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Jim Meaney, owner of Cansolair Inc. displays how he converts pop cans into a powerful solar heating panel.
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http://www.ted.com At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at hi...
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Does your government have an Internet kill-switch? Read our guide to Guerrilla Networking and be prepared for when the lines get cut.
Given enough time and preparation, your ham radio networks could even be adapted into your own ad-hoc network using Packet Radio, a radio communications protocol that you can use to create simple long-distance wireless networks to transfer text and other messages between computers. Packet Radio is rather slow and not particularly popular (don't try to stream any videos with this, now), but it's exactly the kind of networking device that would fly under the radar.
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The idea is to twist radio waves like corkscrews and create multiple subfrequencies, distinguished by their degree of twistedness. Each subchannel carries discrete data sets. “You can tune the wave with a given frequency as you normally do, but there is also a fingerprint left by the twist,” Tamburini says. He and Swedish colleague Bo Thidé hit upon the approach while studying waves warped by the immense gravity of black holes. This past June, the scientists set up a custom dish in Venice and successfully broadcast video encoded in both twisted and normal radio waves across St. Mark’s Basin.
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Concentrated solar therman power would be a benign type of energy that can actually replace nuclear reactors.
All that is needed is a sunny location and concentrating mirrors. The heat achievable is several hundred degrees, quite comparable to that generated in nuclear reactors. It can therefore drive the same type of steam turbines and electric generators.
The most important thing about the sun's energy is its abundance. In just six hours, more energy from the sun reaches the Earth's deserts than is consumed by all of humanity in an entire year. Consequently, it would take a relatively small area of desert land to produce all the electric power the world consumes.
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The Kinecthesia is a Kinect wired to a set of motors that allows the blind to navigate a room or open space, relying on feedback through the motors to assess objects in their path.
The project, created by University of Pennsylvania students Eric Berdinis and Jeff Kiske, is worn like a belt and can sense objects in 3D space.
Obviously this is a bit clunky – the Kinect isn’t quite wearable just yet. They’re working on 2.0 of the project, using a slimmed-down Kinect removed from its case and a new processor, the Beagleboard (rather than the Beagleboard XM).
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THE world may soon be able to buy one of the Far North's most controversial yet revolutionary inventions.
The Lutec draws its power from a bank of batteries, with the motor turning due to powerful permanent magnets at its core being attracted and then repulsed from steel cores of fixed coils.
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The article dates back to August 2010. I am not holding my breath for this one, but it would be neat if they actually got their stuff together and came out with a working product...
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http://earthship.com/Electricity/Electricity-from-the-sun-and-the-wind Vertical Axis Windmill. Highly efficient. 4th generation of vertical axis windmills as... researched and developed by Earthship Biotecture.
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This video is in Turkish so don't expect to understand very much of what is said - but it is fascinating to watch the electric airplane do its thing...
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German aircraft company e-volo has accomplished what it claims is the world's first manned flight of an electric multicopter.
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Ionized plasmas like those in neon signs and plasma TVs can sterilize water and make it antimicrobial as well, according to researchers studying the potential to use inexpensive plasma-generating devices to create sterile water in developing countries...
"Researchers have known plasmas will kill bacteria in water. Now, a new experiment shows that water treated with plasma killed all the E. coli bacteria that were added to it within a few hours of treatment and still killed 99.9 percent of the bacteria added after it sat for a week."
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THE wrong kind of wind? It’s a phrase that haunts those desperately trying to justify wind farms in Britain. However, apologists for the giant turbines now face the unpalatable truth that structures designed to operate in windy conditions literally fell flat on their faces when the wind became a bit too strong.
My comment: Check out D B Parker's SandPiper 3 Spiral Airfoil and the Dynasphere from Earthships (further down). They rotate more slowly. Spiralairfoil also has an interesting graph of power diagrams on their site
showing that the SandPiper produces higher energy per swept area than those airplane propeller types, at lower speeds of rotation ...
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Intel and Micron have announced the creation of a 128 gigabit flash die. An SSD built from such parts could pack 2 TB into a 2.5" drive.
Intel and Micron's joint venture IMFT has announced that it has produced a 128Gb die. A package combining eight such dies together would be small enough to fit on a fingertip and boast an unprecedented 128GB capacity. Mass production will start in the first half of next year, and devices using the new dies are likely to start shipping in 2013.
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For more eco ideas follow us on: http://www.facebook.com/ecoideasnet Can a plastic bottle full of water become a 60W lightbulb? Check out this simple and rev...
Someone has been spreading the word on this in the slums of the Philippines ... and now the UN is catching on...
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Most of the talk about renewable energy is aimed at electricity production. However, most of the energy we need is heat, which solar panels and wind turbines cannot produce efficiently.
To power industrial processes like the making of chemicals, the smelting of metals or the production of microchips, we need a renewable source of thermal energy. Direct use of solar energy can be the solution, and it creates the possibility to produce renewable energy plants using only renewable energy plants, paving the way for a truly sustainable industrial civilization.
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This is a rather long article advocating the use of solar heat (concentrated solar power) in industrial processes, where heat, not necessarily electricity, is required. This kind of use is still very much in its infancy...
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A pendulum that is moved with comparably little effort does much of the work of pumping water here.
Based on a new principle discovered by Veljko Milkovic, the pump has much greater efficiency in terms of work input vs. output than usual water pumps.
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Front on view of the SandPiper in action, because of the shutter speed at times it appears the SandPiper is barely moving when in reality it is flowing fine,...
De Be Parker of Spiral Foil is getting ready to start producing his highly efficient, even in low wind conditions, (and bird-safe) wind generator in small series... his website is
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this is an instructional video taking you through all the processes of the improved biogas plant construction. plant is in kampala, Uganda.
Biogas could do much to improve living conditions in Africa, and to allow the natural vegetation (trees) to re-grow as they are no longer continually cut down for cooking fuel.
Biogas is basically methane produced from organic waste material. After the gasification process, the material remaining is a perfect fertilizer that can be used in gardening...
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High on a mountainside in the Peruvian Andes – 9,000 feet above sea level – sits a modest adobe schoolhouse that is a lot safer for students and teachers than it was six months ago, thanks in part to the efforts of some Stanford students and their...
The school retrofit involved wrapping the walls in sheets of geomesh, a molded plastic grid resembling construction or chain link fencing. Geomesh is commonly used for stabilizing slopes and preventing soil erosion.
Using wooden blocks to stand in for adobe bricks, the students had constructed a model building on a tabletop, and then simulated an earthquake by shaking the table until the model collapsed. The next video clip featured two model buildings side by side, but on one the walls had been covered with mosquito netting to simulate the geomesh.
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Zero Motorcycles recently unveiled the first mass-produced electric motorcycle capable of traveling more than 100 miles, breaking down one of the long-standing obstacles to consumer adoption.
Finally - electric motorcycles that can go a decent distance. 88 miles (or 140 km) per hour speed isn't too bad either.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The sun's abundant energy, if harvested in space, could provide a cost-effective way to meet global power needs in as little as 30 years with seed money from governments...
I link this one as an example of how *not* to do it.
Concentrated solar power can do it. There is no lack of energy, even at ground level. Check out a map that shows how large an area of the Sahara desert would have to be covered with solar collector mirrors to produce all the energy needed for Europe ... and for the entire World. You will see why we shouldn't be going the satellite route for energy.
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