In partnership with the University of Western australia, Panorama has developed a patented optical reader for Micro Electro Mechanical systems (EMS
Panorama anticipates that one of its initial first generation systems will be applicable to the mining sector, targeting improved exploration outcomes and safety.
Among other things, MEMS devices are able to measure acceleration, gravity, chemicals, the indicators of disease or the presence of explosives.
and communicate the data that is measured. Currently MEMS readers measure and communicate information electronically, which is subject to interference from electrical oisefrom nearby devices and the environment.
The only alternative technology, which is more sensitive and therefore more accurate, is an optical system using a laser directed at a MEMS sensor.
However, these are currently only able to operate in laboratories due to their size (similar to that of a washing machine), sensitivity to vibration,
and the need to precisely align the laser with the tip of the tiny MEMS sensor.
In addition, these readers can usually only measure one, or very few MEMS sensors at a time. By contrast
Panorama Lumimems Reader is a portable, robust and autonomous readout system which combines the accuracy and sensitivity of the optical reader with the size and portability of the electrically based system, without the shortcomings of interference from noise or vibration.
It is therefore able to be deployed in harsh environments such as down a drill hole or inside the cylinder shaft of a car engine,
being much more heat resistant than an electrical system. In addition, a chip that has several hundred MEMS sensors can be read simultaneously by one Lumimems Reader,
therefore it is statistically more accurate than laboratory mounted optical systems. Its integration into silicon will use well known
proven techniques already widely used in the likes of smart phones, cars and airplanes. It has been estimated there are already 50 MEMS sensors in a modern car.
The MEMS market is estimated to be $14 billion in 2014, growing to over $22 billion by 2018, a CAGR of 13%per annum.
#Flolevel Technologies launches acoustic level interface transmitter Flolevel Technologies, an innovator of level measurement products, has launched a new self-cleaning acoustic level interface transmitter for Flotation Cells.
The level interface transmitter tracks liquid to liquid interface, liquid to paste interface and liquid to granular interface.
It is powered a hi Ultrasonic self-cleaning transmitter that is not affected by conductivity and dielectric of the solution.
which cause implosions that generate high energy levels. ith over 30 years of experience from many different applications in the mines we have developed a level transmitter that will optimise the mineral recovery in Flotation Cells
and significantly cut costs for the mining industry, says Robert Stirling, Owner and inventor of Flolevel Technologies.
with flange mounting options and a colour display controller mounted in a stainless steel enclosure. They can measure all types of Flotation Cell,
Various output capability options are available, like 3 x 4-20ma, Modbus, Profibus, Foundation Fieldbus, Devicenet, and Ethernet.
#Imergy Power systems develops high-performance flow batteries Imergy Power systems has achieved a milestone in energy storage by developing a process for producing high-performance flow batteries with recycled vanadium from mining slag oil field sludge fly ash and other forms of environmental waste.
The achievement will have a number of significant impacts on the growing energy storage industry. Other manufacturers of vanadium flow batteries build their devices with virgin vanadium extracted from mining.
It must then be processed to a 99%plus level of purity. Through an extensive R&d program, Imergy has developed a way to produce flow batteries with vanadium at a 98%purity level that can be harvested from environmental waste sites.
By extracting vanadium from slag Imergy will lower the cost of obtaining and processing vanadiumhe principal active ingredient in many flow battery electrolytesy 40%relative to competitors.
As a result of this technology and other developments, Imergy will be able to lower the cost of its flow batteries from $500 a kilowatt hour, already an industry benchmark, to under $300 per kilowatt hour.
Imergy flow batteries from low-grade vanadium will also be capable of storing more energy per kilogram than conventional vanadium flow batteries by more than twice, giving cell phone operators, solar power plant developers, microgrid owners
and other customers more flexibility and capacity for managing outages curbing peak power or reducing demand charges.
The technology is also more sustainable for the environment by using an existing waste product with little or no market value.
