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Thread: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

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    Default Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Quote Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have come up with a promising design for a lithium-sulfur rechargeable battery that is considerably cheaper and energy-dense than standard lithium-ions. Using a solid electrolyte rather than a liquid one, the battery is also testing much safer and more durable than previous designs.

    Lithium-sulfur batteries are seen by some as the successors of lithium-ions because they are extremely light (they are often used for solar-powered flight), they can reach an impressive energy density, and they are cheaper to produce.

    But the technology isn't quite mature yet, and as it turns out, the two major limitations with Li-S batteries have to do with the electrolyte. An electrolyte is a substance that, when mixed with a solvent, releases ions, making it electrically conductive. In batteries, electrolytes transport charge between the two electrodes, converting chemical energy into electrical energy.

    In previous Li-S battery designs, the electrolyte used was liquid in nature. This proved a double-edged sword: the liquid electrolyte is an excellent conductor because of how it dissolves the lithium compounds, but this dissolution also causes the battery to break down prematurely. The liquid electrolyte is also flammable, posing serious safety concerns.

    But now, researchers may have found a way around these problems.

    "Our technology overcomes the capacity fade and safety issues of Li-S technology," Dr. Chengdu Liang, lead author of a paper on the research, told Gizmag. "The battery still performs well after a few hundred cycles, and the volumetric density could be slightly better than Li-ion batteries."



    The researchers overcame these barriers by building a solid electrolyte made of lithium polysulfidophosphates (a new class of sulfur-rich materials with good electrical conductivity) to create an energy-dense, all-solid battery that is showing a lot of promise.

    Even after 300 charge-discharge cycles at 60°C (140ºF), the battery retained a capacity of 1200 mAh/g (milliampere-hours per gram), compared to the 140-170 mAh/g of a traditional lithium-ion battery (lithium-sulfur batteries, however, only deliver about half the voltage of lithium-ions, so this 8-fold increase actually translates into a 4-fold increase in energy density).

    The battery uses elemental sulfur, which is a byproduct of industrial petroleum processing. In other words, the battery could also provide a way to recycle industrial waste into a useful – perhaps even superior – technology.

    "The main limitation is the relatively low ionic conductivity of the solid electrolyte," said Liang. "So the power density is lower than Li-ion batteries, but it can be improved with a better solid electrolyte. Moreover, the ceramic structure is brittle, and much optimization is needed."

    The technology is still in the early stages of development, but Liang and colleagues are working on ironing out these issue and have filed a patent application for their battery design.

    The paper detailing the study was recently published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

    Update 06.10.13: Gizmag wrote back to Dr. Chengdu Liang for more details of the battery's charging and discharging behavior. Here is his response:

    "We did not observe self-discharge. A charged cell was put on shelf for over a week, and it still delivered the same capacity. The essence of our all-solid battery design is to eliminate the self-discharge through the all-solid configuration.

    "This battery charges slower than Li-ion battery at the current status for a simple reason; the ionic conductivity of both the solid electrolyte and cathode are not high energy to have high current density. Much better performance at elevated temperatures such as 60 degrees C or higher."
    http://www.gizmag.com/lithium-sulfur-battery/27834/
    Last edited by TargeT; 8th August 2013 at 17:21.
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Cellphones will soon have up to 384GB of memory......

    Quote Samsung's New 3D V-NAND Flash Memory in Production
    Samsung said Tuesday that it has begun volume production of 3D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory offering significant durability and write performance improvements over current NAND flash memory chips based on planar structures using floating gates.

    The South Korean tech giant's new 3D V-NAND products are being produced in 128GB densities per chip for a "wide range of consumer electronics and enterprise applications, including embedded NAND storage and solid state drives (SSDs)," the company said.

    Samsung's new flash technology offers two to 10 times the reliability of current-generation, 10-nanometer class floating gate NAND flash memory and double the write performance of the most advanced flash memory currently on the market, the company said.

    "The new 3D V-NAND flash technology is the result of our employees' years of efforts to push beyond conventional ways of thinking and pursue much more innovative approaches in overcoming limitations in the design of memory semiconductor technology," Jeong-Hyuk Choi, senior vice president of flash product and technology at Samsung, said in a statement.

    "Following the world's first mass production of 3D Vertical NAND, we will continue to introduce 3D V-NAND products with improved performance and higher density, which will contribute to further growth of the global memory industry."

    The new technology utilizes a "proprietary vertical cell structure based on 3D Charge Trap Flash (CTF) technology and vertical interconnect process technology to link the 3D cell array," Choi added.

    Last month, Samsung's fabs began cranking out eMMC 5.0 memory modules—billed as the "world's fastest embedded memory"—for next-generation smartphones and tablets. Volume production started in late July for 11.5-by-13-millimeter eMMC 5.0 devices in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB densities, Samsung said, adding that the small package size makes the modules "ideal for mobile devices where space on the printed circuit board is extremely limited."

    Meanwhile, earlier this week a new startup called Crossbar came out of stealth mode with what it claimed was a breakthrough in memory technology of its own. The California company said its alternative to current NAND Flash memory chips , which Crossbar calls "Resistive RAM" or RRAM, could serve up a terabyte of storage and playback capacity on "an IC smaller than a postage stamp."
    http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2422776,00.asp
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    The above is pretty good, but what about this:

    Quote Better, faster, smaller: How Resistive RAM could change storage forever

    What if we told you that a terabyte of data can fit on something the size of a postage stamp? You’d think we’re crazy, right? Well, California-based startup Crossbar has done just that. The company revealed plans for storage chips that will be able to pack in a terabyte worth of data in a tiny space thanks to resistive RAM (RRAM). It would essentially replace NAND flash memory, which is the current standard in the gadget industry, and pretty much all smartphones and tablets use it. However, not very many people know about RRAM and how it works, and in order to understand Crossbar’s intentions to replace NAND, we should know the differences between the two different types of memory.

    What is RRAM?

