donderdag 31 juli 2008

More Boomer women are getting breast lifts


Wat "luchtiger" nieuws:

WHAT'S HAPPENING
Boomer women who want to turn back the clock are lining up for breast enhancements in increasing numbers, either as a post-baby “mommy makeover” or a post-hot-flash booster shot.
Between 2005 and 2008, demand for breast lifts among 40- to 54-year-old women spiked 11%. Many also had other procedures; 45% of patients who undergo cosmetic surgery come from that same age group (ePR Source 6.17.08).
Coincidence? The surge in enhancements parallels the rise of the TV drama Nip/Tuck and reality shows like Dr. 90210, which helped mainstream cosmetic procedures.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS
It's no secret that Boomer women want to look younger. And what better way to achieve that goal than with perky, youthful breasts?
It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when exotic dancers were the only gals who got their breasts enhanced. Safer, more affordable procedures made the surgery attractive to many woman, especially in the wake of Nip/Tuck and pop-cultural trends.

Surface glows

Flexible OLED Scientists at Philips Research are working on flexible and moldable OLED lighting panels. Soon, almost any surface area, flat or curved, could be used as a light source. Philips Research collaborates with the Holst Centre to develop the technology ingredients for flexible OLEDs. Philips Research Password Magazine 32

Most of the LED-based lamps that you see on sale today are based on ‘silicon chip’ technology that requires the LEDs to be manufactured in very expensive ‘clean’ rooms. However, a new generation of energy-efficient lighting based on OLED (organic light emitting diode) technology is about to hit the market.While chip LEDs are the ideal solution for applications where you want directed light, such as spotlights, OLEDs promise the other extreme – entire walls that gently and evenly glow with light or even OLED-coated windows that illuminate rooms with simulated daylight when it gets dark.Like ordinary LEDs, OLEDs rely on the same electron/hole phenomenon that occurs in semiconductor materials, yet this time the semiconductor material is not a brittle crystalline inorganic material. It’s an organic substance that can be deposited onto surfaces, theoretically any size or shape, using vacuum-deposition techniques. One day, it may even be possible to produce OLED panels using a roll-to-roll printing process not unlike that used to produce wallpaper. Just image it – wallpapering your home with light.Initially, however, you’re going to find that OLED lighting panels are flat and rigid, encapsulated between thin layers of glass. Why? Because OLED materials are rapidly degraded by oxygen and water, which means the current technology needs something as impervious as glass to let the light out but prevent oxygen or water from getting in.

New blog messages per e-mail


Now there is a possibility to receive new messages (RSS feed) delivered per e-mail at your computer. So, you don't need to have a feedreader for new blog messages.

At http://www.sendmerss.com/ you can fill in the feed and this system will take care to send it per e-mail to you. It claims to look for update almost every 2 hours, but my test showed new messages received at 00:00. So probably it is send at the start of a day.


At the home page you have to specify the feed you want to be delivered and your e-mail address.
Then you receive an e-mail you have to confirm. And voila that is all.

So, if you want ALL new messages per e-mail of my blog you fill in the RSS of Ary's Blog http://blog.ary.nl/feeds/posts/default

You can also make a selection of blogs per tag:

If you want technology message of my blog then you have to specify http://blog.ary.nl/feeds/posts/default/-/1.%20Technews

Or whatever you want. Just look at the labels (at INHOUD) and replace a space with %20

woensdag 30 juli 2008

Tiny $10 microscope

Miniature microscope: This tiny microscope, which uses microfluidics to flow a sample over an imaging chip from a digital camera, has the same resolution as a conventional light microscope.

Technology Review Wednesday, July 30, 2008
A tiny microscope that employs the same kind of chip used in digital cameras can produce high-resolution images of cells without the expensive, space-hogging lenses that have been part of microscope design for centuries. Researchers at Caltech, who developed the revolutionary imaging system, say that the devices could be mass-produced at a cost of $10 each and incorporated into large arrays, enabling high-throughput imaging in biology labs. The device could also broaden access to imaging technology: incorporated into PDA-size devices, for example, the microscopes could enable rural doctors to carry sophisticated imaging systems in their pockets.
The Caltech device uses a system of tiny fluid channels called microfluidics to direct cells and even microscopic animals over a light-sensing chip. The chip, an off-the-shelf sensor identical to those found in digital cameras, is covered with a thin layer of metal that blocks out most of the pixels. A few hundred tiny apertures punched in the metal along the fluid channel let light in. As the sample flows through the microscope, each aperture captures an image.
Rest of story >>

maandag 28 juli 2008

If the world were a village of 1,000 people ...

