Eideard

Insects have served as the inspiration for a number of Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) that could be deployed to monitor hazardous situations without putting humans in harm’s way. Now researchers at the University of Michigan College of Engineering are proposing using actual live insects enhanced with electronic sensors to achieve the same result. The insect cyborgs would use biological energy harvested from their body heat or movements to potentially power small sensors implanted on their bodies in order to gather vital information from hazardous environments.

To harvest energy from insects, the researchers have designed a spiral piezoelectric generator that converts the kinetic energy from the insect’s wing movements into electricity. This power would be used to prolong the battery life of devices implanted on the insect, such as a small camera, a microphone or a gas sensor. The prototype piezoelectric generator was fabricated from bulk piezoelectric substrates and was designed to maximize the power output in a limited area.

“Through energy scavenging, we could potentially power cameras, microphones and other sensors and communications equipment that an insect could carry aboard a tiny backpack,” said Professor Khalil Najafi, the chair of electrical and computer engineering at the U-M College of Engineering. “We could then send these ‘bugged’ bugs into dangerous or enclosed environments where we would not want humans to go…”

Getting the insects to go where their handlers want them to is another part of the puzzle that needs to be solved before insect cyborgs can be deployed. But DARPA has been working on this, having put out a call some years back for research proposals for Hybrid-Insect-Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) interfaces to control the movement of living insects. Combining the two technologies could be just the thing to take insect cyborgs to the next level and see them used to monitor hazardous situations in the not to distant future.

Two thoughts immediately come to mind:

Can we trust the insect cyborgs to be loyal to their new human masters – or will they become double agents on behalf of the Dark Side.

Here’s a fun bit of trivia: Jay Leno has driven his Chevrolet Volt nearly 11,000 miles and doesn’t have a single gas station receipt to show for it. According to The New York Times Wheels blog, Leno has had his plug-in for 11 months and, as he told them, “I’ve never had to put gas in it yet… They gave it to me with a full tank of gas. I’ve used less than half of that.”

Given that Leno has an entire fleet of gas-swilling rides in his garage, he can just take the Volt out whenever he knows he can get to Point B and back without refueling. You have to be kind of careful to put 11,000 miles on a Volt without ever going more than 40 miles (plus or minus) at a stretch. Luckily, Leno said his commute is less than 35 miles a day, and so he uses the Volt as his daily driver.

Which matches the stats from the DOT which says the average American commute is 40 miles or less. Which is also why we’re considering an electric car for our next family vehicle – if and when my wife’s ancient Volvo ever kicks the bucket.

And we can find an electric car we can afford.

The Fermi space telescope has yielded the most detailed gamma ray map of the sky – representing the Universe’s most violent and extreme processes.

The telescope’s newest results, as well as the map, were described at the Third Fermi Symposium in Rome this week…

The space telescope was launched in 2008, and the Rome meeting gathered together the hundreds of scientists who worked with the data it produces.

Every three hours, the telescope gathers up a full scan of the sky, spitting out 40 million bits of information each second that it beams back to the Earth…

“When you look at the Universe with gamma-ray eyes what you’re seeing is the ‘extreme Universe’,” said Julie McEnery, Fermi project scientist.

“You’re looking at things where there’s enormous acceleration, enormous energy. We see neutron stars, we see supermassive black holes, we see particles moving at close to the speed of light smashing into gas in our galaxy,” she told BBC News…

“We’ve seen a lot of what we expected to see, and some things we didn’t expect to see,” Dr McEnery said…

But lurking among the data Fermi has collected is the promise of new physics – there are certainly unidentified gamma ray sources that may represent new kinds of celestial objects.

And yet to come may be hints of the dark matter that is believed to make up the majority of the mass of the Universe…

Dr Ritz said that such “indirect” dark matter detections in far-flung parts of the cosmos could complement the kind of searches for never-before-seen particles that are going on at facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider…

What is clear is that the scientists working on the project believe that the best is yet to come from Fermi.

RTFA for lots of detail, ideas and information worth noting for a greater understanding of where it is we actually live. Absolutely incomprehensible to anyone stuck into superstition, closed-end loops of ignorance.

Opening your mind to an understanding of the physical definitions of the universe can range from wonder to delight. I admit I still find it difficult to understand why individuals fear and refuse to admit to expanding knowledge. It can be as beautiful an experience as anything in your life.

