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Mars Base

New energy source for future medical implants: sugar - 0 views

phys.org/...e-future-medical-implants.html

scibyte51 medical FuelCell

shared by Mars Base on 13 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • This silicon wafer consists of glucose fuel cells of varying sizes; the largest is 64 by 64 mm
  • MIT engineers have developed a fuel cell that runs on the same sugar that powers human cells: glucose
  • This glucose fuel cell could be used to drive highly efficient brain implants of the future, which could help paralyzed patients move their arms and legs again
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • strips electrons from glucose molecules to create a small electric current
  • The idea of a glucose fuel cell is not new
  • In the 1970s, scientists showed they could power a pacemaker with a glucose fuel cell, but the idea was abandoned in favor of lithium-ion batteries, which could provide significantly more power per unit area than glucose fuel cells
  • glucose fuel cells also utilized enzymes that proved to be impractical for long-term implantation in the body, since they eventually ceased to function efficiently
  • The new twist
  • is that it is fabricated from silicon, using the same technology used to make semiconductor electronic chips
  • has no biological components
  • consists of a platinum catalyst that strips electrons from glucose
  • mimicking the activity of cellular enzymes that break down glucose to generate ATP
  • So far, the fuel cell can generate up to hundreds of microwatts — enough to power an ultra-low-power and clinically useful neural implant.
  • in theory, the glucose fuel cell could get all the sugar it needs from the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that bathes the brain and protects it from banging into the skull
  • are very few cells in the CSF
  • There is also significant glucose in the CSF, which does not generally get used by the body
  • only a small fraction of the available power is utilized by the glucose fuel cell, the impact on the brain’s function would likely be small.
  • the work is a good step toward developing implantable medical devices that don’t require external power sources.
  • ultra-low-power electronics, having pioneered such designs for cochlear implants and brain implants
  • combined with such ultra-low-power electronics, can enable brain implants or other implants to be completely self-powered
  • group has worked on all aspects of implantable brain-machine interfaces and neural prosthetics, including recording from nerves, stimulating nerves
  • decoding nerve signals and communicating wirelessly with implants
  • designed to record electrical activity from hundreds of neurons in the brain’s motor cortex, which is responsible for controlling movement
  • data is amplified and converted into a digital signal so that computers
  • can analyze it and determine which patterns of brain activity produce movement
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Mars_Science_Laboratory

scibyte22 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - Cached
  • Launch vehicle Atlas V 541
  • Mission duration 668 Martian sols (686 Earth days)
  • Landing August 5, 2012 (planned
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Mass 900 kg (2,000 lb)[
  • Power Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG)
  • the general public had an opportunity to rank nine finalist names through a public poll on the NASA website
  • Curiosity was selected, which was submitted by a sixth-grader, Clara Ma, from Kansas in an essay contest
  • 10 ft (3.0 m) in length
  • radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), as used by the successful Mars landers Viking 1 and Viking 2 in 1976
  • Radioisotope power systems are generators that produce electricity from the natural decay of plutonium-238, which is a non-fissile isotope of plutonium used in power systems for NASA spacecraft. Heat given off by the natural decay of this isotope is converted into electricity, providing constant power during all seasons and through the day and night, and waste heat can be used via pipes to warm systems, freeing electrical power for the operation of the vehicle and instruments
  • designed to produce 125 watts of electrical power from about 2000 watts of thermal power at the start of the mission
  • lifetime of 14 years, electrical power output is down to 100 watts
  • "Rover Compute Element" (RCE), contain radiation hardened memory to tolerate the extreme radiation environment from space and to safeguard against power-off cycles
  • 256 kB of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory
Mars Base

