Most people are doing their best to become greener and help the environment. Changing to energy-saving light bulbs and doing your home recycling may seem like little things to do, but every little thing does help! A life-altering new idea is being tossed around to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases which could be on the cards at the beginning of next year. This new innovation would see everyone with a personal carbon allowance which they could use throughout the year. (more…)

Record increases in fuel prices and concerns about global warming are again directing attention to electricity powered vehicles. Other main alternative solution offered to those concerns, biofuels, is currently taking flak because they are perceived to have contributed to the world food crisis.

Main problems holding back the battery powered vehicles are, the time it takes to recharge the battery and the limited range of the vehicles developed so far, such as EV1 from General Motors. Hybrid vehicles offering a combination of battery power and internal combustion are more popular. However their battery powered range is much smaller; the most successful hybrid, Toyota Prius, can barely make 1 mile on battery alone.

That is why researchers around the world are working hard to improve the technology.

They are increasingly turning to lithium ion batteries. This type of battery made the recent success of the mobile devices possible. They are light weight, and retain full capacity till completely depleted, instead of deteriorating with each recharge as with most other types of batteries.

Nickel-metal-hydride batteries, already in use in Prius, offer durability and better energy density for now. But they are heavy and most researchers think that lithium ion batteries will overtake them in low cost and energy capacity. While currently expensive, large lithium ion batteries may become cheaper once mass production starts and economies of scale kick in.

Some researchers are working on replacing expensive cobalt in lithium ion batteries with other substances like manganese and iron phosphate, though they have not been completely successful in getting the same efficacy as cobalt so far.

Lithium ion batteries are kept back by other reasons; a tendency to explode when over charged or over heated. Larger the battery, larger the potential explosion will be; not very good for vehicles. Getting over this problem is a major focus of research.

In any case here is reason to be hopeful; most experts expect efforts to make batteries competitive with internal combustion to be successful in the not too distant future.

Yes, you heard me right. A breakthrough in technology is likely to increase the storage capacity of electronic devices like MP3 players by a factor of almost hundred and fifty thousand. As I always say more the better!

Currently a state of the art player will hold about forty thousand songs. To make another comparison today’s best 3.5 inch hard drives can hold about one terabyte of data. But if promise of this discovery holds true, 500 terabyte disks are on the horizon.

Key discovery is a switch the size of a molecule or fraction of a nanometer. This allows the stored data to be retrieved ands stored without increasing the size of the gadget using the storage. Switch consists of two banks of molecules placed 0.32 of a nanometer apart from each other on a carbon or gold plane. This in theory allows for 1 billion transistors to be placed on a single microchip.

Discovery published in respected scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology was made by Lee Cronin and Malcolm Kadodwala, chemistry professors at Glasgow University in UK, assisted by researchers at Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington, UK, which houses Synchrotron, a huge radiation source.

Utility of this breakthrough will of course extend well beyond their possible use in music players to all electronic devices. Everyone will get more power and storage.

This is also radical in that it there is no need for fragile silicon, the staple semi conducting material in all modern chips. It may be possible for these switches to be planted on plastic, since they work with carbon, thus allowing greater flexibility to the whole field.