Head Blaze

Hopefully this is for real and not another hurry up and wait. We need solar now more than ever before.

IBM researchers have developed a new class of solar-powered electricity-generating cells that they claim will bring photovoltaic cells closer to cost parity with conventional energy sources.

The researchers from IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York have published their findings in a paper entitled “High-Efficiency Solar Cell with Earth-Abundant Liquid-Processed Absorber,” available here (PDF).
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Being a motorcycle enthusiast these are some amazing claims for a very unique helmet design.  If this works as described it could also make a real impact on sport helmets too.

With over 80% of fatal motorcycle accidents due to head trauma, rotational head injury is currently seen as the greatest cause of brain damage or death for motorcyclists involved in road accidents.

The new helmet, aptly named SuperSkin®, tackles this directly using a special new technology that mimics nature’s own simple design – skull and skin. Vastly superior in design compared to standard helmets, stringent tests show that the SuperSkin® product design reduces rotational impact by an unprecedented 50% and the subsequent possibility of brain damage by 67.5%*.
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Put that liquid soap away and wash your hands the 21st century way, with plasma!

Hospital workers often have to wash their hands dozens of times a day — and may need a minute or more to do the process right, by scrubbing with soap and water. But new devices could reduce the task to just four seconds, cleaning even hard-to-reach areas under fingernails.

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In research that gives literal meaning to the term “power suit,” University of California, Berkeley, engineers have created energy-scavenging nanofibers that could one day be woven into clothing and textiles.
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Attention recruits. Those of you landing in Afghanistan in coming months may not have to engage in the sandbag stacking and trench digging usually associated with lowly grunt-dom. An $800,000 investment in an armored wall system known as McCurdy’s Armor could have Marines rapidly erecting 6.5-foot-tall mortar-, RPG- and bullet proof fortresses in less than an hour, saving the days it can take to fortify an area by conventional means and making forward-operating units more nimble. Continue Reading »

A watched pot never boils, but an electrically charged pot sometimes freezes.

A study in the Feb. 5 Science reports that water can freeze at different temperatures depending on whether the surface it rests on is positively or negatively charged. Under certain conditions, water can even freeze as it heats up. Continue Reading »

The iPad has yet to hit store shelves, and yet the technology that powers Apple’s latest gadget may already be yesterday’s news.

For the first time, scientists have created a circuit that can power itself, as long as it’s left in a beam of sunshine. Created by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, the world’s first photovoltaic circuit could eventually power a new line of consumer devices or even model the human brain. Continue Reading »

Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products. Continue Reading »

The global search for a sustainable energy supply is making significant strides at Wake Forest University as researchers at the university’s Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials have announced that they have pushed the efficiency of plastic solar cells to more than 6 percent.

In a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters, Wake Forest researchers describe how they have achieved record efficiency for organic or flexible, plastic solar cells by creating “nano-filaments” within light absorbing plastic, similar to the veins in tree leaves. This allows for the use of thicker absorbing layers in the devices, which capture more of the sun’s light.
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An electric propulsion technology for miniature satellites aims to give them more mobility — and may eventually allow them to take on deep-space missions. Right now, 10 to 15 Rubik’s Cube-sized satellites are orbiting high above Earth. Known as cube satellites, or “CubeSats,” the devices help researchers conduct simple space observations and measure characteristics of Earth’s atmosphere. Continue Reading »