Eco-Friendly Planes Designed by MIT-Led Team on the Anvil
The NASA Research Program ‘N+3′ has thrown open a challenge for exploring the potential to develop quieter subsonic commercial planes as well as supersonic commercial aircraft that burn less fuel and pollute less. The team led by MIT are working on developing two models to meet the NASA criteria as well to accommodate the demands created by increased air traffic by 2035 A.D.
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NASA’s plans:
NASA’s plans are for designing planes that have fuel-burn reduction, emissions reduction and which can take off from shorter runways. Four teams – one led by MIT, Boeing, GE Aviation and Northrop Grumman work on subsonic designs. AeroAstro faculty & students, ED Greitzer, Principal Investigator, Professor H Nelson Slator, Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation and Pratt & Whitney have jointly developed concepts and technologies to design D series and H series aircrafts that will meet the stringent criteria demanded by NASA.
D Series:
This will be the “double bubble” series to replace the Boeing 737 class aircraft conceived with reconfiguring the traditional tube and wing structure. Resembling two soap bubbles joined together, a wider structure was created with two side-by-side partial cylinders and engines were moved to the rear of fuselage. Using the BLI (boundary layer ingestion) technique, engines use less fuel. Because it travels 10% slower and the planes have longer and thinner wings, smaller tail, most drawbacks of this design are mitigated somewhat. Planes wider size saves time by allowing quicker loading and unloading.
Twin advantages of D Series:
There are two types of D series on the anvil:
- A high tech version with 70% fuel-burn reduction.
- A traditional aluminum body plane with current jet technology but on double-bubble design.
Advantages:
- Use less fuel by about 50%.
- Very good environmental performance.
- Traditional design will help better integration with existing airport infrastructure and so save money otherwise needed to fit radically different designs.
H Series:
The 350-passenger 777 class ‘hybrid wing body’ planes will be larger but will be based on the same technology as D Series. A Triangular-shaped hybrid wing body and a wider fuselage result in improved aerodynamics while larger centre creates a forward lift and balances the plane without the need for a tail. Propulsion architectures and technology are under study still awaiting further exploration.
I Phase over:
With first phase of research and design is over, the MIT team is awaiting word about continuing into the second phase of program to meet more of NASA’s objectives. Sanction of additional funds and approval of the designs and technology identified in the first phase will be know in the next few months.
Future Plans:
Whether or not the work continues for NASA, the researchers hope to continue to develop these models, testing them and collaborating with manufacturers to make the concepts a reality.
Reference Link
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/eco-friendly-planes-mit/
Courtesy
AE News Network
Japanese team create next-gen DVD material
A Japanese research team has found a material that could be used to make a low-price disc with data storage capacity thousands of times greater than a DVD.
The material transforms from a black-colour metal state that conducts electricity into a brown semiconductor when hit by light, according to Professor Shin-ichi Ohkoshi, of the University of Tokyo.
The material, a new crystal form of titanium oxide, can switch back and forth between the metal and semiconductor states at room temperature when exposed to light, creating an effective on-off function for data storage.
It is “promising as a material for a next-generation optical storage device,” says Ohkoshi, who is lead author of the study appearing in the journal Nature Chemistry.
A material that changes colour with light can be used in storage devices as colours reflect light differently to contain different information.
His team has succeeded in creating the material in particles measuring between 5 and 20 nanometres in diameter.
If the smallest particle is used, the new disc could hold more than 1000 times as much information as a Blu-ray disc, provided that matching data-writing and reading equipment are developed.
A single-layer Blu-ray disc can hold five times as much data as a conventional DVD.
The disc would also be cheaper. Titanium oxide’s market price is about one-hundredth of the rare alloy germanium-antimony-tellurium, which is currently used in rewritable Blu-ray discs and DVDs, says Ohkoshi.
“You don’t have to worry about procuring rare metals. Titanium oxide is cheap and safe, already being used in many products ranging from face powder to white paint,” he says.
