3D nano tower arrays - 2

More details emerge on the latest in Photo voltaics Excerpt below :
The GTRI photovoltaic cells trap light between their tower structures, which are about 100 microns tall, 40 microns by 40 microns square, 10 microns apart—and built from arrays containing millions of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes. Conventional flat solar cells reflect a significant portion of the light that strikes them, reducing the amount of energy they absorb.

Because the tower structures can trap and absorb light received from many different angles, the new cells remain efficient even when the sun is not directly overhead. That could allow them to be used on spacecraft without the mechanical aiming systems that maintain a constant orientation to the sun, reducing weight and complexity – and improving reliability.

“The efficiency of our cells increases as the sunlight goes away from perpendicular, so we may not need mechanical arrays to rotate our cells,” Ready noted.

The ability of the 3D cells to absorb virtually all of the light that strikes them could also enable improvements in the efficiency with which the cells convert the photons they absorb into electrical current.

In conventional flat solar cells, the photovoltaic coatings must be thick enough to capture the photons, whose energy then liberates electrons from the photovoltaic materials to create electrical current. However, each mobile electron leaves behind a “hole” in the atomic matrix of the coating. The longer it takes electrons to exit the PV material, the more likely it is that they will recombine with a hole—reducing the electrical current.

Because the 3D cells absorb more of the photons than conventional cells, their coatings can be made thinner, allowing the electrons to exit more quickly, reducing the likelihood that recombination will take place. That boosts the “quantum efficiency” – the rate at which absorbed photons are converted to electrons – of the 3D cells.

Fabrication of the cells begins with a silicon wafer, which can also serve as the solar cell’s bottom junction. The researchers first coat the wafer with a thin layer of iron using a photolithography process that can create a wide variety of patterns. The patterned wafer is then placed into a furnace heated to 780 degrees Celsius. Hydrocarbon gases are then flowed into furnace, where the carbon and hydrogen separate. In a process known as chemical vapor deposition, the carbon grows arrays of multi-walled carbon nanotubes atop the iron patterns.

Once the carbon nanotube towers have been grown, the researchers use a process known as molecular beam epitaxy to coat them with cadmium telluride (CdTe) and cadmium sulfide (CdS) which serve as the p-type and n-type photovoltaic layers. Atop that, a thin coating of indium tin oxide, a clear conducting material, is added to serve as the cell’s top electrode.

In the finished cells, the carbon nanotube arrays serve both as support for the 3D arrays and as a conductor connecting the photovoltaic materials to the silicon wafer.

The researchers chose to make their prototypes cells from the cadmium materials because they were familiar with them from other research. However, a broad range of other photovoltaic materials could also be used, and selecting the best material for specific applications will be a goal of future research.

Ready also wants to study the optimal heights and spacing for the towers, and to determine the trade-offs between spacing and the angle at which the light hits the structures.

The new cells face several hurdles before they can be commercially produced. Testing must verify their ability to survive launch and operation in space, for instance. And production techniques will have to scaled up from the current two-inch laboratory prototypes.

“We have demonstrated that we can extract electrons using this approach,” Ready said. “Now we need to get a good baseline to see where we compare to existing materials, how to optimize this and what’s needed to advance this technology.”

Intellectual Property Partners of Atlanta holds the rights to the 3D solar cell design and is seeking partners to commercialize the technology.
Another commercialization path is being followed by an Ohio company, NewCyte, which is partnering with GTRI to use the 3D approach for terrestrial solar cells. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research has awarded the company a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant to develop the technology.

“NewCyte has patent pending, low cost technology for depositing semiconductor layers directly on individual fullerenes,” explained Dennis J. Flood, NewCyte’s president and CTO. “We are using our technology to grow the same semiconductor layers on the carbon nanotube towers that GTRI has already demonstrated. Our goal is to achieve performance and cost levels that will make solar cells using the GTRI 3D cell structure competitive in the broader terrestrial solar cell market.”

Nano towers were covered in this blog previously.

Nemesis found

The prescience of Issac Asimov, the grand old man of science fiction, is scary. For readers of science fiction, 'Nemesis' was a seminal book about (mostly) superluminal flight and the discovery of a red dwarf which is a 'unknown' binary to our own sun. The scary bit is that there is a rocky planet in orbit around the red dwarf that has liquid water and an alien intelligence based on prokaryote lie forms ( a rocky water sustaining planet around a red dwarf is astronomically very rare). In a recent discovery, Euro astronomers have found a planet that matches this in spec a mere 20 light years from earth. So to Nemesis !

Excerpt from the BBC:
Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface.

The planet orbits the faint star Gliese 581, which is 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra.

Scientists made the discovery using the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile.

They say the benign temperatures on the planet mean any water there could exist in liquid form, and this raises the chances it could also harbour life.

"We have estimated that the mean temperature of this 'super-Earth' lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid," explained Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, lead author of the scientific paper reporting the result. Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky - like our Earth - or covered with oceans."

Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University, added: "Liquid water is critical to life as we know it."

He believes the planet may now become a very important target for future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life.

These missions will put telescopes in space that can discern the tell-tale light "signatures" that might be associated with biological processes.

The observatories would seek to identify trace atmospheric gases such as methane, and even markers for chlorophyll, the pigment in Earth plants that plays a critical role in photosynthesis.


Given the recent theories on chlorophyll, they should also look for retinal which was the photosynthetic molecule that preceded chlorophyll on earth and can still be found in halobacteria.

The exoplanet - as astronomers call planets around a star other than the Sun - is the smallest yet found, and completes a full orbit of its parent star in just 13 days.

Indeed, it is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is to our Sun.

However, given that the host star is smaller and colder than the Sun - and thus less luminous - the planet nevertheless lies in the "habitable zone", the region around a star where water could be liquid.

Gliese 581 was identified at the European Southern Observatory (Eso) facility at La Silla in the Atacama Desert.

To make their discovery, researchers used a very sensitive instrument that can measure tiny changes in the velocity of a star as it experiences the gravitational tug of a nearby planet.

Astronomers are stuck with such indirect methods of detection because current telescope technology struggles to image very distant and faint objects - especially when they orbit close to the glare of a star.

The Gliese 581 system has now yielded three planets: the new super-Earth, a 15 Earth-mass planet orbiting even closer to the parent star, and an eight Earth-mass planet that lies further out.
Gliese 581 is much cooler and dimmer than our own Sun
The latest discovery has created tremendous excitement among scientists.

Of the more than 200 exoplanets so far discovered, a great many are Jupiter-like gas giants that experience blazing temperatures because they orbit close to hot stars.

The Gliese 581 super-Earth is in what scientists call the "Goldilocks Zone" where temperatures "are just right" for life to have a chance to exist.

Commenting on the discovery, Alison Boyle, the curator of astronomy at London's Science Museum, said: "Of all the planets we've found around other stars, this is the one that looks as though it might have the right ingredients for life.

"It's 20 light-years away and so we won't be going there anytime soon, but with new kinds of propulsion technology that could change in the future. And obviously we'll be training some powerful telescopes on it to see what we can see," she told BBC News.

"'Is there life anywhere else?' is a fundamental question we all ask."

Professor Glenn White at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is helping to develop the European Space Agency's Darwin mission, which will scan the nearby Universe, looking for signs of life on Earth-like planets. He said: "This is an important step in the search for true Earth-like exoplanets.

"As the methods become more and more refined, astronomers are narrowing in on the ultimate goal - the detection of a true Earth-like planet elsewhere.

"Obviously this newly discovered planet and its companions in the Gliese 581 system will become prominent targets for missions like Esa's Darwin and Nasa's Terrestrial planet Finder when they fly in about a decade."

Tailored Nanowires for electron extraction

A cross-section of the nanoscale coaxial cable, in which nitrogen, phosphorus, and gallium atoms are shown in blue, yellow, and magenta, respectively. White spheres represent hydrogen atoms, which help render the surface of the wire chemically non-reactive.

A nano scale co-axial technique developed at the LBNL shows promise in increasing the yield from solar power generators. Read more here. Excerpt from the article.

