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)

March 28, 2013

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.

March 25, 2013

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. 🙁

March 25, 2013

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)

March 25, 2013

Earth Hour – tonight!

Earth Hour is tonight, 8:30-9:30PM local time. It’s mostly viewed as a symbolic gesture, a way of expressing one’s concern for the environment. However, the benefits can go beyond merely symbolism, as this large infographic from Jones Oil Blog shows (yeah…an oil company encouraging you to use less oil? Hey, at least they ‘get it’…). The numbers are a bit staggering, though perhaps not entirely relevant (it mentions the energy saved is equivalent to lighting 172 billion 100W light bulbs for an hour…a device that is being phased out in many countries and being phased out in others…but you get the point. I just think it’d be more impressive if put in terms of CFL bulbs). It also put some nice numbers to the cost of the energy we use…and how that money saved could be used to buy renewable energy plants.

It’s a cool infographic and worth checking out (click the thumbnail here to see the whole thing)…and when you turn off your lights tonight, take a minute to think about this stuff…

March 23, 2013

Voyager 1 in the news

Voyager 1, the farthest man-made object from Earth, has been in the news in recent days due to large changes in radiation levels it’s detected. This had led some to claim that it has exited our solar system, others aren’t so sure. I fall into that later category…we don’t fully understand things like that, and while the Voyager 1 probe is doing an amazing job of helping us learn, it’s only one data point. We’ll have to continue to monitor it along its journey.

You can read more about this over at Slashgear.

March 22, 2013

Apple’s Data Centers 100% powered by renewable energy

Apple has reached a cool milestone…their data centers, historically facilities of massive power consumption, are now powered by 100% renewable energy! It has accomplished this by building large solar arrays, building a fuel cell power plant, and also purchasing renewable energy credits from its energy suppliers. It’s not just good for the environment…the more a company can rely on already-installed solar panels, the more predicable (and lower) operating costs become over the life of those panels. It just makes good business sense, if you can afford the initial investment.

March 22, 2013

The Year of the Smartwatch

2013 is quickly shaping up to be ‘the year of the smart watch’, as early entries hit the market (Pebble, Metawatch, I’m watch, etc). Following closely behind are an increasing number of big players, few of whom admit to working on a smartwatch but all suspected of doing so. Among them, Apple, Google, LG, and Samsung. Whether products from those bigger companies will hit the market in 2013 is a bit uncertain, but I’d say it’s very likely that at least two of those companies will be shipping a smartwatch in time for Christmas. As the early entries show, the technology is mostly here, with issues seeming to revolve around battery life and overall software/usability.

March 22, 2013

Why the US government doesn’t act on climate change

If you want to know why the US doesn’t take any significant action on climate change, look no further than the House of Representatives subcommittee on Climate Change. Its new chair is Rep Chris Stewart, a Republican from Utah who does not believe in man-made climate change. This is also a guy who thinks the EPA should be eliminated because it ‘thwarts energy development.’ Yeah, just ask China how that’s going. I for one believe that sacrificing long term growth and prosperity in favor of short term profits is NOT pro-business, and am disgusted at the Republican party as a whole for taking that stance while at the same time pretending to be pro-business. This short-term perspective is nothing more than personal greed.

When virtually all climate scientists believe in man-made climate change…to have the chair of this subcommittee oppose that view is an outright rejection of science and logic. No wonder Congress can’t get anything done.

(via Salon)

March 21, 2013

The Fermi Paradox

The Fermi Paradox is a fascinating argument…it basically says, if the probability of life is so high in this universe, as it appears to be, where are all the other civilizations? Why is there no evidence of their existence? It’s a puzzle for sure, especially as more and more planets are found orbiting other stars. We’ve already discovered 861, and scientists estimate there are about 100-400 billion planets in this galaxy, of which at least 17 billion are Earth-sized (not all of those habitable). Well, there’s a great article on IO9 (click here) that details eleven possible answers to the Fermi Paradox. My favorite – though it’s also the scariest – is that we’re living inside a sort of computer simulation, one that just wasn’t created to have the same level of detail in the entire universe.

March 21, 2013