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The 620325 Stirling Engine by Thames and Kosmos uses renewable energy from the sun to drive a generator, which charges a rechargeable battery to power an electric car.

Power a Car with Solar Generated Electricity       Discover the Stirling engine, a simple, clean and efficient energy technology that is quickly becoming a viable source of electricity as the availability of fossil fuels declines. The Stirling engine in this kit uses renewable energy from the sun to drive a generator, which charges a rechargeable battery to power an electric car. Named after its inventor, Robert Stirling, the original Stirling engine dates back almost 200 years. Today, high-tech Stirling engines are being used in arrays of giant mirrored solar collectors and common applications like compact generators. NASA is even working on using Stirling engines to power a human outpost on the moon!Like a steam engine, a Stirling engine is a heat engine that converts heat energy into mechanical work, usually to drive a generator that then converts the mechanical energy into electricity. But instead of water and steam, the Stirling engine uses a permanently enclosed volume of gas, such as air or helium, to perform the mechanical work. Stirling engines are highly efficient, can operate very quietly, and can use many different sources of heat: combustion of fuels, nuclear fission, geothermal, or solar heat, as this model uses. The Stirling engine in this kit is located in acharging station with a mirrored parabolic dish. The dish focuses the sun’s rays onto the cylindrical glass bulb of the Stirling engine to heat it up. The air inside the bulb heats up and pushes a piston, which turns an electric generator. The generator produces electricity that charges a rechargeable battery in the car. The car runs on an electric motor powered by the battery.The kit includes the charging station with a beta type Stirling engine, the electric car, and a full-color, 64-page manual.

Two military spy telescopes, just as big and powerful as Hubble, donated to NASA

The telescopes were built by private contractors for the National Reconnaissance Office, one of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. Each have 2.4-meter (7.9-foot) mirrors, just like the Hubble, but they have 100 times the field of view.

the telescopes, built in the late 1990s and early 2000s, are now technologically outdated, at least for intelligence operations, despite being just as powerful as Hubble. Now that something that’s worth taking into consideration. Moreover, these telescopes worth hundreds of millions of dollars have never seen operation! Instead they’ve been shelved in a warehouse somewhere, of course, classified. And they might find themselves, yet again, blocked in a warehouse, since NASA, on a string budget, doesn’t have the necessary cash to fit them.

Near field communication (NFC) is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimetres. Present and anticipated applications include contactless transactions, data exchange, and simplified setup of more complex communications such as Wi-Fi.[1] Communication is also possible between an NFC device and an unpowered NFC chip, called a "tag".[2]

NFC standards cover communications protocols and data exchange formats, and are based on existing radio-frequency identification (RFID) standards including ISO/IEC 14443 and FeliCa.[3] The standards include ISO/IEC 18092[4] and those defined by the NFC Forum, which was founded in 2004 by Nokia, Philips and Sony, and now has more than 160 members. The Forum also promotes NFC and certifies device compliance.[5

The conversion of sunlight into electricity has been dominated by photovoltaic and solar thermal power generation. Photovoltaic cells are deployed widely, mostly as flat panels, whereas solar thermal electricity generation relying on optical concentrators and mechanical heat engines is only seen in large-scale power plants. Here we demonstrate a promising flat-panel solar thermal to electric power conversion technology based on the Seebeck effect and high thermal concentration, thus enabling wider applications. The developed solar thermoelectric generators (STEGs) achieved a peak efficiency of 4.6% under AM1.5G (1 kW m−2) conditions. The efficiency is 7–8 times higher than the previously reported best value for a flat-panel STEG, and is enabled by the use of high-performance nanostructured thermoelectric materials and spectrally-selective solar absorbers in an innovative design that exploits high thermal concentration in an evacuated environment.

paper that's stronger than steel

University of Technology, Sydney scientists have reported remarkable results in developing a composite material based on graphite that is a thin as paper and ten times stronger than steel.

Graphene paper (GP) is a material that can be processed, reshaped and reformed from its original raw material state - graphite.

Secure, fast and powerful, Ubuntu Server is transforming IT environments worldwide. Realise the full potential of your infrastructure with a reliable, easy-to-integrate technology platform.

Why use Ubuntu for servers?