The nanowire, developed by researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, may solve several problems currently associated with renewable energy applications.
One overarching problem is that current semiconducting materials with the potential for use in renewable energy devices lack one key characteristic. When electrons in these materials are excited by light and jump to higher energy levels (leaving vacancies, known as “holes,” in the lower levels), both the electrons and the holes typically move around in the same region. Thus, they tend to recombine. This is desirable for certain applications, such as light-emitting devices, where electron-hole recombination produces light, but is not ideal for renewable energy devices. A better scenario is the separation of the excited electrons from the holes such that, in the case of solar cells, for example, the electrons can be drawn off and used for electricity.

“Our nanowires were designed to provide this feature, along with a superior electrical conductivity,” said NREL materials scientist Yong Zhang, the study's corresponding researcher, to PhysOrg.com. “Both of these properties are critical in order for renewable energy devices to reach their ultimate efficiency limits.”

Quantum chlorophyll

The simplest things in nature that make life possible are often the most difficult to comprehend. A recent theory on why plants are green threw up surprising results when it emerged that vegetation on earth works in the red and blue range of solar radiation and not the green. This was even more surprising given the fact that the sun pumps out maximum wattage in the green range. This is probably why the human eye is most sensitive to it. The next big surprise is that chlorophyll seems to use quantum effects to do its magic. In a recent announcement by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory & University of California (UC) at Berkeley:

We have obtained the first direct evidence that remarkably long-lived wavelike electronic quantum coherence plays an important part in energy transfer processes during photosynthesis," said Graham Fleming, the principal investigator for the study. “This wavelike characteristic can explain the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer because it enables the system to simultaneously sample all the potential energy pathways and choose the most efficient one.” The classical hopping description of the energy transfer process is both inadequate and inaccurate," said Fleming. "It gives the wrong picture of how the process actually works, and misses a crucial aspect of the reason for the wonderful efficiency."

Co-authoring the Nature paper with Fleming were Gregory Engel, who was first author, Tessa Calhoun, Elizabeth Read, Tae-Kyu Ahn, Tomas Mancal and Yuan-Chung Cheng, all of whom held joint appointments with Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division and the UC Berkeley Chemistry Department at the time of the study, plus Robert Blankenship, from the Washington University in St. Louis.

The photosynthetic technique for transferring energy from one molecular system to another should make any short-list of Mother Nature’s spectacular accomplishments. If we can learn enough to emulate this process, we might be able to create artificial versions of photosynthesis that would help us effectively tap into the sun as a clean, efficient, sustainable and carbon-neutral source of energy.

Towards this end, Fleming and his research group have developed a technique called two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy that enables them to follow the flow of light-induced excitation energy through molecular complexes with femtosecond temporal resolution. The technique involves sequentially flashing a sample with femtosecond pulses of light from three laser beams. A fourth beam is used as a local oscillator to amplify and detect the resulting spectroscopic signals as the excitation energy from the laser lights is transferred from one molecule to the next. (The excitation energy changes the way each molecule absorbs and emits light.)

Fleming has compared 2-D electronic spectroscopy to the technique used in the early super-heterodyne radios, where an incoming high frequency radio signal was converted by an oscillator to a lower frequency for more controllable amplification and better reception. In the case of 2-D electronic spectroscopy, scientists can track the transfer of energy between molecules that are coupled (connected) through their electronic and vibrational states in any photoactive system, macromolecular assembly or nanostructure.

Fleming and his group first described 2-D electronic spectroscopy in a 2005 Nature paper, when they used the technique to observe electronic couplings in the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) photosynthetic light-harvesting protein, a molecular complex in green sulphur bacteria.

The bavarians switch to LED

A highly distinctive LED light guide system forms the tail-light of the redesigned BMW 5 Series.
Three and a half years after its introduction, the BMW 5 Series has been given a facelift with characteristic design accents at the front and rear, several of which are based around LED lighting systems developed by Hella.

GaN-on-glass process could yield 48% savings for LED epitaxy

A cost of ownership model for a deposition process developed by BluGlass Ltd could result in significant cost savings for LED manufacturing.
Courtesy of Semiconductor Today.

BluGlass Ltd, a Sydney, Australia-based company spun off from Macquarie University in mid-2005, has released figures suggesting that its remote plasma (RP) CVD process for low-temperature deposition of GaN onto glass substrates (rather than conventional MOCVD on sapphire) can cut the cost of manufacturing GaN-based LEDs at both the epiwafer level and the assembled device level.

Independent assessment was carried out by US-based firm Wright, Williams & Kelly Inc (WWK), a cost -of-ownership modeling group for the semiconductor industry.

Wafer-level analysis showed a cost saving of 48% for RPCVD, driven by a significant reduction in materials and consumables costs. Also, in a simple package, the assessment showed that the RPCVD process leads to a 10% cost advantage at the final assembly level for a simple blue LED device.

BluGlass has demonstrated deposition of GaN on 6-inch glass wafers, although the company has yet to demonstrate high quality emission from LED device layers on glass.

T.Rex was a big chicken with teeth

In a path breaking discovery Paleontologist Jack Horner & team have found co-relations in the collagen found in Tyrannosaurus fossils with modern birds. Read more here (yuck was a site :)

Solar update: Nano tower arrays

Georgia tech has come up with an unique 3-D structuring nano technology that allows the creation of tiny nano towers on PV panels. The critical difference seems to be that these panels (or arrays if you will) increase the surface area available for absorption of solar photons due to the 3D structure of Si at the nano level. This could give crystalline Si in solar a much needed boost (and conversely impact thin film solar) as the yields are reported to go up by about 60 times. As observed in this blog, the critical metric for PV costing is the weight of silicon per watt of generation. This technique will hopefully allow us to generate 180 A from the amount of Si used in a conventional 10 W panel that generates about 3 A per day. However there are sill a number of challenges that he georgia tech team has to face as the internal resistance of the cells is too high for commercial use as it does not build up enough voltage. However cracking this is more a question of when rather than if (imho).
To understand the economics of this, consider a drop in solar panel investment by a factor of at least 50 as more than 80 % of the investment in a solar lighting system is the PV used. So an off grid home that invests about $7000 for their power solution will get away with an investment of about $140 for the same functionality. Of course i am mixing physics with trade margins and economics and i am pretty sure that the sale price will not reflect this magnitude jump. Even a factor of 2 or 3 reduction price of PV will be a disruptive innovation with potential of changing the energy map of the world.

Toshiba-Matsuhita announce polymer TV

Blakest black and vibrant colours ! This seems to be the USP for the latest and gratest in TV technology. OLED's have matured enough for this application. From the Digital trends site

Toshiba and Matsushita have announced they plan to introduce organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels for use in televisions within three years via a joint venture, Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Company, (TMD). The joint venture has introduced a 20.8-inch OLED display panel, and aims to begin commercial production of OLED panels for flat-screen televisions by 2009.

Interview with Professor Russ Dupuis

An excellent interview with Prof.Dupis one of the acknowledged fathers of LED's and for that matter even MOCVD. Its ironical to juxtapose this post with the previous one. Read more here.

Oleg Vladimirovich Losev : History sometimes remembers

While the generally held view is that LED's were invented in the 60's by american researchers, electrophoresis has been known for more than 100 years. In a new twist it emerges that LED's were invented and even patented by a russian genius Oleg Losev in the 1940's ! The irony is that Losev apparently died of starvation in Leningrad during the Nazi invasion of Russia.New Scientist has this to say
If you look in an encyclopaedia, the LED was invented by four independent American research groups in 1962. But the latest edition of Nature photonics reveals that it was actually discovered by a little-known Russian genius around 40 years earlier.

Oleg Vladimirovich Losev was a radio technician with a fierce talent. In the mid 1920s he noticed that diodes used in radio receivers emitted light when current was passed through them. Then, in 1927, he published details in a Russian journal of the first ever LED. Nikolay Zheludev, at the University of Southampton, has dug up Losev's story.

Losev also published on his discoveries in German and British journals. In sixteen papers between 1924 and 1930 he comprehensively detailed the function of his LED. He used Einstein's then new quantum theory to explain the way electrons dropping in energy produced the light without releasing heat. But a letter he wrote to Einstein asking for help developing the theory of LEDs received no reply.