Dona Meadows writes a thought-provoking bi-weekly column called "The Global Citizen". Here is something she published recently.
If the world were a village of 1,000 people, it would include:

  • 584 Asians
  • 124 Africans
  • 95 East and West Europeans
  • 84 Latin Americans
  • 55 Soviets (including for the moment Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and other national groups)
  • 52 North Americans
  • 6 Australians and New Zealanders

The people of the village have considerable difficulty in communicating:

  • 165 people speak Mandarin
  • 86 English
  • 83 Hindi/Urdu
  • 64 Spanish
  • 58 Russian
  • 37 Arabic

That list accounts for the mother tongues of only half the villagers. The other half speak (in descending order of frequency) Bengali, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, German, French and 200 other languages.

In this village of 1,000 there are:

  • 329 Christians (among them 187 Catholics, 84 Protestants, 31 Orthodox)
  • 178 Moslems
  • 167 "non-religious"
  • l32 Hindus
  • 60 Buddhists
  • 45 atheists
  • 3 Jews
  • 86 all other religions

  • One-third (330) of the 1,000 people in the world village are children and only 60 are over the age of 65. Half the children are immunized against preventable infectious diseases such as measles and polio.
  • Just under half of the married women in the village have access to and use modern contraceptives.
  • This year 28 babies will be born. Ten people will die, 3 of them for lack of food, 1 from cancer, 2 of the deaths are of babies born within the year. One person of the 1,000 is infected with the HIV virus; that person most likely has not yet developed a full-blown case of AIDS.
  • With the 28 births and 10 deaths, the population of the village next year will be 1,018.
    In this 1,000-person community, 200 people receive 75 percent of the income; another 200 receive only 2 percent of the income.
  • Only 70 people of the 1,000 own an automobile (although some of the 70 own more than one automobile).
  • About one-third have access to clean, safe drinking water.
  • Of the 670 adults in the village, half are illiterate.

The village has six acres of land per person, 6,000 acres in all, of which

  • 700 acres are cropland
  • 1,400 acres pasture
  • 1,900 acres woodland
  • 2,000 acres desert, tundra, pavement and other wasteland
  • The woodland is declining rapidly; the wasteland is increasing. The other land categories are roughly stable.

The village allocates 83 percent of its fertilizer to 40 percent of its cropland - that owned by the richest and best-fed 270 people. Excess fertilizer running off this land causes pollution in lakes and wells. The remaining 60 percent of the land, with its 17 percent of the fertilizer, produces 28 percent of the food grains and feeds 73 percent of the people. The average grain yield on that land is one-third the harvest achieved by the richer villagers.

In the village of 1,000 people, there are:

  • 5 soldiers
  • 7 teachers
  • 1 doctor
  • 3 refugees driven from home by war or drought

The village has a total budget each year, public and private, of over $3 million - $3,000 per person if it is distributed evenly (which, we have already seen, it isn't).

Of the total $3 million:

  • $181,000 goes to weapons and warfare
  • $159,000 for education
  • $l32,000 for health care

The village has buried beneath it enough explosive power in nuclear weapons to blow itself to smithereens many times over. These weapons are under the control of just 100 of the people. The other 900 people are watching them with deep anxiety, wondering whether they can learn to get along together; and if they do, whether they might set off the weapons anyway through inattention or technical bungling; and, if they ever decide to dismantle the weapons, where in the world village they would dispose of the radioactive materials of which the weapons are made.


Dona Meadows has written a regular bi-weekly column called "The Global Citizen" that are equally thought provoking

New Workplace Paradigms

July 2008 Written by Jim Pinto
A large segment of worldwide manufacturing jobs are being replaced with automation. What’s left of conventional manufacturing labor is migrating away from the United States. We need new workplace paradigms.


Traditional manufacturing dates back to the industrial age, with the growth of large-scale production in hierarchically structured organizations. Large numbers of production workers were herded together in central factories, with time clocks and security guards, which gave the impression of walled-off prisons. Central locations brought office workers together in large, central facilities structured somewhat like factories. Today, few people wish to work in that kind of environment.


For much of the 20th century, most factories had full-time workers with employment contracts, mostly short-term. Most people remained with the same company for many years, until the time came to draw the company pension. There was a clear separation between working hours and home or leisure time, and also between a person’s years of employment and the abrupt transition into retirement.

