#Cheap and Nearly Unbreakable Sapphire Screens Come into View This fall, rumor has it, Apple will start selling iphones with a sapphire screen that is just about impossible to scratch.
so it could also lead to better and cheaper electronics and solar cells. Sapphire, or crystalline aluminum oxide, is made in nature
#Flexible, Printed Batteries for Wearable devices A California startup is developing flexible, rechargeable batteries that can be printed cheaply on commonly used industrial screen printers.
Imprint Energy, of Alameda, California, has been testing its ultrathin zinc-polymer batteries in wrist-worn devices
and hopes to sell them to manufacturers of wearable electronics, medical devices, smart labels, and environmental sensors.
The company approach is meant to make the batteries safe for on-body applications, while their small size and flexibility will allow for product designs that would have been impossible with bulkier lithium-based batteries.
Even in small formats the batteries can deliver enough current for low-power wireless communications sensors, distinguishing them from other types of thin batteries.
The company recently secured $6 million in funding from Phoenix Venture Partners, as well as AME Cloud Ventures, the venture fund of Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang, to further develop its proprietary chemistry and finance the batteriescommercial launch.
Previous investors have included CIA-backed venture firm In-Q-Tel and Dow chemical. The batteries are based on research that company cofounder Christine Ho began as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley,
where she collaborated with a researcher in Japan to produce microscopic zinc batteries using a 3-D printer.
The batteries that power most laptops and smartphones contain lithium which is highly reactive and has to be protected in ways that add size and bulk.
While zinc is more stable, the water-based electrolytes in conventional zinc batteries cause zinc to form dendrites,
branch-like structures that can grow from one electrode to the other, shorting the battery.
Ho developed a solid polymer electrolyte that avoids this problem, and also provides greater stability,
and greater capacity for recharging. Brooks Kincaid, the company cofounder and president, says the batteries combine the best features of thin-film lithium batteries and printed batteries.
Such thin-film batteries tend to be rechargeable but they contain the reactive element, have limited capacity,
and are expensive to manufacture. Printed batteries are nonrechargeable, but they are cheap to make, typically use zinc,
and offer higher capacity. Working with zinc has afforded the company manufacturing advantages. Because of zinc environmental stability, the company did need not the protective equipment required to make oxygen-sensitive lithium batteries. hen we talk about the things that constrain us in terms of the development of new products, there really two that
I lose the most sleep over these days. One is batteries and one is displays, says Steven Holmes, vice president of the New Devices Group and general manager of the Smart Device Innovation team at Intel.
Despite demand for flexible batteries, Ho says no standard has been developed for measuring their flexibility, frustrating customers who want to compare chemistries.
So the company built its own test rig and began benchmarking its batteries against commercial batteries that claimed to be flexible.
Existing batteries failed catastrophically after fewer than 1, 000 bending cycles, she says, while Imprint batteries remained stable.
Imprint has also been in talks about the use of its batteries in clothes and eird parts of your body like your eye,
Ho says. The company also recently began working on a project funded by the U s. military to make batteries for sensors that would monitor the health status of soldiers.
Other potential applications include powering smart labels with sensors for tracking food and packages n
#Protect Society from Our Inventions, Say Genome-Editing Scientists Scientists working at the cutting-edge of genetics say one possible application of a powerful new technology called genome editing has the potential to cause ecological mayhem and needs
#Thermoelectric Material to Hit Market Later This Year California-based Alphabet Energy plans to begin selling a new type of material that can turn heat into electricity.
Thermoelectric materials can turn a temperature difference into electricity by exploiting the flow of electrons from a warmer area to a cooler one.
But an efficient thermoelectric material has to conduct electricity well without conducting heat well, because otherwise the temperature across the material would soon equalize.
Alphabet Energy solution is tetrahedrite: an abundant, naturally occurring mineral that also happens to be more efficient on average than existing thermoelectric materials.