Most significantly, in 1927 Losev filed a patent for a 'light relay' that used his devices 'for fast telegraphic and telephone communication, transmission of images and other applications...' He therefore foreshadowed the development of opto-electronics, which is fundamental to the fibreoptic links that make modern communcations possible.

Impressive stuff. But sadly not work that anyone picked up to take further. And Losev died of hunger in 1942 during the blockade of Leningrad, at the age of 39. In November 1941, he tried in vain to get a paper based on his discovery that "using semiconductors, a three-terminal system may be constructed analogous to a [vacuum] triode” out of Leningrad. It didn't make it. Zheludev asks: "Was it a paper on what we now know as a transistor? We shall never
know for certain unless his manuscript is found."

Zheludev also points out that Henry Round, assistant to radio pioneer Marconi, was the first to discover that semiconductors could produce light, some hundred years ago. He published only a very short note on the matter and made no further investigations. But the piece was never seen by Losev, who must be retrospectively declared the inventor of the LED.

Death of the cell phone charger

Wireless power transmission has been a moving target.One is typically accused of smoking something if the topic comes up :) However some breakthroughs are happening. This is very important for the low voltage lighting industry (aka LED lighting). Think of no wiring for you room lighting. The sources can be made portable and all that you need to do is ensure that it is within range of the transmitter. Will be a killer app for commercial and home lighting if there is no wiring to do ! From the CNN.com article:
How much money could you make from a technology that replaces electrical wires? A startup called Powercast, along with the more than 100 companies that have inked agreements with it, is about to start finding out. Powercast and its first major partner, electronics giant Philips, are set to launch their first device powered by electricity broadcast through the air.

It may sound futuristic, but Powercast's platform uses nothing more complex than a radio--and is cheap enough for just about any company to incorporate into a product. A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device's battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.

Picture your cell phone charging up the second you sit down at your desk, and you start to get a sense of the opportunity. How big can it get? "The sky's the limit," says John Shearer, Powercast's founder and CEO. He estimates shipping "many millions of units" by the end of 2008.

For years, electricity experts said this kind of thing couldn't be done. "If you had asked me seven months ago if this was possible, I would have said, 'Are you dreaming? Have you been smoking something?'" says Govi Rao, vice president and general manager of solid-state lighting at Philips (Charts). "But to see it work is just amazing. It could revolutionize what we know about power."
So impressed was Rao after witnessing Powercast's demo last summer that he walked away jotting down a list of the industries to which the technology could immediately be applied: lighting, peripherals, all kinds of handheld electronics. Philips partnered with Powercast last July, and their first joint product, a wirelessly powered LED light stick, will hit the market this year. Computer peripherals, such as a wireless keyboard and mouse, will follow in 2008.

Broadcasting power through the air isn't a new idea. Researchers have experimented with capturing the radiation in radio frequency at high power but had difficulty capturing it at consumer-friendly low power. "You'd have energy bouncing off the walls and arriving in a wide range of voltages," says Zoya Popovic, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Colorado who works on wireless electricity projects for the U.S. military.

That's where Shearer came in. A former physicist based in Pittsburgh, he and his team spent four years poring over wireless electricity research in a lab hidden behind his family's coffee house. He figured much of the energy bouncing off walls could be captured. All you had to do was build a receiver that could act like a radio tuned to many frequencies at once.

"I realized we wanted to grab that static and harness it," Shearer says. "It's all energy."

0-60 in just 3.1 seconds

A hyper fast lithium based electric car that seems to blow the pants of any thing else in featured on Popular mechanics.Seeing is believing.

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nenpimania : Ninja Hybrid Hackers

A new wave of Japanese hackers who squeeze more out of their Petro Electric Hybrids have hit the scene. They compete with each other and one thing they have in common is that they seem to beat the toyota engineers in the quest for hybrid nirvana. Bloomberg.com reports :
Toya, a 56-year-old manager for a tofu maker in central Japan, puts special tires on his Prius, tapes plastic and cardboard over the engine and blocks the grill with foam rubber. He drives without shoes and hacks into his car's computer -- all in the pursuit of maximum distance with minimum gasoline.

Toya is one of about 100 nenpimania, Japanese for ``mileage maniacs,'' or hybrid owners who compete against each other to squeeze as much as 115 miles per gallon out of their cars. In a country where gasoline costs more than $4 a gallon, at least $1 more than the U.S. price, enthusiasts tweak their cars and hone driving techniques to cut fuel bills and gain bragging rights.

``My wife thinks I've joined some strange secret society,'' Toya said in January at a nenpimania gathering in Nagoya in central Japan.

Mileage maniacs aren't alone in pushing the limits of hybrid vehicles. As U.S. automakers General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. race to introduce their own models, first rolled out by Japanese companies in 1997, engineers at Toyota and Honda Motor Co. are trying to boost hybrid performance to maintain their advantage.

``With higher oil prices and tightening environmental regulations, people will focus more on hybrid technology,'' said Koji Endo, an auto analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston in Tokyo.

Hybrid Power

Hybrids combine a conventional gasoline engine with an electric motor. The motor powers the vehicle at low speeds, and the gasoline engine kicks in as the car accelerates. The motor uses the motion of the wheels to recharge the batteries.

Toya said he switched to a hybrid after years of driving sports cars, trading muscle ``for the fun of maximum mileage.'' Nicknamed ``The Shogun,'' Toya said he drove 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) on a single 13-gallon (49-liter) tank 17 times last year, an average of 79 mpg. At the advertised efficiency rate, a driver would get 715 miles per tank.

Toya isn't the best, though. A woman from Akita prefecture, nicknamed ``Teddy-Girl,'' is cited on mileage maniac Web sites as getting almost 116 mpg. That's enough to drive from New York to Wichita, Kansas -- 1,386 miles -- without refilling.

By comparison, a 2007 two-wheel drive Ford F-150 pickup running at peak efficiency burns through five times as much gasoline over the same distance.

LED lighting in Cadillac CTS sedan

Rear of the Cadillac CTS, showing vertical LED light tubes next to the vertical rear light (containing multiple red LEDs). Below this is a white backup (reversing) light comprising two high-power white LEDs. A horizontal strip of red LEDs run above the badge, and comprises the center high-mounted stop lamp (CHMSL).
The beauty of light is its interpretation by the human brain. This seems to be the meme driving auto designers who are increasingly using LED accent and niche lights to visually enhance the overall automotive experience. While Daimler and Audi have been the leaders in this (the high end S class, not your pedestrian C class :) the yankees seem to have woken up to the possibilities of using LED's in auto lighting (this is happening even in India and my firm is neck deep in auto-LED projects). From LED Mag

Cadillac focused on new lighting systems to make the 2008 CTS sport sedan as recognizable at night as its new styling does in the light of day, according to an article in the Detroit Free Press.

A total of 127 LEDs illuminate the CTS's interior and exterior, creating a unique look that builds on the brand's heritage of innovative lighting and design, according to Cadillac product director John Howell.

LED light pipes -- clear tubes that direct light -- for the CTS's brake, turn, backup and running lights are the latest example of the vertical tail lamps that have distinguished Cadillacs since 1948.

"Lighting is one of the last frontiers to differentiate cars," said CTS design director John Manoogian, adding that "countless hours and days" went into designing the CTS's stacked vertical lights. "We decided to make lighting a key element of the car's appearance and character."

The interior also uses white ambient LED lighting in the door pulls, foot wells and recessed between the upper and lower instrument panels. The result, says Cadillac, is a dramatic effect similar to recessed lighting used in contemporary homes.

Kiwi boffins achieve PV breakthrough

In an exciting development Massey Univ in Kiwiland have perfected a new Titanium dioxide based syntethic dye that replaces Si in PV panels. this could be a major beakthrough as the blurb seems to indicate that the technology uses amorphous crystals (an oxymoron) and will work in low light conditions. From Stuff

New solar cells developed by Massey University don't need direct sunlight to operate and use a patented range of dyes that can be impregnated in roofs, window glass and eventually even clothing to produce power.

This means teenagers could one day be wearing jackets that will recharge their equivalents of cellphones, iPods and other battery- driven devices.

The breakthrough is a development of the university's Nanomaterials Research Centre and has attracted world-wide interest already - particularly from Australia and Japan.

