Efficient converter for hot water of 90 degrees C into 3 kilowatts (100 V, 30 A) of electricity.
With the world facing global warming and an ever reducing supply of oil resources, there is a clear and present need for new technology research in renewable energy. Furthermore, in light of the recent great east Japan earthquake, the shutdown of thermal and nuclear based power plants has created brand new demands not only for energy efficient technologies, but also for the immediate utilization of brand new, yet untapped alternative sources of energy. Once such source, underutilized but in abundance, is low temperature heat source below 150 degrees C, which commonly exists in the form of waste heat from factories, solar heat, or hot springs. Modern attempts to utilize such heat sources are limited in scale to the 50+ kilowatt range, and only to sites able to meet restrictive requirements such as high volume heat, large space, expensive upfront costs.
Feature Application of low temperature heat source == ==
A new type of engine could be relatively inexpensive.
A new version of the internal combustion engine, which could significantly cut gas consumption, might be surprisingly practical and easy to deploy, according to recent findings by researchers at MIT. Tests on a prototype based on the technology, which allows engines to switch between conventional technology and the new gas-saving type of combustion, show that it does not require a special fuel, and engines using the technology can be cheaply made out of conventional auto parts.
IBM may be approaching a breakthrough in battery technologies
For the project, IBM"s Research unit will partner with U.S. laboratories to develop a technology that uses lithium metal to react with oxygen in the air, resulting in a storage capacity of more than 5,000 watt-hours per kilogram, more than ten times the capacity of today"s lithium-ion batteries.
A battery with this technology is expected to run for 500 miles, IBM said according to MIT
SanDisk has made three more additions to its Flash card line up, stating that the new models will be released this spring.
According to the company, the additions are new versions of the Ultra II SDHC memory card and will come in sizes of 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB. Needless to say, the 32GB card, which can store up to 8000 10 megapixel images or 40 hours of standard definition video, will be the star of the show
MIT and Texas Instruments researchers have unveiled a new chip design for portable electronics that can be up to 10 times more energy-efficient than present technology.
The design could lead to cell phones, implantable medical devices and sensors that last far longer when running from a battery.
One future goal for implantable medical devices is to make the power requirements so low that they could be powered by "ambient energy"--using the body"s own heat or movement to provide all power.
University of Queensland scientists have built and tested quantum logic gates that are vastly more powerful than those that have gone before by exploiting the higher dimensions available in quantum mechanics.
For example, a qubit can be encoded in a photon"s polarization. But a photon has other dimensions which can also be used to carry information, such as its arrival time, photon number or frequency. By exploiting these, a photon can easily be used as a much more powerful three level system called a qutrit.
That allows a dramatic reduction in the number of gates necessary to perform a specific task. Using only three of the higher-dimension logic gates, the team has built and tested a Toffoli logic gate that could only have been constructed using 6 conventional logic gates. And they say that a computer made up of 50 conventional quantum logic gates could be built using only 9 of theirs.
What does a cup of water equate to, these days? During summers, a cup of water could barely quench my thirst. However, with a new technology developed by Leeds University, a cup of water could mean a kilogram of laundry. Xeros, a Leeds University spin-off, is currently commercializing a washing machine which can clean clothes using just a cup of water.
According to a study by Waterwise (a UK NGO), the water used to wash clothes in the UK alone amounts to 145 Olympic size swimming pools daily. The Xeros washing machine only uses 2 percent of the water as well as the energy used by its conventional counterparts. And, since the machine only uses a cup of water per kilogram of laundry, the clothes come up almost dry, eliminating the necessity to tumble dry. The company has already received a $1 million funding and expect to put washing machines out in the market by 2009 at the earliest.
The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced Thursday it is in the process of commercializing POMI, which is embedded with a network-based interactive technology.
The ETRI is applying for five international patents with regard to the robot, as well as planning to transfer the technology to several local companies including Samsung Electronics. The expression software, which imitates human expressions of emotion, will also be available on the market by the end of next month, it added.
A state-run institute has developed a new robot that can see, hear, touch, smell, but not taste.
Electronics
== 
== 
