Lighting up the World ....Free light for poor ...so simple.... Bottle light inventor proud to be poor - 40 to 60 watts

August 2013  Alfredo Moser: Bottle light inventor proud to be poor

Alfredo Moser's invention is lighting up the world. In 2002, the Brazilian mechanic had a light-bulb moment and came up with a way of illuminating his house during the day without electricity - using nothing more than plastic bottles filled with water and a tiny bit of bleach. In the last two years his innovation has spread throughout the world. It is expected to be in one million homes by early next year.

So how does it work? Simple refraction of sunlight, explains Moser, as he fills an empty two-litre plastic bottle.

"Add two capfuls of bleach to protect the water so it doesn't turn green. The cleaner the bottle, the better," he adds.

Wrapping his face in a cloth he makes a hole in a roof tile with a drill. Then, from the bottom upwards, he pushes the bottle into the newly-made hole.

"You fix the bottle in with polyester resin. Even when it rains, the roof never leaks - not one drop."

Moser's lamps - as seen from above The lamps work best with a black cap - a film case can also be used

"An engineer came and measured the light," he says. "It depends on how strong the sun is but it's more or less 40 to 60 watts," he says.

So refraction occurs when light passes from one substance to another with a different density - eg from air to water

In the case of the "Moser lamp", sunlight is bent by the bottle of water and spread around the room

The inspiration for the "Moser lamp" came to him during one of the country's frequent electricity blackouts in 2002. "The only places that had energy were the factories - not people's houses," he says, talking about the city where he lives, Uberaba, in southern Brazil.

Moser and his friends began to wonder how they would raise the alarm, in case of an emergency, such as a small plane coming down, imagining a situation in which they had no matches.

His boss at the time suggested getting a discarded plastic bottle, filling it with water and using it as a lens to focus the sun's rays on dry grass. That way one could start a fire, as a signal to rescuers. This idea stuck in Moser's head - he started playing around, filling up bottles and making circles of refracted light.

Soon he had developed the lamp.

"I didn't make any design drawings," he says.

"It's a divine light. God gave the sun to everyone, and light is for everyone. Whoever wants it saves money. You can't get an electric shock from it, and it doesn't cost a penny."

Moser has installed the bottle lamps in neighbours' houses and the local supermarket.

Alfredo Moser with one of his bottle lights

While he does earn a few dollars installing them, it's obvious from his simple house and his 1974 car that his invention hasn't made him wealthy. What it has given him is a great sense of pride.

Continue reading the main story

How much energy do the lamps save?

The plastic bottles are up-cycled in the local community, so no energy is needed to gather, shred, manufacture and ship new bottles

The carbon footprint of the manufacture of one incandescent bulb is 0.45kg CO2

A 50 Watt light bulb running for 14 hours a day for a year has a carbon footprint of nearly 200kg CO2

Moser lamps emit no CO2

Source: UN

"There was one man who installed the lights and within a month he had saved enough to pay for the essential things for his child, who was about to be born. Can you imagine?" he says.

Carmelinda, Moser's wife of 35 years, says her husband has always been very good at making things around the home, including some fine wooden beds and tables.

But she's not the only one who admires his lamp invention. Illac Angelo Diaz, executive director of the MyShelter Foundation in the Philippines, is another.

MyShelter specialises in alternative construction, creating houses using sustainable or recycled materials such as bamboo, tyre and paper.

"We had huge amounts of bottle donations," he says.

"So we filled them with mud and created walls, and filled them with water to make windows.

"When we were trying to add more, somebody said: 'Hey, somebody has also done that in Brazil. Alfredo Moser is putting them on roofs.'"

Following the Moser method, MyShelter started making the lamps in June 2011. They now train people to create and install the bottles, in order to earn a small income.

In the Philippines, where a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, and electricity is unusually expensive, the idea has really taken off, with Moser lamps now fitted in 140,000 homes.

The idea has also caught on in about 15 other countries, from India and Bangladesh, to Tanzania, Argentina and Fiji.

Most homes and businesses in the slums of Dhaka have no power and no windows, so 80-90% of them hook up to electricity lines illegally - and fall back on candles or kerosene lamps during regular blackouts.

A voluntary organisation called Change began distributing the bottle light, or botul bati, earlier this year. It's helped hundreds of people - including sari makers and rickshaw repairers - whose livelihoods depend on having sufficient light.

