Ordinary paper could one day be used as a lightweight battery to power the devices that are now enabling the printed word to be eclipsed by e-mail, e-books and online news.
Scientists at Stanford University in California have successfully turned paper coated with ink made of silver and carbon nanomaterials into a “paper battery” that holds promise for new types of lightweight, high-performance energy storage.
The same feature that helps ink adhere to paper allows it to hold onto the single-walled carbon nanotubes and silver nanowire films.
Earlier research found that silicon nanowires could be used to make batteries 10 times as powerful as lithium-ion batteries now used to power devices such as laptop computers.
“Taking advantage of the mature paper technology, low cost, light and high-performance energy-storage are realized by using conductive paper as current collectors and electrodes,” the scientists said in research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The battery could be useful in powering electric or hybrid vehicles, would make electronics lighter and longer lasting, and might even lead someday to paper electronics, the scientists said.
Battery weight and life have been an obstacle to commercial viability of electric-powered cars and trucks.
low-cost, high-performance energy storage device, such as batteries and simple supercapacitors,” Stanford assistant professor of materials science Yi Cui said.
Mr Cui said in addition to being useful for portable electronics and wearable electronics, the paper supercapacitors could be used for all kinds of applications that require instant high power.
“Since our paper batteries and supercapacitors can be very low cost, they are also good for grid-connected energy storage,” he said.
Peidong Yang, professor of chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley, said the technology could be commercialized within a short time.
Sustainability exhibition at Volkswagen’s Autostadt
November 24th, 2009
If the fabulous landscaping, architecture and the famous CarTowers weren’t enough to persuade you to take a visit to Volkswagen’s impressive ‘Autostadt‘, then this new permanent exhibition from Berlin architects J. Mayer H. might tip the balance for you. A collaboration with interactive media specialists, and fellow Berliners, Art+Com, this otherworldly, architectural space offers experiential learning on sustainability issues through a variety of touch-screen technical installations. The rather ginormous green shapey things are apparently based upon the internationally recognised PET symbol, which we’re sure was all very nice to say when presented to the client, but who are they kidding? This beautifully bizarre, luminous, melted wall madness was surely born from some crazy hallucinogenic toad-licking experience.
The trustworthiness of the scientific community’s global warming data pool is being called into question as the scandal over doctored data continues to unfold.
The latest revelation came on Sunday with the publication of a report by The Sunday Times of London that scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom confessed to throwing out most of the raw temperature data on which the theory of global warming is founded.
The loss of the data prevents other scientists from checking it to determine whether, in fact, there has been a long-term rise in global temperatures during the past century and a half.
“They are making scientific progress more difficult now,” says Willie Soon, a physicist, astronomer and climate researcher at the solar and stellar physics division of the Harvard University-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “This is a shameful, dark day for science,” he said in an interview with FoxNews.com.
Soon also suggested that there has been systemic suppression of dissenting opinion among scientists in the climate change community, ranging from social snubs to e-mail stalking and even threats of harm.
Many in the environmental policy community are outraged about the disclosure that the data has been lost. “The scientific process has become so appallingly corrupted,” James M. Taylor, senior fellow in environment policy at The Heartland Institute, told FoxNews.com.
Heartland is a libertarian think tank in Chicago that recently produced a conference featuring scientists and policymakers, like Jose Maria Aznar, the former prime minister of Spain, and Vaclev Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, who dispute the theory of global warming.
The report in the Times quoted Roger Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, who requested the original records from CRU.
“The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us.’ So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” Pielke told the Times. He did not return repeated phone calls seeking additional comment. The university’s publicist also was unable to answer additional questions about the story.
“This closed-door conspiracy is harming everyone,” says Soon. “I thought I had seen it all. Now I have.”
A back story is also starting to emerge, depicting a rough world of suppression of dissenting opinion. Soon, who has been involved in climate change research for 15 years and has published in the field, said there was a general consensus that global warming was possible in the late 1990s. But at the time, the research community wanted to look back not just 150 years but 1,000 years, to see what the long-term trends had been.
Soon says some scientists became staunch advocates for their position that global warming was occurring, and that they they dug in and started refusing to publish papers with contradictory viewpoints.
