Onions generate electricity
Gills Onions produces up to 300,000 pounds of peels a day. Rather than waste them, the California company is now using the refuse to run its processing facility. Engineers installed machinery at the plant to grind and press the peels into 30,000 gallons of onion juice, which is fed into an anaerobic digester to produce methane that powers two 300-kw fuel cells. The system also presses the solid remains into 20 tons of onion cake that the company sells as cattle feed. Gills Onions expects the $9.5 million project, which earned this year’s top award from the American Council of Engineering Companies, to pay for itself within six years.
These diamonds were not separated at birth
Scientists disproved claims that two famous blue diamonds, both found in the same region of India in the 17th century, were cut from the same stone. The Hope Diamond, a 45.52-carat diamond at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and the 31.06-carat Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond, also on display at the museum until August, have strikingly similar blue color caused by traces of boron and emit nearly identical red-orange phosphorescence under ultraviolet light (shown left). But chemists at the Naval Research Laboratory, working with the Smithsonian, found differences in the atomic structures that prove they aren’t related, ending decades of speculation.
Dandelion – Enzyme = Tire
Scorned as a weed, the dandelion is a potential source of natural rubber, according to scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute in Munich, Germany. The white liquid that seeps from a broken dandelion stalk is natural latex, but the sap is ill-suited for industrial use because it immediately begins to harden. The researchers identified an enzyme in the plant that causes this rapid polymerization and found that the sap can produce five times more latex if the enzyme is chemically “turned off.” Dandelions might make an attractive backup as a rampaging fungus attacks rubber trees in Southeast Asia, where the vast majority of the world’s natural rubber is now grown.
Wireless Eyes
A team of MIT researchers has entered the race to develop an implant that can restore partial vision to the blind. Unlike other implants under development, MIT’s system does not place electrodes directly on the retina, which can damage the eye during implantation. Instead, the device stimulates nerves near the eyeball that carry visual information to the brain. A pair of eyeglasses, equipped with a camera, beams visual information and power to the chip. A coil around the iris relays the images to a chip attached to the side of the eyeball (above), which sends the data to electrodes implanted below the retina. The researchers won’t know what patients would “see” until they begin human trials in 2013.
Listening to Leaves
Western Washington University geophysicists are making localized air-pollution maps by tracking the magnetism of tree leaves. Car and some industrial pollution contains particles of magnetic iron oxide that stick to the leaves, making them magnetic.
Radar-friendly windmills
Thousands of megawatts’ worth of proposed wind farms in the U.S. have been blocked because aviation radar confuses the spinning turbines with aircraft. British defense firm QinetiQ and Danish turbine-maker Vestas have produced a turbine that minimizes radar returns by coating the turbine’s tower with radar-absorbent material and integrating stealthy composites into the blades.
World’s first inflatable seatbelt
Michigan-based Key Safety Systems has unveiled the world’s first inflatable car seatbelt, which enhances a traditional three-point shoulder belt with an airbag. When the vehicle detects a collision, the belt inflates with cold gas to five times its original width. The first belts will appear in Ford Explorers going into production this year.
Air cannon pirate deterrent
Commercial shipping vessels desperate for ways to defend themselves from pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia could soon have a nonlethal way to fight back. The Buccaneer, built by Wales-based BCB International, is a deck-mounted weapon that allows besieged sailors to disable attacking ships. The compressed-air device launches a coiled rope over a quarter-mile.
A parachute attached to one end of the rope controls the descent so that the rope lies across the surface of the water, entangling the propeller shaft of the threatening vessel. Many nations bar commercial ships from being armed, and adding weapons often increases insurance rates because of the risk of accidents. The Buccaneer is an attractive alternative to firearms.
Paper batteries
Scientists at Stanford University recently developed a method to store energy in ordinary paper by coating it with ink infused with carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires. These nanomaterials are great conductors because their one-dimensional structures move electricity efficiently. The result: lightweight, flexible batteries and capacitors.
Melting diamonds with lasers
Just how tough are diamonds? In a coordinated effort to determine exactly how diamonds react in extreme environments, two teams of physicists blasted samples of the gem with powerful lasers—the Janus laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Omega laser at the University of Rochester. The lasers created shock waves of pressure 40 million times the Earth’s atmospheric pressure, melting the diamonds. The researchers then tweaked the lasers to gradually decrease the temperature and pressure to see when solid diamond would re-form. At 11 million times the pressure on Earth, pieces of diamonds began to appear on the surface of the liquefied carbon. The dual experiments lend credibility to a theory that gas giants like Uranus and Neptune have oceans of liquid carbon that are dotted with floating icebergs of diamonds. The data could also encourage more extreme industrial uses for diamonds.
