Popular Science sneakpeek

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the goods.au

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Greebly goodies from much closer to home...

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Wish you could swipe and gesture control your PC and games? Or maybe you just really like Minority Report.

Either way, the Leap Motion controller adds a new dimension of interactivity to your PC. The tiny device tracks your hands, pens, or whatever you want with a precision of 1/100th of a millimetre. It uses two camera and three infrared LEDs to observe and track anything above it up to around a meter away. It can even tell your fingers apart. Amazingly it’s also super cheap and available to Australia.

Want a stupidly awesome USB flash drive and have the cash to buy the best? Kingston has just launched a 1TB HyperX Predator drive. Sure, it costs $2500, sure it’s an odd chunky shape, and sure an SSD is cheaper, but for sheer cool factor it can’t be beat. The drive uses USB 3.0 and can read at 240MB/s and write at 160MB/s. It’s backwards compatible with USB 2.0 but would literally take days to fill up at the slower speeds. In case you want a slightly more budget option, Kingston also has a 512GB version.

Dubbed “the Porsche of e-readers” (though by Kobo itself), the Aura packs some impressive specs. It’s got a 6.8” screen with a very high (for an e-reader) 1440 x1080 resolution - which equates to 265 dpi. It’s also got a backlight, WiFi, 4GB storage, SD card slot and only weighs 240g. The battery lasts up to an impressive 2 months (though less with a lot of backlight use) and it can even be used to browse the net.

Not content with torches that merely blind anyone or anything you aim them at, Nitecore has produced a veritable heat ray. The TM26 pumps out an insane 3600 lumens - more than most high end projectors.

It’s built from aerospace grade aluminium and has 4 super powerful LEDs. At full power it gets so hot it has inbuilt temperature measuring and regulation. It has multiple brightness modes which at lower power can run for up to 1000 hours. Get yours today from ThinkGeek.

Leap Motion $79.99

Kingston HyperX Predator $2500

As smart watches take off in popularity, TomTom has launched a new range of GPS watches. Rather than being used for navigation, these watches are aimed sporty people wanting to track their exact performance and exercise levels. The watches themselves are only 11.5mm thick and offer a 10 hour battery life. They also have motion sensors for indoor use.

In a pinch the watches can even use the Russian GLONASS GPS system, just in case the US shut down their GPS while you are out on a run. So far TomTom has not released local pricing, but expect to pay as much as a car GPS.

Kobo Aura HD $219.99

Nitecore TM26 $390

Tomtom GPS Watch $TBA

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EDITED BY LINDS AY H ANDMER

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Lanterns are invaluable for camping or as an emergency light in the car. The Energizer Fusion uses LEDs and a special diffuser to pump out 300 lumens of omni directional light. Thanks to its inbuilt digital controller you can dim or brighten the lantern to meet your exact light needs.

It uses 8 AA batteries, and if you use rechargeables it can run for up to 6 hours at full brightness. You can also run it off 4 batteries in a pinch, though the runtime is reduced.

It’s rated at IPX4 which means its water resistant - light rain is ok but don’t use it underwater.

Backed by Jamie Oliver, the Philips HomeCooker aims to replace half your kitchen with a single device. The layered cooker can sauté, simmer, steam, stew, boil and fry your meals. It can even stir the food to ensure even cooking and no burnt bits. To make life even easier it has an automatic timer system that can shut the cooker off once the food is done. So much cooking wizardry does not come cheap at $400, but it’s a must have for those with small kitchens.

In somewhat of an I can’t believe I didn’t think of that moment, Uni Promark has built a highlighter with a see through tip. This makes seeing what you are actually highlighting (and when it stops) super easy. It works using a standard highlighter tip mounted to the end of a clear blade of plastic. A tiny pipe feeds ink from the reservoir to keep you highlighting all day long. Even better, it’s no more expensive than a normal quality highlighter.

Philips HomeCooker $400

Uni Promark View See Through Highlighter $1.99

Thanks to high speed read and writes, compact flash is the annoying standard that just won’t go away. The latest Exceria Pro lineup from Toshiba has given it a further lease on life with with read / write speeds of 160MB/s / 150MB/s respectively. While that is not a lot compared to a nice SSD, it means they are the world’s fastest CF cards.

Importantly this means they are fast enough to capture 4K footage which needs 65MB/s.

You can get them in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB flavours.

With origins from an incredible successful Kickstarter campaign, the Oculus Rift aims to make the virtual reality headset popular again. The Rift packs a 1920 x 1080 resolution with a very wide 110 degree field of view. The Rift uses a 7” LCD and special lenses to provide 3D vision. It also has head tracking sensors so it can pan your field of view as you look around.

It’s USB powered and only weighs 379 grams. Currently developers and testers are hands on with the Rift but you will have to wait till later this year to buy your own.