“I read a paper on increasing heat in the ocean and asked the scientist in France for the backup data,” Soon says. “She told me she did not distribute data to people who didn’t agree with her conclusions.”
Soon says he has been victimized by other “ugly” personal attacks from leading scientists in the global warming world when he has simply raised questions, as any scientific colleague would, about the veracity of the data.
“Seeing all of this controversy in the news is no different than dealing with them in person,” he said. “There’s a lot of personal ugliness.”
Taylor, who is also outspoken in his questioning of climate change theory, says he too has encountered ugliness from global warming enthusiasts, including “e-mail stalking” and “people making thinly veiled threats to physically harm me and my family.” He said his opponents at public forums have refused to shake his hand or even acknowledge his presence.
Hackers uncovered e-mails between leading global warming advocates, which expressed concerns that the temperature figures from the last decade simply did not demonstrate that global warming was continuing, as theorized.
Now, some critics are questioning even the seemingly reliable data from the U.S. government.
“The GISS and NOAA reports suffer from the same reliability concerns as the CRU ground-based temperature reports,” Taylor says. “And, more importantly, are similarly staffed by outspoken global warming activists who are likely engaging in the same data rigging and data hiding as CRU.”
But global warming backers aren’t so sure.
“I don’t think this is a big deal,” Nick Berning, director of public advocacy and media relations for Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, based in Washington D.C., said. “These are people who want to get their panties in a bunch, so they’ve gotten their panties in a bunch.”
Imagine wrapping paper that could be a gift in and of itself because it lights up with words like “Happy Birthday.” That is one potential application of a new biodegradable battery made of cellulose, the stuff of paper.
Scientists worldwide are striving to develop thin, flexible, lightweight, inexpensive, environmentally friendly batteries made entirely from nonmetal parts. Among the most promising materials for these batteries are conducting polymers. However, until now these have impractical for use in batteries — for instance, their ability to hold a charge often degrades over use.
The key to this new battery turned out to be an often bothersome green algae known as Cladophora (pictured). Rotting heaps of this hairlike freshwater plant throughout the world can lead to unsightly, foul-smelling beaches.
This algae makes an unusual kind of cellulose typified by a very large surface area, 100 times that of the cellulose found in paper. This allowed researchers to dramatically increase the amount of conducting polymer available for use in the new device, enabling it to better recharge, hold and discharge electricity.
“We have long hoped to find some sort of constructive use for the material from algae blooms and have now been shown this to be possible,” said researcher Maria Strømme, a nanotechnologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. “This creates new possibilities for large-scale production of environmentally friendly, cost-effective, lightweight energy storage systems.”
The new batteries consisted of extremely thin layers of conducting polymer just 40 to 50 nanometers or billionths of a meter wide coating algae cellulose fibers only 20 to 30 nanometers wide that were collected into paper sheets.
“They’re very easy to make,” Strømme said.
Quick to charge
They could hold 50 to 200 percent more charge than similar conducting polymer batteries, and once better optimized, they might even be competitive with commercial lithium batteries, the researchers noted. They also recharged much faster than conventional rechargeable batteries — while a regular battery takes at least an hour to recharge, the new batteries could recharge in anywhere from eight minutes to just 11 seconds.
The new battery also showed a dramatic boost in the ability to hold a charge over use. While a comparable polymer battery showed a 50 percent drop in the amount of charge it could hold after 60 cycles of discharging and recharging, the new battery showed just a 6 percent loss through 100 charging cycles.
“When you have thick polymer layers, it’s hard to get all the material to recharge properly, and it turns into an insulator, so you lose capacity,” said researcher Gustav Nyström, an electrochemist at Uppsala University. “When you have thin layers, you can get it fully discharged and recharged.”
Flexible electronics
The researchers suggest their batteries appear well-suited for applications involving flexible electronics, such as clothing and packaging.
“We’re not focused on replacing lithium ion batteries — we want to find new applications where batteries are not used today,” Strømme told LiveScience. “What if you could put batteries inside wallpaper to charge sensors in your home? If you could put this into clothes, can you couple that with detectors to analyze sweat from your body to tell if there’s anything wrong?”
Future directions of research include seeing how much charge these batteries lose over time, a problem with polymer batteries and all batteries in general. They also want to see how much they can scale up these batteries, “see if we can make them much, much larger,” Strømme said.
