U.S. Federal health officials declared Thursday that a popular cleansing therapy advertised as an alternative treatment for several medical conditions is both unsafe, illegal and has even caused the death of an autistic child. The treatment which is heavily marketed on the Net claims to prevent or cure Alzheimer’s disease, autism, Parkinson’s disease and other [...]
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Tires take a lot of crude oil to make. Around seven gallons each, actually, which of course is the cause of Al Gore’s hemorrhoids. But a solution is in the works that will utilize renewable feedstocks from sugar cane, corn, corn cobs, switchgrass or other biomasses rather than petroleum. Mmmm, corn tires. So far there have been issues converting sugars into a substance called isoprene, which is a key ingredient in producing synthetic rubber along with other products such as diapers and feminine hygiene products. But the market is huge and biotires are e xpected to hit the streets sometime within five years. Goodyear, a research partner in all this, has plans to supplement its use of petroleum-based isoprene with the new BioIsoprene product. I think most will agree that we don’t care what our tires are made out of as long as they’re durable, reasonably-priced, and smell great.
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Isn’t it grand when companies somewhat silently update their products with new hardware but keeps the previous price. That’s just what Archos did with the 9 PC Table t. Overnight it went from the Intel Atom Z510 1.1GHz CPU to the Z515 1.2GHz Atom with Hyper-Threading and Intel Burst Performance Technology. It’s a nice little spec bump, actually. Everything else seemed to remain as it was. The 8.9-inch screen, 32GB SSD, Win7 Starter Edition, and the 1GB of RAM appears to be untouched. A bit more RAM and a larger hard drive should be next, right, Archos? It better be. [ Archos via SlashGear ]
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A Tokyo-based venture called ideal Star [JP] has developed a new method that makes it possible to produce solar cells in the form of flexible and thin threads. The company is supported by a total of six Japanese universities and the government. The current prototype cell is 5cm long and just 0.8mm in diameter. ideal Star says the core consists of polymer material and is surrounded by an electrode layer, and layers for hole transport, power-generating (this layer is made from fullerene), electron transport and another (transparent) electrode layer. Once the company finds a way to make the threads longer, they could be woven into power-generating solar sheets or solar power fabrics for clothing or curtains. As a first practical application, sheets consisting of these threads will be used on rice paddies (while they are being rested) to generate solar power. The solar threads feature an energy conversion efficiency of just around 3%, but ideal Star claims 10% are possible. The picture above shows amperage being measured from one of the threads that’s exposed to light. ideal Star estimates mass-production of their products would be cheaper than that of standard silicon solar cells. For example, all layers in the threads are coated down, meaning production requires no expensive semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The company hopes to commercialize the technology within the next five years. Via The Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]
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