Sony and Toshiba waste management and recycling

The Consumer Electronics Association, along with manufacturers and retailers such as Panasonic, Best Buy, Sony and Toshiba, launched an industry-wide initiative yesterday to boost electronics waste recycling to one billion pounds a year by 2016.

That translates to roughly three times the amount of e-waste recycled in 2010, the year to be used as the baseline for the eCycling Leadership Initiative. The effort will focus on consumer education on electronics recycling, increasing the number of facilities to collect e-waste, reporting progress, and supporting a shift toward third-party recycler certification.

"This unique industry-led approach transcends the patchwork of current state recycling regulations with an aggressive set of industry goals and standards," Walter Alcorn, CEA's vice president of environmental affairs and industry sustainability, said in a statement. "Through the eCycling Leadership Initiative, the consumer electronics industry is moving toward a national solution and away from the costly and confusing patchwork of state regulations."

The initiative will continue working with President Barack Obama's Taskforce on Electronics Stewardship. Congressman Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), a senior member of the House Committee on Ways and Means who has previously introduced e-waste legislation, hailed the development.


"I am pleased that major leaders in the consumer electronics industry are taking concrete action to address the e-waste crisis," said Rep. Thompson. "While there's been progress in the recycling of old electronics equipment, much more work needs to be done. The 'Billion Pound Challenge' will help accomplish our goals by making the electronics industry part of the solution to e-waste. This isn't just smart environmental policy -- it's corporate responsibility and accountability at its finest."


Not everyone, however, is applauding the initiative. Barbara Kyle, executive director of the Electronics Takeback Coalition, called the announcement "seriously underpowered."

"CEA gave almost no other information about the program or how they are going to meet their goal," Kyle wrote in a blog post Wednesday. "They won't even say which companies are participating. What will each company be responsible for? What products will they take back -- everything they make? A big announcement of a new program should have included at least some details."

Kyle pointed out the initiative doesn't guarantee that electronics won't be exported to developing countries. A map of 5,000 industry sites provided by CEA also includes sites not connected to the CEA effort. She was critical of CEA's effort to make the program the basis for a national program.


Kyle recommended a series of steps that could strengthen the eCycling Leadership Initiative, including a policy forbidding the export of toxic e-waste to developing countries and going beyond state-level compliance to creating robust recycling programs in all states.

The Basel Action Network similarly called for CEA members to "leapfrog" the eCycling Leadership Initiative and support tighter standards, namely the stringent e-Stewards Certification program.

water-powered jet

thanks to Canadian engineers who claim to have designed a futuristic water-powered jet pack. The water-powered machine, 'Jetlev-Flyer', looks like something out of a James Bond or Superman movie.
 it can hover up to 30 metres in the air and reach speeds of up to 22 miles per hour as one makes one's way across the water.
The device has a cruising duration of between one to two hours. This is all dependent on pilot weight. A digital fly-by-wire system is used to control the throttle.
The flying machine, designed by a team led by Raymond Li, is priced at 110,000 pounds.
It was recently tested out on the beaches of Miami in the US, and the pilot propelled into the air and flew across the water successfully, the Daily Mail reported.
The flights controls are designed so it is easy enough for anybody to use, according to the designers who took nearly 10 years to build it.
The 'Jetlev-Flyer' has a 10-metre hose and an engine which doubles as a flotation device. The hose is essential because water is sucked up and spat out through two nozzles which are mounted on the users back, say the designers.

world's most powerful rocket

A high-tech entrepreneur unveiled plans to launch the world's most powerful rocketsince man wentto the moon.
    Space Exploration Technology has already sent the first private rocket andcapsule into Earth's orbit as a commercial venture.Itis now planning a rocket that could lift twice as much cargo into orbit as the soon-to-be-retired space shuttle. The first launch is slotted for 2013 from California with follow-up launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
    Space X's new rocket called Falcon Heavy is big enough to send cargo or even people out of Earth's orbit to the moon, an asteroid or Mars. Only the long retired Saturn V rocket that sent men to the moon was bigger. "This is a rocket of truly huge scale," said Space X president Elon Musk.
    The Falcon Heavy could put 117,000 pounds into the sameorbit astheInternational Space Station. The space shuttle hauls about 54,000 pounds into orbit. The old Saturn V could carry more than 400,000 pounds of cargo. The old Soviet Union had a giant moon rocket bigger than the Falcon Heavy, but it failed in all four launch attempts. Another Soviet rocket, also bigger than Falcon Heavy and designed to launch its version of the space shuttle, had one successful flight more than 20 years ago.
  
Musk said if Nasa does buy rideson commercial rockets, he would be able to fly astronauts to the space station in his smaller Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule within three years. He said Falcon Heavy willbefar cheaper than government or private rockets. Launches are about $100 million each.

significant discovery of god

Physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory are planning to announce they have found a suspicious bump in their data that could be evidence of a new elementary particle or even, some say, a new force of nature.
    The results,if they holdup,couldbe a spectacular last hurrah for Fermilab's Tevatron, once the world's most powerful particle accelerator and now slated to go dark forever in September or earlier, whenever Fermilab runs out of money to operate it.
    "Nobody knows what this is," said Christopher Hill, a theorist at Fermilabwhowas not partof theteam. "Ifitis real, it would be the most significant discovery in physics in half a century."
    One possible explanation for this mysterious bump, scientists say, is that it is evidence of a new and unexpected version of the long-sought Higgs boson. This is a hypothetical elementary particle that, according to the reigning theory known asthe StandardModel,is responsible for endowing other elementary particles with mass.
   
