Wounds suck. No, wait, suck on your wounds. This funky vacuum device applies suction to minor wounds and reportedly speeds up healing. Neat. It was invented by MIT student Danielle Zurovcik. She says the device will only cost $3 U.S. to make. She’s testing it right now in Haiti and hopes to get it to Rwanda in the near future.

How does it work? Scientists aren’t totally sure, but they think the negative pressure draws bacteria and puss away from wounds, making healing easier. I think it may also draw extra blood to the wound, feeding cells more oxygen and building materials. But I’m no biologist.

Link to Inhabitat article.

In case you missed it, the geniuses at Stanford have created super batteries using carbon nanotube ink and silver nanowires. They basically spread the carbon nanotube/silver goop on paper and it’s ready to store energy. The paper batteries are capable of storing 10 times as much energy by weight as lithium-ion batteries and are conceivably good for 40,000 charge-discharge cycles. From the Stanford article:

“These nanomaterials are special,” [assistant professor Yi] Cui said. “They’re a one-dimensional structure with very small diameters.” The small diameter helps the nanomaterial ink stick strongly to the fibrous paper, making the battery and supercapacitor very durable. The paper supercapacitor may last through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles – at least an order of magnitude more than lithium batteries. The nanomaterials also make ideal conductors because they move electricity along much more efficiently than ordinary conductors, Cui said.

Cui says that the thin, lightweight, flexible batteries could be used in everything from consumer electronics to cars. He also says the technology is basically ready for action. Just a few refinements and the batteries could go into production.

Link to Stanford article

NY Times science writer Michael Specter’s new book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, has been getting a lot of press lately. In this Gizmodo article, he discusses building with biology—genetically modifying organisms to produce the things we need, from fuel to plastics to food. From the article:

. . . you put some chemicals together and you get an organism, and then you get a more complex organism, and you get organisms that’ll do things, and you can get drugs, or chemicals, or plastics or fuel…

Check it out.

Link to Gizmag article

In the developed world, we take electric light for granted. But more than a billion people on the planet live without it. That’s why Danish researcher Fredrik Krebs created a cheap, printable solar panel and flexible LED light combo. The as-yet-unnamed lamp has a printed solar panel on one side and an LED panel on the other. During the day, the panel lays flat to soak up the sun’s energy. At night, the flexible lamp can be curled into a cone to make a simple lamp.

The lamp’s current solar panels only operate at 1 percent efficiency, but they still collect enough power to run the lamp. The lamps are made to last for a year and will cost $7 (or less) each by the time they go into production.

Something as simple as a solar-powered lamp can make a huge difference in remote villages or towns that have no or intermittent power. With such a cheap light source, teens around the world can read comics and Sci-Fi novels late into the night. Or, you know, study math and science.

Link to Popsci article

Al and Ziggy

Researchers at Yale have created the first ever fully functional quantum processor. Harnessing the bizarre qualities of quantum mechanics, the processor can perform simple calculations.

Typical computers use electrons (through transistors) to compute—reading and writing information in bits. Bits have binary states; they’re either “on” or “off,” 1 or 0. Quantum computers use atoms and “qubits,” which have multiple states. Qubits can be 1, 0, 1-0, 0-1, 0+1, or 0 AND 1 simultaneously. Thus a single qubit can store much more information than a bit. Additionally, typical computers read and write numbers and solve problems sequentially. Quantum computers can read and write long strings of numbers all at once, boosting speed tremendously.

The Yale computer is made up of two artificial atoms—billions of aluminum atoms that act as a single atom—in a solid-state system. The processor is extremely unstable, capable of hanging around for only a millisecond before evaporating. Still, it’s a major breakthrough in quantum computing that will lead to more stable and capable computers in the future.

Because of their tremendous computing power and speed, quantum computers have the potential to truly revolutionize computing.

Link to TG Daily 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

A new battery tech named STAIR (St Andrew’s Air) could store 10 times the power of a typical lithium-ion battery, yet weigh considerably less.

