Saving the Earth through fuel efficiency and emission cutdown

With a $7.5m budget this guy has invented a car ‘plug in’ which drops your emissions by up to 100% and your fuel efficiency by 10%. Should be on the market in about a years time.

Basically, the H2N-Gen contains a small reservoir of distilled water and other chemicals such as potassium hydroxide. A current is run from the car battery through the liquid. This process of electrolysis creates hydrogen and oxygen gases which are then fed into the engine’s intake manifold where they mix with the gasoline vapours.

It’s a scientific fact that adding hydrogen to a combustion chamber will cause a cleaner burn. The challenge has always been to find a way to get the hydrogen gas into the combustion chamber in a safe, reliable and cost-effective way.

Sniff traffic by listening to keyboard clicks

What makes the technique feasible is that each keystroke makes a relatively distinct sound, however subtle, when hit. Typical users type about 300 characters per minute, leaving enough time for a computer to isolate the sounds of individual keystrokes and categorize the letters based upon the statistical characteristics of English text. For example, the letters “th” will occur together more frequently than “tj,” and the word “yet” is far more common than “yrg.”

This sounds a lot like Solar Designers technique for analysing SSH traffic, as presented at Hackers At Large in 2001…

Britain to replace nuclear capability?

In an interview with the Guardian, Reid, the UK Defence Secretary, indicates that it is time to replace Trident in order to be able to present a credible nuclear capability against the evolving new and potentially rogue nuclear powers (India, Pakistan, N. Korea among others). Which goes to show, allthough jointness and mobility is the new rage in armed forces, the all out war scenario is not being ignored.

Laser fusion reactors

The basic principles are relatively simple to lay out: a high energy laser is used to heat and compress a small amount of deuterium, a stable isotope of hydrogen. When the deuterium gets sufficiently hot, the outer layers detonate, sending a shockwave towards the centre of the sample.

From The Register

Morphing wings

Wingwarping to the extreme – current wings use leading and trailing edge slats to change their shape in order to create more lift at different angles of attack (angles of aircraft and thus wing pitch into the airflow). This usually creates 3 seperate surfaces for control, but if you look at the way birds reshape their wings, it’s a much more fluid and precise process.

So these guys are building morphing wings on aircraft with wing spans less than 2 feet (probably due to structural integrity issues). It’s a cool beginning to this technology, and the site has videos etc.

Sliding Doors

Well, you could have the whole door open left and right… or you could do this:

The door is segmented into multiple strips and opens minimally according to the shape of the individual, animal or object that has to pass through

Good stuff!