March 28, 2011

There were 2 posts published on March 28, 2011 (this is page 1 of 1).

Artificial Leaf

Fascinating.

Speaking at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in California, MIT professor Daniel Nocera claims to have created an artificial leaf made from stable and inexpensive materials that mimics nature’s photosynthesis process.

The device is an advanced solar cell, no bigger than a typical playing card, which is left floating in a pool of water. Then, much like a natural leaf, it uses sunlight to split the water into its two core components, oxygen and hydrogen, which are stored in a fuel cell to be used when producing electricity.

With a single gallon of water, Nocera says, the chip could produce enough electricity to power a house in a developing country for an entire day. Provide every house on the planet with an artificial leaf and we could satisfy our 14-terrawatt need with just one gallon of water a day.

via Artificial Leaf Could Be More Efficient Than the Real Thing | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Internet pioneer Paul Baran dies

Internet pioneer Paul Baran died over the weekend at the age of 84. Baran’s packet switching technique provided the foundation of today’s Internet.

I find it amusing that AT&T told him it would never work.

In the early 1960s, while working at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., Mr. Baran outlined the fundamentals for packaging data into discrete bundles, which he called “message blocks.” The bundles are then sent on various paths around a network and reassembled at their destination. Such a plan is known as “packet switching.”

“Paul wasn’t afraid to go in directions counter to what everyone else thought was the right or only thing to do,” said Vinton Cerf, a vice president at Google who was a colleague and longtime friend of Mr. Baran’s. “AT&T repeatedly said his idea wouldn’t work, and wouldn’t participate in the Arpanet project,” he said.

via Paul Baran, 84, Dies – Helped Pave Way for Internet – NYTimes.com.