Ohkoshi says it is not known when a disc with this material would be manufactured and put to practical use, adding that he would start talks with private-sector companies for commercialisation.
Reference Link
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/05/25/2908718.htm?site=science&topic=latest
Courtesy
ABC
Chennai to become beggar free soon
If you live in Chennai or if you plan to travel there next month, you may not find any beggars on the streets. The city has banned begging and the municipality has tied up with NGOs to rehabilitate beggars.
All who can work will receive vocational training, child beggars will be put in government schools and those eligible will be enrolled for receive government assistance.
“We are not driving them away from the city, we are trying to rehabilitate them,” said Rajesh Lakhoni, Commissioner, Chennai Corporation.
A large percentage of beggars are disabled like Lourdh and Kamala. Both lepers can’t work and their children are going to private schools. They are ready to quit begging only if the scheme ensures a regular income.
“Who will pay for fees, shoes and other things for my child? If they give money for this, I’ll stop begging,” said Kamala.
Whatever the government plans are for rehabilitating these beggars, the residents of Chennai are welcoming this.
“It’s good because it often becomes dangerous on highways,” said one of the local.
While it’s a welcome initiative, a big question arises if this is a cosmetic clean up looking at beggars as an eye sore. But the corporation says it is addressing the root cause.
Reference Link
http://www.ndtv.com/news/cities/chennai-to-become-beggar-free-soon-27824.php?u=2340
Courtesy
NDTV Convergence Limited
Single lens glasses can help prevent falls
A simple way to reduce falls in elderly people who spend regular time outdoors is to switch their multifocal glasses to single lens distance glasses, say Australian researchers.
Fall prevention expert Dr Stephen Lord of the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute in Sydney and colleagues report their study today online in the British Medical Journal
“If you are old and fit and you’re going outside a lot, multifocal glasses are in effect an elective disability,” says Lord. “You’re walking around with part of your visual field blurred.
“People should just wear a single lens pair of glasses in those circumstances.”
Most people over the age of 50 need glasses, especially for reading, and the most convenient solution is a single pair of multifocal glasses, which contain multiple lenses for focusing at different distances.
“You don’t have to change your glasses. If you look up you can see into the distance and if you look down you can see closer up,” says Lord.
This is great for tasks such as driving where you switch between scanning the road ahead and looking at the speedometer, for walking down a supermarket aisle occasionally reading food labels, or knitting while watching TV.
But these advantages come at a cost.
Blurred vision
Lord says, when we walk along we tend to lower our gaze and scan the ground in front for obstacles.
But, if you are wearing multifocal glasses, the lower part of our visual field is focused on ‘reading’ distances of up to 50 centimetres.
This means our vision of the path a few steps in front of us will be blurred and this might make it hard to notice, for example, a dangerous tree root or a crack in the pavement.
“That crack is in the bottom part of your visual field so you don’t see it, it’s blurred. You hit it and if you can’t react in time you’d fall,” says Lord.
While people in their 50s may be able to react in time, people in their 70s and 80s are more likely to fall because their strength, balance and reaction time is not as good, he says.
Study
Lord and colleagues studied 606 elderly people with a mean age of 80, who wear multifocal glasses.
One half of the group was told about the potential dangers of multifocal glasses, provided with two different pairs of single lens glasses, and asked to wear the distance pair when they went outside. The other half of the group kept using their multifocal glasses.
Over a period of 13 months, the participants in the randomised controlled trial, marked on a calendar whenever they had a fall.
Lord says overall those who wore single lens glasses had 8% less the number of falls than those who wore multifocal glasses.
While this finding was in the direction expected, it was not statistically significant, he says.
Lord says the most significant finding was that in elderly people who spent regular time outside – two or three times a week – single lens distance glasses was associated with 40% fewer falls.
This did not hold for participants who spent more time inside, who had more outside falls when using single lens distance glasses.
Lord says this group of people tended to be frailer and were probably less able to cope with the two pairs of glasses.
