Category: Tech News

• Company Makes CO2 Into Liquid Fuel, with Help from a Volcano

  An Icelandic company figures out how to make methanol from waste CO2, but the economics may not work without a nearby volcano.

  When a geothermal power plant started spewing hot water into the barren, volcanic landscape of Iceland’s Southern Peninsula in 1976, the locals turned the steaming lake into a health spa that’s now frequented by half a million people a year. Now a small Icelandic company is hoping to turn a profit from waste carbon dioxide from the same plant.

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• Fitness Trackers Still Need to Work Out Kinks

  The latest fitness-tracking wristbands need to get in better shape before they’ll earn a spot on my wrist.

  At 11:30 last Friday night I was frantically doing jumping jacks in my living room, trying to hit my activity goal for the day: 4,000 points. The more I moved, the more points I got from the Nike+ Fuelband SE fitness tracker on my wrist—and at nearly midnight I had 3,957.

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• Are Electric Vehicles a Fire Hazard?

  Lithium-ion batteries have risks, but they can be managed to prevent fires in EVs.

  In the past two months, three Tesla Motors Model S electric cars have caught fire after their lithium-ion battery packs were damaged. Last week the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would investigate whether Tesla’s Model S needs to be modified to prevent further fires.

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• Printing Batteries

  New inks and tools allow 3-D printing of lithium-ion technology.

  By making the basic building blocks of batteries out of ink, Harvard materials scientist Jennifer Lewis is laying the groundwork for lithium-ion batteries and other high-performing electronics that can be produced with 3-D printers.

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• Xbox vs. PlayStation: Beginning of the End for Consoles?

  Sony and Microsoft release their first video-game consoles in seven years, but they’re battling for a world of play that is rapidly changing.

  This month marks a milestone in the turf war for the space beneath our television sets: it’s the first time that Sony and Microsoft have released new video-game consoles within weeks of one another. The PlayStation 4 launched in the U.S. two weeks ago (and launches in Europe next week), while Microsoft’s Xbox One is available around the world as of today. Both systems are Blu-ray-playing supercomputers squeezed into similar-looking black plastic casing; both are designed to usher in a new era of high-definition, online-enabled video games.

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• Optimizing Resources Amid Increasing Scarcity – Answer

  How does the ability to instantaneously reallocate physical resources change the way companies source materials, manage operations, and go to market?

• A Trick for Making Batteries Safer Could Also Make EVs Affordable

  SolidEnergy says its new battery materials store more energy and won’t catch fire.

  Bulky and expensive batteries are the bane of electric vehicles. A new MIT spinoff company, SolidEnergy, says it has a solution: materials that can increase the amount of energy that lithium-ion batteries store by 30 percent or more and lower costs enough to make electric vehicles affordable.

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• Inkjet Printing Could Be the Key to Next-Generation OLED Displays

  Kateeva says its new manufacturing equipment can produce affordable OLED displays, rigid and flexible.

  Color-rich, energy-efficient, and flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays could soon be churned out more economically on giant inkjet printers. 

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• Someday Your EV Charger May Be the Roadway Itself

  A researcher envisions the ultimate cure for “range anxiety”: roadway-powered vehicles with modified on-board power receivers.

  One way to extend the range of electric vehicles may be to provide power wirelessly through coils placed under the surface of a road. But charging moving vehicles with high-power wireless chargers below them is complex.

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• Sound Off on Optimizing Resources Amid Increasing Scarcity
• A Gooey Cure for Crack-Prone High-Capacity Batteries

  Polymer glue helps fracture-prone high-capacity batteries last through more charges.

  If electric cars are ever to drive hundreds of miles between charges—as they must to compete with gas-powered cars—their batteries will need to store much more energy. Unfortunately, several of the most promising high-capacity battery materials are prone to breaking in ways that would cut an electrified road trip short.

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• How Toyota Will Be First With a Fuel-Cell Car

  Toyota says it has reduced the cost of fuel cells significantly enough to sell hydrogen cars for under $100,000.

  Toyota says it’s made several advances to hydrogen fuel cells that will make them significantly cheaper, and will allow the company to sell a car using the low-pollution technology in 2015—years before its competitors.

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