Audi have successfully made diesel fuel from carbon dioxide and water. German car manufacturer Audi has reportedly invented a carbon-neutral diesel fuel, made solely from water, carbon dioxide and renewable energy sources. And the crystal clear 'e-diesel' is already being used to power the Audi A8 owned by the country’s Federal Minister of Education and Research, Johanna Wanka.
The creation of the fuel is a huge step forward for sustainable transport, but the fact that it’s being backed by an automotive giant is even more exciting. Audi has now set up a pilot plant in Dresden, Germany, operated by clean tech company Sunfire, which will pump out 160 litres of the synthetic diesel every day in the coming months.
Their base product, which they’re calling 'blue crude' is created using a three-step process. This hydrogen is then mixed with carbon monoxide (CO), which is created from carbon dioxide (CO2) that’s been harvested from the atmosphere. Audi Find out more about how the fuel is made in the Sunfire video below: Can This 2,250-Foot Tower Produce Enough Clean Energy To Replace Power Plants? This Bracelet Could Shrink Your Energy Bill. Disease Warrior: Rampage. Hate ads on your game page? So do we! Ads are distracting, can get in the way of your gaming, and sometimes slow down your computer. Sign-up for Ad-Free Gaming and get rid of ads for as long as you choose.
Why does Armor Games have ads? Making original games costs a lot, and whenever you visit this website, we pay bandwidth charges. Ads help pay for these. Hate ads on your game page? Sign-up for Ad-Free Gaming and get rid of ads for as long as you choose. Why does Armor Games have ads? Ship Comparisons. ...And just how big was the IAS Excalibur from Crusade? Bloody big, that's how big it was! But that's just peanuts compared to ... er, the Imperial Super Star Destroyer from Star Wars at a full 19 kilometres, here show in comparison to the Enterprise-D.
At the other end of the scale, we have the fighters: the Rebel X-wing at 12.3m, the Y-wing at 23.4m, the Imperial TIE-X1 at 9.2m and the standard TIE at 6.03m, versus Starfleet's Type 7 Shuttle at 8.5m, Type 6 Shuttle at 6.4m, and the Type 15 Shuttlepod at 3.6m. And then there's theRed Dwarf, 6 miles (10 kilometres) long, also compared to the Enterprise-D.
But the Starbug is a much more manageable 21.3 metres in length, comparable to Starfleet's Danube class Runabout at 23.1 meters long. Firefly's Serenity is 63 metres long as compared with Star Trek's Danube class Runabout at 23.1 metres long. Stargate SG-1's Stargate is 6 metres in diametre as compared with Star Trek's Type 6 Shuttlecraft at 6.4 metres long. Displair Air Holograms Device. Displair is an interactive air hologram device that will literally blow your mind! It uses air to project images and as a result to produce a sharp display. Interesting is that the midair air holograms can be controlled with your hands and fingers. The combination with touch, gestures and customizable screen sizes makes this approach innovative and in future air holograms might be brought into our everyday lives. Check out the video to see more about how Displair works.Via:bitrebels.com.
Fungus Incubator Turns Plastic Garbage Into People Food. Latest Invention: 'Triton Oxygen Respirator Extracts Air Underwater' A brilliant invention yet a revolutionary. A new invention looks set to change Scuba and diving in general. It’s shocking task lies in the idea of microscopic, nano scale ‘artificial Gills’, can effectively separate the Oxygen from the water while diving, on demand. A series of tiny threads or strands have microscopic holes along their width, which are smaller than water molecules. It’s called the ‘Triton Oxygen Respirator‘ (Image Below), a miniature but incredible device that will do away for the need to move bulky tanks on dives, and allow the dives to last much, much longer than can be had with current equipment. The weight accumulations will help emergency responders to move around more calmly too without having to move bulky and heavy tanks around with them. The Scuba industry is thinking ahead onto commercial, private and military ships as a secure device expressed to all passengers and crew, aircraft too if they have to dive into the sea.
Source: Yanko Design Trend Hunter Comments. Atmos Clock History. After studying the design of the 400-Day Anniversary Clock -which was very popular during that era - Reutter made significant changes to that concept, to meet the small input power requirement he was looking for in his new clock design. Reutters modifications of the 400-Day Clock included changes to the escapement leverage to reduce the arc of the escapement as well as adding jewels to the bearings of the movement. His new clock ran safely and most importantly very reliably. His new clock design included a special device that would power his clock independently, using a substance that would react to the most sensitive changes in temperature and atmospheric conditions. That substance was mercury. He also designed a special glass tube similar to that of a thermometer for the mercury and encased it all inside a metal cylinder, which is now known as the Bellows. The result of Reutters achievement was an ingenious new clock unlike any other, past or present.