According to data released by Alphabet Energy tetrahedrite costs about $4 per kilogram, whereas other thermoelectric materials cost between $24 and $146 per kilogram.
or fracking, for oil and natural gas production (see atural Gas Changes the Energy Map. The technology may provide a way to deal with the increasing amounts of contaminated water the fossil fuel industry is generating as it pursues more and more difficult-to-reach deposits.
a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT who heads MIT Center for Clean water and Clean energy, where the technology was developed.
which accounts for about a quarter of the appliance total energy consumption. Initial tests of actual freezer components showed that the material can reduce defrosting energy consumption by 40 percent,
says Aizenberg. She expects that figure to go up as the researchers optimize the system. Freezers may be the first application of the technology,
and stop generating electricity. Ice can take whole wind farms offline and wreak havoc on the grid in places such as Colorado,
where wind power now accounts for a large fraction of the total electricity supply r
#Facebook s Emotional Manipulation Study Is Just the Latest Effort to Prod Users With emotion-triggering effort, Facebook pushes beyond data-driven studies on voting, sharing,
and organ-donation prompts, to make people feel good or bad. Facebook controversial study exploring
whether it could manipulate people moods by tweaking their news feeds to favor negative or positive content produced a particularly negative emotional response,
#Sharp Demonstrates Ultra-Efficient Solar cells The best solar cells convert less than one-third of the energy in sunlight into electricity
If it can be commercialized it would double the amount of power a solar cell can generate offering a way to make solar power far more economical.
when sunlight strikes a solar cell it produces some very high-energy electrons but within a few trillionths of a second those electrons shed most of their energy as waste heat.
The Sharp team found a way to extract these electrons before they give up that energy thereby increasing the voltage output of their prototype solar cell.
It s far from a practical device it s too thin to absorb much sunlight
and for now it works only with a single wavelength of light but it s the first time that anyone has been able to generate electrical current using these high-energy electrons.
In theory solar cells that exploit this technique could reach efficiencies over 60 percent. The approach is one of several that could someday break open the solar industry
High-efficiency solar cells would lower the cost of installation which today is often more expensive than the cells themselves.
and figuring out how to make them with high precision (see Capturing More Light with a Single Solar cell and Nanocharging Solar).
which create a shortcut for high-energy electrons to move out of the solar cell. Another way to achieve ultra-high efficiencies now is by stacking up different kinds of solar cells (see Exotic Highly Efficient Solar cells May Soon Get Cheaper)
but doing so is very expensive. Meanwhile MIT researchers are studying the transient behavior of electrons in organic materials to find inexpensive ways to make ultra-efficient solar cells.
Each of the alternative approaches is at an early stage. James Dimmock the senior researchers who developed the new device at Sharp says he expects that his technique will initially be used to help boost the efficiency of conventional devices not to create new ones s
#Elon musk Needs a Very Big Factory for His New Solar technology The Tesla founder and private space entrepreneur Elon musk announced yesterday that Solar City,
And with typical bravado, he also said that the company plans to build a huge factory to produce Silevo high-efficiency solar panels,
it will also become a major manufacturer of solar panels, with by far the largest factory in the U s. The acquisition makes sense given that Silevo technology has the potential to reduce the cost of installing solar panels,
Solar City main business. But the decision to build a huge factory in the U s. seems daringspecially given the recent failures of other U s.-based solar manufacturers in the face of competition from Asia.
Silevo produces solar panels that are roughly 15 to 20 percent more efficient than conventional ones.
Silevo isn the only company to produce high-efficiency solar cells. A version made by Panasonic is just as efficient,
and Sunpower makes ones that are significantly more so (see ecord-Breaking Solar cell Points the Way the Cheaper Solar power.
which is building a huge igafactorythat he says will reduce the cost of batteries for electric cars.
The proposed plant would have more lithium-ion battery capacity than all current factories combined (see oes Musk Gigafactory Make sense?
who directs the Energy and Environment Concentration at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, is that at least three other solar companiesirst Solar, Yingli Solar,
Meanwhile, utilities may start wanting to pay solar-panel owners less for the electricity they produce
if building huge factories to produce advanced solar panels can bring down costs, the market for solar panels could still grow exponentially l
#How LEDS Are Set to Revolutionize Hi-tech Greenhouse Farming It won't come as a surprise to discover that consumers all over the developed world are increasingly demanding seasonal vegetables all year round even
So an important question is how to minimize the energy it takes to grow these crops.
And of course LEDS use considerably less electricity wasting little as heat. But the most interesting part of Singh and co s analysis is in the potential of LEDS to change the way that vegetables are grown.
and well into the infrared where much energy is lost as heat. By contrast LEDS can be adjusted to emit light in very specific parts of the spectrum.
and that light frequency also influences the biomass of certain plants as well as their nutritional content.
and co. Exactly how light of various frequencies influences plant growth biomass and nutritional content is understood not well.
This can be done by immersing the oxides in a bath of molten salt and running electricity through the mixture.
