A friend introduced me to TED with an unrelated video, but I was so enamored with the videos I spent a day watching a bunch of them. At 10-25 minutes a piece, that’s a lot of videos. This one was my favorite. It talks about how we’re reshaping our world and our society because of our obsession with money and things. It has interesting social ramifications.
Cella Energy, UK Based, began their research in 2007. The A-Round investors bought in to a simple concept: Using Nano-Technology, it would be possible to create a nano-scaffold capable of safely storing a Hydrogen fuel at ambient temperatures and pressures. Using a patented and emergent process Cella Energy is able to construct a polymer hydride, described as resembling white tissue paper, that safely encapsulates hydrogen. Theoretically polymers could be constructed in a variety of combinations, including a liquid polymer that could replace Petroleum based fuels common today.
The potential value of Hydrogen based fuels is enormous. Hydrogen is one of the most abundant molecules available on Earth and the universe. Water (H2O) makes up 80% of the Earth’s surface and Hydrogen (H2) is estimated to make up 75% of the universe’s chemical mass. Hydrogen was first used by NASA as a fuel for it’s Space Shuttle Booster rockets in the 1970s. Hydrogen possesses the unique property of producing water when burned (two H2 + O2+ ignition = two H2O). However, there are some obstacles to Hydrogen fuel adoption:
Cella’s technique offers the possibility of transitory fuel distribution mediums that could be distributed through the existing gasoline fueling stations. In theory, replacing a single storage tank (the lowest octane unleaded) with a liquid polymer hydride. The Cella fuel would produce lower emissions if used as a fuel additive or zero emissions if used as a pure hydrogen fuel source. In the fuel additive format, the hydride would become a waste product (either in liquid or aerosol form). In a pure hydrogen fuel source, the waste would be water and the polymer only. Depending on the waste product, it might be possible to recycle (rehydrogenate, or replace the hydrogen molecules consumed) to further reduce waste
The potential uses for the Polymer Hydride is virtually endless.
While this announcement has been almost 4 years in the making, and commercial application is still not in sight, the potential for this technology is beyond my ability to predict. Imagine a world where brutal regimes propped up by vast deposits of oil are no longer funded by the dependencies of billions of the Earth’s population? Imagine a world where energy and energy storage is no longer limited by scarcity, but instead based on easily renewable resources.
If this technology pans out, it’s the beginning of something immense.
Costner’s centrifugal ocean therapy machine promises to be a potential solution to the BP Gulf Oil Spill. [Direct Link: Ocean Therapy Solutions]
Synopsis:
The largest of these machines (imagined by and created with Kevin Costner’s $20 million investment) has the potential to process 210,000 gallons of oil per day (200 gallons per minute) out of ocean water. According to rough estimates, over 1,200,000 gallons of oil per day are leaking in to the gulf. BP has ordered thirty-two of these machines while the US government has not ordered any, despite the fact that Costner appeared before a House Committee on Science & Technology early in June.
Early tests seem to have flopped due to unexpectedly high consistancy of the oil being separated (allegedly the consistancy of peanut butter), but OTS has claimed to have put fixes in place to resolve the issue and are resuming field trials. OTS goes so far as to make bold that their tests on the weekend of June 5-6 have been successful. (An earlier press release indicates that testing began mid-May, but no claims of success were made for 3 weeks. This is, presumably, the timeframe in which the early failures were evaluated and fixes were applied to the technology to adjust for unexpected conditions.)
During Costner’s testimony to the House Committee, Costner urged the house to legislate that machines like his should be mandated for all off shore drilling operations, much like life preservers are mandated.
Editorial:
My early concerns about claims that water is 99% clean harkons back to the fishbowl keeping days of my youth. I learned very quickly that if you changed the water purity quickly (exchanging bowl water for tap water) the fish would die of shock. I don’t understand the science behind this phenomena, but it’s real.
So the question I have is, is it 99% clean or 99% clean of petroleum? The latter, leaving most other impurities/salt/etc. in the water strikes me as being the desirable outcome. Cleaning the water of ecosystem killing oil, only to kill it with purified water does not seem like a great solution.
But, if this machine removes only the crude oil from the water, leaving most other elements in place (salt, etc.), this could be the wonder machine of the decade.
