Innovation Toronto » Innovation

UK Scientists Devise Worldwide Food Alert System

innovation2 — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:01:01 +0000

Countries producing food containing harmful bacteria and toxins could be named and shamed more quickly using a worldwide alert system

devised by a team of scientists from Kingston University in South West London. The team, led by Professor Declan Naughton, says the easy to use computer tool can be used to monitor contaminated products; helping to prevent them reaching shop shelves and ensuring that food is safe to eat.

Thousands of alerts about contaminated food are produced each year, particularly by developed countries, but there is no single international system for monitoring food safety. This prompted Professor Naughton and his colleagues, from the School of Life Sciences, to develop a program to analyse alerts and produce a global picture of the countries that trade and detect contaminated food that can be deadly or cause health problems from food poisoning to long term degenerative diseases. Professor Naughton recently presented a summary of the team’s findings to a conference organised by the European Food Security Authority, the EU’s food safety and security watchdog.

Professor Naughton said the program was the most sophisticated available, providing more detailed information more quickly than its rivals. “No other system can reflect the complexity of this information in a snapshot form,” he said.”It can be particularly helpful to developing countries new to food testing because information is easy to access and available in minutes.” The program could also be applied to other global health hazards such as pest control or illegal animal or plant imports.

Read more . . .

Tainted food and water kill surprising number worldwide: WHO (nationalpost.com)
Dr. Elaine Schattner: Protect Yourself And Family From Food-Borne Illness (huffingtonpost.com)

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3-D Printer Creates Entire Buildings From Solid Rock

innovation2 — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:35:13 +0000

Imagine a 3-d printer so large that it can spit out entire buildings made from stone.

Sounds science fiction-y, right? But that’s exactly what designer Enrico Dini created with his prototype D-Shape printer. Dini hopes to use the printer to create buildings made of stone and eventually, moon dust.

The printing process starts with a thin layer of sand. The printer then sprays the sand with magnesium-based glue from hundreds of nozzles, which binds the sand into rock. That rock is then built up layer by layer, eventually taking shape of whatever object it is destined to become, be it a curvy sculpture or an entire cathedral. Dini has even been talking with La Scuola Normale Superiore, Alta Space and Norman Foster to design a printer that would work with moon dust, essentially creating a machine that can make an almost-instant moonbase!

Read more . . .

Architectural Technologist – 3D printing the size of a house (konstrukshon.com)
Non-Enclosed 3D Printer Can Build Houses [3D Printing] (gizmodo.com)
3D Ceramic Printer Creates Pottery Bowls and That Perfect Futuristic ‘Ghost’ Parody [3D Printers] (gizmodo.com)

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Energy Generating, Self-Heating Solar Roadway Unveiled

innovation2 — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:27:57 +0000

The makers of the Solar Roadway just got a little closer to their dream of making every road in the United States a high-tech thruway that carries more than just cars.

They’ve completed their first prototype and unveiled the photographs of the revolutionary energy-generating road surface. If installed on a real thoroughfare the Solar Roadway would carry vehicles, generate electricity for messages to drivers, self-heat to melt snow and ice, and deliver high speed phone and internet cables to the front steps of every home.

The makers of the Solar Roadway have high hopes for their product. In addition to creating a revolution in transportation infrastructure, they envision the installation of the Solar Roadway as a quick path to economic recovery. With some quick calculations they’ve estimated that installing the Solar Roadway on every road in the US will employ 2.5 million people full time for 10 years. That’s not to mention the manufacturing jobs that will be created to make the components in the road panels. It will take just over 5 billion panels to cover all the US roads and each panel requires 6192 LED lights, a special glass covering and a circuit board. That’s a lot of manufacturing.

Read more . . .

Solar Roadways Update (forcedgreen.com)
High-Tech Research Moving From US To China (tech.slashdot.org)

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Hidden RFID tags could mean end of bar-codes and lines at the checkout

innovation2 — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 02:49:31 +0000

Newly developed radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology could usher in the era of checkout line-free shopping.

The inexpensive, printable transmitter can be invisibly embedded in packaging offering the possibility of customers walking a cartload of groceries or other goods past a scanner that would read all the items at once, total them up and charge the customer’s account while adjusting the store’s inventory. More advanced versions could even collect all the information about the contents of a store in an instant, letting a retailer know where every package is at any time.

Researchers from Rice University working in collaboration with a team led by Gyou-jin Cho at Sunchon National University in Korea, developed the new technology which is based on a carbon-nanotube-infused ink for ink-jet printers first developed in the Rice lab of James Tour. The ink is used to make thin-film transistors, a key element in radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags that can be printed on paper or plastic.