The scientists detailed their last month in the journal Nano Letters.
The USS Makin Island is the newest ship in the fleet and the first to use hybrid technology –earning it the nickname the ‘Prius’ of the Navy.
Three football fields long, the Makin Island carries 2,000 marines, their helicopters, hovercraft, Bradley fighting vehicles and a squadron of Harrier jets. The ship is designed for cruising offshore for long periods at slow speeds-perfect for a hybrid electric motor.
Compared to other steam driven ships, the Makin Island can stay on water almost twice as long before refueling. On its first voyage from a shipyard in Mississippi to San Diego, the hybrid engine saves more than 1 million gallons of diesel, saving taxpayers 2.2 million dollars.
The Makin Island is just the first “green” ship to sail the ocean blue- part of an ongoing initiative to make our armed forces less reliant on fossil fuel and to reduce the Military’s carbon footprint.
A wildfire in Santa Barbara, California last month helped forge some unlikely bonds. Rescued from the Jesusita Fire, a 3-week old bobcat kitten and 3 day old fawn became fast friends. The animal rescue in California brought predator and prey together. But these babies simply took comfort in each other’s company, snuggling under a desk at a dispatch office for hours.
The bobcat and fawn would not normally be placed together, due to regulations, but the rescuers had no choice. They snagged the bobcat kitten first, finding it dehydrated and near death. Later, they brought in the fawn and discovered they didn’t have a crate large enough for it. No matter – the kitten ran right over to the fawn, and the two became fast friends.
“All of these Santa Barbara area animal rescue organizations have put out a national plea for donations because of the overwhelming need for animal food, medicines, and space to house displaced animals. ART currently leases a 1.5-acre plot of land that houses rescued animals in enclosures on the property, which require around-the-clock care, and the organization is desperate to purchase the land. The morning after Di Sieno – along with an insanely cute bobcat cub and fawn photo – appeared on the Ellen Degeneres show – the landowner decided he needed to sell it and she’s concerned for the future of the animals she and her fellow workers just rescued. The WCN also seeks funds for their Oiled and Injured Seabird Rehab Center, and receive no City, State or federal funding. One of their volunteers, Nancy Callahan, runs W.I.L.D.E. Services which focuses on raccoons and opossums, had her home and facility burnt to the ground and must start over from scratch. After rehabilitation, the groups reintroduce rescued animals to the wild.”
Fire season is just starting, and with drought conditions in Southern California, there could be more wildfires in the coming months. If you’d like to make a donation to help the animal rescue organizations, follow the links above to the non-profits’ websites. Bobcat and fawn thank you!
The real reason for the recent “global warming”, though it’s not really warming, not some Al Hore hocus pocus.
Charlie Perry, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence, sifts through graphs of data in explaining why he believes solar activity may have greater impacts on global temperatures than previously thought. (COREY JONES/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL)
The average person may not associate coolness with the sun.
The sun releases energy through deep nuclear fusion reactions in its core and has surface temperatures as hot as 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NASA’s Web site.
Not cool at all.
But the sun’s recent activity, or lack thereof, may be linked to the pleasant summer temperatures the midwest has enjoyed this year, said Charlie Perry, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence.
The sun is at a low point of a deep solar minimum in which there are few to no sunspots on its surface.
In July through August, 51 consecutive days passed without a spot, one day short of tying the record of 52 days from the early 1900s.
As of Sept. 15, the current solar minimum ranks third all-time in the amount of spotless days with 717 since 2004. There have been 206 spotless days in 2009, which is 14th all-time. But there are still more than 100 days left in the year, and Perry expects that number to climb.
Perry, who studies sunspots and solar activity in his spare time, received an undergraduate degree in physics at Kansas State University and a Ph.D in physics and astronomy at The University of Kansas. He also has spent time as a meteorologist.
A sunspot, Perry explains, is a location on the sun’s surface that is cooler than the surrounding area. When there are more sunspots, the sun’s surface becomes more dynamic and an opposite effect takes place, releasing more heat and energy when other parts of the sun become hotter.
A solar minimum is when the amount of spots on the sun is at a low and the reverse is true for a solar maximum. The complete solar cycle is about an 11-year process. Perry says the current solar minimum could continue into 2010.