Rocket powered by nuclear fusion could send humans to Mars - 0 views

phys.org/...red-nuclear-fusion-humans.html

scibyte90 MarsMission

shared by Mars Base on 11 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • researchers and scientists
  • are building components of a fusion-powered rocket aimed to clear many of the hurdles that block deep space travel, including long times in transit, exorbitant costs and health risks
  • funded through NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • Last month
  • presented their mission analysis for a trip to Mars, along with detailed computer modeling and initial experimental results
  • one of a handful of projects awarded a second round of funding last fall after already receiving phase-one money in a field of 15 projects chosen from more than 700 proposals
  • NASA estimates a round-trip human expedition to Mars would take more than four years using current technology
  • team have published papers calculating the potential for 30- and 90-day expeditions to Mars using a rocket powered by fusion, which would make the trip more practical and less costly
  • They have demonstrated successful lab tests of all portions of the process
  • Now, the key will be combining each isolated test into a final experiment that produces fusion using this technology
  • The research team has developed a type of plasma that is encased in its own magnetic field
  • Nuclear fusion occurs when this plasma is compressed to high pressure with a magnetic field.
  • The team has successfully tested this technique in the lab.
  • a small grain of sand of this material has the same energy content as 1 gallon of rocket fuel.
  • power a rocket, the team has devised a system in which a powerful magnetic field causes large metal rings to implode around this plasma, compressing it to a fusion state
  • The converging rings merge to form a shell that ignites the fusion, but only for a few microseconds
  • enough energy is released from the fusion reactions to quickly heat and ionize the shell
  • This super-heated, ionized metal is ejected out of the rocket nozzle at a high velocity. This process is repeated every minute or so, propelling the spacecraft
  • successfully demonstrated the metal-crushing process
  • The team had a sample of the collapsed, fist-sized aluminum ring resulting from one of those tests on hand for people to see and touch at the recent NASA symposium
  • Now, the team is working to bring it all together by using the technology to compress the plasma and create nuclear fusion
  • With the flip of a switch, the capacitors are simultaneously triggered to deliver 1 million amps of electricity for a fraction of a second to the magnet, which quickly compresses the metal ring.
  • The mechanical process and equipment used are reasonably straightforward
  • In actual space travel, scientists would use lithium metal as the crushing rings to power the rocket. Lithium is very reactive, and for lab-testing purposes, aluminum works just as well
  • Nuclear fusion may draw concern because of its application in nuclear bombs, but its use in this scenario is very different
  • The fusion energy for powering a rocket would be reduced by a factor of 1 billion from a hydrogen bomb, too little to create a significant explosion
  • Also,
  • concept uses a strong magnetic field to contain the fusion fuel and guide it safely away from the spacecraft and any passengers within
Mars Base

Jellyfish inspires latest ocean-powered robot (w/ video) - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...ocean-powered-robot-video.html

scibyte39 robot MarMedia

shared by Mars Base on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • American researchers have created a robotic jellyfish, named Robojelly, which not only exhibits characteristics ideal to use in underwater search and rescue operations, but could, theoretically at least, never run out of energy thanks to it being fuelled by hydrogen.
  • Constructed from a set of smart materials
  • ability to change shape or size as a result of a stimulus, and carbon nanotubes, Robojelly is able to mimic the natural movements of a jellyfish when placed in a water tank and is powered by chemical reactions taking place on its surface.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • To our knowledge, this is the first successful powering of an underwater robot using external hydrogen as a fuel source
  • jellyfish is an ideal invertebrate to base the vehicle on due to its simple swimming action
  • replicated in the vehicle using commercially-available shape memory alloys (SMA) – smart materials that "remember" their original shape – wrapped in carbon nanotubes and coated with a platinum black powder.
  • powered by heat-producing chemical reactions between the oxygen and hydrogen in water and the platinum on its surface
  • renewable element means Robojelly can regenerate fuel from its natural surroundings and therefore doesn't require an external power source or the constant replacement of batteries.
  • heat given off by these reactions is transferred to the artificial muscles of the robot, causing them to transform into different shapes.
  • robot still needs development to achieve full functionality and efficiency
Mars Base

FAA Clears Virgin Galactic to Begin Rocket-Powered Test Flights | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/eshiptwo-rocket-tests-faa.html

scibyte49 VirginGalactic SpaceShipTwo PrivateSpaceTravel

shared by Mars Base on 31 May 12 - No Cached
  • Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo suborbital space tourism vehicle has won U.S. regulatory approval to begin powered flight testing of the rocket-propelled craft later this year
  • May 30 announcement that the experimental launch permit from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorizes the Scaled Composites development team "to progress to the rocket-powered phase of test flight
  • flight system consists of two vehicles, SpaceShipTwo and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • esigned to launch six passengers and two pilots into suborbital spa
  • offer a few minutes of weightlessness, then return to Eath
  • not set a date for beginning commercial service
  • company said May 30 that it expects to begin rocket-powered test flights before the end of 2012
  • SpaceShipTwo will soon return to flight, testing the aerodynamic performance of the spacecraft with the full weight of the rocket motor system on board
  • Integration of key rocket motor components, already begun during a now-concluding period of downtime for routine maintenance, will continue in the autumn
  • expects to begin rocket powered, supersonic test flights under the just-issued experimental permit toward the end of the year."
Mars Base