New material steals oxygen from the air. Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark have synthesized crystalline materials that can bind and store oxygen in high concentrations. Just one spoon of the substance is enough to absorb all the oxygen in a room. The stored oxygen can be released again when and where it is needed. We do fine with the 21 per cent oxygen in the air around us. But sometimes we need oxygen in higher concentrations; for example lung patients must carry heavy oxygen tanks, cars using fuel cells need a regulated oxygen supply. Now Professor Christine McKenzie and postdoc Jonas Sundberg, Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Southern Denmark have synthesized a material that absorb oxygen in large quantities and store it.
"In the lab, we saw how this material took up oxygen from the air around us", says Christine McKenzie. Oxygen comes and goes in many places The fact that a substance can react with oxygen is not surprising. Heat and pressure releases the stored oxygen. Researchers discover a way to tease oxygen molecules from carbon dioxide. (Phys.org) —A small team of researchers with the University of California has found a way break apart carbon dioxide molecules and get carbon atoms and oxygen molecules instead of carbon monoxide and an oxygen atom.
In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes how they did it, and the implications of their findings. Arthur Suits and David Parker offer a perspective piece in the same journal issue that describes in more depth, minimum energy path (MEP) where reactants don't always follow the easiest path during chemical reactions and how it pertains to the work done by this group. Over the years, scientists have developed a theory about the development of life on planet Earth that's known as the "Great Oxidation Event," where plants developed and began taking in carbon dioxide and pumping out oxygen. In this new effort, the researchers believe they have found a way to achieve the same feat using a non-biological approach. Press release. Multiferroic material displays a novel spin structure that allows light to travel in only one direction. A research team led by Youtarou Takahashi from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science has demonstrated a novel phenomenon called magnetochiral dichroism, which prevents light from propagating parallel or antiparallel to the direction of magnetization.
The discovery, which was made in the multiferroic 'helimagnet' gallium-doped copper iron oxide, could lead to new possibilities in the control of light at gigahertz and terahertz frequencies. Multiferroic materials exhibit both magnetic order and an electric polarization property called ferroelectricity. These properties are determined by the polarization of electron 'spin' in the multiferroic lattice. Scientists have recently taken a particular interest in multiferroics with spiral or helical spin structures, known as helimagnets. The multiferroic mixed oxide has a longitudinal helical or 'conical screw' spin structure due to competition between exchange interactions and geometric frustration among iron ions (Fig. 1).
5 Advanced Technologies Still Catching Up to Invertebrates. There's a scientific field called biomimetics that is all about studying nature and stealing its technology. That makes sense -- if you want to build a flying machine, you start by looking at birds. But the more we study, the more we find that biomimetics isn't just about building a more fishlike boat.
Even the smallest, slimiest creatures employ tech that will some day revolutionize everything from solar panels to TV screens. Just consider the fact that ... #5. The bombardier beetle is one badass motherfucker. Via Apologeticspress.org"Oh, shit. If you think it's amazing that a lowly bug evolved to do that, it's even more remarkable when you consider the complexity of the mechanism that makes it happen. Via Gotweird.com"Shit! Lots of animals squirt poison. How We Can Steal It: Keep in mind, all sorts of technology requires the misting and mixing of chemicals -- everything from car fuel-injection systems to the nebulizers that asthma sufferers use. Via Swedishbiomimetics.com That's right. Presenting the Universal Jamming Gripper. Sponge Converts Sunlight Into Steam for Electricity. Nearly all utility plants generate electricity with steam. Whether it’s a coal plant or a nuclear plant or a solar thermal plant, all of these facilities use fuel to heat water to create steam that turns a turbine that generates electricity.
Now researchers at MIT have developed a completely new structure for turning sunlight into steam: a sponge. The advance could one day lead to an efficient, inexpensive and emission-free way for creating steam that could be used to not only generate steam for energy but also for desalination and sterilization. Store Wind Energy Underground This sponge, developed by Gang Chen, head of MIT’s Mechanical Engineering Department, post-doc Hadi Ghasemi and their colleages, is comprised of a layer of graphite flakes on top of a carbon foam that float on layers of liquid, including water. So far, the material has been able to convert 85 percent of sunlight into steam. 11 Bizarre Sources For Alternative Energy Achieving that end is the team’s next step.
