Slashdot Mirror
Bacteria Powered Batteries
Agent Provocateur writes "SpaceDaily reports on
a battery that is powered by chemical reactions caused by bacteria.
A Pentagon-backed project, University of Massachusetts researchers Swades Chaudhuri, an Indian, and Derek Lovley, an American, say the battery's source is an underground bacterium that gobbles up sugar and converts its energy into electricity.
Their prototype device ran flawlessly without refuelling for up to 25 days and is cheap and stable." The chemistry behind this thing isn't really that complex - keeping the bacteria alive and kicking during that time is prolly the tougher part - you can read more on Al Jazeera, and USA Today. Now, what about replacing this battery?
Is it on the back of a Delorean?
Now I finally have a use for all that old pizza stacked up in the corner of my room......
"A clean green technology? Commie hippie anti-capitalist root-eating sons of socialists!" ::CEO starts having a heart attack::
Similar to this Vehicle?
i wonder what the bastard will smell like.. if it isn't pleasant, might take a while to gain acceptance.
then again, if it smells like garbage, maybe it could attract flies, and maybe the flies could feed it.. ah, that would be funny.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/news-item107.htm
to turn leftover food into gas!
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/goto.html?c-melhui
I've been running my fridge that way for years now!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Can you run your fridge off what's closest to the back in there?
-- Free speech is only free if your time is worth nothing.
Scientists say 50 grammes of sugar would keep a 40-watt light bulb lit for eight hours.
Now, what I will do, is to just connect this liposuction device with me and their innovation, turn my fat into hydrogen and fuel my car. I assume my excess kgs of excess fat will take me to whereever I want. Haha! Here we come McDonald's!
Imagine,
a stack of left over pizza suspended by a magnet waiting above "the Pit". when the power drops, the pizza drops.... voila, instant power back-up...
Need more power???, just add pizza.
Why are other peoples sig's always more witty ???
The reason Santa is so jolly is that he knows where all the bad girls live.
"It has to be able to use raw materials, rather than giving it refined fuel."
Huh? I for one would happily buy one if it could run my 40W max laptop for 8 hours on an ounce and a half (about 50 grams) of refined sugar. Why does it need further refinement before use?
Mr Fusion doesn't feed the DeLorean, it powers the Flux Capacitor, as the whole plot of episode 1 revolved around the lack of plutonium. The DeLorean itself is powered by gas (which again is the whole plot in episode 3)
A colony of e-coli bacteria? Like I don't already have enought of that shit floating round my kitchen.
From the article:
This I want to power my car. And laptop. And house appliances (not just so that I can pour coffee on my computer to recharge the battery)
This solves the hydrogen-storing problem in the hydrogen powered vehicles: no more dangerous concentration of hydrogen, instead you get a small tank containing bubbling "mud". Not quite inflammable in case of a collision.
Add to this that it's hardly polluting (just as much as taking a dump in a bosquet, I'd say), and it even helps reducing the amount of houseold garbage (Powerplants recycling garbage, anyone ?).
The main aspect of this energy source is that it completely suppress the need for combustion. Instead it uses slow, catalyzed, controlled chemical processes that use a lower amount of initial energy. No more smoke.
Maybe I'm overstating all this, but it definitely looks cool. And it's cheap, too. Carrot-powered car, coming our way !
will suddenly be in demand on long flights
1. The article says that to obtain 40 watts of power you need many such cells. I wonder exactly how many. More than will fit into my laptop case?
2. Besides sugar, the cell needs some mysterious 'redox chemicals'. How expensive they are? Can they be produced environmentally-friendly? Are they safe to store? So, this might or might not be a great invention.
What I need is a back yard composter/fertilizer dispenser/generator that I can throw leaves, grass (actually I mulch these now), kitched scaps (sugar cubes, carrots, etc).
I sell the extra energy back to the power grid, and spread the fertilizer on my yard.
No wait, this would make to much ecological/economic sense, I must be some kind of hippie, tree hugger, freak.
But localizing the energy production is a bit silly.
..
With this method, you run into the same problems that we have with automobiles and other gas powered devices. They are less efficient than large scale counterparts, which leads to waste energy, lost in poor engines, and exhaust.
It seems to make more sense to be to centralize the "compost" and generate electricity that way. This would keep bacteria in one place, and minimize the lost energy. It really wouldn't be any different than a power plant.
infact i'm pretty sure that's already been done. What are the benefits to localizing the energy generation? I can't see any. People will have to clean the devices, organic matter doesn't rot away into nothing. There are components to the waste generated by the bacteria organisms. you cant really stick in food and have it *all* gone
i see problems that are going to be difficult to fix. We already have a huge waste management system. It wouldn't be that much of a stretch for waste management to begin compost of organic waste and become power stations with the tech available. then the generated energy can just be stored in traditional batteries. it doesnt seem that these organic batteries offer any improved life over chemical batteries at all.
