March 2008 Archives

Paul Wright and his mechanical engineering students mounted a temperature sensor under a staircase at the University of California, Berkeley and fed its readings into the stairwell's thermostat.

ENERGY-RICH VIBRATIONS. Engineer Paul Wright and his students put this temperature sensor under a wooden stairway, where it scavenged all the energy it needed from vibrations generated by students clomping up and down. Wright

ENERGY-RICH VIBRATIONS. Engineer Paul Wright and his students put this temperature sensor under a wooden stairway, where it scavenged all the energy it needed from vibrations generated by students clomping up and down. Wright The sensor, which was about the size of a quarter, had no power cord or batteries. Instead, the device extracted the energy it needed from the vibrations that shook the wooden staircase as students clomped up and down between classes.

"The 1990s marked this very interesting period in which devices for computing, communication, and sensing all became much cheaper and much, much smaller," explains Wright. He's an engineer who has worked in robotics and computer science and is currently chief scientist at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interests of Society, a multicampus program supported by the state of California.

The most obvious result of the miniaturization was a wild proliferation of cell phones, personal digital assistants, MP3 players, and other portable gadgets. But in parallel, Wright says, "researchers were led to this picture of wireless sensor networks everywhere"—in effect, an electronic nervous system that reports on both the built environment and the natural landscape.

In the not-so-distant future, for example, bridges could tell us whether they had been damaged in an earthquake.

Office buildings could track the locations of their occupants, automatically adjusting the lights and air conditioning for maximum comfort and minimum energy use. Automobiles could talk to each other—and to the road—in an effort to avoid both accidents and traffic jams. Implantable sensors could continuously monitor blood-glucose levels and a host of other medical conditions. And webs of environmental sensors could monitor the health of remote ecosystems, tracking moisture, temperature, micronutrients, pollutants, and many other variables. All these developments would rely on networks of minuscule sensors

Energy scavenging is not a new idea. Self-winding wristwatches, in which a tiny mechanical oscillator extracts energy from the wearer's arm movements, first appeared in the 1920s. And, of course, windmills and water wheels have been harvesting natural energy for thousands of years. But the current wave of interest in energy scavenging for microelectronics began in the late 1990s—initially because researchers were looking for a better way to power the newly devised portable devices.

Energy-scavenging researchers turned their focus from relatively power-hungry portable electronic devices to a new generation of far-more-thrifty gadgets made with microelectromechanical-systems (MEMS) technology.

From an energy-scavenging standpoint, the great advantage of MEMS sensors is that they typically require only about 100 microwatts of power—a thousandth of what portable consumer electronic devices typically need. Such minuscule quantities of energy abound in the environment: in vibrations, temperature gradients, sunlight, and so on.

The challenge is to make effective use of that energy. The first thing to keep in mind is that there is no all-purpose solution.

SOURCE: Read the entire fascinating article at ScienceNews.org

CALIFORNIA RESOURCE:
Paul K. Wright
5133 Etcheverry Hall, Mail Stop 1740
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1740

Storm Over Adding Wind Coverage to Federal Flood Insurance:

  "Congress is seriously considering taking insurance coverage for wind
damage away from private insurers. Lobbyists for the industry are battling
to keep the business where it is.  The tug of war began in 2005 with
Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed the homes of Rep. Gene Taylor (D) and
some of his relatives and friends in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Taylor was and
remains irate that he and others were compensated only for flood damage and
not -- until they sued -- for the ravages of wind.  ...  Taylor wrote
legislation that would add wind damage to the flood coverage that is
already underwritten by the federal government. His proposal passed the
House of Representatives last year as part of a broad renewal of the
soon-to-expire National Flood Insurance Program. The plan, which is backed
by Gulf-state lawmakers and House Democratic leaders, is pending in the
Senate." 

Columnist Jeffrey H. Birnbaum writes for the Washington Post
March 25, 2008.

We can't live the same way we've been living and expect different results! We are facing mass extinction of many of the millions of species that weave our natural systems and biosphere. This is serious business and only by facing the pain can we understand deeply enough to change what we are doing TODAY.

What do you do when you see the scope of the damage happening around us today? Getting past denial is step one. This short film will help us face reality.

This is a preview from "Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction," a feature documentary now in production.

This is a preview from "Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction," a feature documentary now in production. The loss of biodiversity on earth has become so acute that scientists are now calling it a "mass extinction event." The crisis has many causes, all of which are related to human activity. Through interviews with eminent biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, historians, and many others, the film not only presents the facts of the shocking decline, it also explores the ways in which culture and psychology have conspired to determine our collective and individual response to this situation, and how the latest insights into natural systems could help us turn back the tide.

The film weaves biology, psychology, and cultural history into a clear and accessible story of our changing world. The audience is taken into the depths of the human psyche, through the toughest problems of our times and into the cutting edge of what nature has to teach us. The mass extinction is quite possibly the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced. Those of us alive today have been given a choice—one last opportunity to save the diversity of our planet. The decisions we make or fail to make in the next few years will affect the habitability of earth for millennia to come. This is the greatest adventure of all time—with the future of life itself in the balance. Species Alliance

A new Web-based portal developed at the University of California, Berkeley, provides consumers with specific, personalized information they need to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. Virtually everything we do results in the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide.

The new portal, found at http://www.CoolCalifornia.org , is the only "carbon footprint calculator" that can be used to evaluate both direct and indirect emissions of greenhouse gases related to individual lifestyle choices.

It provides localized emissions estimates for transportation, housing, food, goods and services, as well as resources that can help users make more climate-friendly choices.

The calculator was designed by researchers at the Berkeley Institute of the Environment, in partnership with the California Air Resources Board, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the California Energy Commission, and the independent, nonpartisan organization Next 10.

Researchers expect the tool to play an important role in changing the way Californians think about, monitor and address their personal climate footprints. For more information, contact director of public affairs for the UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources Cyril Manning, (510) 643-1722, cyril@berkeley.edu.