Wireless TVs in a year?

"Electronics heavyweights" like Sony, Samsung, Motorola and Sharp are teaming up behind a uniform technology to send high-def video signals from transmitters to television screens, reports MSNBC.

Savvy consumers (super-nerds) can transmit video now using Wi-Fi technology, but it compresses (reduces the quality) of the picture. The new standard, called Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI), supported by the aforementioned "heavyweights" will use more powerful radio signals.

Does this mean your neighbors will be able to dial into your signals and check out what you're watching? Perhaps. But what if you don't want the neighbors to know ho much Entertainment Tonight and America's Funniest Home Videos that you watch? Pound360 bets some type of encryption is also in the works.

Next-gen Toyota Prius outfitted with solar panels

You might expect a car company with a successful car line to keep making the same thing over-and-over-and-over until sales crash and magazine headlines ask in bold, red letters, "What went wrong!?" At least, that's what you'd expect from a U.S. car company.

Over in Japan, car maker Toyota, however, is adding something cool to the 2009 Prius: solar panels, reports CNET's Crave blog (check out a pic of the car at that link, too).

No, the car's wheels won't be powered by the panels (it's not that cool), but the AC will be. Oh, the car will be able to park itself, too. Helps fight global warming. Draws power from the sun. AND parks itself? What a car.

Gadget Charges Your Cell Phone While You Dance

Renewable energy firm GotWind has teemed up with mobile phone operator Orange to release a device that charges cell phones with kinetic energy, reports Reuters.

Basically, you strap the device to your arm, plug in your cell phone, start moving and the charging begins. The GotWind/Orange alliance recommends cell phone users dance to charge their handsets. But since Pound360 staffers are big-d Dorks that can't dance, we wonder if we can charge our phones by taking the kinetic chargers for a jog.

Then again, we have a feeling that, to charge a phone, it would take 48 hours of constant running. It's like the calorie thing. Running is hard. But jogging a mile only burns about 350 calories.

Bush Backs Maglev Train of the Future

The transportation bill signed this month by President Bush includes $45 million for a Las Vegas to California "maglev" train, according to a report at MSNBC. Levitating magnetically, the maglev moves up to 310 MPH and "doesn't pollute" since it's propelled by a magnetic field. But the magnetic field has to be generated somehow, right? And Pound360 bets there's a plant someplace burning something to make that happen.

While Maglevs would be new to the United States, they aren't exactly the train-of-the-future (globally speaking) since one is in use in China (see photo), though it's a money-loser. The hope is that the draw of Las Vegas will make the route profitable. And if the route is successful, more could be developed taking pressure off gas prices and clogged freeways. But don't bet on it. Ask Seattle, home of the monorail, how successful future forms of public transportation are today, tomorrow and the next day.

By the way, Pittsburgh and the Washington D.C. area are also planning maglevs.

Scientists Developing Self-Healing Airplane Skin

Future aircraft could be lighter, safer and more fuel efficient with a skin that heals itelf, reports LiveScience. In the article, a researcher from the University of Bristol in England described how scientists are developing material with hollow, resin-filled tubes that can repair itself. Simply put, when the material is damaged, the resin is let loose, fills in the weak spots and solidifies.

The idea is for the material to work whether the plane is sitting in a hanger (and it's bumped by a truck) or in mid-flight. The only issue with mid-flight damage is the cold temperature at high altitudes. Sub-zero temps may "complicate" the hardening process.

And the material isn't providing just a temporary fix. According to the researcher, "It could be sitting in an aircraft's structure for quite long periods of time, maybe years."

Wind, Solar, now Tornado Power

A Canadian scientist has a plan to draw power from man-made tornadoes, reports LiveScience (via MSNBC). According to Louis Michaud's idea, an open air 200-meter-wide "arena" would serve as the tornado's platform. When the platform is heated and a vortex is created, a tornado reaching "several miles into the sky" would show up. At the sides of the arena, wind turbines would generate electricity.

Pound360 has two questions. One, could these tornadoes knock birds (airplanes?) out of the sky? Two, what if one of the tornadoes escapes!? Imagine one of these things skips out of the arena and bounces through the nearest town. Bad news. And how loud would they be?

Another issue to consider is how the platform is heated. Michaud suggests exhaust from a power plant, but there's got to be a greener way. Solar thermal perhaps?

