White House Goes Green with Solar Panels

The White House is going green. Solar panels are being installed on parts of the residence, a US official said Thursday -- making good on a pledge that dates back to 2010.
With President Barack Obama and his family vacationing in Martha's Vineyard for a week, workers equipped with cranes have been buzzing around the home in downtown Washington.

Solar Dish Pulls In Power of 2,000 Suns

"The White House has begun installing American-made solar panels on the First Family's residence as a part of an energy retrofit that will improve the overall energy efficiency of the building," the official said.
The work will include the installation of new thermostats and variable-speed fans, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"The project will help demonstrate that historic buildings can incorporate solar energy and energy efficiency upgrades," the official said.
The work makes good on a promise made by the Obama administration nearly three years ago.
In October 2010, then Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that solar panels would be installed at the White House, in a bid to encourage Americans to adopt the green power generation technology.

Whiz Kid Inventors Invade the White House

Former president Jimmy Carter, a Democrat like Obama, had solar panels installed during his presidency in the late 1970s, during the oil crisis. But his successor Ronald Reagan had them removed.
Since taking office in 2009, Obama has made green energy a priority for his administration, but his efforts have been thwarted by Congress.
He has since used his executive powers to bring in tougher vehicle fuel efficiency standards. In June, he unveiled a new proposal to combat climate change.

Source : news.discovery.com

Tasty Tech Eye Candy Of The Week (Sept 22)

Of the exciting tech stories to cross our desk this week, innovations that help people get from point A to B stand out. Take for example, a young man who made an elevator from a bicycle, or a group of researchers who designed an RFID ring that gives the wearer access to a subway, or virtual simulation of Elon Musk's Hyperloop that shows it could work or a wind-powered ship that has a hull that works as an airfoil. Read on.

Norwegian designers at Lade AS have designed a unique ship that they say would achieve fuel savings of 60 percent and reduce emissions by 80 percent. Their Vindskip (or Windship) has a specially designed hull that works like a symmetrical airfoil harnessing wind somewhat like the wing of a plane to generate "lift." The ship would also use a liquefied natural gas-powered electrical generator for additional power. 

Source : news.discovery.com

Skin Tattoo Takes Body Temperature

When it comes to grafting electronics onto skin, John Rogers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign churns out epidermic tech at a seemingly fevered pitch. Perhaps his latest creation will make sure he doesn’t overheat.
Along with a team of researchers from the U.S., China, and Singapore, Rogers has designed an extremely pliable patch that, when applied to the skin, can accurately measure skin temperature and can provide “clinically relevant information about cardiovascular health, cognitive state, malignancy and many other important aspects of human physiology.”
What Tattoos Really Say About You
The small, ultra-thin mesh electronics adhere to the skin with a special glue and are no bigger or more intrusive than a temporary tattoo. The device can also monitor heat flow, plus the constriction and dilation of blood vessels.
“Such devices can also be implemented in ways that reveal the time-dynamic influence of blood flow and perfusion on these properties,” researches explained.
As well, the patches can be used in reverse by delivering therapeutic heat to the skin, simply by increasing the patch’s voltage.
BLOG: First Electronic Tattoo Printed Onto Skin
However, the patch isn’t ready for the market just yet, as it still requires an external power source. But the team is exploring two potential energy sources as solutions: solar power, for external patches, and bioelectric power for patches applied internally.
via PhysOrg
Credit: University of Illinois and Beckman Institute
Source : news.discovery.com