    Crossbar boasts that its RRAM storage solution is capable of storing up to 1TB of data on a single chip, thanks to the ability of “3D-stacking” multiple cells in different configurations in order to save space while still upping the storage limits. All of this can fit into a tight, tiny space, which could then fit into mobile devices. The company also says that the new chip technology consumes less energy (approximately 20 times less), extending battery life in devices “to weeks, months, or years.”

    Speed wise, Crossbar claims that RRAM has a write speed that’s 20 times faster than NAND memory (around 140MB/s, compared to 7MB/s with NAND), and is 10 times more reliable as well, noting that it “approaches DRAM reliability” levels. Read speeds are said to be around 17MB/s.

    What’s so special about RRAM?

    For starters, unlike other types of RAM, RRAM is non-volatile, meaning that it can keep and store data even if the power is cut off to it. Volatile memory (like the DDR RAM in your computer) can only store data up until a certain point, like when the power is cut off. This is why you lose information when your computer suddenly shuts down. Of course, NAND memory is also non-volatile, and both of them are able to store data permanently.

    However, that’s pretty much where the similarities end. RRAM uses a different method to store data, by creating different levels of electrical resistance using ions (charged atoms), rather than electrons that create electrical charges in order to store bits of data (hence the name “resistive RAM”). This means that RRAM requires less energy to operate and leaves room for a greater number of write cycles for a longer lifespan, depending on the components being used. With the ability for high and low levels of resistance, this allows RRAM to store different values on the chip to make up bits of data.

    The concept of RRAM has actually been around since the 1960s, but it’s only been until just recently that the concept was deemed practical and physically possible by researchers. And based on the technology in RRAM, it could even be used to replace or supplement other types of memory besides just NAND, including DDR RAM. This means that the days of losing data due to power outages could be over. With RRAM, computers could prevent data from being lost when the machine is shut off, unlike DDR RAM, which doesn’t save data when the power gets cut off.

    What does the future hold for RRAM?

    On top of higher-capacity mobile devices, we could see much higher-capacity solid-state drives come to fruition with RRAM. Solid-state drives currently use NAND flash memory, and they’re able to stuff in way more NAND chips for high-capacity storage, reaching up to 1TB. However, with RRAM, we could see solid-state storage jump into the multiple-terabyte levels – something that hard disk drives have only been able to achieve thus far.

    When will we see RRAM hit the mainstream?

    We’ve seen a lot of crazy concepts in technology – flexible displays and the Hyperloop come to mind – and most of these types of concepts seem pretty far-fetched, sometimes never hitting the market. But Crossbar says that the manufacturing of the chips can utilize current production methods, meaning there’s no need to vastly revolutionize the manufacturing process before the chips can be made. This means that Crossbar could technically pump out the volume needed right away in order to reliably replace NAND in devices easily.

    While the goal is to have RRAM replace NAND memory at some point, the transition could take some time. As for where Crossbar is currently at with the development of its RRAM storage technology, it doesn’t have any chips in production at the moment, and it’s still a bit early for the company to provide an exact timeline. It does claim to have a working prototype built, so the first wave of mass production could be right around the corner. However, as with any technology in its early stages, Crossbar could come across hiccups in the manufacturing process, resulting in delays and the opportunity for other companies to pick up the baton and make a splash.

    Furthermore, Crossbar doesn’t exclusively hold all the patents for RRAM, although it owns a few, so it’ll be interesting to see how the business side of things play out in the production phases of these new storage chips once they get off their feet, and it’s very possible that we’ll see the technology get licensed out to various chip manufacturers in the future.
    http://www.digitaltrends.com/computi...orage-forever/
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Cool thread - I'm drooling over this upcoming tech.

    I changed the thread title to match what you had already done for the opening post, from:
    All-solid lithium-sulfur battery stores four times the energy of lithium-ions

    to
    Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    we are at the point in Moores Law right now that the changes will be coming at us SO FAST & with mind boggling implications

    Transistor count:


    we are going to see advances in the next few years that are equal to the jump from 1985 to 2000 easily...

    Hard drive capacity:



    I'm REALLY drooling over the battery advancements,, I ride an electric motorcycle every day to work.. advancement in battery tech will do so much for society; if I could have two things (that are feasible) right now it would be a LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) in my house and a power storage solution that is at a minimum 50x greater than current commercial offerings.

    those two things would cause a world wide revolution that would make the 1900's seem like everyone was sitting on their couch drinking beer and relaxing... the advancements in 3d printing alone are so exciting I can't even wrap my mind around it... and it's ALL happening RIGHT NOW!
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    My class in the Army was the last to study vacuum tube amplifiers. We marveled at the study materials for the next class, as it contained info on TRANSISTORS. These things were the newest and greatest technology. One transistor was about the size of a pencil eraser, much, much smaller thank the huge and hot tubes. But now? Just damn! It seems we've moved forward thousands of years, rather than the 40 or so since the Army days.

    Great thread! Anyone for a beefy hamburger without need of a cow?
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    This one is probably a bit further out, but maybe not?

    Quote 3D-Printed Microbattery Could Power Tomorrow's Electronics
    Good new, techies: 3D printers can now do more than make dust-collecting doodads. Researchers have developed a method of producing powerful microbatteries using these trendy contraptions.

    Developed by a team of researchers at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, these lithium-ion microbatteries are no bigger than a grain of sand but hold as much energy as their much larger counterparts.

    "The electrochemical performance is comparable to commercial batteries in terms of charge and discharge rate, cycle life and energy density," said Shen Dillon, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "We're just able to achieve this on a much smaller scale."

    To create the microbatteries, researchers used a custom-built 3D printer to stack electrodes- each one less than the width of a human hair- along the teeth of two tiny gold combs. The electrodes were contained within a special ink, extruded from the printer's narrow nozzles and applied to the combs like toothpaste being squeezed onto a toothbrush.
    The electrode inks- one serving as a cathode, the other as an anode- hardened immediately into narrow layers, one atop the other. Once the electrodes were stacked, researchers packaged them inside tiny containers and added an electrolyte solution to complete the battery pack.

    This novel process created a battery that could one day help power tiny medical implants as well as more novel electronics, like flying, insect-like robots. Such devices have been in development for some time, patiently awaiting an appropriately-sized power source.

