SMARTER PHONE: Georgie's an unusual name for a smartphone, but the new Android-based device has been created especially for blind people and is named after a guide dog. A couple in Peterborough, UK, designed the device to provide apps that help complete tasks such as catching a bus, reading printed text and pinpointing location. Users can dial with a voice-assisted touchscreen and use speech input to send text messages, while other apps help with specific tasks for travel, lifestyle and communication. Well, it's a much better name than a random bunch of letters and digits. BBC has further info.
WASTED WASTE: Mostly we don't think about sewers very much, but apparently they run quite hot, thanks to showers, dishwashers and other sources dumping hot water into them. And where there's heat there's potential energy. In Minnesota, USA, a company called Hidden Fuels has been monitoring one town's sewers to create a thermal energy map. Now they're working out how to run the sewage through a geothermal heat pump device to extract the energy that could heat hundreds of homes. They plan to be heating one building with extracted energy by the end of the year. Perhaps it's time to retire the word 'waste' in favour of 'resource'. NPR explains.
ELECTRON HURDLES: UK scientists can make electrons jump one at a time across a barrier, creating a very well-defined electrical current. It's small — the current they produced is ten billion times smaller than the current used when boiling a kettle, but it's a start. They controlled a billion electrons per second with a quantum dot — a tiny electrostatic trap less than 0.0001 mm wide. Next:
nano sprints. National Physical Laboratory details.
KEEP TAPPING: Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have found a way to harvest the energy created when 2 different kinds of plastic materials rub against one another. This could mean that tapping a touchscreen would create electricity to help power the device. The system requires two different kinds of materials to create the different electrodes, as surfaces made from the same material don't produce a charge differential. There's a good excuse for playing games: to recharge the device. Georgia Institute of Technology elaborates.
THE POWER OF THREE: Monitoring systems are used in all kinds of
places: the human body, remote locations and even just spots that are hard to reach. Yet they all need power. MIT's new computer and wireless-communication chips harvest the energy they need from their surroundings. The chips combine power from natural light, heat and vibrations in the environment and use a sophisticated control system to produce a constant output. So long as those remote spots aren't cold and dark ... MIT News has more.
