10 Wind Turbines That Push the Limits of Design

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) released their 20% Wind Report Card on July 8, following up on a study in which the Department of Energy proposed a goal where 20 percent of U.S. electricity comes from wind energy by 2030. The AWEA gave the overall U.S. push for wind power a “solid B”—high marks from an advocacy group that grades U.S. infrastructure. The highest letter in the report was an A- awarded for “Technology Development.” This is no big surprise—for years now, the government, alternative-energy researchers and entrepreneurs have been putting time and money into making better tech for cleaner, more efficient energy production. Here are 10 wind turbine designs that push the limits of the current design and may help the U.S. get back to being an A student by 2030.

#1 WhalePower

What It Is /// The company, WhalePower, has redesigned the typically smooth blades on a turbine, adding a series of ridges, based on tubercles, the bumps on humpback whale fins. The company says this new blade design could increase annual electrical production for existing wind farms by 20 percent.

How It Works /// Humpback whales tilt their fins at steep angles to achieve better lift in the water. Too much tilt, however, has the opposite effect—a loss of lift, called stalling. Tubercles prevent stalling, allowing for more aggressive fin tilts. WhalePower’s tubercle-like structures on the turbine blades allow the blades to have steeper angles—without causing stalling or creating too much drag. During low wind, blades with steeper angles can theoretically generate significantly more power. Wind tunnel tests published by Frank Fish, president and founder of WhalePower, and by Duke University fluid dynamics expert Laurens Howle in 2004 showed that, in some cases, adding tubercle-like bumps to model fins pushed back the stall angle by as much as 40 percent.

Where To Find It /// Testing on the tubercle-enhanced blades began in 2007 at The Wind Energy Institute of Canada in Prince Edward Island. A Canadian ventilation company, Envira-North Systems, will be the first to use tubercle technology in industrial fans.

Follow link for the other 9 designs – http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4324331.html

Turkish Students Create Hydrogen-Powered 1300-MPG Car

In preparation for the inaugural Global Green Challenge across the Australian outback, a team of Turkish students have assembled a hydrogen-powered vehicle that has an efficiency of 568 kilometers per liter (roughly 1,335 mpg). In order to get across the outback, they hope to only use three liters of fuel in the vehicle, dubbed the SAHİMO.

The SAHİMO weighs 110 kg–a carbon fiber frame keeps the weight down–and the scary thing is that these Sakarya University students want to up the efficiency to 1,000 km/L.

But doing so won’t be cheap, as the cost to build the SAHIMO is already at $170,000, and they’re looking for sponsors to keep improving the car before the competition in October.

The Global Green Challenge is organized by the same organization responsible for the World Solar Challenge, which has produced some of its own notable cars, including the University of Michigan’s latest, the Infinium.

http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2009-07/turkish-students-create-hydrogen-powered-car-gets-1300-mpg

Pet trade is generating an alien invasion

One man’s pet is frequently another man’s problem. As a child, I had a pet rooster named Sir Gawain. We brought him into the garage every night so he wouldn’t disturb our neighbours by crowing to the rising sun. One day he escaped and every morning, unable to recapture him, we would cringe as we listened to him crowing from a different corner of our sleepy suburban neighbourhood. It took a week to get him back.

But my family’s troubles with Sir Gawain pale in comparison to the problems created by the exotic pet trade. This was the topic of a hearing in the US Senate yesterday where senators discussed what should be done to deal with the threat of non-native species to ecosystems.

For example, in Mexico, guppies from Trinidad have been observed sexually harassing local fish to prevent them from reproducing. The guppies were probably introduced to Mexican waters by careless aquarium owners.

Meanwhile, the number of US households with at least one pet reptile has doubled in the past decade. When they escape or are released into the wild, many become invasive, destroying local wildlife.

Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades are a classic example. According to some scientists, the pythons were first introduced to the area after Hurricane Andrew swept over South Florida in 1992, destroying pet shops along the way.

Last week a little girl was killed by a pet Burmese python after it broke out of its tank. Senator Bill Nelson, who says it’s only a matter of time before one of the several thousand Burmese pythons that live in the Everglades kills a park visitor, used the incident to argue at the Senate hearing that imports of the snakes should be banned. 

Http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/07/problem-pets.html

Winning the ultimate battle: How humans could end war

OPTIMISTS called the first world war “the war to end all wars”. Philosopher George Santayana demurred. In its aftermath he declared: “Only the dead have seen the end of war”. History has proved him right, of course. What’s more, today virtually nobody believes that humankind will ever transcend the violence and bloodshed of warfare. I know this because for years I have conducted numerous surveys asking people if they think war is inevitable. Whether male or female, liberal or conservative, old or young, most people believe it is. For example, when I asked students at my university “Will humans ever stop fighting wars?” more than 90 per cent answered “No”. Many justified their assertion by adding that war is “part of human nature” or “in our genes”. But is it really?