Lens Changes Focus Like a Human Eye

Human eyes are an ideal lens. They can easily shift focus between several objects in a given scene, even if those objects are located at different distances. Attempting a similar ability with a camera may require the photographer to change lenses.
Oops! Word’s Thinnest Glass Made By Accident
Ohio State University engineers took a crack at giving a camera lens some of the versatility of a human. They made a fluid-filled lens that can change its shape and focus, as well as alter the direction it focuses in. The work was described in the Technical Digest of the 25th IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems. The technology could improve the capabilities of digital phone cameras and make cameras overall more reliable by eliminating the need for certain moving parts.
The Ohio State University lens is made from a flexible polymer. The design is like an insect’s compound eye, with a single large lens made up of several small dome-shaped pockets, each filled with fluid. Tiny channels supply the fluid to each of the pockets.
By pumping fluid in and out of the pockets, the engineers were able to alter the lens’ shape and focus. The point where the image is focused can also be moved off-center. In a lens made of glass or plastic the only way to change where the image is centered is to point the lens in a different direction.
This method of focusing is a lot like what human eyes do. In humans, the muscles in the eye squeeze the lens or stretch it a bit to change the focal point of the image. When you look at something far off, for instance, the lens in your eye becomes slightly flatter.
Another advantage of the design is a wide angle of view. This is where the designers took a cue from insects’ compound eyes. The reason flies can see behind them is that their eyes are made of thousands of tiny facets, each pointed in a different direction. The down side (for the fly) is that each of those tiny facets can’t focus very well. The artificial lens solves that problem by adjusting the fluid-filled lenses.
10 Materials That Emulate Nature
Yi Zhao, associate professor of biomedical engineering and ophthalmology at Ohio State and one of the co-authors of the research, said in a press release that one focus for further development will be making the technology more practical for electronics. Fluid-filled lenses probably aren’t going to work in a smart phone. Lenses made of piezoelectric material, which changes shape in response to current, would function much better.
Credit: Jo McCulty, courtesy of Ohio State University

Source : news.discovery.com

Google Glass: Surgery Tool Of The Future?

We've been waiting for a while to figure out what practical uses will come out of Google Glass, besides, of course, making dudes look silly. And aha! A surgeon at The Ohio State University used his Google Glass to beam a colleague into an ACL repair surgery, plus allow medical students to watch the surgery from his particular point of view.
Christopher Kaeding, Ohio State's director of sports medicine, got a hold of the futuristic eyewear through Ismail Nabeel, an assistant professor of general internal medicine at the school. Nabeel was one of the 1,000 elite applicants chosen to participate in the Google Glass Explorer program, and decided to partner with Kaeding to test out his new toy.
Seeing a live feed of a surgery from the surgeon's perspective seems a whole lot more useful to a medical student than observing in-person, where much of the nitty-gritty of the procedure is obscured by the people actually operating on the patient. It could potentially be used by a surgeon to bring up x-ray images or patient reports during an operation, too.
And apparently, it's pretty unobtrusive. Kaeding reported it "seemed very intuitive and fit seamlessly." 

Source : popsci.com

How Phase Change Materials Can Keep Your Coffee Hot

Lukewarm coffee. In the grand scheme of life, it’s a mild vexation, but the same sustainable, nontoxic material that keeps babies warm and soldiers cool can now ensure your cappuccino stays at optimal drinking temperature for hours.

PureTemp, a technology developed by Minnesota-based Entropy Solutions, turns vegetable oils into phase change material (PCM) capable of maintaining a specific temperature between minus 40 and 300 degrees for hours. PCMs have been around longer than our species: Water’s transition from a solid to a liquid at the phase change point of 32 degrees is the most obvious example. So we asked PureTemp Chief Chemical Officer William “Rusty” Sutterlin to explain what’s so cool about this hot new take on phase change.

Read Oil About It

PureTemp technology involves purifying a variety of vegetable oils and then isolating different compounds within the blends. Each compound, Sutterlin says, naturally melts or solidifies at a different specific temperature and can be used as the base material for an application, depending on the phase change point needed.

“Think of peanut butter,” explains Sutterlin, who added he’d just stirred a jar of the sticky stuff that morning — not for a PureTemp application, but for a sandwich. “It’s made from the oil of peanuts, but that oil is made of different compounds, some of which are liquid at room temperature and some of which are solid at room temperature.”