Another effort, called Energy ITS, which is backed by the Japanese government and involves several Japanese universities,
or do not properly respond to the hormone in order to move the body main energy sourcelucosento cells.
Across the table, a briefcase-sized wireless energy transmitter sits on another tripod and a plug dangling from it is plugged into the wall.
and TDK recently licensed Witricity for use in electric car batteries. Energous charging method uses a transmitter with lots of small antennas to send radio waves to a receiver connected to the gadget being charged.
and converts their energy to DC power so it can charge the phone. The transmitter and receivers Energous brings to my office can send power to two devices that require less than 10 watts of power at a distance of up to 15 feet;
what you pay today for a case that provides extended battery life, though the transmitter for charging things probably would cost around $300.
If the end result is wasting energy, consumers may be wary of cutting their cords
#Nerve-Stimulating Implant Could Lower Blood pressure An implantable device that reduces blood pressure by stimulating a nerve in the neck could someday be an alternative to drugs for controlling hypertension.
Implanted electrical devices that control bodily functions have been used for many years. Pacemakers for heart patients are known perhaps best
but electrical devices are used also to control Parkinson s disease and experimentally some psychiatric conditions (see Brain Pacemakers
and will help brands ensure that people keep them in mind next time theye looking for coffee or an energy boost.
Last week, a major U n. climate report called attention to the importance of carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) for dealing with climate change
In the new work, researchers from University college London and the University of Iceland added carbon dioxide to a stream of water being pumped underground at a large geothermal power plant in Iceland,
Lithium-ion batteries are just about everywherehey power almost all smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Yet Elon musk, CEO of Tesla motors, says he intends to build a factory in the United states three years from
now that will more than double the world total lithium-ion battery production. The plan is still in its early stages,
would by 2020 make enough batteries for 500,000 electric cars. It would produce enough batteries annually to store 35 gigawatt hours of electricity, hence the name.
Second, battery companies normally announce factories only after theye funded and a site is selected. And they typically scale up gradually.
Why announce plans to build such an enormous factory specially when electric car sales so far come nowhere close to justifying it?
The project seems more puzzling in light of the hard times at other electric car battery factories in the United states. In 2009,
President Obama announced an ambitious $2. 4 billion grant program intended to launch an electric car battery industry in the United states. That effort,
All of the battery makers involved have struggled (see oo Many Battery factories, Too Few Electric cars, and one, A123 Systems, went bankrupt.
He seems to be betting that a huge factory will significantly reduce the cost of making batteries,
Tesla has a good track record for reducing battery costs (see riving Innovation, and even incremental improvements at conventional factories could reduce costs by 15 percent by 2020,
says Menahem Anderman, president of Advanced Automotive Batteries. But it unclear where the remaining 15 percent might come from.
with batteries built from raw materials rather than assembled, will also help. Usually, the components of batteries are made in many different places.
Electrolytes are made often at a large chemical plant and graphite electrodes at a plant that also makes graphite for tires and other applications.
The electrolytes and electrodes are packaged then into cells at a plant dedicated to cell making,
and the cells are assembled into complete battery packsith cooling systems and electronic controlsn yet another factory.
Musk plans to bring almost all of this under one roof. Raw materials, processed into electrodes, electrolytes,
containers and other parts, go in one end; complete battery packs come out the other. The factory will also be able to take old batteries apart to recycle the materials,
and Musk even plans to use solar and wind to help power the factory. Brett Smith, codirector for manufacturing, engineering,
and technology at the Center for Automotive Research, says having control over every part of the process could indeed help reduce costs.
For example, it can be cheaper to make electrolytes in a large chemical plant that makes other chemicals
Panasonic, Tesla current battery cell supplier, benefits from the know-how of workers in Japan, many of whom have decades of manufacturing experience. anufacturers have tried both approaches.
Battery manufacturing is a complex process involving many steps. If these steps are all dependent on each other,
there would likely be no alternative market for those batteries, making it a risky investment.
One potential market, using batteries for storing electricity power on the grid, is still in early stages of development.)
In Germany, legislators are discussing an all-European communications grid. There is a risk that the Internet could fracture into smaller national networks,
In this report, we visit a small energy company for which a network cable might as well be Medusa hair.
#These revolutionary bladeless wind turbines shake to generate electricity WASHINGTON: These bladeless wind turbines can revolutionize the way wind energy is produced.
whose turbines look like stalks of asparagus poking out of the ground, is using pillars that shake back and forth from the vortices created by the movement of air around the structure to generate power, the Verge reported.
but Vortex says it is using magnets to adjust the turbine on the fly to get the most from whatever the wind speeds happen to be.
an alternator in the base of the device then converts the mechanical movement into electricity.