    "[The researchers'] innovative microbattery ink designs dramatically expand the practical uses of 3D printing, and simultaneously open up entirely new possibilities for miniaturization of all types of devices, both medical and non-medical," said Donald Ingber, the founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.
    ennifer Lewis, a professor of engineering at Harvard University and lead author of the microbattery research study, said her team is looking at using their novel 3D printing process to create other precise structures with diverse electronic, optical, mechanical or biologically relevant properties.
    http://www.technewsdaily.com/18386-3...ectronics.html
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Also a bit further out than 2 years (based on current development models) maybe these things will come to market faster however, since we have increased our tech so much?

    Quote Mystery Particle To Make Devices Even Tinier
    A strange, newly discovered particle could shrink a laptop computer's hard drive to the size of a peanut and an iPod's drive to the size of a rice grain.

    The particle, called a skyrmion, is more stable and less power-hungry than its conventional, magnetic cousin. Besides storing data in ultra compact media, skyrmions could lead to faster computers that combine storage with processing power and usher in smaller and smaller devices that have the same computing power as a desktop machine.


    DNA Data Storage: Your Genetic Material Is A Hard Drive
    Using DNA as a hard drive? Scientists at the European Bioinformatics Institute over in the UK, have actually done it. Anthony find out if you'll ever do this at home.
    DCI
    Kristen von Bergmann and her colleagues, led by Roland Wiesendanger at the University of Hamburg in Germany, report their findings in today's issue of Science.

    While the name sounds like an evil creature from a fantasy novel – it comes from Tony Skyrme, a British physicist who first theorized the particle's existence in 1962 -- skyrmions are tiny magnetic fields that surround groups of atoms.

    Magnetic fields are the basis for data storage. In an ordinary magnet, the spinning electrons inside the atoms all line up the same way, and that's what makes the magnetic field. Those fields embedded into a metal alloy are what make up the 1s and 0s, the bits, a computer data. But these bits must have some space between them in order to function well. Put them too close together and the magnetic fields start to "stick" to each other, messing up the data.

    Inside a skyrmion particle, however, the spinning electrons point in different directions, making it more difficult for the magnetic fields to stick together when they get too close to each other. In fact, von Bergmann and her colleagues were able to space the skyrmion bits just six nanometers apart. The best magnetic drives have bits spaced about 25 nanometers apart. In the world of electronics, the more tightly packed bits could translate into a hard drive for an iPod Classic shrinking from about two inches across to length of a grain of rice.

    To make the skyrmions, the researchers put a two-atom-thin film of palladium and iron into a magnetic field and cooled it to nearly absolute zero. Immediately, skyrmions appeared on the film. Next, the researchers fired a beam of electrons at the film. The electrons annihilated the skyrmions. Firing that same kind of current at the film again made the skyrmions reappear.

    The action was similar to reading and writing data onto a magnetic film, with a skyrmion counting as a "1" and its absence counting as a "0."


    Now that the scientists have shown it's possible to read and write data using skyrmions, the next step is making a practical data storage device. Von Bergmann said the challenge will be finding materials that can make skyrmions at room temperature. If they can do that the skyrmion-based bits should be more stable than their ordinary cousins. The same quality that enables them to come close together without interference also make them less affected by heat, a typical problem in magnetic drives.

    Skyrmion-based electronics wouldn't just be smaller and more stable -- they'd use less power, noted Avadh Saxena, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In fact, the skyrmions require 100,000 times less power to manipulate than magnetic fields on a hard dive.

    One factor that bodes well for building real drives is that the researchers didn't need to use any exotic substances for the magnetic film. "It's exciting that they used relatively conventional materials," said Ulrich Rössler, a physicist at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research in Dresden, Germany.
    http://news.discovery.com/tech/nanot...ier-130808.htm
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Quote New “semi-floating” gate makes for fast, low-power circuitry
    As well as a very compact image sensor.

    After a long period during which the emphasis had been on building ever-faster computer circuits, things have shifted toward making them more energy-efficient. Some efficiency gains have come through small tweaks to the layout of the individual components, but most of the efficiency was a product of changes to the manufacturing process: new materials and ever-smaller features. Unfortunately, we're getting close to the point where shrinking the features of circuits any further will cause the inherent noise of quantum mechanics to start interfering with the chip's operations.

    But that doesn't mean an end to potential improvements. A team of Chinese researchers have now described a new structure for the individual gates that control the flow of electrons within chips. Their design, which they're calling a semi-floating gate, switches states in as little as a nanosecond, and it requires very little power to operate.

    The gates in electronics share a common design. They have a source of electrons and a drain for them connected by something that can be switched between two states: one that allows the current to flow between the source and drain and one where the current is blocked. Typically, the switch material has been a semiconductor that directly connects the source and the drain. A neighboring bit of material can switch the semiconductor between insulating and conducting, controlling the flow of electrons through the gate.

    Flash memory uses a distinctive variant on this called a floating gate. In these structures, the material that bridges the source and sink is electrically isolated from them by a thin layer of insulator—in other words, it floats. This forces the electrons to transit through the gate by tunneling, with the rate of tunneling set by the control wire. A floating gate can stably trap charges, letting it be set in a semi-permanent on or off state, which is why flash can work as a long-term storage solution.

    The semi-floating gate is like a hybrid of the two. On the source side, the gate is electrically isolated, forcing electrons to tunnel into the semiconductor that can transfer them to the drain. On the drain side, the semi-floating gate directly contacts the drain, allowing electrons to flow through. The control wiring that sets the state of the semiconductor is also slightly different. In addition to sitting above the semiconductor, it curves around to flank the junction between the semiconductor and the drain, forming a structure called a tunneling field-effect transistor. This provides finer control of the flow of electrons through the gate.

    The end result is a device that can store its state, much like flash, but switches much more quickly. Changing between the on and off states took only 1.3 nanoseconds. All the switching also took place within a range of 3V and required very little current: less than one micro-Amp. The device was also very stable. Even after 1012 cycles of writing and erasing, it retained about 90 percent of its original performance. The researchers estimate it would still work out to 1015 cycles, which handily beats floating gate performance.

