A Solution to Grid Issues

A common problem in today's society is how to efficiently manage the power grids.  There is no good way to store energy in a battery for use in peak hours.  And it is extremely difficult to manage all the possible sources of energy during the demand hours and in what amounts.  There are some batteries currently available to store energy, but they are extremely expensive and can only be recharged a very limited amount of times.  Researchers at Stanford University have created a battery that could have the potential to mitigate this problem.  They have created a high-efficiency nanomaterial batter electrode that can be recharged 40,000 times before there is any major decrease in charge capacity.  This is not a full working battery solution yet, but it holds lots of potential to be the solution.  The battery is based on the same idea of lithium-ion batteries.  It utilizes moving sodium, Na, and potassium, K, ions between electrodes.  But, this is cheaper.  The difference is this battery will use water-based electrolytes rather than the organic solvent-based electrolytes in lithium-ion batteries.  Price is greatly reduced because the materials are readily available and common.  83% of the battery charge capacity is kept over the 40,000 charge cycles.  Typical lead-acid batteries last a few hundred cycles and lithium-ion batteries usually last about 1,000 cycles.  These electrodes have a 99% efficiency!
There is a competing battery designed by a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.  The charge-capacity is greater by 40 milliampere hours per gram of material.  But, it is based on copper and therefore significantly more expensive!
Stanford is working on producing a full protoype of their battery.  So far, they have the cathode working, they only need to focus on the anode.  The implications of this are incredibly substantial.  If these batteries can store energy efficiently, it can help solve the grid management issues we have, including blackouts.  We currently have enough wind energy that could be harnessed in the great plains, but there is no way to move this energy to the rest of the country.  This battery could allow this energy to be stored and can increase the promise of alternative energy.

Eating Healthy Made Easy

A new app, The Eatery, has been designed that allows user to take a photo of their meal and upload it to their database to be rated as healthy or unhealthy by other users.  When one uploads a photo they are prompted immediately to rank other users photos in order to ensure all photos are ranked.  The extremes of the scales are discarded to provide a more average vote.  Nutritionists also periodically rank photos to make add some consistency to the system.
When a photo is uploaded the user is prompted to add a location and the time/meal is recorded.  This allows the system to plot where healthy and unhealthy meals are being eaten and for what meal.  This app is simpler to use than counting calories, providing more motivation to eat healthy.  One can visually see and get ranked feedback rather than only counting their calories, which many tend to leave some meals and snacks out.  It is also more reliable that using software programs that estimate the calories in a meal based on an image.  Providing feedback from actual people rather than a program is more realistic and people are more willing to listen to a person rather than a program.  This app also allows users to plot their own meal progress of healthy vs unhealthy meals.  The Eatery also can show other users where healthy and unhealthy meals have been eaten along with plotting where healthy and unhealthy districts are.  Statistically, this application can provide cities with data about the impact of certain restaurants on the eating habits of their citizens along with the location of food deserts.

No More Fingerprints!

A group of German scientists have come up with a new surface coating that will prevent smudges!  Think of all the things you have now that accumulate finger prints and smudges, phones, iTouch, iPad, computer tablets, etc., now image them fingerprint- free.  These scientists have realized that a rough surface is in fact best for repelling smudges.  They obtained a glass slide and held it over a candle.  The accumulation of soot from this candle on the slide were staked just correctly to produce the correct surface texture- 80% empty space and 20% soot spheres.  In order to prevent the soot from washing away, it was coated with a thin silica shell and then baked at 600 degress Centigrade.  Another problem with common anti-smudge screens is they are thick.  This smudge proof screen contains soot spheres that are 30 to 40 nanometers in diameter, and the silica shell is 25 nanometers thick, a total of 55 to 65 nanometers thick, that is all!  The scientists viewed the smudgeproof coated slide under a microscope and sprayed it with many greasy substances.  The result- they observed the particles bouncing up and down like ping-pong balls! (This is the picture shown here.)  The problem with this coating is that is does scratch and wear off eventually.  Although, they are working on this flaw and trying to correct it quickly.
This has many implications in society, not just getting rid of those annoying fingerprints on your phone.  This substance is so repellent, it has been referred to as "superhydrophobic."  This coating could be used on buildings so they could clean themselves, reducing costs and environmental impact.  It can even be used biomedically so that tools do not become clogged by water or fatty materials.  And even eyeglasses can use this technology.  Once perfected, we could find it on all of our technologies.

Autonomo

We have all seen SmartCars, their compact size is one of the major benefits.  Autonomo is a similar compact car theory, it is half the with of a regular car.  This would be perfect for crowded cities with wide-scale traffic problems!  These cars are smart in that they have recognition software that allows them to make decisions about movements.  An Autonomo can split a regular car lane with another Autonomo, allowing for very efficient usage of the existing road space.  Autonomos have object-recognition sensors that allow them to move safely in relation to each other and other vehicles.  The creator, Charles Rattray, commented on his design, "Every time it makes a decision to follow, change lanes or overtake it will take into account the performance characteristics of the vehicles around it.  The vehicle will constantly share those decisions with all other autonomous vehicles and work together to ensure safe, efficient transport.  That means a group of Autonomos will never swerve in front of an 18-wheeler that didn't have enough time to brake."  Eventually, the company would like to advance the technology enough so that the Autonomos could move in close proximity with each other, almost as if they were connected.  Volvo and other European car companies have already begun testing this technology, called road trains.
This technology is being explored by many car companies.  If these Autonomo like cars come into reality, they could be extremely beneficial to the roadways.  In crowded cities, rush hour extends through most of the afternoon.  In the town where my grandfather lives, about an hour outside of Seattle, Washington, they have signs at the exit for the town, "Shoulder driving ok" during specific hours.  These cars could cut the traffic in major cities drastically and also help to decrease the carbon footprint one has.

