Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Pico Projector



Optima has produced a "Pico Projector," which is small enough to fit in your pocket. Being the first of this kind one person claims it to be the invention of the year. Perfect for dull moments to take it out and attach you ipod or iphone and listen to music or watch music videos. The optima is compatible with normal RCA cords along with USB. This new creation will create great ease for many impromptu situations. Many companies caught on to this new hot item and many variations have been created. Although the resolution is not "High Definition," it proves to be very strong. You must also consider that it stays in your pocket. All this is available to the public now for under 130 dollars.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/04/optoma-pico-projector-gets-pictured-specced-and-priced/

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Efficient Thin-Film Solar Cells


Scientists at MIT have just recently created more efficient ways to capture sunlight within thin-film solar cells. These solar cells are made of a new kind of silicon which are much more efficient and cost less. This new prototype combines a highly effective reflector on the back of a solar cell with an antireflective coating on the front. By adding silicon to these new types of solar cells, they can capture sunlight and produce electricity up to 15% more than the regular commercial cells. On modern solar cells each are backed with a metal layer which reflects light. Scientists backed surface of a silicon solar cell to make it so that it can capture and reflect sunlight. Scientists etch a series of ridges and troughs where on top they deposit a photonic crystal. The crystals make the light stay inside the cell longer increasing the chance of changing it into electricity. This new prototype can hopefully create enough electricity to where we now longer need power plants. This can help decrease the amount of pollution and decrease the effects of global warming.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Cancer nanobombs

Cancer is a serious problem and is hard to cure. Doctors usually use chemotherapy to get rid of some tumors that might spread throughout the body. Even if chemotherapy was to get rid of the tumors in the body there still would be major side effects.
Balaji Panchapakesan at the University of Delaware figured out a less risky way to get rid of tumors. He came up with the idea of Cancer Nanobombs. Cancer Nanobombs are tiny carbonNanotubes filled with water, which are injected into the area with the tumor. Then a laser light is zapped into the area causing the water inside the Nanotube to boil thus causing the Nanobombs to explode and kill any nearby cells.
Sure the Nanobombs will kill other cells along with the tumor cell but its better than the side effects of chemo.

sited: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16002-invention-cancer-nanobomb.html

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Monday, October 27, 2008

Brazil's Technology



Brazil bets on technology to control Amazon. Every move was being watched from up in the sky, when the pilot of Colombian drug-smuggling plane landed at a clandestine air strip in the vast Amazon rain forest. The pilot got caught by a high –tech spy plane. A high-tech spy plane helps the police arrest a criminal with evidence and with no doubt. The Brazilian police arrested the pilot minutes later and confiscated 300 kg of cocaine. After this, Marcelo de Carvalho Lopes, head of the Amazon Protection System, or Sipam said, “We can't be everywhere, the region is huge. So we need intelligence to focus our resources," On the walls of one large conference room at Sipam's flying saucer-like headquarters in Brasilia, are the latest images of the areas worst affected by logging, taken with infrared cameras from Air Force planes. The images will be used as evidence in court against hundreds of illegal loggers. Currently, only 8 percent of all fines for illegal logging are collected, according to the environment ministry. The high-resolution images also show paths where loggers plan to chop trees, giving authorities a chance to prevent deforestation before it happens. By the end of the year, Brazil will have scanned 86 percent of the Amazon. With the high-resolution images it will gain an edge in law enforcement and conservation, analysts said. The problem is that the drug smuggling cocaine gangs enter from Colombia by boat instead of a plane to sell in Brazil or en route to markets in Europe.


http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=brazil-bets-on-technology

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

PRD website

SORRY WEBSITE CONTAINING SOME CONTRIBUTING INFO


http://www.thermo.com/com/cda/product/detail/1,,10135709,00.html

Radeye PRD


Worried about gamma sickness or radiation sickness don't be due to the The RadEye PRD you can easily find out how much radiation is around you. The RadEye PRD or The RadEye Personal Radiation Detector is a high performance personal radiation detector.the RadEye is a good advance in hand held devices that can detect Gamma rays and x rays it also has a longer range compared to a regular dosimeter. the RadEye PRD is 5000 - 100000 times more sensitive than a typical electronic dosimeter. The main purpose of the Radeye PRD is to detect harmful substances in and around a certain area .