Silk Leaf Could Make Oxygen for Long Space Trips. Modular, self-assembling robots from EPFL and MIT | The Kid Should See This. Baltimore’s Trash-Collecting Water Wheel River cleanup in Baltimore has gotten easier (and more fun to watch) with the construction of the Healthy Harbor initiative's Water Wheel. Designed by John Kellett and Daniel Chase, the solar and water-powered trash c... PancakeBot: Drawing a Sea Horse PancakeBot is a machine that Miguel Valenzuela made for his daughters Lily and Maia out of LEGO Mindstorms, LEGO bricks and two ketchup bottles.
He has since toured Maker Faires around the globe, hoping to inspire kid... Flying Robot Orchestra Three words – Flying Robot Orchestra. Boomer the Toy Dinosaur Meet Boomer, an extraordinary little robot dinosaur by toy inventor NeverBen. Magnetically Actuated Micro-Robots This magnetically-controlled micro-robot is in charge of gluing things. Bionic Kangaroo Festo HQ, the engineering team that brought us Aqua Penguins, Aqua Jellyfish, dragonfly-inspired BionicOpters, and a robot that flies like a bird can now add Bionic Kangaroo to their list of... Wind up bots. Robot "Hand" Made of Coffee Grounds and a Balloon Picks Up Almost Anything. Robots are great at manipulating objects like automobile parts and circuit-board components. But what about a glass of orange juice, a ball bearing, or a raw egg? Expensive, Terminator-style artificial hands are awful at picking up everyday objects that they're not pre-programmed to recognize, so if robots are ever going to reliably help out around the house--or perform unpredictable missions in space or war zones--they'll need to be able to get a grip on anything.
The best solution? A beanbag filled with coffee grounds, according to these researchers. "It basically works on the same mechanics as when coffee shops vacuum-seal packs of ground espresso," Heinrich Jaeger, a lead researcher on the project, tells Co.Design. "It needs no special sensors to compute how much pressure to apply--the materials of the gripper just do it automatically. " Come again? Acoustic Levitation and the Tractor Beam, the Impossible just became Incredible… Levitation and the defiance of gravities surly bond has been a science that struggled to keep up with its own mythology, until now.
A team of Japanese researchers have this week demonstrated the first technology that not only brings the mythology of levitation to life but leap frogs it to create a tractor beam, lifting and moving objects across 3 dimensions using sound alone. Presented for your viewing pleasure is the astounding video of acoustic levitation in action, now including tractor beam. Sit back relax and prepare to watch the future arrive, gliding effortlessly. Scientists from the University of Tokyo and Nagoya Institute of Technology are now able to levitate and move any object in 3 dimensions. The size is currently limited to objects only a few millimetres in size; ideally the object must be smaller than the size of the wave being used. Making it difficult to lift larger sized objects, but not impossible with enough acoustic power. Reference: Research PapersReference: The Wire.
Handheld Device TellSpec Can Detect Allergens, Chemicals, and Nutrients In Food. The industrialization of food production freed people up to pursue careers other than farming. But it also incentivized food companies and restaurants to use low-cost ingredients that taste or look good but often are neither healthful nor natural. For people with food allergies or diet-related diseases such as Celiac and diabetes, eating foods with unknown ingredients is a high-risk activity. All of these diseases are on the rise in the United States and other developed countries, according to some researchers due to the same lack of exposure to livestock and soil. For this particular ill of the post-War era, there’s now a 21st-century workaround: a hand-held spectrometer that can determine exactly what is in the user’s food and display it on his or her smartphone.
A Toronto company called TellSpec has developed a spectroscopy data-crunching algorithm that runs in the cloud and delivers nuggets of useful information to the user through a smartphone app. Onewheel – A self-balancing electric skateboard! Circuits and sensors direct from the printer -- ScienceDaily. A new way to harness waste heat: Electrochemical approach has potential to efficiently turn low-grade heat to electricity -- ScienceDaily. Liquid crystal as lubricant -- ScienceDaily. New 'T-ray' tech converts light to sound for weapons detection, medical imaging -- ScienceDaily.
Quantum positioning system steps in when GPS fails - tech - 14 May 2014. Video: Jelly-Like Artificial Muscles Improve Robotic Flexibility With Rotary Motion. DARPA's Robotic Suspension System - M3 Program. Captherms MP1120 Multiphasic CPU Cooler | Technology. Top 10 Theoretical Megastructures. Phytoremediation. The Copenhagen Wheel. Power of Nanotechnology Video #Blow Mind.