Tiny supercharger is like 10 wind turbines in one

What if there were a palm-size charger that gathered power from the wind? A company called Humdinger says its Microbelt small-scale wind charger actually works, and it's 10 times more effective at generating wind energy than other units its size.

Where is the turbine, you ask? There isn't one — it uses "aeroelastic flutter and vibration of a membrane" for its wind power, operating sort of like that blade of grass you put between your thumbs to honk out some choice noises.

The amount of energy created by this diminutive device is minuscule — but it's efficient, outputting 2 milliwatts when the wind is blowing at 5.5 meters per second. That's enough power to run building monitoring and transit monitoring sensors; with one of these, there'd be no need to ever change batteries. Put a few dozen of these on an electric car, and you'll have something pretty close to a perpetual-motion machine.

Via Treehugger

Take a look: transparent solar panels

Imagine if instead of looking out your window to see your solar-panel array, your windows were your solar panel array? Sphelar solar cells can be built into windows, whether they're flat or curved. Instead of chasing the sun, they'll capture the sun from all angles.

Sphelar solar cells, from the Kyosemi Corporation, debuted at the PV Expo 2010 in Tokyo. They are solidified drops of silicon, 1.8mm across, that are embedded into glass of any shape. Potentially, the technology could be integrated into a decorative dome on top of a building, glass bricks, or just an ordinary office or home window. Because they're round drops, they'll pick up the sunlight at all times of day.

Although the Sphelar cells are clear, once they're embedded into glass, the window isn't completely clear, so this wouldn't make an ideal car window. However, it could be the newest twist on tinted glass for homes and offices.

Just think if all those shiny glass skyscrapers gracing most city skylines were actually generating their own power?

Via Gizmag

The Pursuit of Profit

Lehman Brothers: Warehouse for junk loans

3D printer uses bio-ink to create the first 'printed' human veins

It sounds like science fiction, but researchers from the University of Missouri have a 3D printer that could one day recreate human organs by using a cocktail made from human cells. If your liver was failing, for instance, cells from your liver could be used to print a healthy one, or cells from your heart could be used to create a new heart, and so on.

Right now, all of that is still a long way off. What has been done, however, is recreate a human vein using "bio-ink," or the liquid sludge that's produced using human cells and printed onto "bio-paper." This paper slowly dissolves as the layers of ink bind and start to take on the shape us humans would recognize.

Gabor Forgacs, the man who created the Organovo NovoGen prototype printer, told NPR that the blueprints for the organs, or "schemes" as he calls them, can be created using x-ray technology and the like, giving researchers an outline and floor plan to each organ. It's not as simple as it sounds, though, and you probably won't hear about printed organs replacing a failing liver. Human testing could begin within five years, according to Forgacs, whose team is currently perfecting the process to print out a human vein.

Each vein starts as a series of circles and then, like layering flattened donuts one on top of the other, the entire stack creates a cylinder — a vein.

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Power wrist band to charge your Devices

You can never really go without juice for your various gadgets, as anyone who's ever been stuck out with a dead cellphone can attest. There's nothing quite like it to make you feel cut off from the world and maybe a bit panicky. Which is why this Universal Gadget Wrist Charger is pretty great.

Sure, it's not the coolest-looking thing in the world, but hey, it's useful. It's a little battery that lets you charge up anything that juices up via mini USB, such as cellphones, MP3 players or portable gaming systems. For $35, you get the wristband as well as a slew of adapters for common devices. Now you just need to figure out what to wear with it.