Solar roof shingles
The complex installation of solar panels can be off-putting to many homeowners. To open the market to more people, Dow Chemical created thin-film photovoltaic solar panels that are the size and shape of ordinary asphalt shingles. Installation is easy: They can be nailed into the roof like conventional shingles. Plus, the solar shingles are healthier for homes than solar panels because they don’t use elaborate racking systems that penetrate a roof. Sales of the Powerhouse Solar Shingles are expected to begin late this year.
Stickiness with an on/off switch
Researchers at Cornell University have developed a way to produce instant adhesion that can be activated with a switch. The technique relies on surface tension produced by water droplets as they’re forced through microscopic holes. The charge from a 9-volt battery pumps water through the team’s device, creating a bond; reversing the voltage pulls droplets back through the holes and into a reservoir, releasing the surface. A 1000-hole prototype supports about 70 paperclips; a square-inch device with millions of small holes could support 15 pounds.
Bird-beak compasses are widespread
Many birds have nerve branches filled with iron in their upper beak, enabling them to navigate using the “feel” of Earth’s magnetic fields. German researchers confirmed that these specialized dendrites, first detected in homing pigeons, also exist in birds such as robins, warblers and even chickens, which don’t migrate. This suggests the extra sense appeared early in avian evolution.
A single ion tells time
A single aluminum ion, vibrating a quadrillion times a second, is the basis for a new “quantum logic” clock developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. A prototype of the clock remains accurate to within a second every 3.7 billion years—significantly better than the current U.S. civilian time standard, a cesium fountain clock accurate to within a second every 100 million years. The General Conference on Weights and Measures, based in France, may consider the design for a new international time standard. Such precise clocks are used to synchronize telecommunications networks and deep-space communications and to assist satellite navigation and positioning. They could also lead to new types of space-based gravity sensors, used to locate underground natural resources.
Hot chili grenade
The Indian military has weaponized the world’s hottest chili pepper, the bhut jolokia, or “ghost chili.” The infamous pepper rated at more than a million Scoville units, the scientific measurement of a chili’s heat. In comparison, jalapeño peppers max out at 8000 units. Compounds from the chili will be used in a hand grenade that, like tear gas, can overwhelm an aggressor.
Skin doubles as computer hardware
As portable electronics shrink, our fingers become too large to press tiny buttons and our eyes too weak to read small screens. A computer science Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University has come up with a novel solution: use the human body as a proxy. To work, the device projects a screen and keypad onto the skin. Piezoelectric vibration sensors detect taps and finger flicks and translate them into commands. A prototype of the “Skinput” system straps to the upper arm, but the researchers expect future versions to shrink to the size of a wristwatch.
Methane eaters on Mars?
A team of researchers working with the SETI Institute has found creatures in a desolate Arctic spring whose existence hints at a new kind of life that could possibly thrive on Mars. The water of Lost Hammer, a spring on Canada’s Axel Heiberg Island, contains bubbles of methane that steadily rise to the surface. While searching in the frozen pool for organisms that emit methane, the researchers instead found anaerobic bacteria that utilize methane as a source of energy and carbon. The spring’s mix of methane and ice mirrors past conditions on Mars, leading the team to speculate that similar life forms could have evolved there.
Airplanes can trigger rainstorms
Findings from the National Center for Atmospheric Research show that airplanes can trigger rain or snow simply by flying through clouds composed of supercooled water droplets. As the droplets pass over propellers or wings and into the cooler wake, they freeze and fall to the ground, creating distinctive “hole punch” clouds that are sometimes seen in the sky.
Rapid hands-free climbing device
Atlas Devices has created a climbing aid for the Navy that can hoist up to 500 pounds with the press of a button. Personnel can use the Power Ascender to quickly scale the hulls of vessels during boarding operations or to drop from helicopters without rescue booms. The rope weaves through the Ascender between rollers on a spindle: Rotate the spindle one way and the climber ascends; a button changes its direction for the descent. Rock climbers, look elsewhere—Atlas is only marketing the device to the military and to civilian first responders.
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