Wind Power Ecocapsule Allows Live Off-The-Grid Anywhere On Earth

Bratislava, Slovakia based group Nice Architects unveiled a tiny egg shaped portable house which is powered by wind and solar energy and contains rain drops collection as well as filtration.This is a micro-home that is designed as energy efficient, called "Ecocapsule".

It contains 2.6 sq metre array of high efficiency solar cells on the roof and a built in 750W wind turbine, both provide power the house.The dual power system and a high-capacity battery approx 9,744Wh capacity, ensures the house will have enough power to operate during periods of reduced solar or wind activity.The spherical shape is optimized for rainwater collection.Ecocapsule can fit inside a standard shipping container.

The Ecocapsule lengths about 4.5 meters (14.6 feet), width is 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) and heights 2.5 meters (8.2 feet).The total usable area is 8 square meters (86 sq feet).The micro shelter is enough for two persons.It includes a folding bed, entrance, a dinning and working place, two openable windows, toilet and shower, Kitchennette and storage space.

The team plans to display a micro-home at the Pioneers festival in Vienna on May 28.It is expected to be available for sale later this year and delivery of first units will take place in the first half of 2016.

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Vortex Stick Like Turbine Generates More Power At Low Cost

A Spanish radical company called Vortex Bladeless changes the way we capture energy from the wind.The ompany targets to generate wind power through Vortex, which is a stick like bladeless wind turbine.When wind flows over stick like turbine the flow changes and generates a cyclical pattern of vertices which is called vortex shedding effect that creates vorticity.Through vorticity Vortex Bladeless generate energy.

Co-founder of Vortex Bladeless David Yanez explains the example of vorticity; the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940.The bridge started vibrating in heavy winds, wind conditions was 40 mile per hour.As a result of this incident scientists and engineers changed their way they built and designed bridges.

Yanez and his team take advantage of vorticity which is a aeroelactic effect that make vibration instead of turning, and capture the energy.The mast designed to vibrate in the wind.Actually it is a Vortex wind generator which has a fixed mast and it has no spinning parts like blades.It is a magnetic induction system turbine which has no contact between moving parts so there is no lubricant needed.

According to the company site, the Vortex manufacturing costs and operating costs are 53 % and 51% respectively that are lower than conventional wind turbines.Co-founder of Vortex Bladeless Raul Martin added, "compare our invention to a conventional wind turbine with similar energy generation—ours would cost significantly less," around 50 percent or 47 percent less."

This turbine has potential to generate more energy in less space.Martin said the next step will be to lunch a 4-kilowatt wind turbine for small businesses.

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This High Speed Camera Could Visualize Atoms

Japanese researchers have developed a high speed camera that can record events at a rate of more than 1-trillion-frames-per-second.A new high speed camera ables to capture images a thousand times faster than formal high speed cameras.By this camera researchers can watch or capture waves of atoms travelling through crystal structures at one sixth of the speed of light, or about 28,000 miles per second.

The new technology was created by Keiichi Nakagawa from the University of Tokyo called Sequentially Timed All-optical Mapping Photography (STAMP).According to the team of researcher the new device, "holds great promise for studying a diverse range of previously unexplored complex ultrafast phenomena."

The speed of conventional high-speed cameras are limited because of their mechanical and electrical components.The new camera solve this issue by using only fast, optical components.

The pump-probe method is another optical technique, can create movies and take images at even higher speed than STAMP, but at this time, it can capture one frame at a time.

Nakagawa said, ""Many physical and biological phenomena are difficult to reproduce.This inspired me to work on an ultrafast camera that could take multiple frames in a single shot."

The camera splits an ultra-short pulse of light into different colours such as rainbow that hit the imaged object in quick succession.Then each flash is analysed to see how the object looked like over the period of time of the flash.The first version of STAMP could take six frames in a single shot.But now latest version of STAMP can take 25 images and they have aim to increase the number of frames up to 100 with this technology.

Nakagawa and his team utilized this camera with image electronic motion and lattice vibrations on a crystal of lithium niobate to watch how a laser focused onto a glass plate creates a hot, rapidly expanding plume of plasma."I think it is important to note that there might be many potential applications of STAMP that I have not imagined," Nakagawa said. "I hope more researchers will become interested in STAMP."

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Clever Shoes That Grow 5 Sizes In 5 Year To Help Poor Children

The shoes invented by Kenton Lee that grow and can adjust its size as the foot grows.The shoes come with only two sizes, small and large.Each size can grow five sizes and last at least five years.

Kenton Lee was in Nairobi, Kenya in 2007.One day he saw a girl wearing shoes that were very small for her feet.Then he thinked about a shoe that could adjust and expand.He said, "there are over 300 million children who do not have shoes. And countless more with shoes that do not fit.Some children receive shoes donations but within a year their feet grow and they outgrow donated shoes."

The shoes are made with high quality materials such as compressed rubber, leather, buckles, a few buttons and snaps.No mechanical parts of gears to break and it is easy to use as well as easy to clean.The shoe can grow from the front which is adjustable toe, from the sides through snaps to expand shoe size and the back which has expandable heel strap.

The Shoe That Grows team said, "footwear for poor rural populations around the world is an extremely important resource to help ward off parasitic diseases transmitted from the soil and in environments with inadequate sanitation resources. In addition to infections from the soil, mere cuts and scrapes can also make the skin vulnerable to infections. "And being sick = struggling. Kids miss school, can't help their families, suffer with pain. Many of these diseases and parasites get into the body because people don't have shoes."

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Gamers Feel Virtual Objects with Omni Gloves

Engineering students are making a glove that allows a gamer to feel objects in a virtual space.The glove introduced by engineers at Rice University is called Omni glove which allows a user to interact with virtual objects in the world.The glove revealed during the George R. Brown School of Engineering Design Showcase and built up with a Houton gaming company (Virtuix), is purposed to leave force feedback to the fingertips as players touch, press or grip objects in the virtual world.

The glove utilized air to expand bladders under your fingers, so user can hook this up to a video game and when user touch out and take hold of a practical object, it feels as you are grabbing that object," mechanical engineering Thor Walker said.

The right handed only glove is designed to be unnoticeable as possible and is without wire to let the user a full range of movement.The glove is light sufficient to prevent the user from noting it, even after a while and it weighs about 350 grams."We had a constraints based on testing to decide the quantity of detectable weight that could be strapped to your legs, fingers, arms and limbs, the utmost weight that is obvious to users and we went up with 660 grams on the forearm and often less than that on the back of a palm or on the fingers," Koch said.

"We needed as much mass as far back on a palm as possible, and that's precisely what we are doing," he said."The user will just know it's there."

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Engineering Students Create A Fire Extinguisher That Blasts Out Flames Using Sound Waves

Two engineering students Viet Tran and Seth Robertson from George Mason University have introduced a prototype fire extinguisher that uses sound wave to put out fires.They started this project as a part of a senior research project, and after one year of struggle, they have invented a fire fighting device.They spend $600 of their own money to fund their project.

They started work on project with basic concept that sound waves are pressure waves as well as mechanical waves.Due to the to and fro motion, pressure waves displace some of the oxygen.If the sound waves in the range of 30 to 60 Hertz separate the oxygen from the fire, as a result the fire will blasts out.

The two students said, it has been tested on alcohol fire at this time.One of the major problem is, it does not cool the fuel, the fires that go out will reignite because of hot material.But they hope that their small fire extingusher that works without chemicals or water, could be used in a kitchen as a tool against small fires.

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