The reason raw sugar won't work, is because it will kill the ecoli. The water content in the bug is much higher than that in the surrounding media(pure sugar in this case). The water will will move towards the region of the high sugar content (following the gradient of high water concentration to low). This will dessicate the ecoli and kill them.
Be sure your batteries get plenty of fiber to avoid constipation.
I don't even know where to begin! Converting organic matter to electricity on demand on a portable scale - and you dismiis it as silly!
I'm a bit rusty on my recycling but:
- Primary: re-use for original purpose (e.g.
second-hand clothes)
- Secondary: re-use for alternative purpose (e.g. clothes as wiping rags)
- Tertiary: reclamation of materials (e.g. clothes as paper fibre)
- Quaternery: reclamation of energy (e.g. burning the clothes to warm you up)
So unless you like eating someone elses left-overs, want to replant the seeds of the tomato they've eaten, or make a halloween pumpkin, you are left with energy or land-fill. Silly energy!?I simply don't understand the argument that it is more efficient to gather the waste to a central location (by truck?), burn/convert it there, transmit across a high voltage line to your house, charge a NiCd, etc, than to stuff your leftovers in a CD size case and get energy provided by nature's best organic catalysts in the middle of no-where, or at the bottom of your loo.
Or were you planning to hook up all of Africa to the American grid? This would be ideal for families in developing countries to run a lamp bulb (or radio, or even a computer) off after 6 p.m. on the equator.
Gaah, nuff said.
Now when we say our battery died, we'll mean it literally.
While this development certainly sounds interesting, calling something cheap and stable based soley on a prototype wihout major major long-term testing seems to be jumping the gun a little.
One Can Never Own Enough Musical Instruments...
Well I don't know about refueling, but recharging would certainly kill it.
In case you remember, they used "biocells" in that movie, which used a form of bacteria to generate electricity. Useless trivia, but hey.
USA Today? Do they think they can use this battery to topple an innocent left-wing government, or what?
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Finally my B.O. is more than just a pretty smell...
photoplankton
What happens when these batteries rupture, bringing cultured bacteria to the surface to wreak havoc on all living beings?
/tinfoil
I'm telling you, it's SARS from cars.
This sounds like a neat power source for nano-technology. Power the nanobots off the sugar in the bloodstream.
And some get entered just to remove sugar from the bloodstreams of diabetics. Where do I sign up for that? (I'm a type II diabetic already, this could stave off more drastic treatment for years.)
The Bacterial Matrix
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
Walk away from the conference table for a few seconds, when you come back there are no doughnuts left! Just a laptop and cell phone sitting there innocently. They'll never tell....
...
. . . for the bacteria.
So, that case of Jolt will now keep BOTH you and your laptop going for that all-nighter! Very convenient.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Al Jazeera is a TV channel which particularity is to mostly be broadcasted in the Gulf countries.
As you may now, before terrorists, these countries
host oil producers.
Because of the great fear of losing control when all of the oil will have been drilled, it sounds obvious that these billionaires are interested in investing in alternative power sources such as this one, so that they are certain they'll keep control of worldwide energy sales...
Terrorism is just an artefact that has been added after "some" occidental countries decided to interefere with the local governments...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The downside, however, is that it's a slow process. That cup of sugar could take weeks to digest. Still, a slow but steady trickle of electricity can be used to charge up a battery, which can then discharge large amounts of power when needed.
Obviously stacking a large cluster of these in a battery type configuration would solve the voltage/current supply issue.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
"Just a spoonful of sugar makes the cell phone turn on, the cell phone turn on..."
Kick in the Head
When the bacteria take over, there is gonna be MAJOR payback.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
If this comes through my fridge could be self powering by using that really old yoghurt that's in it! ;-)
Years ago, Spirou used to drive a sugar-eating-mushroom-powered car...
French-speaking cartoon lovers will for sure remember "Du glocose pour Nomie"
Trolling using another account since 2005.
My underwear could generate a few megawatts.
Trolling is a art,
83% Efficient? Thats impressive, if true. If you think that a typical car engine is only 20% efficient. Maybe one day you could run your car on Glucose..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
I wonder how safe these bacteria are? Not in any fearful way, but could they
be used to power an artificial heart, getting the sugar from the body? Perhaps
power artificial limbs?
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
There was an article on this nearly a year ago. As soon as I saw this, I assumed I was looking at a dupe. However, the earlier battery was developed in England, and part of the goal was to eventually have the battery run not off of pure sugar, but rather garbage. As you can imagine, witty comments about Mr. Fusion and the general cleaniness level of geeks ensued.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Instead of kids needing batteries for toys, they'll all be going, 'mommy, can I have a pet battery for Christmas?'.
Now your Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger really does have power, and it really morphs too, albeit into a green blob of goo that will probably stain the carpet and be toxic to eat.
It doesn't state how much sugar it needs, nor the cost for electricity based on sugar prices. Any chemist know how 83% efficiency translates into cost and amount of sugar needed for a certain amount of power consumption?
Question everything.
