The Air Force Research Laboratory has created the fastest supercomputer of all time by putting together 1,760 Playstation Three’s. The Department of Defense is calling it The Condor Cluster. This device is so powerful and so fast that it has the ability to process 500 trillion floating point operations per second. WOW. It also has 168 GPU’s and 84 servers. Compared to a supercomputer built like this one from scratch, The Condor Cluster only costs about 5%-10% of the cost at 2 million dollars. Interestingly, The Condor Cluster only consumes about 10% of the power of a computer of such magnitude made from scratch.
With The Condor Clusterthe military will be able to look at high resolution satellite imagery, radar and very possibly extra-terrestrial life. It’s amazing where our technology is going. Now we are creating super computers using Playstation Gaming Consoles.
Scientists over at Sandia National Laboratories are now trying to create fuel with the help of solar energy. There are multiple conversion that will need to take place for this to happen, however. The scientists are using a cerium-oxide-based system to turn CO2 into carbon monoxide, and they are also working to turn water into useable hydrogen. Combining these two, they will make a synthetic fuel. In a two chambered machine, mirrors will cause the solar energy to heat up to over 1,500 degrees F, which will in turn pull the oxygen out of the cerium oxide. The deoxygenated substance is then pumped into another chamber where it reacts with CO2 to again produce cerium oxide and carbon monoxide.
In the same way, water is heated up and a stream of hydrogen is produced. This prospective new fuel called Syngas is created into a final product using solar energy once again. Mirrors concentrate solar energy to 400 degrees Celsius, which catalyzes a reaction between CO2 and Calcium Oxide. The final product is calcium carbonate. Using similar solar heating processes, finally zinc, steam, and CO2 come together to produce Syngas.
Using this very inexpensive process, we will be able to produce low cost, effective fuel that is readily available and carbon-neutral. Carbon dioxide emissions are becoming a huge problem across the globe as we burn more fossil fuels to run our vehicles and go about our everyday lives. A carbon-neutral, low cost power source could mean great things for the future of our ecosystem. Imagine if cars could run off Syngas and emit no carbon dioxide whatsoever? People are looking for all sorts of ways to reduce their carbon footprint. If this idea can be commercialized, it will be a great opportunity to reduce that footprint even further.
Say goodbye to fog lights because scientists are working on something much better; Computer Vision Systems. It is believed that in the near future, computer vision systems are said to be able to increase your ability to see through the fog or the snow in your vehicle. Can you imagine the full extent of what this type of technology would mean for society? Airplanes wouldn’t fly blindly, underwater exploration would be taken to an entirely new level, public transportation would be more efficient and safer, and lastly our own private transportation will be greatly enhanced. Researchers say that this technology will first be in the oceans, then in airplanes, and in a few years we will probably see it in public transportation. They also explain that it’s a long ways away before car companies get their hands on this emerging technology.
This technology is the key focus for many over at Carnegie Mellon University. SrinivasaNarasimhan, professor of computer vision and graphic systems explains that this technology will not “take away the fog.” He says that the key to making this technology work is illumination. Lighting up the fog with something like a floodlight is actually the a terrible thing to do because the light refacts and reflects off of the fog and the viewer loses all contrast. Instead you have to scan light and then a camera will make the image clearer.
A big problem, according to SrinivasaNarasimhan is that drivers often speed up in the fog because they perceive that they are actually driving slower. For this type of technology, it is said that specialized led lights or laser will suffice as the light source.
Researchers believe that one of the emerging technologies that will change this world will be LucidTouch. Microsoft has been looking into the idea for several years now once they realized that there was a huge amount of wasted space on our handheld devices (on the back). Patrick Baudisch of Microsoft first began to formulate this idea when he realized he couldn’t see past his fingers on his touch screen phone, which made things more difficult for him. Most recently Baudisch has been focusing his efforts on maximizing the screen size on things like cellular phone technology. The biggest problem is that we always want our technology to be smaller, however this means that there is also smaller screens and therefore less surface area to work with.
Baudisch also realizes that we need to be able to see our fingers on the back of the device, so he’s created a “see-through pseudo-transparency” system that allows you to see what you are doing as you use the back side of your technology. A great part about this is any size hand, and any size finger can use this technology without blocking the screen. A colored dot on the screen will point out exactly where the finger will be in contact with the screen, which will prevent any confusions. Prototypes are still using a camera-boom attachment that points at the fingers and then renders the actions on a screen. According to research, a simple optical sensor will do the trick as long as they can provide enough data to indicate the location of the fingertips.
Baudisch is just starting with his dream of the LucidTouch. He believes that this technology could be used in gaming devices and even helps the disabled! It’s quite obvious that this technology could mean some big things for the future. It’s just a matter of when the researchers at Microsoft can create a prototype that will be effective enough to go to market. Could you imagine something like this? It would be leaps and bounds in the technology world.
