August 24, 2007 by dinofond.

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August 24, 2007 by dinofond.

Sony has announced a breakthrough in battery technology–a bio cell that uses sugar to produce electricity.
Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

A year ago it seemed Sony Corp. couldn’t even get a laptop battery right. A massive recall of lithium-ion cells tainted its image and had the company scrambling, but on Thursday it reported a sweet breakthrough in bio battery technology.

Sony, one of the world’s largest battery makers, said it had succeeded in creating a battery that produces electricity by breaking down sugar. The bio cell, which measures 39 millimeters cubed, delivers 50mW (milliWatts) — a world record for such a cell, according to the company.

A video provided by Sony shows four of the cells connected in series delivering enough energy to power a Walkman music player. The battery uses glucose solution as a fuel. A second video shows a small fan being powered by the cell with a glucose-based sports drink used as the fuel.

As in other cells, power is produced through a flow of electrons between a cathode and anode.

In the bio cell sugar-digesting enzymes at the anode extract electrons and hydrogen ions from the glucose. The hydrogen ions pass through a membrane separator to the cathode where they absorb oxygen from the air to produce water as a byproduct. The electrons flow around the circuit outside the device producing the electricity needed to power it.

Details of the bio battery were accepted as a paper at the 234th American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exposition that is taking place this week in Boston.

Sugar is naturally occurring so the technology could be the basis for an ecologically-friendly energy source. Companies like Sony are researching numerous technologies that could replace the dominant lithium ion cells as a clean power source for portable electronics.

One of the most talked about is fuel cell technology. While hydrogen-based cells have taken off for home or automobile use, versions based on methanol for use in electronics products have yet to be commercialized. Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp. are among the companies that promised methanol fuel cell-based laptops in previous years, but each time technology launches have been delayed.

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August 24, 2007 by dinofond.

The Alpha Auriga, or Aurigids, meteor shower is expected to be either dull or spectacular, depending on the astronomer talking. It will be seen from August 25 to September 8, 2007.

By William Atkins

The peak viewing time for the meteor shower is early morning on Saturday, September 1, 2007, when tens of shooting stars, maybe up to 100, will be seen skirting across the sky from the constellation Auriga. In the past, only about an average of 9 meteors were seen, with maximum amounts of up to 30 observed in 1935 and 1986.

Specifically, the one hour centered around 4:33 am PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) is the peak time, but the entire time possible to see the shooting stars is about two hours. The shower will be visible from locations in the western United States (primarily west of the Rocky Mountains), including Alaska and Hawaii, and from Mexico and the western provinces of Canada.

The shower should contain bright fireballs (some as bright as stars) and strangely colored meteors (such as blue-green).

The origin of the meteors from Auriga is the Comet Kiess (C/1911 N1), which some time around AD 4 (give or take about 40 years) passed by the Sun close enough so that a cloud of dust particles was ejected. Its orbit is a highly elliptical (long-period) comet that has passed into the inner solar system only twice in that last two thousand years.

Its second trip caused the Auriga meteor shower for the years 1935, 1986, 1994, and now in 2007. Most of the time these dust particles miss the orbit of the Earth, but in these four years, they moved into the path of Earth, to give us this meteor shower called the Aurigids.

Will we actually see the meteors shooting across the sky?

Bill Cooke, of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office (Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, United States), comments: “We have so little experience with ancient debris from long-period comets. Almost anything could happen—from a fizzle to a beautiful meteor shower.”

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