    In effect, the authors say that the device has the speed of SRAM, but it only requires a single transistor to provide the equivalent behavior.

    It's also remarkably flexible. The authors replaced the control gate with a photosensitive material that built up charge in response to light. The amount of current that flowed through the gate ended up being proportional to the amount of light the device was exposed to, meaning that each one of these gates could act as an incredibly compact photosensor.

    The device doesn't hold its state without power, so it's not currently a replacement for flash. But the authors suggest it could eventually stand in for current forms of RAM (both SRAM and DRAM)—and there are obvious applications in digital imaging. The authors also note that by lowering the speed of operations, it's possible to use even less power, which could make the technology useful for mobile applications.
    http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...wer-circuitry/
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    These are technologies that are emerging out of Japan, primarily due to the tsunami and earthquake of 2011. BBC has a great video with much of the new technology. Some of these new items are pretty amazing.

    To watch the video follow this link.

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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    California firm unveils gigantic amphibious airship which could revolutionize air travel as we know it
    The Aeroscraft can take off and land without an airstrip meaning it can operate even in war zones and disaster areas



    Quote Zeppelins were once considered the future of air transport - but after the horror of the Hindenburg disaster, they disappeared from the skies for more than 75 years.
    Now a pioneering aviation firm hopes to bring back the airships in a bid to revolutionise the global market in transporting freight.
    The Aeroscraft is built using innovative technology which allows it to control its flight better than previous airships, so it should avoid the problems experienced by the first generation of zeppelins.
    It requires only a third as much fuel as an aeroplane carrying cargo, and it can take off and land anywhere even without a formal airstrip - including on water - making it well suited to war zones and disaster areas.
    The aircraft has been designed thanks to a $3million grant from the U.S. government, and it will soon be ready for its first test flight, according to Business Insider.
    The Aeroscraft is designed by Worldwide Aeros Corp., who predict that it will change the way that goods are moved around the world by providing a mode of transport which is cheaper than planes but faster than ships.
    The key technological breakthrough came when the firm's founder Igor Pasternak came up with a way to compress helium, which allows the airship to control its weight.

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2eXeneM5j
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years


    Quote The hits keep coming from IDF. After showing off svelte new 14nm silicon built for laptops, CEO Brian Krzanich announced a brand new SoC series named Quark. It's the smallest SoC the company has ever built, with processor cores one-fifth the size of Atom's, and is built upon an open architecture meant so spur its use. Early on in his keynote, Krzanich said that Intel plans to "lead in every segment of computing," and Quark is positioned to put Intel in wearables -- and, in fact, he even showed off a prototype smartwatch platform Intel constructed to help drive wearable development. And, Intel President Renee James pointed out that Quark's designed for use in integrated systems, so we'll be seeing Quark in healthcare and municipal use cases, too.
    http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/10/intel-quark-soc/

    ¤=[Post Update]=¤

    Intel CEO says next-gen processors will improve battery life by 30 percent or more

    Quote Intel's Haswell processors have finally made all-day laptop battery life a reality, and the company's next-generation chips will introduce even greater gains. On stage at Intel's IDF 2013 keynote, CEO Brian Krzanich revealed that Broadwell, the successor to its current Haswell processor line, will improve battery longevity by about a third. 14-nanometer processors — one of which was demoed live on stage as a reference design — are already exhibiting "30 percent power improvement" the CEO said. "And we're not done yet. That's only what we've tested so far," Krzanich said.

    If his figures hold up, Broadwell will mark another impressive leap over Haswell after years of so-so longevity offered by Intel's older processors. Intel is clearly putting a focus on extending productivity, and the company is also looking to eliminate another minor inconvenience for users: fan noise. Krzanich showed off a fanless HP laptop, highlighting that the hardware's low wattage (4.5 watts) allowed it to operate without a need for a whirring fan. Intel is reportedly planning to ship its Broadwell family of processors in the second half of 2014.
    http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/10/47...urce=pulsenews
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    This one may be a bit more than 2 years off, but it's VERY significant.


    Programmable glue made of DNA directs tiny gel bricks to self-assemble

    New method could help to reconnect injured organs or build functional human tissues from the ground up



    Quote Boston, Mass. -- A team of researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has found a way to self-assemble complex structures out of bricks smaller than a grain of salt. The self-assembly method could help solve one of the major challenges in tissue engineering: regrowing human tissue by injecting tiny components into the body that then self-assemble into larger, intricately structured, biocompatible scaffolds at an injury site.

    The key to self-assembly was developing the world's first programmable glue. The glue is made of DNA, and it directs specific bricks of a water-filled gel to stick only to each other, the scientists report in the September 9th online issue of Nature Communications.

    "By using DNA glue to guide gel bricks to self-assemble, we're creating sophisticated programmable architecture," says Peng Yin, Ph.D., a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute and senior coauthor of the study, who is also an Assistant Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. This novel self-assembly method worked for gel bricks from as small as a speck of silt (30 microns diameter) to as large as a grain of sand (1 millimeter diameter), underscoring the method's versatility.

    The programmable DNA glue could also be used with other materials to create a variety of small, self-assembling devices, including lenses, reconfigurable microchips, and surgical glue that could knit together only the desired tissues, said Ali Khademhosseini, Ph.D., an Associate Faculty member at the Wyss Institute who is the other senior coauthor of the study.

    "It could work for anything where you'd want a programmable glue to induce assembly of higher-order structures, with great control over their final architecture -- and that's very exciting," said Khademhosseini, who is also an Associate Professor at Harvard-MIT's Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School.

    To fabricate devices or their component parts, manufacturers often start with a single piece of material, then modify it until it has the desired properties. In other cases, they employ the same strategy as auto manufacturers, making components with the desired properties, then assembling them to produce the final device. Living organisms fabricate their tissues using a similar strategy, in which different types of cells assemble into functional building blocks that generate the appropriate tissue function. In the liver, for example, the functional building blocks are small tissue units called lobules. In muscle tissue, the functional building blocks are muscle fibers.

