Resonate With Resin: New Eco-Friendly Battery Created From Pine & Alfalfa

While lithium batteries have been the standard as small, portable power sources for decades now, their difficulty to the environment is undeniable.  Now, researchers from Uppsala have used organic materials to create a new and effective battery that requires a great deal less environmental trouble.

According to sciencedaily.com, lithium itself is a rare element on Earth, and the process of extracting it is arduous.  Other chemicals involved in traditional batteries are not only rare but also require toxic chemicals to aid in the extraction process that makes them viable to the battery design.  The premise behind the new batteries, which are constructed in part from pine resin and alfalfa, involves recycling the lithium from older batteries and continuing to utilize it, with help from the more-amenable biomaterials.

An astonishing 99% of power was recovered from the "spent" lithium batteries when used in conjunction with the new biomaterial battery design.  Further developments in the future may even be able to improve on this, making lithium-ion batteries ever-more attractive options for sparking and storing energy in the future.  This could be beneficial in particular for the electric automobile industry, or the storage systems required for implementation of large-scale solar power.

Daniel Brandell, Senior Lecturer of Uppsala University's chemistry department, explained, "The use of organic materials from renewable sources makes it possible to solve several of the problems that would arise from a huge rise in the use of lithium batteries. But above all, it's a major step forward that, to a high degree and in a simple, environment-friendly way, the lithium from these batteries can be recovered. These solutions are also potentially very cost-effective."

Thus, recycling our rare-earth material and mixing it with regular-earth material might just be the perfect way to keep us powered up for years to come.

PINE POWER!

Text On Fire: New "FireChat" Service Connects Phones Under The Radar

While not stirring up a lot of coverage in the Western world, the current pro-Democracy protests in China are benefiting humanity with more than just a shot at free speech. Namely, in conjunction with a new texting service, now they're showing how many people can use their free speech, internet-free.

According to the independent.co.uk, FireChat is an iOS-based text messaging service that is able to operate without cellphone or internet service, making it ideal for revolutionaries in communications-restricted countries. FireChat uses Bluetooth to create "mesh networking" with other phones in the area, strengthening the connection and allowing for discussion.

FireChat does not aim to be the exclusive domain of the repressed, saying it could be useful "on the beach or in the subway, at a big game or a trade show, camping in the wild or at a concert, or even travelling abroad, simply fire up the app with a friend or two and find out who else is there."

Current numbers suggest that already tens of thousands of people are using the FireChat app at any given time, so fire it up and see what's up.

Hear hear.  (Students on the streets of Hong Kong, protesting and pro-texting.  Image courtesy lesechos.fr.)

Snuggle Up To New Hug-Hunting App, "Cuddlr"

Aw, there there. Does someone need a hug? Well, now instead of dealing with the peskiness of generating affection from any conventional source, a new app will help you get held, nicely (but nonsexually.)

According to techanalyzer.net, the new app Cuddlr is "a location-based social-meeting app for cuddling." You read that right. Not relationships, not hookups, just hugs. It requires users to be 17+ (to presumably prevent statutory hugging) and is currently available on iOS (their Android release is set for 2015.)

Creator Charlie Williams feels that he is fulfilling a yet-unexplored social connection gap, explaining, "We don’t have a space for this in our culture...there’s not a way to have physical affection that isn’t tied to sex. I think there should be. Not with any random person on the street, but perhaps with some carefully selected random people? Definitely."

Prospective embracers can try out "test cuddles" to see if they're down with random snugglers, and frequent users can earn "reputation points" for the security and quality of their hugs.

Shh, there there. Feel better now? Oh ok, one more time. That's right, hug it out. It'll be okay.

Don't get so desperate that you end up hugging tigers.  Use Cuddlr instead.

Shrug Off "Atlas", Facebook's New Ad-Stalking Network

You are a target.  Your likes, dislikes, and desires, as manifested via the internet, make you prime material for directed advertising, and social media giant Facebook knows it.  That's why they're stepping in to make their ads follow you around the internet, like a lost dog of consumerism, or perhaps an over-egregious door-to-door salesman inside your screen.

According to mashable.com, the targeted ads will start following you immediately.  You selections and mentions on facebook help them to direct material that they think you will be prone to clicking on, and thus your creepily-pertinent ad distractions will appear if you visit other facebook-affiliated sites (such as Amazon or various news outlets.)

Facebook's new ad network, Atlas, is responsible for this collection and dispersal.  A former Microsoft company which Facebook purchased for $100 million last year, Atlas tracks your verbiage and serves up what it feels is appropriate topical consumer choices.  Atlas CEO Erik Johnson stated this is superior to the logging of your info by your computer's "cookies", stating in a blog post that, "Cookies don’t work on mobile, are becoming less accurate in demographic targeting and can’t easily or accurately measure the customer purchase funnel across browsers and devices or into the offline world."

Now that they've stepped up their game, so can you.  Services like Adblock, Ghostery, NoScript and Disconnect.me can help to combat the ever-encroaching e-eyeballs and protect your privacy.  So if you've ever had the sneaking suspicion that your paper trail needs to be burned, now you know how to fire it up.

You don't want to be on the shoulders of the Atlas that hefts the world wide web.

