Discovery News: Material World

Green Roofs, Warp Engines and Cheap Solar Power

These are the coolest stories I read this past week.

July 25 / Scientific American
Urban Roofscapes: Using "Wasted" Rooftop Real Estate to an Ecological Advantage
How a green roof can minimize run-off and mitigate the urban “heat island effect.”

July 25 / BBC
HP's Plan to Fix Ailing Planet
Trillions of sensors deployed worldwide will monitor the state of the planet and pick up ailments (wildfires, hurricanes, bacteria, hazardous chemicals) that may need to be warded off or remedied.

July 26 / The New York Times
China Surpasses U.S. in Number of Internet Users
Is anyone surprised? I'm so not surprised that I almost didn't put this on the list. You're right. I'm taking it off. 

July 28 / Discovery News
Warp Drive Engine Would Travel Faster Than Light
Gather 'round Trekkies. Your time has come. Two physicists have figured out warp drive works without breaking the laws (of physics, that is).

July 28 / Scientific American
Engineering Silicon Solar Cells to Make Photovoltaic Power Affordable
One company is on a mission to get the cost of solar cells down to a buck a watt. Those are light bulb prices that would make energy from the sun competitive with that from coal-burning power plants.

July 28 / The New York Times
Former Employees of Google Prepare Rival Search Engine
This company pronounces their name, Cuil, as "cool." That, and the fact that they are trying to upstage Google, makes me narrow my eyes with skepticism.

July 30 / Nature
Energy: Upgrading the Grid
What it takes to make a stupid power grid super smaht.

July 30 / Wired
Project to Rebuild Internet Gets $12M, Bandwidth
There's a project dedicated to rebuilding the Internet's underlying architecture? Whoa. I didn't even know about that.

July 30 / BBC
Olympic Link to Early 'Computer'
A closer look at an ancient Greek timepiece discovered in 1901 reveals that it has dials that record the dates of the original Olympic games.

July 31 / Technology Trends
OmegaTable, A 24-million Pixel VR Display
This virtual reality display is a multi-sensory touch tabletop that gives people a 3D experience without looking like a giant dork in those special glasses.

July 31 / Technology Review
3-D Printing for the Masses
This printing service takes orders from customers and turns ideas into three-dimensional prototypes at an affordable cost. If you're an artist, architect, designer, or general hobbyist, you might want to read this article.

July 31 / The Guardian
Sweet Peas Make a Second Skin
Didn't know this, but an enzyme in sweet pea pods and seeds can cause floppy skin in grazing animals. That's totally weird. But that same enzyme, when used in a polymer gel wound dressing, could relieve shrinking or lumpy skin grafts on burn victims.

July 31 / Economist
Genetically Modified Olympians?
You can detect performance-enhancing drugs, for the most part, but how do you detect gene therapy?

July 31 / New Scientist
Solar-Cell Material Can Soak Up More Sun
The sun cranks out a ton of energy, but conventional solar cells are only able to absorb the visible light part of the sun's spectrum. A new material that absorbs the infrared could, in theory take energy absorption from 30 percent to 63 percent.

Hydrogen Made Cheaply

Hydrogen as a fuel could be a godsend to the economy, if someone could just figure out a way to make it cheaply and in a way that doesn't use up more energy than it creates.

Researchers at Penn State think they've found a solution. It relies on water, solar energy and nanotubes.

The process -- developed by Craig Grimes, professor of electrical engineering, and his his team -- starts with a diode that has two sides, each made from one of twoa commonly found elements: titanium and copper. Both are used to make nanotube arrays (see illustration).

It doesn't look like it, but the device works similar to a leaf. Whereas leaves take in sunlight and CO2 and convert it into usable energy, this so-called photoelectrochemical diode takes in sunlight and water to produce usable energy in the form of hydrogen gas.

It occurs through a chemical reaction between water and the sun, which is ignited by the nanotube arrays. On the one side, titanium and sunlight work to break oxygen free of water, the remaining hydrogen ion diffuses to the copper side where it is matched with an electron, forming gaseous hydrogen. 

What's cool is that the process doesn't require electricity, which is typically made by coal-fired plants, defeating the purpose.

Steel-melting solar mirror, eco-friendly fireworks, freeing oneself from email's grip and more!