“We are going to a society where RFID is a key player,” said Cho, a professor of printed electronics engineering at Sunchon, who expects the technology to mature in five years. Cho and his team are developing the electronics as well as the roll-to-roll printing process that, he said, will bring the cost of printing the tags down to a penny apiece and make them ubiquitous.

RFID tags are almost everywhere already. They are being used to identify and track everything from farm animals to shipping containers and passports to library books. But to date RFID tags have been largely silicon-based. Paper or plastic tags printed as part of a package would cut costs dramatically and the roll-to-roll technique, which uses a gravure process rather than inkjet printers, could replace the barcodes that currently appear on just about everything we buy.

Invisibility cloak created in 3-D

innovation2 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:09:43 +0000

Scientists have created the first device to render an object invisible in three dimensions.

The “cloak”, described in the journal Science, hid an object from detection using light of wavelengths close to those that are visible to humans.

Previous devices have been able to hide objects from light travelling in only one direction; viewed from any other angle, the object would remain visible.

This is a very early but significant step towards true invisibility cloaks.

Tolga Ergin, a scientist from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany led the study.

He told BBC News that his team’s cloak was based on the concept that you can “transform space” with a material.

He and his colleagues designed a photonic metamaterial, which influenced the behaviour of light rays.

“You can think of any transformation that you would like to have, and tailor your material to mimic this,” he explained.

The basis of the design is known as a “carpet cloak”. This was first proposed by Professor Sir John Pendry from Imperial College London, who also took part in this study.

“He proposed the theoretical design of having an object hidden under a bump and making the bump disappear,” said Mr Ergin.

“It’s like a carpet mirror,” he continued. “If you hide an object under it, there is a bump, so you see a distortion in the reflected image.

“We put the carpet cloak on top of that bump and it bends the light so that the distortions disappear.

“You have the impression that the mirror you’re looking at is flat.”

Read more . . .

Invisibility Cloak Project Becomes More Realistic [Science] (gizmodo.com)
Cloaking device makes objects invisible … to infrared light (guardian.co.uk)
3D invisibility cloak fashioned out of metamaterials (engadget.com)

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Mile-High Mega Kites Could Pull Giant, Floating Power Plants

innovation2 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:32:49 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Take a huge oceanic catamaran, stick a hydroelectric turbine underneath it, and hitch it to a 6.5 million-square-foot parafoil flying nearly a mile in the air. That’s a Korean research team’s new proposal for generating gigawatts of clean energy.

As the parafoil pulls the boat, seawater would be forced through the turbine, which generates electricity. The 800 megawatts of electricity produced would separate seawater into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis, and the hydrogen would then be stored on-board the ships.

“The calculation shows that, with a large such ship, a gigawatt order electrical power may be harvested by this system,” wrote Park Chul of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and Kim Jongchul of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, in the journal Energy in March.“If such ships are deployed at 20-km (12.4-mile) intervals over two temperate zones, one in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in the Northern Hemisphere and the other everywhere in the Southern Hemisphere, the total power produced will be many times that needed by the world,” they wrote.

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Smoothing Out the Wind

innovation2 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:15:12 +0000

A cunning plan to store energy underwater may help fulfil the promise of wind power

THE problem with wind power is that is cannot always be relied upon. The wind—and other transient, environmental energy sources such as solar—must either be used when it is harvested or stored expensively in batteries or specially designed hydroelectric schemes that use the resulting energy to pump water uphill. Alternatives would be extremely welcome. Alexander Slocum, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks he has one. Observing that the fashion among wind-power fans is to build turbines out at sea, where the wind blows strongest, he proposes a pumped-storage system that uses seawater.

Dr Slocum’s scheme involves anchoring a hexagonal array of hollow, 31-metre-diameter concrete spheres to the ocean floor at a depth of approximately 350 metres. Floating turbines would be tethered to these spheres and surplus power from these turbines, generated during periods of high wind and low electrical demand, would be used to pump water out of the spheres, evacuating the central chamber. When the wind faltered or the lights went back on, water forced into the central chamber by the pressure of the surrounding ocean would pass through a turbine and generate electricity. Each sphere would provide a five megawatt turbine with four hours of storage capacity.

Read more . . .

Wind Vs Conventional Electricity Economics (slideshare.net)

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Momentum Reel push mower stores energy for a burst of extra cutting power

innovation2 — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:27:20 +0000

“Green” mowers like the human-powered Mow Cycle are great for keeping that well manicured lawn along with a clear conscience.

But there’s always the chance of running into a patch of particularly thick grass that makes push mowers that little bit less attractive. The Momentum Reel Mower tackles this shortcoming in an ingenious way – its InertiaDrive Technology (patent pending) stores energy like a flywheel to unleash a burst of extra cutting power when required.

