Lattes in Your Gas Tank?

January 5, 2009 – 12:17 pm

 

Have you ever smelled a car that runs on waste vegetable oil? Or maybe you’ve never been in the car, but can identify the driver by his McDonald’s like smell? Well, researchers at the University of Nevada have found a new source of biofuel that will instead make you smell like a fresh cup of Starbucks. That’s right. Researchers have found a new way to recycle used coffee grinds into viable biofuel.

The whole idea occurred as most amazing discoveries do…by accident. One of the chief researchers left a cup of coffee on his desk overnight and noticed a ‘kind of oil around the edge of the cup’. He decided to bring in the specimen for tests and stumbled across more than he bargained for.

Coffee grounds contain 10 to 15 percent oil by weight. The process extracts the oil and converts it to biodiesel. The researchers collected a bunch of grinds from a locals Starbucks and found that the process breaks fown to about a dollar a gallon for the coffee biodiesel. 

The Department of Agriculture estimates global coffee production at over 7.2 million tons annually. The biggest problem is the collection of the waste for conversion. I’m not excited about driving a car that smells like French fries, but I might be able to support owning a car that smells like fresh brewed Starbucks. Could you?

Jeffrey Rodriguez is a business developer / web ninja for Aorist Technical Staffing.

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Hydrokinetic Turbines

December 29, 2008 – 2:42 pm

Ever hear of a hydrokinetic turbine? For those of you who can’t break it down from the words its comprised of, it’s basically a fan that can draw power from the motion of the water that passes through it. It’s a like a dam, but a lot more cost-effective. The nation’s first has just been placed into the Mississippi River near it’s source in Minnesota. It is being installed in conjunction with an existing dam and is expected to increase the dam’s current output by 5 percent. 

The cool thing about hydrokinetic turbines is that, when compared to land based turbines, can provide ‘840 to 850 times the energy density of win’. The only problem they are currently facing is that there is no legislative backbone for these types of projects, so the regulatlory process is as intensive as a major dam project. Most current projects have found a way around this by latching themselves on to existing dam projects that have already met regulatory constraints.

Congress has already passed a bill that will give tax incentives to these tubrines starting in 2016. There are also plans to put one in the East River in New York City. My only question is this: Apart from the regulatory issues attached to doing these projects away from a dam, wouldn’t it be much more effective to install these turbines at the mouth of the river where the flow is a lot more rapid? If this technology catches on, I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.

Jeffrey Rodriguez is business developer / web ninja at Aorist Technical Staffing.

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The Girl With No Heart

December 10, 2008 – 11:43 am

D’Zhana Simmons, a fourteen year old girl from North Carolina, was recently released from Miami Holtz Children’s Hospital. She finally obtained her second donor heart nearly four months after her initial transplant was rejected. The amazing thing is that she lived for 118 days without a heart, her blood circulating via two blood pumps made by Thoratec Corp of California.

D’Zhana suffered from a disease called dilated cardiomyopathy. It is an enlargement of the heart that causes the heart to weaken and reduces flow to the rest of the body. Without treatment, it will lead to medical complications and eventually death.

There is another recorded case of a patient living for nine months without a heart in Germany, but it was an adult patient. This is the first time a pediatric patient has undergone such a procedure.

Her prognosis looks good, although nearly 50 percent of heart transplant recipients require a new heart in less than 15 years after their initial transplants. She beat the odds once, and hopefully she’ll do it again.

Jeffrey Rodriguez is a business developer / web ninja for Aorist Technical Staffing.

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Resistance Is Futile

December 1, 2008 – 12:38 pm

Isaac Asimov came up with the Three Laws of Robotics which all robots must obey in order to prevent ultimate destruction of mankind. The US is planning to invest nearly $4 billion to design robots that will be able to fight without killing indiscriminately.

This is a complicated project as evidenced by The Terminator films and several other science fiction movies and books. Somehow, if you give robots the ability to become sentient, they automatically decide to use their ‘brainpower’ to overpower their creators and take over the world.