Toshiba Exceria Pro $200+

Oculus Rift $300

Energizer Light Fusion LED Lantern $35

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THE FUTURE OF ENERGY STOR Y BY K ATIE PEEK

ILLUSTR ATION BY FATHOM INFORM ATION DESIGN

GLOBA L LANDSCAPES HO W GEOGR APHY DRIVES ENER GY DE VELOPMENT

Denmark has 5,078 wind turbines, or one for every 1,100 people. The country’s position in the North Sea makes wind an effective resource.

WORLDWIDE RENEWABLE energy production reached 66.83 quadrillion BTUs in 2010. The countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—which keeps detailed records for its 34 members [see map]— produced 16.50 quadrillion BTUs that year. Which technology works in which country is often a matter of topography.

The OECD collects and analyses data to make policy recommendations for its member countries.

2000 to 2011

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S O U R C E: WO R L D P O P U L AT I O N DATA A N D R E N E WA B L ES INFOR MATION 2012 ©OECD/IE A

100%

Iceland Portugal

17.06 Quadrillion BTUs Top per-capita production in each category

Israel 11% Germany 21% Denmark 2.9% Germany 14% US 36%

RENEWABLE ENERGY as a proportion of total produced

Solar 2% Wind 7% 80%

Iceland 11% Mexico 17% US 27% Iceland 0.9%

Germany aims to produce 30 per cent renewable energy by 2020. Lacking ready access to new hydro or geothermal, the country has focused on wind and solar.

Hydro 28% Norway 8.7% US 24%

Hydroelectric dams are a big slice of the renewables pie because they’re a mature—and thus relatively cheap— technology.

Finland 3.3%

Farmland—and farm subsidies—have made corn ethanol the major driver of biofuel growth in the US

Luxembourg

60%

Finland

Canada 27%

Biofuel & Waste 55%

Finland is the secondmost forested country in Europe—the most forested is Sweden. In both countries, biofuel is largely a by-product of the forest industry.

Chile

Austria

Iceland’s volcanism allows it to produce 78 per cent of its energy geothermally. The rest of the energy it produces is hydroelectric power.

Canada’s hydroelectric power plants generate 63 per cent of the country’s electricity.

Geothermal 8%

France 5.3%

Sweden Italy 40%

“Biomass is the oldest energy being used by mankind,” says Cédric Philibert, an analyst at the International Energy Agency, “but the long-term potential is much lower than solar and wind.”

Spain

20%

Germany 11%

US 37% Percentages reflect countries’ production within each subcategory.

New Zealand Turkey Switzerland Israel

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Ireland Slovenia Estonia Japan Greece Germany Slovak Republic France Hungary Canada Denmark Belgium Mexico Poland Czech Republic U.S. Norway Netherlands South Korea Australia U.K.

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THE FUTURE OF ENERGY STOR Y BY SUS AN E. M AT THE WS

ILLUSTR ATION BY PITCH INTER ACTI V E

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Predicted consumption in 1980 Predicted production in 1980 2004 2001

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2013 Consumption Cases High economic growth High oil import Low oil import Low economic growth

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FINANCIAL CRISIS The financial crisis of 2008 preceded a sharp dip in consumption and a slight dip in production. Most of the decrease in demand came from the industrial and transportation sectors.

2013 Production Cases Low oil import High economic growth High oil import Low economic growth

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NATURAL GAS The recent uptick in US production is largely attributable to natural gas, captured through hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. In 2012, drillers extracted 700,000 barrels per day, equivalent to approximately one quadrillion BTUs annually.

MODEST GROWTH Since 2007, analysts have revised their estimates for US energy consumption, accounting for the economic downturn as well as standards passed by the Obama Administration that will double fuel efficiency in cars by 2025.

CASE BY CASE In addition to making its main predictions [thin lines], the EIA runs its model to see how various scenarios might affect the country [dotted lines].

This year, the EIA tested which conditions would make the US oil independent [low oil import]. Self-reliance requires limiting consumption to a 3.5 per cent increase while revving up oil production 36 per cent by 2020, to 10 million barrels per day.

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THE FUTURE Based on the business-as-usual projections, the US is not on track to attain energy independence before 2040. The projected deficit that year—9.18 quadrillion BTUs—could be overcome by doubling the country’s current renewable energy production.