the RadEye PRD is equipped with a self alarming system witch will notify the operator if the amount of nuclear radiation detected in a certain area can be harmful to humans and or the environment lately the world has been having a problem which is know as the "orphan source"
this what they call it when gamma radiation appears in spots such as scrap yards and depots and other places which would be unlikely to have radiation under some peoples eyes.
This small hand held device can be thought of as maybe a hard device to use due to its long name FALSE. you see the device is actually quite simple to use with only three buttons on the screen to turn on you can simply press on and to view the radiation count in the room or within the vicinity of yourself you hold it and turn it what ever direction you would like to get an accurate and precise reading
I believe that this would is an ideal system and can be used to look out for the welfare and well being of people and the world

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Large Hadron Collider






After nine years of construction, the seventeen mile long scientific instrument/experiment known as the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) is prepared to change our understanding of the world. The LHC is an enormous particle accelerator that shoots two beams of subatomic particles (Hadrons) around a track of tubing in opposite directions and "collides" them together. By colliding these particles together scientists are able to use detectors constructed for the LHC to examine the particles created by colliding the Hadrons together. One of the main goals of the LHC is to simulate conditions after the Big Bang in order to dicover new information on the origin of mass. Another is to learn more about Higgs Particle. Higgs is one of the last undiscovered territories in modern science.




The Large Hadron Collider will also play a large role in how the internet might work in the future. The LHC will be capable of teaching us how to transmit large quantities of data through to the internet. When the LHC is at it's full capacity it will be able to put out 5 Gigabytes of data every 5 seconds, with an annual output of about 15 million gigabytes. Compared to the capabilities of bandwith now the LHC can possibly revolutionize the internet.


http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-lhc-may-change-internet

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Portable DNA testing Kit


Everyone has heard of the show CSI and the infamous Forensic lab that coincides with it. Well now part of that lab will be with them at the scene as there is a new technology available to faster conclude what happened at a crime scene. Now available is a portable DNA detector which is now the size of a briefcase, and weighs approximately 10 kilograms. At a field test site where the Palm Beach county sheriff's office set up a mock crime scene, the unit was brought along. The research unit collected blood samples at the scene place them in the machine and in six hours had a positive match between the sample and a database of DNA. One of the researches Mathies states "This enables them to find the person and get crucial evidence before he or she leaves the region or country or destroys the evidence." Mathies also talked about how this would be great if the suspect has every been processed previously because now a days Law Enforcement takes DNA and fingerprints upon being processed in, having the information in the database allows for instant match.
Using Fluorescent lights and other accessories rather than chemical and biochemical reactions allows the unit to be much smaller than it is in the lab. The only major problem they seem to be having with the machine is the sensitivity and the limited amount of samples it can handle in its lifetime.

Sited from:http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/21415/

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Clean-Coal debut in Germany

The worlds first coal-fired power plant designed to capture and store carbon dioxide was created. This plant used to excrete sulfurous smoke from the burning of brown coal. Located in Spremberg this new coal plant will be using a new technology called Carbon Capture and Storage. For CCS they will use there small 30 megawatt plant to burn lignite while it is in the air. This removes the nitrogen and it creates a cloud of smoke that contains Carbon Dioxide and water vapor. Three fourths of this cloud is recycled back into the boiler of the plant. They continue this cycle, which is known as oxyfuel. According to Vattenfall, the Swedish power company behind the plants operations, "continuing this cycle will remove nitrogen and water vapor, and leave wastes consisting of 98% carbon dioxide alone." To then get rid of the Carbon Dioxide they will cool it down to -28C and liquefy it. From there they take the liquid 150 miles northwest to be put 3000 meters below the ground. Vattenfall says that" all these processes reduce the overall efficiency of the plant." They also said there main goal was to eventually make a power plant with "absolute zero" pollution. Vattenfall said that they "hope by 2015 that they can get up to a 300-500 megawatt demonstration plant, and up to 1,000-megawatt commercial plants." Vattenfall said the main purpose of the new power plant was to decrease the amount of CO2 in the air and to decrease global warming.







Sited: http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/21397/

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Blog Assignment Due Dates

9/23/08 Mark Briganti comments/responses due 10/1/08
10/1/08 Justin Snow comments/responses due 10/8/08
10/8/08 Jordan Smith comments/responses due 10/15/08
10/15/08 Ray Beckly comments/responses due 10/22/08
10/22/08 Grishma Patel comments/responses due 10/29/08
11/5/08 Andrew Bregman comments/responses due 11/12/08