Another explanation might be that it is evidence of a new force of nature — in addition to gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces we already know — that would manifest itself only at very short distances like thosethat ruleinsidethe atomic nucleus.
    Either could shake what has passed for conventional wisdom in physics for the last few decades. Or it could be there is something they do not understand about so-called regular physics.
    The Tevatron has been colliding beams of protons and their opposites, antiprotons, accelerated to energies of 1 trillion electron volts, for over two decades looking for new forces and particles. The bump showed up in an analysis of some 10,000 of those collisions collected by the Collider Detector atFermilab.
    They found that in about 250 more cases than they expected, what came out of the collision were two jets of lightweight particles, like electrons, and a heavy-force-carrying particle called the W boson were produced. The team foundthatin about250times more cases than expected, the total energy of the jets clustered around a value of about 144 billion electron volts, as if they were the decay products of a hitherto unsuspected particle with that mass-energy. For comparison, a proton weighs about one billion electron volts.
    This could not be Standard Model Higgs, Punzi and his colleagues concluded, as the Higgs is predicted to decay into much heavier particles, namely quarks. Moreover,the rate atwhichthese mystery particles were being produced was 300 times greater than Higgsbosonswouldbe produced.If real,itwassomething totally new,Punzisaid.

drill down to Earth’s mantle

It may not quite be Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, but it's the closest we've come yet.
A team of British-led researchers are to drill down to Earth's mantle for the first time and bring back samples.

The incredible feat would involve tunnelling through five miles of solid rock on the sea bed in temperatures as high as 570F (298C).Once there, the pressure on the equipment would be a staggering four million pounds per square inch - 285,000 times that of normal gravity.
The scientists hope to take samples and get them back up to the surface so we can learn more about the origins of the planet.
The bold plan mimics the classic 1959 sci-fi film Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, in which Pat Boone leads a group of adventurers who venture down an Icelandic volcano to the bowels of our world.

The real-life version would not go as far and would stop at the mantle, the 2,000mile thick layer between the crust and the molten core, but would nonetheless be a first for science.
It was announced by Dr Damon Teagle of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and Dr Benoit Ildefonse from Montpellier University in France.
Experts likened the significance to that of 'moon rocks' from our moon in terms of what they could tell us about our past.
It would also tell us about the Moho layer which sits at the base of the crust and may explain how and why earthquakes happen.
Dr Teagle explained that the best place to drill to the mantle would be in the ocean as the crust is thinner there.


The technical challenges would be enormous and the drill would have to function without a riser, a common safety feature where double pipes are used to vent gasses.

Instead, seawater would have to be pumped into the hole with enough pressure to force samples being dug up back up to the surface.

There have been previous attempts to drill to the mantle but Project Mohole in the 1960s failed due to poor organisation and cost overruns.

Samples of rock from the mantle have also found their way to the surface but they have been spouted out by volcanoes.

Dr Teagle and his team are now searching for a suitable site somewhere in the Pacific and hope to have the expertise, technology and funding in place by 2018.

an artificial leaf own power station.

Scientists claim to have found the 'Holy Grail' of science in an artificial leaf that could turn ever British home into its own power station.

The leaf, which is the same size as a playing card, mimics the process of photosynthesis that plants use to convert sunlight and water into energy.

Scientists behind the invention say it could provide an affordable solution to the third world's growing energy crisis.
Dr Daniel Nocera, who led the research team, said: 'A practical artificial leaf has been one of the Holy Grails of science for decades.
'We believe we have done it.'The artificial leaf shows particular promise as an inexpensive source of electricity for homes of the poor in developing countries. Our goal is to make each home its own power station.
'One can envision villages in India and Africa not long from now purchasing an affordable basic power system based on this technology.'

The device bears no resemblance to Mother Nature's counterparts on oaks, maples and other green plants, which scientists have used as the model for their efforts to develop this new genre of solar cells.
About the shape of a poker card but thinner, the device is fashioned from silicon, electronics and catalysts, substances that accelerate chemical reactions that otherwise would not occur, or would run slowly.

Placed in a single gallon of water in a bright sunlight, the device could produce enough electricity to supply a house in a developing country with electricity for a day, Nocera said.

It does so by splitting water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen.

The hydrogen and oxygen gases would be stored in a fuel cell, which uses those two materials to produce electricity, located either on top of the house or beside it.

Nocera, who is with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, points out that the 'artificial leaf' is not a new concept.

The first artificial leaf was developed more than a decade ago by John Turner of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

Although highly efficient at carrying out photosynthesis, Turner's device was impractical for wider use, as it was composed of rare, expensive metals and was highly unstable — with a lifespan of barely one day.

Nocera's new leaf overcomes these problems.

It is made of inexpensive materials that are widely available, works under simple conditions and is highly stable. In laboratory studies, he showed that an artificial leaf prototype could operate continuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity.

The key to this breakthrough is Nocera's recent discovery of several powerful new, inexpensive catalysts, made of nickel and cobalt, that are capable of efficiently splitting water into its two components, hydrogen and oxygen, under simple conditions.

