6 Important Things You Didn't Know We're Running Out Of. When we talk about a shortage of "resources," most people immediately think "oil. " But the only reason oil is the most famous of the dwindling resources is because we feel the spike in prices, since we have to go buy the stuff ourselves on a weekly basis. But other resources that are key to keeping our society operating are running out just as fast, but much more quietly. Pretty soon, you may turn on CNN to hear about wars being fought over something ridiculous, like ... The world is running low on helium? If only it were ever actually this much fun. Actually, if you have benefited from a piece of technology more complex than a sharp rock tied to a stick, it was probably made with the help of helium. Think of it as the Batman of gases -- known for its playful public persona as the stuff that makes you talk like Jennifer Tilly, but secretly a badass vigilante keeping the modern world in one piece.
All metaphors work best with Batman. "Next up for sale, an early 2011 red helium balloon. Touchscreen. Interactive table, Ideen 2020 exposition, 2013. HP Series 100 HP-150 ca. 1983, the earliest commercial touchscreen computer. The IBM Simon Personal Communicator, ca. 1993, the first touchscreen phone. Apple iPad, a tablet computer with a touchscreen. A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that the user can control through simple or multi-touch gestures by touching the screen with a special stylus/pen and-or one or more fingers. Touchscreens are common in devices such as game consoles, all-in-one computers, tablet computers, and smartphones. Historically, the touchscreen sensor and its accompanying controller-based firmware have been made available by a wide array of after-market system integrators, and not by display, chip, or motherboard manufacturers. History[edit] The prototype[1] x-y mutual capacitance touchscreen (left) developed at CERN[2][3] in 1977 by Bent Stumpe, a Danish electronics engineer, for the control room of CERN’s accelerator SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron).
E.A. Peak minerals. The commentary on peak oil - the point at which global oil production begins to decline due to a lack of cheaply-extractable petroleum - has been sucking up most of air on the issue of resource scarcity. Oil is in many ways a front-of-mind issue. We set it on fire on a daily basis to get around in cars.
It is used to make the plastic that constantly surrounds us, and the fertilizer that is used to grow our food. Its combustion allows trade to stream across the oceans and humans to remain aloft for hours at a time. But what most people don't realize is that we're running out of a lot of essential minerals. Take, for example, the now-ubiquitous smartphone. A single iPhone is composed of 135 grams of material, including stainless steel, plastics, glass, a lithium-ion battery, and, perhaps most crucially for the tactile experience of iPhone ownership, a touch-screen display weighing in at 12.5 grams, just under one-tenth of the total weight of the device (PDF).
China's unofficial rare earth elements - One News Page [Aus] Business. New touchscreen technology based on low-cost materials - Indium? Who needs it? A team has come up with a new touchscreen display that doesn't require rare and expensive raw materials such as indium. Indium-tin-oxide (ITO) is normally used for the wafer-thin electrode under the glass surface of a touchscreen display - it's excellent at conducting slight currents and lets the colours of the display show through clearly.
Unfortunately, the stuff is in very short supply, making a readily-available alternative something of a holy grail for the industry. The US Geological Survey reckons that the world supply will be exhausted by 2020 at the latest. But the Fraunhofer team says it's found an alternative that's just as good - and vastly cheaper. Its main components are carbon nanotubes and low-cost polymers. The electrode foil is composed of two layers. This combination by itself isn't particularly durable, because humidity, pressure or UV light put a strain on the polymers.
Japan Developing Alternatives to Rare Earth Metals. What Happens if We Run Out of Touchscreen Components? Now that our lives have steadily changed to embrace a generation of touchscreen devices, could we go back? Could we throw away multi-touch and go back to keypads and buttons for the entire scope of our interaction with technology? Maybe--but we wouldn’t be happy about it. And now we’ve got some bad news: the magic material used in all our touchscreens, a transparent conductor known as indium tin oxide, is a precious commodity that’s running out fast.
At our current usage rate, the known supply of ITO will be gone by 2020. indium tin oxide--though it’s brittle and inflexible, it conducts electricity but doesn’t absorb light. So--ITO is awesome. On the far end of the spectrum is a cadmium oxide material that uses far less indium (the expensive, rare component of indium tin oxide) than ITO, but is 3-4 times more conductive. Graphene is a great conductor, and carbon nanotubes demonstrate remarkable durability and conductivity. Recycling of Rare Earth Metals Faces Challenges. Recycling probably isn’t high on the priority list at GM these days but with an administration keen to promote its green credentials it may be a good time for GM and other car producers to consider a closed loop recycling program for their new hybrid and electric car projects in the way Toyota has for the PGM’s used in their exhaust catalysts.
Rare metals pundit Jack Lifton recently wrote on the topic in www.autobloggreen.com. With so much press coverage being spent on the fragility of rare earth metal supplies, (many quote 90% of all metals fall into this bucket) one would expect a simple project risk management analysis to have flagged this up as an issue requiring attention. One of the problems in extracting rare earths from automobile parts is that the technology is not well developed. For clean segregated scrap, such as segregated Li-ion battery scrap, the process is relatively straightforward. –Stuart Burns. Hitachi develops recycling technologies for rare earth metals. Hitachi today announced that it has developed technologies for recycling rare earth magnets from hard disk drive (HDD) motors and air conditioners and other compressors.
Specifically, developed machinery to separate and collect rare earth magnets from end-of-life products, and successfully extracted rare earths from rare earth magnets using an experimental dry process. Going forward, Hitachi aims to commence full recycling operations by 2013 after calculating overall recycling costs and recovery ratio. Separating and collecting rare earth magnets from HDDs manually requires approximately five minutes per worker per HDD (roughly 12 units per worker per hour). Hitachi has confirmed that the machinery it has developed is able to run the separation and collection with roughly eightfold increased efficiency (approximately 100 units per hour). Explore further: Thermoelectric generator on glass fabric for wearable electronic devices. Rare Earth Metals - Resource Investor. Scientists show off cheap plastic touchscreen - Hardware. By Stewart Mitchell Posted on 28 Jan 2011 at 11:40 A new touchscreen technology could significantly reduce the costs of user-interface displays, according to scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.
The carbon nanotube screens would be built from cheap materials that are available globally, reducing the economic dependence on rare materials that go into today's touchscreens, the scientists said. Current touchscreens involve a wafer-thin electrode under a glass surface made of indium tin oxide (ITO), but the industry is worried that supplies of ITO are unreliable. “There are very few deposits of indium anywhere in the world,” the researchers said in a statement. “In the long term, the manufacturers of electronic gadgets are afraid that they will be dependent upon the prices set by suppliers, which is why indium is one of what people call 'strategic metals'. " “Its main components are carbon nanotubes and low-cost polymers,” the Fraunhofer team said.