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SOUR CE: U.S. ENER GY INFOR MATION ADMINISTR ATION

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CITY LIGHT OF

WH Y WO UL D A PE TR O - STATE E R ECT A SO L AR - P OWER ED ECO - ME TR OP O L IS IN THE MIDDLE OF TH E A R A B I A N DESER T ? TO CHANGE THE WO R L D. STO R Y BY DAN BAUM

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COURTESY FOSTER + PARTNERS ( 8 )

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t first glance, Masdar City appears as a mirage. From a distance it looks like a single multicoloured building, standing lonely on the horizon. Part of the illusion is due to the city’s strange setting: next to Abu Dhabi airport, just across the highway from the Arabian Gulf, in a deeply inhospitable stretch of desert. Between it and downtown Abu Dhabi lie 30 kilometres of the most wasteful urban development I’ve ever seen—a featureless plain studded with ostentatious walled houses the size of the Supreme Court and crisscrossed by empty six-lane boulevards. But the illusion is also a matter of density. Masdar City, an $18-billion experiment, will hold 40,000 residents in only five square kilometres.

HOW 2.0 / INSTANT E XPER T

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STORY BY ANTHONY FORDHAM PRETTY BLUE Cherenkov radiation is actually a fresh tech blue, not the sickly green Hollywood likes to use to make you afraid of radioactive things. Radium glows green though. Or at least, greenish.

The Pool of Fire HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT AUSTRALIA’S ONLY NUCLEAR REACTOR?

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fter nearly 50 years of service, Australia’s first reactor, called HIFAR (the High Flux Australian Reactor) was turned off in 2006. Now, we have a newer and more technically sophisticated reactor called OPAL the Open Pool Australian Lightwater reactor.

Google it and you’ll find a series of newspaper articles carrying on about water leaks and organisational politics, and not so much about what the reactor actually does.

The general rule seems to be this: if you don’t know OPAL’s capabilities and intent, you’re against Australia having “nuclear power”. If you DO know what OPAL is all about, you tend to agree that - not letting up on the safety at all - it’s probably a good tool to have in the country’s box of tricks. So let’s recap: 1. IT’S NOT A POWER STATION This is one of those know-it-or-you-don’t things, but OPAL is a research reactor. If it was a power station, it would produce a miserly 20 megawatts (Chernobyl was an 8000 megawatt

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reactor). It’s used to “transmute” substances by bombarding them with neutrons, and to send some of those neutrons down a tube to a hall full of scientific instruments.

Universities and others can book time on the equipment to do experiments in everything from elemental physics to the science of food spoilage. The elements produced by the radioactive decay of its uranium fuel are also used.

2. THE CORE IS ABSOLUTELY TINY OPAL is a uranium fission reactor, but its core is something like 33,000 times smaller than the core at Chernobyl (note its thermal output isn’t 33,000 times smaller though it’s an inherently better design than the Generation II Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalniy type reactors the USSR used... actually, which Russia still uses. Eep). OPAL’s core contains only about 33 kilograms of uranium in 16 “fuel assemblies”. The core is no bigger than a wheelie bin.

3. IT’S ACTUALLY NOT THAT RADIOACTIVE Okay, strictly speaking, it’s pretty radioactive since there’s a sustained fission reaction going on in the core,

but compared to high-yield power reactors, OPAL contains much less uranium-235, what’s called “enriched” uranium. U-235 can be used in nuclear weapons, the lessradioactive uranium-238 can’t. OPAL is a champion for a switch to “Low Enriched Uranium” in nuclear power and research.

4. IT MAKES MEDICINE As part of a Federal Government requirement that facilities like the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation generate 30% of their own funding, OPAL is used to make radiopharmaceuticals for imaging diseases (such as in a PET scanner) or for treating a wide range of cancers. OPAL makes several different products that are hugely in demand around the world.

5. THE WORLD NEEDS IT OPAL holds records for “availability”, such as in 2010 when it ran for 286 days (not in a row) at power. Generally it runs for 28 days, then stops for two days to shuffle the fuel. When OPAL needed an eight-week refit to stop water leaking into (not out of) its heavy water neutron reflector, the worldwide supply of radiopharmaceuticals had to be rationed.

HOW 2.0 / DIY EVOLUTION

COUR TESY PATR IK D’HAESELEER/BIO CUR IOUS

STOR Y BY A JAI R A J

Clothes Wringer Etching Press

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THEN

DIY BIOPR INTER

Inventive Ink

In 1939, PoPular Science published instructions for building an etching press out of an old clothes wringer. With the addition of a 35-cent scribing tool (about US$5.79 today) and a few easy modifications to the clothes wringer, aspiring printmakers could etch patterns onto paper and even silk. It was a great way to bring a design to life—though not quite as literally as today.

