Mobile phone runs on Coca-Cola
Bulky mobile phone chargers could soon be a thing of the past with handsets running on soft drinks instead.
Daizi Zheng designed the 'greenphone', which is powered by Coca-Cola, as part of her final university project.
The Central Saint Martins graduate came up with the concept for Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia.
Zheng says the modified phone can run three or four times longer on a single charge than a phone using a conventional lithium ion battery, and can also be fully biodegradable.
The greenphone's bio battery generates electricity using enzymes to catalyse sugar in the drink.
As the battery dies out, only water and oxygen are left behind.
Unfortunately, Nokia will not be developing the greenphone prototype further in the near future.
Ms Zheng told Sky News: "At the time they wanted something to bring out within the next two years and thought my design was too futuristic."
But she added that bio batteries are being developed by large electronics companies and may be on the market in the next five years.
Boeing 787 Jet: Plastic Dream Machine
Boeing thinks its new 787 jet, built mostly of plastic composites, could remold the airline industry.
Inside Boeing Co.'s (BA ) cavernous development center in Seattle, the future of its commercial jet business is taking shape. That future is plastic -- and lots of it. At center stage in the tightly guarded building are three huge fuselage sections, dubbed barrels, made entirely of composites known as carbon fiber-reinforced plastic. Engineers swarm over the structures, looking for imperfections that could weaken the wafer-thin yet granite-tough material. Over in one corner, mechanics are sculpting the world's biggest composite aircraft wing.
Nothing on this scale has ever been attempted with composites, which are used in everything from golf-club shafts and tennis rackets to giant underground storage tanks. But even the latter can't measure up to what Boeing is creating -- namely, the entire airframe of its upcoming 787 Dreamliner jet.
Boeing knows this is a gutsy, bet-the-company move. But after falling behind archrival Airbus in sales over the last four years, executives felt they had to come up with game-changing technology that would captivate financially strapped airlines.
So far the strategy looks like a winner. Boeing is heading into the Paris Air Show in June with 266 orders and commitments for the Dreamliner from 21 customers. That makes the 787 one of the fastest-selling commercial jets in history. And the plane is already playing a key role in a remarkable reversal of fortune between Boeing and Airbus.
VALUE ADDED
The reason the 787 is selling so well is simple: Customers get tremendous bang for their bucks. For $120 million -- about what they paid for the comparable Boeing 767-300 back in the 1980s -- airlines get an all-new aircraft that flies faster than the competition and costs substantially less to operate. That's compelling at a time when fuel prices are high and airlines are just emerging from the worst industry recession ever. Combined with more fuel-efficient engines, composite materials are "changing the paradigm of the industry, which was based on aluminum," says James C. Seferis, a materials professor at the University of Washington who has consulted for Boeing.
One big plus: Jets made of composites require far fewer parts, so there's less to bolt together. And since these plastics weigh less than aluminum, the planes should burn less fuel. Boeing says the Dreamliner will also improve passenger comfort. Why? The superior strength of the composite fuselage will allow the passenger cabin to withstand higher pressurization -- equal to the air pressure at an altitude of 6,000 feet instead of the usual 8,000 feet. So it's easier to control cabin temperature, humidity, and ventilation.
As sales take off, Boeing must deliver on its promises. The big question is, can it mass-produce the composite fuselage and wing at a high rate and at targeted costs? In the six months since trial production began, there have been some sour notes, including a machining problem on the first barrel that put the program about a month behind schedule.
BAKED LAYERS
Boeing officials say they have made up for the lost time and insist that things are under control. "Can we build the 787 at production volumes?" says Michael B. Bair, vice-president of the 787 program. "That has always been the challenge, but we're confident."
Traditionally, making large composite structures has been a slow, manual process, and the quality of finished parts depended on the craftsmanship of experienced workers. Much of that must be automated for the 787. That initially left some of Boeing's global manufacturing partners and suppliers worrying about how to maintain quality, meet weight targets, and stay within original budget estimates of $6 billion to $8 billion. David Polland, Boeing's composites guru and lead engineer for the 787, concedes the design is still overweight but says that's typical for new aircraft at this stage of development. Meanwhile, he adds, the 787 team is making solid progress in developing efficient manufacturing methods.
Making carbon-fiber parts might be described as a massive wallpapering operation -- with the paper really being wide tape, loosely woven from superstrong carbon fibers, then soaked in a honey-thick mixture of polymers. The gooey tapes are plastered on the inside of molds or wrapped around shells called mandrels, and then baked. The heat triggers a chemical reaction that turns the polymers into a hard, incredibly sturdy structure.
The first bake-off of plastic barrels came last Thanksgiving, when the Dreamliner team produced the world's first one-piece fuselage section. It was 22 feet long and 19 feet in diameter and could be attached to other sections with almost no rivets. Now, Dreamliner engineers are discovering that their composites are even tougher than they initially imagined. So Boeing is able to guarantee customers that maintenance costs will be 30% lower than for aluminum planes.
