A Swedish Company Claims It Has Built The World's Most Efficient Solar Panel That Tracks The Sun.

A Swedish technology company has installed a new solar electricity generation system in South Africa’s sun-soaked Kalahari desert, saying it’s not only the most efficient system of its kind in the world, but it doubles the efficiency of standard solar panels.

The system, which features a pair of huge, 12-metre mirror dishes, runs on a Stirling engine - a type of closed-cycle regenerative heat engine that was invented way back in 1816, and uses trapped gas instead of water to propel the internal pistons and flywheel. The dishes are slowly rotated throughout the day to capture the maximum amount of solar rays and focus them into a specific point, which kicks the Stirling engine into gear.

Room With The Lowest Magnetic Field In The Solar System.

Some experiments, especially in fundamental physics, require the complete absence of magnetic fields. The only places you would find such a spot would be either in intergalactic space or inside a superconductor. Now an international team of researchers claim to have created such a space with a magnetic field that is the weakest in the solar system.

In the Journal of Applied Physics of 14 May the researchers report that by building a box consisting of metal shields arranged in a "Russian nesting doll" structure, they have been able to attenuate changes in the ambient magnetic field caused by man, such as passing cars, or of natural origin, such as solar flares, by a million fold, a factor they have increased to seven million since the acceptance of their paper. In practical terms, the shielded box can reduce magnetic disturbances from passing cars to below one pico Tesla. In comparison, the magnetic field of the Earth averages 48 microtesla at the surface.

This million-fold attentuation is an increase of two orders of magnitude over the previous best magnetically shielded space, the BMSR-2 in Berlin, explains Peter Fierlinger, a physicist at the Technical University Munich, Germany. "There is a very fundamental experiment that we are intending to do.  It will allow us to look at the origin of the universe much closer to the Big Bang than the Large Hadron Collider," says Fierlinger.

The team of 19 researchers from Germany, Switzerland and the United Sates used an industrial alloy of nickel and iron, Magnifer, that responds to external magnetic fields by becoming easily magnetized and redirecting the magnetic field lines towards the inside of the metal. The complete magnetic shield has a large external chamber consisting of three alloy shields and an aluminum shield for stopping RF radiation. A second box, also consisting of three Magnifer shells, called the "insert," is mounted on rails and can be rolled in and out of the external shield.  The total space available for experiments is slightly more than 4 m3.

"You can lock yourself in this room, but you will be the most magnetic item inside," says Fierlinger.

Although such magnetic shields have been built in the past, an efficient design, with optimized spacing and thickness of the metal sheets, became possible with advances in numeric modeling over the last few years, explains Fierlinger.  "It took us several years of elaborate work to achieve this improvement," he says.

The magnetic field the researchers achieved is now low enough to tackle an experiment that will  allow them to probe the Standard Model of Particle Physics beyond the capabilities of the LHC.

"We are trying to measure the electric dipole moment of the neutron, and this is a very fundamental quantity, it is a quantum effect inside the neutron which is forbidden by the laws of nature that are part of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, but it is an effect required to explain physics beyond our Standard Model,”  says Fierlinger. “And this physics must exist because it would explain why the universe, as we see it, has more matter than antimatter."

However, he is quick to add that their magnetically shielded room will profit other areas of science and technology, such as measuring magnetic signals from the brain with SQUIDs, the design and testing of SQUIDs, superconducting detectors, and low-noise electronics.  "Our chamber will not be a user facility, but experiments will be collaborative."

Diamond+Graphene Engineered to Reduce Friction To Almost Zero.

Friction is an important fact of life, robbing efficiency from anything where two surfaces interact with each other, such as engines and wheels. Lubrication can reduce the amount of friction, but it's never possible to get rid of it entirely.

In some rare cases, however, it's been possible to get the coefficient of friction to drop dramatically. A phenomenon called superlubricity occurs when two perfectly flat surfaces with incompatible crystal structures slide past each other. It's only been observed in extremely small samples, however, as larger surfaces have imperfections that tend to get stuck as they slide around.

Now, researchers have managed to create superlubricity in a large sample. They do so by getting graphene to wrap around nanoscopic diamonds, creating something akin to tiny ball bearings.

The authors of the new paper, a team from Argonne National Lab, were initially intending to study the traditional type of superlubricity. They reasoned that graphene and diamonds would have incompatible surfaces, and hoped that coating two surfaces with them would allow them to slide with minimal friction. Although friction was low, it didn't fall into the superlubricity category.

By looking at the surfaces afterwards, however, they found that small sheets of graphene had peeled off one of the surfaces and rolled up, creating scrolls in the debris. However, as graphene is only a single atom thick, these scrolls weren't very robust, and they ended up crunched between the two surfaces. In order to give the graphene more staying power, the team then turned to a rather robust substance: diamonds. The authors expected that the diamonds would act like tiny ball bearings, allowing the graphene scrolls to roll while the two surfaces slid past each other.

