Innovation and Technology News http://www.merit.unu.edu/i&tweekly/ UNU-MERIT 2008 Goodbye air pollution and smoky chimneys, hello brighter days. That's been the trend in Europe for the past three decades − but unfortunately cleaning up the skies has allowed more of the sun's rays to pierce the atmosphere, contributing to at least half the warming that has occurred. Since 1980, average air temperatures in Europe have risen 1 °C: much more than expected from greenhouse−gas warming alone. Researchers at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland took aerosol concentrations from six locations in northern Europe, measured between 1986 and 2005, and compared them with solar−radiation measurements over the same period. Aerosol concentrations dropped by up to 60 per cent over the 29−year period, while solar radiation rose by around 1 watt per square metre. The latest climate models are built on the assumption that aerosols have their biggest influence by seeding natural clouds, which reflect sunlight. However, the team found that radiation dropped only slightly on cloudy days, suggesting that the main impact of aerosols is to block sunlight directly. http://www.merit.unu.edu/i&tweekly/html.php?nid=3372 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:13:05 +0200 A device consisting of a giant rubber tube may hold the key to producing affordable electricity from the energy in sea waves. Invented in the UK, the 'Anaconda's' ultra−simple design means it would be cheap to manufacture and maintain, enabling it to produce clean electricity at lower cost than other types of wave energy converter. The Anaconda is closed at both ends and filled completely with water. It is designed to be anchored just below the sea's surface, with one end facing the oncoming waves. A wave hitting the end squeezes it and causes a 'bulge wave' to form inside the tube. As the bulge wave runs through the tube, the initial sea wave that caused it runs along the outside of the tube at the same speed, squeezing the tube more and more and causing the bulge wave to get bigger and bigger. The bulge wave then turns a turbine fitted at the far end of the device and the power produced is fed to shore via a cable. When built, each full−scale Anaconda device would be 200 metres long and 7 metres in diameter, and deployed in water depths of between 40 and 100 metres. Initial assessments indicate that the Anaconda would be rated at a power output of 1MW (roughly the electricity consumption of 2000 houses) and might be able to generate power at a cost of 6p per kWh or less. Although around twice as much as the cost of electricity generated from traditional coal−fired power stations, this compares very favourably with generation costs for other leading wave energy concepts. http://www.merit.unu.edu/i&tweekly/html.php?nid=3366 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:10:56 +0200 A new energy concept called a solar tower could generate enough electricity for 200,000 homes. Demonstrated more than 20 years ago, the basic design calls for solar collectors to warm the air near Earth's surface and then channel it up the tall central tower. Turbines placed at the bottom make electricity from the updraft. EnviroMission in South Melbourne, Australia, has now designed a kilometre−high solar tower and is looking at possible sites in the southwestern United States. The solar tower is an updated version of a solar chimney − a centuries−old technique for providing ventilation to a home by creating a natural updraft from sun−heated air. The physics is also similar to the atmospheric vortex engine, where a man−made tornado funnels warm air up into the sky. Even though this vortex could extend higher than a solid structure, only the solar tower has been demonstrated to work, according to EnviroMission. On a sunny day, the air at the top of the tower would be 20 degrees Celsius, whereas the air in the greenhouse could reach 70 degrees Celsius. As this hot air escapes up the tower at 15 metres per second, it spins 32 turbines that generate up to 200 megawatts of electricity. The solar tower is less than one tenth as efficient as solar cells in converting the sun's energy into electricity. But the advantage is that its materials are much less expensive. http://www.merit.unu.edu/i&tweekly/html.php?nid=3369 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:11:58 +0200 Companies are to receive European funding to develop technology that helps older people continue living independently at home. The European Commission wants to see Europe developing as a hub for ICT for older people through the development of smart home technologies, electronic alarm systems and remote health facilities, for example. It is hoped that smart devices, mobile technologies for monitoring vital signs and user−friendly interfaces for people with impaired vision or hearing will improve the quality of life of elderly people, their carers and families. The proposal is part of the Commission's goal to save on health and social care expenditure. A quarter of the EU population will be aged over 65 by 2020, and spending on pensions, health and long−term care is expected to increase to eight per cent of GDP in the coming decades. The new proposal will see an additional EUR150m in funding to a new European Joint Research Programme, resulting in a total investment of around EUR600m. http://www.merit.unu.edu/i&tweekly/html.php?nid=3367 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:11:18 +0200 Wireless communication in the ocean is difficult because water molecules absorb radio waves very efficiently, an effect exploited by microwave ovens. Acoustic signals travel better, but also degrade quickly due to echoes, ambient noise, swirling