Venerable Voyager 2 Spacecraft Gets a Tune-up 14 billion Kilometers From Earth - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-billion-kilometers-from-earth

scibyte23

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • engineers at JPL sent commands across 14 billion kilometers (9 billion miles) out to Voyager 2
  • enabling it to switch to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft
  • This will reduce the amount of power that the 34-year-old probe needs to operate,
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • hopefully — the power to operate for at least another decade
  • The move was a little risky
  • backup roll thrusters were previously unused
  • been idle and out in the harsh environment of space for 32 years
  • Voyager 2 will save about 11.8 watts of electric power by turning off the heater that kept the hydrazine fuel to the primary thrusters warm
  • Voyager 1 and 2 are each equipped with six sets, or pairs, of thrusters to control the pitch, yaw and roll motions of the spacecraft. With this latest command, both spacecraft are now using all three sets of their backup thrusters
  • The primary roll thrusters now turned off fired more than 318,000 times. Voyager 1 changed to the backup for this same component after 353,000 pulses in 2004
  • energy generated by Voyager 2′s Plutonium 238 nuclear power source continues to decline, and is now down to about 270 watts from the 470 watts being produced when the spacecraft launched in 1977
  • at the rate of decay, the Voyager spacecraft won’t have sufficient electric power to its instruments sometime by the mid-2020′s.
  • Using solar power for a spacecraft traveling beyond Jupiter is impractical
  • This latest tune-up will hopefully get Voyager 2 a little farther while she’s still able to communicate with Earth
Mars Base

Germany sets weekend record for solar power - 0 views

phys.org/...rmany-weekend-solar-power.html

scibyte49 solarcell

shared by Mars Base on 30 May 12 - No Cached
  • Solar power plants in Germany have set a new record. “Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity,"
  • plants peaked at 22 gigawatts of output for a few hours over the weekend, on Friday and Saturday
  • they yielded almost half the country's energy mid-day electricity needs
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • 22 gigawatts is up from 14 GW a year ago. Also, this 22 gigawatts of output is equal to about 20 nuclear plants.
  • 2012 Environment Ministry report showed that German taxpayers pay an extra four billion euros per year on top of their electricity bills to support solar power
  • The new record-breaking figures from Germany, however, do not quiet some energy experts who stress that without good storage strategies for excess power, such record-breaking numbers are not meaningful. They say the real point is to get consistently large percentages of power from renewable sources.
Mars Base

Emergency Spacewalk Likely for 'Serious' ISS Coolant Leak - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...y-for-serious-iss-coolant-leak

scibyte94 iss ViewerFeedback

shared by Mars Base on 19 May 13 - No Cached
  • while the coolant is vital to the operation of the ISS for the electricity-supplying systems, the crew is not in any danger
  • The ammonia cools the 2B power channel, one of eight power channels that control the all the various power-using systems at the ISS
  • All the systems that use power from the 2B channel, the problem area, are being transferred throughout the day to another channel
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The 2B channel will eventually shut down when the coolant is depleted, and the power is being diverted in order to keep everything up and running on the station
  • While Cassidy and Marshburn prepare in space, Astronauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center are using the Neutral Buoyancy lab – a 12- meter (40 ft.) deep swimming pool with mockups of the space station that simulates the zero-gravity conditions in space – going through the entire expected EVA
Mars Base