There were teething problems. "Some people said they felt poorer after installing a bottle light," says Change founder Sajid Iqbal. The group counters this by stressing that each one helps tackle climate change.

Unlike some other charities, Change charges a small amount for the lights - roughly the price of 2-3kg of rice. "If you give the light for nothing, people don't maintain them," Iqbal says. "They don't understand their value."

People in poor areas are also able to grow food on small hydroponic farms, using the light provided by the bottle lamps, he says.

Overall, Diaz estimates, one million people will have benefited from the lamps by the start of next year.

"Alfredo Moser has changed the lives of a tremendous number of people, I think forever," he says.

"Whether or not he gets the Nobel Prize, we want him to know that there are a great number of people who admire what he is doing."

Did Moser himself imagine that his invention would have such an impact?

"I'd have never imagined it, No," says Moser, shaking with emotion.

"It gives you goose-bumps to think about it."

CERN - The Worlwide Grid could turn desktop computers into supercomputers and is now being adapted to allow mobile devices such as phones and tablets to connect.

How CERN's Grid may place the power of the world's computers in your hands....The Worlwide Grid could turn desktop computers into supercomputers - The combined power of the world's computers could soon be placed in the palm of your hand thanks to technology that is partly being developed at the home of the Large Hadron Collider.

 Scientists at CERN in Switzerland and in the US have been developing a new kind of computer system that is already being described as the successor to the World Wide Web.

Known as the Worldwide Grid, it would give users access to the computing power of all the machines connected to a network no matter where they are in the world.

The technology could turn desktop computers into supercomputers and is now being adapted to allow mobile devices such as phones and tablets to connect.

Physicists at CERN already have access to the world's biggest Grid computing network, combining more than 200,000 computers together.

It allows them to analyse more than 26 million gigabytes of data produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) each year.

Ian Bird, LHC Computing Grid project leader at CERN, said: "The Grid that we have implemented for physics is a mechanism to allow scientists to share data and collaborate.

"It brings together disparate resources from around the world so that they are working as if they are single system.

"It solves a problem where we do not have the money to build a big computer centre.

"With a single credential I can use computer resources in the UK, or the US or in Europe.

"You don't need to know where that computer is located though as you just go into your web browser and look for a service you want to buy.

"All the user sees is that there is a lot of computing available to them."

The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid has already helped identify the particle that is now believed to be the best candidate for the elusive Higgs Boson.

It is now undergoing an upgrade as the rest of the LHC is similarly upgraded to increase its power.

Based on the past three years of use, scientists are intending to improve the efficiency of the system while also decreasing its complexity.

physicists have also recently been able to access CERNs grid using mobile devices like iPhones and iPads to submit work, monitor results and control processes.

Mr Bird said the computing power of the mobile devices themselves does not contribute greatly to the resources available in the Grid, but this may change in the future.

The average iPhone now contains more computing power than early supercomputers.

Another computing Grid being developed by IBM and University of California, Berkley, is also already attempting to tap into the computing power of mobile devices

The World Community Grid now allows Google's Android devices to work on the Grid.

Last month researchers began using the combined power of volunteer's handsets to search for new drug candidates against HIV.

Around 20,000 smartphones are now on the network, along with 500,000 personal computers.

David Anderson, a researcher at the University of Berkeley's space sciences laboratory, said: "There are about a billion Android devices right now, and their total computing power exceeds that of the largest conventional supercomputers.

"Mobile devices are the wave of the future in many ways, including the raw computing power they can provide to solve computationally difficult problems."

There are currently several other Grid computing systems in operation around the world that are being used by groups of scientists to help them with research, including the search for extraterrestrial life and identifying potential new drugs.

Experts hope that as more computers join the systems and they link together, a Worldwide Grid will be created, giving access to resources around the world at the touch of a button.

It would mean weather forecasters could have access to far greater computing power than current supercomputers allow while schools could access resources capable of performing tasks that can currently only be performed at universities.

Businesses would also be able to perform detailed analysis on data that they currently cannot.

For home users, it would mean no longer having to upgrade their machines every couple of years to ensure they are powerful enough to run the current software.

They could also pay to use software and resources as they needed them rather than having to buy expensive licenses.

Mr Bird added: "The technology is evolving. If you look at what we have done is created a way to collaborate in computing and share resources between different organisations."

