Interesting Stuff

The following items came from a weekly list of technology news by www.kurzweilai.net

It makes for interesting reading, seeing where different minds are focused and what they are developing and exploring...

A more efficient generator could convert more of the wind's energy into electricity.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/21666/?a=f

ExRo Technologies, a startup based in Vancouver, BC, has developed a new kind of generator that's well suited to harvesting energy from wind. It could lower the cost of wind turbines while increasing their power output by 50 percent.

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Will the Next Ice Age Be a Very Long One?
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/will-next-ice-age-be-very-very-long/

A new analysis of the dramatic cycles of ice ages and warm intervals over the past million years, published in Nature, concludes that the climatic swings are the gyrations of a system poised to settle into a quasi-permanent colder state — with expanded ice sheets at both poles.

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The world's first Stirling hybrid electric car
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?articleId=1b081989-f67b-458e-8e42-913c8568fb36

Installed in the car's trunk compartment is a Stirling engine invented at DEKA, Kamen's technology company in the Manchester Millyard. It powers the features that would normally drain huge power from the battery, notably the defroster and heater.

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Tricked-Out Inflatable House Provides "Instant Survival"
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/inflatable-hous.html

In tough circumstances, sometimes all you need is hope, but other times you need a blow-up survival shelter featuring a bed, a couch, freeze-dried food, a 50-gallon water bladder, a first-aid kit, a radio and a cookstove. And the latter is exactly what the "Life Cube" from startup Inflatable World is designed to provide.

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Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/miniature-nuclear-reactors-los-alamos#history-byline

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb. The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

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