Heart-powered pacemaker could one day eliminate battery-replacement surgery - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...ttery-replacement-surgery.html

scibyte36 heart health

shared by Mars Base on 04 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • A new power scheme for cardiac pacemakers turns to an unlikely source: vibrations from heartbeats themselves.
  • a device that harvests energy from the reverberation of heartbeats through the chest and converts it to electricity to run a pacemaker or an implanted defibrillator.
  • new energy harvester could save patients from repeated surgeries. That's the only way today to replace the batteries, which last five to 10 years.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • use ambient vibrations that are typically wasted and convert them to electrical energy
  • researchers haven't built a prototype yet
  • made detailed blueprints and run simulations demonstrating that the concept would work
  • A hundredth-of-an-inch thin slice of a special "piezoelectric" ceramic material would essentially catch heartbeat vibrations and briefly expand in response
  • Piezoelectric materials' claim to fame is that they can convert mechanical stress (which causes them to expand) into an electric voltage.
  • have precisely engineered the ceramic layer to a shape that can harvest vibrations across a broad range of frequencies
  • incorporated magnets, whose additional force field can drastically boost the electric signal that results from the vibrations.
  • new device could generate 10 microwatts of power, which is about eight times the amount a pacemaker needs to operate
  • originally designed the harvester for light unmanned airplanes, where it could generate power from wing vibrations
Mars Base

Sun Fires Off 2 Huge Solar Flares in One-Two Punch | Space Weather | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ge-solar-flares-erupt-sun.html

scibyte37 sun

shared by Mars Base on 07 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Tuesday
  • One of the flares is the most powerful solar eruption of the year, so far.
  • Both of the huge flares ranked as X-class storms, the strongest type of solar flares the sun can have
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • followed several weaker, but still powerful, sun storms on Tuesday
  • came just days after another major solar flare on Sunday night
  • When aimed directly at Earth, X-class solar flares can endanger astronauts and satellites in orbit, interfere with satellite communications and damage power grids on Earth
  • also amplify the Earth's display of northern and southern lights, also known as auroras
  • five categories: A, B, C, M and X. The A-class flares are the weakest sun storms, while the X-class events are the most powerful solar flares
  • subsets, from 1 to 9, to pinpoint a solar flare's strength. Only X-class solar flares have subcategories that go higher than 9.
  • most powerful solar flare on record occurred in 2003 and was estimated to be an X28 on the solar flare scale
  • The sun is currently going through an active phase of its 11-year weather cycle
  • expected to reach its peak level of activity in 2013
Mars Base

Opportunity Rover Gets Power Boost from Wind Events on Mars - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-boost-from-wind-event-on-mars

scibyte125 opportunity

shared by Mars Base on 29 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Opportunity rover on Mars has gotten a 70% boost in power over the past few weeks
  • A good portion of that comes from the fact that its springtime in Mars’ southern hemisphere where Oppy now sits
  • so the Sun is now shining longer and higher in the sky.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • several recent gusts of wind – or perhaps small dust devils – have cleaned much of the dust off the rover’s solar panels.
  • The rover team reported that between Sols 3605 and 3606 (March 15 and March 16, 2014), there was a dust cleaning event
  • resulted in about a 10% improvement in power production to 574 watt-hours
  • another cleaning event this week has put the power output to 615 watt-hours.
Mars Base