By working with Imergy, fuel and mining companies can reduce their potential scope of liability and operating costs. his is a win all the way around.
Wee taking industrial sludge and turning it into a source of clean energy said Bill Watkins, CEO of Imergy Power systems. t the same time,
wee lowering the cost and increasing the performance of energy storage, which is going to expand the market. a
and provides enhanced capabilities through innovative software applications allowing operators to optimize the development of their unconventional reservoirs
and iteratively with the seismic and well data required to model the structure rock and fluid properties.
Key scientific and technological advances in the CYPHER 2. 0 service include modelling the interaction of the reservoir's natural fracture networks with the fractures induced by the hydraulic fracturing process.
This results in a more accurate fracture network model with which to simulate the production performance of the completion design.
Critical operational factors can then be adjusted in real time between stages during the fracture treatment to further optimize well performance.
and iteratively optimize the development plans for operators shale assets. Since we released the CYPHER service in September 2013 we have seen tremendous customer interest
Projects on shale assets in several North american basins have delivered a 35 percent production increase on average.
Devon Energy first applied the CYPHER service in the Grasslands Area of the Northern Barnett Shale.
After seeing improved production results and EURS with far less production variations between wells Devon has chosen to incorporate the CYPHER service in the Eagle Ford Shale as part of their technology efforts to help them better understand the reservoir
and also aid in the stimulation design to help improve their fracture efficiency and effectiveness.
The CYPHER service is deployed to all major shale developments in North america and many key international markets through multi-disciplined technical teams with more than 300 technical professionals trained on major elements of the workflow w
#Virtual Curtain technology treats mining wastewater A new cost-effective technology to treat mining wastewater and reduce sludge by up to 90 per cent has been used for the first time at a commercial mine.
and the equivalent of around 20 Olympic swimming pools of rainwater-quality water was discharged safely. Sludge is a semisolid by-product of wastewater treatment
Given the Australian mining industry is estimated to generate hundreds of millions of tonnes of wastewater each year,
which can be reprocessed to increase a miner overall recovery rate and partially offset treatment costs,
which are minerals sometimes found in stomach antacids, to simultaneously trap a variety of contaminants including arsenic, cadmium,
and complicated chemistry to treat the waste, he said. f required, the treated water can be purified much more efficiently via reverse osmosis
and either released to the environment or recycled back into the plant, so it has huge benefits for mining operators in arid regions such as Australia
and Chile. t is a more efficient and economic way to treat wastewater and is enabling the global mining industry to reduce its environmental footprint and extract wealth from waste.
The licensed technology, which can be applied to a range of industrial applications, is available through Australian company Virtual Curtain Limited.
Check out the video below to see how it works o
#Dundee Sustainable Technologies innovates in nickel extraction Dundee Sustainable Technologies the developer and owner of proprietary technologies to serve the natural resource sector with environmentally friendly procedures has announced an innovation in the nickel extraction.
The company has reported the successful application of its patented proprietary process for nickel extraction from laterites for the production of nickel sulfate.
This new concept was applied on laterites from Guatemala Cuba and the United states and achieved a nickel extraction ranging from 95%to 97%at ambient pressure and moderate temperature over a short period of time.
This approach has simplified greatly the collection of nickel from laterites as per the following table:
The cyanide and mercury free gold extraction process developed by DSTI has been recognised as a green technology for
#Paradigm#s new solution covers entire upstream workflow Paradigm has released the latest version of its integrated solution suite, Paradigm 14, to its worldwide user base.
and imaging to interpretation and modeling, reservoir characterization, reservoir engineering and drilling and data management.
to deliver high-definition images that enable users to see the smaller features that are important in modern reservoirs.
and sensors into a desirable geometry with 5d data reconstruction Enhancing fracture determination from seismic data with improved full azimuth imaging
In this release, Seisearth interpreters have access to a wealth of seismic inversion and data analysis functionality within the application.
