Lifeboat Foundation

The trouble with microphones is that they don’t just hear — they have to listen. Powering the mic and its signal processor means using energy, and energy means a battery, and a battery means charging. This new microphone-like system hears more like the way our own ears do, requiring little or no power, and could help fill the world with voice-responsive machines. (If that’s something we really want.)

The device is called a “triboelectric auditory sensor,” and it works via what’s called the triboelectric effect — essentially when two surfaces rub together and create a charge. They’re still trying to figure out why this happens, but what matters to engineers is that it happens reliably.

Triboelectric nanogenerators have been around for a few years, creating power by having two compatible materials interact with each other at super-small scales. While they’re tiny and highly efficient, they don’t actually produce a lot of power. Researchers from Chongqing University found that, fortunately, you don’t need a lot of power for the purposes of detecting sound.

Continue reading “Nanotech powers this super-sensitive microphone” »

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Two new permanent exhibits just opened at the Maryland Science Center, capturing the imagination of children of all ages.

The two new exhibits are titled “Science Aglow” and “Water Play.”

Science Aglow is an exhibit on the Electromagnetic Spectrum. It was developed and built in-house, involving topics of light, radiation, energy and optics. Kids can capture their shadow, use infrared cameras, experiment with light sensors, and observe how different animals view light.

Continue reading “Two New Permanent Exhibits Open At Maryland Science Center” »

Israel’s Urban Aeronautics (UA) has announced it’s going into full-scale development of its CityHawk VTOL flying car. The first manned flights of this hybrid-powered, 170 mph six-seater will take place in 2021–22, after which it’ll be converted to run on hydrogen fuel cells.

The race to produce safe, powerful and affordable solid-state lithium batteries is accelerating and recent announcements about game-changing research using a solid non-flammable ceramic electrolyte known as garnet has some in the race calling it revolutionary.

“This is a paradigm shift in energy storage,” said Kelsey Hatzell, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. A paper – “The Effect of Pore Connectivity on Li Dendrite Propagation Within LLZO Electrolytes Observed with Synchrotron X-ray Tomography” – describing her novel research on the failure points of a garnet electrolyte was published online in March in the American Chemical Society’s Energy Letters, which was among the most read ACS Letters articles that month.

Continue reading “Safe solid-state lithium batteries herald ‘paradigm shift’ in energy storage” »

Ionic Materials received an investment from Hyundai Cradle. Ionic Materials has a polymer electrolyte that can make higher performing and safer solid-state batteries. Prototype batteries with Ionic Materials’ solid plastic electrolyte can enable higher energy densities at low cost.

Properties of Ionic Materials polymer

Up to 1.3 mS/cm at room temperature Lithium transference number of 0.7 High voltage capability (5 volts) Can accommodate high loadings in the cathode High elastic modulus Low cost precursors Stable against Lithium Conducts multiple ions.

Continue reading “Ionic materials could achieve 50% higher energy density while costing less than $100 per kwh” »

Their task was to ensure that the radioactive materials did not fall into the wrong hands on the way back to Idaho, where the government maintains a stockpile of nuclear explosive materials for the military and others.

To ensure they got the right items, the specialists from Idaho brought radiation detectors and small samples of dangerous materials to calibrate them: specifically, a plastic-covered disk of plutonium, a material that can be used to fuel nuclear weapons, and another of cesium, a highly radioactive isotope that could potentially be used in a so-called “dirty” radioactive bomb.

But when they stopped at a Marriott hotel just off Highway 410, in a high-crime neighborhood filled with temp agencies and ranch homes, they left those sensors on the back seat of their rented Ford Expedition. When they awoke the next morning, the window had been smashed and the special valises holding these sensors and nuclear materials had vanished.

Continue reading “Plutonium Was Stolen From the Back of a Van at a Texas Marriott” »

DENVER, July 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) has embraced a 3D printed titanium dome for satellite fuel tanks so big you can’t even put your arms around it. The 46-inch- (1.16-meter-) diameter vessel completed final rounds of quality testing this month, ending a multi-year development program to create giant, high-pressure tanks that carry fuel on board satellites.

The titanium tank consists of three parts welded together: two 3D printed domes that serve as caps, plus a variable-length, traditionally-manufactured titanium cylinder that forms the body.

Continue reading “Giant Satellite Fuel Tank Sets New Record for 3D Printed Space Parts” »

One of the biggest freshwater reservoirs in the world is, literally, up in the air.

Between 6 and 18 million gallons of freshwater hover above every square mile of land, not counting droplets trapped in clouds. Scientists realized this centuries ago but they have never quite figured out how to bring the water down to earth. The effort required to condense it would consume such vast quantities of energy that it has always appeared to make any effort to capture and use this water uneconomical.

Continue reading “Harnessing natural gas to harvest water from the air might solve two big problems at once” »

Directly converting electrical power to heat is easy. It regularly happens in your toaster, that is, if you make toast regularly. The opposite, converting heat into electrical power, isn’t so easy.

Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories have developed a tiny silicon -based device that can harness what was previously called waste heat and turn it into DC power. Their advance was recently published in Physical Review Applied.

“We have developed a new method for essentially recovering energy from waste heat. Car engines produce a lot of heat and that heat is just waste, right? So imagine if you could convert that engine heat into electrical power for a hybrid car. This is the first step in that direction, but much more work needs to be done,” said Paul Davids, a physicist and the principal investigator for the study.