T. K. Mattingly Oral History - 0 views

www.jsc.nasa.gov/...MattinglyTK_11-6-01.htm

scibyte91 Apollo13

shared by Mars Base on 18 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • The Race to the Moon book’s description is probably a little better
  • The way back, the spacecraft started drifting off its trajectory, and now they had to make their midcourse corrections to get back
  • turns out that, too, we had practiced in some simulation somewhere. It’s not very accurate, but it doesn’t have to be
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • It was hard to get people to recognize that we do that, but you don’t need to be the nearest five degrees
  • didn’t solve any problems in the simulator
  • actually ran those procedures, verified them, made some red lines, I think, brought them back over
  • They had to take their flight plan and turn it over and tear out pages and write on the back of it. The only thing they had were pencils and ball pens
  • actually had extra electrical power in the lunar module batteries
  • Somebody came in and found a way to do a jumper cord and take battery power out of the lunar module and top off the command module and to use that power to help get the command module stuff started so we didn’t use all the power from the batteries. So we ended up with a good margin on the batteries
  • Because all our procedures were based on two practical rules. One of them is, structural things don’t break. Actually, that drove everything. Fluid lines and structural—you know, joints can leak, shorts can happen to wires, but physical structure doesn’t break
  • if you admitted to that, then the number of things that you could have to prepare for is infinite.
  • had done a lot of testing of this, a lot of margin of safety in the hardware, so we never looked at those kinds of implications
  • Got in the car to drive back up. This is two days, I think, two days before launch, I think. I’m driving up the road, turned the radio on, and they interrupt the news announcement that this afternoon NASA has announced that they have changed and substituted Jack Swigert for me.
  • Gene says, “Sy, didn’t Jim say that he looked out the window and there’s stuff out in the sky and he heard something?” He says, “Does that sound like instrumentation to you?”
  • thanks to the kind of simulation training program we had, maybe the things weren’t exactly the same or in an exactly the same order, but everything we ended up doing had been done somewhere.
  • somewhere in an earlier sim, there had been an occasion to do what they call LM lifeboat, which meant you had to get the crew out of the command module and into the lunar module, and they stayed there
  • when you get out in space, that all those black spots in between the stars are filled with stars, and those constellations are nowhere near as obvious as they were
  • The guys in the lunar module electrical system had calculated how much time we had, and the two numbers didn’t match. So bringing on this platform is probably the biggest energy user in the spacecraft. Didn’t want to do it
  • They had a capability to maneuver, and they knew where they were, and now they could figure out what to do
  • a big debate about what to do next, as I recall, the books and the movies and all don’t really capture.
  • That debate of what to do next was also rather charged because there was one group of people that said, “You know, this has really been a bad day. We don’t know the condition of any piece of hardware we’ve got. We don’t want to do anything. Don’t touch anything. Let’s just figure this out.”
  • There’s others that said, “There’s only this much electricity and water in the lunar module. We need to turn around and come home as fast as possible.
  • Somewhere in there—I don’t remember all the details—we found out that a family that had gone to a picnic with Charlie and his family over the weekend, one of their kids had the measles, and Charlie was considered exposed
  • One of the many lessons out of all this is starting on day one it was from the very first moment, assume you’re going to succeed and don’t do anything that gets in the way.
  • you had to write down all the numbers in the command module, put them on a list, and then do some math, and then punch the numbers into the lunar module computer
  • you could get a very good alignment so that now you could go in with the lunar module and make a little tweak to tighten up the alignment
  • to get back before the batteries run out
  • while
  • debating what to do with this inertial unit in the command module we had to bring up from scratch, these units are very, very delicate
  • they were allowed to run at a temperature of like 70 plus or minus one. They were tested to see that they would work at plus or minus 10.
  • had one that we don’t know what its temperature is, but we know it’s below freezing
  • didn’t do any testing at those kind of temperatures
  • semi-apocryphal story is that one of the employees at the company
  • had a snowstorm
  • last winter
  • had an IMU in the back of the station wagon
  • took it inside
  • hooked it up and ran it, and they didn’t have any trouble
  • they had had a problem down on the spacecraft, some kind of a problem with detanking the oxygen from the service module
  • took all night and a good bit of the next day
  • to review
  • they’d seen a problem like this before, and even though the regular drain system wasn’t working, they could boil the oxygen out
  • the oxygen tank that we discussed prior to launch was, in fact, the culprit in the explosion. It was damaged in the process that we used in ways that we didn’t anticipate
Mars Base

SkySweeper robot makes inspecting power lines simple and inexpensive (w/ video) - 0 views

phys.org/...-robot-power-lines-simple.html

scibyte91 SkySweeper

shared by Mars Base on 18 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Mechanical engineers at the University of California
  • invented a robot designed to scoot along utility lines, searching for damage and other problems that require repairs.
  • the SkySweeper prototype could be scaled up for less than $1,000, making it significantly more economical than the two models of robots currently used to inspect power lines
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Made of off-the-shelf electronics and plastic parts printed on an inexpensive 3D printer
  • Current line inspection robots are large, complex, and expensive
  • Utility companies may also use manned or unmanned helicopters equipped with infrared imaging to inspect lines
  • SkySweeper could be outfitted with induction coils that would harvest energy from the power line itself, making it possible for the robot to stay deployed for weeks or months at a time
  • strengthening the clamps so they can release from the rope and swing down the line, one end to the other, thereby swinging past cable support points
Mars Base

