OzAccess

Electricity without wires

WiTricity
Cambridge, Mass.

Marin Soljačić couldn't sleep. The problem was his wife's Nokia cell phone. The tyrannical device beeped on the bedside table when it needed to be plugged in. It could not be disabled.

Instead of taking a hammer to the phone, Soljačić marveled at the fact that this device, and billions of others like it, was sitting a few feet away from all the electricity it could ever need. Why couldn't it receive power wirelessly, just as laptops get Wi-Fi?

A physics professor, Soljačić dug into the problem and learned that if you could get two magnetic fields to resonate -- to sing the same note, in effect -- they could transfer an electric current. With two large magnetic coils, he found a way to throw 60 watts across a room, powering a lightbulb. MIT, his employer, quickly patented the technology and encouraged Soljačićto start a company.

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Breaking the sound barrier

Emo Labs
Waltham, Mass.

As DEMOfall in September, before an audience of sleepy journalists and venture capitalists, Emo Labs CEO Jason Carlson took the stage with a TV and a giant set of speakers playing the Beach Boys.

Then he whipped off the speaker box to reveal the real source of the sound: a sheet of clear plastic. There were audible gasps. Dozens of digital cameras flashed at once. Emo had invented invisible speakers.

"I can't tell you how many times we've sat in front of engineers, and they keep asking, 'Where's the sound coming from again?'" says Carlson. "It's like their minds don't want them to believe it." Emo went on to win $500,000 and the conference's DEMOgod title.

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Forest of 100,000 Artificial Carbon-Capturing Trees Proposed in UK

Carbon-capturing artificial trees have been getting some due attention lately, and for good reason: each fake tree can suck down CO2 thousands of times faster than their leafy, organic brethren--giving them intriguing potential as part of the solution to global climate change. Now, scientists have taken the idea a step further--they're proposing that one of the most practical ways to cut greenhouse gases on a large scale is to build a forest of 100,000 artificial trees over the next 10-20 years.

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Potentially Our Cheapest Energy Source

Many engineers and scientists have concluded that high altitude wind energy can play a substantial role in addressing the world's energy and global warming problems.

TIME Magazine recently named Sky WindPower's flying electric generator one of the 50 top inventions of 2008. It is item #35 on their list as Airborne Wind Power and is shown in a simulation near the beginning of TIME's video. Two alternative links may be found on our Links page.

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Israeli scientists generate electricity from road traffic

Start-up Innowwattech says vehicles can produce electricity from generators placed beneath the asphalt surface.

Shira Horesh5 Oct 09 15:37
Israeli scientists have achieved a breakthrough in alternative energy, by generating electricity from road traffic. The technology was developed by Ra'anana-based start up Innowwattech Ltd., and Israel National Roads Company Ltd. and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology participated in the trial.

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Awesome, Low-Tech Gadget Creates Liters of Fresh Water

Sometimes the simplest technology is the best. The Watercone, a solar-powered water purifier, is a testament to that.

The cone-shaped device turns salty or dirty water into up to 1.7 liters of fresh water in a matter of hours, according to Watercone.

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Agricultural Waste Can Clean up Nuclear Waste, Researchers Find

Waste uranium can apparently be recovered very cheaply from the polluted runoff from uranium mining using E. Coli and a phosphate storage molecule found in seeds, British researchers have found. They used the common bacteria with a chemical parallel of what is already found in agricultural waste: inositol phosphate.

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GreenSun Develops Colorful Solar Panels that don�t need Direct Sunlight

A Jerusalem company called GreenSun has developed bright-colored panels. Officials say the hues capture different parts of sun’s spectrum, and don’t need direct sunlight to work, according to National Geographic News. The colored collectors are still in development, but the company says its panels will cost less than a buck per watt to manufacture, compared to more than $4 a watt for conventional solar.

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Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol

Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide 'renewable petroleum'

Call for ban on TV junk food advertising to children

A new survey, commissioned by the Coalition on Food Advertising to Children, has found 86 per cent of parents with children under 14 want the Federal Government to place a ban on television advertising of junk foods to children.

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