There’s a really cool, scrollable four billion pixel panoramic image of Mars, courtesy of the Curiosity rover, available over at Wired. You can scroll, zoom in, and get a feel for just how desolate that planet is.
Running a car…on aluminum?
Phinergy has developed a battery that’s, well, a bit difficult to categorize. It’s powered by aluminum and air, but it’s not readily rechargeable. Every 200 miles it needs to be refilled with water, and after 1000 miles, the aluminum plates need to be replaced. So, what’s the point? Well, it has some potential as a range-extender used in conjunction with a conventional rechargeable battery. This Al battery could be a ‘reserve’, or for long road trips, actually replaced enroute (the cost of the raw material being replaced would be ~$50, so it might not cost much to do this). It’s an interesting idea…and ideas like this take creative marketing and some lucky business deals to work out. We’ll see.
(read more at extremetech)
Sherpa – predictive AI for your iPhone
Sherpa is a new, predictive artificial intelligence that will soon be available for iPhones (if you want to sign up, follow this link). It’s raised a bit over $1M seed funding so far, and promises big potential by making location a key part of its services. For example, based on your calendar and current traffic, it would know that you’ll be late for an appointment and offer options for notifying the meeting organizer, and even alternate routes to take. Ideally you’d be able to avoid that situation, as it would notify you when you need to leave to make it to your meeting on time. Weather forecasts will be based not only on your current location, but where it knows you’re going. It’s a background app, pushing information to you as needed…pretty cool stuff if they can pull it off.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria killing more people than AIDS
According to this article at Treehugger, antibiotic-resistant bacteria (such as MRSA and CRE) are responsible for more deaths each year than AIDS, in the US at least. It’s a problem that is only expected to get worse in the coming years. Not helping matters is the large extent to which antibiotics are used in animal agriculture – it’s estimated that around 80% of antibiotic use (in the US) is for that. The more we use antibiotics, the faster bacteria will evolve to resist them…there’s no escaping that fundamental fact of evolution.
Government officials at the CDC have recently warned against the emerging threat posed by these ‘superbugs’ as well. It’s not clear there’s any solution in sight though. We can slow the spread of these by better sanitation and reduced use of antibiotics, but it’ll continue to be a growing problem for future generations to deal with. 🙁
There’s a new ‘world’s lightest material’ – graphene aerogel
Researchers have managed to make an aerogel-like material using carbon nanotubes and graphene as the underlying support structure, with the result being an incredible light, elastic, sponge-like material. With a density of only .16mg/cm^3, it’s incredibly elastic and can absorb 68 times its weight in organic compounds per second (important if, for example, this finds a use in containing oil spills). Apart from that, I’m not really sure what the possible uses are, but it’s cool to see technology being used to make new materials like this.
(via phys.org)