Convenient and Eco-friendly Cell Phone Chargers

Turns out many companies are creating greener and more convenient cell phone chargers.  How many times have you forgotten to charge your phone at night, and the charge does not make it through the day?  Many of these new chargers rely on solar energy, so as long as you are outside or near a window during the day, you can receive a cell phone charge.  Here is a link to the charger for the iPhone, the Solar iPhone glove.  There are a number of different companies producing chargers to fit many popular model phones.  Solar chargers would come in handy at tailgates, at the beach, at a baseball games and many other events, even just walking down the street.  The better models can fully charge a phone in as little as 30 minutes.

Picture from: http://www.solio.com/charger/solio-charger-classic.html

Coming out later this year will be a bike charger kit built by Nokia.  Although a bike charger might not be as relative for the U.S. there are many other countries where bikes are a common form of transportation and could be the primary energy source for charging.   Charging cell phones may not be a large proportion of energy consumption, but every little bit will help.  Little innovations such as eco-friendly cell phone chargers will lead us in the direction of making even greater advances of renewable energy in the future.

Clean Water in Disaster Relief

After talking about water purification methods to help people in the developing world this week I remembered a video I saw a few months ago.  I looked it up and found the presentation by Michael Pritchard on the TED website.

After learning about the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Catrina in 2005, Michael Pritchard was inspired to create the LifeSaver water bottle.   It took the United States of America five days to get clean drinking water to the Super Dome for survivors.  Prior to this bottle, the best hand filters could only strain out particles of about 200 nm or larger.   Many bacteria, and viruses are smaller than this and would therefore not be filtered out.  The pores of the newly created LifeSaver bottle are 15nm wide.  This means that even the smallest bacteria and virus cannot get through.

The black base in the above is removable and dirty water is placed in the chamber.  The pump at the bottom is pumped, and when the yellow cap is removed clean water comes out.  This bottle can be used for 6,000 liters and when the purification technology is expired the system will shut itself off.

Pritchard sees this as a life saving device that can be used in disaster relief. When a disaster such as a hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami happen clean water is shipped in and people set up camps.  With the congregration of people comes the spread of disease and the need for more resources rises.  Instead of shipping water bottles, Pritchard wants LifeSaver bottles to be used.  If given to people in crisis, it will allow them to stay put.  This will help them get on with the rebuilding of their lives and homes.  The same technology can be used in larger canisters to be more convenient for families.  The cost of using this technology is only half a cent per day.  Although this is not a solution for providing a water source, but if a water source is available, it is a great way to provide potable water for billions of people around the world.

The Future of Radio Frequency Identification Tags

In the past RFID tags have been used for such things as the tracking of goods, vehicles, airliners and even Alzheimer's patients.  The basics of an RFID tag are that there are two parts: and integrated circuit, and an antenna.  The integrated circuit is used for storing and processing information, and the antenna is used to transmit the signal.

www.gereports.com

GE has been developing RFID tags that can also detect the presence of harmful chemical agents in the air.  These tags will potentially record and transmit information regarding a persons health and the environment in which they live in.  According to a principal scientist at GE Global Research this technology could be used with a number of interesting applications.  One such example would be for analyzing a person's breath.  Based on the chemicals in a persons breath, the sensor could potentially pick up on the early warning signs of certain diseases such as diabetes and cancer.  The sensors could also be useful in occupational health monitoring as well as physiological and metabolic studies.  Late last year GE received an award from the National Institutes of Health to help them further develop a real-time, wearable sensor.

GE has also been working on RFID tags that detect and report back food spoilage.  An RFID sticker attached to the outside of a milk carton can smell the milk through the packaging and send a wireless alert when the milk goes bad.  This could very helpful in preventing the consumption of spoiled food as well as supporting much more efficient food recalls than we have seen in the past. The possibilities for the applications of RFID tags are endless and I am sure that we will be hearing a lot about them in the future.



http://www.gereports.com/wearable-airborne-chemical-sensor-wins-nih-award/

http://www.printedelectronicsworld.com/articles/wearable_rfid_sensors_to_detect_airborne_toxins_00002050.asp