June 27 / The New York Times
Data Centers Explore Novel Ways to Cut Energy Use
Data centers make the Web possible. Make my job possible. But electricity consumed by microprocessors in those data center is rising by 16 percent per year. That kind of voracious appetite for energy is expensive and not very green. But people at the recent Data Center Energy Summit are brainstorming solutions to curb the beast's energy appetite, including reusing hot water from cooling systems to filling a town's swimming pool.

June 28 / The New York Times
I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip
Gasp! This guy stopped using email. On purpose. His server didn't even go down or anything!

June 29 / Guardian
Calls for ID Card to Replace Passwords
Passwords be damned! Finally, an industry group known as the Information Card Foundation is advocating that we replace our passwords with an electronic ID card. Advantages: security and signing in just once.

June 30 / Guardian
Welcome to the Particle Menagerie
Up, down, top, bottom, charm, strange, axions, sleptons and quarks. How do physicists dream up such whimsical names for the fundamental particles they discover? Simon Singh explains

June 30 /  Guardian
The Brains Behind the Operation
Cern scientists have invented a new way to network computers, and it could be the next leap forward in computing.

June 30 / Discovery News
Meet the Steel-Melting Solar Mirror
Enterprising kids know you can melt crayons by focusing light on them with a magnifying glass. MIT students are now vaporizing wood, and can theoretically melt steel, by focusing sunlight with mirrors.

July 1 / Popular Science
Powering Cars With Toxic Waste
Scientists invent a uranium-eating molecule that could help turn nuclear junk into fuel.

July 1 / Technology Trends
Toward Eco-Friendly Fireworks
Researchers are developing new pyrotechnic formulas that burn cleaner and produce less smoke.

July 1 / Scientific American
Farming Solar Energy in Space
Japanese scientists are working on the hardware needed to realize orbital generators as a form of clean, renewable energy, with plans to complete a prototype in about 20 years.

July 1 / The New York Times
Google’s Ethos, Applied to Dining
Crowdsourcing sommeliers and open source recipes. Let's eat.

July 1 / Guardian
Hybrid Embryos: U.K. Team Plans Stem Cell First
British scientists got the okay from their gov to create the world's first human stem cells from embryos that are part human and part animal.

July 2 / Nature
How to Weave an Invisible Rug
You've heard of an invisibility cloak. Researchers calculate that a carpet, not a cloak, would be the most realistic kind of cloaking device. It would produce a controlled mirage.

July 2 / The New York Times
Obama Voters Protest His Switch on Telecom Immunity
Senator Barack Obama’s Web site has netted him lots-o cash. Now it's netted him lots-o backlash. When followers heard he supported legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants, they protested electronically.

July 3 / Wired
Laugh at High Gas Prices With a 282-MPG VW
Fuel efficiency seems like oxymoron. But now Volkswagen is upping the ante with a new bullet-shaped car that gets triple-digit mpg. Muh-ha-ha-ha-ha.

July 3 / Scientific American
Who Will Die?: Computer Predicts Which Death Row Inmates Will Be It
Sounds like a gruesome game that no one would want to play. But the predictions could actually lead to a fairer appeals process.

July 3 / The New York Times
See Spot Run. Now Find Out Where He Went.
Track everyone, everything with GPS, for under $130.

July 3 / Guardian
Environment: Climate Risk From Flat-Screen TV
The rising demand for flat-screen televisions could have a greater impact on global warming than the world's largest coal-fired power stations, a leading environmental scientist warned yesterday.

July 3 / IEEE Spectrum Online
Crimeware Pays
Adware, phishing, and spam are a strange -- and big -- business.

July 3 / IEEE Spectrum Online
Iraq Electricity, By the Numbers
The scorching truth about electricity use and need in Iraq.

Hydrogen: Us and Them

Earlier this week, the San Jose Mercury News reported that in the four years since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order to create a hydrogen highway, not one station has been built under the order. The reasons vary, but include:

• utilities haven't stepped forward
• not enough hydrogen cars built
• too many restrictions
• Schwarzenegger overpromised

In the same time frame, U.K.-based fuel cell company ITM Power announced a collaboration with the engineering firm, Roush Technologies, to not only develop an extensive hydrogen refueling station infrastructure, but put hydrogen-fueled vehicles on the road within months.

Months.

The commitment from England to significantly reduce carbon emissions puts the U.S. shame. Not only does it seem likely that the UK will meet or even exceed it's goal of reducing CO2 emissions 12.5 by 2012, but it's well on its way to fulfilling the Climate Change Bill before Parliament, which will set a target to  cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050.