Such views certainly seem to chime with recent research on the roots of warfare. Just a few decades ago, many scholars believed that prior to civilisation, humans were “noble savages” living in harmony with each other and with nature. Not any more. Ethnographic studies, together with some archaeological evidence, suggest that tribal societies engaged in lethal group conflict, at least occasionally, long before the emergence of states with professional armies (see our timeline of weapons technology). Meanwhile, the discovery that male chimpanzees from one troop sometimes beat to death those from another has encouraged popular perceptions that warfare is part of our biological heritage.

These findings about violence among our ancestors and primate cousins (see “When apes attack”) have perpetuated what anthropologist Robert Sussman from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, calls the “5 o’clock news” view of human nature. Just as evening news shows follow the dictum “if it bleeds, it leads”, so many accounts of human behaviour emphasise conflict. However, Sussman believes the popular focus on violence and warfare is disproportionate. “Statistically, it is more common for humans to be cooperative and to attempt to get along than it is for them to be uncooperative and aggressive towards one another,” he says. And he is not alone in this view. A growing number of experts are now arguing that the urge to wage war is not innate, and that humanity is already moving in a direction that could make war a thing of the past.

Among the revisionists are anthropologists Carolyn and Melvin Ember from Yale University, who argue that biology alone cannot explain documented patterns of warfare. They oversee the Human Relations Area Files, a database of information on some 360 cultures, past and present. More than nine-tenths of these societies have engaged in warfare, but some fight constantly, others rarely, and a few have never been observed fighting. “There is variation in the frequency of warfare when you look around the world at any given time,” says Melvin Ember. “That suggests to me that we are not dealing with genes or a biological propensity.”

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327151.500-winning-the-ultimate-battle-how-humans-could-end-war.html

Military mega-lasers are too hot to handle

HIGH-ENERGY laser weapons have been hailed as the future of anti-missile defence, but they may be further from being battle-ready than military chiefs hoped.

In recent tests, several prototypes have suffered serious damage to their optics at intensities well below the expected levels of tolerance. “Optical damage has been quietly alarming upper management in most major programmes,” Sean Ross of the US Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico told a meeting of the Directed Energy Professional Society in Newton, Massachusetts, last week. There are also big problems managing the waste heat generated by high-intensity beams.

Laser weapons require mirrors and lenses to focus powerful beams onto distant moving targets, and to compensate for atmospheric perturbations that can reduce the power they deliver. The higher the intensity of the beam, the more likely it is to damage the surface of its optical components.

Optical surfaces are designed to withstand powers up to a specific damage threshold, but tiny flaws or irregularities – which can be extremely difficult to spot – reduce this threshold by making them more vulnerable to heat. Contaminants deposited on the surface can also reduce this threshold by forcing the surface to absorb energy.

These problems have begun to stall the development of laser weapons. Earlier this year in the US, engineers halted tests of the $4.3 billion megawatt-class Airborne Laser short of full power to avoid damaging “a handful of optics in the turret”, according to Mike Rinn, a Boeing vice-president who manages the programme. They realised that the optics, designed years ago, would be “frail” in the presence of any contamination, which would be virtually inevitable in flight. In the next week or so, Boeing engineers will install replacement optics and test them on the ground before running the laser at full power in flight.

Finding a way of preventing laser weapons from frying themselves is proving just as troublesome. Depending on the type of laser, generating 1 watt of laser beam produces about 4 watts of waste heat that must be dissipated. The challenge is to develop a cooling system that is both small and extremely robust.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327166.000-military-megalasers-are-too-hot-to-handle.html

Safety Tests MIA for Taser’s Shocking New Shotgun

Controversial electroshock weaponeer Taser International is quickly building up it arsenal. But the results from the safety and field tests of that new gear – well, that’s coming along much more slowly.

The firm recently made available a shocking XREP shotgun projectile. It also introduced a new specialist shotgun (pictured) optimized for the XREP and other ‘”less lethal” rounds. And then there’s the ghastly teaser campaign for the company’s forthcoming “X3.”

Danger Room looked at XREP –- eXtended Range Electronic Projectile -– before its big launch last year. The original work was carried out for the Marine Corps, which was looking for a less-lethal weapon for clearing buildings. XREP packages a complete Taser system including power supply in a 12-gauge shotgun round with a range of 100 feet. On striking, it inflicts a 20-second Taser shock cycle via some clever electrodes, immobilizing the target.

Taser has announced two versions of XREP. There’s a finned round for standard shotguns, and a rifled version for the Taser X12 Less Lethal Shotgun, made by Mossberg. The X12 is customised for low-velocity rounds (like bean bags and XREP) and rifled for greater accuracy. The bright yellow color warns users that it is less-lethal only and the weapon will not accept standard shotgun rounds.

The example in the picture has an X26 Taser mounted under the barrel. While the XREP projectile is not as dangerous at close range as other less lethal shotgun rounds that rely on impact force, it’s not recommended at very close quarters, so the X26 can fill the gap. (”Bean bag” rounds, shotgun rounds typically consisting of a canvas bag of shot used to subdue suspects, have been known to break ribs and cause other injuries including liver trauma, abdominal wall penetration, and internal bleeding leading to death.)