Cyborg Domination Plot Takes Shape

The British military recently launched the final component of its global satellite communications network. The ominous name of this project? Skynet. Not impressed? Not quivering with fear? We at Pound360 are. We at Pound360 remember the Terminator movies where a defense system called "Skynet" turned on humankind and set off to destroy it with nuclear weapons and walking, killing computers called Terminators.

Still not terrified? According to the BBC, the British system makes it so "computers can talk directly to computers." Not only that, Skynet can control attack aircraft, zoom in with its cold digital eyes on any street corner in the world and its super secure. Skynet is reinforced "to withstand any interference - attempts to disable or take control of the satellites - and any efforts to eavesdrop on their sensitive communications."

Scared yet? Skynet allows computers to talk to each other so they can eventually conspire against us. Not only that, when they're ready, the united computers can hunt us down with assault planes, there's nowhere we can hide and we couldn't hack into the satellite to stop it if we wanted to.

[Cue Terminator theme music.]

Now go read more about Skynet at Wikipedia.

Gasoline from Algae More than a Gimmick?

Regular readers of Pound360 know we're big fans of using algae to create energy. Recently we discussed how hydrogen can be captured from massive algae vats to power cities (if they can get the cost of the process low enough, of course).

But a San Diego company, Sapphire Energy, is working on crude oil made from algae, reports New Scientist. Yes, they claim, this stuff can "go right into today's oil pipeline" and be refined into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, anything you want!

Sounds too good to be true. Well, we're sure they can do it, but what kind of scale can we expect? Will it be enough to make a dent in the 20 million barrels we Americans consume each day?

According to the New Scientist write up, the company expects to hit a 10,000 barrel-per-day production clip by 2013. And it doesn't mention anything about cost. Does it cost $10 to make a gallon of algae gas? Well, if prices keep rising the way they have been lately, it might make sense.

Nations Take New Look at Beaming Power from Space

The idea: Set up a massive satellite orbiting geosynchronously, 22,000 above the surface of the earth, to gather solar energy and beam it back to Earth. It's not a joke. Researchers in India and Japan are fast at work on making this happen, reports CNN. The US looked at this decades ago, but of course abandoned the idea. It would take serious vision to make this work (for example, someone would have had to understand we're only running out of fossil fuel and oil would be over $120 per barrel in the near future), something procrastinating, short-sighted politicians (which is almost every one of them) don't have.

Although the price tag for orbital solar power (we just made up that term) is in the high hundreds of billions (for the satellite, the launches of materials into space and the station back on earth to collect the energy), there's serious potential here. There's more solar energy in one kilometer of space than all of the known oil reserves on Earth. So here's where the vision comes in. One expert told CNN, "The country that takes the lead on space solar power will be the energy-exporting country for the entire planet for the next few hundred years."

Here's a thought. Imagine if, in the future, all electrical devices were capable of absorbing power from high-orbit energy satellites, just like we use satellites for cell phones today. Imagine the possibilities.

Already experts suggest energy satellites could power military operations in the field and beam juice to natural disaster areas.

Scientist Have Developed Paper Stronger than Cast Iron

Research teams in Sweden and Japan have come up with material that resembles paper, but has the strength of cast iron, reports the NY Times. The super-paper was developed using nanofibrils and appropriately dubbed nanopaper.

The stuff probably won't turn up in a school kid's notebook. The idea is to use nanopaper as a construction material, perhaps to reinforce thin walls. Pound360 wonders if you couldn't armor-plate a vehicle, or person with this stuff.

Discover Mag Featurs '3 Amazing Science projects'

A recent piece at Discover Magazine looks at some "amazing" research projects happening right now around the world.

First, researchers at Raytheon Sarcos in Salt Lake City are working on a hydraulically-powered exo-skeleton. No, it's not like an Iron Man suit (though the Discover piece mentions that), it's more like the suit Sigourney Weaver's Ripley character used to fight the queen in Aliens. Of course, the US Military is backing development of the suit. And though it may help in loading bombs onto fighter aircraft, it won't be of much use in the slums of Sadr City since the suit requires a power cable to be plugged into the wall. Do they even have power in Baghdad now?

Next, scientists are building a telescope out of a one-kilometer block of ice about a mile beneath the surface of the South Pole. Almost sounds like something out of a movie doesn't it? The cube, fitted with sensors, may pick up neutrinos from deep space as they interact with ice molecules. By tracking these interactions, researchers "should identify the locations of violent cosmic events—and perhaps locate exotic new objects that are invisible to ordinary telescopes."

