Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies

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Post by Paul »

Price of Gas dropped by 20 % here in California. Elections due in November.
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Post by shyamd »

Accelerating masses generate gravitational radiation in higher dimension - the world of extraterrestrial intelligence
India daily Technology Team
Sep. 21, 2006

Accelerating masses generate gravitational radiation in higher dimension.That side of the universe in completely dark for us as we cannot perceive anything beyond the three spatial dimensions and one forward moving time dimension.

The theory of relativity predicts that masses being accelerated should emit ``gravitational radiation'''' in the same way that charged particles (like electrons) emit electromagnetic radiation when they are accelerated.

Electromagnetic waves are produced when charges are accelerated by electric or magnetic fields. Gravitational waves are produced when masses are accelerated by gravitational fields.

Gravitational radiation has not yet been observed. However, we must keep in mind that just because we have not observed them, that does not mean they do not exist. Before 1933, radio waves had not been observed, but surely they had been there all along.

The waves and radiations that we can perceive are designed to explicitly manifest themselves in 3-d spatial environments. Gravity radiation is what runs the chilled universe , the Hyperspaces and zillion universes held by the chilled platform universe.
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Pax Insectica?

Post by Sanjay M »

DARPA may be on track to find the ultimate solution against asymmetric warfare:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4808342.stm

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/US_Mili ... borgs.html

Will the jungle guerrilla of the future panic at every stirring bug or leaf he comes across?


The head of the DARPA program is a desi:

http://192.5.18.102/mto/people/pms/lal/ ... serday.pdf

http://www.darpa.mil/BAA/baa06-22.html


Here's the crappy html version for those without Acrobat:

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:N_x ... serday.pdf


Spy satellites are few and far between, as well as overburdened -- they have a whole planet to survey, and cost billions of dollars to build and get into orbit. An insect costs nearly nothing to make, and there are trillions of them. How expensive is an insect, really?

Not only are insects Nature's oldest jungle warriors, but they are found much farther afield, in lakes, prairies, fields, caves -- even inside the walls of your home. Gurkhas may have practiced jungle warfare for a few hundred years at most, but insects have been doing it for millions of years. Over this time, they have acquired a myriad of incredible talents, skills and abilities. They are capable of perfect stealth, they are armed with the most deadly poisons, they can easily feed and refuel from any surrounding trees and plants, or even dung. They are very efficient in their use of energy, and some are even capable of traveling thousands of miles without eating. They are expendable, and can easily sacrifice themselves, whether to defend their hives, or to become food for their mates or for their young.

Insect nervous systems are tiny and simple, and thus better suited for interface with modern microelectronics, for control and guidance purposes. Yet their bodies are precision-engineered as a result of millions of years of evolution and competition for survival of the fittest. If a fly hits a wall and falls down, it can quickly recover and resume flying again, because its body is made of resilin, the most efficient elastic material known to man and capable of absorbing 98% of mechanical impact energy, more than the most advanced shock-absorbing industrial polymer rubber.

If rifle maker Kalashnikov's invention caused a revolution in warfare by giving unprecedented killing power to the layman peasant revolutionary, then DARPA's quiet invention of the BugBot could herald a counter-revolution of similar proportions that could turn the tide against the asymmetric guerrilla fighter.

After all, how do you hide from bugs in the jungle? How do you tell which bug is friend or foe? How can even the most inspired fanatical suicide-bomber defeat or evade an army of tiny expendable insects? The very prospect of it would inflict demoralization.

If this type of weaponry ever gets deployed against LTTE, Naxalites, or jihadis, then they'll never recover.
Guerrilla-style asymmetric warfare would be totally discredited, and thrown into the dustbin of history.

MiddleEastern/Hezbollah/jihadi types will feel fear of Biblical proportions when they realize that the deadly plague of locusts of Biblical infamy has descended upon them to smite them down. I doubt that RPGs or AK-47s would be terribly effective protection against swarms of fast, tiny bugs armed with neurotoxins or micro-explosive shape-charges.


Interesting bug facts:

http://ufbir.ifas.ufl.edu/chap11.htm

The locust holds the world record for flying distance. In the past, some locust swarms have been tracked flying across the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of over 4500km. Obviously there is no place to land or stop at during such flights, so that means they all had to fly continuously across that distance. Wow, now that is a lot of endurance for such a tiny creature!
Go back to the Table of Contents to see all the other insect records.