    Scientists have tried to mimic this manufacturing strategy by developing self-assembling systems to fabricate devices. For example, last year Yin and his team reported in Science that they had developed miniscule "DNA bricks" smaller than the tiniest virus that self-assemble into complex nanoscale 3D structures.

    Now, he and Khademhosseini sought to create a similar programmable, self-assembling system for mesoscale components -- those with edge widths ranging from 30 microns to 1000 microns (1 millimeter). They focused first on creating a system in which bricks of biocompatible, biodegradable gels called hydrogels self-assemble into complex structures. For future applications, small hydrogel bricks containing human cells could potentially be injected into the body. The bricks would assemble, then the cells would knit together to form functional tissue as the hydrogels break down.

    In previous attempts to self-assemble hydrogel bricks into complex structures, scientists faced a challenge: the bricks often glom onto one another rather than assembling into the desired architecture. Yin and Khademhosseini needed a way to help each component stick only to specific partners, but not to other components. In other words, they needed programmable glue.DNA was ideal for the task. It stores genetic information as a sequence of four chemical "letters," or nucleotides, that bind in a specific way to complementary nucleotides (A to T, and C to G). A single strand of DNA adheres tightly to a second strand, but only if the second strand has a sequence of nucleotides that is complementary to the first. And even a short piece of DNA can have a huge number of possible sequences, which makes the glue programmable.

    The researchers used enzymes to multiply a snippet of DNA into long pieces of DNA called "giant DNA" that contained multiple copies of that snippet. When they coated hydrogel cubes with giant DNA, the cubes adhered only to partner cubes coated with matching giant DNA. Since scientists can synthesize snippets of DNA with any sequence they want, this meant that giant DNA functioned as programmable DNA glue.

    To assemble hydrogel cubes into larger structures, they used smaller hydrogel cubes as connectors. They coated the connector cube with their DNA glue, then attached it to one of the six faces of a larger cube. A large cube outfitted this way adhered only to other large cubes whose connectors had matching DNA glue.

    By placing connector cubes on various faces of the larger cubes, they programmed the larger cubes to self-assemble into specific shapes, including a matching pair of cubes, a linear chain, a square, and a T-shaped structure.

    The method was so specific that when the researchers placed 25 pairs of matched cubes in a single pot, all the cubes located and adhered only to their partners. This ability to assemble multiple components simultaneously is called multiplexity, and the new system has the highest degree of multiplexity of all existing mesoscale self-assembly systems.

    "Designing a strategy that leverages the power of self assembly used by living systems to direct construction of tissues from tiny component parts represents an entirely new approach for tissue engineering," said Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., the Wyss Institute's Founding Director. "Peng and Ali have created an elegant and straightforward method that could permit tissues to be reconstructed from within after a simple injection, rather than requiring major surgery."

    This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, by the Office of Naval Research, by the National Science Foundation, and by the Wyss Institute. In addition to Yin and Khademhosseini, the research team included: Hao Qi, a postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute; Majid Ghodousi, a research assistant at the Wyss Institute; Yanan Du, a former postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute who is now a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China; Casey Grun, an undergraduate researcher at the Wyss Institute, and Hojae Bae, a former Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School who is now an Assistant Professor of Bioindustrial Technologies at Konkuk University in South Korea
    http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/123
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Seagate to produce 5TB hard drive next year, 20TB by 2020
    Quote Seagate on Monday announced that it has sold more than 1 million drives using a new recording technology that will offer consumers 5TB hard drives next year and possibly 20TB drives by 2020.

    The technology Seagate is touting -- shingled magnetic recording (SMR) - is needed more than ever.

    Just as NAND flash is running up against a miniaturization wall, where the circuitry has little room to continue to shrink in size, hard drives face a similar density dilemma. The data tracks on a 1TB hard-drive platter cannot afford to shrink much more, according to Seagate.

    The theoretical limit of magnetic storage, called the superparamagnetic limit -- about 1Tbit per square inch of storage density -- is fast approaching. Increasing the density beyond that will lead to data corruption issues. Currently, Seagate's drives store data at up to 625Gbits per square inch of storage areal density.

    SMR is only one of several technology advancements pushing the limits of hard drive capacity. Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is expected to take disk drives to 5Tbits per square inch. Seagate rival Western Digital is expected to release helium filled disk drives later this year. The helium provides less resistance than air and so will allow more platters to be stacked closer together.

    "With SMR technology, Seagate is on track to improve areal density by up to 25% or 1.25TB per disk, delivering hard drives with the lowest cost per gigabyte and reaching capacities of 5TB and beyond," Mark Re, Seagate's chief technology officer, said in a statement.

    Seagate would not disclose which of its drive models today use SMR. It would only say that system makers that use them know they're using them.

    Quote The principle behind SMR is simple. With the technology, the tracks of a drive basically overlap like the shingles on a roof, thereby allowing Seagate to squeeze more tracks together.

    The density problem came about when Seagate and other drive manufacturers pressed the limits of how close they could squeeze tracks together on a drive platter. For a mental picture of platter tracks, think of an LP vinyl record, except on a microscopic level.

    The closer the tracks of a drive platter are squeezed together, the more data can fit in a disk drive. But, the closer together the tracks get squeezed, the greater risk of data corruption and read errors -- that is, the read/write head of a hard disk drive cannot discern the difference between tracks. In between the tracks are buffer areas to help the read/write heads track accurately.

    Like stacking pancakes, more platters can be added to a drive, but that adds to the height of the drive.

    Hard drive density
    Hard drives today typically use perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), a method of laying down data on a platter that creates tracks that are about 75 nanometers wide, which is smaller than a flu virus. Seagate introduced its first PMR drive in 2007. The drive, the Barracuda, held 250GB of data per platter. That grew to 1TB per platter by this year.
    http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...r_20TB_by_2020
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Did Tesla just roll over in his grave?