Finally, 150 miles of the coast of Norway, the Sleipner complex (named after Odin's magical eight-legged horse in Norse mythology, see pic in this posting) is successfully storing CO2 deep below the ocean floor in a "porous sandstone formation capped by impervious rock." Sound expensive to Pound360, but it's cost effective enough to beat Norway's taxes on greenhouse-gas emissions.

You've Got to See this Flying Machine…

The first thing Pound360 thought when we saw this killer flying machine was, wow that looks like something out of our GI Joe action figure collection from 1987. And few things thrill us more than seeing our childhood toys come to life.

What we have here is pretty much a jet-powered set of person-sized wings. With one of these things strapped on, you can fly up to 185 MPH.

Company Launches Brew-Your-Own Ethanol Machine

A company called E-Fuel just released the $10,000 "MicroFueler", a machine that brews 35 gallons of ethanol per week for as low as $1 per gallon. This according to a report at Reuters. All you have to do is feed it sugar (10-14 pounds to make a single gallon, according to an NY Times report on the story). No, sugar's not free (about $.20 per pound, according to the Times). But E-fuel is working on distributing surplus supplies of "inedible sugar" (which costs about 2.5 cents per pound) to MicroFueler owners for cheap.

Check out this picture of the MicroFueler at the CNET.co.uk. Is it just Pound360, or does this adorable little machine seem like a giant Easy Bake oven for people that absolutely must prove they're the greenest family on the block?

E-fuel's goal is to "break the traditional ethanol system." Their competitive advantage (over traditional ethanol refineries) is using "special fine filters" to separate water from fuel. Most ethanol plants must distil the water, a costly process. Oh, they sidestep the whole insanity of using corn for fuel, too.

One major problem of note for would-be MicroFueler buyers: According to the Times article, it's illegal in the United States to fuel a car with pure ethanol (unless you're driving a Formula One racer or, go figure, a tractor).

Energy Crunch: Algae May be the Answer

On a recent edition of Australia's Science Show, they looked at how researchers are working on a cost-effective way to squeeze hydrogen out of algae. In massive quantities, this process can power entire cities.

Here's how it works.

Typically when plants convert sunlight into energy, they release oxygen. Basically, they use the sun's radiation to split water (H2O or hydrogen dioxide) into its elemental pieces hydrogen and oxygen. Normally, plants combines the hydrogen with CO2 (a greenhouse gas) to create the energy they need to survive.

Now, if you deplete algae of sulfur, they modify this process so instead of combining hydrogen with CO2, they combine oxygen with CO2 to get the energy they need. In that case, Hydrogen is the byproduct.

This is a win-win since the algae pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere and it also creates a renewable energy source.

Algae can be cultivated in "square box-type bio-reactors" anyplace they fit (for example, on non-arable land so it doesn’t interfere with the food supply). These bio-reactors are big, up to a square kilometer each. And it would take 33 of them to power the city of Queensland (population 4.2 million) for a year.

Here's the problem.

Currently the conversion efficiency of the algae-hydrogen process is just 1 percent (in other words, one percent of the sun's energy gets converted into hydrogen). If this is going to be a commercially viable process, the efficiency level needs to reach 7 percent.

Controversy Erupts Over Miraculous 'Pixie Dust'

When someone loses an arm, leg, ear or finger, it's supposed to be gone forever. But the BBC reported a hobby store worker, Lee Spievak, was able to regrow his finger tip after it was severed in a model plane accident.

Spievak claims to have used "pixie dust" sent to him by his brother, Alan, who "was working in the field of regenerative medicine," read the BBC article. Thanks to the dust, Spievak's finger was miraculously restored completely, including full sensation and finger prints.

The pixie dust is actually an "extra cellular matrix" culled from the bladder of pigs. It sounds like something out of a witch's recipe book, doesn't it?

Well that may be exactly where it belongs.

According to the London Times, the BBC is "backtracking" on the story. As it turns out, "the claims had not been substantiated by any kind of scientific publication." Not only that, the injury Spievak suffered were superficial. "Such injuries are renowned for self-healing," reported the Times. The icing on the cake, Lee Spievak's brother Stephen is the "chief scientist" for Acell, a biotech company.

A final suspicious element of the story, "exactly the same claims had been published in American media outlets in February 2007 - again featuring Lee Spievak."

Public relations stunt or medical breakthrough? Pound360 suspects the former.

Computer Breakthrough May Power Next-Gen Artificial Intelligence

Hewlett-Packard researchers have created a working "memristor," that's a super-tiny "electrical resistor with memory properties," reports the NY Times.