And we could have them placed in large power plants, and we could show them movies or have them play videogames, and then we could serve them drinks and food intraveneous.
What a blast! who would be able to refuse this offer?
:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
Free the battery bacteria!
No slavery for electricity!
How many Rhodoferax died for your Walkman today?
Single-celled life forms are people too!
Et cetera, et cetera....
Coffee sweetners become the new unleaded.
It's always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's just hilarious. -B.Hicks-
Amazingly, I've been able to obtain this confidential photograph of their prototype.
what i find really interesting is that Al-Jazeera is posted as a first link and USA Today as an alternative one.
Interesting bacteria.
"Where we are now is where solar power was 20 or 30 years ago." So we have a few more decades to bicker about it while they make a working device.
Oh, and here I thought it was another of them thar ``alternative'' power sources. Thanks for clearing that up.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Lets see, metal fillings in my teeth, a candy bar, and I am wireless! Sign in restaurants "Please refrain from plugging into our sugar bowls"
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
Now when they x-ray your laptop at the airport, either:
a) your batteries will all die or
b) they'll mutate into a super hero or villan and take over the city.
Regradless, this is just another typical slashdot "Technology of the FUTURE!" article about something that we'll never hear about again. 99% of all "new technology" articles on slashdot just sort of fade away.
Up next on prime time TV, my Thinkpad doing the Dew with a bunch of hot chicks.
One day we'll have bacteria powered robots and cars and planes. We'll depend on virii to keep things moving. Then we'll come to the conclusion that yes...we are a virus ourselves.
Portland Linux User Group
I know this will be modded OffTopic, but I think it important to reply to this (and I have karma to burn).
It is important to see the other man's point of view. One of the problems in Iraq at the moment is incomprehsnsion between the US forces and the locals. I agree that Al Jazeera does reflect an anti-US viewpoint. However, it does not create such a viewpoint - it reflects that of the world in which it lives. AJ is not killing US soldiers - is just speaks the same language as people who are. If you disregard all Arabs as "anti US terrorists", you will never achieve enough understanding if the Arab world to retire from Iraq gracefully.
Apart from the fact that the AJ piece is an amost exact dupe of the SpaceDaily article, it is an entirely impartial report about a piece of US innovation. It makes the US look good. What is bad about quoting an Arab source saying good things about the US? You need that - Arabs don't read the New York Times, they read Al Jazeera.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
i've been coughing and sneezing all morning. i should be able to power the entire office with the bacteria in my lungs.
!(^((ri)|(mp))aa$)
The process that is core to this experiment(breaking down of sugar ) takes place in our bodies also. :-)
How long will it take for researchers to come up with a method to tap the extra energy in human beings(that usually gets converted to fat)? And then, when your cell goes dead - you'll have to eat more sugar
Further imagine what would happen if some major energy company decided to couple this knowledge with genetic cloning? Welcome to the real world!
even if we use "harmless" bacteria, nobody knows how they will influence our health and above all - the ecosystem - if they really are cultivated in large masses to satisfy the market for battery's. so what if the "living battery" is depleted, how do you prevent the bacteria from spreading like a wildfire and eventually mutating in something harmful? before this tech should go into large scale production, massive, and i emphazise the word !massive!, tests about the implications on human immunesystem and the ecosystem of this sort of bacteria should be conducted
".Sig Stealer" was here
So if I catch someone recharging a half discharged battery do I report them?
Will it work on freezing cold or boiling heat? Chemical batteries are very robust in extreme weather but what about the bacteria?
Dont just mail it - Maileet
According to the article the bacteria grow at a maximum of 30C (86 F). That means the bacteria battery won't be operative during long stretches of July and August.
Be sure to read twice, now, to be sure you don't order the wrong type of butt plug.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
A calculator uses really tiny amounts of current compared to Christmas tree lights. My calculator hasn't had a battery charge in years, and my watch has a calculator in it too. Christmas lights got to use hunderds of times more power in comparison.
Prolly? WTF is Prolly?
Mixing up 'Then' and 'Than' or 'its' and 'it's' I can understand at a grade-school level, but 'Prolly' instead of Probably?
I can imagine the new movie already....
Yes, I did, and it was a copy of one of the previous articles. Therefore, I'm guessing Hemos wa s trying to make some sort of point, as slashdot editors love doing on occasion
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I'm still wondering if this variety of battery would have any ethyl alcohol output...
I could use a laptop battery that puts out a nice little shot of vodka for the end of the day. This feature could also motivate users to take very-good care of their bacteria.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
pff, damned typo's due to keyboard covered in cola...
ahhrggghhh! my fingers! they are eating my fingers!
I wonder if this means energy plants in the future will be pretty rotten places.
So my cell phone digests. Will I have to take it out for a crap every moring?
I hear its quite difficult to overthrow dictators who are supported by the worlds largest and most powerful military force.. .. and you wonder why people blame the USA?
More competition for my sugar intake.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Hey Hemos, maybe you could hook some derivative of this up to your fingers so that you'll have enough energy to visit Merriam-Webster to find out that 'PROLLY' IS NOT A WORD, DAMN IT!