The largest question seems to be whether or not we can develop robots that can confor to the laws of war, such as the Geneva Conventions. It seems to me that this is the easiest part. A robot is a computer and all that a computer does is follow rules. Therefore, the ‘rule following’ mechanism would follow as the easiest part of the puzzle.

I see the hardest part is in determining what is enemy and what is not. How will a robot be able to tell the difference between a soldier carrying a firearm and say, a child carrying a super soaker. Without highly precise systems that can determine makes and physical properties of objects, this will be a huge problem to overcome.

We already use a large number of robots in our armed services. However, every one of these robots are human controlled. A Predator drone, a common robot used by the US military, employs six individuals working around the clock for it to function.

Some more cynical people fear the Doomsday scenario. Noel Sharkey, the creator of the Robot Wars television series is terrified of the possibilities. ‘I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination is terrifying’. The only problem I see with designing such technology is that all it takes is one rogue scientist to not program the ‘Three Laws’ into his robots to create enough chaos for us all to regret.

Will these robots be designed to look like humans? I seriously doubt that developers are planning to go that route. They more than likely will look a lots like remote controlled cars or, at best, four legged beasts. We have yet to develop a reliable walking mechanism for a two-legged robot that can compensate as a human being does.

I think we’re probably ten years away from this being a reality, but the idea is awesome enough to fill my imagination for at least the next few weeks.

Jeffrey Rodriguez is a business developer / web ninja for Aorist Technical Staffing.

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Cooling Outside of the Box

November 25, 2008 – 5:39 pm

Over a billion people don’t have access to important vacccines because they lack electricity, and more importantly, refrigeration. As a result, researchers are constantly seeking ways to develop vaccines that can work at non-refrigerated temperatures. This research hasn’t yielded much in ways of a solution. By thinking outside of the box, Adam Grosser found another way.

He decided that rather than making vaccines that don’t need refrigeration, he should make refrigeration an easily accessible commodity. He developed a way to create a device that releases a refrigerant when the device is heated. It can turn virtually anything into a refrigerator. 

Check out his talk at the TED conference. If you haven’t seen the TED talks before, I recommend tham. They are all inspiring.

Click here to watch a video of him explaining the technology.

Jeffrey Rodriguez is a business developer /  web ninja at Aorist Technical Staffing.

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Keeping Bridges Safe

November 17, 2008 – 2:50 pm

Many of us travel over bridges on our daily commutes. In fact, some of us drive long distances on these bridges. When was the last time your bridge was tested for structural integrity? What type of testing was done. Thankfully, there are people concentrating on these topics so we can drive safely without worry of a bridge collapse.

Often, bridge testing is done manually, with engineers actually walking the span of the bridge, looking for racks and irregularities. German and Italian scientists have worked together to develop a system that will hopefully make this process much more accurate and efficient.

They have created image processing software that will systematically analyze photographic images of the bridges, documenting cracks and troublesome areas. The software will compile the data and transmit it to engineers who can compare the new data to the previously collected images. The comparisons will allow scientists and engineers to see faults and potential issues long before the previous technology would have allowed.

The largest problem they are facing is the wide variety of bridges and designs. The discolorations and other signifiers may be different based on the material and design of the bridge. The software handles this by using unique data for each bridge being analyzed, so it will only be compared to itself. Hopefully, this technology will prevent future bridge collapses and keep all of us safe on our work commutes.

Jeffrey Rodriguez is a business developer / web ninja for Aorist Technical Staffing.

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Real-life Iron Man Suits

November 10, 2008 – 12:45 pm

A company in Japan has developed the first prototypes of a robotic suit that can help disabled and elderly people walk as well as climb up and down stairs. The company is called Cyberdyne and the ‘hybrid assisted limb’ is nicknamed ‘HAL’. With those two names, this comapany’s marketing team has obviously never heard of the ‘The Terminator’ or watched ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Either that, or they have a twisted sense of humor.

HAL uses special sensors to determine how much effort the individual is able to put towards making the step, and assists by providing the remaining force needed. It’s currently available only in Japan and can be rented for $2200.00 for two legs or $1500.00 for one leg. I’m not sure how the balance/weight differential works on the ‘one-legged’ version.