Researchers are already attaching transmitter chips to dragonflies in order to track their movements:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4759615.stm

Dragonflies are among the fastest flying insects, and possibly faster than the locust. They have an 80 km flight radius (combat radius?)
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Post by vishalb »

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Water out of thin air

Post by Sunoor Singh »

Depending upon how much it costs and whether US govt. allows its export, this may be a good technology for India

Making Water from Thin Air

People will no longer have to dig deep tubewells and exhaust ground water. Water supply will be available 24 hours a day.
Water could easily be produced in arid areas. Desert could be greened. Water transportation problems will belong to the past.
Indian agriculture will no longer remain a gamble on monsoons.

(P.S. Don't wake me up).
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Post by Sanjay M »

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Arsenic Decontamination

Post by Sanjay M »

India has many arsenic-contaminated wells, and could therefore benefit from this new arsenic decontamination technology:

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_ar ... h=nanotech
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Post by Sanjay M »

Israel developing 'bionic hornet':

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Israel ... 77092.html

Check a few posts back within this thread at what I wrote.
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Holographic Storage

Post by Sanjay M »

Holographic disk technology is now starting to come out:

http://www.our-picks.com/archives/2006/ ... this-week/

Each holographic disk is the size of a regular CD or DVD, but can store 300 Gigabytes on each disk.

In a few years, that storage capacity would be elevated to 1.6Terabytes per disk (1600 Gigabytes per disk).

That is a staggering amount of memory storage within a small space. With one disk, you could rip off all the bollywood movies that are released in a year. Now that's a lot of storage.
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40% Solar Efficiency Achieved

Post by Sanjay M »

US Dept of Energy announces breakthrough in solar cell efficiency:

http://www.energy.gov/news/4503.htm

They're using a concentrator (lens type of focusing device) in connection with the solar cell to achieve the higher efficiency of 40%.

I read a comment on the net which said that the total solar panelized surface area required to support the entire world's energy needs would be 265 miles by 265 miles (ie. approx 70,000 sq.mi.). Hmm, that doesn't sound impossible.
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Bees for Explosive Detection

Post by Sanjay M »

Bees used to sniff for explosives

http://www.techreview.com/BioTech/17867/
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Post by Murugan »

india has max exposure to the sun through out the year yet we are lagging behind in exploiting solar power or in r&d in this field.

what we find is negligible interest of govt in this area. tapping solar energy has not yet been made profitable in india compared to wind energy (thanx to suzlon).

there are plenty of products ranging from PV mobile chargers to garden lights to solar panels that can be used in solar farms. But the govts interest is not exceeding - other than providing subsidy to people who are out there to use alternate source of energy like solar.

do we even have a proper retail outlet which sells PV cells or panels?
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Post by Sanjay M »

Solar technology is also good because it provides distributed local onsite power generation, which would be good for a country where distribution infrastructure is weak.

Anyway, here's a different article on Carbon Nanotube Muscles, which are a different promising technology:

http://www.techreview.com/NanoTech/17872/
Raju

Post by Raju »

Tech promises cheap solar cells

Washington, December 7
________________________

An Australian National University researcher claims to have invented a technology that could cut the cost of producing solar panels by more than 60 percent.

Professor Andrew Blakers, director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems at the Australian National University, has said that 'sliver technology' could reduce the price of solar power to below the current retail price of electricity.

This would also make it cost-effective for householders to buy solar panels rather than electricity from the grid, he said.

According to Blakers, the system works by taking a standard solar cell about one millimetre thick and cutting it into tiny slices that are just 120 micrometres wide.

"Imagine a standard solar cell is a loaf of bread. When you put it out in the sun it generates energy based on its surface area. Now imagine you cut that loaf up into slices and lay them horizontally. You get a lot more surface area," he said.

According to him, the technique also allows researchers to use much smaller amounts of expensive silicon to generate the same amount of electricity.

"We're looking at major reductions in the total cost without the need for major scientific breakthroughs. It's about doing a good engineering job using known scientific principles."
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Post by uddu »

Reva is not coming up with a four seater version. If they do it will revolutionise the Indian car industry.
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Shaving Razor Uses Light

Post by Sanjay M »

Philips has patented a shaving technology that uses near-infrared light to make hair follicles go dormant:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article ... light.html

http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/11/phil ... ir-growth/

Wow, laser blades instead of razor blades.