Geez, Louise! Learn to spell and quit being lazy!
And for all you dumbasses that don't know the difference between their, there, and they're as well as it's and its, step in line behind Hemos at Merriam-Webster
Have a good day,
Spelling and Grammar Dad
That Provocateur is probably a FBI agent...
with regards to the bigass 30 million dollar battery set we just bought -- the extreme case presented is -51 deg C freezes pipes in a residential house in about 2 hours without power. And this battery can provide power for up to 15 minutes for the lowest estimate on usage, which is enough to get the diesel generators going. Why do we need the (30 million dollar) battery? If the most it takes is 15 minutes to get everyone happy again, then why do we need to buy that 15 minutes at a whopping cost of 30 million dollars??? I'm confused.
why is this flamebait ?
why is this offtopic ?
aren't we dealing with alternative power sources and Arab interests ?
somebody smoked too much here...
Interesting story. Given that the power is generated by bacteria, my first question would have to be: Is an optimal temperature required for bacterial function / electrical generation?
Maintaining a warm environment for the sake of the bacteria would certainly rule out plenty of uses from cars to flashlights, and most importantly: that little light that goes on when you open your freezer.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Anyone care to do the math on how many acres of sugarcain field and the number of trained worker ants needed to harvest for a city powerplant?
As biological systems, these battery bacteria should be susceptible to a host of illnesses -- viruses (called bacteriophages), mold, other bacteria, etc.. Swiping a packet of sugar from the restaurant to fuel a laptop might get you some extra surfing time (about half an hour according to my back-of-the-envelope-calcs) or it may get you some nasty battery disease. Will we need public service announcements on practicing safe laptop recharging?
Sugar may be cheap, but sterilized sugar solution in a handy refill cartridge will cost a pretty penny. And, yes, it only means more sweet spam.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Stamp it out before it's
Skiing? Check out The Independant Skiers Portal
Just as I was getting set up to rant, I discover that "prolly" is now a recognised acronym for "probably".
To newspeak is good. I did plus ungood thoughtcrime.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Go ahead and mark me flame-bait... but it's supposed to be a joke...
Yoghurt contains mass produced bacteria.
Most soft cheeses like Camenbert and Brie depend on bacteria for their production.
Bacteria is used in most sewerage treatment plants.
You're hatching them in your gut and every day you shit them. Multiply that by everyone in your city, the world etc and be very afraid. Ie you are mass producing them.
Did you know living in an environment artificially depleted of bacteria (eg too much bleach), can increase your chances of things like Asthma?
Bacteria are used every day by farmers to control other pests like mould and fungus and caterpillers (dipel). (Ironically penicillin is a fungus to control bacteria). Bacteria are also important to good quality soil and natural recycling of vegetation and animal manure.
It probably wouldn't be a good idea to eat your phone battery, but that's no reason to be afraid of it.
Bacteria only multiply out of control in very favourable conditions. That's why they say you should keep your food refrigerated or boiling ie keep your food at temperatures not conducive to growing toxic bacteria like some salmonella.
I suppose you still eat chicken or eggs? The salmonella is not completely eliminated, only minimised...
And bacteria doesn't generally "spread" really fast without help.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
This too is off topic, apologies but the thread was already here...
My two cents: Saying we need to try to "understand" the types of radical prejudice and hate-speak generated by the Arab world, is akin to saying we need to try to "understand" white-supremacy so that we can all get along.
For crying out loud we're talking about a part of the world where women aren't allowed to drive.
It is not "we" who need to understand. We *do* understand.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Provide a box of doughnuts & a treadmill and we have a new use for fat people!
Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia.
Al Jazeera comes freom Qatar, where women are allowed to drive - as they are in Iraq and most of the rest of the Arab world.
You prove my point - you are treating the Arab world as if it was a monolithic whole, then apply the worst of the worst to the whole. Of cvourse Al Quaida and Saddams thugs are murderous thugs. Bu they are no more typical of the whole Arab world than the Klu Klux Klan are typical of the USA.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Arthur C Clarke talked about this years ago in one of the Rendezvous with Rama trilogy - technology from the giant spiders IIRC.
Sorry, what accusation? I didn't accuse the US of anything more than incomprehension.
It doesn't matter how you got in to this mess, you won't get out of it without understanding what the Arab in the street wants. He certainly doesn't want Saddam back - but he equally certainly doesn't want a govenment imposed by the occupying power - no matter how benevolent that occupying power.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Somewhere, there is a tiny bacteria named NEO being offered a blue pill.....
If we had 150 million white supremacists to deal with it might be worth trying to understand them.
During the cold war, we made an effort to get along with the Communist block. We didn't agree with them, we didn't approve of them, and we didn't even like them, but we had to share a planet with them, and we can now look back at that time and congratulate ourselves on avoiding a catastrophe. If the catastrophe had happened, it would no doubt have soon become accepted wisdom that it was inevitable.
