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DIY Natural Solar Cells Use Plant Wastes

3/12/2012

Andreas Mershin

Andreas Mershin, a researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a big dream, one that could potentially change some parts of the world. He believes that it is possible to create inexpensive solar panels from plant wastes, an inexpensive peptide powder, and an ordinary substrate material.

The expert says that the molecules plants use to conduct photosynthesis could be removed from plant wastes via a relatively simple process, then stabilized using the peptide powder his team is currently working on developing.

The gooey mixture will then be placed on a sheet of metal, a piece of glass or other ordinary material. Attaching a couple of wires to the substrate would complete the DIY solar panels. If this approach succeeds, the costs associated with building your own power supplies would be negligible.

Above is the video the MIT News Office compiled of the researcher explaining his technique in more detail. I do hope this works, since renewable energy would help alleviate a host of problems, especially in the developing and Third worlds.

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New Pacemaker Model Is Powered by the Heart

3/5/2012

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Pacemakers help the heart beat at a healthy rhythm

Heartbeat vibrations could one day power up a new generation of pacemakers, say scientists at the University of Michigan, in the US. If such a technique could be applied to devices controlling the heart beat, then the need to perform battery replacement surgery would disappear.

At this time, people who carry pacemakers need to undergo regular surgery, where doctors change the batteries powering up their medical implants. This is very uncomfortable, so scientists have been looking for ways to eliminate this procedure from their work flow for a long time.

Now, U-M engineering researchers propose a new solution to this problem. They say that each heartbeat reverberates through the chest, producing small vibrations. By using a new device the team developed, it may be possible to convert these vibrations into electricity.

This energy could then be used to power up pacemakers or an implanted defibrillator. Both these tools are used to force the heart into keeping a healthy rhythm in cardiac patients. In devices implanted today, small batteries provide the needed current.

Each patient with such an implant needs to undergo surgery once every 5 to 10 years, in order to have the battery replaced. The waiting period between surgeries is determined by the volume of work the implant needs to carry out.

“The idea is to use ambient vibrations that are typically wasted and convert them to electrical energy. If you put your hand on top of your heart, you can feel these vibrations all over your torso,” U-M Department of Aerospace Engineering research fellow Amin Karami explains.

Funds for this investigation were secured from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Virginia Tech Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science.

The U-M group has not yet built a working prototype. However, it did manage to develop a series of schematics and blueprints for how the vibration-powered device should look like. The most important component is a thin slice of a piezoelectric material.

Piezoelectrics are special ceramics and crystals that produce a small electrical current when a mechanical force is exerted onto them. Heart vibrations can easily distort the shape of the thin piezoelectrics slices that the team wants to use.

Details of the device are published in a paper called “Powering pacemakers from heartbeat vibrations using linear and nonlinear energy harvesters,” which appears in the current issue of the esteemed journal Applied Physics Letters.

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Arctic Bacteria Underlie New Salmonella Vaccine

3/5/2012

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New, temperature-sensitive vaccine developed against Salmonella enterica

Treating salmonella infections in poultry is rapidly becoming one of the most important methods of increasing food security. Working towards that end, a team of Canadian researchers was recently able to isolate a microorganism in the Arctic that may be of help.

Investigators at the University of Victoria, led by microbiologist Dr. Francis Nano, believe that bacteria collected from cold Arctic waters may hold the key to immunizing chickens against Salmonella enterica infections.

This bacteria causes millions of deaths annually in official statistics, which means that the actual numbers may be even higher. In Canada, around 10,000 people are infected by the pathogen yearly.

As such, salmonella is viewed as a critical public health concern. Scientists say that it represents the most common, food-borne disease in the world. In addition to being harmful in and of itself, the organism also favors the development of other conditions.

Using funds provided through the Genome BC Proof-of-Concept initiative, Nano and his team have been working on a way to use the Arctic bacteria in a new vaccine against S. enterica. Their approach (simple in theory, but difficult to apply in practice) appears to be working, PhysOrg reports.

The research resulted in the creation of a temperature-sensitive vaccine. What the chemical does is it replaces one of the genes in S. enterica with a gene from the Arctic bacteria. The switch renders the former unable to resist the temperatures in the bloodstream of warm-blooded animals.

The modified salmonella will then immediately die out, immunizing the host to future infections by the same strand. The team was able to demonstrate in its investigation that producing the vaccine would also be cost-effective.

This implies that it could be used by authorities, farmers and big companies alike. All those involved in raising animals would stand to benefit from this substance, as would national economies, experts say.

“Using Arctic genes, we can create bacterial pathogens that behave like vaccines, much like the many temperature-sensitive viruses that are used as vaccines. We can apply this same approach to develop new vaccines against many diseases of humans and animals,” Nano explains.

Vaccinations are becoming increasingly important in animals nowadays because overuse of antimicrobial drugs and antibiotics has given rise to a wide array of drug-resistant microorganisms, which cannot be killed by conventional means.

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DIY Natural Solar Cells Use Plant Wastes

New Pacemaker Model Is Powered by the Heart

Arctic Bacteria Underlie New Salmonella Vaccine

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