TWO DIY PRINTERS THAT WOULD HAVE IMPRESSED GUTENBERG f office printers can build images by spraying tiny blobs of ink onto paper, why couldn’t they also print with living cells? The question compelled Patrik D’haeseleer and a few collaborators at Biocurious, a biohackerspace in Sunnyvale, California, to build a machine that prints patterns of bacteria engineered to glow green. The team first altered a Hewlett-Packard 5150 printer but met two complications: The ink cartridges used filters and nozzles too fine to allow bacteria through, and the device’s single range of motion thwarted printing directly onto gelatinous petri dishes. So they started over, beginning with an Arduino-

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Barf Bag Phone Mount BECOME THE ENVY OF FELLOW PASSENGERS ON TV-FREE AEROPLANES

On the streets of Manila, Flynn Jason Siy entertains himself with urban gymnastics. On aeroplanes, he avenges boredom with barf bags. During a budget flight to the resort island of Boracay—on a plane lacking TVs—Siy made a cradle for his smartphone from the metal closure tabs of several bags, allowing him to comfortably watch movies on the device.

Here’s how to engineer your own seat-back screen in a few minutes.

controlled printing device called the InkShield—a gadget with inkjet nozzles large enough to accommodate E. coli. Next, they built a two-axis printing platform out of old CD drives. They filled the cartridge with bacteria engineered to glow in the presence of arabinose (a sugar E. coli likes to eat) and printed the microbes on petri dishes laced with arabinose. Soon, living luminescent words appeared. D’haeseleer is now replacing the nozzles on the machine with a syringe pump that can print in gels as well as liquid solutions. He says he hopes to use it to lay down 3D biological structures on the fly—perhaps even an artificial leaf that performs photosynthesis.

IT’S ALIVE! Biohackers created microbial ink that glows in UV light [above] by engineering E. coli bacteria to produce green fluorescent protein only in the presence of arabinose sugar.

5-MINUTE PROJECT / HOW 2.0

POPULAR SCIENCE ARCHIVE

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STOR Y BY AM ANDA SCHUPAK

ILLUSTR ATION BY SON OF AL AN

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Take three barf bags from nearby seat pockets, and remove their pliable closure tabs.

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Bend two tabs into Z shapes. Work one end of each tab into gaps above the tray table lock. The other ends cradle the bottom of your phone.

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Fashion the third tab into an inverted J, and wedge it between the lock and the upholstered seat to secure the top of the phone.

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Plug in your headphones, sit back, relax, and (actually) enjoy the flight.

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RETRO INVENTION 55

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STORY BY LINDSAY HANDMER

Ex-Russian Military Night Vision LOVE TO GO SPOTLIGHTING BUT, YOU KNOW, HATE ACTUAL SPOTLIGHTS? OATLEY ELECTRONICS USED TO SELL THE PERFECT KIT... ince we are still as fascinated by electronics, high voltage and night vision as we were 20 years ago, we tracked down an old Oatley Night Viewer kit, gave the electronics a once over and fired it up.

The image intensifier tube in the Oatley Kit is the heart of the entire project. Reportedly dating from the 70s (though unmarked, so hard to tell), these opto-electric tubes were salvaged from surplus Russian military equipment and still had some of the old mounting silicone.

Opto-electric image intensifiers work by converting photons to electrons with a photocathode and high voltages.

Humans can’t see if there are only a few photons bouncing around, but even a few photons can release many electrons. These hit a fluorescent screen, producing more photons and thus a brighter image.

Even better, the scope can use light outside our normal vision range, such as infrared - so it’s a heat detection camera as well as light amplifier. In our kit, the scope is a three stage tube that gives 50,000 times light amplification. This means it can produce an image from starlight alone and no external infrared illumination is needed.

Contrast this to newer hobby-grade models which need at least some ambi-

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ent illumination like a nearby streetlight or the moon - but the flip side is the image on this kit is entirely green, and rather low resolution.

This was sold in the days of proper DIY - the kit came with a bare tube and it was necessary to mount it with lenses at the front and back. Ours is housed in a section of PVC pipe with an old manually-focusable video camera lens on the front and a stamp viewer eyepiece lens on the back. Very Mad Max! The tube is also surrounded by tin cans which are needed to block low levels of x-rays emitted by the tube!

Also... very Mad Max. The high voltage supply sits in a jiffy box under the scope and runs from a simple nine volt battery. The main high voltage driver circuitry is gooped up in silicone to stop any arcing.

Of course night vision scope can only be used at night, so testing it can be tricky. A dark room or cupboard won’t cut it - it’s actually too bright - and of course turning it on in a bright room can damage the tube. To test during the day it’s possible to cover the lens with a layer of foil with a very very small pin prick in the centre. This acts as a lens as well as blocking enough light to test.

These days you can buy a range of pocket sized night vision scopes with sleek plastic or even metal casings, camera and gun mounts and more, but for a genuine ex-Russian military experience, the Oatley kit was a great building experience.

STATS

Price: $200 Tube: 3-stage ex Russian military Amplification: 50,000 x Bonus features: Extreme infrared sensitivity Power source: 1x 9 volt battery Dangers: Low-level X-ray emission Available: 1990s, Oatley Electronics