These capabilities benefit users by: Defining rock properties using seismic inversion, seismic facies classification and on the fly-fly attribute calculation Identifying potential hydrocarbon locations with AVA inversion and QC of pre-stack seismic data Predicting flow for well planning
using full-azimuth fracture orientation and intensity analysis Wojciech Kobusinski, head of Depth Imaging Group at Geofizyka Torun,
supervisor of Paradigm seismic processing and imaging solutions in the unconventional drilling segment, said, t Geofizyka Torun,
our objective is to generate highly accurate and detailed seismic images for the shale gas reservoirs where we operate.
With Paradigm seismic processing and imaging solutions we are able to extract that detail by building velocity models that honor available geologic data
It opens unique possibilities for 3d imaging and exact modeling of geological materials in oil and gas exploration, composite materials, fuel cells and electronic assemblies.
The extremely fast hierarchical 3d reconstruction software speeds up imaging internal microstructures 10-100 times compared to traditional or GPU-accelerated micro-CT algorithms.
Using the new XFLASH V5 LE SDD detector, the S2 RANGER X-ray spectrometer achieves superb light element performance and analytical precision for applications in cement, minerals and mining, petrochemistry, and research.
With a larger detector area the spectrometer achieves higher sample throughput and lower detection limits.
A further highlight is its light element performance from carbon upwards, and gaining a factor of 8 in intensity for sodium compared to traditional instruments.
#New remote control solution can help mining in hazardous areas TORC Robotics has provided a remote control solution for a 40 cubic yard shovel
and 240-ton mining truck to a large open-pit mining operation in the western United states. The mine recently experienced a series of landslides.
The resulting debris derailed production as the avalanche created numerous hazardous areas where humans could no longer venture.
TORC provided tele-operated systems that enable remediation of high wall failures to begin much sooner than it would with manned equipment.
The remote control systems provided by TORC allows the mine operators to quickly increase production that would have stalled due to the hazardous recovery.
The TORC solution converted existing equipment (a CAT 793d haul truck and a Hitachi EX5600 hydraulic excavator) to operate via a tele-operated control system.
Equipment is driven manually to a transition zone, where the operator leaves the vehicle cab. The equipment operator then goes into the Integrated Remote Operations center (IROC) that contains two operator stations and a spotter.
A nearby communications trailer provides a dedicated wireless communications link between the equipment and the operator.
Once the operator is in the remote control room the vehicle is driven remotely into the hazardous zone.
The operator control station is designed to exactly mirror the control center in the cab, allowing seamless transitions for the workers between manual and remote control.
This allows the mine to continue working without putting personnel into risky and dangerous situations t
which would allow workers to operate three parallel rigs simultaneously. The company remote operator station called Benchremote has been designed to tackle potential safety problems with close proximity drilling in the mining and oil & gas industries.
Atlas copco says that risks of working close to unstable and hazardous benches close to the wall are well known
and that although safety regulations have improved, accidents still happen with falling debris. According to a company statement,
The operator station is able to be installed in a vehicle, trailer or containers with the control and interface systems designed to mimic the setup of a physical rig to improve operator familiarity with the system.
The technology operates using a closed Wifi network to communicate between the operator station and the rig.
The closed network means that the Benchremote technology is independent of any other local Wifi network
The latest breakthrough in invisibility technology comes out of the University of Rochester, where the most sophisticated
which works for transmitting rays in the visible spectrum, said Joseph Choi, a Phd student at Rochester Institute of Optics.
In other words, the University of Rochester technology is a cloaking system that doesn't distort and maintains the cloaked area across multiple viewing angles.
such as in the medical industry. A surgeon could potentially ook through his hands to what he is actually operating on, for instance.
The lenses could even be applied to allow drivers to see through blind spots on their vehicles
#Could bacteria from honeybees replace antibiotics? Bacteria are increasingly outsmarting our most overused antibiotics creating a boom of drug-resistant diseases.
This could be the dawn of a post-antibiotic era the World health organization warns when common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill.