“There’s a fair chance it will be a cooler winter than last year,” Perry said.
Perry said there is a feeling from some in the scientific community the Earth may be entering into a grand minimum, which is an extended period with low numbers of sunspots that creates cooler temperatures. The year without a summer, which was 1816, was during a grand minimum in 1800 to 1830 when Europe became cooler, Perry said. Another grand minimum was in 1903 to 1913.
Perry said there is anecdotal evidence the Earth’s temperature may be slightly decreasing, but local weather patterns are much more affected by the jet stream than solar activity.
However, Perry said snow in Buenos Aires and southern Africa, the best ski season in Australia and a cooler Arctic region are some of the anecdotal evidence for a cooling period.
So, Perry said, sunspots may have a far greater impact on weather than previously thought.
Perry is a proponent of the cosmic ray and clouds theory as opposed to the CO2 global warming theory to explain recent global warming trends.
The cosmic ray and clouds theory was first put forth in the late 1990’s by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark.
In a July 2007 issue of Discover magazine, Svensmark said the theory is simply that solar activity can alter the amount of clouds in the atmosphere, which affects the temperature of the Earth. More clouds mean a cooler Earth because more of the sun’s heat is being reflected. Fewer clouds equal a warmer Earth.
Perry says data indicates global temperature fluctuations correlate to a statistically significant degree with the length of the sunspot cycle. Longer cycles are associated with cooler temperatures.
Johan Feddema, acting chair and professor of geography at KU, studies global warming. Atmospheric science is a program in geography at KU. He says he is skeptical of any one phenomenon being the direct cause of global warming because there are so many climate variables that factor into global temperatures.
Feddema said the warming trend earlier in the century could be attributed to anything from solar activity to El Ninos. But since the mid 1980s he believes data doesn’t correlate well with solar activity, but does correlate well with rising CO2 levels.
Feddema believes we may hit global high temperatures in a few years with the underlying factor being rising CO2 levels, coupled with the solar cycle returning to a maximum and an El Nino.
For more information or to view graphs of data pertaining to global climate change, Feddema recommends visiting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Web site at www.ipcc.ch/ where 2007 assessment reports on climate change can be viewed. He also recommends the Wikipedia entry on solar variation for good visual graphs of data.
Of course now that the government (taxpayers) own GM, we can say that the Volt gets “as many miles as we want it to get”.
Ultra-high mileage for GM’s electric-drive Volt could give it a marketing boost.
DETROIT (CNNMoney.com) — The Chevrolet Volt, GM’s electric car that’s expected to go on sale in late 2010, is projected to get an estimated 230 miles per gallon, the automaker announced Tuesday.
That exceptionally high government mileage rating could give the Volt a major boost. For the first time, car buyers will easily be able to compare electric cars with ordinary gas-powered cars.
“Having a car that gets triple-digit fuel economy can and will be a game changer for us,” said GM CEO Fritz Henderson.
Determining fuel economy for an electric car is a tricky matter. While General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) has been working with the Environmental Protection Agency for years on the issue, the agency says it has not tested a Chevy Volt and therefore cannot confirm the fuel economy values claimed by GM.
50 mpg? or 5,000 mpg?
Basically, you will be able to drive the Volt for about 40 miles using the lithium-ion batteries. For those driving less than that, gas mileage is essentially unlimited. It is only after 40 miles that the Volt will start using gas.
“Most Volt drivers will operate on a daily basis without having to use a single drop of gas,” said Henderson, saying that three out of four drivers travel 40 miles or less a day.
Fuel economy for hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius is displayed in the same way as it is for any other gasoline-powered vehicle. It gets 46 mpg, for example, versus 19 mpg for a V-6 Ford Mustang.
That standard works because all the energy used by the Prius ultimately comes from burning gasoline. The Prius just uses that energy more efficiently than other cars do.
The Chevrolet Volt, on other hand, runs on electricity that comes from two sources — a battery as well as a gasoline engine.
When gasoline is providing the power, the Volt might get as much as 50 mpg. But that mpg figure would not take into account that the car has already gone 40 miles with no gas at all.
So let’s say the car is driven 50 miles in a day. For the first 40 miles, no gas is used and during the last 10 miles, 0.2 gallons are used. That’s the equivalent of 250 miles per gallon. But, if the driver continues on to 80 miles, total fuel economy would drop to about 100 mpg. And if the driver goes 300 miles, the fuel economy would be just 62.5 mpg.