Space Station Sunday: The Hair Up There

This week, the International Space Station welcomed three new crewmates, NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Russian cosmonauts Yelena Serova and Alexander Samokutyaev. Their Soyuz space capsule blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan last Thursday afternoon, and docked safely at the ISS after a six-hour flight.

Cosmonaut Serova is an interesting addition to the ISS crew. According to the BBC, the 38-year-old engineer has been training for seven years for her role on the ISS, where she now holds the title of the first-ever Russian female cosmonaut on the space station. One of only four Russian female cosmonauts to ever go into space, Serova has tolerated annoying questions regarding her femininity as it pertains to her job, replying to one question on her prospective hairstyling in space with the rejoinder, "Aren't you interested in the hair styles of my {male} colleagues?" (Full disclosure: during the World Cup, we sure were.)

Regarding the other new crew members, according to NASA, cosmonaut Samokutyaev is currently on his second tour of duty to the ISS, having previously served as a flight engineer on Expedition 27/28 in 2011. Astronaut Wilson is the former pilot of the space shuttle Atlantis, and spent 11 days on the ISS during a mission in 2009.

The delivery of the new crew was the second arrival at the ISS last week, as an unmanned SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule successfully docked on Tuesday. The capsule contains, among other things, a special delivery of zebrafish, which will live in the Japanese "Kibo" module's Aquatic Habitat and will be studied for their particular manifestations of muscle atrophy (a major problem in micro-gravity.) Hopefully the research will allow new breakthroughs to be made in counteracting this issue.

Other experiments delivered by the Dragon include a Rapid Scatterometer, which examines how winds over the Earth's oceans can affect weather patterns. A delivery of experimental mice were also transported up, along with a habitat and research tools pertinent to the mice-mission. No word has yet been offered on how the mice plan on styling their fur.

See you next week...watch this space!

The new crew celebrates their safe arrival on the ISS.  Serova, front left, has proven her media-fascinating hair choice (a classic bun) to be stylistically auspicious in the micro-gravity environment (which is prone to creating bad hair days.)  

Dead Drop: Darknet Service Will Be Your Whistleblower If You Mysteriously Disappear

It's hard out there for a whistleblower.  With Bradley "Chelsea" Manning in extreme custody, Edward Snowden hiding out in Russia, and numerous other knowledge-droppers dead under sketchy circumstances, one would be deterred before breathing a word of any new top-secret info - no matter how damning.  However, if you do happen to have your hands on some hot intel, and fear for your safety because of it, a new service will release your documents if you end up disappearing or dead.

The service, called Dead Man Zero, is accessible only through the deep web.  According to vice.com, it costs around $120 (paid in bitcoin.)  One uploads their files to a secure cloud, then the site requires password updates (set at a variable time preference by the user), which if not established will trigger a release of the documents to the user's desired outlets (lawyers, journalists, etc.)

“So what if something happens to you?” Dead Man Zero's site ponders. "Especially if you're trying to do something good like blow the whistle on something evil or wrong in society or government. There should be consequences if you are hurt, jailed, or even killed for trying to render a genuine and risky service to our free society...Now you have some protection. If 'something happens' to you, then your disclosures can be made public regardless.”

It adds, "If events overtake you, you can still overtake your adversaries."

Of course, for anyone paranoid enough to use this service, a secondary dose of worry ensues.  Is the cloud secure enough?  Will the site sustain long enough to make certain my documents really do survive me?  Will they follow through with their promise despite what the intel may contain?  Yes, it is a gamble.  But so is possessing information worthy of this kind of necessity.  For true protection of what is too dangerous for public knowledge, it's either a service like this, or a buried chest full of documents and some keys distributed to your close associates...which do you feel is truly the safest?

You could always test their security by uploading a treasure map to the cloud and laying booby traps for anyone who comes after it.  Just an option.

Seared And Re-Engineered: Bioprinting "Living Bandages" For Burn Victims

The 3D printing revolution surges forward, and is now able to literally heal your wounds.  Scientists announced this week that 3D printed skin cells will be able to be applied to burned flesh to make it heal faster and become new again.

This amazing new development, as reported by the International Business Times, was invented at the University of Toronto, and takes an innovative approach to burn treatment.  While the successive layers of exterior and interior skin tissue (epidermis and dermis) have different cell structures and would normally require careful construction to individually repair, the scientists working on the PrintAlive project have created a "living bandage" to safely ensconce the wounded area in a healing hydrogel.

The PrintAlive bioprinter creates what is not exactly a skin graft, but rather an amalgamation of the patient's own skin tissue cells (keratinocytes and fibroblasts) along with cell nutrients, which fuse with a biopolymer that is then printed in stripes or spots to localize care as needed by the recipient.  The successive layers of skin tissue are printed together, so they will interact with the body as normally as possible to protect the damaged flesh until the wound heals itself.

Despite human trials being some 2-3 years away, the PrintAlive technology was advanced enough to win Canada's division of the prestigious James Dyson award in 2014.  The award is given to "the best student industrial or product projects in 18 countries that are able to solve a problem." They will now be competing internationally for a grand prize of $50,000 in funds.

But remember kids, just because we have this...

...doesn't mean you should do this.