I guess this means Gillette will have to pack 5 of them onto one shaving head, and market it under Mach-5.

I sense an imminent fatwa to outlaw the low-infrared spectrum.

But at least you won't have to worry about annoying nicks and cuts, or the need to use aftershave as a sterilizer, or even shaving cream.
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Post by SaiK »

when we slowly move onto super duper "freeways", i guess our GQ is a starter (not eggzactly freeway though).. all these chota mota cars would become useless or worthless..

reva, hyndai, and all those gully-cars are fit only for gullies. auto mftrs should start thinking of long distance travelling easier and cheaper.

compact size to small-sized automobiles should be slowly withdrawn from phased planing of cities and highways.,, and move away from this congested way of living.

i hope some discussion to this effect starts with GoI, before we all die., for heaven sake, we have more space than EU countries, and we are talking like our potential worth nothing more than 4th world-ic.

jumpstart is the key! to banish obsolete techs and products. devalue the land cost based on the living space, and increase living space per person to aleast 10 sq. ft to begin with.

subsidize land for poor, but standardize on the living space., bring all the poor to middle class and upper middle class. chew the rich to pay the poor. robin hood tech to rescue.
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Post by SureshP »

[quote]In a recent study, fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel explains that a hydrogen economy is a wasteful economy. The large amount of energy required to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds (water, natural gas, biomass), package the light gas by compression or liquefaction, transfer the energy carrier to the user, plus the energy lost when it is converted to useful electricity with fuel cells, leaves around 25% for practical use — an unacceptable value to run an economy in a sustainable future. Only niche applications like submarines and spacecraft might use hydrogen.

“More energy is needed to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds than can ever be recovered from its use,â€
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Post by Alok_N »

[quote="SureshP"]“More energy is needed to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds than can ever be recovered from its use,â€
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Post by Alok_N »

Raju wrote:According to Blakers, the system works by taking a standard solar cell about one millimetre thick and cutting it into tiny slices that are just 120 micrometres wide.
this is brilliantly simple idea ... :eek:

let's see if the instrumentation costs associated with 120 micron slivers does not negate the obvious advantage in material costs ... the idea has to be mass produced before they can claim 60% reduction ...
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Post by Sanjay M »

Well, thin film coating technologies like CVD might make it possible, so you never know.

Anyway, take a look at this one:

http://www.physorg.com/news85069467.html

A material a little friendlier than silicon, for high-speed switching. Terahertz computing is within sight. Imagine this combined with multi-core architectures on the order of a thousand cores per chip. Might make for videogames that are little more lifelike than what we see today.

Also, another silicon-beating material, this time for flash-style memory:

http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/i ... ewsID=7544

Lower power, higher speed, scalability to tinier dimensions than flash can support. Will help videogames to be portable too, then.
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Post by Sanjay M »

Here's a rusty technology that may provide new hope for solar-generated hydrogen:

http://www.techreview.com/Energy/17887/
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Post by chaitanya »

Theres a lot of money being poured in by BP and Shell into the chem / applied phys department here at caltech in order to develop highly efficent methods of solar-based hydrogen production... if a suitable method is found, hydrogen storage devices are being developed that would allow systems with energy densities higher than that of batteries to be produced
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Post by SureshP »

Sanjay M wrote:Here's a rusty technology that may provide new hope for solar-generated hydrogen:

http://www.techreview.com/Energy/17887/
Sanjay your time will be better spent learning some real science rather then googling the internet for the many many daily stories on technological breakthroughs that will in a flash tranform economies.

The reality is more prosaic. 99.9% of these stupendeous breakthroughs never make it to the real world, besides overcoming numereous technological hurdles which arent apparent in the breathtaking accounts the economics of using sledgehammers to crack nuts runs into the sands of real world economies.
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Post by Yerna »

Raju wrote:Tech promises cheap solar cells

"Imagine a standard solar cell is a loaf of bread. When you put it out in the sun it generates energy based on its surface area. Now imagine you cut that loaf up into slices and lay them horizontally. You get a lot more surface area," he said.