Trade-off
Lord says while switching to single lens glasses may be a bit inconvenient for elderly people who spend time outdoors, it’s worth the reduction in falls.
Falls are a major problem in older people, with 1 in 3 suffering a fall every year, he says.
Those who fall have a 5 to 7% chance of a fracture, a 3% chance of a hip fracture, a 1 in 3 chance of never regaining their original mobility, and 1 in 4 chance of not surviving a year, says Lord.
In an accompanying editorial, Professor John Campbell and colleagues at the Dunedin School of Medicine in New Zealand say any changes to glasses should be introduced carefully so that people are not overwhelmed.
They also say doctors and optometrists should have good communication when considering vision, glasses and the risk of falls.
Reference Link
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/05/26/2909765.htm?site=science&topic=latest
Courtesy
ABC
Hard Times Spur Ideas for Change
As states around the country gird for another grim budget year, more leaders have begun to talk not of nipping, not of tucking, but, in essence, of turning government upside down and starting over. Ever growing is the list of states, municipalities and agencies with blue ribbon committees aimed at reconsidering what government should be.
A lawmaker in Nebraska this year proposed the unthinkable: Cut by half, or more, the 93 counties that have made up the state for generations. Senators in Indiana, aiming to thin the tangled layers there, want to eliminate the system of more than 1,000 township boards.
And in Missouri, where lawmakers this spring took a day off for a brainstorming session on how to “reboot government,” there is talk of merging the agencies that oversee secondary and higher education, providing incentives to counties for combining services, even turning to a four-day state workweek.
But despite the longest recession since the Great Depression and predictions already of new, gaping deficits in state budgets for at least the next two years, some of the most sweeping notions for overhaul remain just that — notions. And so, as more than a dozen states grapple with next year’s budgets, most of which take effect on July 1, many experts say politicians would be wise to do more than merely contemplate significant change — and may soon have little choice.
“We can incrementally hobble and muddle through, or we can stand back and be more strategic,” said Scott D. Pattison, the executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. “That’s the question: whether this will be the time when these ideas actually get carried out, or whether this is going to be a whole lot of reports that sit on a shelf.”
Beyond the immediate financial squeeze, political pressures are growing, too. The jobs of 37 governors are up for grabs in November, so talk of remaking government — eliminating services, merging school districts, shrinking employee costs — has become a refrain.
“We are working essentially off a 1950s, 1960s model” of government and services, said Tom Emmer, a state representative and a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota, where lawmakers closed a nearly $3 billion projected budget gap in May and are already anticipating a $5 billion hole next year. Mr. Emmer voted against the current budget agreement, explaining in an interview: “You cannot Band-Aid the Good Ship Lollipop. It’s time to completely restructure the hull.”
Perhaps, but change — especially eliminating anything — has proven to be politically fraught.
In Georgia, after the House voted to end financing for the state’s Council for the Arts, artists, musicians and dancers, some in costume, turned up in the state Capitol. In the end, the 2011 budget gave the council nearly $790,000 — about a third of what it had received this year (and less than was needed to be ensured federal grant money) but still enough to keep it alive.
“Anytime you start changing things, you are playing with people’s hearts,” said Rich Pahls, the Nebraska senator who proposed reducing the number of counties — a thought that startled those long accustomed to having their own courthouse and board of supervisors. That arrangement was designed in the days of the horse and buggy, Mr. Pahls said, not a time when, in rural Nebraska, “people will drive 100 miles to the grocery store.”
The proposal got nowhere during this year’s legislative session, but Mr. Pahls remains hopeful. “None of this can happen overnight,” he said, “but I think we’re almost on the cusp of something now — a tipping point where people are dissatisfied with the way government is working as it is.”
Scott Walker, the county executive of Milwaukee County in Wisconsin — who has, improbably enough, suggested the possibility of eliminating county government — concurs. “It’s reached the point where the public is already there,” said Mr. Walker, also a Republican candidate for governor. “Our elected officials need to be willing to take that next step.”
