Tuesday, 18 December 2012

Philips Releases an Updated A19 LED Bulb That is Better Looking and More Efficient Read more: Philips Releases an Updated A19 LED Bulb That is Better Looking and More Efficient

The new A19 ditches the gray cooling fins and yellow phosphor that gave the previous version its industrial appearance. But the changes aren’t all aesthetic; the previous A19 consumed 12. 5-watts and the new version consumes only 11-watts. In addition to the new styling, the bulb is also more dimmable than the previous version, with all of the great efficiency benefits that LED provides.
Philips isn’t spilling the beans on the new technology used to create the bulb, employing what they call AirFlux technology to create the sleek new look. No details have been released on what the technology involves, but it is clear that it makes distinct visual improvements. The bulb will come in soft white and daylight temperatures, produces 830 lumens, and will have a retail price of $24.97.


PAPER USB DRIVE CAN BE RECYCLED AFTER USE


intelliPaper® opens doors that have never been open before. Our patented process embeds a small silicon chip inside ordinary paper and turns it into a USB drive. These drives are inexpensive and environmentally friendly. intelliPaper USB drives are transforming printed materials.
intelliPaper® currently burns customer-directed information onto business products as part of manufacturing, and ships them to marketing customers in large quantities only. Indiegogo support will help us bring this same technology to average people for personal use at a low cost—technology that has never been available on a small scale before.

Source-http://www.indiegogo.com/intellipaper

Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Sculptor Michael Grab uses patience and balance to defy gravity on earth


Make no mistake about it: no tricks are employed in creating these breathtaking sculptures. The only ‘glue’ holding these stone configurations together is the very gravity they seem to defy.

Grab began stone balancing in 2008, and has since gained recognition in and around Boulder, Colorado for his amazing sculptures. He originally began the hobby to fend off boredom, but Grab now regularly uses stone balancing as an artistic and spiritual outlet. He says that one of the keys to stone balancing, in addition to incredible patience and a sense of balance, is finding the natural grooves and indentions the rocks provide.

Grab is not be the first to discover the art of stone balancing, explaining that many cultures across the globe have employed the art for centuries, but he is definitely making a name for himself as he shares his creations with the world through his site, Gravity Glue.



http://www.gravityglue.com/



Tuesday, 4 December 2012

Africa’s largest solar power plant worth $400m to be located in Ghana


UK firm, Blue Energy, today December 4, 2012 announced plans to build a photovoltaic (PV) solar power plant in Ghana, according to British media reports.
Both the BBC and the Guardian report that the company says the project which is worth $400 million will be the largest solar power plant in Africa when completed.
Blue Energy, the renewable energy developer behind the $400 million project said the 155MW solar PV plant will be fully operational by October 2015, the Guardian reported.
Construction works of the plant begins by the end of 2013 and will be located in the Western Region near the village of Aiwiaso, officials say.
The company says it will install some 630,000 PV modules.
The Nzema project will be able to provide electricity to more than 100,000 homes, the BBC reported.
Douglas Coleman, the project’s director at Blue Energy, told the Guardian that the company was using solar PV instead of the distinctive ‘troughs’ used in concentrated solar power technology seen in north Africa and the Middle East in part because PV only requires light, not direct sunlight.
By Ekow Quandzie

Ten Times the Turbine

Doug Selsam's Sky Serpent uses an array of small rotors to catch more wind for less money
WIND WIZARD Doug Selsam sits beneath a prototype 25-rotor turbine that can produce three kilowatts of power. The other end is held aloft by a balloon. John B. Carnett

Sky Serpent
Cost to Develop: $250,000
Time: 9 years
Prototype | | | | | Product
Today’s largest wind farms are the size of small towns, made up of turbines 30 stories tall with blades the size of 747 wings. Those behemoths produce a great deal of power, but manufacturing, transporting, and installing them is both expensive and difficult, and back orders are common as the industry grows by more than 40 percent a year. The solution, says inventor Doug Selsam, is to think smaller: Capture more power with less material by putting 2, 10, someday dozens of smaller rotors on the same shaft linked to the same generator.
“The wind-turbine design out there right now is a thousand years old,” Selsam points out, as he lets one of his carved wooden blades speed to a blur in the makeshift wind tunnel he’s made of the alley behind his Fullerton, California, apartment. He brainstormed his multi-rotor approach in the early ’80s, in a fluid-dynamics class at the University of California at Irvine. “The textbook said, this single-rotor turbine design is the most power you can get. I knew then it wasn’t right. More rotors equals more power.”

Of course, more rotors also means more-complicated physics. The key to increasing efficiency is to make sure each rotor catches its own fresh flow of wind and not just the wake from the one next to it, as previous multi-rotor turbines have done. That requires figuring out the optimal angle for the shaft in relation to the wind and the ideal spacing between the rotors. The payoff is machines that use one tenth the blade material of today’s megaturbines yet produce the same wattage.
How the Sky Serpent Works: Aligned at the optimal angle, each rotor receives its own wind, increasing efficiency.
Selsam never did graduate from Irvine, but over the next couple decades he kept investigating novel wind designs, and by 1999, after an extended hiatus as a heavy-metal guitarist (he claims that the band Metallica stole its name from his group, Metallix), he turned to wind development full-time. In 2003, he landed a $75,000 grant from the California Energy Commission to develop a 3,000-watt turbine—his seven-rotor design met the challenge—and he has now sold more than 20 of his 2,000-watt dual-rotor turbines to homeowners. He’s built them all in his suburban garage.
“We’ve tested all kinds of wacko things that people think should make a lot of wind energy,” says Brent Scheibel, a former turbine tester for General Electric who now runs a wind-testing facility in Tehachapi, California. “The laws of physics take most of them out of the equation very early. Doug’s idea is one of the very, very few that I’ve seen that actually has a strong chance of making strides into the commercial world.”
Selsam says two rotors is just a start. Someday he sees his multi-rotor turbines stretching for miles across the sky. “We can go big,” he says, “and make turbines using this technique that are way more powerful than anything in GE’s wildest imagination.”

Saturday, 1 December 2012

Disposable Paper Laptops


I quite agree with Je Sung Park when he says that disposable cameras and cell phones have gained acceptance, so why don’t we take the next step and bring out a disposable computer. His Recyclable Paper Laptop is quite a raw version and could do with some refinement. It uses recycled paper or pulp material all packed in layers. This is so that you can easily replace the damaged portions (even corrugated paper will tear easy). The vibe of a Paper Laptop is intriguing, I kno eventually someone will figure out the tech bit, so let’s see who will take the bait.






THE UMBRELLA WITHOUT A CANOPY

Designers Je Sung Park and Woo Jung Kwon, have developed a unique umbrella that only consists of the handle and nothing else. The ‘Air Umbrella’ is a simple electronic device that takes in air from the bottom of the controller, and shoots it out at the top to create a ‘curtain’ of air that can repel raindrops. You can control the length of the stick and the size of the air canopy.
THE AIR-UNBRELLA WITH WIND POWER IS DESIGNED AND INNOVATIVE AND FIXED IDEA. FROM ITS REFINED AND CREATIVE DESIGN,NOT ONLY IT MAKES PEOPLE MORE CONVENIENT,BUT ALSO HELPS MORE ECO-FRIENDLY AS REDUCING THE USE OF PLASTIC BAG.