Sea Weed To Bio-Fuel "A Cost Competitive Alternative To Fossil Fuels"

From: Yahoo AFP

Breakthrough in seaweed biofuel reported


Energy experts believe that seaweed holds enormous potential as a biofuel alternative to coal and oil, and US-based scientists say they have unlocked the secret of turning its sugar into energy.


A newly engineered microbe can do the work by metabolizing all of the major sugars in brown seaweed, potentially making it a cost-competitive alternative to petroleum fuel, said the report in the US journal Science.


The team at the Berkeley, California-based Bio Architecture Lab engineered a form of E. coli bacteria that can digest the seaweed's sugars into ethanol, it said.
Unlike other microbes before, researchers found it can attack the primary sugar constituent in seaweed, known as alginate.


"Our scientists have engineered an enzyme to degrade and a pathway to metabolize the alginate, allowing us to utilize all the major sugars in seaweed, said Daniel Trunfio, chief executive at Bio Architecture Lab.
The advance "makes the biomass an economical feedstock for the production of renewable fuels and chemicals," he said.


A company spokesman told AFP that the lab currently has four aquafarming sites in Chile where it hopes to "scale up its microbe technology as the next step on the path to commercialization" in the next three years.


Seaweed is seen as an appealing option for biofuel because, unlike corn and sugar cane, it does not use arable land and so does not compete with crops grown for food.
Less than three percent of the world's coastal waters can produce enough seaweed to replace some 60 billion gallons of fossil fuel, according to background information in the article.
At peak production, seaweed could produce 19,000 liters per hectare annually, about twice the level of ethanol productivity from sugarcane and five times higher than the ethanol productivity from corn.


Funding for the research came from the US Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency, a grant from InnovaChile, and Norwegian oil giant Statoil.


see also: health benefits , 

KINECTHESIA

From: Physorg



by- Evan Lerner, Penn Current



Kinecthesia: Students Hack Kinect To Help Visually Impaired


Junior SEAS students Eric Berdinis and Jeff Kiske work on Kinecthesia, a belt-worn camera system that gives users feedback through directional vibrations.
Despite amazing advances in computers and cameras, people with serious visual impairments are often aided with the most basic technology imaginable: a cane.


Earlier this year, juniors Eric Berdinis and Jeff Kiske, both computer engineering majors in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, hacked together a high-tech upgrade for the visually impaired out of off-the-shelf video game equipment. Called the Kinecthesia, it’s a belt-worn camera system that gives users feedback about their immediate surroundings through directional vibrations.
Although it’s fresh out of the workshop, the Kinecthesia is already generating buzz: it was selected as one of 10 projects for Google’s Zeitgeist Young Minds conference, which highlights college-aged innovators.




Berdinis and Kiske started the project as their final assignment in professor Rahul Mangharam’s embedded systems class. Tasked with creating a medical device, the duo began exploring the Microsoft Kinect, a video game controller that uses multiple cameras to translate a player’s real-life motions into actions on the screen.
“We saw that there wasn’t much in the way of assistive devices that had to do with vision, despite all of these new cameras and things like the Kinect,“ says Kiske. “We just thought it looked cool and started playing around with it.”


Recognizing the Kinect’s ability to translate details about environmental depth into digital information as a route to a high-tech upgrade on walking canes, the team began figuring out how to integrate the technology into a wearable device. Getting the cameras to talk to the BeagleBoard, a miniature, customizable computer at the heart of the system, was the first step.




“The Kinect wasn’t intended to work with anything but the Xbox, so modifying the code to make it work on this processor was one of the biggest challenges,” says Berdinis.
Though the Kinect is great at determining how far away objects are, another challenge was deciding how to relay that information to the user. 
“We didn’t want to overwhelm the user with audio cues or vibration motors all across the waist,” says Berdinis. “Through trial and error, we found that three buzzer zones was the right amount.”


The three buzzers, positioned left, right and center, begin vibrating once objects become close enough to potentially impede the user, and increase in intensity as the objects get closer.   
Berdinis and Kiske will continue to work on the Kinecthesia; connections made through the Google conference have enabled them to work with the visually impaired community and further refine their system into what could be a life-changing product.

SWITCH Lighting

From: Physorg

Next-Generation Light Bulb

A California startup out to change the world shined at the Consumer Electronics Show on Thursday with a light bulb blending beauty and efficiency with love for the Earth.

Switch Lighting executives Tracy Bilbrough and Brett Sharenow glowed as they showed off new-generation LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs that they believe will transform the more than $30-billion global market.

"It is exciting to be the little David taking on the Goliath's of the world," Switch chief Bilbrough told AFP.
"You pick this because it doesn't have mercury; you can dim it; it loves cold weather; there is no ultra-violet so they don't draw any bugs outdoors, and it fits in any fixture an incandescent bulb goes in."

Switch bulbs being are being tested in two US hotels and will begin shipping later this month as a smart option to incandescent or CFL models.
Incandescent bulbs are power-sucking classics being phased out in countries around the world, replaced by energy-efficient CFL versions containing toxic mercury that make them hazardous to toss in the rubbish.

"LEDs are really the next thing in lighting," said Switch chief strategy officer Sharenow.
The Silicon Valley company's bulb is touted as Earth-friendly from "cradle to cradle" and lasts about seven times longer than CFLs while providing the kind of light people like from incandescent.

Switch bulbs have an artistic look akin to a snow glove perched on a silver pedestal. They can also survive a three-foot drop to a hardwood floor.
A ring of metal prongs, each with a computer chip on it to emit light, is immersed in liquid that fills each bulb. The liquid cools the chips while acting as a lens to magnify light.
"It is food-grade; actually used in making beer, pasta and women's cosmetics," Sharenow said of the liquid, the ingredients of which were secret.
"We actually get more light out of the LEDs with liquid in the glass dome than if there was air in there."

Switch bulbs use 80 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs and last for about 25,000 hours no matter often you switch them on or off, he added.

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