Diamonds have two other properties that make them an excellent choice. For one, they provide the same sort of surface that the authors had already reasoned would slide past graphene with minimal resistance. It's also possible to create incredibly small diamonds, which the authors refer to as nanodiamonds.

So, the authors coated a surface with graphene, coated another with diamond-like carbon, and sprinkled nanodiamonds in between. This dropped the coefficient of friction down to near zero, indicating the superlubricity had been achieved. Electron micrographs of the surface revealed that, as expected, graphene sheets had wrapped themselves around the nanodiamonds, which acted a bit like a ball bearing.

The authors tried a variety of conditions, changing the temperature, varying the load on the surfaces, and increasing their relative velocity. In all cases, the nanodiamonds retained superlubricity. The only exception came when the increased the relative humidity to 30 percent, which caused friction to increase dramatically. Apparently, water vapor can make its way into the space between the two surfaces and act as a bridge between them, creating transient bonds that need to be broken to shift the surfaces.

This is the first time that superlubricity's been demonstrated for something other than two microscopic, defect-free surfaces. So, in that sense, it represents significant progress, and may point a way forward to getting rid of some of the friction that robs us of energy.

Using Human Cells to Develope 3D Printed Ears.

3D printing has taken another huge step forward with engineers and physicians successfully creating a prosthetic human ear by using injectable moulds.

The injectable moulds contain living cells that were used to mould the shape of the ear. Over three months, the collagen used to mould them is replaced by cartilage once implanted. The discovery was made by scientists and biomedical engineers in Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medical College and detailed in online peer review journal PLOS ONE.

The process starts with a digitised image of an ear for the printer. The file instructs the printer to mould the ear accordingly and then injects the gel containing living cells.

The whole procedure is quite fast. The mould takes roughly half a day to print and 30 minutes to inject the gel. It is then trimmed and left to culture in ‘nourishing cell culture media’ for a number of days before it is implanted on to a person.

The manufactured ear could help babies who have been born with ear deformities and in the long run be used to help people who lost their hearing later in life, whether through injury or illness, explains Dr Jason Spector.

Spector is the directorof the Laboratory for Bioregenerative Medicine and Surgery in New York and associate professor of plastic surgery with Weill Cornell. His colleague and co-lead author of the study, Lawrence Bonassar who is the associate professor of biomedical engineering also stated: “This is such a win-win for both medicine and basic science, demonstrating what we can achieve when we work together.”

Virtual Flowmeters: A Low-Cost Alternative

The use of virtual flowmeter (VFM) systems can help lower the costs and improve the reliability of subsea multiphase metering efforts. However, despite the maturation of VFM technology and the widespread use of VFM models as backups to physical meters, the industry has still not accepted it as an alternative to the physical meter or even as a tool to supplement physical meter measurements, an expert said. Speaking at a technical section on Tuesday at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Amin Amin, senior technical adviser at the Letton-Hall Group, discussed the study his group conducted into the viability of VFM systems. Amin compared five commercially available VFM software packages by using production data from a subsea well with a subsea multiphase flowmeter. He ran three rounds of evaluation. The first was an “out of the box” test, where the models were tested without any modifications. In the second round, the meters were tuned using elemental computing parameters for subsea multiphase meters such as total mass flow rate, gas volume fraction, and water/liquid ratio. In the third round, Amin factored fluid property errors into his measurements. “We really wanted to have a complete vote of confidence of VFMs,” Amin said. “Here was a real test case for us.” After the first round of testing, Amin noted that the real production data were valuable in comparing the methodologies used by each flow model to arrive at the given flow rates measured by the subsea multiphase flowmeter. In the second round, he found that the gas volume fraction could be estimated to a sufficient degree of accuracy by tuning the total mass flow rate in each model. Though the gas flow rate predictions grew increasingly uncertain over time, each package was consistent with regards to the anchoring role that the total mass flow rate parameter played in the VFM tuning process. The flow rate predictions from all participating models showed less than a 5% deviation from the measured oil flow rate and less than a 10% deviation from the measured gas flow rate. Adjusting the models to account for fluid properties did not change the results much. The deviation of individual phase densities had little effect on the flow rate projection, provided that the total mass flow rate used in the tuning process was accurate. Amin said the dependency of VFM models on the mixture density measurement at a given point for the purpose of defining the total mass flow rate is greater than it would be on the individual phase densities. Amin found that the presence of anomalous input data can impair the flow rate predictions of VFM systems, but with only one case study of note, it is hard to determine if this is a serious concern. He said more work is needed to establish a systematic approach to understand and interpret VFM systems in order to identify anomalous devices. “The systematic errors can be compromising, so the detection of these errors may not be as easy as one might expect from this system,” he said.