This kind of employment has little place in today’s workplace. Rising health costs are making company-sponsored long-term health plans unaffordable. Further, long-term pension funds are becoming an unacceptable financial burden. This brings major changes in social and welfare protection and employment law.

In the information age, all the old models of labor relations—with all the assembled baggage of collective bargaining between employers and unions—is become increasingly inappropriate. Trade unions are becoming obsolete.

Today’s factory has geographically dispersed knowledge workers working ’round-the-clock. In the networked economy, value comes from the manipulation of information and knowledge much more than from the production of material goods. Individuals take responsibility for their own work, career and life, including the responsibility of ensuring that they constantly update their own skills. In exchange, the company undertakes to empower them in their work by removing old-style supervisory practices, replaced by new types of high productivity team-working and performance management.

Old workplace standards assumed that exited employees could and would always be replaced—employers were conditioned to treat employees as replaceable commodities. In the new global business environment, companies are forced to downsize on the one hand, and on the other, to develop ways to keep key employees from leaving.

Cross-functional teams with multiple skills must be linked to broad responsibilities, as part of a general shift toward job elimination through automation of anything that becomes repetitive. Downsizing demands the use of high-performance practices that emphasize cross-functional flexibility and broad job tasks.

Traditional workplaces with walls and square offices should be turned into open environments with common work areas and quiet spaces. The old, prestigious personal spaces should be replaced with team space. New office tools—computers, PDAs, wireless connectivity—should readily be available for all employees, facilitating effective communications and productivity. Offices should provide quick and easy file transfer and e-mail connectivity, whether the worker is in the office or at a remote location. Follow-me telephone numbers should be assigned to individuals rather than tied to physical locations. The concept of the “personal secretary” anchored to the office location becomes obsolete.

Get social
In the new paradigm, old-style human resources departments disappear. New “Facebook”-style networking should link employees (local as well as international) to develop camaraderie and a close-knit family atmosphere.

Factories and manufacturing workplaces should, like offices, make strong efforts to be warm, welcoming places; they should look good—small, efficient, clean and happy places to work. Productivity and efficiency will follow.

Innovation is the strength of the American workforce. The declining manufacturing sector can be stimulated through individual entrepreneurship and development of new workplace paradigms.

Mojave the "next" Windows OS

Microsoft has created a teaser site for its Mojave project. CNet News, July 25
As first reported by CNET News, Microsoft last week interviewed XP users who were skeptical of Vista and showed them what it called a secret new version of Windows, "Mojave." It was in fact Vista. The results, according to Microsoft executives, were almost universally positive, with participants expressing surprise when told it was actually Vista they had been using.
For now, Microsoft has put up a teaser site, with plans to show the actual video footage next week. (As I mentioned before, Mojave was something put together in the past couple of weeks by internal Microsoft people and is not the larger advertising campaign coming from new ad agency Crispin Porter and Bogusky.)

vrijdag 25 juli 2008

Piecing together the next generation of cognitive robots



Cordis ICT results publication
Piecing together the next generation of cognitive robots
European researchers are making progress on piecing together a new generation of machines that are more aware of their environment and better able to interact with humans.
While building robots with anything akin to human intelligence remains a far off vision, making them more responsive would allow them to be used in a greater variety of sophisticated tasks in the manufacturing and service sectors. Such robots could be used as home helpers and caregivers, for example.
As research into artificial cognitive systems (ACS) has progressed in recent years it has grown into a highly fragmented field. Some researchers and teams have concentrated on machine vision, others on spatial cognition, and on human-robot interaction, among many other disciplines.
All have made progress, but, as the EU-funded project CoSy (Cognitive Systems for Cognitive Assistants) has shown, by working together the researchers can make even more advances in the field.
“We have brought together one of the broadest and most varied teams of researchers in this field,” says Geert-Jan Kruijff, the CoSy project manager at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence. “This has resulted in an ACS architecture that integrates multiple cognitive functions to create robots that are more self-aware, understand their environment and can better interact with humans.”
The CoSy ACS is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. It incorporates a range of technologies from a design for cognitive architecture, spatial cognition, human-robot interaction and situated dialogue processing, to developmental models of visual processing.
“We have learnt how to put the pieces of ACS together, rather than just studying them separately,” adds Jeremy Wyatt, one of the project managers at the UK’s University of Birmingham.
The researchers have made the ACS architecture toolkit they developed available under an open source license. They want to encourage further research. The toolkit has already sparked several spin-off initiatives.
Read the whole story >>

donderdag 24 juli 2008

Solar Sailing in Space

Photon flight: NASA’s NanoSail-D is a small satellite that can move through space using a solar sail propelled by pressure from photons. The sail, fully expanded to 10 square meters in this image, is a very thin sheet of plastic coated with aluminum. Technology Review, Thursday, July 24, 2008