Right now, Nocera's leaf is about 10 times more efficient at carrying out photosynthesis than a natural leaf. However, he is optimistic that he can boost the efficiency of the artificial leaf much higher in the future.

'Nature is powered by photosynthesis, and I think that the future world will be powered by photosynthesis as well in the form of this artificial leaf,' said Nocera, a chemist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. 

Smart Bird soar higher

One of mankind's oldest and most elusive dreams has been to recreate the effortless, swooping flight of a large bird.
Now scientists have invented a robot that not only perfectly mimics that flight, but could be mistaken for the real thing.
The SmartBird's revolutionary design allows it to start, fly and land autonomously.
Its wings not only beat up and down, they also twist at specific angles, providing the ultra-light model with 'excellent aerodynamic qualities and extreme agility'.
Controlled by a radio handset, it can also simply glide through the skies if left to its own devices.

Steering is achieved when the SmartBird, which weighs just 450grams, moves its tail and turns its head from side-to-side.
Inspired by the herring seagull, scientists at technology firm Festo control the up/down flapping motion of the wings by spinning two wheels inside the robot's torso.
Similar to the wheels on a steam train, these are connected by rods that in turn provide the wings with their flapping movement.
The angle of the wings is adjusted by using 'torsional motors' that point the wings upwards on the up-stroke, making the SmartBird soar higher, and point downward on the down-stroke.

A spokesman for Festo said: 'The minimal use of materials and the extremely lightweight construction pave the way for efficiency in resource and energy consumption.'
While undeniably impressive from a technological viewpoint, it is the SmartBird's uncanny resemblance to an actual bird that astounds.
From the ground it is easily mistaken for the real thing, so realistic are its movements and the flapping of its wings.

On closer inspection, of course, it is clearly a robot.

green cities India and japan

The Japanese government announced yesterday that it would sign a free trade agreement with India that would eliminate 94 percent of trade tariffs over the next decade. The partnership between two of Asia's leading innovators runs much deeper than sending goods across the boarder though. It's also sprouting a network of "green cities."   Historically, India and Japan have had strong relations politically and commercially, a result of the spread of Buddhism coming from India via China to Japan in the 6th century A.D.

During World War II, the Indian National Army was employed by the Japanese Imperial Army in Japan's efforts against British forces. Japanese commercial giants like Honda, Sony, and Toyota have long been operating manufacturing plants in India and one of Japan's most successful companies, Suzuki, has a strong partnership with the largest car manufacturer in India, Maruti.   In December, 2006, India and Japan signed the Joint Statement Towards Japan-India Strategic and Global Partnership. Since then, the two countries have participated in annual summits, which have culminated in projects such as the Delhi Metro and the JET Program.


In November, 2010, India and Japan unveiled a plan to launch 24 green cities along the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor. These green cities will have optimized energy supplies, 24-hour potable water supply, bicycle and walking paths, and water and waste recycling systems. Preparatory work has begun on pilot projects in seven green cities expected to be part of the DMIC. "Green cities and green technologies will be an important part of the DMIC. It will be like forging a sort of a green alliance between India and Japan," said Aftab Seth, a former Indian ambassador to Japan.

Japan's reputation as a world leader in green technologies adds tremendous credibility to the possibilities of these green cities. Companies like Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Toshiba are all expected to participate in the design and construction of eco-friendly towns in seven states. Because Japan is more energy efficient than India, the development of green cities will allow knowledge sharing across the nations, with the end goal being improved energy efficiency and overall quality of life for citizens of the green cities and, eventually, all of India.



India has a lot to learn from Japan: despite the massive difference in size of the two countries, Japan at one point was the shining star of Asia and now, even after all its economic woes, is still the world's third largest economy. India's potential though seems to supersede what global expectations were of Japan twenty years ago.

It cannot be denied that part of the motivation for strengthening the tie between India and Japan is to counter China's progress. But the two countries are capitalizing on a unique opportunity to set a worldwide example of the future of urban planning and development. The combination of state-of-the-art infrastructure supporting transportation functions and the modernity of "green" living is an innovative idea and can very well change the way the world—both developed and developing—will view international relations in the context of readying for the future.

Baidu mobile os

As part of its quest to become Google of China, Baidu has already launched a Twitter-like service and announced plans to integrate apps and search. Now they're taking another step forward to develop their own operating system for mobile devices.

According to the company's chief executive Robin Li, over the coming 3-5 years Baidu will create software that offers a web search box within a second of starting mobile phone or tablet computer. From what I've understood, we're not talking about an Android-like platform, rather Baidu wants to develop something like Chrome OS.

Mr Li said: "Right now when you power on an iPhone, it takes 45 seconds before you can do anything. In the future, one second, you turn on the device, and you can start using the box. That's our mission for the future of the internet."