Sun's Magnetic Field is about to Flip in 3-4 months

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34gNgaME86Y

August 5, 2013: Something big is about to happen on the sun accroding to NASA

A new ScienceCast video anticipates the reversal of the sun's global magnetic field. Play it

"It looks like we're no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal," says solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. "This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system."

 The sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun's inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of 'Solar Max' will be behind us, with half yet to come.

Hoeksema is the director of Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of the few observatories in the world that monitor the sun's polar magnetic fields. The poles are a herald of change. Just as Earth scientists watch our planet's polar regions for signs of climate change, solar physicists do the same thing for the sun. Magnetograms at Wilcox have been tracking the sun's polar magnetism since 1976, and they have recorded three grand reversals—with a fourth in the offing.

Astronomers at the Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO) monitor the sun's global magnetic field on a daily basis. WSO home pageSolar physicist Phil Scherrer, also at Stanford, describes what happens: "The sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. This is a regular part of the solar cycle."

A reversal of the sun's magnetic field is, literally, a big event. The domain of the sun's magnetic influence (also known as the "heliosphere") extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space.

When solar physicists talk about solar field reversals, their conversation often centers on the "current sheet." The current sheet is a sprawling surface jutting outward from the sun's equator where the sun's slowly-rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current. The current itself is small, only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter (0.0000000001 amps/m2), but there's a lot of it: the amperage flows through a region 10,000 km thick and billions of kilometers wide. Electrically speaking, the entire heliosphere is organized around this enormous sheet.

During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Scherrer likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball. As Earth orbits the sun, we dip in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet.

Field Flip (current sheet, 200px)

An artist's concept of the heliospheric current sheet, which becomes more wavy when the sun's magnetic field flips. MoreCosmic rays are also affected. These are high-energy particles accelerated to nearly light speed by supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy. Cosmic rays are a danger to astronauts and space probes, and some researchers say they might affect the cloudiness and climate of Earth. The current sheet acts as a barrier to cosmic rays, deflecting them as they attempt to penetrate the inner solar system. A wavy, crinkly sheet acts as a better shield against these energetic particles from deep space.

As the field reversal approaches, data from Wilcox show that the sun's two hemispheres are out of synch.

"The sun's north pole has already changed sign, while the south pole is racing to catch up," says Scherrer. "Soon, however, both poles will be reversed, and the second half of Solar Max will be underway."

When that happens, Hoeksema and Scherrer will share the news with their colleagues and the public.

Stay tuned to Science@NASA for updates.

The oddest precipitation...raining Diamonds on Uranus and Neptune

The Oddest Precipitation !  The high-pressure, methane-rich atmospheres of the ice giants may produce diamond hailstones.

The ice giants Uranus and Neptune get their blue hue from the presence of methane, a hydrocarbon, in their dense atmospheres – and they may also get diamond hailstones from it too. The extreme pressure and heat of the planets' atmospheres may compress methane so much that diamonds are formed and then fall toward the planets' atmospheres may compress methane so much that diamonds are formed and then fall toward the planets' rocky cores.

the Record on Earth - On July 23, 2010, a hailstone that weighed almost a kilogram and measured more than 20 centimetres in diameter fell in South Dakota.

Diamonds are just carbon but are the hardest substance on Earth.

1 kilogram has an estimated street value of $100 million.

If a diamond is 'cooked' in an oven at 763 °C, it will simply vanish.

Diamonds are 100 times more valuable than gold.

Diamonds are commonly judged by the 'four Cs': carat, clarity, colour, and cut.

A diamond is 58 times harder than the next hardest mineral on Earth.

About half of all the worlds' diamonds come from Africa.

Belgium is the international diamond trading capital of the world.

The only way to cut diamonds is with other diamonds.

Washington Secrets - Massive solar flare narrowly misses Earth, EMP disaster barely avoided

BY PAUL BEDARD | JULY 31, 2013

The earth barely missed taking a massive solar punch in the teeth two weeks ago, an "electromagnetic pulse" so big that it could have knocked out power, cars and iPhones throughout the United States.

Two EMP experts told Secrets that the EMP flashed through earth's typical orbit around the sun about two weeks before the planet got there.

"The world escaped an EMP catastrophe," said Henry Cooper, who led strategic arms negotiations with the Soviet Union under President Reagan, and who now heads High Frontier, a group pushing for missile defense.

"There had been a near miss about two weeks ago, a Carrington-class coronal mass ejection crossed the orbit of the Earth and basically just missed us," said Peter Vincent Pry, who served on the Congressional EMP Threat Commission from 2001-2008. He was referring to the 1859 EMP named after astronomer Richard Carrington that melted telegraph lines in Europe and North America.