    Cota By Ossia Aims To Drive A Wireless Power Revolution And Change How We Think About Charging

    Quote Wireless power. It’s less sci-fi sounding than it once was, thanks to induction charging like that based on the Qi standard, but that’s still a tech that essentially requires contact, if not incredibly close proximity. Magnetic resonance is another means to achieve wireless power, and perfect for much higher-demand applications, like charging cars. But there’s been very little work done in terms of building a solution that can power your everyday devices in a way that doesn’t require thought or changing the way we use our devices dramatically.

    That’s where Cota by Ossia comes in. The startup is the brainchild of physicist Hatem Zeine, who decided to focus on delivering wireless power in a way that was commercially viable, both for large-scale industrial applications and for consumer use. Zeine has been hard at work developing his wireless power technology and refining its delivery for over a decade now, and has built Ossia under wraps, managing to raise an impressive $3.2 million along the way while also keeping the startup almost completely invisible to the outside world.

    Today, however, Zeine is ready to show what Ossia can do, and he’s presenting the first public demo of the Cota wireless charging prototype on-stage at Disrupt and revealing his company Ossia publicly for the first time. Despite the fact that no one’s heard of Ossia, the Cota prototype in its current form already managed to deliver power wirelessly to devices over distances of around 10 feet, delivering around 10 percent of the total original source power to recipient devices using the same unlicensed spectrum that powers Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and other wireless communication standards.

    “I got fascinated by electromagnetic radiation, the way that light and optics and radio waves are the same thing,” Zeine said, explaining how he got interested in the subject while studying physics as a student. “And I got thinking about ‘what can you really do beyond this?’ there is something about the linearity of physics and the non-linearity of physics. most people are familiar with the linear version, which is the common sense version, where two apples are twice the weight of one, for instance.”

    “In wave theory and electromagnetic systems, you don’t get linearities everywhere,” he added, describing the science behind Cota. “There are situations where double could mean for more, like double could mean square, or 3 plus 3 apples could result in a net total of 9 apples, so to speak. When you move from the linear version to the power version, things happen that were quite surprising.”Zeine started doing computer simulations to figure out what he was on to, but says unlike Thomas Edison, for example, who started with a problem and tried to solve it but came up with many failures before success, he started out with a solution and found many problems that it does solve, including questions around health, safety, interference with other wireless signals, delivering power to multiple devices, non-line of site, around and behind walls and more. “I was always thinking ‘What’s the catch?’,” he said, “But sometimes an invention just solves the problem and goes all the way. This was one of them, we had something here that was much, much different than what people expect.When Zeine then decided to turn Cota’s wireless charging into a company, he faced understandable and considerable skepticism. Naysayers suggested he couldn’t deliver wireless power safely, or with adequate efficiency to be useful, or consistently, or any number of objections you yourself are probably cycling through at this moment. Skepticism aside, Zeine stuck to his guns and set about commercializing his discovery. In 2007, Zeine filed his first patent for the tech, formed Ossia in 2008 and continued to file patents, and he says now the company has a much deeper understanding of how it works. They’ve built the prototype they’re demoing on stage, and have another in the works to debut later this year.

    “What we’re doing uses the same frequencies as Wi-Fi,” he explained. “It’s the unlicensed spectrum that’s used by Wi-Fi, and many phones, Bluetooth and Zigbee devices and so on in our lives. The nice thing about this frequency is that it’s just the sweet spot for our technology for distance, safety, for the size of the antennas and the hardware that we use, it’s just a perfect level. Also it’s well understood, since people have had Wi-Fi in their homes for a long time now.”Obviously health and safety is going to be a foreground concern when it comes to new wireless tech of any kind, but something that’s designed to be able to provide enough energy to power up devices will definitely raise eyebrows. Aside from being at a late stage in terms of gaining FCC clearance, Zeine says Ossia also benefits from using the same kind of spectrum that Wi-Fi broadcasts at, and says Cota offers the same kind of health risks that Wi-Fi in-home does. Academic research on how much that actually is may differ, but consumers definitely seem willing to accept the risks associated with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other similar specifications.

    “Cota is the only wireless power technology that can deliver one watt of power at a distance of 30 ft safely,” Zeine said on stage today at Disrupt, highlighting range as well as health and safety. During his presentation, Zeine showed an iPhone 5 being charged remotely from his version one prototype wireless power transmitter, which was greeted by plenty of applause from those in attendance.The next step for Cota is delivering a commercial-grade product capable of replacing the numerous wired power connections for sensors and monitors in sensitive facilities like oil and gas refineries with wirelessly powered devices, which decreases risk by minimizing the number of potential opportunities there are for generating sparks, since there are fewer live cables lying around. Commercialized versions should be ready to ship in the next couple of months, Zeine says, with consumerized versions following in 2015. Neither would’ve been possible in terms of cost alone 20 years ago, he adds, but advances in the tech of Cota system components have made it possible to do with thousands what would once have cost millions.

    Long-term, the vision of Zeine and Ossia is one where you’re never out of wireless charging range – charging networks spanning home, public spaces and offices would make it possible to build devices like phones and remotes with only small batteries, that are constantly topped off and that never need to be plugged in. He says the aim is not just to disrupt the battery, but eventually even to eliminate the concept of “charging” as a conscious act altogether.

    QUESTION & ANSWER FROM DISRUPT JUDGES
    1. Do you want to license your tech to OEMs?

    A: Cota will provide licensing of patents, hardware designs, and also its own hardware and patent licensing.

    2. What is the cost of this for consumers, and size of household device?

    A: The Cota will be over $100, and be about the size of a large tower PC once consumerized.

    3. Can the transmitter be smaller?

    A: The size of the current device is due to using off-the-shelf parts, so it can be reduced tremendously using custom parts.

    4. Does it require line-of-sight?

    A: No, it can go around walls and through walls just like a Wi-Fi signal.