currents and, again, water absorbing the signals. But a technique called acoustic time reversal can change that. Time reversal exploits the way undersea acoustic signals typically arrive clouded by echoes that travel at different speeds. For example, a 'ping' may arrive as three separate sounds − one that travelled directly, an echo from the surface and then an echo from the ocean floor. If the receiver transmits the same sequence of sounds backwards, they will take the same routes back to the original source. But because the sound that took the longest to travel is sent first, the second−slowest next, and the fastest last, all three will arrive at about the same time at the original source. In effect, they converge in time, reconstructing the original signal, according to researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the US, and NATO Undersea Research Centre in Italy. To use this technique for communication, a person that wishes to receive a message first transmits a carrier signal. The sender time−reverses what they receive, and also alters it to carry a message before sending it back. The receiver gets a clean enough version of the original signal to decode the added message. The researchers managed to use the technique to transmit 15 kilobits a second at a range of 4 kilometres, and 5 kilobits per second at 20 km. It even worked over 3,500 km − comparable to the distance some whales can communicate with song − although the data rate fell to only about 100 bits per second. http://www.merit.unu.edu/i&tweekly/html.php?nid=3365 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:10:35 +0200 IBM's India Research Laboratory (IRL) has developed technology that automatically detects and masks sensitive information in audio recordings. The technology could be useful for call centre operations which record conversations between call centre staff and customers for a number of reasons, including monitoring of service quality. Some of these audio recordings are also used to train new staff. The technology utilises a combination of speech analytics and metadata to locate and mask portions of an audio recording during playback to individuals that are not authorised to hear the sensitive information. The information that is to be masked can be configured depending on the requirement, and the masked portions can be presented in many ways, such as white noise, silence or an announcement that the information has been edited. The ability to maintain customer trust requires organisations to be able to ensure the security of their customer's private information, such as credit card numbers, PIN codes, social security numbers and other information collected through interactions between call centre staff and customers, IBM said. The technology has applications in a number of other areas, such as medical diagnosis, where recorded information collected in one context is later used for training people. http://www.merit.unu.edu/i&tweekly/html.php?nid=3368 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:11:37 +0200 An invisibility carpet may prove to be the most realistic kind of cloaking device, according to new calculations. Researchers at Imperial College London have come up with a theory for how to create a carpet that would cause anything swept under it to seem to disappear. The carpet could be made of regular silica and silicon, and would work across the spectrum of visible light − something no other cloaking scheme has yet been able to achieve. Invisibility cloaks, shields and skins remain a dream for physicists and engineers, not to mention military organisations. Most modern schemes are based on 'metamaterials' − materials possessing carefully crafted internal structures that can alter the path of light. The idea is to bend light by different amounts at different points, much as a heated column of air can cause the horizon to shimmer. To date, however, metamaterials have worked only at wavelengths longer than that of visible light, or at very specific colours or wavelengths. The new scheme does better because it attempts to make an object look like a flat surface rather than making it disappear altogether. That makes the requirements of the metamaterials involved less demanding. Metamaterials could one day be used in a range of applications, from radar−invisible skins for ships and planes to optical computing. http://www.merit.unu.edu/i&tweekly/html.php?nid=3370 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:12:20 +0200 A new postgraduate centre for maths and computer science has opened in the Nigerian capital of Abuja as part of an ambitious plan to attract the best young African scientists and nurture their talents as problem−solvers and teachers. The centre is providing advanced training to graduate students from across Africa in maths and related fields. The new Nigerian centre is modelled on − and has close ties with − the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Cape Town, South Africa, which was set up in 2003 by the Cambridge University cosmologist Neil Turok. In recognition of the close ties with AIMS, the new centre is called AIMS (Abuja). The plan is to set up another 15 AIMS−type centres across Africa over the next five years. Each centre will be run as a partnership with AIMS and AIMS (Abuja), plus one or more local universities. The centres will host students from across Africa but focus on particular branches of mathematical science. New centres are planned for countries including Ghana, Madagascar, Sudan and Uganda − and they will join the African Mathematical Institutes Network (AMI−Net), which was created in 2005. http://www.merit.unu.edu/i&tweekly/html.php?nid=3371 Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:12:39 +0200