Researchers at the centre have developed a range of synthetic dyes from simple organic compounds closely related to those found in nature, where light-harvesting pigments are used by plants for photosynthesis.

"This is a proof-of-concept cell," said researcher Wayne Campbell, pointing to a desktop demonstration model.

"Within two to three years we will have developed a prototype for real applications. "The technology could be sold off already, but it would be a shame to get rid of it now."

The key to everything is the ability of the synthetic dyes to pass on the energy that reaches them - something that mere coloured water could not do.

"We now have the most efficient porphyrin dye in the world," said the centre's director, Ashton Partridge.

"It is the most efficient ever made. While others are doing related work, in this aspect we are the world leaders."

The development of the dyes has taken about 10 years and was accomplished with funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand for fundamental work and the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology in the later stages.

Now the team is seeking extra funding to go commercial.

"This particular technology does not require the large infrastructure required for silicon chips and the like," said Professor Partridge. It lends itself to being taken up by local and New Zealand industries.

Other dyes being tested in the cells are based on haemoglobin, the compound that gives blood its colour.

Dr Campbell said that unlike silicone-based solar cells, the dye- based cells are still able to operate in low-light conditions, making them ideal for cloudy climates.

They are also more environmentally friendly because they are made from titanium dioxide - an abundant and non-toxic, white mineral available from New Zealand's black sand.

Titanium dioxide is used already in consumer products such as toothpaste, white paints and cosmetics.

"The refining of silicon, although a very abundant mineral, is energy- hungry and very expensive," he said.

Sharks in trouble

Sharks have been in trouble for a while now as they are apex predators in thier environment and have a very slow reproduction rate. I personally gave up eating sharks (except on very rare occasions) more than 5 years ago. This was due to the fact that immature sharks were coming into the market. George monbiot has this to say on shark conservation.

Sharks deserve the conservation status we give to the giant panda


Marine predators are on the verge of extinction, but the fishing industry still rips the environment to shreds with impunity

If these animals lived on land there would be a global outcry. But the great beasts roaming the savannahs of the open seas summon no such support. Big sharks, giant tuna, marlin and swordfish should have the conservation status of the giant panda or the snow leopard. Yet still we believe it is acceptable for fishmongers to sell them and celebrity chefs to teach us how to cook them.

A study in this week's edition of Science reveals the disastrous collapse of the ocean's megafauna. The great sharks are now wobbling on the edge of extinction. Since 1972 the number of blacktip sharks has fallen by 93%, tiger sharks by 97% and bull sharks, dusky sharks and smooth hammerheads by 99%. Just about every population of major predators is now in freefall. Another paper, published in Nature four years ago, shows that over 90% of large predatory fishes throughout the global oceans have gone.

Tata inks deal for Indonesian coal

Tata Power has neatly bought a 30 % stake in PT Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC) and PT Arutmin Indonesia for US$1.3 billion. While the rest of the world is worried about the Asian twins (India and China) eating into the golbal oil reserves, these deals slip under the scanner. Coal is and will remain the mainstay for power generation for a long time to come. This includes china and the US. What is interesting is that India has enormous coal reserves of her own. Read more in the Jakarta post

LED cityscape lighting

Survey shows LEDs improve public’s perceptions of city safety. From LED Mag

When Raleigh, NC, the first "LED City", and Cree, Inc. turned on LEDs in the municipal parking garage, people’s opinion of the quality of the lighting improved threefold.

Raleigh exchanged the previous garage fixtures and their dull orange light for LED fixtures with bright white light, and people felt safer. The number of respondents who perceived the garage as "very safe" increased by 76% after the LED fixtures were installed, according to a survey by Mindwave Research of Austin, TX.

Cree (Nasdaq: CREE) produces LEDs that provide a source of energy efficient light which can serve as the foundation for cost-effective lighting solutions. Lighting Science Group Corporation (OTCBB: LSGP) of Dallas, TX, supplied the LED fixtures installed in the Raleigh garage.

"LED technology provides a clear benefit to municipal infrastructure, as well as to the citizens it serves," said Charles Meeker, mayor of Raleigh. "This survey shows that LEDs can do more than improve light quality. In addition to the proven environmental and energy efficiency benefits the city has already documented, the survey shows that LEDs’ bright white light can help improve public feelings of safety in city spaces."

The survey results showed that the parking garage generated a more positive reaction from most of the respondents after the addition of LED fixtures:

* Both men and women felt significantly safer post-installation: 74% rated the garage as feeling "very safe," while only 2% did not. These figures contrast with the pre-installation numbers: only 42% felt "very safe" with the original lighting, and 13% did not.
* The percentage of respondents who gave the garage an overall rating of "excellent" increased by 100%. The number of people who rated it as "poor" decreased from 8 to 1%.
* The lighting quality of the garage was "excellent" according to 86% of the respondents, a 258% increase from pre-installation respondents. The number of people who rated it as "poor" decreased from 18 to 2%.
* The cleanliness of the parking garage was perceived as "excellent" by 76% of the respondents, while only 58% rated it this way before the LEDs were installed, showing a 31% increase.

This announcement comes shortly after Raleigh agreed to become the nation's first LED City. The LED City initiative focuses on installing LED lighting, based on Cree's LEDs, throughout the city to save energy and money, and boost the quality of life for its residents by using the best lighting technology commercially available. As a result, the city has conserved energy and improved the lighting of its municipal city parking facility, the first of a series of projects aimed at delivering the environmental and economic benefits of LED lighting throughout Raleigh’s "living laboratory."

US Supreme court asks EPA to regulate Auto emmisions

A landmark case and a surprising judgement given the lobbying power of the US auto industry and the EPA's own reluctace to do so (wonder why). Excerpt below

Supreme Court Declares EPA Reasons for Not Regulating Carbon "Arbitrary, Capricious"

This is a landmark case, or at the least the beginning of a series of landmark cases: in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court today sent the issue of whether or not the EPA can regulate carbon dioxide back to the lower courts, declaring the EPA's decision not to regulate carbon emissions "arbitrary, capricious or otherwise not in accordance with law."

The EPA had previously declared that the Clean Air Act does not give it the authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

Monbiot on biofuels - 2

Monbiot has more to say on biofuels and this time around has hard data to substantiate his argument. As ever he is right... From the Guardian op-ed.

It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless. In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow - it is released again when the fuel is burned. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic claim to be "decarbonising" our transport networks. So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. In 2004 I warned, on these pages, that biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford to drive are richer than those who are in danger of starvation. It would also lead to the destruction of rainforests and other important habitats. I received more abuse than I've had for any other column - except for when I attacked the 9/11 conspiracists. I was told my claims were ridiculous, laughable, impossible. Well in one respect I was wrong. I thought these effects wouldn't materialise for many years. They are happening already.

Since the beginning of last year, the price of maize has doubled. The price of wheat has also reached a 10-year high, while global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year lows. Already there have been food riots in Mexico and reports that the poor are feeling the strain all over the world. The US department of agriculture warns that "if we have a drought or a very poor harvest, we could see the sort of volatility we saw in the 1970s, and if it does not happen this year, we are also forecasting lower stockpiles next year". According to the UN food and agriculture organisation, the main reason is the demand for ethanol: the alcohol used for motor fuel, which can be made from maize and wheat.

Monbiot's previous mentions in this blog

battle-with-entropy
Bio fuels 1
Idiot science

The greaseball challenge

The Greaseball Challenge is a charity biofuel car rally from the USA to Central America. Inspired by the tradition of the classic car race, Greaseball is a cross-continental adventure promoting sustainability on a shoestring using renewable fuels.

The inaugural Greaseball Challenge departs on April 1, 2007. Armed with nothing but a sense of adventure and some cheesecloth, five teams will drive 4,500 miles on grease power from the USA to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

Rudolf Diesel, who invented the diesel engine, demonstrated one of his first engines running on peanut oil at the World Fair in 1900. He said at the time "The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may in the course of time become as important as petroleum…”.

Despite his prediction, veggie oils have remained on the “specials” menu ever since, along with just about every other renewable fuel source. Veggie car enthusiasts make a distinction between waste vegetable oil (WVO) discarded from restaurants and straight vegetable oil (SVO). Filtering waste grease is a must or bits of fried chicken will clog up your fuel lines.