    5. Is there some sort of identification, can a device take power from a system unauthorized?

    A: You can configure the system to recognize only a specific set of devices, or open if you want to power all Cota-tech enabled devices.
    http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/09/cot...ireless-power/
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    again, a bit further off than 2 years... but very significant

    STANFORD SCIENTISTS USE DNA TO ASSEMBLE A TRANSISTOR FROM GRAPHENE
    Quote Graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms arrayed in a honeycomb pattern, just a single atom thick. It could be a better semiconductor than silicon – if we could fashion it into ribbons 20 to 50 atoms wide. Could DNA help?
    Tom Abate | Stanford Engineering
    DNA is the blueprint for life. Could it also become the template for making a new generation of computer chips based not on silicon, but on an experimental material known as graphene?

    That’s the theory behind a process that Stanford chemical engineering professor Zhenan Bao reveals in Nature Communications.

    Bao and her co-authors, former post-doctoral fellows Anatoliy Sokolov and Fung Ling Yap, hope to solve a problem clouding the future of electronics: consumers expect silicon chips to continue getting smaller, faster and cheaper, but engineers fear that this virtuous cycle could grind to a halt.

    Why has to do with how silicon chips work.

    Everything starts with the notion of the semiconductor, a type of material that can be induced to either conduct or stop the flow of electricity. Silicon has long been the most popular semiconductor material used to make chips.

    The basic working unit on a chip is the transistor. Transistors are tiny gates that switch electricity on or off, creating the zeroes and ones that run software.

    To build more powerful chips, designers have done two things at the same time: they’ve shrunk transistors in size and also swung those gates open and shut faster and faster.

    The net result of these actions has been to concentrate more electricity in a diminishing space. So far that has produced small, faster, cheaper chips. But at a certain point, heat and other forms of interference could disrupt the inner workings of silicon chips.

    "We need a material that will let us build smaller transistors that operate faster using less power," Bao said.

    Graphene has the physical and electrical properties to become a next-generation semiconductor material – if researchers can figure out how to mass-produce it.

    Quote Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern. Visually it resembles chicken wire. Electrically this lattice of carbon atoms is an extremely efficient conductor.

    Bao and other researchers believe that ribbons of graphene, laid side-by-side, could create semiconductor circuits. Given the material’s tiny dimensions and favorable electrical properties, graphene nano ribbons could create very fast chips that run on very low power, she said.

    "However, as one might imagine, making something that is only one atom thick and 20 to 50 atoms wide is a significant challenge," said co-author Sokolov.

    To handle this challenge, the Stanford team came up with the idea of using DNA as an assembly mechanism.

    Physically, DNA strands are long and thin, and exist in roughly the same dimensions as the graphene ribbons that researchers wanted to assemble.

    Chemically, DNA molecules contain carbon atoms, the material that forms graphene.

    The real trick is how Bao and her team put DNA’s physical and chemical properties to work.

    The researchers started with a tiny platter of silicon to provide a support (substrate) for their experimental transistor. They dipped the silicon platter into a solution of DNA derived from bacteria and used a known technique to comb the DNA strands into relatively straight lines.

    Next, the DNA on the platter was exposed to a copper salt solution. The chemical properties of the solution allowed the copper ions to be absorbed into the DNA.

    Next the platter was heated and bathed in methane gas, which contains carbon atoms. Once again chemical forces came into play to aid in the assembly process. The heat sparked a chemical reaction that freed some of the carbon atoms in the DNA and methane. These free carbon atoms quickly joined together to form stable honeycombs of graphene.

    "The loose carbon atoms stayed close to where they broke free from the DNA strands, and so they formed ribbons that followed the structure of the DNA," Yap said.

    So part one of the invention involved using DNA to assemble ribbons of carbon. But the researchers also wanted to show that these carbon ribbons could perform electronic tasks. So they made transistors on the ribbons.

    "We demonstrated for the first time that you can use DNA to grow narrow ribbons and then make working transistors," Sokolov said.

    The paper drew praise from UC Berkeley associate professor Ali Javey, an expert in the use of advanced materials and next-generation electronics.

    "This technique is very unique and takes advantage of the use of DNA as an effective template for controlled growth of electronic materials,” Javey said. “In this regard the project addresses an important research need for the field."

    Bao said the assembly process needs a lot of refinement. For instance, not all of the carbon atoms formed honeycombed ribbons a single atom thick. In some places they bunched up in irregular patterns, leading the researchers to label the material graphitic instead of graphene.

    Even so, the process, about two years in the making, points toward a strategy for turning this carbon-based material from a curiosity into a serious contender to succeed silicon.

    "Our DNA-based fabrication method is highly scalable, offers high resolution and low manufacturing cost," said co-author Yap. "All these advantages make the method very attractive for industrial adoption."

    The experiment was supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Stanford Global Climate and Energy Program.
    http://engineering.stanford.edu/news...ycombinator%29
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Zinc-air Battery Company Claims Novel Electrolyte Will Do The Trick (CT Exclusive)


    Quote Move over, lithium-ion. A start-up company in northwestern Montana reports that it has solved the rechargeable problem that has dogged zinc-air battery development and will soon be in competition with the dominant lithium-ion technology.

    Ron Brost, CTO and CEO of ZAF Energy Systems, reports his research team has developed a zinc-air prototype that produces two times the energy of a lithium-ion battery at a third of the cost, with applications ranging from powering cell phones to airplanes.

    The technology, which has four (or pending) patents, was developed by an offshoot of four-year-old ViZn Energy Systems (formerly Zinc Air, Incorporated), which is beginning to commercialize its zinc-iron redox grid batteries.

    Several other companies and research labs have reported breakthroughs in creating a zinc-air battery in the last few months, including Eos Systems and Fluidic Energy.

    Advantages of zinc over lithium-ion are many and obvious: zinc is a readily available and cheap mineral, with resources totaling 1.9 billion tons worldwide; it costs about a third what lithium costs; it weighs about half what lithium weighs in comparable applications; and while lithium-ion batteries have caught fire under certain trials, zinc is environmentally benign, going to zinc oxide (the main component of baby powder) after playing out in a battery. And zinc oxide is easily recyclable; Brost claims the ZAF battery itself will be recyclable.
    But let’s look at what ZAF scientists say their prototype can do. Brost wrote in a white paper that research institutes and industrial labs have verified the basic function of rechargeable zinc-air cells, but three basic problems have remained: the air catalyst must be stable and convert oxygen to hydroxide during discharge and evolve oxygen during charges; the zinc electrode must be protected against air oxidation in order to prevent self-discharge and must be able to be formed and reformed hundreds of times without loss of energy or shorting the cell; and the alkaline electrolyte cannot lose water as it is exposed to a continual stream of air, nor can it react with air contaminants such as carbon dioxide.

