Hasta La Ideas

Wireless power

In the photo you see above, the light bulb held in inventor Marin Soljacic’s hand is powered–via the air–by the black object sitting on the desk. S’right, no wires to the bulb.

With two large magnetic coils, he found a way to throw 60 watts across a room, powering a lightbulb. MIT, his employer, quickly patented the technology and encouraged Soljacicto start a company.

Soljacic was inspired by his wife’s Nokia cell phone, which would wake him up by beeping when it needed juice. He realized it was silly for something to be sitting so close to an outlet but with no way to access the electricity.

The latest iteration of Soljacic’s invention, displayed in Tokyo earlier this year, “was able to power a 1,000-watt klieg light from across the room.”

Dog Armor

Military dogs can cost up to $50,000, and protective dog gear is both humane and financially prudent. Next year a company called K9 Storm is introducing “the K9 Storm Intruder, a bulletproof dog vest with a wireless camera, speakers and a microphone built in. The handler can see what the dog sees and issue commands through the audio system,” which increases the handler’s range to about 300 yards.

Though you may never have heard of them, K9 Storm runs a business worth $5 million annually and has been around since the ’90s; years ago a story made the news whereby a police dog took two .45 rounds in its K9 Storm bulletproof vest, but kept fighting and subdued the shooter with no harm to itself. Pretty bad-ass!

Beer-Fed Fish

Okay, so the title’s slightly misleading. Here’s the deal: Free raw materials sounds good to manufacturers, and recycling waste products sounds good to environmentalists. Biologist Andrew Logan figured out a way to turn beer sludge (waste-water from beer factories) into high-protein fish food, using microbes. Brewers are only too happy to give Logan their sludge for free–it costs up to $3 million per year to get rid of the stuff otherwise–and the fish farm industry needs something to feed its 65 million tons of fish. It’s win-win, and Logan will probably become rich as a result.

via CNN’s Next Little Thing

(more…)