One problem, said Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, a Republican, is that “people like hanging on to the authority they have.”
A move to abolish township boards in Indiana failed to make its way through the state legislature, and efforts to abolish the office of lieutenant governor in states like Illinois and Louisiana have gained little traction.
Certainly, there are indications that revenues to states are steadying after a long, sharp drop. But experts say the budget picture in many states will remain dark, particularly as federal stimulus money, which some places have leaned on heavily to make up deficits, disappears.
Despite the struggles, there have been some broad changes. In Hawaii, the school year was 17 days shorter than usual (though some there want to restore the old calendar next year). In Massachusetts, a pile of transportation agencies were transformed into one last year.
Other examples are found in smaller places — places where the budget crunch hit hard, like Pewaukee, Wis., a city of 12,000 that found itself with a $1.8 million deficit and the need to replace two broken-down fire trucks. Leaders there decided to close the Police Department in January and sign a contract with the local sheriff’s department.
But in a sign of how politically hazardous cutting government can be, some in town clamored to recall the mayor, Scott Klein. Instead, Mr. Klein won re-election last month over an opponent who had promised to reopen the Police Department.
Elsewhere, making over government remains a work in progress. In Missouri, lawmakers agreed to merge the state’s water patrol with its highway patrol (saving about $1 million a year) and to stop printing copies of the state’s “blue book” guide to politics and statutes (saving $1.7 million). But larger ideas will wait.
Other places may wish to look at Michigan, a state plagued by budget problems long before everywhere else. Since the early 2000s — a period Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat, recalls as “the decade from hell” — the state has shrunk itself. It dropped a quarter of all state departments and 11,000 workers, closed 8 prisons and 10 prison camps, and drastically decreased funds for services like the arts and dental care for adults.
Much of that was accompanied by deep, loud complaint. “People have come to expect that government was going to be a certain way,” Ms. Granholm said, “and we’ve had to press the reset button on our economy and our government.”
But for those places resistant to change, still hoping to ride out the hard times for a few more years until flush budgets return, Ms. Granholm is skeptical.
“People who don’t take advantage of the crisis to cross over to a new model,” she said, “are wasting the crisis.”
Reference Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/us/25remake.html?th&emc=th
Courtesy
The New York Times Company
Students harness vibrations from wind for electricity
May 26, 2010 By Anne Ju
Zach Gould ’10 adjusts the oscillator array installed on the roof of Rhodes Hall.
(PhysOrg.com) — The Vibro-Wind Research Group is working on an efficient, low-cost method of converting vibrations from wind energy to electricity.
A gusty day makes stop signs quiver and leaves flutter. It’s these vibrations a Cornell research group is harnessing and transforming into electricity for a new kind of energy storage system.
The Vibro-Wind Research Group, led by Frank Moon, the Joseph Ford Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is working on an efficient, low-cost method of converting vibrations from wind energy to electricity. Much the way solar panels now grace many rooftops, the researchers envision buildings outfitted with vibro-wind panels, which would store the energy they convert from even the gentlest of breezes.
Traditional wind energy harvesting requires the use of large, expensive turbines, or windmills. The vibro-wind setup would require a fraction of the space and cost much less.
“The thing with turbines and windmills is that you need wide open space, and you need it to be away from the city, because people don’t like the way they look,” explained Rona Banai ’10, a chemical engineering major and chief student engineer of the Vibro-Wind group.
Looking into the feasibility of vibro-wind panels isn’t just about engineering. The group includes co-principal investigator Kevin Pratt, assistant professor of architecture, and architecture major Jamie Pelletier ’10, who are working on design issues to address integration of panels into buildings.
This past semester, the students — exclusively undergraduates — tested a prototype consisting of a panel mounted with oscillators they made out of pieces of foam. They set up their experiment on top of Rhodes Hall, hoped for windy days and monitored how much energy they captured with each quiver of the oscillators.