Source: Real-Time Rendering
Over at the UK Telegraph, journalists have been talking with programmers over at the Leeds Metropolitan University about a computer program being written to analyze an incoming signal from outer space to determine if it’s audio, video, or raw text. And, if it’s a language being sent, put a syntax to it to start the process of translating it to something that humans can understand.
According to the programmer, of the 60 languages on Earth that have been evaluated to write this program, all of them have a syntax which is mathematically similar. Adjectives are near nouns; functional terms that bracket phrases. Like “if” and “but” (which, when you think about it, are merely linguistic methods of describing mathematical or logical concepts.) “If these, then this, else that” and “This but not that.”
It sounds a lot like the kind of code breaking that was done during World War II, and if the Germans had possessed something like this back then, they might have realized that the Navajo language used as a code by the Allied forces was in fact a language and not a code…
Likewise, if this program works as described, if we ever discover life in outer space, the odds are that this will help us to decipher what they are saying.
Who would have guessed that all of the imagination that went in to Star Trek would one day bear fruit in reality?
io9 re-posted an article recently about a medical breakthrough allowing brain-computer-interfaces to be built that bridge existing nerve tissue in a limb with the brain, bypassing an injury. These brain-to-muscle connections eliminate the need for prosthetic limbs where the original limb still exists, but is unusable because of some trauma. Previous experiments in the BCI technology have permitted subjects to control prosthetic limbs, but this is the first brain-to-muscle type interface.
The re-post did have a few inaccuracies when retyped from the original article (which they fail to link to. But a Google search finds a likely candidate.) According to that article, practical applications are at least 10 years away (probably a little less if they didn’t account for the increasing rate of discovery.)
Still, the possibilities are quite interesting. Not only can you remotely control human bodies once this technology is perfected (i.e., transmit my motor control signals to your body), but you could also bypass nerve damage and return motor control to paralysis victims, and remotely control prosthetic limbs (for construction, hazardous activity or even surgery.)
If you know nothing about Buckminster Fuller then I entreat you to visit Wikipedia and read the recount of his life and work. While it may not be wholely accurate, it will contain many references that can be reviewed for accuracy. Interestingly enough, although certain geodesic dome patterns were named Bucky Balls after Fuller, the football (soccarball) was an occurance of this geodesic pattern long before Fuller coined the terms or studied the architectural integrity of its design.
Today, as proponents of Fuller have previously suggested, we continue to see expansion on the work of a genius. In Florida, they’re making Buckypaper which are constructed of Carbon Nanotube which are members of the fullerene structural family. Essentially, these Carbon Nanotubes are built out of the same geodesic pattern that forms Bucky Balls, but instead of being formed in to a spherical shape, they’re formed in to that of a tube.
According to the scientists who continue to expand on the work named after Fuller, they discover practical applications of his utopian theories. This breakthrough, if it reaches a commercial application, could result in new structural components for airplanes and cars that are significantly lighter and stronger (approximately 50 times stronger by weight) which means that in order to obtain the same structure integrity as current vehicles, we’d need only 2% of a cars current structural weight. (A rough calculation: If we assume that a car is 1900 lbs and the engine and other internal components weighs another 1000 lbs, then the car structure could be reduced to 38 lbs and yet still maintain it’s existing structural integrity.)
I don’t know about you, but if you could reduce the weight of a car by a half ton, your fuel efficiency would go way up… and, you wouldn’t need anywhere near as much horse power to propel your vehicle, so you’d end up reducing the weight of the engine to compensate for the reduced structural weight… which would only drive down the engine weight, the need for additional horsepower, and increase the fuel efficiency.
Plus, with current make engines, you could dramatically improve the structural integrity of a vehicle (making it safer) and still save on weight and fuel.
Although the comments on this YouTube video indicate that the content is well over 2 years old, it’s still amusing to see hairless mice that glow under a UV light. Apparently some scientists decided to change the genetic code of the mice to cause stem cells to glow when in the presence of UV light.
NewScientistTech posted an article with a log capture of their recent conversation with a ChatBot that was an applicant to the annual Turing Test competition. Apparently ElBot managed to fool 25% of the Turing judges (or 83% of the necessary judges fooled in order to pass the Turing test).. In simple terms that means that ElBot fooled 3 of 12 judges, and if it had fooled 1 more judge it would have passed the test.
This is the closest any applicant has come to passing the Turing test since the annual testing started in 1991.
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