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/taser-introduces-new-shocking-shotgun-safety-tests-mia/

Vancouver approves plans for mandatory plugs in new parking lots

The city of Vancouver, British Columbia was considering mandating the installation of electrical vehicle charging ports in new parking garages. The city council has now voted unanimously to approve the plan. Going forward, any property developers building parking facilities for apartments or condominiums will have to install charging ports in at least 20 percent of the stalls. Charging ports will also be installed in city-owned parking lots.

This will certainly help address the needs of future electric car owners who don’t live in a house with a garage. The 20 percent plan was double the original proposal’s 10 percent installation rate. Developers will have 18 months before they have to start installing the charging stations, which cost $500-$2,000 each. The problem of charging still persists for those living in existing buildings. Those people may decide they’re better off moving to a new place, and if the trend becomes big enough, it may prompt management companies to retrofit existing facilities.

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/07/10/vancouver-approves-plans-for-mandatory-plugs-in-new-parking-lots/

New Kind Of Astronomical Object Around Black Hole

This artist’s conception shows a rogue black hole that has been kicked out from the center of two merging galaxies. The black hole is surrounded by a cluster of stars that were ripped from the galaxies. New calculations by David Merritt, from Rochester Institute of Technology, Jeremy Schnittman, from Johns Hopkins University, and Stefanie Komossa, from the Max-Planck-Institut for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany suggest that hundreds of massive black holes, left over from the epoch of galaxy formation, are waiting to be detected in the nearby universe. (Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute)

The tight cluster of stars surrounding a supermassive black hole after it has been violently kicked out of a galaxy represents a new kind of astronomical object and a fossil record of the kick.

A paper published in the July 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal discusses the theoretical properties of “hypercompact stellar systems” and suggests that hundreds of these faint star clusters might be detected at optical wavelengths in our immediate cosmic environment. Some of these objects may already have been picked up in astronomical surveys, reports David Merritt, from Rochester Institute of Technology, Jeremy Schnittman, from Johns Hopkins University, and Stefanie Komossa, from the Max-Planck-Institut for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.

Hypercompact stellar systems result when a supermassive black hole is violently ejected from a galaxy, following a merger with another supermassive black hole. The evicted black hole rips stars from the galaxy as it is thrown out. The stars closest to the black hole move in tandem with the massive object and become a permanent record of the velocity at which the kick occurred.

“You can measure how big the kick was by measuring how fast the stars are moving around the black hole,” says Merritt, professor of physics at RIT. “Only stars orbiting faster than the kick velocity remain attached to the black hole after the kick. These stars carry with them a kind of fossil record of the kick, even after the black hole has slowed down. In principle, you can reconstruct the properties of the kick, which is nice because there would be no other way to do it.”

“Finding these objects would be like discovering DNA from a long-extinct species,” adds Komossa.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090709170759.htm

New Law Floods California With Medical Data Breach Reports

California officials have received more than 800 reports of health data breaches in the first five months after a new state law went into effect January 1.

The law requires health care organizations in California to report suspected incidents of intentional and unintentional unauthorized breaches of a patient’s personally identifiable health information to the California Department of Public Health.

The agency, however, says it was surprised by the large number of reports it received in such a short period, according to the Journal of the American Health Information Management Association, and expects that number to increase dramatically as organizations become more familiar with the reporting procedures.

Of the cases reported, which also include complaints from patients, officials have conducted full investigations on 122 cases so far and confirmed 116 as actual breaches. The types of breaches run the gamut from unintentionally faxing a patient’s chart or test reports to the wrong phone number to intentional snooping by workers. Most of the breaches reported so far have been unintentional.

Officials can fine offending organizations or individuals up to $250,000 for a breach, depending on the nature of the breach and the extent of the harm it caused, the Journal reports. Los Angeles-based Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center was the first to be fined this amount after investigators determined that 23 hospital workers inappropriately accessed the medical records of Nadya Suleman, aka “the Octomom” (pictured at right). Suleman is a 34-year-old single mother on public assistance who received extensive publicity this year after giving birth to octuplets following fertility treatments.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/07/health-breaches/

Evolution Guides Cooperative Turn-taking, Game Theory-based Computer Simulations Show

It’s not just good manners to wait your turn – it’s actually down to evolution, according to new research by University of Leicester psychologists.

A study in the University’s School of Psychology sought to explain how turn-taking has evolved across a range of species. The conclusion is that there is an evolution-based “invisible hand” that guides our actions in this respect. What’s more, the researchers have shown that this behavior can be simulated using a simple computer algorithm and basic genetic laws.

Professor Andrew Colman and Dr Lindsay Browning carried out the study due to appear in the September issue of the journal Evolutionary Ecology Research. The study has helped to explain the evolution of cooperative turn-taking.

Professor Colman said: “In human groups, turn-taking is usually planned and coordinated with the help of language. For example, people living together often agree to take turns washing up the dishes after meals or taking their children to school. But turn-taking has also evolved in many other species without language or the capacity to reach negotiated agreements. These include apes, monkeys, birds, and antelopes that take turns grooming each other, and mating pairs of Antarctic penguins that take turns foraging at sea while their partners incubate eggs or tend to chicks.

“It is far from obvious how turn-taking evolved without language or insight in animals shaped by natural selection to pursue their individual self-interests.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090708195337.htm