Read More here.

11 MW solar plant in sunny Portugal

One of the world's largest solar energy plants, covering the hills of a valley dotted with olive groves in southern Portugal, started delivering electricity to about 8,000 homes on Wednesday.

The solar panels, which are raised around 2 meters off the ground, cover an area of 60 hectares (150 acres) and produce 11 megawatts of electricity in one of Europe's sunniest spots -- Portugal's poor agricultural Alentejo region.
The plant, which has 52,000 photovoltaic modules, is near the town of Serpa, 125 miles southeast of Lisbon.

The scheme fits into Portugal's plans of reducing its reliance on imported energy and cutting output of greenhouse gasses that feed global warming.

Portugal's emissions have surged about 37 percent since 1990, one of the highest increases in the world.

By bringing modern technology to one of western Europe's poorest regions, the $75-million plant is expected to bring alternative development to the Alentejo.

Castro and US dept of energy sing the same tune

Strange allies in the global race for energy emerged today when both Fidel Castro and U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell agreed that corn ethanol is a stupid idea. Reuters reports :

Output of U.S. ethanol, which is mostly made from corn, is expected to jump in 2007 from 5.6 billion gallons per year to 8 billion gpy, as nearly 80 bio-refineries sprout up.

Corn prices have doubled over the last year as the Bush administration, seeking to reduce oil imports while boosting output of fuels believed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, offers millions of dollars in incentives to boost ethanol production.

The corn prices, the highest in a decade, have spurred thousands of people in Mexico to protest over the price of tortillas, a national staple made from corn. The spike has also lead to worries that meat and dairy prices could eventually rise.

Sell said the future of biofuels is cellulosic ethanol, made from microbes that break down woody bits of non-food crops into sugars that can be fermented into fuel.

Cellulosic, and other new biofuels such as biobutanol, which can be made from petroleum as well as biomass, could begin to feed the commercial fuel market within six to 10 years, he said. They could also be part of a larger program to cut greenhouse gases, he added.

In a related incident El Commandate has condemed the use of food to produce automotive fuel. An excerpt from a conversation beween Chavez and Castro published by the BBC is below.
BBC: The following is the transcript of the conversation between Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro. It has been edited for brevity.

...Chavez: Do you know how many hectares of corn are needed to produce one million barrels of ethanol?

Castro: To do what?

Chavez: To produce one million barrels of ethanol?

Castro: Ethanol. I believe you told me about that the other day. Somewhere around 20 million hectares.

Chavez:[Laughing] Just like that.

Castro: Go ahead, remind me.

Chavez: Indeed, 20 million. You are the one with an exceptional mind, not me.

Castro: Twenty million. Well, of course. The idea of using food to produce fuel is tragic, is dramatic. No one is sure how high the price of food will rise when soy is being used for fuel, with the need there is in the world to produce eggs, milk, to produce meat. It is a tragedy. One of many today.

Nano art

Humans are getting better at smaller things. This nano guitar modeled after a stratocaster is a about 10 microns long and is actually playable. The pick you will have to use is an atomic force microscope ! Made my the mavens at Cornel.

Rebel with a cause

Lumileds (Philips now) has finally released the latest and greatest in low form factor power led's. The high efficacy (upt 72 lm/W) LED boasts a high Tj of 150 deg C. This is quite an innovation and can provide a much needed shot in the arm for LED general illumination space. Alternate Lighting (where i work) has already created some reference designs that will use this semiconductor. Currently this led is seen to have a large potential in the solar lighting and AC dowlighting (MR16, 11 etc) markets.

From the article in LED mag
The Rebel contains a 1x1 mm2 chip and has a footprint of just 3mm x 4.5mm, considerably smaller than rival power LEDs. The chip is mounted on a ceramic substrate and has a hemispherical silicone lens. The Rebel is engineered for operation between 350 mA and 1000 mA, and is the first power LED to offer guaranteed minimum performance (many datasheets for other LEDs specify typical performance values). Lumileds says that its minimum performance specifications enable greater design and manufacturing consistency, and allow customers to purchase the light output performance appropriate for each application.

The Rebel white binning structure includes a CCT range from 2670K to 3500K for warm-white, 3500K to 4500K for neutral-white, and 4500K to 10000K for cool-white. Sampling of the warm-white and neutral-white products begins immediately with volume production later this year.
For each CCT range, there are several bins with different minimum performance; 40, 50, 70 and 80 lm at 350 mA for cool- and neutral-white. With a forward voltage of 3.15 V, the highest bin has an efficacy of around 72 lm/W.

At higher drive currents, the datasheet shows that the top bins deliver 145 lm at 700 mA in cool- and neutral-white (57 lm/W), and 110 lm for warm-white (43 lm/W).

Typical color-rendering index (CRI) is 80 for warm-white, 75 for neutral-white, and 70 for cool-white.

The package's small footprint and low profile of just 2.1mm should enable significantly reduced color mixing and diffusion depths. This will allow luminaire designs that are significantly thinner than those using alternative power LED packages.

Misplaced priorities

This blog has tried to maintain a pragmatic view of Life, the universe and everything. Yet one glaring issue that no one (especially environmentalists) want to talk about is population. The real degradation of the planet is caused by uncontrolled human breeding. Those of us in India see the manifestations and repurcussions of this everyday. The "green revolution" managed to nudge the population to explode with wild abandon. After all precreation is the only recreation for most here. The limiting factor was food and with subsidized, oil fed agriculture we have a king size problem today. The Hindu has this nice opinion piece that hits the nail on the head. From the article.
While the green lobby tells us to fiddle with our standby buttons and low-energy light bulbs, no one is willing to address the accelerating growth in the world's population.

IN THE time it takes you to get to the end of this sentence, seven people have been added to the population of the world. At this rate, the United Nations estimates the number of people on the planet will nearly double by the middle of this century. Even with significant reductions in birth rates, the population is expected to increase from 6.7 billion now to 9.2 billion by 2050.

These figures are staggering. Yet there is hardly a mention of them in discussion of global warming and ensuing climate change.

The U.K., for example, last week unveiled its Climate Change Bill promising to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming by 60 per cent from 1990 levels by 2050. Suggested policies to achieve this ranged from banning standby buttons on electrical equipment and old-fashioned, inefficient light bulbs to "capture and storage" of pollution from coal-fired power stations. Others want to limit air travel — a small but fast-growing source of greenhouse gases.

These have been well-intentioned, if not always convincing, ideas. At an Oxford, England, conference, scientists argued against the "Hollywoodisation" of the problem, that it is being promoted beyond the science. And still, everybody is talking only about one half of the equation: the emissions we generate, not how we generate them. All the standby buttons and low-energy light bulbs are dwarfed by the pressure of a global population rising by the equivalent of Britain every year.

Cree anounces improvement to XLAMP

Cree has announced a significant performance increase in its warm-white LEDs, which are now qualified to operate at 700 mA and can produce well in excess of 100 lm.
Cree has announced that it is shipping warm white XLamp LEDs that produce up to 124 lumens at a correlated color temperature (CCT) of 3,000 K when driven at 700 mA.

The company claims that this represents the industry's first demonstration of "lighting class" warm-white LEDs.

100 Million years without sex

Times online reports on a creature that has turned the current orthodoxy in evolutionary biology around. Apparently this small rotifer family is all female. Shot in the arm for Lesbian groups :) From the article A tiny creature that has not had sex for 100 million years has overturned the theory that animals need to mate to create variety.

Analysis of the jaw shapes of bdelloid rotifers, combined with genetic data, revealed that the animals have diversified under pressure of natural selection.

Researchers say that their study “refutes the idea that sex is necessary for diversification into evolutionary species”.

The microscopic animals, less than four times the length of a human sperm, are all female, yet have evolved into different species that fill different ecological niches. Two sister species were found to be living together on the body of a water louse. One of them specialised in living around the louse’s legs and the other stayed close to the chest.

Genetic analysis showed that the two creatures were distinct, a fact backed up by observations that each type had differently shaped jaws.

Asexual animals and plants usually die out quickly in evolutionary terms but the ability of bdelloid rotifers to diversify may explain why they have survived so long.

