Daily Tech News

Everyday, we hear about the giant strides that are being made by various alternative and sustainable energy sources. But by-and-large, the public is still apprehensive about what kind of impact it will have. Basic questions such as, ‘can solar power provide round the clock power?’ or ‘can a regular household afford to switch to solar panels?’ or ‘is it really more cost and energy efficient?’ tend to plague alternative energy solutions—proving that, while it’s slowly gaining attention, large scale use remains elusive and uncertain. But check this out—in India, the  Cochin International Airport , which has been outfitted to provide round-the-clock electricity solely through solar energy, is putting all these apprehensions to rest. Everyday,   we hear about the giant strides  that are being made by various alternative and sustainable energy sources. But by-and-large, the public is still apprehensive about what kind of impact it will have. Basic q...

Boyan Slat, 20-year old founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, today announced that the world’s first system to passively clean up plastic pollution from the world’s oceans is to be deployed in 2016. He made the announcement at Asia’s largest technology conference, Seoul Digital Forum, in South-Korea. The array is projected to be deployed in Q2 2016. The feasibility of deployment, off the coast of Tsushima, an island located in the waters between Japan and South-Korea is currently being researched.  The system will span 2000 meters, thereby becoming the longest floating structure ever deployed in the ocean (beating the current record of 1000 m held by the Tokyo Mega-Float). It will be operational for at least two years, catching plastic pollution before it reaches the shores of the proposed deployment location of Tsushima island. Tsushima island is evaluating whether the plastic can be used as an alternative energy source. The scale of the plastic pollution problem, whereb...

Hundreds of millions of tons of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic are produced each year to package everything from sodas to shampoo. That only a fraction of this is recycled leaves much of it to rest in landfills and the ocean. But efforts to deal with this monumental mess may soon receive a much-needed boost, with scientists in Japan discovering a new bacterium with the ability to completely break down PET plastics in a relatively short space of time. A team led by Dr Shosuke Yoshida from the Kyoto Institute of Technology unearthed the bacterium, quite literally, by scooping up 250 debris samples from outside a PET recycling plant. Among the soil, sludge and other sediments, they discovered a bacterium that was actually feeding on PET as its energy and carbon source. When it was left alone in a jar with PET plastic, the scientists found that the material was completely broken down within a matter of weeks. At the heart of this healthy appetite for plastic were a pa...

Step aside windmills, there's a new way to harvest kinetic energy in the works. A research team at the Ohio State University has created electromechanical devices that look like tiny leafless trees and can generate electricity when they are moved by seismic activity, the slight swaying movements of a tall building, or the vibrations from traffic on a bridge. Before we start envisioning great fields of wriggling tree-like power generators, it should be stated that this idea is for situations where  small  amounts of power are required. In a study published last month, the researchers described their experiments with the new vibrational energy-harvesting platform. "Buildings sway ever so slightly in the wind, bridges oscillate when we drive on them and car suspensions absorb bumps in the road," said project leader Ryan Harne. "In fact, there's a massive amount of kinetic energy associated with those motions that is otherwise lost. We want to recover and re...

Can motorcycles undergo meiosis? If so, Ludovic Lazareth's LM 847 looks like it's got stuck in the process of cell division. Built around a gigantic, 4.7-liter Maserati V8 engine, this terrifying tilting quad bike picks up where the  Dodge Tomahawk  left off, with four single-sided swingarms, rim-mounted brakes, dual hub-centre steering and a bunch of other crazy touches. Oh, and 470-odd horsepower tearing up the bitumen through a single-speed viscous clutch automatic transmission.   French motorcyclists have lived the last 30 years under a strange and annoying law that restricts all motorbikes to a maximum of 100 horsepower. Every bike released in Europe needed a French version made, complete with electronic or mechanical restrictors to choke it down to a power level deemed safe and proper by the local bureaucracy. A French R1 would pull like a standard bike up until that magical horsepower limit,  then crap itself  and wheeze its way up the useless top...