USA Makes Discovery Then Gives It To China

The former UniEnergy Technologies office in Mukilteo, Wash. Taxpayers spent $15 million on 

research to build a breakthrough battery. Then the U.S. government gave it to China

When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work.

They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow battery — based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. 

The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid.

"It was beyond promise," said Chris Howard, one of the engineers who worked there for a U.S. company called UniEnergy. "We were seeing it functioning as designed, as expected."

But that's not what happened. Instead of the batteries becoming the next great American success story, the warehouse is now shuttered and empty. All the employees who worked there were laid off. 

And more than 5,200 miles away, a Chinese company is hard at work making the batteries in Dalian, China.     READ MORE...

Ultrasound Stickers See Inside the Body

MIT engineers designed an adhesive patch that produces ultrasound images of the body. The stamp-sized device sticks to skin and can provide continuous ultrasound imaging of internal organs for 48 hours. Credit: Felice Frankel



New stamp-sized ultrasound adhesives deliver clear images of the heart, lungs, and other internal organs.

When clinicians need live images of a patient’s internal organs, they often turn to ultrasound imaging for a safe and noninvasive window into the body’s workings. In order to capture these insightful images, trained technicians manipulate ultrasound wands and probes to direct sound waves into the body. These waves reflect back out and are used to produce high-resolution images of a patient’s heart, lungs, and other deep organs.

Ultrasound imaging currently requires bulky and specialized equipment available only in hospitals and doctor’s offices. However, a new design developed by MIT engineers might make the technology as wearable and accessible as buying Band-Aids at the drugstore.

The engineers presented the design for the new ultrasound sticker in a paper published on July 28 in the journal Science. The stamp-sized device sticks to skin and can provide continuous ultrasound imaging of internal organs for 48 hours.

To demonstrate the invention, the researchers applied the stickers to volunteers. They showed the devices produced live, high-resolution images of major blood vessels and deeper organs such as the heart, lungs, and stomach. As the volunteers performed various activities, including sitting, standing, jogging, and biking, the stickers maintained a strong adhesion and continued to capture changes in underlying organs.

In the current design, the stickers must be connected to instruments that translate the reflected sound waves into images. According to the researchers, the stickers could have immediate applications even in their current form. 

For example, the devices could be applied to patients in the hospital, similar to heart-monitoring EKG stickers, and could continuously image internal organs without requiring a technician to hold a probe in place for long periods of time.  READ MORE...

Solar Emergy

A team of engineers at Stanford University have developed a solar cell that can generate some electricity at night.
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The research comes at a moment when the number of solar jobs and residential installations are rising.

While standard solar panels can provide electricity during the day, this device can serve as a "continuous renewable power source for both day- and nighttime," according to the study published this week in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

The device incorporates a thermoelectric generator, which can pull electricity from the small difference in temperature between the ambient air and the solar cell itself.

"Our approach can provide nighttime standby lighting and power in off-grid and mini-grid applications, where [solar] cell installations are gaining popularity," the study said.

Mini-grid applications refer to independent electricity networks. These can be used when a population is too small or too far away to extend the grid.

It wasn't until recently that solar energy declined in price and became much more affordable. Some companies have bought into the program, and California has even incentivized the shift to solar.  READ MORE...

Aircraft Without Moving Parts

As a kid, steven barrett, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, would watch the movie and tv series ‘star trek’ during his free time. his young eyes would gaze upon the shuttle crafts, so futuristic and dystopian that they would glide through the horizon at a lightning speed. barrett noticed how these space crafts seemed frameless, bare of their moving parts such as the propellers, and noiseless. such an observation still influences him today to the extent that he thinks, in the long-term future, planes should be stripped of their turbines and propellers to be more like the shuttle crafts of ‘star trek’ in their glowing light. at MIT, the professor did just that.

MIT engineers, led by barrett, have introduced the world’s first plan without moving parts, bare from any propellers and turbines. the lightweight aircraft relies on an ‘ionic wind’, or the abundant flow of ions produced aboard the plane that generates enough force to thrust the plane over a steady and sustained flight. through this concept and design, the plane ditches the use of fossil fuels, an element that adds to its silent glide.

As the professor spoke to the university’s official news site, he describes how the plane is the first-ever sustained flight with no moving parts in the propulsion system. ‘this has potentially opened new and unexplored possibilities for aircraft which are quieter, mechanically simpler, and do not emit combustion emissions.’ the design weighs about five pounds and has a five-meter wingspan attached to thin wires resembling fences. these wires act as positively charged electrodes, while similarly arranged thicker wires, running along the back end of the plane’s wing, serve as negative electrodes.

The fuselage of the plane holds a stack of lithium-polymer batteries. barrett’s ion plane team included members of professor david perreault’s power electronics research group in the research laboratory of electronics, who designed a power supply that would convert the batteries’ output to a sufficiently high voltage to propel the plane. in this way, the batteries supply electricity at 40,000 volts to positively charge the wires via a lightweight power converter.  READ MORE...