Cyberdyne claims to be working on a fullsuit model that includes arm assistance as well, but it isn’t ready for release.

For those of you wondering why the US doesn’t have technology as cool as this, we actually do. Click here to check out the amazing XOS EXoskeleton as profiled by Popular Science magazine in April. Eat your hearts out Japan!

Jeffrey Rodriguez is a business developer / web ninja for Aorist Technical Staffing.

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Artificial Heart Breakthrough

November 3, 2008 – 4:58 pm

Last week, French scientists unveiled a spectacular protoype of the human heart that will hopefully become a breakthrough a medical technology. The  developers are funded by the European Space and Defense Group (EADS) and presented the dvice at a press conference last Monday.

Their technology is based on the same technology as satellites and airplanes. This means that, just like an airplane has sensors to measure altitude and air pressure, there are tiny sensors that determine pressure and flow and whether or not the patient is receiving enough blood at any given time.

This machine is the most advanced devloped yet. Previous artifical hearts had only one pump, but this one has two pumps, just like a real heart. So far, it has only been tested in animals, but the results seem optimistic. The cost for the device has been estimated at around $200,000. It would be primarily for those who have suffered a massive heart attack or who have had heart failure.

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Jeffrey Rodriguez is a business developer/web ninja for Aorist Technical Staffing.

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Speed Reading

October 24, 2008 – 4:05 pm

Imagine how much more information we’d be able to process if we had the ability to read faster. There are many speed reading programs out there that guarantee success. Rather than spending all of your money on a course, I will give you some simple tips and a website that you can use to practice.

Tip #1- Use your finger to guide you. Now, I know you’ve probably been under strict instructions not to use your finger while reading. Well, the truth is, if you don’t use your finger, your eyes will dart all over the page and you will have trouble maintaining your exact placement on the page. It is not recommended to go left to right along a page, as this will slow you down, rather use your finger in the middle of the page, and drag it down so you can keep focus on the particular line you’re on. This alone will drastically improve your speed.

Tip #2- Don’t read aloud to yourself. Most of us, when reading for pleasure, tend to subconsciously speak every word we see as if we were reading out loud to a class. Don’t do this. It will slow down your reading speed significantly. It is a hard habit to break, but will definitely pay off in the end result.

Tip #3- Start processing what you’re reading in larger chunks. Rather than digesting each word at a time, take in two or three words, a phrase, a sentence, or even a paragraph all in one quick scan. Our brain can process the words faster than we realize, and once you practice this technique, you’ll realize the difference in speed.

I recently stumbled across this great website that I recommend for practice. It’s called spreeder.com. Here, you can practice your block reading (the hardest part). You can take a large block of text and copy it into the spreeder dialog box. Once you’ve done that, you can select the WPM (words per minute) that you’d like to shoot for. Even better, you can select how many words it displays at once. Start with one word moving very fast, and then turn up the volume to two words. 

With this website and the three tips I’ve given you, you will be speed reading, or ‘spreeding’ along faster than you ever thought was possible.

Jeffrey Rodriguez is a business developer/web ninja at Aorist Technical Staffing.

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‘Brain Fingerprinting’ Is The New Polygraph

October 13, 2008 – 4:45 pm

A Seattle neuroscientist, Dr. Larry Farwell, has developed a machine that he claims can detect whether or not a person is lying. While a polygraph measures body reactions such as GSR (galvanic skin response) and heartbeat, this machine measures brain waves and is supposedly foolproof.

This technology, unlike polygraphs, is admissible in court. Dr. Farwell has worked with law enforcement agencies throughout the country and has already jailed a serial killer and freed an innocent man from behind bars.

There is a bit of resistance coming from some agencies, but Farwell says that is to be expected and was similar for both fingerprinting and DNA evidence.

‘I can’t beat it, and I invented it’, boasts Farwell. He has offered $100,000 to anyone who can beat his machine, and so far, no one has. 

Jeffrey Rodriguez is a web ninja / business developer for Aorist Technical Staffing.

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