In a paper to be published…scientists on NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, including lead author Nathan Schwadron and others from the University of New Hampshire, isolate and resolve the mysterious “ribbon” of energy and particles the spacecraft discovered in the heliosphere – the huge bubble that surrounds our solar system and protects us from galactic cosmic rays.

The finding, which overturns 40 years of theory, provides insight into the fundamental structure of the heliosphere, which in turn helps scientists understand similar structures or “astrospheres” that surround other star systems throughout the cosmos.

The ribbon of energy was captured using ultra-high sensitive cameras that image energetic neutral atoms (instead of photons of light) to create maps of the boundary region between our solar system and the rest of our galaxy.

Notes Schwadron, an associate professor at UNH’s Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space and department of physics, “Isolating and separating the ribbon from the IBEX maps was like pulling the drapes from our window to discover the landscape at the edge of the solar system…”

The IBEX team is using the maps to learn how the heliosphere is shaped and what its physical properties are. This detailed information about our solar system’s boundaries will allow scientists to better understand how galactic cosmic rays evolve in our space environment, which in turn will provide fundamental information about the radiation environment on Earth and its implications on the evolution of life…

The IBEX maps differ so radically from what was expected prior to the mission that the scientists have been struggling to untangle the vast amount of information the maps contain. The team notes that getting emissions from the nose of the heliosphere has been an important “lamp post” towards understanding how the global heliosphere is controlled by the interaction of the Sun with the local galactic medium.

Says David McComas, “Prior to IBEX, most scientists believed that the global boundaries of our solar system were controlled mainly by the motion of our solar system through the galaxy and the solar wind, an extremely fast flow of electrically charged matter that flows out from the Sun. The IBEX maps reveal the galactic magnetic field is also a critical part of the Sun’s interaction with the galaxy.”

Bravo! So many interesting studies, tasks sufficient for centuries of exploration and study.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, cola wars rivals for a century, are now locked in a bottle battle.

PepsiCo Pepsi’s new bottle is made from switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and other materials. Ultimately, Pepsi plans to also use orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps and other leftovers from its food business.

Two years after Coca-Cola Co. unveiled a bottle made partly from plant materials, PepsiCo says it is introducing a better one. The Purchase, N.Y. company says it has developed the world’s first plastic bottle made entirely from plant-based, fully renewable resources, cutting the use of petroleum. Coke’s PlantBottle is made of up to 30 percent plant sugars…

Beverage companies are trying to design bottles to counter environmental concerns. The bottled water industry is using lighter plastics, dropping the average weight of the 16.9 ounce “single serve” bottle by a third over the past eight years, according to the International Bottled Water Association.

That means less fuel consumed to transport the beverages.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle is available in nine countries and is expected to reach more than a dozen other markets this year. More than 2.5 billion PlantBottles have reached the marketplace, a number Coca-Cola says equates to saving about 3 million gallons of gasoline.

The technology will also appear in Heinz bottles, under a partnership with the ketchup-maker, and possibly in bottles for Honest Tea, a Maryland company Coca-Cola just acquired. The PlantBottle is made partly with natural sugars found in sugarcane ethanol from Brazil. Odwalla, a Coca-Cola juice brand, plans to switch to the PlantBottle within the next few weeks.

Before someone brings it up – yes, I know that glass is one of the easiest after-use commodities to recycle. And we’re not about to run out of sand to make glass bottles either. But, either road, glass production in the traditional manner consumes a boatload of energy. And that, too is a commodity which must be paid for by consumers.

Nicolas Sarkozy and Manmohan Singh
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrapped up his four-day visit to India, last week, securing defense, energy and aviation deals worth billions of dollars.

Headlines heralded a significant breakthrough — a framework agreement signed by India and France that will allow French energy group Areva SA to build two nuclear reactors in India’s western state of Maharashtra and to supply fuel for 25 years.

The deal, worth $9.3 billion, is set to boost strategic ties between the two countries and help feed India’s growing demand for energy…

Preparations for the construction of the two reactors may start in early 2011…

India’s Ministry of Environment gave the project a go-ahead last month. India has 20 operational nuclear reactors and is seeking to expand its energy sector to meet the rising energy demands…

Disclaimer: I own enough shares of Areva to buy a year’s supply of good French cheese. There is hardly any other kind.

The core of the proposed North Sea grid

Ministers from 10 European countries bordering the North Sea have agreed the construction of a new offshore electricity grid.

The grid will link countries across Europe and make it much easier for member states to trade energy.