Meniere’s disease is one that affects only 1% of the population. It is an imbalance disease that is quite debilitating. People with this disease can have vertigo occur at any time. Sometimes when there is an attack of vertigo, people will have to lay still for hours until the feeling subsides. Can you imagine how this type of disease might affect everyday life? It must prevent people from taking part in all sorts of activities and really hamper everyday life. Because one cannot predict an event like this happening, people affected by this disease are in a constant state of fear. While there are lifestyle changes and medications that can be ingested to help with the disease, none of them actually cure it. There is also the option to undergo surgery, however the results are not definite and this can also greatly affect hearing.
Luckily, some scientists and students over that the University of Washington Medical Center are investigating a possible solution. They say that a cochlear implant will be placed in a small well that will be put into the skull behind the temporal bone. Electrodes will then go into the ear canal and the inner ear. Neuronal signal testing will be used to identify the spot to create the well behind the ear. The device will be accompanied by a processor which well be pressed when a user feels an impending attack. The electrodes will then be activated in the inner-ear which will correct the problems.
After 4 years of testing and design modifications, the final design was approved by the FDA. I’m hopeful for all of the people with Meniere’s disease that they will be able to reap the benefits of such a medical breakthrough. This type of invention will surely give people their lives back.
So over in the Netherlands scientists were thinking about doing something that’s pretty cool. First, consider all of the carbon emissions that come out of the tailpipes of cars every day along with other chemicals. One of the major chemicals that come out of a tailpipe is nitrogen oxides. The problem with nitrogen oxides is that they cause acid rain. People that live in densely populated areas have to deal with a lot of smog in the air and it can definitely cause respiratory problems.
Interestingly enough, at the Eindhoven University of Technology, scientists are coming up with new ways to solve this problem. In the laboratories, they came up with a concrete that can actually reduce nitric oxide. Former concrete contains titanium dioxide and this is a photocatalytic material that has the ability to remove nitrogen oxides from the air. Using sunlight, this nitric oxide can be converted to nitrate.
On a busy road in the Netherlands, known as Castorweg, the scientists resurfaced it using the air purifying concrete paving stones. Over the course of the fall and the winter, the areas which contained the air purifying stones, in comparison to the regular concrete, showed improved NOx levels ranging from 25% to 45%. Actually although this type of concrete will cost 50% more than regular concrete, but with installation it will end up being only 10% more in costs. Pretty cool huh?
I can't count the number of times a week I have to worry about my laptop running out of battery. I feel like they shouldn't even be considered portable devices anymore because mine is plugged in so often. Everyone claims that they're Mac has great battery life, which is probably true in comparison to my Lenovo Thinkpad, however I still know plenty of people that are looking for outlets to plug their Mac's into while studying. The truth is, we could always use more battery life. At full charge, my Lenovo only holds a little over 1:30, which just isn't cutting it.
There's too many times when I'm basing my seat in the library on its proximity to an outlet. Either that, or I'm getting in other people's way while trying to plug my computer into an outlet. So, what's the next step...better battery technology? A definite possibility. Bigger batteries? I mean, we could do that but who really wants their laptop to be even heavier?
Our generation has been receiving a lot of bad publicity because we keep technology for just a few years and then dispose of it for something better and nicer. Ultimately, with the plastics we are throwing out precious metals and plenty of re-usable stuff. Creating better battery technology will just cause us to throw out the batteries we have now much faster, which is just adding to the technology junkyard.
Luckily, over at MIT we have professors working on alternative solutions to problems such as low battery life. Professor Peter Hagelstein is co-author an interesting manuscript which is now published in the Journal of Applied Physics. In his studies, he claims that the heat that a laptop generates has the power to DOUBLE battery life! Basically, when operating a computer only a portion of the energy that goes into it is actually successfully utilized. Some of this energy is lost in the form of heat or friction. Many forms of technology such as engines, microprocessors, and power plants need to give off excess heat in order for the machine to perform at an optimal level.
Hagelstein seems to think that the current heat to energy technologies not performing to their full potential, so he is working to create a better heat energy converter. According to theory, heat to energy transfer cannot go over a certain value called the Carnot Limit. Hagelstein claims that we are only maximizing about 1-10th of that limit. According to their statistics, using their new technology they can possibly reach about 90% of that limit.
Hagelstein is using a new system in which power is being generated by a single quantum dot device. It is a type of semiconductor that restricts electrons in all three dimensions. Although there is a current technology that can convert heat to high energy returns, he explains that with the current technology you can only get high throughput (converting heat from a less efficient system and getting more energy), but in this way you are sacrificing efficiency, price, and size. Hagelstein claims that in his new system there is no catch.
After performing a significant amount of research, Hagelstein learned that by lessening the distance between a hot surface and the conversion device you can create significantly larger amounts of power. MTPV Corp. (for Micron-gap Thermal Photo-Voltaics) and founder Robert Dimatteo plans to take Hagelsteins concept into the commercial market, claiming that this could be a huge jump in the battle to harness more power from the devices we use today.
According to DiMatteo, in the cars and technologies for generating electricity, about 60% of the possible power is lost to heat. Can you imagine if we changed this!!??
So there's all different types of power these days. There's the renewables, including hydroelectric power, solar power, wind power, nuclear power, and hydrogen power just to name a few. There's also the farfetched things including algae power (as mentioned previously in this blog). Then, there are the non-renewables including things like coal, natural gas, oil, oil shale, biomass, and tar sands. Did I leave anything out that seems pretty interesting?