Other manmade PCMs exist, but most are petroleum- or mineral-based, with varying levels of toxicity, or water-based, with more limited temperature ranges. PureTemp’s claim to fame is that its materials are biodegradable and nontoxic. PureTemp materials also have a broader range of potential phase change temperatures and containment sizes: Its coffee mug, for example, has a rigid inner core of PCM that could fit in the palm of your hand, while blankets and clothing use the material in thin, flexible sheets or pockets of microcapsules.

Immortal Phase

PCMs have an advantage over other heat or cooling sources: a kind of immortality. “The material never changes composition, latent heat capacity or its phase change point,” Sutterlin says. “Think of it this way: How many times can you freeze and melt and freeze water again before that water goes bad? The answer is unlimited.”

Getting Specific

Unlike water’s set solid-liquid phase change point of 32 degrees, manmade PCMs’ change points vary depending on their molecular composition. But they absorb and release latent heat according to the same principles as ice melting (storing heat) and refreezing (releasing that heat). 

“As soon as we cause something to solidify, boom, there’s a lot of energy there to harness,” Sutterlin says.

The PureTemp mug’s inner PCM core has a phase change point set at 140 degrees, considered the optimal drinking temperature. Coffee is typically brewed, however, at about 190 to 200 degrees.

“You make your coffee and pour it into the PureTemp mug,” explains Sutterlin. “The PCM [inside the core] melts, pulling energy in the form of heat from the coffee.”

It takes a minute or two to reach the optimal drinking temperature — and the PCM’s phase change point. As the coffee cools below 140 degrees, the PCM starts to solidify again, releasing the stored heat back into your coffee and maintaining that perfect drinking temperature.

More Than This

Aside from keeping America’s java drinkers content, PCMs developed by PureTemp are also being used in far more significant ways, including the Embrace infant warmer; the Cool Vest, which prevents overheating in human and canine troops in Afghanistan; and the Greenbox, which safely transports pharmaceuticals, blood and vaccines. We’ll drink to that.

[This article originally appeared in print as "Running Hot and Cold Forever."]

Source : discovermagazine.com

NASA Tests Largest 3-D Printed Rocket Part Ever

In NASA's latest exploration of combining 3-D printing and space travel, the agency ran tests on the largest ever 3-D printed rocket engine component at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
The engine part was a complex subscale injector, similar in size to those that power small rocket engines. When an engine is firing, the injector delivers propellants, which provides power and thrust to get the rocket off the ground. NASA tested the component on August 22; it helped the engine generate a record 200,000 pounds of thrust. And the conditions were grueling, conducted at pressures of up to 1,400 pounds per square inch and at nearly 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Working with NASA, a rapid prototyping company called Directed Manufacturing printed the rocket part using a process called selective laser melting, which creates 3-D objects by building up layers of nickel-chromium alloy powder. Whereas previous injector models have been made of 115 parts, this 3-D printed version is made of just two, which saves on cost. The production process also took much less time—under a month for 3-D printing, whereas traditional injectors sometimes take six months and cost twice as much.
NASA wanted to test a component that was complex and vital to the functioning of the rocket engine, as well as something that comes into direct contact with the extreme heat. It helps that the injector is also very similar to traditional versions that have undergone testing.
The agency says it is looking at 3-D printing as a way to quickly and cheaply replace engine parts for human missions to deep space, including to Mars and asteroids.
In July, NASA completed a successful test of a smaller 3-D printed rocket injector. The 3-D printed injectors showed no difference in performance from traditionally manufactured ones. In the coming days, engineers will perform computer scans and other inspections on the injector tested last week.
"This successful test of a 3-D printed rocket injector brings NASA significantly closer to proving this innovative technology can be used to reduce the cost of flight hardware," said Chris Singer, the director of the Engineering Directorate at the Marshall Center, in a statement.
The first 3-D printed part to be hot-fire tested on a NASA engine system was an exhaust port cover made at the Marshall Center and tested at the Stennis Center. And NASA is looking beyond printing engine parts. The space agency is working with Made in Space to develop and test a 3-D printer for the International Space Station, which would print tools as needed, and they're also looking at printing food for long-duration missions. 

Source : popsci.com