NASA prepares to test a satellite that can be propelled by light particles from the sun bouncing off its sails.
For the first time, NASA is preparing to send into orbit a small satellite that can be propelled by solar sails. When light particles from the sun strike the surface of the sail, the energy is transferred to it, providing a propulsive force that moves the satellite through space.
NASA's goal is to test the complex deployment mechanism of the 10-square-meter sails, says Dean Alhorn, an engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, AL, and the lead engineer on the project. "A successful flight will not only make for a unique historical event, but will show that we have a reliable mechanism to deploy a solar sail in space for future missions," says Alhorn.

dinsdag 22 juli 2008

Magnets Capture Cancer Cells

Seek and destroy: Magnetic nanoparticles (above, red) coated with cancer-targeting peptides can seek out and glom on to cancer cells like the one shown above. The peptides were designed to bind with a molecule found on the surface of ovarian-cancer cells. Researchers hope to use the nanoparticles to filter cancer cells from the abdominal fluid of patients with ovarian cancer, perhaps preventing metastasis.  Credit: J. Am. Chem. Soc. Copyright 2008 American Chemical Society
Technology review, July 22, 2008
Nanoparticles pluck cancer cells from the bellies of mice.
Magnetic nanoparticles coated with a specialized targeting molecule were able to latch on to cancer cells in mice and drag them out of the body. The results are described in a study published online this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The study's authors, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology, hope that the new technique will one day provide a way to test for--and potentially even treat--metastatic ovarian cancer.
"It's a fairly novel approach, to use magnetic particles in vivo to try to sequester cancer cells," says Michael King, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell University, who was not involved in the study.
With ovarian cancer, metastasis occurs when cells slough off the primary tumor and float free in the abdominal cavity. If researchers could use the magnetic nanoparticles to trap drifting cancer cells and pull them out of the abdominal fluid, they could predict and perhaps prevent metastasis. Although the nanoparticles were tested inside the bodies of mice, the authors envision an external device that would remove a patient's abdominal fluid, magnetically filter out the cancer cells, and then return the fluid to the body. After surgery to remove the primary tumor, a patient would undergo the treatment to remove any straggling cancer cells. The researchers are currently developing such a filter and testing it on abdominal fluid from human cancer patients.
Rest of story >>

21/07/08 Bloem 3 jaar

Bloem aan de knoppen




Afgelopen zondag vierde Bloem haar 3de verjaardag.
Vele cadeautjes. Hier zit ze achter haar eigen laptop (van oma Lia gekregen).









De familie Habraken


Een familieportret van de familie Habraken (Sonja was net weg, jammer genoeg). Van links naar rechts: Linda, David, Loes, Silvia, de jarige Bloem en oma Lia.







Als je op de titel klikt dan zie de complete verzameling foto's van onze kleinkinderen.

maandag 21 juli 2008

A New Competitor to LCD

Technolgy review Monday, July 21, 2008
Mirror trick: A microscopic image shows a two-dimensional array of 100-micrometer-wide pixels. The new pixel design by Microsoft researchers uses two micromirrors, one with an aperture and the other placed directly in front of the aperture. In the “on” state, the first mirror bends, sending light bouncing off the second mirror and out the pixel. Credit: Microsoft Research

A novel pixel design promises to be faster and brighter.
A pixel that uses a pair of mirrors to block or transmit light could lead to displays that are faster, brighter, and more power efficient than liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Researchers at Microsoft Research who published their novel pixel design in Nature Photonics say that their design is also simpler and easier to fabricate, which should make it cheaper.

LCDs corner half of the global TV market and are the most popular technology for cell phones and flat-panel computer monitors. But for three reasons, they do not boast the best image quality. First, the pixels do not turn completely off. Second, it takes 25 to 40 milliseconds on average for the pixels to switch between black and white, which is slow enough to blur fast-moving images. Third, LCDs are almost impossible to use in bright ambient light. "There is nothing in LCD technology that stands out," says Sriram Peruvemba, vice president of marketing at electronic-paper pioneer E Ink, based in Cambridge, MA. "The only reason it has done well is it's the lowest price [flat-panel] display today."