I know some of the students in our ENGR407 class talked a little bit about the idea of mechanical power as well as power that is generated by extreme differences in temperature, but these things are almost mediocre in the vast enigma that is energy. People are always searching for new ways to generate power. In this day and age everyone is beginning to worry because of the damage the non-renewables have caused our environment, and also because there is definitely exponentially growing demand that opposes a significantly dwindling supply. Non-renewables have caused conflicts in government, foreign policy, culture, foreign direct investment, law, economics, and so much more.
I attended an entrepreneurship forum the other day and the extremely successful and wealthy speaker told me something that stuck in my mind. It's probably the best advice anyone has ever given me in terms of learning how to become an entrepreneur and start a business. He told me "if there's something out there that you consider to be a pain in the ass, or something that really pisses you off, you have an opportunity for a business." So what pisses us off? Well, I'd think that gas prices piss us off. A war overseas in which oil has a significant (although underplayed) influence. Annoying wind turbines piss us off. The high prices and low benefits for solar power piss us off. The dwindling natural resources on earth piss us off. So why not head elsewhere, and start something new, powerful, and life-changing.
Currently, scientists at Washington State University have moved into the solar system. I guess that they've decided that the Earth just isn't cutting it anymore, and for all the right reasons. It's called solar-wind power, and its the first of its kind. It's said that solar-wind power will provide enough energy to satisfy all energy requirements of mankind.
The way that solar wind power works is probably not what you would expect. There are no blades attached. Instead, a satellite is shot into space and looks somewhat like the sheet pictured above. The sheet is made of charged copper wire which harnesses energy from the from electrons that are shooting away from the sun at amazing speeds of several hundred kilometers per second.
Some of the advantages of this system include:
The energy that will be supplied to the Earth will be enough to supply all of mankind's power needs, although not all of the energy will be transferred back. Some will need to be used to charge the copper wire in order to create a magnetic field.
Scientists believe that it can generate one billion billion gigawatts of energy if they put a sail in space 8,400 km wide.
1000 homes could be lit with just 300 meters (984 feet) of copper wire, which is attached to a two-meter-wide (6.6-foot-wide) receiver and a 10-meter (32.8-foot) sail.
This source of energy could generate much more power than scientists predicted.
Some of the disadvantages include:
There are definitely a lot of engineering difficulties and logistics before this project is put into the air.
Given the distance of the solar sheet from the earth, more concentrated laser beams need to be formed.
It will be extremely difficult to tap the energy.
Looking at comments based on this idea, there is definitely some skepticism. I think an idea like this could be extremely beneficial to us, but as many others have commented, there's still a very long way before we know for sure how to harness this energy and how to build something of such magnitude.
Is it true that robots are the future of cleaning up after our mess? There have been countless movies made about robots in the future that will take care of our every need, provide all of our services, and even act as personal servants. For years, people have been waiting for the real C3PO, but will such a thing ever exist? Last time, I took a plunge into the world of robotics and discovered that every day, scientists are finding success in challenges that were once thought to be impossible.
One of the most recent and large-scale challenges that this country has faced on the homefront is the oil spill. The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill which occured in the Gulf of Mexico over the summer months of 2010 is the worst oil spill in U.S. History. Countless businesses across the U.S. suffered because no one wanted to attend the beaches. Fisherman whose lives depended on the well-being of the ocean struggled to put food on thier tables.
People agree that the response from the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill took too long. After 3 months and 185 million gallons of oil later, the gushing finally stopped. However, although BP eventually stopped the bleeding, it took the effort of countless fisherman, the government, and volunteers to assist in the recovery of the Gulf Coast. The spill covered a total of 580 square miles. It was a disaster.
Obviously, someone took the initiative to never let such a catastrophe like this happen again without a quick response. Check it out:
Recently created by MIT, the Seaswarm is a fully-functional, eco-friendly robot that can absorb and collect oil off of the surface of the ocean. Although they are not on the market to be used commercially, they should be ready to go in about a year.
Working best in groups, the Seaswarm robots will have the ability to detect oil and communicate with the rest of the group to clean up the spill in the most efficient way possible.
The Seaswarm has a long, 5 meter conveyer belt that is made up a special material developed by MIT which they call paper towels for cleaning up oil. The Seaswarm will be able to hold up to 20 times its weight in oil. The belt propels the machine through the water, picking up oil and repelling water. Once picking up the oil, it the Seaswarm will either burn it or dispose of it in a bag to be picked up later.
Not only are these things cost effective in comparison to huge tankers trying to clean up the spill, but they are also much easier to use and require no man-hours.
According to professionals at MIT, in comparion to the 800 skimmers it took to clean up the spill, 5,000 to 10,000 Seaswarms could clean up the mess at a price of only 100 to 200 million dollars. Interestingly, the Seaswarm needs only 100 watts of power and can be used on the sea for months at a time. Also, these machines have the ability to adhere to terrible weather because of the way that the conveyer belt touches the surface of the water