He went on talking about the goal to transform the search box into a universal computing tool that could replace all other interfaces. "The goal is to let people become increasingly dependent on the Baidu box," he added.

allow trees to grow /tree catalogs

Tree islands are patches of relatively high and dry ground that dot the marshes of the Everglades. Typically a meter (3.3 feet) or so high, many of them are elevated enough to allow trees to grow. They provide a nesting site for alligators and a refuge for birds, panthers, and other wildlife.
Scientists have thought for many years that the so-called fixed tree islands (a larger type of tree island frequently found in the Everglades' main channel, Shark River Slough) developed on protrusions from the rocky layer of a mineral called carbonate that sits beneath the marsh. Now, new research indicates that the real trigger for island development might have been middens, or trash piles left behind from human settlements that date to about 5,000 years ago.
These middens, a mixture of bones, food discards, charcoal, and human artifacts (such as clay pots and shell tools), would have provided an elevated area, drier than the surrounding marsh, allowing trees and other vegetation to grow. Bones also leaked phosphorus, a nutrient for plants that is otherwise scarce in the Everglades.
"This goes to show that human disturbance in the environment doesn't always have a negative consequence," says Gail Chmura, a paleoecologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and one of the authors of the study.

Chmura will be presenting her research on March 22, at the American Geophysical Union's Chapman Conference on Climates, Past Landscapes, and Civilizations.
In a previous scientific investigation of tree islands, Margo Schwadron, an archeologist with the National Park Service, cut through the elevated bedrock at the base of two islands and discovered that it was actually a so-called "perched carbonate layer," because there was more soil and a midden below. Later, a team including Chmura's graduate student Maria-Theresia Graf performed additional excavations in South Florida and found more of the perched carbonate layers.
Chemical analysis of samples of these curious perched layers revealed that they are made up partially of carbonates that had dissolved from the bedrock below, Chmura says. The layer also contains phosphorus from dissolved bones, she adds. Her team concluded that trees are key to the formation of this layer: During South Florida's dry season, their roots draw in large quantities of ground water but allow the phosphates and carbonates dissolved in it to seep out and coalesce into the stone-like layer.
The perched carbonate plays a key role in letting tree islands rebound after fires: because it does not burn, it protects the underlying soil, and it maintains the islands' elevation, allowing vegetation to regrow after the fire. Humans are now threatening the existence of tree islands, by cutting down trees (whose roots keep the perched layer in place) and artificially maintaining high water levels year-round in some water control systems, which could cause the layer to dissolve.
Chmura's team now wants to explore exactly when trees started growing on the tree islands.

The Nokia E-Cu concept

The Nokia E-Cu concept phone doesn't need to plug in, it charges from any heat source. Just lay it on top of a radiator and it starts soaking in the energy.

Designer Patrick Hyland says it can even work off the warmth of your pocket. The first time "it would take approximately seven hours to reach full charge, then after that it's continuous[ly charging] by keeping the phone in areas between 86 degrees and 104 degrees Fahrenheit." That's one hot pocket.

He's put a thermogenerator inside the phone that converts heat into electric potential energy. To better conduct the heat to that little power plant in your pocket, the E-Cu (E for energy, Cu for copper) is encased in copper backing with engraved heat sinks like those normally used to keep electronics from overheating.

And it's an eye catcher. You'll certainly turn some heads if you pull out a shimmering copper-coated phone. Click through the slideshow for some additional close up photos of the prototype. The etchings on the back both increase surface area and represent a parched earth appearance, since, as Hyland reminds us, that is what the effect of heat is on the natural environment.

Nokia doesn't have current plans to build the phone, so for now it remains a concept. But Hyland says he's open to anyone who wants to collaborate.


For Americans this technology would certainly be convenient. It would also save a bit on energy bills and waste, "Annually, unwanted phone chargers produce 51,000 tons of waste in addition to the greenhouse gases created by the production of the electricity needed to charge them," Hyland says. So a charger-free phone is also a "green" phone. Though adapting our plug-in habits would help a bunch too: most cell phone related energy use comes from leaving your charger plugged in all day unnecessarily.

The real potential for charger-free cell phone technology is what it could enable places where plugging in isn't an option, like rural areas in the developing world.

Cell phones are spreading faster than power lines and bringing with them countless enterprise opportunities, aid, and health advances. Here's GOOD's infographic on cell phone use around the world. A phone like the E-Cu, if it ever comes to be, would enable all manner of expanded aid and development by phone projects. Let's hope Patrick finds a collaborator.

FOG-to-Fuels

Blackgold Biofuels is operating FOG-to-Fuels, a pilot program to turn FOG into biodiesel at San Francisco's Wastewater Treatment Facility. FOG builds up in sewer pipes much like cholesterol does in an artery, and that backup causes some 10 billion gallons of untreated sewage flow each year (yuck). Blackgold's process, says CEO and co-founder Emily Bockian Landsburg, not only reduces the amount of energy needed to treat FOG but also results in "an environmentally friendly fuel that can be used onsite or sold for profit." Conversion to biodiesel offers the highest and best use for this material.

FogBusters has developed a patented technology that works in conjunction with existing systems to actually remove FOG from wastewater without the use of chemicals. The reasons why this is significant include the fact that there is currently so much FOG sludge it needs to be transported by truck to landfills, where it takes forever to break down. Removing FOG from the wastewater equation is, says FogBusters CEO Bradley Mart, "the first big breakthrough in oil/water separation in 25 years."

geothermal power plant / earthquakes can be prevented.

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) says that there is no way of predicting earthquakes at present but an independent researcher from Delhi claims that earthquakes are a result of the heating of the earth's core and can be prevented.


