NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Battery 'Sponge' Made from Foam-Like Copper

The humble battery is crucial for technologies ranging from consumer electronics to electric vehicles. But for all of its necessity, it still has major limits. Batteries still take too long to charge, are full of toxic chemicals and typically last just a few hundred cycles. After that, it’s the landfill.

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The Prieto Battery Company wants to change that by building a battery that has a three-dimensional internal structure, allowing them to suck up energy faster and extend their lifetimes. The design is the brainchild of Amy Prieto, a chemistry professor at Colorado State University.

Ordinary batteries are made in layers: the part that provides positive charge, called a cathode, the negatively charged part, called the anode, and the electrolyte between them which is usually an acid. The electrolyte allows electrons to move between the cathode and anode. The layers are either flat, as in a phone battery, or rolled up, as in a AAA for the remote.

The problem is that this design only allows electrons -- the current -- to move from the side of the anode in contact with the electrolyte to the cathode. That provides fewer pathways for the electrons to move, and limits how many can do so, like cramming a crowd of people into a room and only opening the doors on one side. As a result the battery takes a while to charge and loses energy faster.

Prieto’s design does something different: the cathode and anode are like a sponge, with lots of holes. So instead of a solid block, the battery has loads of surface area inside. That allows the electrons to move more easily because they have more points of contact. In the room analogy, it's like opening up the exit doors on all four sides, allowing the people to leave faster.

The Prieto batteries are made with copper. The copper, which takes on a foam-like structure, is then coated with the negative electrode material. That in turn is coated with the electrolyte, which is a solid instead of a liquid. The leftover space is filled with the cathode, which is initially a kind of slurry that then hardens into place.

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The chemicals used are non-toxic -- one component is citric acid as opposed to stronger ones such as the sulfuric acid used in car batteries. The company says they can get it to charge quickly and do so thousands of times, though testing continues and it will be some time before a working version hits the streets.

Via Inhabitat, Prieto Battery

Credit: Prieto Youtube Screengrab

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Spy Agency Predicts Megahumans By 2030

In the year 2030, Asia will surpass North America and Europe and become the global economic powerhouse it once was during the Middle Ages. Deaths from communicable disease will drop by 40 percent. The majority of the world's population won't be poor and among them will walk bionic superhumans with neuro-pharmaceutical drugs coursing through their veins.

These are just a very small fraction of the predictions made by the soothsayers over at the National Intelligence Council (NIC), a US coalition of 17 government intelligence agencies. The NIC's prophecies were recently detailed in Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, a 140-page report that identifies "megatrends" expected to emerge over the next 18 years and radically alter the world as we know it today. The report is the fifth installment of NIC's Global Trends series, which seeks to provide a proactive framework for thinking about the future.

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"We are at a critical juncture in human history, which could lead to widely contrasting futures," writes Christopher Kojm, NIC chairman, in the report's introduction. "It is our contention that the future is not set in stone, but is malleable, the result of an interplay among megatrends, game-changers and, above all, human agency."

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Chief among the megatrends is the diffusion of power and individual empowerment. The West is set to take a back seat to Asia's economy as technology levels the playing field and other "non-Western or middle-tier states" begin to rise. The middle class is expected to expand in most countries, but won't feel secure due to the one billion workers from developing countries expected to flood the labor pool.

Global demographics are expected to shift as well. Life-expectancy rates are likely to soar, leading to an increase in global population from 7.1 billion today to around 8 billion in 2030. Much of this population will gravitate towards megacities as urbanization is set to grow by nearly 60 percent.

As population swells, so too will competition for resources. Demand for food is expected to rise 35 percent and energy 50 percent. Half the world will live in areas with severe water stress.

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You see where this is going. As the global population becomes more intelligent, more healthy and more prosperous due to positive technological developments in a wide range of fields, it's creating a promising, yet vulnerable future. That's to say nothing of game-changing scenarios like nuclear war, pandemics and bioterrorism.

"Our effort is to encourage decision-makers, whether in government or outside, to think and plan for the long term so that negative futures do not occur and positive ones have a better chance of unfolding," writes Kojm.

Who those decisions-makers will be and whether they'll lead the globe into chaos or order, feast or famine, is anyone's guess. What's crystal clear, though, is that 2030 will be beyond our wildest imagination.

"As replacement limb technology advances, people may choose to enhance their physical selves as they do with cosmetic surgery today," the report states. "Future retinal eye implants could enable night vision, and neuro-enhancements could provide superior memory recall or speed of thought."  

via RT

Credit: Digital Vision / Getty Images

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See How Purchases Directly Impact Climate Change

Ever wonder how much that purchase you just made affects climate change? Probably not, but you should. Every time you buy something, you directly affect the environment, whether it's food or entertainment, hardware or software or anything in between.