"Basically this is a Russian roulette thing," added Pry. "We narrowly escape from a Carrington-class disaster."

Pry, Cooper, and former CIA Director James Woolsey have been recently demanding that Washington prepare the nation's electric grid for an EMP, either from the sun or an enemy's nuclear bomb. They want the 2,000-3,000 transformers in the grid protected with a high-tech metal box and spares ready to rebuild the system. Woolsey said knocking out just 20 would shut down electricity to parts of the nation "for a long time."

But Washington is giving them the cold shoulder, especially the administration. Woolsey told Secrets that some in Congress are interested in the issue, but the administration is just in the "beginnings" of paying attention.

Woolsey said that Air Force One and aircraft used by the Strategic Air Command to control nuclear-tipped missiles are hardened against an EMP.

The EMP effect is not rare. One occurred in Canada in 1989, knocking out Quebec's electric transmission system. And North Korea is reportedly testing a device to attack the U.S. with an EMP attack.

The trio appeared at an event in Washington this week, but Pry said getting the nation's leaders interested in the issue is difficult and educating the public about EMP hard too. "The education curve isn't going up fast enough," he said.

At the event, Cooper suggested that North Korea might already have the capability to launch an EMP against the United States. He said in December, North Korea tested its so-called Space Launch Vehicle which could deliver a stealthy nuclear attack on the United States by orbiting a nuclear weapon over the South Pole where the U.S. has no radar or missile interceptors facing south. North Korea, he said, apparently orbited a satellite over the south polar region on a trajectory and altitude consistent with making a surprise nuclear EMP attack against the United States.

Woolsey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are the honorary co-chairs of a new EMP Coalition pushing for protections to the electric grid, national security, and civilian infrastructures.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/massive-solar-flare-narrowly-misses-earth-emp-disaster-barely-avoided/article/2533727

Robotic insect: World's smallest flying robot takes off -weigh less than a tenth as much as a paper clip

Scientists in the US have created a robot the size of a fly that is able to perform the agile manoeuvres of the ubiquitous insects.

see video here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh67JMKxURE

This "robo-fly", built from carbon fibre, weighs a fraction of a gram and has super-fast electronic "muscles" to power its wings.

Its Harvard University developers say tiny robots like theirs may eventually be used in rescue operations.

It could, for example, navigate through tiny spaces in collapsed buildings.

Robotic fly Tethered flight: It will take "a few more years" before the robo-flies will be able to carry a power source

Lead researcher Kevin Ma from Harvard University says his team has made the world's smallest flying robot.

It also has the fly-like agility that allows the insects to evade even the swiftest of human efforts to swat them.

This comes largely from very precise wing movements.

By constantly adjusting the effect of lift and thrust acting on its body at an incredibly high speed, the insect and the robot's flapping wings enable it to hover almost motionless in the air or perform sudden evasive manoeuvres.

And just like a real fly, the robot's thin, flexible wings beat approximately 120 times every second.

The researchers achieved this wing speed with special piezoelectric material, which contracts every time a voltage is applied to it.

By very rapidly switching the voltage on and off, the scientists were able to make this material behave like just like the tiny muscles that makes a fly's wings beat so fast.

 "We get it to contract and relax, like biological muscle," said Dr Ma.

The main goal of this research was to understand how insect flight works, rather than to build a useful robot.

"[But] a robotic insect stands as a tangible end goal to drive this research forward," Dr Ma told BBC News.

He added though that there could be many uses for such a diminutive flying vehicle.

"We could envision these robots being used for search-and-rescue operations to search for human survivors under collapsed buildings or [in] other hazardous environments," he said.

"They [could] be used for environmental monitoring, to be dispersed into a habitat to sense trace chemicals or other factors.

Dr Ma even suggested that the robots could behave like many real insects and assist with the pollination of crops, "to function as the now-struggling honeybee populations do in supporting agriculture around the world".

The current model of robo-fly is tethered to a small, off-board power source but Dr Ma says the next step will be to miniaturise the other bits of technology that will be needed to create a "fully wireless flying robot".

"It will be a few more years before full integration is possible," he said.

"Until then, this research project continues to be very captivating work because of its similarity to natural insects. It is a demonstration of how far human engineering ingenuity has reached, to be mimicking natural systems"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22380287