When it comes to emission reduction, it's them, not us, that are making great strides.

The U.S. shunned the Kyoto Protocol like a ginger kid, instead committing the American economy to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent by 2012. But that goal is an empty promise. Last year represented the biggest single year increase in greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants in nine years, according to the Environmental Integrity Project.

And according to the government's Energy Information Administration, "total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2006 were 1.5 percent below the 2005 total—the first annual drop since 2001 and only the third since 1990."

Does anyone really think that paltry 1 or 2 percent drops here and there are going to get us to an 18 percent reduction in just four more years?

The technology is there. Clearly, the will of our government is not.

Fuel Cell for Whole Foods

Even as homeowners do their part to conserve electricity, countless commercial and industrial buildings consume millions of kilowatt hours each month. According to the U.S.'s Energy Information Association, commercial and industrial entities used nearly 188 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in November 2007 compared to the 96 billion kilowatt hours consumed by residents. The message: if we're going to get a handle on carbon emissions, then nonresidential users must take drastic measures to reduce their energy use.

Enter Whole Foods Market. This week they announced that their Glastonbury, Conn. store will be the first supermarket to generate 50 percent of the electricity and heat and nearly 100 percent of the hot water using fuel cell technology .

According to the announcement:

"More than half of the energy potential in traditional power plants is lost to the atmosphere as waste heat or in line transmission losses. In contrast, the UTC Power fuel cell system captures its exhaust energy for local cooling and heating. The harnessed exhaust energy at the store will cool refrigeration cases year-round and heat the store in the winter months."

The fuel cell technology will not only allow the store to operate independent of the power grid, but also provide 200 kW of standby power if the event of a grid failure.

I'd like to see more commercial and industrial buildings follow suit.

CO2 into Fuel?

With his characteristic "modesty", geneticist J. Craig Venter announced that within 18 months he could be producing fuel from the greenhouse gas CO2 using genetically engineering organisms. 

Venter told fellow big-wigs at last week's Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in California that "We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry, and becoming a major source of energy."  So, if this works, who knows what the ramifications might be:  end the recession, stop the financing of Middle East terrorist groups, and solve global warming?  Is this a scientific Monopoly card: advance to Stockholm and collect Nobel?

Probably not, but despite the sarcasm, the science behind the announcement is established. Certain bacteria produce octane, and other hydrocarbon fuels, naturally.  To change it from a biological quirk to world-peace inducing would take some genetic tweaking to increase the amount of both the CO2 the bacteria ingest and of the octane they emit.  This shouldn't be hard to do; high school students can manipulate some genes with relative ease and scientists have been doing it for decades. 

The hard part, according to Venter's response to a question from audience member (and Google co-founder) Larry Page, is keeping the bacteria fed.  Scientists need to develop a way to get high concentrations of CO2 from somewhere.

Despite all the talk about limiting CO2 emissions, CO2 makes up a very small percentage of the Earth's air, too small to be bottled up, so to speak. The CO2 levels required, according to a BusinessWeek blog, would have to come from carbon sequestration, an idea CEO's at the Davos economic talks apparently scoffed at.  Whether any of this works, we'll find out in 18 months, but given Venter's traditional flare, probably sooner.

Light Has More Intuition Than Some People I Know

Have you ever been at a party or in a meeting with a "Me Monster?" This person talks nonstop about himself and shows no awareness of others.  ME ME ME ME ME ME ME

Now there's a lamp that is, literally and figuratively, brighter than him. Made with artificial intelligence, the AI Light made by London-based Complex Matters, a spin-off from University College London, changes shape and varies its intensity based on what's going on around it. How intuitive.

I saw an article in Cubed describing the light and then got in touch with Siavash Mahdavi, the managing director to ask him a couple of questions about the light, which was designed by Assa Ashuach.

The light has several sensors: two motion sensors, two light sensors, one short range and one long range, and eventually a sound sensor.

If someone enters the room, the long range motion sensor is triggered and the light performs a small dance to greet its visitor. The shorter range motion sensor could be directed to react to people  congregating around a breakfast table or sitting area, for example,where activity will cause the light to respond and move.

According to Mahdavi, every AI Light behaves in a different way. "If it continues to get the same inputs, it can get bored and stops reacting.  New behaviors within the room intrigue the AI Light and cause it to react in a more pronounced way."

I'd like invite this light to my next party. 