Surya Prakash Kapoor debunks the conventional theory of plate tectonics and says that geothermal energy is responsible not just for earthquakes but also volcanic eruptions , tsunamis and climate change. "Geothermal energy travels from its source situated at the centre of the earth towards the surface where it leads to geodynamism and geothermal events like volcanic eruptions, high heat flows and earthquakes. If this energy is tapped, used for generating electricity, not only will events like earthquakes cease but the earth's temperature can also be brought down," he said.

According to his theory, there are seven geothermal provinces in India — Himalayas , Sohana Cambay, west coast, SONATA, Godavari and Mahanadi. Of these, the Himalayas are most prone to earthquakes. "The collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian plate resulted in the formation of the Himalayas and one of the largest geothermal belts, over 150km wide and extending 3,000km through India, Tibet, China, Myanmar and Thailand. Over 150 areas are hot enough to generate electricity," he added.

The Himalayan geothermal area also has the highest heat flow value accounting for almost 60% of the total devastating earthquakes in India.

Kapoor's research shows that the first pilot binary 5 MW power plant was operated by the Geological Survey of India in Manikaran. India's geothermal provinces are capable of generating 10,600 MW. "Epicenters of all damaging earthquakes during last 200 years in India are located in the seven geothermal areas. It leads us to conclude that earthquakes are periodical emissions of unmanaged geothermal energy accumulated in the respective geothermal provinces. The portion of Gangetic plain comprising Kanpur, Allahabad and Varanasi, although situated in the vicinity of Himalayan plate boundary but lying in non-geothermal province, has not witnessed any earthquake hazard in the last 3000 years," he said.

dihydrocapsiate / easy diet plans

This 'miracle' extract – known as dihydrocapsiate (DHC) – speeds up the body's metabolism, helping it use up more calories.
It is already sold in the form of diet supplement pills in the U.S. and Japan, but it could be about to be used as a food additive in Britain.

The ingredient, which is tasteless, is one of several chemical compounds known as capsinoids found in a particular variety of chilli.

Now a Japanese food firm has submitted plans to the Food Standards Agency watchdog with the aim of adding it to chocolate bars, desserts and ready meals targeted towards slimmers.
The FSA has recently declared the extract safe.
It is now up to the European Commission to decide whether it can be sold.
If approved, products with DHC could appear on shelves very soon.

But dieticians have said that the effects of eating the foods would be minimal.


They claim that in reality, a person weighing 15 stone consuming the recommended portions of foods containing DHC would probably burn off only 50 extra calories a day – the equivalent of a digestive biscuit.
The manufacturer, Ajinomoto, plans to make the ingredient synthetically as only very small amounts can be derived from chilli peppers.
Up to 3mg would be added to a portion of food – the amount of extract found in ten chillis.
The firm insisted it was not trying to claim people would be able to lose weight simply by eating their food. It would have to be part of an overall healthy diet and active lifestyle to achieve results.
Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said it was a 'very interesting idea'.

'But as ever, the proof is in the pudding,' he added.

improve battery performance / performance car batteries

Scientists are coming up with new software that would help speed up the process of development of future electric cars.

Lack of charging stations and limited battery life have so far prevented compact electric vehicles from going mainstream.

The lithium-ion batteries used by most automakers are simply too heavy, too expensive and go flat too quickly.

New materials should improve the performance, service life and safety of the energy storage device, yet the development of these kinds of materials is time-consuming and costly.

But now researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern are developing software to simulate lithium-ion batteries, which should in turn speed up this process and make it more efficient.

The new software is dubbed BEST , short for Battery and Electrochemistry Simulation Tool.

The researchers have managed to simulate on macroscopic and microscopic level the entire battery cell as well as the transport and reaction processes of the lithium ions themselves.


"We can show the microscopic structure of the electrodes. Every individual pore measuring 10 micrometers can be seen - something none of today's off-the-shelf programs can do. The position and shape of the electrodes can also be varied," said Zausch.

By resolving the structure of the electrodes in three dimensions, parameters such as lithium ion concentrations and current density can be calculated.

For these computations a specialize "Finite Volume" code is used that was developed and implemented at the ITWM.

The distribution of the current flow provides an indication of heat production in the battery. Therefore, the software can pinpoint possible hotspots that may overheat and can lead to ignition of the battery. Aging effects can also be assessed using BEST.

naked treatment / naked therapy

There is something about getting a man to talk about his feelings that usually sends him running in the other direction.
But a 24-year-old psychology buff believes she has the answer - getting naked.
Sarah White has brought a brand new type of therapy to the people of New York.
By slowly peeling away the layers of her clothes during the session, she believes it will allow her to peel away the layers of her clients' subconscious.
She said: 'During the sessions I use the power of arousal to let you gain more control over your life.
'The goal is to use nakedness so you can understand yourself and your world better, so you can feel great and powerful, and so the excitement you feel during the sessions can lead to more excitement outside the sessions.'

The naked therapist's unique approach to helping people has aroused interest from dozens of people.

Unsurprisingly, most of her clients are men.
Miss White, from the Upper West Side, studied psychology as an undergraduate at university but believed there was something missing and uninspiring from the classical training - and that was an open interest in sexuality.

She told the New York Daily News: 'For men especially, who are less likely than women to go to therapy, it is more interesting, more enticing, more exciting. It's a more inspiring approach to therapy.
'I felt early on that something was missing from classical therapy, it seemed to encourage repression as opposed to encouraging people to open up.'
The 24-year-old begins the session with her clothes on, as the hour-long appointment progresses, she takes off every item of clothing until there is nothing left. The initial sessions, which cost $150, are conducted via a one-way web cam and text chat.