The new telescopic pixels switch completely off and on within 1.5 milliseconds. Michael Sinclair at Microsoft Research says that the ultrafast response time translates to simpler, low-cost color displays. In LCDs, a pixel is made of three subpixels--red, green, and blue--that are lit up simultaneously at different intensities to create, say, yellow. Each subpixel is controlled with a separate transistor circuit, which makes the circuits complex. Because the telescopic display switches so rapidly, you could put red, green, and blue light-emitting diodes behind each pixel, Sinclair says, and have them sequentially light up to create a color shade. "This would reduce the complexity and cost of today's LCD," he says.

Rest of story >>

woensdag 16 juli 2008

Google Trends Reveals Which Tech Trends Are Hot (Or Not)


Datamation news, July 16
If you want to know which trends are growing more popular and which are sinking toward “jump the shark” status, look at Google Trends.
The tool, kind of a search engine within a search engine, reveals the popularity – or unpopularity – of a given search keyword. Its results reflect mega-patterns of what people are thinking about (if you accept the thesis that Internet searches equals the public’s level of interest).
The data goes back to 2004, so Google Trends often shows a multi-year trend of ascendance. Or, poignantly, a multi-year sinking trend line that suggests a given person or thing is yesterday’s lunch meat.
This tool is good way to get a forward-looking glimpse of what tech trends are coming or going.

Ary: Fun to play with it. E.g. screenshot shows the graph of Microsoft and Google.

Microsoft revamps software-as-a-service offerings

Publication vnu.net July 8, 2008

Microsoft has revamped the pricing and partner model for its software-as-a-service offerings.
The company today introduced two new subscription service suites as part of an overhaul of Microsoft Online Services.
Microsoft Online Services delivers software as subscription services hosted by Microsoft and sold with partners.
The offerings include Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft Office SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Communications Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
"Today we are taking an important next step in delivering Microsoft Online Services with a broad set of Microsoft partners that are crucial to bringing this solution to our customers," Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, said at the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston.
"Microsoft Online Services is a key component of the software plus services initiative, and we are seeing customers, partners and even competitors embrace this flexible approach to the cloud."
Elop introduced Exchange Online Deskless Worker and SharePoint Online Deskless Worker designed to meet the needs of users who typically spend a small portion of their working day using a computer but still need to communicate and collaborate with colleagues and partners.
Exchange Online Deskless Worker will provide email, calendars, global address lists, antivirus and anti-spam filters, as well as Outlook Web Access Light for company email.
SharePoint Online Deskless Worker will provide access to SharePoint portal and team sites and search functionality, giving employees read-only access to information such as company policies, training and benefits.
A Deskless Worker Suite, including Exchange Online Deskless Worker and SharePoint Online Deskless Worker, will be available for $3 per user per month. Customers can also subscribe to each service independently.

Machine safety, in smaller packages



Control Engineering Europe 07 July 2008

The safety of machines and systems is one of the most important topics within the automation sector. The reason for this is the new Machinery Directive which will come into effect as of 29 December 2009.
On this date, the new Machinery Directive 2006/42/EG will replace the Directive 98/37/EG. All machines in the European market within the application areas of the directive must meet the specified safety requirements. Machine builders must expect fundamental changes. The machine directive stipulates a basic risk analysis for machines and systems, as well as risk minimisation if applicable. Appropriate technical safety measures can be derived from the results, and further defined. Safe operation of the machine in all of its operating modes and service-life stages must be taken into consideration, for example commissioning and automatic operation.
A further change will be the implementation of a CE marking for safety components. As there have been many discussions on the definition of a safety component, a list of components has been created. These include, for example, safety devices for detecting people or also emergency brake control units. A further amendment is the obligation to produce an assessment of risk as well as operating instructions for the technical documentation.
Only a few years ago, Pilz started the trend towards smaller, easier-to-program machine safety systems with its PSS Universal system. Today, many control and automation vendors have similar systems, and even servomotor and drive maker BaumĆ¼ller has launched its own system, called b maXX-safePLC safety control, on the market.
At present, there isn’t much published information about it, other than it ‘helps increase safety and reduce complexity,’ and it can be used to satisfy SIL 3 requirements, but BaumĆ¼ller is nevertheless proud that it won the ‘Red Dot’ design award.