    Brost says the ZAF prototype battery solves these problems.

    First, they’ve achieved 400 Wh/kg when, previously, 180 Wh/kg was the norm with zinc-air batteries, which means that the prototype has achieved at least two times the energy output of currently used lithium-ion batteries. They’ve developed a highly efficient bi-directional air cathode and made all three components of the battery bi-directional. And they have developed the first solid-state electrolyte to be used in a battery. Instead of a typical liquid or paste alkaline electrolyte, the ZAF battery uses a solid polymer electrolyte that limits the amount of oxygen that can pass through, while allowing ions to pass freely. This substantially increases the number of recharges and extends the battery life.

    Brost notes that problems of dendrites forming in zinc batteries are addressed through proprietary anode and electrolyte designs that both limit dendrite growth and prevent shorting.

    Howard Wilkins, chairman emeritus at ViZn and holder of a patent on the ZAF battery, reports that ZAF licensed a fuel cell technology developed at Lawrence-Livermore National Labs. “The technology was a fuel cell that was mechanically rechargeable [it had to be rebuilt to recharge]. We found a way to make it electronically rechargeable. That increased the energy by 300 percent and then we made it rechargeable,” he says.

    He says the electrolyte in the ZAF battery has been proven rechargeable at 500 charges and researchers are “trying to get beyond that.” When asked if 500 charges would be sufficient, Wilkens noted that a ZAF battery lasts almost three times as long as today’s batteries, so in a cell phone, for example, a ZAF battery might only need to be charged once a week rather than several times a week.
    One of the main applications ZAF is aiming its research toward is the electric car battery. Brost has about 12 years of experience in leading battery teams at Ford Motors and Coda Automotive. He said one of ZAF’s challenges is to “get the cycle life up,” but added that the ZAF battery stores a lot more energy than other batteries. “If we build an electric vehicle with a 500-mile battery, with 500 recharges, that’s 250,000 road miles, so we’re looking at it that way. Five hundred cycles is a reasonable customer expectation,” he says.

    Wilkins, a former medical researcher and one of the pioneers of the soft contact lens, says the ZAF technology is in some ways similar to contact lens chemistry. In doing research at Pennsylvania State University and Oak Ridge National Labs, Wilkins says researchers were looking for a material for the contact lens that didn’t let oxygen in. Somewhat similarly, with the zinc fuel battery, they were looking for a way to make the electrolyte ionically conductive, but oxygen limiting.

    Another member of Brost’s team was discovered as a postdoc at Montana State University. Adam Weinstein had been researching compounds for catalysts for years at MSU. Weinstein became a member of the ZAF team and developed a special formula for the perovskite used in the battery catalyst, which was essential for the creation of an efficient bi-directional cathode. Today Weinstein is a senior scientist at ZAF.

    That is part of the “serendipity” Brost refers to in the ZAF research that has led to today’s prototype. He says he’s been surprised at how fast their research has developed – a matter or a year or two as opposed to typically three to five years. “It evolved as a very simple but very elegant system,” he says. “The individual components are interesting enough, but putting them together in this trinity of technologies will give us a very superior commercial product.”

    Thomas Zawodzinski, Governor’s Chair in Electrical Energy Storage at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, has verified the general claims made by Brost and Wilkins. “They’ve got something that works. They definitely have a rechargeable battery,” he said in an interview, adding, “It’s always a question of efficiency.”

    Zawodzinski, who holds a chair at Oak Ridge National Labs, says he considers ZAF in the early prototyping stage — “a process of continual improvement of these materials.” He says he tested the ZAF battery in his lab and “we more or less validated the performance they’re showing.”

    Zawodzinski is leading a team of researchers from Penn State, Case-Western University, and the University of Memphis to synthesize new materials for use in the ZAF electrolyte.

    Brost reports that they are testing for conductivity and water chemistry and trying various materials developed by Zawodzinski’s team in their batteries. “We’re looking for a long-life battery that is robust at different temperatures, humidities, and latitudes,” he says.

    ZAF’s commercialization model is to license its technology, and they are in talks with several companies. Brost predicted commercialization for small applications, such as hearing aides, will take about a year and EV batteries three to five years.

    ZAF and ViZn Energy, located in Columbia Falls, Montana, have kept a low profile and operate through funds provided by investors. Together they employ about 70 people.
    http://cleantechnica.com/2013/09/09/...-ct-exclusive/
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    data storage? i hear somewhere you could use crystal to store unlimited of data.

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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Quote Posted by apokalypse (here)
    data storage? i hear somewhere you could use crystal to store unlimited of data.

    theoretically, but I'm focusing a bit more in this thread on things we can use in the next 2 years (or there abouts)
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Quote Posted by TargeT (here)
    Did Tesla just roll over in his grave?

    Quote Cota By Ossia Aims To Drive A Wireless Power Revolution And Change How We Think About Charging

    2. What is the cost of this for consumers, and size of household device?

    A: The Cota will be over $100, and be about the size of a large tower PC once consumerized.

    3. Can the transmitter be smaller?

    A: The size of the current device is due to using off-the-shelf parts, so it can be reduced tremendously using custom parts.

    4. Does it require line-of-sight?

    A: No, it can go around walls and through walls just like a Wi-Fi signal.

    5. Is there some sort of identification, can a device take power from a system unauthorized?

    A: You can configure the system to recognize only a specific set of devices, or open if you want to power all Cota-tech enabled devices.
    http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/09/cot...ireless-power/
    I can't imagine what will happen with this once some electrical geeks get a hold of it... if they aren't too expensive I'll buy one and send it strait to Eric Dollard; I bet he could do some fantastic extrapolation with this device.
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