to diversify the economy has resulted in an international scholarship programme that sees more than 130
000 Saudi students studying abroad at the world leading universities. With 70%of the population under 34,
and unemployment for Saudi nationals lingering around 12 %and over 30%for women it no surprise the nation is pushing its youth to innovate.
Norway, the world eighth-largest oil exporter, established a sovereign wealth fund (Government Pension fund Global) in 1990 to diversify oil investments
a new government-funded business incubator that is one of many promoting entrepreneurship as a means to new economic growth. f we focus on creating a culture based on entrepreneurs,
advance manufacturing and biotechnology. e started with ICT because it the easiest thing to start.
All you need is servers and business development managers. So far, Badir has supported over 70 companies,
which links usersaddresses with their mobile phone number to make deliveries easier; physical residence addresses don exist in much of Saudi.
Coffee, however, probably won turn the economy around on its own. While Badir focuses on lighter tech industries,
The King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (Kaust) campus is a public research institution near the coastal village of Thuwal.
Graduate and Phd students at Kaust New Ventures programme are given both encouragement and financing to find solutions to pressing problems such as water treatment and renewable energy.
Over 60%of Saudi water comes from desalination an expensive process and the country has untapped vast,
as yet potential for solar development. t clear for the government at highest levels that oil is not sustainable.
changing the culture, the economy, the mindset. While Stanford and Harvard universities took decades to become recognised institutions
and build a culture of entrepreneurship in the Kingdom. he society wants innovation from Gen Y to corporate employees,
audis don like to work, she says. Many Saudis are supported fully, by family or government, and don work until they graduate from university. n Saudi arabia,
you won find someone who risen from the mailroom to be CEO, she says. t inherited money,
or success because of connections. The Saudi government heavy subsidising of entrepreneurship is a und-it
we have over 60,000 Saudi students, explains Prince Fahad bin Faisal Al Saud. He a 30-year-old member of the Saudi Royal family who, after graduating from Stanford university,
helped spearhead Facebook Arabic user growth. He now a echnology evangelistfor the country. his number of Saudi students outside the country has happened not in 13 years,
he explains. fter 9/11, we weren allowed to get visas. It was not a good time for us.
Prince Fahad quit Facebook and hopped on a plane back to Saudi, itching to gnite the cultureof entrepreneurship and new media,
like drinking water and energy but these entrepreneurs are building a different economy. audi is the largest consumer of Youtube content per capita in the world,
More than 90 million Youtube views per day come from the Kingdom. Saudis are also the biggest content producers in the region 40%of Arabic tweets
In 2011,39%of internet users, approximately three million people, bought products and services online. According to economists, Saudi e-commerce sales are now over $4bn per year,
and the fastest-growing in the region. Some even say it may grow as high as $13. 3bn by 2015.
and customers send their orders via Whatsapp. nstagram is better than a website, because it much easier.
Dr Jaser says the internet as well as slowly loosening restrictions for women makes starting businesses for women ore accessible hen
In Saudi arabia, 52%of university graduates are women; but segregation laws, such as not allowing them to drive,
have restricted employment opportunities. Shifting sands Times, however, are changing. round 400,000 jobs will be created in the next few years for Saudi women,
the first website in Saudi arabia that helps women find jobs. Last month, India largest IT company, Tata announced plans to build an ll-female services centrein the country next year.
and Glowork database, which has registered now over 1. 2 million unemployed Saudi women between 18 and 35,
Private investment and loans for start-ups are still almost nonexistent. There is no equity-backed financing.
A culture of risk-taking investors and VCS has yet to emerge among Saudi wealthy.
Protection for foreigners investing in the country is minimal. Frederic Wehery, a senior associate in the middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
says it will be hard to end the culture of dependency subsidies, benefits and handouts from the government that have marked Saudi economy. t not simply a matter of buying innovation says Wehry. here still no incentive for private entrepreneurshipand the ambition exceeds the capacity and the reality. t all dreams.
Nothing has turned into a reality yet, says Khalid Al Khudair. ee far from where we want to be.
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