A specimen trapped in amber has shown that the animals were living at least 40 million years ago and DNA studies have suggested they have been around for 100 million years. Modern Man has notched up about 160,000 years.

It had previously been recognised that asexual animals and plants can evolve through mutations into another species, but only into one species and at the cost of its original form. Bdelloid rotifers have displayed the ability to evolve into many different forms.

The study of several bdelloid rotifers, published in the journal PLoS Biology, was carried out by an international team including researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. “These really are amazing creatures, whose very existence calls into question scientific understanding,” said Tim Barraclough, of Imperial College.

He added that the two species of bdelloid rotifer almost certainly arrived on the louse as one species and later evolved to take better advantage of the environment.

There are many examples of asexual species of animals and plants, including some dande- lions. Asexuality is most common in invertebrates, such as aphids, but it is also found in a number of fish and frogs.

The end of incandescents

In a decade, the incandescent light bulb might only exist as a museum
exhibit of "how life used to be." Energy specialists, environmental
activists and Philips Lighting North America recently announced that
they are working together to eliminate the incandescent light bulb in
10 years.

This is a interesting case of a company trying to kill its own product. Read more here.

For some strange reason

This blog made the VJ times in bangalore. Must be the bikini's...

ELectrifying bikinis!

Praise the lord! Optics.org reports that A bikini stitched from solar panels generates enough electricity to charge an MP3 player, allowing the wearer to multi-task leisure activities while reclining on the beach. The photovoltaic panels stitched directly on the bikini put out 6.5 V.The multi-function swimwear made its catwalk debut at the end of 2006 at the Interactive Telecommunications Program students' final show at the Tisch School of the Arts, a part of New York University.

"The suit is a standard medium-sized bikini swimsuit retrofitted with 1x4 inch photovoltaic film strips sewn together in series with conductive thread," developer Andrew Schneider told optics.org. "The cells terminate in a female USB connection and a 5 V voltage regulator to optimise the output."

"There is no way I couldn't do this project," he said. "Once I realized it could be done, it had to be done. I also wanted the opportunity to work with renewable and solar energy in a fun, kitsch and yet consumer-oriented way."

"I decided to go with a female suit because of the sleeker form. The demographic I can foresee actually becoming interested in the solar bikini would be those people who enjoy mobile culture, hanging out, music, and kitsch - a demographic not unlike that to which the Apple Corp. seems to preach."

Relax, guys!

Men who are interested in adapting their swimwear into a mini-power station will not be left out. The male version of the Solar Bikini is coming soon and will be called the iDrink. With a greater surface area (!) it is expected to deliver a higher output voltage. This additional juice will be sufficient to power a 1.5 A peltier junction to cool a can of beer (or soda) in a custom coozy. "That's what I call double cool," Schneider added.

"The iDrink solar swimwear line will be perfect for those who want to go the beach, listen to music, and enjoy a cold beverage, but who don't want to get wet! You've got tunes, you've got beer, you've got sun, and you've got each other in swimwear. The rest is up to you."

Whether the multi-tasking beach babes and bums will actually be able to swim in the new costumes without receiving a shock in a sensitive area was not revealed. But optics.org guesses they'll probably be too busy dancing, drinking or charging up their toothbrushes to take a dip.

Inflection point: High efficiency PV

Looks like the knights of the round table are getting closer to the holy grail all the time. Concenterator PV (covered by this blog in the past) technology has hit a magical number of 40 % efficiency of conversion at the point of incidance. From the US DOE site
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix.

“Reaching this milestone heralds a great achievement for the Department of Energy and for solar energy engineering worldwide,” Assistant Secretary Karsner said. “We are eager to see this accomplishment translate into the marketplace as soon as possible, which has the potential to help reduce our nation’s reliance on imported oil and increase our energy security.”

Attaining a 40 percent efficient concentrating solar cell means having another technology pathway for producing cost-effective solar electricity. Almost all of today’s solar cell modules do not concentrate sunlight but use only what the sun produces naturally, what researchers call “one sun insolation,” which achieves an efficiency of 12 to 18 percent. However, by using an optical concentrator, sunlight intensity can be increased, squeezing more electricity out of a single solar cell.

The 40.7 percent cell was developed using a unique structure called a multi-junction solar cell. This type of cell achieves a higher efficiency by capturing more of the solar spectrum. In a multi-junction cell, individual cells are made of layers, where each layer captures part of the sunlight passing through the cell. This allows the cell to get more energy from the sun’s light.

For the past two decades researchers have tried to break the “40 percent efficient” barrier on solar cell devices. In the early 1980s, DOE began researching what are known as “multi-junction gallium arsenide-based solar cell devices,” multi-layered solar cells which converted about 16 percent of the sun’s available energy into electricity. In 1994, DOE’s National Renewable Energy laboratory broke the 30 percent barrier, which attracted interest from the space industry. Most satellites today use these multi-junction cells.

Reaching 40 percent efficiency helps further President Bush’s Solar America Initiative (SAI) goals, which aims to win nationwide acceptance of clean solar energy technologies by 2015. By then, it is intended that America will have enough solar energy systems installed to provide power to one to two million homes, at a cost of 5 to 10 cents per kilowatt/hour. The SAI is also key component of President Bush’s Advanced Energy Initiative, which provides a 22 percent increase in research and development funding at DOE and seeks to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil by changing the way we power our cars, homes and businesses.

For more information, visit the Solar America Initiative website at: http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar/solar_america/.

Hydrogen economy to be based on human blood

Nice title huh ? The Imperial collage of London (guess only imperialists have access to enough blood for such systems) has a new technique where a complex molecule based on human blood serum can be used to hydrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen. From the article :
Scientists have combined two molecules that occur naturally in blood to engineer a molecular complex that uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. This molecular complex can use energy from the sun to create hydrogen gas, providing an alternative to electrolysis, the method typically used to split water into its constituent parts. The breakthrough may pave the way for the development of novel ways of creating hydrogen gas for use as fuel in the future.

Blast from the past: Milton Friedman on corporate responsibility

The recently demised Milton Friedman had the following to say about the social responsibilities of corporates.
If this statement is not pure rhetoric, it must mean that he is to act in some way that is not in the interest of his employers. For example, that he is to refrain from increasing the price of the product in order to contribute to the social objective of preventing inflation, even though a price increase would be in the best interests of the corporation. Or that he is to make expenditures on reducing pollution beyond the amount that is in the best interests of the corporation or that is required by law in order to contribute to the social objective of improving the environment. Or that, at the expense of corporate profits, he is to hire 'hardcore' unemployed instead of better-qualified available workmen to contribute to the social objective of reducing poverty.
In each of these cases, the corporate executive would be spending someone else's money for a general social interest. Insofar as his actions in accord with his 'social responsibility' reduce returns to stockholders, he is spending their money. Insofar as his actions raise the price to customers, he is spending the customers' money. Insofar as his actions lower the wages of some employees, he is spending their money." Friedman argued that such actions in effect turned executives into public employees or civil servants, levying "taxes" (in the form of corporate money allocated to social causes) and making "expenditures" -- a part of "the socialist view that political mechanisms, not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to determine the allocation of scarce resources to alternative uses."

The difficulty of exercising 'social responsibility' illustrates, of course, the great virtue of private competitive enterprise -- it forces people to be responsible for their own actions and makes it difficult for them to 'exploit' other people for either selfish or unselfish purposes. They can do good -- but only at their own expense."

Nichia hits 138 lm/W

Nichia has developed LEDs with indium tin oxide contacts that can deliver an efficacy of 138 lm/W and an output of 402 lumens at 2A.