Now an app from researchers at MIT, Stanford and U.C. Berkeley, called Oroeco, works with the financial tracking website Mint.com to link purchases, including investments, with climate change data.

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The app includes a carbon calculator that breaks down your purchases (i.e. food, living expenses, entertainment, investments) and puts them on a carbon emission scale.

You can compare your data to other users and create goals on how to lower those emissions by following the tips and guidelines provided. Over time, you'll be able to see a long-term graph of how your spending has changed and how your carbon output has adjusted with these changes. By making improvements you can earn "oro points" for virtual and real-life prizes.

The app is currently seeking funding in Indiegogo, and everyone who pledges $5 or more will get access to the beta version.

Credit: Oroeco

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Wind Data Becomes Smart Wall Art

Perhaps we're so used to seeing wind turbines turning in one direction or weather vanes slowly pivoting that we forget how complex wind can be. A new wind-driven kinetic facade in San Francisco serves as a mesmerizing reminder.

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The Randall Museum in San Francisco commissioned the art installation from local designer Charles Sowers, whose public art and science exhibits bring attention to natural phenomena such as ice forming on a puddle, often with special instrumentation. His piece for the museum's exterior, called "Windswept," took more than a year and a half to develop.

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As the salty California breeze hits the façade, which is 20 feet tall and 35 feet wide, it moves 612 freely rotating directional arrows. Sowers originally started with a four-foot square panel prototype covered in different arrow types that he mounted on his apartment window at Baker Beach, according to ArchDaily.

Ultimately he settled on a design for arrows made from anodized aluminum that were mounted on a metal architectural panel using stainless steel axles and rivet nuts. "Windswept" also serves to mask the air intake on the museum's concrete exterior.

"The whole piece sits off the wall to allow an equal volume of air to enter a ventilation intake mounted in the middle of the existing wall," Sowers explained in a statement about the work.

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The arrows don't all move in unison. Instead, they reveal the ripples and swirls we'd usually just call a nice breeze. Co.Design's Mark Wilson compared the effect to watching "the Plinko of air currents." To me, however, a video of "Windswept" was more like seeing dust in a beam of sunlight. Sowers has made the invisible visible in a big way.

Photo: The art installation "Windswept" in San Francisco by Charles Sowers. Credit: Charles Sowers (video)

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Living Bamboo Billboards Have Wi-Fi, Clean Air

Are you sick of ads, especially enormous billboards that seem to shout at you along a congested highway? A Los Angeles artist has an alternative plan: Turn them into smart bamboo gardens.

Sculptor Stephen Glassman has worked with bamboo in the public realm for several decades. After the Northridge earthquake hit Los Angeles in 1994, Glassman noticed that billboards remained even though freeways fell. Since then, his large bamboo installations have gone up in devastated parts of the city.

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His latest project, called Urban Air, proposes to replace traditional advertising with living bamboo in metal billboard scaffolding. Each Wi-Fi-enabled Urban Air billboard will contain misters for the bamboos as well as sensors that collect and transmit local climate data such as temperature and air quality.

"My intention is to put a crack in the urban skyline so that when people are compressed, squeezed, stuck in traffic and they look up, they see an open space of fresh air," Glassman said in a video posted on the project's Kickstarter campaign page.

Glassman is working with the Los Angeles-based billboard company Summit Media and engineering firm Arup on a full-scale working prototype. The idea is that once a prototype has been created, the project team can make "kits" to easily transform billboards in other cities. (Except for my hometown. Vermont is one of the few states that bans billboards.)

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Urban Air has already secured billboards in LA. The team continues to raise money through Kickstarter in hopes of launching in the new year. "We're ready to go," Glassman said in his project video. So, I'm sure, is everyone who's ever been stuck staring at soul-sucking ads in highway traffic.

Credit: Urban Air

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Donate to Red Cross with iTunes: DNews Nugget

Donate to Red Cross in iTunes: As the United States deals with the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, iTunes now allows users to donate to the Red Cross as easily as buying a song, reports The Verge.

"You can donate anywhere from $5 to $200 via iTunes, but Apple warns that it 'may not qualify for any tax deduction or other tax benefits,'" their post reads. In addition to iTunes donation, you can give directly to the Red Cross through their website, RedCross.org or through any number of other foundations.

With regard to food drives you might be seeing on television, the Red Cross would prefer cash or blood and does NOT accept food donations.