Honey is a natural antibacterial which helps explain why it never goes bad and why people have used it as medicine for thousands of years.
Its viscosity acidity and sugar content make it good at sealing wounds and it even contains small amounts of hydrogen peroxide.
But there's also something else at work. Could honey's secret weapon against bacteria be other bacteria?
Researchers in Sweden recently discovered a unique group of lactic acid bacteria living inside honeybees'honey stomachs an enlarged section of esophagus where the insects store nectar while foraging.
According to a newly published study those 13 bacteria are experts at stifling other bacterial infections including dangerous superbug strains such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Pseudomonas aeruginosa and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE.
The bee bacteria beat every pathogen they faced a promising result given the global threat posed by superbugs.
They've only been tested against human-infecting bacteria in a lab setting but they did work wonders for 10 horses with persistent wounds.
The bacteria were mixed with honey and applied directly to the horses'wounds which had resisted other attempted remedies.
The mixture healed all 10. These bacteria represent one of the greatest symbiotic flora ever found in a single organism the researchers write protecting all honeybee species
and at least some stingless bees from the microbial threats they face while gathering nectar. Although the exact mechanisms remain a mystery the researchers say the secret to such strong results is likely the variety of active substances involved.
Antibiotics are mostly one active substance effective against only a narrow spectrum of bacteria lead author
and University of Lund microbiologist Tobias Olofsson says in a press release. When used alive these 13 lactic acid bacteria produce the right kind of antimicrobial compounds as needed depending on the threat.
It seems to have worked well for millions of years of protecting bees'health and honey against other harmful microorganisms.
However since store-bought honey doesn't contain the living lactic acid bacteria many of its unique properties have been lost in recent times.
Each of the 13 lactic acid bacteria (LAB) plays a role in turning nectar into honey according to the study
although their ratios vary in naturally harvested honey depending on the nectar source the bees'health and the presence of other microbes in the collected nectar.
and microbial threats that varies with season and honeybee health. This study bodes well for developing countries given the availability of fresh honey
but also for many developed nations where antibiotic resistance is on the rise. The researchers say their next step is to investigate wider use of these bacteria against topical infections in more animals including humans n
#'Smart'bicycle has radar vibrates when it senses obstacles A new smart bicycle has been unveiled in The netherlands
which can be inserted with a computer tablet that can be set to flash a bright signal when danger approaches.
The tablet mount also allows the rider to wirelessly connect and talk to the bicycle through a dedicated application.
It's half-bike half-electric car Meet the Twike. It a made-in-Germany combination of an electric bicycle with an EV.
and it being used as a test bed by the Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems (IMS) at the University of Cincinnati.
The center is working on something like Big data for smart batteries turning these mysterious devices into information centers that according to doctoral student Mohammad Rezvani can tell their users
The University of Cincinnati's smart battery team with the Twike. Photo: Jim Motavalli) The big drawback of the Twike is the price around $27000 for the base model
and youe going to want to add some options. But it a superbly engineered ybridvehicle (pedal power
and battery assist) that can reach 52 mph and cruise up to 300 miles on a charge.
For al fresco driving the central plastic canopy is removable. The Cincinnati guys tell me it can get quite warm with the top in place.
but very few in the U s. It can be registered as a motorcycle which means you don need airbags and crash tests.
The made-in-America equivalent of the Twike is named another three wheeler the ELF which Ie had the pleasure of pedaling around places as diverse as Darien Connecticut and Chattanooga Tennessee.
The ELF built by Organic Transit isn quite as luxurious as the Twike but it a lot cheaper $5495 for the standard model.
Plastic-bodied ELFS weigh only 150 pounds achieve 1800 mpg (the company says) and can reach 20 mph with 15 miles of electric range
though you can triple that by pedaling a lot. It's also possible to extend the range by adding extra e-bike type li-ion battery packs.
One enterprising owner even drove an ELF from the company Durham North carolina base to his home in Boston.