The trickiest part — the actual conversion from mechanical to electrical energy — was done using a piezoelectric transducer, which is a device made of a ceramic or polymer that emits electrons when stressed.
Banai in particular has also researched an alternative to the piezoelectric transducer, checking feasibility of using an electromagnetic coil instead. The pros and cons are some of the things she’s now working to put into a report, she said.
Vibration energy harvesting is nothing new, but according to Moon, interest in the subject has grown in the past few years in such areas as defense and civil infrastructure. The soldier of the future, for example, could shed the need for heavy batteries or other equipment, instead creating and storing electrical energy just by walking. Or civil engineers could rig buildings or bridges with sensors to detect fires and other instabilities, and the sensors would be powered by vibrational energy.
“We are taking research that’s been in progress, and we are trying to extend it into a new type of energy harvesting,” Moon said.
The study is funded by a $100,000 grant from the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future’s Academic Venture Fund. Co-principal investigators are: Ephrahim Garcia, associate professor; Hod Lipson, associate professor; Charles Williamson, professor; and Wolfgang Sachse, professor, all mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Provided by Cornell University (news : web)
Reference Link: http://www.physorg.com/news194111724.html
Courtesy : Science News Daily & PHYSORG
A lesson in combining education and entrepreneurship
| Innovation need of the hour, says Teach for India CEO |
Shaheen Mistry, CEO and founder member of Teach for India.
MUMBAI: Nineteen years ago, a young college girl walked into Mumbai slums and expressed her desire to teach the less privileged children who roamed the streets.
Those were the baby steps towards the founding of Akanksha Foundation, a non-profit organisation working primarily in education, to impact the lives of such children.
The young girl was Shaheen Mistry, one of the six privileged Indian delegates to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, held in Washington DC on April 26 and 27 this year. The summit brought together nearly 250 successful entrepreneurs from over 50 countries and highlighted the importance of entrepreneurship, job creation and community development.
It was addressed, among others, by U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “It was a huge privilege to be part of such a big and important summit full of important people and visionaries like Mr. Obama,” said Ms. Mistry at an interaction with journalists.
She said it was quite an experience to be seated among people from diverse countries and listen to them share their experiences and challenges they faced.
Ms. Mistry displayed her entrepreneurial streak at the early age of 18 by starting Akanksha.
The organisation has expanded from 15 children in one centre to more than 3,500 children across Mumbai and Pune over 19 years. Today, she is the CEO and one of the founding board members of Teach for India, a nationwide movement started a couple of years ago to build a network of leaders who will eliminate inequity in education.
Speaking of the key issues of entrepreneurship, Ms. Mistry says that in today’s age of information, it is innovation and looking at things through a different lens that matters. According to her, technology has tremendous scope, and it must be harnessed to bring about innovation.
It is also important for any entrepreneur to lead from the front, and the actual process of change starts only after the delegates have returned to their respective countries at the end of summits and conferences.
Established in 2008, Teach for India is modelled on the widely acclaimed Teach for America. This organisation hires exceptionally brilliant college graduates and young professionals to teach full time for two years in under-resourced schools and become life-long leaders across sectors. In just a year, Ms. Mistry has seen the movement grow to 230 fellows teaching in more than 60 schools in Mumbai and Pune, impacting the lives of almost 7,000.
“The aim of founding Teach for India is for fellows to discover how difficult it is to turn around even a single child’s life and to develop entrepreneurship skills to participate in policies for the betterment of education,” says Ms. Mistry. “No system of education in the world is ideal. A single teacher cannot change the system unless he/she has sufficient backing from leaders, policymakers, visionaries and the media.”
However, not everything worked out smooth for Teach for India. Building a good team, getting funds and lack of awareness of the movement were some of the biggest challenges that the organisation faced. More so, this success is somewhat marginalised, but a look at Ms. Mistry’s agenda for the coming months and year makes one hopeful of its gradual impact on greater sections.
Reference Link: http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/26/stories/2010052653652200.htm
Courtesy: The Hindu
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