What's incredible about this chip is it breaks the binary barrier. Computer processors have been limited to story data in 1s and 0s, but the memristor (pretty lame name) can store a "vast array of intermediate values," which "allows them to function like biological synapses and makes them ideal for many artificial intelligence applications."

Memristors were predicted in 1971 by University of California electrical engineer, Leon Chua. Pound360 wonders whether or not the honorable Mr. Chua has kids. If so, we hope for their sake the mother named them.

The initial crop of working memristors are about 15 namometers in size, but they may shrink to four nanometers in time. That's pretty small, people. For reference, an atom is about .1 nonometers.

Will we see memristor-charged robots in the home anytime soon? Well, the good news is that "they can be made in the same kinds of semiconductor factories that the chip industry now uses." However, they're still pretty slow. Slower than conventional memory chips.

Typical Car's Engines Only Utilize 15% of Energy in Gas

Part of the problem with gas engines is how inefficient they are. According to a report at CNN, just 15 percent of the energy in gas "makes its way to the wheels." That's due to imperfect engine timing, spacing and other factors.

Also, many of a car's systems (steering, air conditioning for example) are powered by hydraulic systems that draw their energy from the engine. By "electrifying" these systems, fuel efficiency could be raised 10 percent.

Of course, the problem with all improving the precision of a gas engine and electrifying a cars systems is the cost. Even if an auto company had the courage to toss out an expensive, super-efficient vehicle, there's no guarantee enough people will buy it to keep shareholders happy.

The good news is some manufacturers are pushing ahead with innovations. Lookout for this acronym: HCCI. It stands for "homogenous charged compression ignition." It's a gas engine design that mimics diesels. According to CNN, "several car companies" are working on this. It should improve fuel efficiency by about 15 percent.

The Strange Race for Industrial Spider Silk

German scientists announced a breakthrough in the race to produce synthetic spider silk, reports the BBC. Scientists are interested in coming up with a way to reproduce spider silk since its five-times stronger than steel, elastic and biodegradable.

Not only can super heroes swing through Manhattan on ropes made of spider silk, but imagine belts and t-shirts made out of this stuff. A single belt, or pair of shoe laces would last a family for generations.

Using new techniques, the German team is able to both observe how spiders make silk and "mimic this process." Spiders produce silk by forcing water-soluble proteins through small holes on their backside known as spinnerets. The German scientists produced silk by cultivating spider silk proteins from bacteria and forcing them through "channels etched into glass." These channels mix in salt solution (which condenses the protein) before spitting out a single, strong fiber.

However, we're not done yet. Said one British expert, none of the German team's results "were of a particularly high quality." However, the team's research "adds a piece to the puzzle."
In the past, researchers have used some very bizarre methods to recreate spider silk. For example, a Canadian team implanted a spider gene into goat eggs so the animals would produce spider silk in their milk. Pound360 is not making this up. According to the BBC, "the technique was successful but the company later abandoned the research." The report didn't explain exactly why the research was abandoned.

Pound360 wonders if it had something to do with the occasional monster goat being born. Come on, there had to have been a couple goats with eight legs or ten eyes, right?

'The world's last great source of carbon-based fuel'?

We're getting pretty desperate on this planet for stuff we can burn to create energy. The latest pursuit? "Flammable ice." This according to a report at New Scientist.

Beneath some permafrost and stretches of ocean floor lie frozen methane hydrates. If we can find an efficient way to mine this stuff, we may have a new fuel source on our hands. Japan, which has long searched for a homespun energy source is leading research in this field.

But caution is urged. "Disturbing the hydrates" could lead to a chain reaction causing seaborne natural disasters like tsunamis. Scotland is thought to have been hit by a tsunami 8000 years ago after a "sudden release" of gas from beneath the sea floor.

Innovation Converts Rainfall into Energy

French scientists are at work on panels that convert the mechanical energy from rainfall into electricity, reports National Geographic in this video feature (via Seed's Daily Zeitgeist). A write-up on the story is also available at Physorg.com.

With an innovation like this, made cheap and easy to manufacture, societies may have clean, renewable energy rain or shine.

How does this work? When a raindrop falls on a panel manufactured to convert mechanical into electric energy (generally known as piezoelectric material), tiny vibrations are created. Those vibrations generate an electrical charge that can be captured, explains Physorg.com.

A while back, Pound360 recalls a story about walkways that could capture energy from pedestrians. So it seems that almost anything can be tapped to generate energy. Again, the key is to make the technology cheap and easy to manufacture.