The InertiaDrive combines a large diameter cutting reel and heavy cutting reel blades to store energy expended while mowing less troublesome areas. When a tough spot is encountered the InertiaDrive delivers twice the energy to power through small twigs, weeds, or dense grass that would jam other reel mowers. The mower’s large diameter cutting reel and heavy cutting blades allow it to power through obstructions that would cause the small diameter cutting reels and thin blades of standard reel mowers to a standstill.

Made by Finnish company Fiskars, the Momentum Reel Mower also features the company’s StaySharp Cutting System and VersaCut Design that it says makes the mower 30 percent easier to push in long grass.

StaySharp Cutting System

Standard reel mowers rely on contact between the cutting reel and stationary blade for cutting. The steel on steel contact that is produced creates friction & causes blade wear. As a result, the blades on standard reel mowers dull quickly and require annual sharpening to prevent cutting performance degradation.

Read more . . .

Lawn Mower Scooter Concept (ubergizmo.com)
Gas-free mower doubles its power with a new secret (dvice.com)

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Tyndall National Institute create first junctionless transistor

innovation2 — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:18:04 +0000

A team of scientists at the Tyndall National Institute in Cork, Ireland has created what they claim is the world’s first junctionless transistor.

The invention represents a breakthrough in transistors and nanoelectronics, and has the potential to revolutionize microchip manufacturing.

The approach uses a control gate around a silicon nanowire to control the passage of electrons without the use of junctions.

The Tyndall team, led by Professor Jean-Pierre Colinge, says the transistors are relatively easy to make and could help to extend Moore’s law and reduce manufacturing costs.

The transistor is the fundamental building block in electronic devices. On silicon computing chips, the number of transistors reflects the relative amount of processing power the chip has. Since the 1970s the number of transistors built on a silicon chip has grown from just a few hundred to more than two billion transistors on a single chip. Today’s electronic devices are driving the need for more transistors on each chip, while also requiring semiconductor chips that are smaller, more energy efficient, and more cost effective. The conventional transistor architectures used for the last 40 years can no longer keep up with this demand.

Read more . . .

Single Molecule Turned Into a Functional Transistor [Transistors] (gizmodo.com)
Graphene Transistors 10x Faster Than Silicon (hardware.slashdot.org)
First Functional Molecular Transistor Comes Alive (wired.com)
IBM’s 100Ghz Graphene Transistor Might Replace Silicon Someday [Ibm] (gizmodo.com)

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Fandango Begins Rolling Out Mobile Tickets That Let Moviegoers Go Paperless

innovation2 — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:37:13 +0000

Waiting in line for movie tickets is still the worst part of going to the movies (unless you are going to see The Bounty Hunter).

With so many mobile phone movie apps, it’s easy to find what’s playing at nearby theaters and even purchase tickets right from your mobile phone, but then you still have to get a paper ticket from the dispenser or the ticket agent. But your ticket could easily be delivered to your mobile phone via a 2D barcode.

Read more . . .

Fandango Rolls Out Mobile Tickets That Let Moviegoers Go Paperless (huffingtonpost.com)

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Innovation Toronto » Innovation

UK Scientists Devise Worldwide Food Alert System

Countries producing food containing harmful bacteria and toxins could be named and shamed more quickly using a worldwide alert system

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3-D Printer Creates Entire Buildings From Solid Rock

Imagine a 3-d printer so large that it can spit out entire buildings made from stone.

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Energy Generating, Self-Heating Solar Roadway Unveiled

The makers of the Solar Roadway just got a little closer to their dream of making every road in the United States a high-tech thruway that carries more than just cars.

Related articles by Zemanta

Hidden RFID tags could mean end of bar-codes and lines at the checkout

Newly developed radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology could usher in the era of checkout line-free shopping.

Invisibility cloak created in 3-D

Scientists have created the first device to render an object invisible in three dimensions.

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Mile-High Mega Kites Could Pull Giant, Floating Power Plants

Smoothing Out the Wind

A cunning plan to store energy underwater may help fulfil the promise of wind power

Related articles by Zemanta

Momentum Reel push mower stores energy for a burst of extra cutting power

“Green” mowers like the human-powered Mow Cycle are great for keeping that well manicured lawn along with a clear conscience.

StaySharp Cutting System

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Tyndall National Institute create first junctionless transistor

A team of scientists at the Tyndall National Institute in Cork, Ireland has created what they claim is the world’s first junctionless transistor.

Related articles by Zemanta

Fandango Begins Rolling Out Mobile Tickets That Let Moviegoers Go Paperless

Waiting in line for movie tickets is still the worst part of going to the movies (unless you are going to see The Bounty Hunter).

Related articles by Zemanta