It will also simplify the exploitation of the 140 Gigawatt offshore windfarm currently being planned in the North Sea…

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the governments of the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

The new grid would be used to connect European grids to a large offshore windfarm currently in planning for the North Sea. The project is part of a concerted effort by the European Union to live up to its emissions targets and integrate the energy infrastructure.

One such cooperation is already in place. Norway and the Netherlands [.pdf] use so-called “high-voltage direct-current” links to pump energy back and forth between the two countries…

The North Sea grid is a highly ambitious project but could prove an important boost to countries whose location gives them an excess of solar or wind energy.

This project confounds so many aspects of political life in these United States, my friends and family will likely be discussing it most of the weekend. Why? Because it would be damned near impossible for us to accomplish the same thing – as useful as it would be.

Thanks, Tom, for the NordNed link

Eradicating fossil fuel subsidies would boost the global economy, environment and energy security, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday, referring to a pledge made by G20 countries.

G20 leaders committed in Pittsburgh in 2009 to phase out, over the medium-term, inefficient fossil fuel subsidies which encouraged wasteful consumption.

“Eradicating subsidies to fossil fuels would enhance energy security, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollution, and bring economic benefits,” said the IEA, the energy watchdog to 28 industrialized countries, in its annual set-piece World Energy Outlook.

The report estimated such subsidies at $312 billion in 2009, mostly in developing countries, compared with $57 billion in subsidies for renewable energy.

Eliminating fossil fuel consumption subsidies by 2020 would cut global energy demand by 5 percent and reduce carbon emissions by nearly 6 percent by then, said the IEA report.

Economists say that governments should support low-carbon energy alternatives, or else penalize fossil fuels, to take account of the damage that greenhouse gas emissions will cause the climate, and blame fossil fuel subsidies for encouraging energy waste and for undermining greener alternatives.

A graphic lesson in who holds sway over political power in most of the modern world.

Scientists, educators, activists on behalf of humanity and nature vs. the Oil Patch Boys and Coal Barons. Not a fair contest by any measure – when it’s obvious who owns the referees.

Just a different kind of shiny

Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has until now sought radio signals from worlds like Earth. But Seti astronomer Seth Shostak argues that the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence (AI) would be short. Writing in Acta Astronautica, he says that the odds favour detecting such alien AI rather than “biological” life.

Seti searchers have mostly still worked under the assumption – as a starting point for a search of the entire cosmos – that ETs would be “alive” in the sense that we know. That has led to a hunt for life that is bound to follow at least some rules of biochemistry, live for a finite period of time, procreate, and above all be subject to the processes of evolution.

But Dr Shostak makes the point that while evolution can take a large amount of time to develop beings capable of communicating beyond their own planet, technology would already be advancing fast enough to eclipse the species that wrought it.

“If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you,” he told BBC News. “But within a few hundred years of inventing radio – at least if we’re any example – you invent thinking machines; we’re probably going to do that in this century.

“So you’ve invented your successors and only for a few hundred years are you… a ‘biological’ intelligence…”

Dr Shostak says that artificially intelligent alien life would be likely to migrate to places where both matter and energy – the only things he says would be of interest to the machines – would be in plentiful supply. That means the Seti hunt may need to focus its attentions near hot, young stars or even near the centres of galaxies.

“I think we could spend at least a few percent of our time… looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out.”

Makes sense to me. But, then, I made the transition to understanding our species as meat machines decades ago. Another transition to more durable construction is a natural.

Geothermal power plant in Iceland

Indonesia is hosting what is being called the world’s biggest Geothermal energy conference.

The congress in Bali is an attempt to look at how to better develop geothermal power as an environmentally friendly fuel for the future…

It is often dubbed volcano power but the correct scientific explanation for geothermal energy is power extracted from the heat stored in the Earth’s core.

Indonesia has ambitious plans to tap geothermal power…The archipelago of more than 17,000 islands sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire” – one of the most active regions in the world for volcanic activity…

Scientists say that in theory the planet’s geothermal power is enough to supply mankind’s energy needs and could certainly help to solve Indonesia’s fuel problems.

But the issue is cost. While environmentally friendly, the harnessing of geothermal power is also a very expensive endeavour.

Reports from the conference just might provide some info, some hope, some idea of folks realizing that a little extra time and money means a great deal to the future of energy production.

Or we can continue with the same short-sighted analysis of commerce and production that gets the world – repeatedly – into disaster-laden corners.