For the first time, astronomers have measured the radius of a black hole - 0 views

phys.org/...onomers-radius-black-hole.html

scibyte65 black holes

shared by Mars Base on 30 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • an international team
  • , has for the first time measured the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy—the closest distance at which matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.
  • scientists linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a telescope array called the "Event Horizon Telescope" (EHT) that can see details 2,000 times finer than what's visible to the Hubble Space Telescope.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • , the team observed the glow of matter near the edge of this black hole—a region known as the "event horizon."
  • , not everything can cross the event horizon to squeeze into a black hole
  • "cosmic traffic jam" in which gas and dust build up, creating a flat pancake of matter known as an accretion disk
  • disk of matter orbits the black hole at nearly the speed of light, feeding the black hole a steady diet of superheated material
  • Over time, this disk can cause the black hole to spin in the same direction as the orbiting material
  • Caught up in this spiraling flow are magnetic fields, which accelerate hot material along powerful beams above the accretion disk
  • resulting high-speed jet, launched by the black hole and the disk, shoots out across the galaxy, extending for hundreds of thousands of light-years
  • jets can influence many galactic processes, including how fast stars form.
  • . Because M87's jet is magnetically launched from this smallest orbit,
  • astronomers can estimate the black hole's spin through careful measurement of the jet's size as it leaves the black hole
  • Until now, no telescope has had the magnifying power required for this kind of observation
  • team used a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, or VLBI, which links data from radio dishes located thousands of miles apart.
  • , taken together, create a "virtual telescope" with the resolving power of a single telescope as big as the space between the disparate dishes
  • enables scientists to view extremely precise details in faraway galaxies.
  • Using the technique
  • team measured the innermost orbit of the accretion disk to be only 5.5 times the size of the black hole event horizon
  • According to the laws of physics, this size suggests that the accretion disk is spinning in the same direction as the black hole
  • first direct observation to confirm theories of how black holes power jets from the centers of galaxies
  • The team plans to expand its telescope array, adding radio dishes in Chile, Europe, Mexico, Greenland and Antarctica, in order to obtain even more detailed pictures of black holes in the future.
  • www.eventhorizontelescope.org/
Mars Base

SkySweeper Robot Makes Inspecting Power Lines Simple and Inexpensive - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

scibyte91 SkySweeper

shared by Mars Base on 20 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 20 Apr 13
     
    SkySweeper Robot Makes Inspecting Power Lines Simple and Inexpensive
Mars Base

Student's flashlight works by body heat, not batteries - 0 views

phys.org/...flashlight-body-batteries.html

scibyte100 StudentDesign

shared by Mars Base on 02 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • her flashlight has got her into the finalist ranks for the Google Science Fair
  • Ann Makosinski from Victoria, British Columbia, has an LED flashlight powered by body heat
  • the Hollow Flashlight, which works according to the thermoelectric effect—creating electric voltage out of temperature difference
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • a Grade 10 student
  • designed a flashlight that provides bright light without batteries or moving parts
  • and only needs a five degree temperature difference to work and produce up to 5.4 mW at 5 foot candles of brightness
  • Using four Peltier tiles and the temperature difference between the palm of the hand and ambient air
  • bought Peltier tiles and tested them to see if they could produce sufficient power to light an LED
  • power was no problem but getting the needed voltage was, as the tiles did not generate enough of the voltage needed
  • some changes to the circuit design
  • used the Internet for information, experimented with different circuits
  • finding an energy-harvesting article
  • that made note of a circuit that could provide enough voltage when used with a recommended transformer
  • The final design included mounting the Peltiers on a hollow aluminum tube which was inserted in a larger PVC pipe with an opening that allowed ambient air to cool the tube
  • The palm wrapped around a cutout in the PVC pipe and warmed the tiles.
  • The result was a bright light at 5 degree Celcius [sic] of Peltier differential
  • Materials for the flashlight project cost her $26
  • The top winner gets a $50,000 scholarship and trip to the Galapagos Islands
  • The prize ceremony takes place in September. Winners will be chosen in different age categories—13-14, 15-16, 17-18.
Mars Base