That's a lot to ask from an ELF which lacks basic suspension and is jolting over rough pavement.
Organic Transit's ELF on its way to Boston. Photo: Jim Motavalli) Rob Cotter CEO and founder of Organic Transit describes the Twike and ELF as the same but different.
(or solar panels) are less. That said I loved it the first time I saw one at the Vancouver World's Fair around 1987.
I bullish on these neighborhood-type trikes which make great commuter vehicles. Highway friendly they're not
The smart battery research at the University of Cincinnati is interesting. According to Jay Lee the IMS director the cells in a battery pack typically degrade
(and charge) at different rates and that throws off the efficiency and longevity. If every part of the pack can be monitored with the kind of Big data equipment that now hugely in vogue one bad apple won spoil the whole bunch
and owners would be left with a much more satisfying experience. ou want to be able to predict
Another use for the Smart Battery Watchdog Agent Dr. Lee said is to plot the optimal route to where youe going based on your past driving behavior the availability of charging stations along the way and other factors.
It can also do a better job than current in-car systems of predicting how much range youe got left again based on driving behavior and such factors as terrain and temperature.
Automakers are just starting to look at optimizing the EV driving and charging experience as is refashioned the newly Chargepoint app.
UC global partners have included GM Ford Chrysler Nissan and Mitsubishi. Here's a closer look at the Twike on video c
#IBM's new computer chip can think like a human brain IBM's latest brain-like computer chip may not be"smarter than a fifth-grader,
and perform complex tasks using very little energy. Researchers for the computer hardware giant have developed a postage-stamp-size chip,
equipped with 5. 4 billion transistors, that is capable of simulating 1 million neurons and 256 million neural connections, or synapses.
In addition to mimicking the brain's processing by themselves, individual chips can be connected together like tiles,
similar to how circuits are linked in the human brain. The team used its"Truenorth"chip, described on Aug 7 in the journal Science,
to perform a task that is very challenging for conventional computers: identifying people or objects in an image.
Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures"We have not built a brain. What we have done is learn from the brain's anatomy
and physiology,"said study leader Dharmendra Modha, manager and lead researcher of the cognitive computing groupat IBM Research-Almaden in San jose, California.
Modha gave an analogy to explain how the brain-like chip differs from a classical computer chip.
You can think of a classical computer as a left-brained machine, he told Livescience; it's fast,
Right-brained machine Classical computers from the first general-purpose electronic computer of the 1940s to today's advanced PCS
and smartphones use a model described by Hungarian-American mathematician and inventor John Von neumann in 1945.
and perform data operations at the same time. In contrast, IBM's new chip architecture resembles that of a living brain.
The chip is composed of computing cores that each contain 256 input lines or"axons"(the cablelike part of a nerve cell that transmits electrical signals) and 256 output lines, or"neurons."
"Much like in a real brain, the artificial neurons only send signals, or spikes, when electrical charges reach a certain threshold.
The researchers connected more than 4, 000 of these cores on a single chip, and tested its performance with a complex image-recognition task.
The computer had to detect people, bicyclists, cars and other vehicles in a photo, and identify each object correctly.
"This is the work of a very large team, working across many years, "he said.""It was a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, multiyear effort."
"The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the branch of the U s. Department of defense responsible for developing new technologies for the military, provided funding for the $53. 5 million project.
Humanoid Robots to Flying cars: 10 Coolest DARPA Projects After the team constructed the chip, Modha halted work for a month and offered a $1,
000 bottle of champagne to any team member who could find a bug in the device.
But nobody found one, he said. The new chip is not only much more efficient than conventional computer chips,
it also produces far less heat, the researchers said. Today's computers laptops, smartphones and even cars suffer from visual and sensory impairment,
Modha said. But if these devices can function more like a human brain, they may eventually understand their environments better,
he said. For example, instead of moving a camera image onto a computer to process it, "the camera sensor becomes the computer,
"he said. Building a brain IBM researchers aren't the only ones building computer chips that mimic the brain.