And you don't understand. Which are these countries where "women aren't allowed to drive"? Iraq? - no. Egypt? - no. Syria? - no. Saudi Arabia - yes. Iran? - bzzzzzt, they're not Arabs, try again...
Many Thanks,
Luke
If we have protoculture already I want my reflex technology powered fighter.
in a petri dish in your home. At least I hope that they make the batteries with an open standard and none of this "It's broken, go buy another one because opening it with a screwdriver violates our intellectual property and would release oh so dangerous components into the wild"
if the batteries get widespread, they should come with instructions on how to replace the bacterial colony inside them, and detailed safety data sheets. After all, alexander graham bell spilled a lead acid on himself when making the first phone call, and that doesn't stop me from topping up the sulphuric acid in my car battery.
Yeah. open battery technology. And they should also tell you how to replace the high tech membrane and electrolyte solutions if you mess those up too.
One step closer.
It was the episode where Homer became an astronaut. He was up on the shuttle, and he ended up breaking an ant farm and releasing all the ants. So the ants were floating around in the microgravity, and when Kent Brockman was relaying the story on the news, the picture that came in from the shuttle was an ant on the camera, and many floating around in the background.
(A page on the episode, with the quote)
So Kent Brockman says:
"Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but, uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves."
Great episode. A very good one to watch, if you get a chance.
*honks*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
But it's extremely unfortunate and in poor taste that Slashdot choose to highlight it using Al Jazeera as a news source. This news outlet is the largest voice of anti-US sentiment in the Arab world and is a particularly offensive forum to highight while our soldiers are still dying in that area of the world.
Uhm... it's unfortunate yes. But ONLY because Al-Jazeera is such an unreliable source of accurate news.
no thanks
Growing battery-bacteria in your kitchen sounds like one heck of a funny geek-hobbyist experiment. The only thing I need now is an online store where I can buy a few grammes of freeze dried Rhodoferax ferrireducens.
I wonder if you could make it work as a hobbyist. Any biologists here to answer the question if it would be feasible to grow these at home?
"You can read more on Al Jazeera and USA Today".
Wow. Is that a first? Is Al Jazeera to be considered a reputable media outlet? Does it deserve linking from a Slashdot site?
I don't know how well their technology coverage is, but I do know that their "World news" is highly skewed and biased.
Yeah, USA Today is certainly not #1, but compared to Al Jazeera, it's superbly honest.
When was the last time Slashdot linked to the Inquirer?
Favorite
How can leet-speak be modded Troll? What kind of fscking morons are you people?
LOL. "Secret coup suppression" in Qatar? Puhleaze. One, if a conspiracy theory "secret suppression" is the best you can come up with, then, well, I really shouldn't be even answering but you proved my point. No where in the Arab world can you point to the U.S. as having directly suppressed with our soldiers the citizenry of an Arab country in support of its dictator. That has not occurred and is not recognized as having occurred in any legitimate political, diplomatic, or journalistic circles. Two, if you're going to try to prove a point, try not to user The Free Republic as your source. The Brother Grimm's fairytales provide better reading.
For some reason US raw surgar prices seem to be about triple the "world" price.
Tarrifs.
IIRC, the US has some pretty high tarrifs on cane sugar. Not that there's a domestic sugar industry to protect, but there is a huge corn syrup (and other corn products) industry. Think Archer Daniels Midland. Think lobbying groups.
And yeah, it's the reason that drinks like Coca-Cola use corn syrup instead of real sugar as the sweetener.
-- Alastair
You're the idiot who would just as easily accept the propaganda spewed out by mainstream American media, and quickly dismiss Al-Jazeera as a skewed and racist medium. Go through the site, and see for yourself before you rush to judgement.
Chaudhuri is obviously a Muslim last name -- thank your lucky stars they didn't mention their religions.
My battery leaked - I've got meningitis!
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
There's got to be a downside. Who owns the IP? Are there patents filed yet? How about domain names? I can hear the politicians screaming to the press. "We need to regulate and tax these new power sources." Who approves this? FDA? EPA?
-- No sig for you!
Michael J Fox and his DeLorean?
-- No sig for you!
Of course, this was the concept behind the Dracucell, which theoretically will be able to extract about 100W from the bloodstream (though actual efficiencies will be quite a bit below that).
I suspect Dracucells will do wonders for the diabetic population.
--Dan
The bacteria battery sounds like it is more efficient than this potato powered web server, but the technology sounds more complicated and failure prone. Spuds are dependable sources of power.
"The electrons were transported to the nearby electrode, called the anode, and driven around an external circuit to the other electrode, the cathode: electrical power."
Excuse me? The electrons travel from anode to cathode?
"The prototype made by Lovley and Chaudhuri cranks out only a tiny amount of current -- enough to run a calculator or Christmas tree lights."
Christmas tree lights don't draw as much current as a hair dryer, but a couple orders of magnitude more than a calculator!
