UK solar-powered pilotless plane breaks world record

The UK-built solar-powered Zephyr pilotless plane has been recognised as having smashed the world record for the longest time spent in the air by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), after staying aloft for two weeks.

The 50kg craft, built by defence technology company QinetiQ, remained airborne for 14 days, 22 minutes and 8 seconds – 11 times longer than the previous record, according to media reports.

The world governing body for air sports records, the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), gave Zephyr three records including longest time aloft.

The FAI noted that Zephyr smashed the previous record for the absolute duration of an unmanned autonomous vehicle (UAV) flight - set by Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk in 2001 - by a factor of 11.

QinetiQ believes that Zephyr’s ability to fly higher and longer than any other current aircraft offers benefits to a number of potential customers in the military, academic, commercial and scientific arenas.

The record-breaking flight took place above a US Army site in Arizona for 14 days in the month of July, 2010.

Zephyr High-Altitude Long-Endurance (HALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an ultra-lightweight carbon-fibre aircraft. It flies on solar power generated by amorphous silicon arrays covering the aircraft’s wings, no thicker than sheets of paper. It is powered day and night by rechargeable lithium-sulphur batteries that are recharged during the day using solar power.

The aircraft uses United Solar Ovonic solar arrays, a full flight-set of Sion Power batteries, as well as a novel solar-charger and bespoke autopilot developed by QinetiQ.

Traffic tip for Santa: reflective reindeer collars

Norwegian reindeer owners have a Christmas safety tip for Santa -- put reflectors on his fleet-footed animals so they won't get hit by cars.

About 2,000 reindeer have been fitted this month with reflective yellow collars or small antler tags to cut down on the car crashes that now kill 500 reindeer a year and pose a danger to motorists across Arctic Norway.

"It really works," Kristian Oevernes, the leader of the project at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, told Reuters of the project in Finnmark, where the sun does not rise in mid-winter.

A test drive on a snowmobile showed that marked reindeer were far more visible in the dark than others. Several people are injured every year in car accidents involving reindeer, and one recent accident in Finland was fatal.

"I guess so," Oevernes said, when asked if Santa might take up the safety tip.

"This is the first time it (reindeer marking) has happened on this scale."

Sami herders had tried small experiments to attach reflective tape to the animals but the glue failed in the cold. Finnish herders had also tried a reflective spray, but it reduced the fur's ability to keep out the chill.

About 200,000 reindeer live in Norway, mostly owned by Sami indigenous people who raise them for meat, skins and antlers, according to the International Center for Reindeer Husbandry.

If the new project is successful, supporters say, reindeer owners or vehicle insurance companies might be interested in buying reflectors.

Eco-bulbs 'a health hazard for babies and pregnant women due to mercury inside'

Energy-saving light bulbs were at the centre of a fresh health scare last night after researchers claimed they can release potentially harmful amounts of mercury if broken.
Levels of toxic vapour around smashed eco-bulbs were up to 20 times higher than the safe guideline limit for an indoor area, the study said.
It added that broken bulbs posed a potential health risk to pregnant women, babies and small children.

The concerns surround ‘compact fluorescent lamps’ (CFLs), the most common type of eco-bulb in Britain, which are mini-versions of the strip lights found in offices.
The European Union is phasing out the traditional ‘incandescent bulbs’ used for more than 120 years and is forcing people to switch to low-energy alternatives to meet its climate change targets.
A CFL uses a fifth of the energy of a conventional bulb and can save £7 a year in bills. However, critics complain that CFLs’ light is harsh and flickery. Medical charities say they can trigger epileptic fits, migraines and skin rashes and have called for an ‘opt out’ for vulnerable people.
Incandescent bulbs do not contain mercury, along with other variants of energy-saving lights, such as LEDs and halogen bulbs. The study, for Germany’s Federal Environment Agency, tested a ‘worst case’ scenario using two CFLs, one containing 2 milligrams of mercury and the other 5 milligrams. Neither lamp had a protective casing and both were broken when hot.
Scientists at the Fraunhofer Wilhelm Klauditz Institute found that they released around 7 micrograms (there are 1,000 micrograms in a milligram) per cubic metre of air.The official guideline limit is 0.35 micrograms per cubic metre.
Federal Environment Agency president Jochen Flasbarth said: ‘The presence of mercury is the downside to energy-saving lamps. We need a lamp technology that can prevent mercury pollution soon.
‘The positive and necessary energy savings of up to 80 per cent as compared with light bulbs must go hand in hand with a safe product that poses no risks to health.’
During tests the German government agency’s researchers were alarmed to discover that some bulbs had no protective cover and broke when hot.
High levels of mercury were measured at floor level up to five hours after the bulbs failed.