The biggest savings will come on inspections. Because composite materials are more durable than aluminum, government regulators may call for fewer inspections. After just six years in service, a normal plane undergoes a meticulous and costly check for corrosion. The composite 787, in contrast, may remain in service for 12 years before its first structural test. By staying out of the shed, the Dreamliner can make up to 113 additional flights. "The corrosion and fatigue benefits are going to be astounding," says Bair. "It's probably a bigger story than the fuel [savings]," he adds, referring to the 20% drop in fuel costs the 787 can deliver compared with other planes.
While composites are used extensively in military and some small business jets, their incorporation into large commercial planes has been slower. Boeing's 777 is only 11% plastics, mostly in the tail section. But composites will make up 100% of the 787's skin and 50% of all the materials in the plane. "We have always wanted to design in composites," said Alan R. Mulally, Boeing's CEO for commercial airplanes and champion of the 787, at a May 17 investors' meeting. But only recently, he added, have material costs become competitive with aluminum.
Before Mulally could get his wish, another issue had to be solved. Execs fretted about ramp crashes -- service vehicles bumping into parked planes. Since carbon-based composites are normally very rigid, a hard hit from, say, a food-service truck could crack the plane's skin, not merely dent it. Even cracks too small to see could then spread under the stresses of high-speed flight and the dramatic changes in outside air pressure and temperature as a jet climbs to around 30,000 feet.
To prevent that, Toray Industries Inc., the Japanese supplier of Boeing's carbon-fiber tape, impregnates the fibers with a proprietary mixture: The epoxy that provides strength and hardness is surrounded by a polymer with a different density. This combination makes the surface less prone to impact damage -- and if damage does occur, it prevents cracks from spreading. Because of this breakthrough, "I will be sleeping soundly whenever I take off on a composite airplane," says Washington University professor Seferis.
BEDEVILING DETAILS
On the manufacturing side, the benefits of plastic fuselage sections are undeniable. One metal barrel requires some 1,500 sheets of aluminum held together by nearly 50,000 rivets. With plastics, the number of fasteners drops by 80%. "The magic in cost reduction is fewer and simpler parts," Bair says.
The main challenge, on the other hand, is the sheer size of the 19-foot-diameter fuselage sections. These require multiple layers of carbon-fiber tape to assure structural integrity. But each added layer of tape increases the likelihood of variations or flaws, says Michael W. Hyer, an engineering professor and composites expert at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University.
Last November, as the first barrel was baking in the autoclave oven, waiting engineers were clearly nervous. Sure enough, on close inspection, there were flaws -- bubbles on the skin. This so-called porosity could weaken the material and eventually cause cracks by allowing water to seep under the surface, then freeze up and expand at high altitudes. But nobody expected perfection on the first attempt, says Boeing's Polland. When barrel No. 3 was pulled from the oven, it had fewer defects.
And the wings? Bair says the program is moving ahead smoothly. He expects to lock up the Dreamliner's complete configuration later this year -- a key milestone that means engineers can begin working on final designs of parts and production tools.
Once the Dreamliner's barrels, wings, and other parts are ready, Boeing hopes to assemble each 787 in just three days, down from 11 days for the 737. "It takes time to choreograph the dance that happens in final assembly," says Bair. If three days proves to be a tad ambitious, he adds, "we'd be happy to get to four." Welcome to a bold new era for commercial aviation.
Did You Know That WIFI was Invented in Australia?
T
his is the story of how a small group of Australian scientists beat the world’s heaviest computer hitters to one of the biggest inventions of our time.
Its one of the most important inventions that Australians have made. Its epic sweep runs from the dusty fields of outback NSW to a courtroom showdown in Texas.
It's almost like it's a dream that's going to burst when I wake up, said Dr. Terry Percival.
This is the true story of the invention of modern wifi … and how the credit was nearly lost.
Now, unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few years, you’ve probably heard of wifi. Basically, if you have one of these gadgets in your home or business, you can connect computers, printers, phones and the web wirelessly via radio waves. Yet this ultimate symbol of global connectedness began life in one of the more remote parts of the world, said Dr. Jonica Newby
The radio telescopes of outback New South Wales, where back in the 80’s a young Dr John O’ Sullivan was practicing extreme radio astronomy, searching for exploding black holes.
We were looking at hundreds of metres of film looking for small v shaped patterns in it. pause to look And ah I'm I guess I'm inherently lazy so I was starting to think at that time hey there must be a better way of doing this, cited by Dr. Sullivan.
So, John O'Sullivan invented what would prove to be the key to this whole extraordinary story – the Fast Fourier Transform Chip. Fourier transformation is a mathematical equation which changes information from one form into another … say from radio waves to a spectrum. The beauty of John’s chip was that it could perform thousands of these rapidly.