A group at Stanford university developed a system called"Neurogrid"that can simulate a million neurons and billions of synapses.
But while Neurogrid requires 16 chips linked together, the IBM chip can simulate the same number of neurons with only a single chip,
Modha said. In addition, Neurogrid's memory is stored off-chip, but the new IBM system integrates both computation and memory on the same chip,
which minimizes the time needed to transmit data, Modha said. Kwabena Boahen, an electrical engineer at Stanford who led the development of the Neurogrid system,
called the IBM chip"a very impressive achievement."("Several of Boahen's colleagues on the Neurogrid project have gone on to work at IBM,
he said.)The IBM team was able to fit more transistors onto a single chip,
while making it very energy efficient, Boahen told Live Science. Greater energy efficiency means you could compute things directly on your phone instead of relying on cloud computing,
the way Apple's voice-controlled Siri program operates, he said. That is, Siri outsources the computation to other computers via a network instead of performing it locally on a device.
IBM created the chip as part of DARPA's Synapse program (short for Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics.
The goal of this initiative is to build a computer that resembles the form and function of the mammalian brain, with intelligence similar to acat or mouse."
"We've made a huge step forward, "Modha said. The team mapped out the wiring diagram of a monkey brain in 2010,
and produced a small-scale neural core in 2011. The current chip contains more 4, 000 of these cores.
Still, the IBM chip is a far cry from a human brain, which contains about 86 trillion neurons and 100 trillion synapses."
"We've come a long way, but there's a long way to go, "Modha said o
#Real-life Transformer: Robotic bug springs to life The latest advancement in robotics may not look like much just a few small batteries attached to a flat sheet of paper
but there's much more to this new contraption than meets the eye. If you look long enough,
you'll see the sheet of paper start to move, transforming itself with a few crisp folds. First, legs emerge,
and then batteries are lifted off the ground, onto the back of what now looks like a small robotic bug.
Within minutes, the futuristic insect is moving, crawling around on four legs and turning as if it knows just where it's headed.
This real-world Transformer developed by computer and electrical engineers at the Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT) and Harvard university, could change the field of robotics.
Researchers say the self-assembling robot represents a new way to build bots, a process that will make it easier to churn out complex machines in less time.
See video of the real-life transformer in action Origami robots The new robots were inspired in part by origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.
While they look thin enough to be made from a single sheet of paper, the bots actually consist of five layers of materials,
including paper, copper and a shape-memory polymer that folds when heated to more than 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius).
The middle, copper layer contains a network of electrical wires that deliver heat to the robot's joints,
initiating a complex folding process.""We activate the folding using embedded circuits, which produce heat locally at each hinge,
which are connected to the batteries carried on the bug's back, the researchers said. Also on the robot's back is programmed a microprocessor
with a unique algorithm developed by computer scientists at MIT. The microprocessor tells the robot what to do what shape to take and how to move.
Functional folds The robot's ability to fold itself up isn't just a cool trick;
it's also an extremely useful quality, said Robert Wood, a professor of engineering at Harvard university who helped develop the new robot.
Wood said he first became interested in origami-like folding when he realized it might help solve some of the common problems of manufacturing devices on a small scale.
a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT who also worked on the self-assembling robot."
"Today, it costs a lot in time and money to make a new robot, "Rus told reporters in a press briefing."
"The 6 Strangest Robots Ever Created The researchers said that this new method of building machines could serve as a form of 3d printing for robotics, turning a complex manufacturing process into something that's both more accessible and less expensive for the average user.
or hazardous environment exploration,"Wood said. But before these tiny bots travel into space or other harsh environments, the researchers will need to experiment with stiffer and more-durable materials.
The engineers also said they're looking into the use of materials that can also unfold themselves, something shape-memory polymers,
once heated, can't do. The new research was published online on Aug 7 in the journal Science S
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