PILZ’ NEW PROFISAFE INTERFACE

Pilz’ decentralized I/O-system PSSuniversal for safety-related and standard control functions now communicates via Profinet and Profisafe, thanks to this new bus interface module (far left in the photo). The new head module lets Profinet users connect the PSSuniversal into their systems, and use only one Profisafe address per station, so that safety settings for each device are made at a single point. Software to configure the Pilz system, called the PSSu Configurator, can be called up via TCI so that parameterising can be done on a Siemens Step 7 system.

dinsdag 15 juli 2008

Bill Gates: top ten greatest hits (and misses) - the Microsoft years



Engadget takes a quick look back at the top ten greatest (and not so great) products created on Bill-time.
Hits
- Internet Explorer (IE)Introduced 1995
- Media CenterIntroduced 2002
- MS-DOSIntroduced 1981, discontinued 2000
- OfficeIntroduced 1989 (on Mac), 1990 (on PC)
- PeripheralsIntroduced 1982
- Windows 3.1 / NT 3.5Introduced 1992 and 1994
- Windows 2000 and XPIntroduced 2000
- Windows CE / MobileIntroduced 1996
- Xbox and Xbox 360Introduced 2001 and 2005
- Visual BasicIntroduced 1991, discontinued 1998

Misses
- Auto PCIntroduced 1998, discontinued 2001
- Microsoft BobIntroduced 1995, discontinued 1996
- CairoIntroduced 1991 (but never released)
- MSN Music and URGEIntroduced 2004 and 2006, both fully discontinued 2008
- Origami / UMPCIntroduced 2006
- OS/2Dates: introduced 1987, discontinued 2006
- SPOT watches and MSN DirectIntroduced 2004, discontinued 2008
- Windows ActivationIntroduced 2001
- Windows MEIntroduced September 2000
- Windows VistaIntroduced 2007

The whole story at >>

Microsoft Wireless Arc Mouse folds up, makes you look cool


Microsoft has had its share hits and misses as far as product design goes, but this Arc Mouse due this winter looks to be a slick little input device. Wireless and collapsible, the Arc Mouse promises to combine both portability and style for those of you on the "fashion edge" (their words, not ours). Hyperboles aside, this $59.95 optical jobby seems to be the real thing, and comes in both red and black. Look for it for the holiday season littering holiday gift guides.

A Picowatt Processor

Pico power: This tiny processor, called the Phoenix, uses 90 percent less energy than the most efficient chip on the market today. It could enable implantable medical sensors powered by tiny batteries.

A Picowatt Processor
A low-power chip could be used for implantable medical sensors

Before long, sensors may be implanted in our bodies to do things like measure blood-glucose levels in diabetics or retinal pressure in glaucoma patients. But to be practical, they'll have to both be very small--as tiny as a grain of sand--and use long-lasting batteries of similarly small size, a combination not commercially available today.
Now researchers at the University of Michigan have made a processor that takes up just one millimeter square and whose power consumption is so low that emerging thin-film batteries of the same size could power it for 10 years or more, says David Blaauw, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Michigan and one of the lead researchers on the project.
Read the whole story >>

Energy from Waves

Catching waves: A U.K.-based company has come up with a simple design for a device that harnesses wave power: a water-filled rubber tube floating just under the ocean’s surface. Waves create bulges inside the tube that travel along it and drive a turbine attached at the other end.

Energy from Waves
A new technology could provide a cheap way to harness wave energy.

The ocean's waves have enough energy to provide two trillion watts of electricity, according to the Department of Energy's office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Extracting that enormous resource of power, however, has proved to be a herculean challenge.
A new device being developed by U.K.-based Checkmate SeaEnergy could help tap a portion of this wave power. The device, aptly named the Anaconda, is a long, water-filled rubber tube closed at both ends. It currently exists as a small laboratory-scale model, but it could eventually be 200 meters long and seven meters in diameter. At such a size, it will be capable of generating one megawatt of power at about 12 cents a kilowatt-hour, which is competitive with electricity costs from other wave-power technologies.
Read the whole story >>

maandag 14 juli 2008

080713 Strijbeekse Heide

Klik om foto's van Strijbeekse Heide route te zienHet was al weer een tijdje geleden dat wij in Nederland gewandeld hadden, dus zondag naar Begie getrokken om daar de Ontrack wandeling Strijbeekse Heide te lopen:
Strijbeekse Heide is een must voor degene die van rust en stilte in een verrassend natuurgebied houdt. Deze grenswandeling door glooiend bos en heide, tussen weide en vennen is overigens pittig. Hij leidt bijna geheel over zandpaden.tip: medio augustus staat de heide in bloei. Volop reden om deze route dan (nogmaals) te doen.

Op het plaatje klikken om de foto's te zien.