Vortex claims that energy produced by its turbines will cost around 40 percent less than energy made from today's wind turbines
The simpler design also means that manufacturing costs are about half that of a traditional wind turbine (those massive blades are expensive.
As per Vortex, its bladeless design captures around 30 percent less energy than a regular turbine,
whose turbines look like stalks of asparagus poking out of the ground, is using pillars that shake back and forth from the vortices created by the movement of air around the structure to generate power, the Verge reported.
but Vortex says it is using magnets to adjust the turbine on the fly to get the most from whatever the wind speeds happen to be.
an alternator in the base of the device then converts the mechanical movement into electricity.
Vortex claims that energy produced by its turbines will cost around 40 percent less than energy made from today's wind turbines
The simpler design also means that manufacturing costs are about half that of a traditional wind turbine (those massive blades are expensive.
As per Vortex, its bladeless design captures around 30 percent less energy than a regular turbine,
The new machine mimics the pumping mechanism of life-sustaining proteins that move small molecules around living cells to metabolize and store energy from food.
The artificial pump draws power from chemical reactions, driving molecules step-bystep from a low energy state to a high-energy state-far away from equilibrium."
"Our molecular pump is radical chemistry-an ingenious way of transferring energy from molecule to molecule,
"The artificial pump is able to syphon off some of the energy that changes hands during a chemical reaction
but researchers believe it won't be long before they can extend its operation to tens of rings and store more energy.
#High-capacity batteries made from wood pulp NEW YORK: Ever heard of a battery made of wood pulp?
Here is developed one by researchers from KTH Royal Institute of technology, Sweden, and Stanford university, US. Using nanocellulose broken down from tree fibres,
foam-like battery material that can withstand shock and stress.""It is possible to make incredible materials from trees
A 3d structure enables storage of significantly more power in less space than is possible with conventional batteries,
In fact, this type of structure and material architecture allows flexibility and freedom in the design of batteries,
Hamedi said the aerogel batteries could be used in electric car bodies, as well as in clothing, providing the garment has a lining.
Ever heard of a battery made of wood pulp? Here is developed one by researchers from KTH Royal Institute of technology, Sweden,
foam-like battery material that can withstand shock and stress.""It is possible to make incredible materials from trees
A 3d structure enables storage of significantly more power in less space than is possible with conventional batteries,
In fact, this type of structure and material architecture allows flexibility and freedom in the design of batteries,
Hamedi said the aerogel batteries could be used in electric car bodies, as well as in clothing, providing the garment has a lining g
The product uses"low levels of pulsed electrical energy to signal specific neural pathways, allowing users to dial up or dial down their stress responses and energy levels."
a US-based safety organization specializing in electrical devices v
#A blood test can tell every virus you've ever had Test detects every known human virus from single drop of blood.
*The BMW i8 electric sports car has a carbon fibre passenger compartment to make up for the weight of its heavy battery.
*Offshore wind turbines could also benefit from self-healing technology, as they are damaged often by bird strikes.
*The BMW i8 electric sports car has a carbon fibre passenger compartment to make up for the weight of its heavy battery.
*Offshore wind turbines could also benefit from self-healing technology, as they are damaged often by bird strikes.
#Scientists use graphene to create the world's smallest light bulb Scientists have created the world's smallest light bulb from a one atom-thick layer of graphene,
The discovery could be used as the basis of a new kind of switching device for future optical computers that use pulses of light rather than electricity to process
what is essentially the world's thinnest light bulb. This new type of'broadband'light emitter can be integrated into chips
and a near-perfect conductor of electricity. The Columbia scientists, working with researchers in South korea, attached small strips of graphene to microscopic metal electrodes which passed an electric current through the suspended strips causing them to heat up and bright
Scientists have created the world's smallest light bulb from a one atom-thick layer of graphene
The discovery could be used as the basis of a new kind of switching device for future optical computers that use pulses of light rather than electricity to process
what is essentially the world's thinnest light bulb. This new type of'broadband'light emitter can be integrated into chips
and a near-perfect conductor of electricity. The Columbia scientists, working with researchers in South korea, attached small strips of graphene to microscopic metal electrodes which passed an electric current through the suspended strips causing them to heat up and bright
Researchers have developed a new mosquito trap that uses less energy and relies on lighter weight batteries.