Japanese LED chip manufacturer Nichia has produced a small white-emitting LED chip that has an efficacy of 138 lm/W at 20 mA, and a larger device that delivers 92 lm/W at 350 mA.
The small chip, which measures 240x420 µm, has a color temperature of 5450K, a wall plug efficiency of 41.7%, and a forward voltage of 3.11 V at 20 mA.
The 1x1 mm chip has a slightly lower color temperature and efficacy, but can deliver 106 lumens at 350 mA and 402 lumens at 2 A, which is equivalent to the total flux of a 30 W incandescent lamp.
Both of the MOCVD-grown devices produce white light by exciting a yellow YAG phosphor with 450 nm emission from an InGaN/GaN LED. The high efficacy of the chips results from improvements in external quantum efficiency, according to Nichia's researchers.
The LEDs do not use a conventional translucent Ni/Al p-contact that has a transmittance of only 40%, but instead employ an indium tin oxide electrode with a transmittance of 95%.
Extraction efficiency is also boosted by growth on a sapphire substrate patterned with convex hexagons, which scatter more of the light emitted from the active layer.
Nichia's results compare favorably with those of Cree, which reported a white LED chip delivering 131 lm/W at 20 mA this summer. Nichia's results were obtained using pulsed operation (200 Hz repition rate, and a duty cycle of 1 %). Cree provided no details of its mode of operation.

Viscount Monckton of Brenchley debunked

More action from the flat earthers. A recent monograph by Christopher Monkton, an aristo who apparently dabbles in Atmospheric physics, questioned the current model of climate change and went on to cast aspersions on it. George Monbiot shows why it is that much crap. From the article :
The author of this "research article" is Christopher Monckton, otherwise known as Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. He has a degree in classics and a diploma in journalism and, as far as I can tell, no further qualifications. But he is confident enough to maintain that - by contrast to all those charlatans and amateurs who wrote the reports produced by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - he is publishing "the truth".

The warming effects of carbon dioxide, Lord Monckton claims, have been exaggerated, distorted and made up altogether. One example of the outrageous fraud the UN body has committed is the elimination from its temperature graphs of the "medieval warm period", which, he claims, was "real, global and up to 3C warmer than now". He runs two graphs side by side, one of which shows the temperature record over the past 1,000 years as rendered by the UN panel, and the other purporting to show real temperatures over the same period.

The world was so hot 600 years ago, he maintains, that "there was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none". By contrast the planet is currently much cooler than climate scientists predicted. In 1988, for example, the world's most celebrated climatologist, James Hansen of Nasa, "told the US Congress that temperature would rise 0.3C by the end of the century (it rose 0.1C), and that sea level would rise several feet (no, one inch)".

Most importantly, "the UN repealed a fundamental physical law", doubling the size of the constant (lambda) in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. By assigning the wrong value to lambda, the UN's panel has exaggerated the sensitivity of the climate to extra carbon dioxide. Monckton's analysis looks impressive. It is nonsense from start to finish.

Education in India: The importance of first principles

One of the key factors that allow humans to 'progress' as a society is the power to comprehend abstractions and build on them. The flip side of this ability is the way we treat abstractions as fundamental axioms rather than the derived entities that they are. Take for example the simple act cooking your food. Where does the LPG actually come from and how does it get to you. To cut a long story short most of the LPG that we use in India is shipped from Qatar or S.Arabia via LPG tanker ships that are off-loaded at a convenient Gas terminal on the west coast of India, is either piped or shipped via road to the filling terminal and is then bottled in your ubiquitous cylinder and shipped by road (mostly) to your friendly neighborhood dealer. How many people are aware of this ? How many people know the true cost of this ?
When I hear comfortably off Indians (they are still the only ones who use gas) bitch and rant about how the cost is shooting up and what the government should do (basically give it to them free) I stop to wonder if they would do this had they looked beyond the 'cylinder' abstraction. I think not. Whatever else the shortcomings of the Indian middle class, they can be trusted to read a sentence and comprehend its broad meaning.
So how do we keep abstractions and yet rise above them ? IMHO this is a process that should be 'the' education system in this country. People can think in abstractions once they master the first principles at tender years. Unfortunately our vedic mafia that controlled the education system (such as it was) with the able assistance of Macaulay's imperial education mandate have managed to distort and even destroy the underpinnings of a rational education system.
Ask yourself what is in the Roti that you are eating. Have a look at the list (not exhausive) below and give yourself a point for every thing you got right.

1. LNG from Saudi. (which also gave us the Al Quida)
2. Hybrid dwarf wheat germplasm from Mexico (which also gave us Parthenium and Lantana)
3. Gas cracker technology from Europe (which gave us many things :)
4. Chloripyrophos and friends from Ambani bai (well you can fill in the other things that you got)
5. Nitrogenous fertilizers from Fertilizers India
6. Water from the glaciers in the Himalayas diverted by eco-system destroying canal networks(if grown in punjab or harayna)
7. Diesel from IOC for all agri operations and transport (the crude is from the gulf again)
8. Electric power from Raichur thermal plan to mill the damn thing.(the coal is probably from bihar or jarkhand if not imported from australia)
9. Polyethylene to pack it from god knows who.

This is the eco-footprint of your Roti. Don't you think your kids will be better off if they know this rather than think of agriculture as that nice, clean, eco-friendly(ecological not economic) occupation that magically gives you 'chakki fresh', 'mothers formula', 'extra fiber' (packed and distributed 'home style') atta. Especially when this magic atta was grown using the stuff mentioned above (most of which are toxic, cause global pollution and leave residues in food that allows your son to grow boobs or worse a tail) and packaged and marketed by global criminals like Cargill and Monsanto ?

David Cromwell: Eating the planet

zmag has a good writeup on the ecologically unsustainable practices that are a result of the current idealogically dominant economic system. Good read.

Clean Green Chinese Millionaires

Worldwatch reports that a numner of chinese energy players are now turing clean and green as a way to wealth. From the article
The Hurun Report, a luxury business magazine known for its annual surveys of China’s wealthiest citizens, recently released its 2006 China Energy Rich List, which ranks the wealth generated from the nation’s booming energy sector. Shi Zhengrong, a solar energy tycoon, tops the list with a personal wealth of US$1.95 billion, followed by Jia Tingliang and Wang Suolan with the coal company Shanxi Datuhe Coke & Chemicals, with US$525 million.

While entrepreneurs from traditional energy industries such as coal mining, oil and gas distribution, and power generation still dominate the energy “rich list” (occupying more than half of the fifty spots), the share of wealthy Chinese representing the “clean energy” sector—which includes solar and wind power, batteries, bioenergy, incineration power generation, and thermal energy—has increased to 14, up from only 4 last year. Rupert Hoogewerf, CEO of the Hurun Report, concedes that “valuing the wealth of China’s Rich is as much an art as it is a science,” but believes the list offers a useful glimpse into the dynamics of China’s energy market and illustrates how private companies struggle to share the energy pie with their state-owned counterparts.

According to Shanghai Security Daily, the 2006 list reflects two main trends: the ongoing restructuring of China’s traditional coal mining industry, and the rapid entry of private companies into the clean energy field. The coal industry restructuring, which is being overseen by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), is intended to accelerate technological modernization and improve the industry’s ability to meet projected growth in demand—as well as protect the environment and improve industrial safety, according to Xinhua News. Under new policies, several large private coal companies have been able to merge, renovate, and regroup smaller mines, enter the overseas market with their competitive costs, and switch to deep coal refining. These activities have contributed to the emergence of several new tycoons.

ZnO the future of Lighting ?

ZnO is being touted as a viable alternative to GaN as the building block for Light Emitting Diodes. The prognosis appears promising with a startup MOXtronics having developed the first successful ZnO Arsenic doped LED's. The exciting part is that Zno shows great potential as a medium to produce full spectrum light as opposed to GaN devices that are phosphor activated. From what is clearly a PR note sent to Optics.org
The attractiveness of zinc oxide (ZnO) LEDs stems from the potential for phosphor-free spectral coverage from the deep ultraviolet (UV) to the red, coupled with a quantum efficiency that could approach 90% and a compatibility with high-yield low-cost volume production. One day these LEDs could even outperform their GaN-based cousins (which offer a narrower spectral range) thanks to three key characteristics – superior material quality, an effective dopant and the availability of better alloys.
ZnO also promises very high quantum efficiencies, and UV detectors based on this material have produced external quantum efficiencies (EQE) of 90%, three times that of equivalent GaN-based detectors. The physical processes associated with detection suggest that similarly high efficiency values should be possible for the conversion of electrical carriers to photons. So it is plausible that ZnO LEDs will have an EQE upper limit that is three times higher than that of GaN-based devices.
latest UV LEDs have a typical wall-plug efficiency of 0.1%, which would equate to an efficacy of 0.6 lm/W if the emission were in the visible spectrum. Although the efficiency is far lower than that of GaN LEDs, we are making rapid progress by addressing the various phenomena that degrade device performance. If progress continues at the same rate we will produce LEDs with a 1% wall-plug efficiency within one year, 1–5% within two years and about 10% or more within three years.

