Shiny things that caught my eye.

Tleilaxu eyes

Engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.

"Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is generating superimposed on the world outside," said Babak Parviz, a UW assistant professor of electrical engineering. "This is a very small step toward that goal, but I think it's extremely promising." . . .

There are many possible uses for virtual displays. Drivers or pilots could see a vehicle's speed projected onto the windshield. Video-game companies could use the contact lenses to completely immerse players in a virtual world without restricting their range of motion. And for communications, people on the go could surf the Internet on a midair virtual display screen that only they would be able to see. . .

Building the lenses was a challenge because materials that are safe for use in the body, such as the flexible organic materials used in contact lenses, are delicate. Manufacturing electrical circuits, however, involves inorganic materials, scorching temperatures and toxic chemicals. Researchers built the circuits from layers of metal only a few nanometers thick, about one thousandth the width of a human hair, and constructed light-emitting diodes one third of a millimeter across. They then sprinkled the grayish powder of electrical components onto a sheet of flexible plastic. The shape of each tiny component dictates which piece it can attach to, a microfabrication technique known as self-assembly. Capillary forces – the same type of forces that make water move up a plant's roots, and that cause the edge of a glass of water to curve upward – pull the pieces into position.

The prototype contact lens does not correct the wearer's vision, but the technique could be used on a corrective lens, Parviz said. And all the gadgetry won't obstruct a person's view.

The U.S. currently produces roughly 30 trillion cubic feet of gas a year, and these numbers are dropping. According to Engelder, the technology exists to recover 50 trillion cubic feet of gas from the Marcellus, thus keeping the U.S. production up. If this recovery is realized, the Marcellus reservoir would be considered a Super Giant gas field. . .

The natural fractures in the Marcellus shale are the key to recovering large amounts of gas. As heavily organic sediments were laid down 365 million years ago, the black shale of the Marcellus formed. As the organic material decayed and degraded, methane and other components of natural gas formed and dispersed through the pores in the rock. About 300 million years ago, the pressure of the gas caused fractures to form in the shale. It was not until 280 million years ago that the eastern portion of Pennsylvania was pushed into the folding of the ridge and valley province that makes up that area. Gas that occurs in pockets underground is considered a conventional reservoir; gas that is distributed throughout the rock, like the Marcellus, is called an unconventional reservoir.

The Penn State-Fredonia approach is not restricted to production of the Marcellus shale, but can be applied to any gas-bearing shale with this type of fracture. Because the approach begins with a vertical well and then drills horizontally in the direction that will crosscut the productive fractures, old vertical wells can be reused.

"We can go back to wells that are already drilled and played out, and then drill horizontal from there," says Engelder. "Reusing old wells has both economic and environmental value."

Anaerobic microbes in the Earth's oceans consume 90 percent of the methane produced by methane hydrates – methane trapped in ice – preventing large amounts of methane from reaching the atmosphere. Researchers now have evidence that the two microbes that accomplish this feat do not simply reverse the way methane-producing microbes work, but use a sulfur compound instead. . .

The two single-celled organisms that live in the consortia arrange themselves in a cluster of about 100 cells 10 to 15 microns across. The microbes that consume methane are on the inside while those microbes-reducing sulfur are on the outside. These consortia live in the sediments on the ocean bottom around methane seeps.

Understanding how these symbiotic organisms remove methane from the oceans is important because, House notes that without these microbes, the atmospheric temperature would likely be warmer by about 14 degrees Fahrenheit. . .

"In climate models, researchers generally only consider the methane produced in bogs and lakes as dominant greenhouse gases," says House. "They do not need to consider ocean methane because these microbes destroy most of it before it is released from the sediments."

Update: UltraBattery

The UltraBattery combines a supercapacitor and a lead acid battery in a single unit, creating a hybrid car battery that lasts longer, costs less and is more powerful than current technologies used in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). . .

tests show the UltraBattery has a life cycle that is at least four times longer and produces 50 per cent more power than conventional battery systems. It’s also about 70 per cent cheaper than the batteries currently used in HEVs,” . . .

The UltraBattery test program for HEV applications is the result of an international collaboration. The battery system was developed by CSIRO in Australia, built by the Furukawa Battery Company of Japan and tested in the United Kingdom through the American-based Advanced Lead-Acid Battery Consortium.

UltraBattery technology also has applications for renewable energy storage from wind and solar.