Newest Fusion Engine Is Powered On Star Trek Like Dilithium Crystals - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/ike-dilithium-crystals-2012-10

scibyte66 WarpDrive

shared by Mars Base on 05 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Researchers at University of Huntsville in Alabama say they are using "Dilithium Crystals" in a new fusion impulse engine that could cut the travel time to Mars down to as little as six weeks, not the six months it takes now
  • "The fusion fuel we're focusing on is deuterium [a stable isotope of hydrogen] and Li6 [a stable isotope of the metal lithium] in a crystal structure.
  • researchers say that this type of engine is what NASA needs to propel human beings outside low-Earth orbit, out to places like Mars and even beyond.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • the military will probably get first dibs
  • projects is only possible from repurposing military nuclear testing equipment, essentially stuff America used to test nuclear weapons
  • , the sponsors of the fusion engine project have ties to military funding—the Aerophysics
  • still a few kinks to work out though
  • issue of harnessing fusion is prominent
  • also the question of turning the power generated by fusion into thrust for an engine
  • craft using the impulse drive would also need to be assembled in space
  • the technology has applications far beyond military or space exploration
Mars Base

Habitable Planets & Plant Power | Jupiter Broadcasting - 0 views

www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/...planets-plant-power-scibyte-32

scibyte42 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 12 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Habitable Planets & Plant Power | SciByte 32
  • February 7, 2012
  • Habitable planet?
Mars Base

Polymer Power Drives Tiny Reactions - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...er_power_drives_tiny_reactions

scibyte38

shared by Mars Base on 14 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Applying force to polymers in water generates enough energy to drive chemical reactions
  • won’t replace large-scale energy operations
  • offers a way to harness the wisps of unused energy generated by everyday endeavors, like walking or compacting plastic bags at a recycling center
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • capturing such energy could lead to cheap, clean ways to sanitize a small container of water, for example, or to run a simple lab bench reaction
  • Scientists knew that bonds can break when mechanical force is applied to a polymer
  • breakage can generate free radicals, atoms with unpaired electrons that are eager to engage in further reactions
  • new work shows that when a polymer is squeezed in water, the free radicals migrate and react with the water, generating enough hydrogen peroxide to spur other reactions.
  • When the scientists added gold and silver metal salts to a PDMS tube filled with water, squeezing the tube powered reactions that generated gold and silver nanoparticles
  • also injected the sole of a Nike LeBron sneaker with water and a compound that fluoresces when it is cleaved
  • Half an hour of walking applied force to the polymers in the sneaker’s sole, and the resulting free radicals made enough hydrogen peroxide to cleave the fluorescing compound and make the sole glow. 
  • capturing and converting the mechanical energy of polymer squeezing into energy for driving reactions can be as efficient as 30 percent
  • comparable to some power plants that use coal.
  • PDMS is used in some medical devices such as catheters, and in some breast implants, raising the issue that normal wear in the body might generate free radicals that could cause inflammation and other problems
  • adding an antioxidant such as vitamin E, which latches onto free radicals, to the implant ingredients might be a quick and easy way to
  • Some of the body’s immune cells, though, generate well more hydrogen peroxide than that generated by the polymers
  • the fact that enough free radicals are generated to drive reactions — which might even contribute to the breakdown of medical devices — is interesting, Tang says. “I don’t know how unique it is or material-specific, but it could have potential importance.”
Mars Base

Sun-powered plane waits for better weather to continue trip - 0 views

phys.org/...sun-powered-plane-weather.html

scibyte49 SolarPower

shared by Mars Base on 31 May 12 - No Cached
  • Swiss sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse is waiting for weather conditions to improve before continuing on its first transcontinental flight, organisers said Wednesday
  • experimental plane, which is not designed to fly into clouds
  • landed in Madrid on Friday
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • end of the first leg of its attempt to reach Morocco without using a drop of fuel.
  • After technical checks and a pilot change it was hoped Solar Impulse would leave for Rabat on Monday but its departure was put off due to strong winds
  • waiting for a good weather forecast window on the Madrid-Rabat leg
  • If successful the 2,500-kilometre (1,550-mile) journey will be the longest to date for the aircraft after a flight to Paris and Brussels last year and it will mark the first time that the plane has left Europe.
  • intended as a rehearsal in the run-up to the plane's round-the-world flight planned for 2014
  • wingspan of a large airliner but weighs no more than a saloon car, is fitted with 12,000 solar cells feeding four electric motors driving propellors
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