Technological Innovation Needed To Extract Value From Mature Oil Fields

With the oil industry facing an uncertain future in the wake of low oil prices, the maintenance of mature fields has become an extremely tough challenge. Despite the volatile economic environment, it is still possible for operators to wring additional value from these fields while keeping costs at a reasonable level, a trio of experts said. In a forum that took place at IHS CERAWeek in Houston, Tim Dodson, Michel Hourcard, and Leta Smith discussed the need for the industry to preserve mature fields by emphasizing technological innovation and creative management strategies. Dodson is the executive vice president at Statoil; Hourcard is a senior vice president of development, exploration, and production at Total; and Smith is a director at IHS. Dodson’s presentation focused primarily on Statoil’s efforts in the North Sea, particularly the Norwegian continental shelf. He said the mature areas in the Norwegian shelf remain attractive to the company because it is familiar with the geology, and it has the infrastructure in place to take advantage of the resources in the area. “As an operator of large production hubs in Norway, Statoil puts a lot of effort into proving up additional, timely resources in the surrounding areas in order to prolong the lifetime of the existing structure,” Dodson said. An example of this strategy is the Aasta Hansteen field, which was discovered by BP in 1997. Statoil is building a spar platform from which it will run the Polarled pipeline approximately 300 miles to a gas plant on the Nyhamna peninsula off the central Norwegian coast. Polarled is expected to deliver up to 70 million scf/D of gas to the Nyhamna plant. Furthermore, the company plans to build a separate pipeline between Polarled and the Kristin platform.

Worst-Case Discharges

In March, the SPE Board of Directors approved the publication of a technical report on the calculation of worst-case discharges (WCDs). The report, “Calculation of Worst-Case Discharge,” documents the consensus from an SPE-sponsored summit held in March last year. At the summit, 68 subject matter experts met in New Orleans with the goal of improving the methods of calculating and reporting WCD scenarios. The attendees—representing operators, regulators, academia, and service providers—developed the report, which was made available for comment for 30 days and edited to include comments before being approved by the Board. The focus of the technical report is on the calculation of WCD rather than well design or intervention. Its primary application is in the US Gulf of Mexico, although the report may be used for wells elsewhere. Deterministic methods are proposed because of the wording of regulations and requirements for detailed well design and response planning. Probabilistic modeling and statistical analysis are unacceptable. All reservoir properties, the report says, should be best-estimate, success-case values based on sound geology, geophysics, and engineering judgment. All calculation parameter values should be explained and justified to ensure consistency and transparency. Parametric sensitivity is recommended for identifying the major variables and their impact on the WCD calculation. Topics covered in the technical report include reservoir properties, inflow modeling, outflow modeling, total volume, special cases, and reporting. Future improvements could include flow correlations for high rates in large-diameter pipes, sonic velocity effects, and probabilistic methods. According to the report, the flow scenario should be modeled over the duration of the spill to determine when the highest, single-day flow rate from the well occurs, which may or may not be the first day. In multiwell situations, the report says, it is important to remember that the WCD well may or may not be the first well drilled on the block or in the field. Each potential well location must be assessed and the WCD determined by the planned well that has the highest WCD flow rate. The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management defines WCD as “the single highest daily flow rate of liquid hydrocarbon during an uncontrolled wellbore flow event,” that is, the average daily flow rate on the day that the highest rate occurs under worst-case conditions (e.g., a blowout). It is neither the total volume spilled over the duration of the event nor the maximum possible flow rate that would result from high-side reservoir parameters, nor a distribution of outcomes. It is a single value for the expected flow rate calculated under worst-case wellbore conditions using known (expected) reservoir properties.