It also has a new bait system for luring mosquitoes, a sensor that automatically sorts the mosquitoes from the other bugs
Researchers have developed a new mosquito trap that uses less energy and relies on lighter weight batteries.
It also has a new bait system for luring mosquitoes, a sensor that automatically sorts the mosquitoes from the other bugs
#World thinnest bulb created from graphene Researchers have created the world's thinnest light bulb using graphene, an atomically thin and perfectly crystalline form of carbon,
what is essentially the world's thinnest light bulb, "said Hone, Wang Fon-Jen professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia Engineering."
Energy supplied by humanitarian kite The Zephyr project, a photovoltaic balloon designed by students, aims to supply energy to disaster areas.
In the Iliad, Zephyr is a violent, stormy wind, while in the Odyssey and more recent literature, it is depicted as gentle and light a warm breeze that melts the snow.
Zephyr takes the form of a flying device that comes to the rescue of those living without electricity in disaster areas.
In emergency situations, the question of energy supply is often of critical importance. At the moment electricity in refugee camps generally comes from heavy,
polluting generators that require expensive fuel oil. The supply chains for such oil can be broken, making procurement unpredictable.
which can generate energy anywhere even in disaster areas where it is not possible to install land-based infrastructure as a result, for example, of a natural catastrophe.
while working together from November 2013 to March 2014 on'energies of the future'at the Laboratoire,
Energy for fifty people: The principle is based on a highly mobile, low-cost kit made up of a box housing the technology and a lightweight sail.
and is covered with 15 m2 of lightweight solar panels.''All you need to do is unfurl the sail
while the batteries store surplus energy and take over the power supply at night, 'explains Cedric Tomissi, one of the two young designers behind the project.
The electrolyser uses nine litres of water plus the solar energy collected, coupled with the batteries inside the housing, to produce the gas needed to inflate Zephyr in half a day.
Halfway between a balloon and a kite, this hybrid device has a yield of up to 3 kilowatt hours (kwh
the 2014 Humanitech Challenge jointly organised by the Red Helmets Foundation and Orange and EDF's'Sharing energy in the city, 2030'challenge.
They were given also the opportunity to present their project at EDF's stand at the Saint-Etienne Design Biennale in March.'
'A technical feasibility study was carried out on the balloon last November in partnership with EDF, Dassault systemes, the Red Helmets Foundation and the Institute of Research and development on Photovoltaic Energy (IRDEP.
In the long term, the aim is to sell an entire range of balloons adapted to generate energy in different kinds of situations,
'The balloon can be used for homes in remote areas where the roof cannot take the weight of traditional solar panels,
aims to supply energy to disaster areas. In the Iliad, Zephyr is a violent, stormy wind,
Zephyr takes the form of a flying device that comes to the rescue of those living without electricity in disaster areas.
In emergency situations, the question of energy supply is often of critical importance. At the moment, electricity in refugee camps generally comes from heavy,
polluting generators that require expensive fuel oil. The supply chains for such oil can be broken, making procurement unpredictable.
which can generate energy anywhere even in disaster areas where it is not possible to install land-based infrastructure as a result, for example, of a natural catastrophe.
while working together from November 2013 to March 2014 on'energies of the future'at the Laboratoire,
Energy for fifty people: The principle is based on a highly mobile, low-cost kit made up of a box housing the technology and a lightweight sail.
and is covered with 15 m2 of lightweight solar panels.''All you need to do is unfurl the sail
while the batteries store surplus energy and take over the power supply at night, 'explains Cedric Tomissi, one of the two young designers behind the project.
The electrolyser uses nine litres of water plus the solar energy collected, coupled with the batteries inside the housing, to produce the gas needed to inflate Zephyr in half a day.
Halfway between a balloon and a kite, this hybrid device has a yield of up to 3 kilowatt hours (kwh
the 2014 Humanitech Challenge jointly organised by the Red Helmets Foundation and Orange and EDF's'Sharing energy in the city, 2030'challenge.
They were given also the opportunity to present their project at EDF's stand at the Saint-Etienne Design Biennale in March.'
'A technical feasibility study was carried out on the balloon last November in partnership with EDF, Dassault systemes, the Red Helmets Foundation and the Institute of Research and development on Photovoltaic Energy (IRDEP.
In the long term, the aim is to sell an entire range of balloons adapted to generate energy in different kinds of situations,
'The balloon can be used for homes in remote areas where the roof cannot take the weight of traditional solar panels,
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