Once she builds a rapport with a client she moves to two-way Skype video appointments and then, in some cases, in-person consultations.
So far, she has around 30 clients which are an eclectic mix of college students with sexual issues, middle-aged men with relationship problems and even some women who enjoy a chat with a nude peer.
She said of her approach: 'Naked therapy has been very eye opening and worldly for my clients.
'The goal is to show patients I have nothing to hide, and encourage them to be more honest.
'For men in particular, seeing a naked woman can really help them focus, look deeply into themselves and speak their minds openly.
'Freud used free association. I use nakedness.'

Clients schedule appointments through her website, sarahwhitelive.com.
She conceded that naked therapy is not approved by any mental health association. And she is not a licensed therapist.
While Miss White's boyfriend supports her new business, her parents are still in the dark.
She said: 'I should probably tell them before they read it in the paper.'

Not surprisingly, professional psychologists are not sold on her idea.

Diana Kirschner, a New York-based clinical psychologist, told the Daily News: 'She's using the word therapy here, but I don't consider this therapy. I consider this interactive soft-core Internet porn.'
Any sexual interaction between patient and therapist is considered highly unethical by the American Psychoanalytic Association, the largest and oldest such organization in the nation.

Even physical contact violates its code of professional conduct. 

But there is no physical contact in naked therapy. And, as Miss White points out:  'It's not like I'm having relationships with any of my patients.'

engineering with an interest in robotics and artificial intelligence

 robots are the helping hands everyone has always wished for. Deriving its origin from the Czech word robota, meaning forced labour;Though the first thing that comes to mind vis-a-vis a robot is an imitation of a human from Star Wars, the Terminator or Star Trek it's not always a man versus machine game. Robots we encounter in our daily lives are those that perform tasks that are too dangerous, boring or onerous, thus being the helping hands.
With over a million types of robots, their presence is seen in almost every industry especially the auto, medical, manufacturing and space industry. Robots are used in industries for speeding up the manufacturing process. They are also used in the fields of nuclear science, sea exploration, servicing of transmission signals and bio-medical equipment design.
Created as a result of the perfect blend of the human imagination and technological developments, robots can be described better as mechanical devices that are capable of performing a variety of complex human tasks on command or by being programmed in advance. It is an artificial agent guided by computer or electric programming and is able to do tasks on its own.
A combination of intelligence, energy, movement and senses, robots require these characteristics to fulfil their purpose. The branch of study that develops these robots is robotic engineering. It deals with design and application of robots and the use of computer for their manipulation and processing.
Professor Patricia H. Reiff, director, Rice Space Institute and a professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rice University, while highlighting new career trends says, "Robotics is very critical these days and one of the most upcoming career options. The expansion in space research these days will also boost robotics and its development."
To follow this career and develop an interest in robotics, an engineering background is a must. Mechatronics is the area of knowledge and practice interfacing mechanical and electronics engineering. Robotics is a subset of mechatronics, which involves automated machinery and components that move. Robotics being an inter-disciplinary course prefers students who have completed their graduation in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, instrumentation engineering or computer engineering with an interest in robotics and artificial intelligence.
Though the specialisation is offered at an undergraduate level in a few private engineering colleges across the country, it is not the preferred choice. The popularity and growing demand for robotics is at the Master's level.
A course in robotics trains and educates a student in the field of artificial intelligence, computer-aided manufacturing, computer integrated manufacturing system, computational geometry, robot motion planning, digital electronics and micro processing. The different facets of building a robot include working on developing the hardware, software, intelligence control and adaptive control of this machine.
Robotics is not all about designing the robots. Its maintenance, developing new applications and conducting research are equally important. Specialising in design and control in robotics is close to mechanical engineering. For hardware design of robots, a B.Tech. in electrical or electronics and communication engineering forms a good base.

Computer engineers can look at hardware design in robotics and the controls part requires aspects of electrical engineering. This field also requires the application of computer-integrated manufacturing, mechanical engineering, electrical and software engineering and biological mechanics.
In India, work on robotics began in educational institutions and research centres such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and the Indian Institute of Science. Now this field is the preferred choice of many budding engineers and contests are held among students across the country to encourage talent.
Robotics engineering can be studied at the IITs in Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. A few other institutes that offer this specialisation are the National Institute of Technology, University of Hyderabad, Jadavpur University and the Birla Institute of Technology and Science.
A specialisation in robotics is a popular choice for students going abroad to study. This field offers job opportunities and a robotics engineer can apply his mastery in diverse fields like modern warfare, surgery, nano-technology and space-exploration. Many funding programmes and scholarships are available for research and PhD. students. Developing a robot comes with the goal of finding a solution to the problem. Along with the technical know-how, interest in research is essential. This field has no boundaries and will continue to grow until the machines take over!

the bloom box / bloom box technology

In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that's inexpensive and clean, with no emissions. Well over 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley are working on it, and one of them, Bloom Energy, is about to make public its invention: a little power plant-in-a-box they want to put literally in your backyard.