According to him, the technique also allows researchers to use much smaller amounts of expensive silicon to generate the same amount of electricity.
How about printing amorphous silicon or organic solar cells that are only 120u thick rather than slicing millimeter thick solar cells?
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Post by Alok_N »

Sanjay and Yerna,

it is all about cost ... if you don't see that, you didn't get the idea ... :)
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Post by Yerna »

Alok_N wrote:Sanjay and Yerna,

it is all about cost ... if you don't see that, you didn't get the idea ... :)
hmmm... I was thinking low efficiency and degradation of printed amorphous solar cells is the problem otherwise screen printing is the cheapest form technology available. Screen printing is a 3000 year old technology and the only thing holding us back is the efficiency and once we master that efficient affordable thin substrate solar cells will be a reality. There are already several start ups in the market that are into roll-to-roll processing, both amorphous silicon and organic film based solar cells. Well, the later is still in labs but after I made the above post, I watched a program on history channel which showed featured a company, Nanosolar, which is a year away from releasing products into the market.
The day is not far away when we can buy an outdoor wall paper that doubles up as solar panels.... may be another 10 years.
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Post by Sanjay M »

Cloning nanotubes:

http://www.techreview.com/NanoTech/17899/

Now everybody can have the pick of the litter!
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Post by Alok_N »

Yerna wrote:The day is not far away when we can buy an outdoor wall paper that doubles up as solar panels.... may be another 10 years.
that's what I heard 20 years ago ... it is always 10 years away onlee ... :)

in the meantime, there are some *real* ideas, like the one posted by Raju, that will bring down the cost barrier for solar power ...
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Post by Yerna »

Alok_N wrote:
Yerna wrote:The day is not far away when we can buy an outdoor wall paper that doubles up as solar panels.... may be another 10 years.
that's what I heard 20 years ago ... it is always 10 years away onlee ... :)
I agree, solar wall papers may take a bit more than 10 years but we will get there nevertheless.
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Post by Sanjay M »

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Post by Sanjay M »

Mind-controlled robots:

http://www.physorg.com/news85402954.html

Could this be the future of warfare, or even of security and riot control?

Telepresence. Instead of putting a man in harm's way, put a mechanical platform that moves like a man in harm's way. Then have it remotely controlled by a human operator.
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Post by Sanjay M »

A stunning medical discovery in Canada, where insulin was first discovered:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news ... =63970&p=1

Researchers have found that diabetes may be caused by stress from the nervous system. It's as if the pancreatic cells get stuck in some kind of feedback loop due to this. And all this time we thought it was purely hormonal and genetic.
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Post by Sanjay M »

Left-handed material with negative refractive index for the far-red frequency of the light spectrum has been developed:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10816.html


As we all know, left-handed materials with negative index of refraction have been postulated as being suitable for invisibility cloaking. While achieving this for visible light spectrum would be hard, it might be considerably easier to do it for radio/radar/microwave cloaking, or even infra-red/thermal detection wavelengths.
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Post by Suppiah »

http://energy.seekingalpha.com/article/22601

Are we getting closer to solar power for masses? Implications for India are HUGE!!! If Solar PV can approach the affordability of even solar water heating, if we can see as many homes with solar electricity panels as we see solar water heating panels, man that would be great!!
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Post by Sanjay M »

Could neutrons be used as qubits for quantum computing?

http://www.physorg.com/news85828822.html

It's an interesting idea.
Hey Alok N, what do you think?

I'm thinking that since decoherence is a problem with quantum systems, then neutrons might be better candidates than others, due to their apparently immunity to charge. They are however affected by magnetism, which could then be used for spin-entanglement and measurement purposes. But like I said, perhaps their immunity to charge effects would help their stability against decoherence.

Btw, what do you all feel is the most rational explanation behind Bell's Inequality? What is the reason for "spooky action at a distance"? I'd really like to hear people's best speculations.
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Post by Sanjay M »

Could electric/hybrid vehicles help to buffer against load-shedding/brown-outs?

http://www.techreview.com/Energy/17930/

Could they make windpower, solar and other time-variant sources of power more practical?
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Post by Alok_N »

Sanjay M wrote:Hey Alok N, what do you think?
I think such posts have an appropriate home:

http://www.drdo.org/dsforum/cideaframe.htm
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Post by Sanjay M »

You know what, I think I'm actually going to cross-post my ideas to their submission page then.
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