The Volt will need to be plugged in at night to recharge. The company said it estimates it will need 8 kilowatt hours for the recharge necessary to travel 40 miles. That should cost a total of about 40 cents at off-peak electricity rates in Detroit, Henderson said.National figures from the Department of Energy suggest most consumers would pay more than that, probably around 88 cents per recharge.
Even at those modest recharging costs, and limited use of gasoline, it will be difficult for the Volt to save money for their owners, according to auto sales service Edmunds.com.
“Even if the Volt’s fuel savings could possibly be as dramatic as today’s numbers suggest, the expected purchase price will be much higher than that of existing hybrids, and it will take years to pay off its price premium,” notes Edmunds.com senior analyst Jessica Caldwell.
Making — and selling — the Volt
The fuel efficiency rating is based on the EPA’s proposed methodology which GM used in its Volt tests and applies to city driving only. Henderson said GM is confident that when Volt’s combined city/highway mileage average is calculated, it will be over 100 mpg.
But GM is obviously focused on the 230 mpg estimate as part of its early marketing campaign for the vehicle. It unveiled a logo with the number 230, with the zero looking like a cross between a smiley face and electrical plug.
Edmunds officials said they have doubts about the assumptions used to achieve the lofty fuel economy estimate.
“For most people, it is not realistic to expect that kind of mileage in real world driving,” said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst.
But Krebs said the Volt is likely to get achieve significantly better fuel economy than current offerings, such as the Toyota Prius that gets an estimated 50 mpg.
GM started pre-production of the car in June is making about 10 a month. “Volt is becoming very real, very fast,” Henderson said.
Henderson conceded the cost of building a Volt will be expensive, about $40,000 per vehicle. But he said the vehicle will qualify for a $7,500 tax credit, which will reduce the vehicle cost by that amount for consumers.
He also stressed that GM has not set the pricing for the Volt, and conceded the company may have to subsidize the vehicle. The goal: Make enough sales to move the Volt from “first generation” to lower-cost future designs.
“The cost of the vehicle in the first generation is high,” he said.
GM has not given sales targets for the first year, other than to say it will sell only thousands in the first year, and tens of thousands after that.
Members of the SEAPLEX (Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition) attend a training to use conductivity, temperature and depth instrument onboard the research vessel New Horizon in this handout taken August 2, 2009 and released to Reuters August 3, 2009. REUTERS/Scripps Institution of Oceanography/Handout
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Marine scientists from California are venturing this week to the middle of the North Pacific for a study of plastic debris accumulating across hundreds of miles (km) of open sea dubbed the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”
A research vessel carrying a team of about 30 researchers, technicians and crew members embarked on Sunday on a three-week voyage from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, based at the University of California at San Diego.
The expedition will study how much debris — mostly tiny plastic fragments — is collecting in an expanse of sea known as the North Pacific Ocean Gyre, how that material is distributed and how it affects marine life.
The debris ends up concentrated by circular, clockwise ocean currents within an oblong-shaped “convergence zone” hundreds of miles (km) across from end to end near the Hawaiian Islands, about midway between Japan and the West Coast of the United States.
The focus of the study will be on plankton, other microorganisms, small fish and birds.
“The concern is what kind of impact those plastic bits are having on the small critters on the low end of the ocean food chain,” Bob Knox, deputy director of research at Scripps, said on Monday after the ship had spent its first full day at sea.
The 170-foot vessel New Horizon is equipped with a laboratory for on-board research, but scientists also will bring back samples for further study.
Little is known about the exact size and scope of the vast debris field discovered some years ago by fishermen and others in the North Pacific that is widely referred to as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”
Large items readily visible from the deck of a boat are few and far between. Most of the debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the water surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite images.
The debris zone shifts by as much as a thousand miles north and south on a seasonal basis, and drifts even farther south during periods of warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures known as El Nino, according to information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Besides the potential harm to sea life caused by ingesting bits of plastic, the expedition team will look at whether the particles could carry other pollutants, such as pesticides, far out to sea, and whether tiny organisms attached to the debris could be transported to distant regions and thus become invasive species.