"In addition, the bacterium is rugged and stable, able to grow at temperatures ranging from four to 30 C (39.2 to 86 F), with 25 C (77 F) the optimum."
A high-end operating temp of 86F makes it useless all summer in my local climate, or any day it gets left in the car and the sun is shinning. Still I agree with the line: "But as a proof of concept it is remarkable." Also, with so much of the discussion of a hydrogen economy being complete Bovine Scat, ignoring the cost/energy required to produce it, this should be tied in to efforts at bio-generation of free (as in loose) hydrogen.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
You'll note Al-Jazeera didn't mention the religious beliefs of the researchers. Chaudhuri is obviously a Muslim name.
If Al-Jazeera's article mentioned their religious beliefs, then it would indicate something more than a difference in "journalistic" culture, possibly a bigoted view.
But kudos to you for mentioning that it is nothing more than a difference in culture.
Most of these Middle-eastern countries have tight to non-existent immigration policies. Even if you as a non-national had a child born in that country, your child would not be eligible for citizenship. I speak from experience living in Saudi Arabia.
Hopefully, in the future, they'll loosen these restrictions, and build the economy of their nations through immigrant labor, the way the US did.
I built a bacterial fuel cell (from their description, identical except for the bacterial species) as a high school science project in 1964! We just used some bacteria from the Kansas River.
It worked... dump in sugar, get out current.
I think what is new here is the high level of efficiency.
The only good weather is bad weather.
A battery life of 25 days is very impressive for a string of Christmas lights. Less so, for a calculator. I suspect that they meant a single (LED?) Christmas tree light, which would still be pretty good. Anyone know how much sugar and power are involved?
i think it was called The Matrix
i believe 'Agent Smith' referred to us as "Parasites". (are parasites a bacterium?)
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
The Flintstones already figured that one out...
Not true. "Choudhuri" is a Bengali surname....its true some Bengali Muslims also use the name...(many from Bangladesh/West Bengal in India)...
Rather than wondering if it will ever replace Fairbanks' UberUPS, I'm more interested if it will be adapted to replace this battery. Reducing the number of open chest surgeries for people already having heart problems can be a very very good thing.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Oops...It should read "...Bengali Hindu surname.."
Cool stuff. But what if it gets infected with a virus?
Would it explode or merely cough up something?
My Laptop is sick......
Well keep it warm and give it two aspirins and call again tomorrow....
The Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab at the University of the West of England has demonstrated a robot doing phototaxis, powered entirely by a microbial fuel cell.
Zzzzz...when I have kids, I hope that I'll teach them to read everything freely available--INCLUDING Al Jazeera. Because US-centrism is a BAD thing.
Sometimes I seriously wish I could secede from the US in some kind of meaningful way.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
If you must fall into the role of jingoist and ideologue by demonizing publications of vaguely defined enemies, at least try to be a little more accurate... "women aren't allowed to drive"--indeed! But only in the US supported regime.
And in other news, bacteria still run the planet.
Damn those pesky terrorists
The article states that the bacteria contributes to global warming: "The process does have a pollutant, in the form of CO2, which is a greenhouse gas, but the contribution to global warming would be far less than the equival emission using fossil fuel, says Lovley." But doesn't the CO2 production originate with plant byproducts, which in turn come from atmospheric CO2? Hence, 100% of the CO2 is actually recycled rather than produced from fossil fuels ... which means that these batteries contribute nothing at all to global warming.
Jeff Cagle
No, humans were referred to as a virus.
I've been called a "Fucking Dick" by better people than you.
...and new relevence to the term "protoculture".
In a Pentagon-backed project, University of Massachusetts researchers Swades Chaudhuri, an Indian, and Derek Lovley, an American, say the battery's source is an underground bacterium that gobbles up sugar and converts its energy into electricity.
They didn't go on to show any especial suspicion about that, they just noted it. Later on, at the end of the article, they described the Military applications -- "the US Department of Defence was interested in it for powering underwater microphones and sonar to spot passing ships and submarines." They were quite positive, all told, describing the batteries as remarkable for a proof-of-concept. They mentioned applications in impoverished areas, using batteries working from sewage for example.
On the other hand, USA Today didn't mention the Pentagon connection, describing the scientists only as being "at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst." The USA Today story was considerably shorter, lacked Al Jazeera's detailed description of how the thing worked ("...each side containing a graphite electrode and separated by a membrane. On one side was R ferriducens swimming in a glucose solution, which it broke down into carbon dioxide (CO2) and electrons. The electrons were transported to the nearby electrode...") and just generally read much more superficially.
I wouldn't describe the Al Jazeera story as amazingly well-written -- it included some grammatical slips that read as if they'd been made in translation -- but it was a more complete bit of reporting by far, and showed no determined bias other than noting the military connection in a neutral way, IMHO.
I'd bet the story's submitter included that Al Jazeera link because it's just plain better. Take a look yourself.
