Homely Scientist

 Hydrogen is often held up as the fuel of the future, but there are some problems with good old H-2.  First, it’s explosive.  Second, as the lightest element, Earth’s gravity isn’t even strong enough to keep it here.  Third, given one and two, rather hard to safely contain and if that isn’t enough, fourth … it isn’t that easy to generate.  Yes, I did the electrolysis experiment in school using a battery to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, but the reality is that the amount of energy required to get the hydrogen out, exceeds the amount of energy the …read more

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 I don’t know if this is a post for here or PimpYourWork, but eh, we’ll do it here (more science than work I guess).  We know that electrical resistance makes heat (this how toasters and electric heaters work, btw) and our computers are packing in so many electro-bits (I made that up) that heat generation is a big problem.  I have no less than three devices handy to help keep my laptop cool.  All involve passive cooling (letting more cool air get to the machine), not what if the processors were made to cool themselves!
US researchers have developed a prototype …read more

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 Not only does our world run on electricity, it runs on batteries.  Batteries, while greatly improved even in my lifetime,  still have a way to go.  They are heavy (relatively), bulky, and toxic (like really freakin’ toxic).  What if a battery could be thin, light, and safer?  Soon that might be possible….
Companies have been trying to figure out how to use carbon nanotubes in electronics. Batteries may be the answer, say researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
The device is a piece of paper infused with carbon nanotubes and a salt, which serves as an electrolyte. Because it stores energy and conducts …read more

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 One of the problems with our dependence on petroleum is that it isn’t “renewable” (technically, it is … it just takes so long that it isn’t functionally), but what if we could “grow” gasoline?  Looks like that might not be such a pipe dream after all:
LS9, a company based in San Carlos, CA, and founded by geneticist George Church, of Harvard Medical School, and plant biologist Chris Somerville, of Stanford University, had previously said that it was working on what it calls “renewable petroleum.” But at a Society for Industrial Microbiology conference on Monday, the company began speaking more openly …read more

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 Think of all the small, free-standing structures you see in a given day.  Bus stops, small sheds, fixed awnings.  They are put there to keep sun (yes and rain, I know) off people.  What about the roofs of those structures?  Looks like there could be a product that will let us take advantage of a lot of small surfaces and use them as solar collectors:
Soliant’s primary customer is commercial building owners but the company’s product design is flexible enough that it has developed a specialized solar-power generator for car parks, or roofs that shade cars during the day.
“One thing we …read more

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Remember me talking about wind-power hitting a tipping point and how solar was almost there?  In a case of news almost made to order is this bit of news:
The University of Delaware has inched up the record for solar cell efficiency with a new device that can convert 42.8 percent of the light that strikes it into electricity.
That beats the old record of 40.7 percent hit in December. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has been funding research to get efficiency up to 50 percent.
The cell, created by Christina Honsberg and Allan Barnett of UD, splits incoming light …read more

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I don’t know anyone with a severe allergy to peanuts, but I do know that people who are live in a world where just about any food could make them sick, or worse.
News from North Carolina might give them some hope:
People with life-threatening allergies to peanuts might be able to rest easy at their friendly neighborhood Thai restaurants soon, if research announced this week proves true. A release from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University says researcher Mohamed Ahmedna has developed whole, roasted peanuts in which the allergen is completely inactivated and that serum from people with severe …read more

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Replacement limbs have generally been somewhat useful objects.  Sure, there are hooks, and some bio-mechanical hands, and much better legs now, but true bionics have eluded us, until now:
Touch Bionics announced Tuesday what it calls the world’s first commercially available bionic hand, a prosthetic hand that moves more naturally than traditional prostheses and can hold awkward or delicate objects. While most prostheses today can open and close, allowing people to grasp some items, they lack the detailed movements of a natural hand. The i-Limb Hand gets one step closer to that natural movement, with motors in each finger that make …read more

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 In the Andes, the Incas and modern-day descendents have been gathering water from the fog for centuries.  The process there is simple, the fog hits some kind of cloth or sheeting and the water condenses on it.   Then the water collects and rolls down into a container.  These work amazingly well, but they are also huge and need pretty heavy fog to work well.  Max Whisson has taken the idea that there is always (pretty much) water in the air and uses condensation to make a water gathering machine:
There’s a lot of water floating around in the air everywhere, and …read more

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Making artificial limbs work like the original has been a lofty goal for years.  Hooks, pulleys, servos, all sorts of gadgets to make fingers and wrists move and respond.  Until now, that’s been the limit, but now inspired by the elephant’s trunk, a breakthrough has been made:
It’s not often you see a piece of tech touted by its developer as being inspired by something “long, gray, and soft,” but that’s exactly how the researchers at Germany’s prolific Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Institute are describing their ISELLA robotic arms. Inspired by the finesse and power of an elephant’s trunk, the team developed a …read more

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