Give the jedi his hat

Jerome Taylor takes the mighty Aussies apart. Bowlers win matches. Kudos to Taylor for the rare feat of a one day hatrick.

What after human extinction ?

All species have a finite life span (as the universe itself) and it appears that we are close to ours. (at least in terms of how the biosphere is). This article from the New scientist seems to indicate that all traces of our immortal civilizations will vanish in a short span of (geological) time. Brings to mind the tagline a friend of mine uses "Earth has been around for 6 billion years. It needs no saving. Save your self". Yes santosh, seems that you are right....

Limiting factors: Lunar Exploration - 2

This blog previously examined the stated NASA goal to setup a martian settelment with a waystation on the moon for Water. It now appears that there is none to be had.This complicates things for NASA (and other space agencies) counting on the avaialbility of extra-terrestrial water sources to move out into the solar system. From the news release:
Hopes that the Moon's South Pole has a vast hoard of ice that could be used to establish a lunar colony are sadly unfounded, a new study says.

In 1994, radar echoes sent back in an experiment involving a United States orbiter called Clementine appeared to show that a treasure trove of frozen water lay below the dust in craters near the lunar South Pole that were permanently shaded from the Sun.

If so, such a find would be an invaluable boost to colonisation, as the ice could be used to provide water as well as hydrogen as fuel. Nasa is looking closely at the South Pole as a potential site for the United States' return mission to the Moon, scheduled to take place by 2020.

But a paper published in the British science journal Nature on Thursday by a US team says the Clementine data most probably was misinterpreted.

Donald Campbell of Washington's Smithsonian Institution and colleagues collected radar images of the Moon's South Pole to a resolution of 20m, looking especially at Shackleton crater, which had generated most interest.

The team found that a particular radar signature called the circular polarisation ratio - which in the Clementine experiment was taken to indicate thick deposits of ice - could also be created by echoes from the rough terrain and walls of impact craters.

Grow your home

http://img.timeinc.net/popsci/images/2006/10/treehouse_b_800.jpg
Popular Science has this article on the homes of the future. Basically the house is living and grows around you. Rather romantic and cool. From the article:
f solar power and recycled building materials just aren’t green enough for you, the brains behind the Fab Tree Hab might have the perfect pad. Architects Mitchell Joachim and Javier Arbona, along with environmental engineer Lara Greden, have designed a house that will grow from a few seedlings into a two-story, water-recycling, energy-efficient abode. The Fab Tree Hab, a mix of ancient and ultramodern technology, isn’t merely environmentally friendly. It is the environment.

Instead of building a home out of green materials, the trio figured, why not construct a living, breathing house? “Something that’s alive and thriving,” Joachim says. They hope to plant the first house within five years, but for now, they’re working with Israeli arboriculture firm Plantware, testing techniques for growing the lattice-like weave of vines and roots that will form the walls.

Despite its odd exterior, the house will look normal on the inside. The walls, packed with clay and plastered over, will keep out the rain, and modern technology will be welcome. Yet there are still a few practical kinks to work out. Joachim wonders, for example, how a planning board will react to a house that constantly expands.

Each house will take at least five years to grow, depending on the climate, but Joachim envisions the structures being grown and tended to on a farm. Customers could pick a finished tree habitat and then have it transported to and replanted on a lot within 100 miles. Here, a look inside and out at what’s sure to be the greenest house on the block.

Google shows the way

Google has plans to setup a 1.6 MW solar power plant to take care of part of its needs in California. this is an excellent trend and google show the very eco un-friendly electronics and IT crowd how it is done. From Reuters:
Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) plans a solar-powered electricity system at its Silicon Valley headquarters that will rank as the largest U.S. solar-powered corporate office complex, the company said on Wednesday.

The Web search leader said it is set to begin building a rooftop solar-powered generation system at its Mountain View, California, headquarters capable of generating 1.6 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 1,000 California homes.

"This is the largest customer-owned solar electric system at a corporate site," said Noah Kaye, director of public affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association, an industry group based in Washington, D.C.

A Google executive said the company will rely on solar power to supply nearly a third of the electricity consumed by office workers at its roughly one-million-square-foot headquarters. This does not include power consumed by data centers that power many of Google's Web services worldwide, he said.

The return of the Jedi

Bowlers win matches.

Save the trees

Sony has this neat eBook reader that looks cool and may help cut paper usage. Well, I still want a dead tree book, but this could be the wave of the future...

The attack of the radioactive mutant gastropods

We reap what we sow. Spain reports that radioactive snails are crawling around an area where the US lost some thermo-neculear devices several decades ago. From Reuters:
MADRID (Reuters) - The discovery of radioactive snails at a site in southeastern Spain where three U.S. hydrogen bombs fell by accident 40 years ago may trigger a new joint U.S.-Spanish clean-up operation, officials said on Wednesday.

The hydrogen bombs fell near the fishing village of Palomares in 1966 after a mid-air collision between a bomber and a refuelling craft, in which seven of 11 crewmen died.

Hundreds of tons of soil were removed from the Palomares area and shipped to the United States after high explosive igniters on two bombs detonated on impact, spreading plutonium dust-bearing clouds across nearby fields.

Spanish authorities say the appearance of higher than normal levels of radiation in snails and other creatures shows there may be dangerous levels of plutonium and uranium below ground, and a further clean up could be necessary.

"We have to study the dirt, we have to look underground," said Juan Antonio Rubio, director general of Spain's energy research agency CIEMAT, which is carrying out an investigation with the U.S. Department of Energy.

"We don't know what's down there."

The U.S. and Spain have agreed to share the cost of the initial investigation, which is set to begin in November.

The governments have yet to agree on who would pay for a clean up, according to a U.S. embassy spokesman in Spain.

Spain's government has bought a 25 acre area near Palomares where the bombs fell.

Since 1966, the United States has helped pay for Palomares residents to be checked for signs of radiation poisoning. Spain says there is today no danger from surface radiation.

But it still advises local children not to work in fields at the explosion site, nor eat their snails -- which are a local delicacy.

Planet enters 'ecological debt'

The BBC reports that Rising consumption of natural resources means that humans began "eating the planet" on 9 October, a study suggests.The date symbolised the day of the year when people's demands exceeded the Earth's ability to supply resources and absorb the demands placed upon it.

Welcome to the brave new world. When your grandkids are rooting around 21st century rubbish dumps for food they will thank you for all the SUV rides...

Low humidity water engine

An interesting product to extract water out of the atmosphere for potable applications is being used by the US Army to cut water costs. The machine is not a electrically driven compressor design that needs high humidity to work, rather, a new salt based technology using hydrophilic properties has been adopted. More on this at Wired.

Carbon Sequestration Project Database

Greenbiz reports :
WRI and the Climate, Energy and Pollution program strive to protect the global climate system from further harm due to emissions of greenhouse gases and help humanity and the natural world adapt to unavoidable climate change. Its research on carbon sequestration is one way of moving toward this goal. This database includes descriptive and contact information about carbon sequestration projects worldwide. It also provides information on the projects' efforts toward providing and evaluating non-carbon benefits. The criteria selected to categorize such impacts were drawn from the nine international processes utilizing criteria and indicators for assessing forest extent, health, management, and other socio-economic benefits. In addition, to the extent possible, CEP has made available indicators, guidelines and other measurement tools used to evaluate these impacts. This database does not attempt to evaluate the sustainability of individual projects; rather, it provides initial information to users for further study.
The database can be accessed at the World Resource Institute

Dell to recycle its old PC's

Good trend. Long overdue. What about the millions of assembled PC's that we run. I have several myself and even with linux some of these are dying...

Clean up your act !

Solvent Substitution for Surface Cleaning

The University of Massachusetts Lowell has put up a great database that allows industries to make simple but significant changes in the industrial solvents that are used in manufacturing. This is vital for countries like India and China given the impact of our growing manufacturing. The freely available database is acceesible here