(And as far as the world news thing goes, you should try to understand why it is that the Arab world watches this channel rather than the Western World's channels, which they see as bought and paid for by US corporate interests. It is a point of view, and you might want to understand it even if you don't agree.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Any links to some more technical info on this technology? Specifically, what are the mediators they are using? That may be a limiting factor here.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
Lysol. Kills 99% of airborne bacteria. Now with patented Dura-kill for those tough to reach batteries.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
whoops...you're right...a virus, not a parasite...
it was Maynard Keenan that spoke of humans as a parasite -- (if i now recall correctly...)
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
The United States provides financial, military, and political support to the following Arab governments:
The above Arab governments are not lead by democratically elected leaders or are lead by an elected leader who has held office for over 10 years. They are dictatorships, monarchies or other forms of autocracies.
The US had supported the previous autocratic government of Iraq (I leave Iran out of the discussion as it is not Arab).
The US military is the strongest military in the world.
None of the aforementioned countries have seen sucessful popular rebellion once the US began military aid (Several have had forced monarchy successions or military coups).
Several of the aforementioned countries had successful rebellions before the US began military aid.
Somalia's Barre lost control of his government despite US support.
The above points make it reasonable to assert, as in the original point, that it is difficult to overthrow a goverment supported by the country with the world's strongest military as Somalia is the only example of an Arab goverment with US support being overthrown. As a test case, we could withdraw US financial, military, and political support of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and watch how long it stands. Your point that no US forces have actively stood against an Arab rebellion (which I agree with) is trivial as long as US resources (including, in rare occassions, direct US military assistance) continue to be used to support Arab dictators and suppress anti-goverment activity.
You should probably spend more time watch the Daily Show with John Stewart and less time with Saturday Night Live. It will help you drop the (silence), bring it on, LOL and Puhleaze rhetoric that reads like that of an eighth grade drop out.
A more interesting question than the above B.S. is whether democracy is a worthwhile immeditate goal in the Arab countries. The most stable goverments seem to be the constitutional, parlimentary monarchies of the gulf states (some of which are more liberal than others) but even that stablilty may be wishful thinking. Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have seen significant internal threats. The democratization of the middle east is probably just so much hooka smoke until the Arabs have had a couple generations of a liberal parlimentary monarchy which may be impossible to achieve while religious freedoms are maintained for fundamentalists. See Turkey for more lessons on balancing humanism (and political freedom) with fundamentalist religion. Perhaps Egypt and Iraq will prove the exceptions, but perhaps not.
This is Slashdot, the place is crawling with virgins. Or were you expecting something else?
The writer of that movie must have been a genious! I wonder if he could prove prior art?
Agent Provocateur, a frenchman, wrote something about a bactera, a very tiny insect maybe , going on and on and on...
If it was easier for Saddam to hide them there instead of Syria he would do it in a heartbeat.
And fuck you. Come on down to the corner of Greenwich and Park Place in NYC and call me a bastard to my face. Anytime you want coward boy. I'll use your head as a soccer ball you little prick. I'll kick your ass over the fence into the big hole where the WTC used to stand.
I was there. I'll make any fucking WMD joke I want. When's the last time YOU saw someone die you freakin coward?
wbs.
Huh?
After thinking about the idea more, it seems that this is only a resting point on the path to better energy. We have these organisms which happen to manufacture proteins (I assume that's what does the work) that metabolize sugar into electricity. They also happen to manufacture hundreds or thousands of other proteins, many of which are quite helpful in spreading progeny but superfluous in their electrical purpose. Once we have a better understanding of how they work and how to imitate them - and I'm sure the 20 or 30 year target zone the article cites is ample for that - why not strip away all the excess baggage and make a lean, mean electric machine? Though bacteria possess great advantages over the machines of today with such things as replication, there're a lot of things biological systems are vastly inferior at, like energy efficiency. In the long run in which this technology will be relevant, there's nothing fundamental to keep us from improving on nature's design by leaps and bounds. Ooh... it sends shivers down my spine. ;)
...then my co-workers could power the midwest.
Not a new idea, I remember hearing about a project to make similar batteries at an Austin, Texas firm way back in 1977 or 78. The idea seems to have died, but it seemed a rather good idea at the time. But the devil is always in the details. Part of the claims were, one could have one or two refrigerator sized units running on recycled garbage that could run a small household. Or flashlight batteries. I had always wondered what the big show stopper was for this particular scheme.
so I jump started it from my refridgerator.
After examing the icebox and it's contents, I decided to call Entergy and have them cut the wires to my house. Every few weeks or so I throw a pizza or two in there for it to consume.
I just left it plugged in. It *PUTS* power back into my house wiring this way.
Weeee! Free energy! Fsck cold fusion, I got grungetricity!
Good Lord! Slashdot promotes Al Jazeera! On a second thought, I kind of expected it.
A failure is you.