Equally important to a cash gift is blood donation. To find a blood drive near you or make an appointment at a nearby office visit their website RedCrossBlood.org. via The Verge

You can also make a quick donation by texting REDCROSS to 90999. This will give $10 to American Red Cross Disaster Relief. The $10 will then show up on your phone bill. Regular message and data rates will also apply.

GET MORE MUST-READ DNEWS NUGGETS HERE!

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New Tech Gets Gold From Wastewater

Precious metals could be extracted from wastewater. The water we're talking about comes from recycling plants, where the process involves dissolving components in acid and water. That leaves small concentrations of precious metal in the water. Typically, this water is treated but most methods don't extract the tiny particles of metals left behind because it's been too expensive.

Researchers at Magpie Polymers, a French start-up company, think they've found a way to do it, though. The group has developed beads of a special resin, based on polystyrene, that bonds with metals dissolved in water. Passing the water over the resin leaves the metals behind.

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This accomplishes two things: it removes metals so they can be used again and it purifyies the water. Etienne Almoric, administrative and commercial director of the company, told Discovery News that the resin can get the concentrations down to micrograms per liter, or parts per billion. For many metals that's below the limits considered safe to drink by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

It takes about a quart of the resin to filter out anywhere from five to ten cubic yards of water, which would yield a few ounces of metal. An ounce of gold sells for about $1,700 at current prices. But even without the precious metals, disposing of electronics in an environmentally friendly fashion will mean removing the toxic ones such as lead in any case.

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The ability to filter out toxic metals is useful for recycling electronics, but it could also play a role in cleaning up water near, for example, mines, where huge pools of metal-laden water are often a serious environmental concern.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Sustainably Smart Bamboo Mobile Phone

Earlier this year, the U.K. tech company ADzero announced that they would be releasing a bamboo mobile phone sometime in 2012. Well, sometime just came. At Droidcon, an Android event in London, the company released full specifications on the phone as well as a Kickstarter campaign.

The phone is made from treated organic bamboo and has 16 GBs of storage as well as an 8-megapixel camera with a shadow-minimizing feature. It will run on Android Ice Cream Sandwich and has a 1.4 GHz Samsung Exynos quad-core processor. From laptops to bicycles, bamboo is becoming a trend. It's has been a pretty popular choice among designers looking for a sustainable, yet durable choice for creating new things.

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However popular the material, the ADzero phone still needs funding. Which is why they mentioned a soon-to-be started Kickstarter campaign. To get a phone, donors must give at least $500, which is apparently an "Early Bird Special" of $200 off of the original retail price.

This announcement was made on Friday, but there was no specific release date announced for the phone or when the actual campaign would start. If you're in the market for a sustainable phone and have the extra dough to spend, keep an eye out.

Credit: ADzero

New York Times Lifts Paywall for Hurricane Sandy

With the potentially damaging Hurricane Sandy on the move, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are temporarily lifting the subscriptions paywalls on their websites to give everyone access to information about the weather event. All content on both sites, include apps for all mobile devices and all sections will be available starting today.

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Usually the paywall at the NYT limits readers to 10 articles, but with it lifted, everyone has unlimited access to news. It's like 2005 again! The New York Times says their paywall will remain lifted until "the weather emergency is over."

This isn't the first time the paper has forgone its restrictions to content in the wake of a national event. As CNET points out, it also lifted the paywall, briefly, when Osama Bin Laden was killed and during Hurricane Irene last year. Good to know that when the situation is dire and news is necessary, even big names will let down their monetary guard to give everyone the most up to date news on what's going on.

Then again, you can always check out our always-free hurricane coverage here at Discovery News.

via CNET

Credit: Robert Such/Arcaid/Corbis

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Google Street View Hits the Trails

There was a time when I saw the Google Street View car a lot in my town. It became almost a daily event. And then as quickly as it came, it disappeared. Now, in attempt to leave no stone unturned on this planet, Google is taking it to the trail.

In their blog post this week, Google introduced the Trekker, a 40-lb backpack with one of those big-balled camera systems, to span rugged terrain those little hatchback cars can't handle. The ball has 15 cameras inside that capture images every 2.5 seconds.

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On its first outing to the Grand Canyon, the Trekker was able to capture 360-degree images of the landmark through its Android-controlled platform. The Street View team is continuing this week through the South Rim in the Grand Canyon National Park, as well as the Bright Angel Trail and South Kaibab Trail.

So, aside from rugged terrain and national parks, where else could the Trekker go? How about Venice? The narrow streets and unpredictable water has made it virtually impossible to get shots of the famed streets through traditional Google means. That's just one of the places they hope to get into. For now, panoramic views of their current travels will be up on Google Maps within the coming weeks.

via Laughing Squid

Credit: Google

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