Breathing Lithium Ion Batteries Store 8-10 times the Power

An early demonstration model of the St Andrews air cell. Air enters and leaves via the porous circular membrane in the centre (Image: Peter Bruce/EPSRC)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17159-breathing-batteries-could-store-10-times-the-energy.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

 

  Interesting find

The lithium ion batteries used in laptops and cellphones, and tipped for future use in electric cars, are approaching their technological limits. But chemists in the UK say that there’s a way to break through the looming energy capacity barrier – let the batteries "breathe" oxygen from the air.

A standard lithium ion battery contains a negative electrode of graphite, a positive electrode of lithium cobalt oxide, and a lithium salt-containing electrolyte. Lithium ions shuttle between the two electrodes during charging and discharging, sending electrons around the external circuit to power a gadget in the process.

The problem with that design, says Peter Bruce at the University of St Andrews, is that the lithium cobalt oxide is bulky and heavy. "The major barrier to increasing the energy density of these batteries is the positive electrode," he says. "Everyone wants to find a way to push up the amount of lithium stored there, which would raise the capacity." 

New LASER can detect certain cancers in a patients breath?

Apparently it is true.  Using molecular markers by looking at wavelengths that are reflected can be used to fingerprint compounds.  This similar technique is used to determine the makeup of a distant star or planet.  Impressive

Photograph of Ioachim Pupeza and a colleague with the new laser system

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/sep/30/new-laser-could-spot-signs-of-cancer-in-exhaled-breath

Is there trouble brewing in the land of DevOps?

Does your organization use Agile project management?  Are you deploying new capabilities on very short intervals to your infrastructure?   Does your organization use middle-ware ‘service’ layer to help standardize your software product line? Is your organization such that this middleware is provided by a separate team?

It may behoove you to ensure there is compliance with time-tested documentation and proper change control.  Any middleware subsystems created as components used on new technologies but are not well documented, packaged, or maintained may suffer in the future and negate the benefit of being componentized.  This is “technical debt” that eventually will fall upon your organization.  All systems that use this middleware will be tied to a system that eventually will be unable to be updated unless the talent that created them are keep employed. This technical debt can bring down a company with a ‘market leading product’ quickly when the competition brings a new product to market.  New products can industrialize your organization’s product.  Your organization is quickly put into the position of having a legacy product, and management will need to invest heavily to bring your product up to the level and quickly to the new generation of product.

I follow gardeviance’s blog pretty regularly because he is the only source I have found insightful in IT leadership and how prepared organizations are for future success. This blog is gold for any CIO.

It is worth the investment in time to read. You may want to reserve time to read related content, but once you do he brings a unique perspective on new technologies coming to market, such as Amazon’s dash button.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

TIL that scientists in Florida plan to release genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild. The males still mate with females, but the hatchlings die before adulthood due to the presence of the new genes.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/28/382168407/florida-health-officials-hope-to-test-gmo-mosquitoes-this-spring

Brilliant!  Help me understand why this is a bad idea? 

The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car — Backchannel — Medium

Interesting read about accidents Google’s autonomous cars are having are due to other driver’s errors.  Worth the read especially if you ride motorcycles for things to watch.

https://medium.com/backchannel/the-view-from-the-front-seat-of-the-google-self-driving-car-46fc9f3e6088

St Louis Bread company BRINGS BACK THE JALAPEÑOS BAGEL

I don’t know if this is publicly announced yet, but coming soon to a St. Louis Brad company near you is the jalapeños bagel.  Why is this so kick arse?  Have you ever tried their breakfast egg, white cheddar, and ham on a jalapeños bagel?  You haven’t lived, sir or madam.. 

Trust me, ask if they have it, and ask them to make you this one if a kind taste.

Reply back, and tell me if it isn’t the best thing since the bread tie was invented.

In all it’s glory:

image

New theory: dark matter is wrong, right answer is time is slowing down

Ok, it doesn’t matter, but I thought of this possibility myself years ago, but my lack of knowledge on the subject prevented me from sharing.

Everyone knows scientist say the universe is expanding at an remunerated rate, right?  ..And dark matter with done interesting properties you can’t measure is used to help explain this? 

image

What if the observations could be explained without the use of a Easter bunny?  Well, team had figured out the observations could be explained by removing the constraint that time is constant.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/09/is-time-slowly-disappearin.html

St.Louis Adult Easter Egg Hunt – Fun or Epic Fail?

Summary details they DON’T tell you upfront:

  • 2.7 mile walk – and that is only if you also know
  • The eggs are all at the FAR south end of the loop
  • Unless you are looking for the “golden eggs” with $50 / $100 in them (i heard of only one found on a trash can) walk the path only.  don’t bother with the woods or anything else
  • When you arrive, enter at the NORTH WEST end of the park.  GPS will take you to dead ends and it will take you another 20 minutes to figure out how to get there
  • Eggs have numbers on them.  you get to pick up ten only
  • when you return, you have to fight through lines to see if the numbers are winners
  • winning numbers you get to pick off a table of cleaning products, ketchup, coolie cups, envelops (mine were 15% off massage at xxx)
  • Apparently you can win grills, alcohol etc.  but we saw nothing of the sort
  • The only thing “adult” about it is they have liquor for sale, and you have to walk 3 miles in the dark, 5+ if you don’t know the above things also..

The path is the blue and red lines combined :

image

 

For many years, Jefferson Barracks have put on an adult egg hunt.   I have heard of it, but never knew anyone who went.  I decided to give it try this year, and although there are folks who swear it is a great time, I felt it seriously lacking.  It almost seems deliberate they don’t post some of the specifics on how it works.  Basically, you go to the starting area, trade your $8 tickets for new tickets, you are left to a 2.7  miles (Felt like 6 in the dark after going in circles)

After an hour of looking hopelessly, I decided I needed group/hive help.  Out of approximately 100 people I asked, no one knew how to find the eggs.  An hour into it, i finally found someone with eggs and they explained the items listed above.

We arrived late – the address on the website on my GPS took me to a closed road. After finding the place, the big group had left. we received red tickets and was sent off to hunt. We wandered for an hour around looking for eggs, and we and dozens of others never found any eggs. We finally found someone who had eggs, and found out you had to walk about 3-5 miles to It took us another hour to find the eggs, grab a few with numbers, to return to a huge crowd trying to get to a table of winning numbers. never found any golden eggs (with $50/100 in them apparently?) we pushed our ways in to check the eggs, we had a couple. you got to choose your winnings from a table of soaps, ketchup, 15% off coupons for massage, and a bunch of dfdsd from a dollar store. (part 1 of 2)

I am nearly disabled and the walk nearly killed me physically. there was a tent selling alcohol, that was the only thing ADULT about it.

 

Bottom line: this was a complete waste of an evening. Had there been something upfront on their website about having to walk the entire loop I would have known not to go.  The group that puts this on needs to explicitly state on their webpage this is a 3+ mile walk and be clear about the park entrance and NOT to use Google maps / GPS.

 

some views of the park, which i would recommend going during the day.  It was a nice walk, i just wasn’t physically ready as I am recovering from injury.

Interstellar TARS and CASE – the Machines background

I talked about this movie in a pervious posting that explained new physics / rendering that was discovered and worth reviewing.   I found a behind-the-scenes look at the machines (robots?) that were part of the movie.  They were unique in a lot of ways and had an interesting back-story.  Check it out

https://youtu.be/cRmNPE0HwE8