Is this project anything alike of Dracucell that was mentioned on slashdot a while back? Both of the projects seem pretty similar.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Okay, so say for instance that I have a battery that's about 1 cubic foot. I add approximately 1lb of sugar to it. I use the battery and as electricity is being generated, 80% of the electrons are being collcted and sent out as energy... Well, what happens to the rest of the sugar?! Do I end up with 1/4lb of bacteria? Will I end up with some strangely glucose deficient sludge? Will I need to come out every morning with a spoon and scoop 1lb of bacteria into the trash?
I think God has prior art with this one...
Hmm, thats a new word for me but I don't think it's going to get into my every day vocabulary. proka-what? No less than five words I've never absorbed before (the words not the subjects).
Yeah, biology at my school was science for art students. So I stopped early. Sad, because I liked it but it clashed with Maths, Physics and Chem.
What I am vaguely concerned about is Mr/Ms Lemming's irrational fear of bacteria. Is s/he going to die attempting to do a personal purge? Has this been done before or would it be a new category for Darwin Awards?
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
First off, Al Jazeera is a TV Network, not a newspaper. The Web site is an extension of the TV network.
All I'm saying is, there's a reason Al Jazeera has an audience, and that audience is not just blindly kneeling at the altar of Arab nationalism, no. There is a bias, definitely -- and it mostly takes the same form we see on something like Fox News in the US: points of view that are closer to the station ideologically get first-person, direct defenses and more time on the air, and the ones the station is less aligned with -- notably Israeli sources -- get less representation and are often described indirectly, at one remove. Anyone who watched Fox describing the protests before and during our recent war will understand exactly what I mean by that. The anchors would go out of their way to frame stories about the protests by saying they were made up of a very few people and so on, and Fox didn't put footage on in which the protestors' point of view was directly expressed by advocates on the air nearly as much as they characterized those views at one remove. (The contempt Fox felt for those protesters was palpable. The anchors practically sneered going into those segments.)
For all, that, here's an Al Jazeera producer on your bias charge:
Al Jazeera did have Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Christopher Ross, a former American ambassador to Syria who speaks fluent Arabic, on the air. Tony Blair has appeared too.
The Norm for Al Jazeera is Arab Nationalism. They're catering to their viewers, of course, but they're doing so at the cost of objectivity. It's more like a circus than a news show. More entertainment than news. Have you ever watched it?
Absolutely I've seen it. Nationalistic news sources suck, I totally agree with you there. Al Jazeera gets called "The Arab CNN," mostly, when people are trying to describe why it was created and the role it plays. It's struck me as a lot closer to Fox News than CNN, for what it's worth. CNN has always been about direct news feeds with traditional anchors and so on, whereas Fox is much more talk/advocacy driven, and much closer in tone to the last ten years of my US talk radio. Al Jazeera has a lot of really confrontational talk programs on the air, contentious ones, that Fox or MSNBC would be my closest US analog to.
You're totally right -- looks to be a story cribbed from Space Daily. Gee, I wonder why they didn't spice it up with a bunch of anti-American references and bash the Pentagon angle. Seems like a clear case where they had the chance to, doesn't it? And let's see, why do you think Al Jazeera keeps a relationship with Space Daily rather than reporting on the level of, in this case, the USA Today? Seems like they made a decent choice.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
No, this is not an infection on my forearm, it is my battery, stupid!
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
Why not go further than batteries? Have a garbage system at home that chews up and retains your waste in a tank. You might use a range of bacteria to do things such as e.g. break down cellulose. Separate out what's worth keeping, filtering and using membranes to purify it. Use the sugars to power your home electrics and the garbageman can pick up compacted solids (or you can simply flush them through the sewers or burn them or dump them on the garden or whatever).
Semms to me that slow release is not such an issue when there's a constant throughput.
Energy from garbage is a good (and old) idea.
One common alternative energy scheme is a digester that converts waste into methane that is collected and burned for household energy needs. The tank employs methanogenic bacteria not unlike those found in ruminant mammals such as cows. Its a good, small-scale, low-tech method, but it does require a bit of stewardship to keep the bacteria warm and happy (issues like maintaining the proper carbon-nitrogen ratio can be hard).
A more recent, higher tech method is to use very high temperature, high pressure water (e.g., 700 C, 100 atmospheres) to completely breakdown and reform all the molecules in a waste stream. This converts just about any stream of organic waste into a mix of CO2, hydrocarbons, and salts. It's great in that it can chew up anything, including plastics and it detoxifies a wide range of nasties like medical waste, dioxin, and pesticides. It's not a small-scale technology, however.
As for using battery bacteria in such a system, I would have 3 concerns that could be dispatched with further study. First, many household garbage items might be toxic to the bacteria (e.g., detergents, soaps, solvents, and anti-bacterial cleansers). Second, highly digestive versions of the bacteria could lead to the infamous "gray goo" problem -- a cellulose-eating bateria might take a liking to our houses and trees. Third, slow release means a large holding tank -- a 1 acre processing tank would make battery-bacteria uneconomical or infeasible for most households.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Welcome, and don't apologize... I've just been hearing that quote a lot, for a long time, and happened to know about the episode repository. ^^;;
*honks*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things