Paradigm Shift in Thermostats

Think of all the new revolutionary technology and all the fields in which innovation is occurring.  But the one field that has not had much reinvention is the field of thermostats.  A former employee of Apple, Mr. Nest, has designed his new thermostat, the Nest.  The Nest is a learning thermostat.  However, it is not only smart, it is sleek and a radical departure from the normal thermostat view.  The Nest is a small circular thermostat that sports a dome to cover the screen.  The input is similar to an iPod in that you must turn the dial and push the dome to make selections.  However, the most unique characteristic about this thermostat is its ability to “learn”.  For the first week after installation, you must manually adjust the temperature just as you would your typical thermostat.  Following the first week of programming, the thermostat will pick up on your routines and automatically adjust itself based on the times and temperatures you previously entered.  It also has a sensor to detect when no one is home and will drift outside the typical temperatures to a range set by you.  A second sensor tells when a person wanders by the thermostat.  When someone gets close, the LCD screen lights up and dims when a person walks away.

So what are the implications of this?  Well, it will save money, plain and simple.  Most people with programmable thermostats never bother to actually program them, and in doing so are wasting money.  The energy saved by a programmable thermostat is a rather large amount!  The Nest also tells the user how long it will take the house to reach the designated temperature you have just set.  This feature helps in disproving the common misnomer that if you blast the heat, the house will warm up faster.  This smart thermostat will waste less energy and in result, will save great amounts of money!  The thermostat also includes an eco-leaf that notifies the user when they are being ‘eco-friendly’ giving them an added incentive to use the thermostat.

Too Much DNA!

Watson and Crick discovered the first DNA molecule and the double helix many decades ago.  In 1990 the Human Genome Project began, a large, world-wide project to sequence the human genome.  After only 13 short years, the project was completed in 2003.  The entire human DNA code had been deciphered.  Now, the field of genetics, biotechnology, and DNA is developing at a drastic pace!
Watson and Crick had only dreamed of what could become of the DNA molecule.  In today's world, we are decoding DNA faster that we can analyze it.  This bottleneck is a growing problem in biotechnology.  The cost of sequencing a genome, and the speed of sequencing it as well, has decreased incredibly over the past few years.  The human genome is comprised of 3 billion bases of DNA in a set of chromosomes.  In July 2007, it cost $8.9 million to have your genome sequenced.  Last July this number was $10,500, a decrease by a factor of more than 800 in a short span of only four years!  The problem is, the analyzing speed has decreased by a factor of four in that same time.  The decrease in cost has lead to an inundation of DNA sequencing jobs, but no increase in the analysis of those.
It is important to sequence and analyze various human genomes because these genes and sequence of DNA can help us determine the causes of diseases and tell if they are genetic.  One of the most promising possibilities of analyzing DNA is to determine the causes of cancer.  However, this massive amount of decoded genome has created large amounts of genome data to store.  The problem is, we are also short on space to store that data.  Before, scientists would store as much data on a genome as possible in case more dtailed analyzing methods were developed later.  Then, the genomes could be reanalyzed with the more sophisticated technology.  But, if we run out of room, scientists can only save the bare minimums of new genomes, and possibly have to purge the old genomes.  Leaving us without evidence that could be extremely crucial later once more sophisticated technology is developed.

To Photoshop, or not to Photoshop...

The modern debate over the Adobe photo editing software, Photoshop, is whether or not to use it for body shaping.  Many of us dismiss the photos seen in the hottest magazines or in advertisements because it is common for them to be Photoshoped drastically.  Some people are worried that these images of size 0 and 1 women is adding to the pressure of young girls.  The concept is that these unrealistically slim models are being broadcast as "the norm" and creating self-image issues for vulnerable young teenage girls, leading to eating disorders and related psychological problems.
There has been a bill introduced in some European countries such as Norway, France and England mandating that digitally altered photos be labeled as such.  A professor and Doctoral student at Dartmouth University have used this concept and debate over Photoshop as inspiration for a computer program that measures the altered state of an image.  These two, Dr. Farid, and Eric Kee, have developed the software tool to measures just how much an image has been changed on a scale of 1 to 5.  This algorithm developed by Farid and Kee statistically measures how much the photo of one's face and body has been altered.  Interestingly enough, most of the pictures they used to create the algorithm were taken from websites of "professional Photoshopers" showing off their abilities.  The program simulates how a person would decide if an image has been altered.  In order to do this, they used many people to compare before-and-after Photoshoped images and rank them on a 1 to 5 scale.  These ratings the people gave images were used to train the software so it can accurately decide what altered-state rank to give the photo.
Potentially, either the labeling of altered pictures or this software program, could have drastic implications on society and the social pressures to look like a model.  However, some argue that there is already a decrease in Photoshop usage in the fashion and magazine industry.  One editor commented that it is alright to do simple touch-ups or changes, but mentioned, "Readers arent' fooled if you really sculpt the images.  If you're a good editor, you don't go too far these days.  If you give someone a face-lift, you're a fool."  So, it is up to you to decide, is it a good idea to label images? What could be the impact of this photo-alteration detection technology on society?