The Bloom Energy and its Bloom Box is one of many start ups who have jumped into the alternative energy market using fuel cells. The technology has plenty of potential but right now it is very expensive and these start ups like Bloom Energy are not making money.

Bloom lost $85 million in 2008, according to venture capitalists that have seen its business plan, roughly on par with other fuel-cell companies building energy boxes much like Bloom's.
Google told Fortune that it has a 400 kilowatt installation from Bloom at its headquarters in Mountain View, California. But the real test, analysts say, is whether Google feels confident enough to use Bloom boxes to power its vast server farms upon which its business depends

In late February of this year, K.R. Sridhar, a native of India who moved to the United States and eventually became the CEO of Bloom Energy, announced a new piece of technology marketed as the Bloom Box. The Bloom Box is Bloom Energy's claim to fame, and it is the most recent hot news item within a technology that has had a checkered past: fuel cells. Formerly, companies that have posted exciting advances in fuel cell technology have received interest from venture capital companies followed by a boom and then bust cycle as the potential profit from the technology has proven to be significantly less than expected. Ballard Power Systems is one such example. In the 1990's, Ballard received international attention when it revealed its work on fuel cell technology and hinted that a hyper-efficient automobile would soon emerge. As the reality of fuel cell technology manifested itself as a much slower process, however, interest in Ballard's activities declined.


What is Bloom?

The Bloom Box is a stationary fuel cell designed to generate power at any scale desired depending on the number of ceramic plates utilized in the device. Yahoo has purchased a number of the boxes and claims to have saved around $150,000 in power costs since they were installed. According to Sridhar, the fuel cell is not ideally suited to mobile applications such as automobiles, but it does work extremely well for stationary power generation. Sridhar originally was pursuing a technology that would generate oxygen for NASA Mars missions, but when the missions were scrapped, Sridhar reverse-engineered his product to intake oxygen from the atmosphere and generate electricity. The CEO believes his product is unique because it uses a specially-engineered ink on ceramic plates (arranged in a fashion similar to the title picture) to generate power. He thinks that he will be able to manufacture a home-sized Bloom Box for around $2,000-$3,000, and that when he is able to do this, his company will reap extremely large profits. A Bloom Box of approximately the size of a bread loaf is purported to be able to satisfy the energy needs of an average household, and to do so at a level of efficiency that would enable consumers to regain their investment in the device relatively quickly.


A lot of industry experts are skeptical about Sridhar's Bloom Box, however. Many have examined the designs and concluded that there is nothing new or particularly revolutionary to the Bloom Box technology, and they have also evaluated and largely disregarded his belief that he could manufacture the boxes cheaply enough that average citizens would be able to save a good deal of money from the boxes. Sridhar's claims are not all hot air, however. The blooming executive has managed to make fuel cell technology extremely portable, which can be beneficial for remote field operations that require an immediate and simple source of power (and one that does not pollute the landscape). The jury is out about whether or not Sridhar has stumbled upon a revolutionary new form of clean energy in his Bloom Box, but the company's success will depend upon how quickly and effectively they are able to market their product in the recent wash of press coverage they have received.

The Bloom Energy Server (commonly referred to as the Bloom Box) is a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) made by Bloom Energy, of Sunnyvale, California, that uses liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons (such as gasoline, diesel or propane produced from fossil or bio sources) to generate electricity on the site where it will be used; Bloom Energy representatives assert that it is at least as efficient as a traditional large-scale coal power station.According to the company, a single cell (one 100 × 100 mm metal alloy plate between two ceramic layers) generates 25 watts.

In October 2001, K.R Sridhar C.E.O had a meeting with John Doerr from the large venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.Sridhar was asking for more than $100 million to start the company. Bloom Energy has received $400 million of start-up funding from venture capitalists, including Kleiner Perkins and Vinod Khosla.The company, originally called Ion America, was renamed to Bloom Energy in 2006.Sridhar credited his nine-year-old son for the name, saying that his son believed jobs, lives, environment and children would bloom. One of the celebrities appearing at the product launch was Michael R. Bloomberg, who appeared by video link.Bloomberg's business news network covered the event, but was attributed every statement to "Bloom Energy".

The CEO gave a media interviewfor the first time in 2010, eight years after founding the company, because of pressure from his customers.A few days later he allowed a journalist (Lesley Stahl of the CBS News program 60 Minutes) to see the factory for the first time.On February 24, 2010, the company held its first press conference.

Installation of bloom box

The current cost of each hand-made 100 kW Bloom Energy Server is $700,000–800,000. In the next stage, which will likely be mass production of home-sized units, Sridhar hopes to more than halve the cost of each home sized Bloom server to under $3000. Bloom estimates the size of a home sized server as 1 kilowatt, although cNet News reports critical estimates recommend 5 kW capacity for a residence.
The capital costs according to NewsWeek magazine is $7–8 per watt.
According to the New York Times (Green Blog), in early 2011 "... Bloom Energy ... unveiled a service to allow customers to buy the electricity generated by its fuel cells without incurring the capital costs of purchasing the six-figure devices.... Under the Bloom Electrons service, customers sign 10-year contracts to purchase the electricity generated by Bloom Energy Servers while the company retains ownership of the fuel cells and responsibility for their maintenance.... 'We're able to tell customers, 'You don't have to put any money up front, you pay only for the electrons you use and it's good for your pocketbook and good for planet,' ' [CEO K.R. Sridhar] said.