Fast forward to 1990, to the Radio-physics division of Australia’s venerable research institution, the CSIRO. Flushed with their success in designing Australia’s famous radio-telescopes, the division were wondering what to do next.
What was happening was that portable computers were starting to appear on the scene. I guess I thought and, so did John that portable computers didn't really have anywhere to plug in.
And being extreme radio folk, they thought why plug in to a network when you could do it wirelessly? It was incredibly forward thinking.
In those days we'd never even seen a laptop or a mobile phone and so the excitement of trying to work on something that was going to be sort of the future of communications a bit like you know with the communicators in Star Trek.
Trouble was, there were some basic laws of physics in the way, sometimes called the cavern problem.
The sound reverbs around. Indoors, my voice bounces off every surface, so echoes distort the message. The same thing happens if my message is in radio-waves.
And the view we took was it has to be as good as the best wired networks. So now we were looking at a problem that was you know well beyond what anybody was thinking they could tackle, said O'Sullivan.
They didn’t know it at the time, but 22 other major research groups around the world were trying, and failing to solve this problem. But these guys were outliers. They weren’t from mainstream computer firms. And over a mere 6 months, this is the solution the tiny team came up with.
Enter John’s fast Fourier Transform chip. It can make multiple copies on different frequencies. So even if not all arrive, enough will to construct the message. It means you can send lots of data slowly, but simultaneously
Dr Terry Percival
It was a fantastic chip, that was what gave us the edge over the rest of the world cause no one even thought that you could do that, said by Dr. Percival.
But what if some parts of the message are still lost - one can’t afford errors in data transmission.
That problem was solved through clever coding using extra copies and error correction. The message can now be unpacked and errors corrected instantly at the other end.
There was a really good moment when the signals were bouncing all over the place and the error rate that we had measured said zero point zero zero zero zero zero. At that point we said yes we've cracked it!
They’d come up with a solution so perfect, it seemed no one would be able to do it better. Now to sell their invention to the world Plane takes off, or not.
They were generally polite but you got the body language that it was a bit of a yawn and they weren't really interested and these crazy guys from Australia, said by Dr. Percival.
Remember, this was 1993. Most people couldn’t imagine a future of streaming video. And at the time, their invention wasn’t even commercially viable – chips weren’t fast enough to run it. In 1996, their invention was granted a patent. Then, as the digital decade surged forward, it became clear CSIRO’s method was indeed the best. In 1999, it was written into the international standards for high speed wifi. From 2000, high speed wifi began to appear in laptops, phones and homes.
Well we weren't concerned that they'd stolen the technology. We were, we thought this is great, everyone's using our technology.I think we were a little bit naive as to how easy it would be to get the recognition for our patent, Dr. Percival.
In 2002, Nigel Poole joined the CSIRO. A businessmen, he was determined to claw back the royalties he believed they were due.
Poole wrote letters to the companies who we thought were using our technology and we gave them a certain amount of time to have a think about that. And of course in the end um none of them decided they wanted to take a licence. So we decided to have a test case.
In February 2005, CSIRO sued the tech company Buffalo. Suddenly the big guns unexpectedly came out. Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Netgear and Apple all sued the CSIRO to declare its patent invalid.
Led by Nigel, they decided to counterfile against a further 8 companies at the end of 2006. This was deep waters - the biggest fight CSIRO had ever taken on. And it wasn’t just about the money – at stake was their people’s legacy as the true inventors of high speed wifi. But they were up against 14 of the most powerful computer companies in the world.
Every year there'd be, seemed to be another flight over to the US where I'd have these lawyers throwing documents at me which I'd written maybe fifteen years ago and pointing to page twenty one and saying what did you mean by that. And this went on and on, said Dr. Percival.
But the showdown when it came in April 2009, seemed all too soon … fittingly enough in a small courtroom in Texas.
When Dr. Percival walked into the court room and there was a swinging and the, the judge sitting at his large desk and the jury in the jury box. And all these lawyers ah sitting in tables in front of you. It was very nerve-racking.
Meanwhile, outside the court, a second team were deep in their own drama.
So we have no idea what’s going on in the courtroom but we’re meeting the 14 defendents trying to settle thing, said Dennis Redfern.
But the days went by, one by one, their opponents began to lay down their guns and settle.
Dr. Percival was in the office on the Sunday morning ah sitting down doing some preparation for my next appearance in the court, and suddenly I hear this almighty cheer. The last company had, had agreed to settle the case.I've never seen so many smiles on thirty people's faces.
With the trial aborted, they never did get to hear the jury’s verdict. But to the original team, it feels like the vindication they’ve so long sought – they really did invent high speed wi-fi.
Every time I pull my mobile out and say yeah yeah I that's gotten the same, the same technology. My laptop has the same technology yeah, you can't help but feel pride, said O'Sullivan.
And it all came about from the blue sky research field of extreme-radio-astronomy.