During discharge, the battery breathes in atmospheric oxygen, which reacts with carbon to crank out more power.

The new battery tech is being developed at the University of St Andrews Chemistry Department and is, of course, “at least five years away.”

Link to Telegraph article

Want a non-toxic battery? Ask a virus to build it. A group of scientists at MIT have genetically engineered a virus to construct the components of lithium-ion batteries without toxic solvents or chemicals. The virus, which normally infects bacteria, can build the positive and negative terminals of a battery on the molecular level.

The batteries have a the same output and capacity of current lithium-ion batteries found in everything from laptops to electric cars like the Tesla Roadster. The current prototype is a typical disc battery that can light a single LED, but the team plans to create more powerful batteries based on manganese phosphate and nickel phosphate.

The team, led by MIT materials and biological engineer Angela Belcher, tweaked the genes of the virus to coat itself with iron phosphate, then nab carbon nanotubes to create a conducting network. The resulting goop crammed into a traditional battery case and voila, vat-grown batteries.

MIT President Susan Hockfield met with President Obama to show the new technology off, and encourage federal funding for clean-energy technologies.

Link to MIT release

The automotive future is electric. But if we want to chuck fossil-fuel-chugging cars into the recycling bin, we’ll need better batteries. Two new developments in battery tech could make electric transportation feasible.

A team at the University of Maryland has developed a new breed of supercapacitor that could replace conventional batteries in electric cars. The new supercapacitors can store as much juice as the best batteries, but deliver that juice as quickly as a capacitor.

It’s a big deal, especially for electric cars. To get an electric car to burn rubber (accelerate briskly), you need a lot of current, quickly. Batteries can’t do it without the help of capacitors—the superchargers of the electrical world. Capacitors store energy on the surface of two plates separated by an insulator. They store and release electricity much faster than batteries.

The team at the University of Maryland joined forces with engineers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology to create a grid of nano capacitors. Their prototype contains more than 10 billion nano capacitors linked together with electrodes. And they did it on aluminum foil.

Gary Rubloff, a physicist at the University of Maryland, anodized (added a layer of oxide) a sheet of foil to create a uniform grid of nanopores. Using atomic layer deposition, the team filled the pores with three layers of material that mimic the conductor-insulator-conductor layout of a normal capacitor.

A kilogram of the new supercapacitor could deliver a megawatt of power—enough to power 10,000 100-watt light bulbs.

Whiz kids at MIT have also found a way to make lithium batteries speedier. Gerbrand Ceder, the Richard P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, has drastically improved the charge and discharge rate of lithium batteries by redesigning their structure.

Everyday lithium batteries store tons of energy, but they can’t absorb or discharge it very quickly. Turns out that the slow charge/discharge rate is due to a kind of atomic traffic jam. Charged ions get gummed up traveling in and out of the battery.

Ceder and grad student Byoungwoo Kang found that they could fee up the traffic jam by engineering a beltway of material around the battery. The result is a small battery that can be charged and discharged between 10 and 20 seconds. The discovery should lead to faster-charging gadgets and quick recharges for electric vehicles.

Link to NewScientist article

Link to MIT article

David Merrill from MIT Media Lab shows off his latest creation at TED 2009, programmable computerized play blocks called Siftables. 

The blocks are packed with OLED touch screens, accelerometers, and wireless communications. Merrill and his team have programmed the blocks to do everything from math to cranking out extremely cool chiptunes with a live synthesizer. They’ve also made a killer word game that’s a cross between Boggle and Scrabble, complete with Speak-N-Spell sound effects.

Merrill says the blocks represent a new way to teach and learn, and it’s not hard to imagine them on a glowing plexiglass desk in one of the Enterprise’s classrooms, Data awkwardly arranging them in an attempt to teach a group of wily toddlers. 

I want a set. That word game would be fantastic at parties.