Usage bloom box

On 24 February 2010, Sridhar told Todd Woody of The New York Times that his devices are making electricity for 8–10 cents/kWh using natural gas, which is cheaper than today's electricity prices in some parts of the United States, such as California. Twenty percent of the Bloom Energy Server cost savings depend upon avoiding transfer losses that result from energy grid use.
Bloom Energy is developing Power Purchase Agreements to sell the electricity produced by the boxes, rather than sell the boxes themselves, in order to address customers' fears about box maintenance, reliability and servicing costs.
Fifteen percent of the power at eBay is created with Bloom technology; after tax incentives that paid half the cost eBay expects "a three-year payback period" for the remaining half, based on California's $0.14/kWh cost of commercial electricity.

Efficiency bloom box

A Gerson Lehrman Group analyst wrote that GE dismantled its fuel cell group five years ago and Siemens have almost dismantled theirs. United Technologies is the only large conglomerate that has fuel cell technology that could compete with Bloom Energy. Toshiba only has technology to provide energy for a small device, not a neighborhood.

Katie Fehrenbacher of Business Week reports that Sprint Nextel owns 15 patents on hydrogen fuel cells and is using 250 fuel cells to provide backup power for its operations. Sprint has been using fuel cell power since 2005. Last year Sprint's fuel cell program received a grant of over $7 million from the United States Department of Energy. The Sprint program has partnered with ReliOn and Altergy for fuel cell manufacture, and with Air Products as a hydrogen supplier. Business Week reported that a German fuel cell firm called P21, which is based in Munich, has been working on similar projects to supply backup power for cellular operations. United Technologies makes fuel cells costing $4,500 per kilowatt.

In October 2009 the Department of Energy awarded nearly $25 million in grants for research and development of solar fuels, which Michael Kannelos notes in Wired may be similar technology to the solar cells in Sridhar's description of the Bloom Energy Server. Department of Energy grant recipients included a variety of startup companies and universities.

According to an article in NewScientist, there is a claim stating the Bloom Box is "electrolyte-supported" and based on that, there are at least two well-established companies, Topsoe Fuel Cell and Ceres Power, already rolling out products with more advanced non-electrolyte-supported cells. Ceres having a four-year program to install 37,500 units in the homes of customers of the UK's British Gas.
Ballard Power's comparably scaled products are based on proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Ballard's 150 kW units are intended for mobile applications such as municipal buses, while their larger 1 MW stationary systems are configured from banks of 11 kW building blocks.
Another competitor that already has product in-market in Europe and Australia is Ceramic Fuel Cells , with an efficiency of 60% for the power-only units; these fuel cells are based on proven technology spun off from Australia's CSIRO.

biofuel research / New Biofuel to Replace Gasoline

Things are moving along at a nice clip in the world of biofuel research, so it seems like news of another "breakthrough" is barely enough to provoke a yawn. Well, this latest piece of news sure stands out from the crowd. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has just announced that a research team headed up by the Department's BioEnergy Science Center has developed a cost effective method for converting woody plants straight into isobutanol, which can be used in conventional car engines just as gasoline.
Biofuel and Green Jobs, Too

In his announcement, Chu was quick to point out that biofuel production has the potential to create new jobs in rural parts of the country. Though some of those jobs might come from putting more farmland into production, the most important thing about DOE's new isobutanol process is that it does not necessarily rely on new agricultural production. Aside from cultivated biofuel crops, it can use the woody waste from other crops including wheat and rice straw, corn stover, and lumber waste. Handling, transporting and refining these wastes is probably where a good deal of the new employment would occur.
Biofuel, from Farm to Gas Tank


Scientists from the BioEnergy Science Center (an offshoot of DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory) worked with researchers from the University of California to develop a new strain of the microbe Clostridium celluloyticum. As its name implies, C. celluloyticum is a natural at breaking down cellulose. The problem is that different species can only produce certain aspects of the process, so the new strain combines those various talents in one microbe. The result is a process that breaks down plant matter and produces isobutanol in one relatively inexpensive step, in contrast to the multi-stage process demanded of conventional biofuel production.
Green Jobs for Microbes

Non-edible woody plant matter is a potential biofuel gold mine, but until now the problem has been to find low cost, energy efficient ways of breaking down the cellulose – the "wood" part of the plant cells – to get at the soft innards that can be converted to fuel. Microbes have proved up to the job, and that's just one example of their role in new green tech. They're also being put to work cleaning up polluted sites, powering fuel cells, and even transforming wastewater into bioplastic.

It was another one of those Disney moments of magic.

When 78-year-old retiree Carl Frederickson's house takes off into the air aided by the help of hundreds of helium balloons in Up!, viewers saw it is a heart-warming moment of pure fiction.
But for some people, it became more than that.
The team from National Geographic have built a house inspired by the Pixar movie Up! that can really fly.
Using 300 helium-filled weather balloons, a team of scientists, engineers, two balloon pilots and dozens of volunteers, they managed to get the small house 10,000 feet into the air.
Of course it was not a real house, but a custom-built light weight one.

Executive producer Ben Bowie said: 'We found that it is actually close to impossible to fly a real house.'

Producer Ian White added: 'But what we can do is kind of fly a light-weight house and fly it safely with people on board.'