Goodbye Fluorescent Bulb? Philips Says Yes.

By Toby Sterling – Royal Philips NV, the Dutch consumer appliances giant, said Thursday (Apr 11) that it has developed an LED light that will soon be far more efficient than the best fluorescents on the market. That should make it cheaper and greener, as well.

It’s a combination that will inevitably help the LED dominate the market for illuminating the world’s workplaces, according to the global leader in lighting sales.

“This is a major step forward for the lighting world,” said Rene van Schooten, CEO of Philips’ light sources division. “It will bring an enormous savings in energy.” more> http://tinyurl.com/cxl6d8j

• LED price battle heats up as Osram launches 10-euro bulb, Reuters
• Goodbye fluorescent bulb? Philips says yes, Toby Sterling, Associated Press/Yahoo
• Philips Unveils 200 Lumen-Per-Watt LED Tube Lamp, Cutting Energy Use in Half, Paul Strauss, technabob.com
• Addressing Fears About LED Light Bulbs, David Pogue, NYTimes.com

Nuclear fusion-powered rocket could send humans to Mars

R&D Magazine – “Using existing rocket fuels, it’s nearly impossible for humans to explore much beyond Earth,” says lead researcher John Slough, a UW research associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics. “We are hoping to give us a much more powerful source of energy in space that could eventually lead to making interplanetary travel commonplace.”

The research team has developed a type of plasma that is encased in its own magnetic field. Nuclear fusion occurs when this plasma is compressed to high pressure with a magnetic field. The team has successfully tested this technique in the laboratory.

Only a small amount of fusion is needed to power a rocket—a small grain of sand of this material has the same energy content as 1 gallon of rocket fuel. more> http://tinyurl.com/d34e3f3

Quantum Cryptography Secures the Electrical Grid

By Cabe Atwell – The variability of renewable sources are mainly caused by weather fluctuation, but can also be complicated by their long-distance location from heavily populated areas. This uncertainty is handled by grid management systems that properly allocate available renewable energy sources when available, but also quickly switches the energy supply to conventional reserves when a deficit occurs; a similar method is employed for energy excesses. To safeguard the grid’s management system, scientists hope to employ the latest encrypted data security measure — quantum cryptography.

A team of researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory has successfully demonstrated the use of the new technology to safeguard data transmission. Quantum cryptography exploits the use of physics, rather than mathematical methods, to safely transmit data over long distances. more> http://tinyurl.com/ckp3o3x

Boeing: New Enclosure ‘Keeps Us From Ever Having a Fire’

By Charles Murray – The Boeing Co. took the issue of 787 battery fires head-on last night, definitively declaring that with pending modifications to its lithium-ion battery packs, a “fire can’t begin, develop, or be sustained.”

The key to preventing fires is to carefully control the amount of available oxygen, Mike Sinnett, vice president and chief engineer of the 787 program said. Describing a potential scenario, he explained that the pressure disc in the rear of the enclosure would open after about 1.5 seconds of cell venting. Vented electrolyte would then entrain the air inside the enclosure and “take it overboard… So as long as we keep the vented air out of the battery enclosure, there’s no oxygen to support combustion.” more> http://tinyurl.com/cp5q43s

Related>

• Boeing puts 787 battery through tough tests it once avoided, Alwyn Scott and Peter Henderson, Reuters
• Airbus sells 234 planes to Lion Air in $24 billion deal, Reuters

The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley’s big talk on innovation

By James Temple – “Technology innovation in this country is somewhere between dire straits and dead,” said the PayPal co-founder Max Levchin.

Venture capitalists are eager to cash out on their investments in as few years as possible, which requires products ready to ship and stable financial track records. And the public markets don’t reward big risks; they applaud predictable growth.

Private markets are loath to put up the billions of dollars and patiently wait a decade or more, yet that’s precisely what’s needed to develop breakthrough drugs, disruptive clean energy technologies or that new, new thing you and I can’t yet imagine.
more> http://tinyurl.com/bgyrm4m