Honda just revealed their EV-N concept electric car, which will be put on display at the Tokyo Motor Show. It’s awful cute.

Got to Autoblog for more photos:

Link to Autoblog gallery

The Pharaohs built the pyramids to thwart time, to survive the elements for eternity. Nearly 4,500 years later they show few signs of erosion and will likely last for generations. Modern buildings, however, barely last a decade without significant maintenance. Thanks to engineers at MIT, that could all change. A team of civil engineers have figured out how to make standard concrete resist the ravages of time for 16,000 years.

It all comes down to “creep.” It’s the technical term for the process that makes cement break down. Basically concrete particles settle into different densities over time, thus cement cracks and crumbles. Professor Franz-Josef Ulm and his team at MIT have figured out how to manipulate concrete at the nano scale to slow creep to a crawl. Using silica fumes, a waste material from aluminum production, they’ve shown they can cut the rate of creep by nearly three times.

That makes extremely dense concrete that, on the short side, can last for more than 100 years without maintenance. The new material is also much stronger than conventional concrete, which means engineers can use less of it in construction. Says Professor Franz-Josef Ulm of MIT:

“The thinner the structure, the more sensitive it is to creep, so up until now, we have been unable to build large-scale lightweight, durable concrete structures,” said Ulm. “With this new understanding of concrete, we could produce filigree: light, elegant, strong structures that will require far less material.”

Using less concrete will also reduce CO2 emissions. Current concrete construction accounts for 2 to 8 percent of worldwide CO2 emissions.

Link to MIT article

Batteries seem to be stuck in the days of Edison—heavy, toxic bricks that hold measly amounts of energy and wear out far too quickly. Even hallowed lithium-ion batteries are expensive and unstable. Thankfully the next generation of batteries are on the horizon, and they’re hellishly awesome.

Engineers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have revived lithium-sulphur batteries. They promise to pack three times as much power as lithium-ion batteries, and weigh much less than current power cells.

Lithium-sulphur batteries aren’t anything new. They were developed ages ago, but abandoned due to high cost, poor efficiency, and short lifespan. Charging and discharging a lithium-sulphur battery involves moving lithium ions between two electrodes within the battery. Theoretically, sulphur should be able to hold twice as many lithium ions. But sulphur is an insulator, making it difficult for electrons and ions to move freely into and out of the sulphur electrode.

The scientists at Waterloo have overcome the technical issues using a nanostructure of carbon rods. Sulphur is melted into the carbon nanostructure, giving ions much better access to the sulphur. Essentially, ions and electrons can travel down the carbon rods to reach the sulphur melted between them.

The battery is in testing phases right now, which means we’ll likely not see lithium-sulphur batteries in laptops, iPods, or electric cars for a few years.

Link to Gizmodo article

Link to Technology Review article

Québécois researchers have created solar-powered cyborg nanobots that use bacterial swarms to navigate Petri dishes.

Sylvain Martel and his team at the NanoRobotics Laboratory at the École Polytechnique de Montréal built a tiny solar-powered machine approximately 300 microns square that indirectly manipulates a swarm of bacteria that’s naturally sensitive to magnetic fields. The nanobot contains a pH sensor and a simple transmitter that sends electromagnetic pulses to an external computer. The computer reads the signals and adjusts a magnetic field to direct the bacteria. The machine is swept along in the swarm, moving from low to high pH areas in the dish.

It isn’t the researchers’ first foray into cyborg nanobot construction. They initially attached bacteria directly to the robots. But bacteria only have a lifespan of a few hours, making the symbiosis impractical. With the new method, fresh bacteria can be injected into the dish to revive the propulsion system.

The researchers say the method of propulsion could be used to guide tiny medical devices in the future.

Link to Technology Review article