Accounting for HSSE in an Enterprise Resource Planning System

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software systems help organizations manage data from product planning to shipping. By automating primary business-related processes, the systems allow companies to define their business models and plan workloads. However, most companies do not include processes related to health, safety, security, and environmental (HSSE) concerns within the scope of their ERP systems, and failing to account for HSSE may be a costly mistake, an expert said. Jeff Morgheim, a former climate change director at BP, said the early inclusion of HSSE practices in ERP systems is a good business practice because it sets a societal expectation that leads to improved decision making. He spoke at a webinar, “What About HSSE? Why Early Inclusion of HSSE Into Enterprise Resource Planning Efforts Makes Sense,” held by the SPE Gulf Coast Section’s Health, Safety, and Environment study group. Morgheim, who was part of BP’s executive team in the aftermath of the Macondo incident in 2010, is the founder of Edge Consulting. HSSE plays an important part in the operational excellence of an organization, Morgheim said. However, financial issues may make it difficult for a company to execute primary HSSE functions. “When an enterprise decides that it needs to implement something that allows all this information to flow together, the usual motivator has to do with getting a better handle on their accounting systems,” Morgheim said. “So, what you’ll find is that the executive sponsor within an enterprise will tend to be someone from within the finance function. That has an impact on the scope (of ERP implementation).” The following factors drive the inclusion of strong HSSE policies in an ERP system: Seizing the opportunity for near-term process improvements Avoiding rework Fostering a collaboration between functions Leveraging the risk reduction potential of an ERP system Enhancing workforce sustainability Signaling the role of HSSE to the organization Morgheim said near-term process improvements provide organizations with a framework for identifying the processes for simplification or elimination, and removing duplicity in data collection and reporting. An organization’s ability to use its HSSE policy in the investigative process in a consistent way with the rest of the ERP system is a powerful opportunity. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for your function to be able to sit down and look at how exactly our processes work,” he said. “Where do we get information from? Who do we get information to? How do we validate that information? What do we do with that information?” Avoiding rework on ERP systems is critical to keeping their cost down. Morgheim said incorporating good HSSE practices into a plan early will always cost less in the long run than retrofitting a plan to incorporate those practices after an incident. “As anyone who has done house remodeling knows, there is a lot less pain and suffering and mental anguish involved in designing all the rooms ahead of time rather than building two separate parts of the house and figuring out how you’re going to integrate them together,” he said. In addition, fostering collaboration between functions (operations, drilling, accounting, human resources, and the supply chain) helps reduce workload and errors within an organization. Leveraging an ERP’s risk reduction potential helps improve compliance, risk management, and operational assurance, which leads to long-term benefits in accounting and finance. Enhancing the HSSE workforce’s sustainability helps lower turnover costs and risks. It expands the pool of potential HSSE employees and lowers the costs to bring in new people. By emphasizing the importance of the role of HSSE, an organization is making it part of the creation of a culture of operational excellence. Morgheim said companies should reinforce the belief that good HSSE practices lead to good business practices.

STEM Learning Lab Promotes Love of Science and Maths in Children.

STEM Learning Lab provides young students with engaging and interactive learning experiences in science, technology, engineering and math by integrating those subjects in ways that are fun and hands-on.

For example, STEM’s curriculum also includes the powerful robotics platform EZ-Robot enabling kids engage in science and technology through building and playing with robots.

Here’s more from founders Gina Cherkowski and Ryan Clements:

How did you come up with the idea for your startup? Was there an “ah-ha” moment?

Gina: After many years of teaching in the classroom we still have so many kids who don’t have the competitive advantages in a world that requires an understanding of math, science, data, technology, and real world problem solving. This new world is based on having strong numeracy skills as well as visual and spatial reasoning skills. Adding arts to the equation is one way to do this.

We can also build these skills by teaching math visually using spatial temporal reasoning and by teaching things such as robotics. Most school curriculums do not target visual spatial skill development; in fact it is the smallest part of most math curriculums. Given that visual spatial reasoning is critical for learning, we know that supplementing children’s experiences with activities that promote visual spatial skills is important.

We wanted to provide a platform for children to learn these important skills while they are engaging in fun hands-on experiences and making new friends. Our camps not only target visual spatial skills and math and science skills, we also foster the development of computational literacy, analytical reasoning, problem solving, computer programing and logic-systems thinking.

What has been the biggest challenge so far? What have you done to solve it?

Distinguishing our niche from the many other great camps that are currently available. Parents need to find camps that best support their child and also understand the difference between each camp and what best suits them. Our niche is very different from any of the other camps in that our focus is on the visual spatial dynamic in learning through robotics and maker activities. To solve this challenge we have created many strategic partnerships, which has given us exposure and access to new networks, established relationships with many schools, and provided many demos of the robots and how they will work in our camps.

What’s new with your startup that we can share?

We have a full slate of camps and workshops for this summer open for registration at www.stemlearninglab.com. In the fall we will be adding math and robotics programs as well as science and computer camps for home-schoolers. Later this year we will launch a series of enrichment camps for kids on weekends, a pre-school program targeted to develop young children’s visual spatial skills that are critical to develop from ages 3 to 5, and bots for tots camps.

What advice would you like to share with others just starting out?

Take a process driven approach – utilize lean startup thinking, get your product to market quickly, test it with real customers and improve it based on feedback. Develop many strategic partnerships, networking opportunities, and mentoring relationships.

What made you choose to go down the path of entrepreneurship?

We both wanted the freedom to create things that added value and solved problems for others. We love the creative process, developing relationships, and the ability to act independently. We also are driven by the idea of disruptive innovation and we saw an opportunity to offer kids things that they couldn’t get in schools.

What do you and your startup need help with?

Getting the word out, growing our exposure and connecting to the people who could most benefit from our product. Please visit www.stemlearninglab.com for more information.

Lloyed Lobo covers technology startups in Alberta. He is a partner at Boast Capital and co-founder of Traction Conf. If you’d like to be featured, please email llobo@boastcapital.com.