Electric Cars, Then and Now

On Jan. 15, I posted a blog about Toyota's and GM's announcement to offer electric hybrid cars for sale by 2010. Reader "AnneA" posted the comment/question below.

I wonder what the differences are between this "plug-in" and the electric car from the mid 1990's, the GM EV1.  After seeing the documentary "Who Killed The Electric Car", I must say that I'm skeptical about how this will play out, although I'd love to be wrong. [annea]

Good question. Reader "Mysterymeat" replied with a brief explanation, but I wanted to go deeper. So I called up Tony Markel, a senior engineer and hybrid electric car expert at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. Here's the gist of what he said:

The first generation EV1 had a lead-acid battery. But it was heavy, not very efficient, and could only hold enough charge to take the car about 80 miles or so.

The second generation EV1 (above) had a nickel-metal-hydride battery. It was lighter and more efficient than the lead acid, but could only hold enough charge to take a car about 100 to 120 miles. (For a copy of the specs, down this PDF.)

Now, even though the average American doesn't drive more than 100 miles per day, he or she still gets "range anxiety," said Markel, which is why the hybrid electric cars being developed today are more attractive to consumers.

Unlike the EV1, which was all electric, hybrid electric cars use a combination of electricity and gas to make the engine run efficiently, use less gas, and offer long range driving when needed.

As Mysterymeat pointed out, some hybrid electric cars can be plugged in to recharge the battery (they're called PHEVs). Other hybrid electric cars do not have to be plugged in (they're called HEVs).

The battery on a HEV (also made from nickel-metal-hydride) gets charged while the car is being driven. This means that, ultimately, you need gas in the tank in order to get the battery charged.

I like the idea of PHEVs best. They also need gas in the tank, but you can recharge the battery (also nickel-metal-hydride) much more cheaply by plugging it in. You generate fewer emissions this way, too.

What's more, cars that plug into an electrical socket could lead to a vehicle-to-grid system that's attractive to consumers and utility companies. With this system, batteries from electric cars would be used collectively to store and release excess power from utility companies that normally fluctuates throughout the day. "One interesting statistic," said Markel, "is that a typical vehicle is used only 5 percent of the day for driving. The rest of the time it’s parked."

Parking lots full of cars-as-electricity-sponges would also help utility companies incorporate renewable yet ofttimes fickle energy sources, such as solar and wind, into their power generation models.

You can read more here about a vehicle-to-grid plan. And just yesterday, the NY Times published an article about a project in Israel to sell electric car transportation similar to the way cell phones are sold. (See my blog about this here.)

Toyota, GM Promise Plug-Ins By 2010

When it comes to the future of cars, I'm all about the plug-in. Biofuels, unless they are made from  existing organic waste, require too much land, jack up agricultural prices, and in the end dump just as many pollutants into the atmosphere as fossil fuels. So electrically powered vehicles are the way to go, especially if that energy can be generated by some renewable source, such as solar or wind.

That's why I'm excited to hear the news this week from both Toyota and GM announcing their plans to have plug-ins by 2010!

This past Sunday, Katsuake Watanabe, president of Toyota, said that the company is accelerating its global plug-in hybrid research and development program. By 2010, they want to be selling a million cars a year (left). As part of that plan, Toyota will partner with Panasonic in a joint venture and expand a battery factory the car company already operates.

On Monday, Saturn announced that it may begin production as soon as 2010 on a plug-in hybrid electric version of the Saturn Vue Green Line (below). The vehicle will use a modified version of GM's hybrid system and plug-in technology and a lithium-ion battery pack.

Both companies are claiming that they will be first. Should we lay down some bets on who it will be (for entertainment purposes only)?  

Human Bodies Warm and Power Buildings

If The Matrix taught us anything, it was that billions of human bodies make pretty good batteries. Now, the Swedish state-held property administration company Jernhuset is planning to harvests body heat from people and use it to warm up a nearby office building. Rest assured, no one will be forced to live out their days in a gelatinous cocoons. The plan is tap into the heat generated by the 250,000 commuters passing through Stockholm Central Station each day.

That body heat will warm up water will be pumped through pipes over to the office building. According to the AFP story via Physorg, the system should bring down heating costs in the building by up to 20 percent.

The technology reminds me of a piece I wrote for Discovery about converting commuter vibrations in Victoria Station, UK, into renewable energy. Called Pacesetters, the project is being organized by the London-based architectural firm The Facility.

Just imagine the energy that could be harnessed by combining both techs, at, say... a concert or rave.