A spokesman for the agency said: ‘Children and expectant mothers should keep away from burst energy-saving lamps.
‘For children’s rooms and other areas at higher risk of lamp breakage, we recommend the use of energy-saving lamps that are protected against breakage.’ However, the UK Government insisted the CFL bulbs were safe – and that the risk from a one-off exposure was minimal.
The Health Protection Agency says a broken CFL is unlikely to cause health problems. However, it advises people to ventilate a room where a light has smashed and evacuate it for 15 minutes.
Householders are also advised to wear protective gloves while wiping the area of the break with a damp cloth and picking up fragments of glass. The cloth and glass should be placed in a plastic bag and sealed.
CFLs are not supposed to be put in the dustbin, whether broken or intact, but taken as hazardous waste to a recycling centre.
A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: ‘The mercury contained in low-energy bulbs does not pose a health risk to anyone immediately exposed, should one be broken.’
Friends of the Earth said the switch to low-energy bulbs would reduce exposure to mercury from coal-fired power station


By David Derbyshire

Co-op and Marks & Spencer named UK's 'greenest' supermarkets

The Co-op and Marks & Spencer are today named as the UK's "greenest" supermarkets in a new survey which rates retailers' progress in areas such as sustainable and ethical sourcing. Tesco, Asda and Netto were identified as the three worst performing companies.

As households stock up for the festive season, Ethical Consumer magazine urges shoppers to cut the environmental cost of Christmas by shopping from retailers with a proven track record of pursuing "green policies".

The environmental and ethical performance of 19 of the country's leading supermarkets and convenience stores were scrutinised in the survey, included detailed analysis of the companies' corporate social responsibility reports.

The results reveal a clear divide between the top two performing supermarkets – the Co-op and M&S – and the other 17 companies.

Policies praised at these two major high street chains include the Co-op's fish policy, whose goal is to operate its fish-sourcing policy in line with the aims and objectives of the Marine Stewardship Council. The Co-op also sources 98% renewable electricity in its 5,500 sites across the UK.

M&S was highly praised for its palm oil policies. It now stipulates the use of sustainable palm oil in many of its own-brand goods and is advised on the issue by WWF. M&S also scored well for its climate change policies which include a target of using non-crop derived biofuels in its fleet of vehicles.

Rob Harrison of Ethical Consumer, and co-author of the buyers' guide, said: "If you're lucky enough to live close to a local independent shop that has an ethical stocking policy then this is where we would recommend people to shop. However the reality is that the vast majority of us now shop in supermarkets and we would therefore urge shoppers to choose either the Co-op or M&S."

He went on: "These two companies have made genuine efforts to reduce the environmental and ethical impact of their operations and have demonstrated that they are setting the environmental agenda for supermarkets."

Is night falling on classic solar panels?

A new breed of electronic solar cells that harvests power from heat could double the output of conventional panels

SOLAR cells that work at night. It sounds like an oxymoron, but a new breed of nanoscale light-sensitive antennas could soon make this possible, heralding a novel form of renewable energy that avoids many of the problems that beset solar cells.

The key to these new devices is their ability to harvest infrared (IR) radiation, says Steven Novack, one of the pioneers of the technology at the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls. Nearly half of the available energy in the solar spectrum resides in the infrared band, and IR is re-emitted by the Earth's surface after the sun has gone down, meaning that the antennas can even capture some energy during the night.

Lab tests have already shown that, under ideal conditions, the antennas can collect 84 per cent of incoming photons. Novack's team calculates that a complete system would have an overall efficiency of 46 per cent; the most efficient silicon solar cells are stalled at about 25 per cent. What's more, while those ideal conditions are relatively narrowly constrained for silicon solar cells - if the sun is in the wrong position, light reflects off a silicon solar cell instead of being absorbed - the antennas absorb radiation at a variety of angles. If the antennas can be produced cheaply, the technology could prove to be truly disruptive, says Novack.

Solar arrays of billions of the tiny antennas have an efficiency as high as 84 per cent
Unlike photovoltaic cells, which use photons to liberate electrons, the new antennas resonate when hit by light waves, and that generates an alternating current that can be harnessed.

To build an array that could capture both visible and infrared radiation, researchers envision multiple layers of antennas, with each layer tuned to a different optical frequency.

So far, two main challenges have stood in the way of fomenting a revolution in solar power. First, the length of the antennas must be close to the size of the wavelength being captured, which in the case of the solar spectrum can be very small - from millimetres down to a few hundred nanometres.

Second, the currents produced will be alternating at frequencies too high to be of use unless they are first converted into a steady direct current. The problem here is that silicon diodes, which are crucial to the conversion, typically don't operate at the high frequencies required, says Aimin Song, a nanoelectronic engineer at the University of Manchester, UK.

Both of these barriers are now being broken down. Earlier this year, Novack and colleagues perfected a technique for creating arrays of billions of antennas. Although these antennas were only just small enough to harvest energy at the far end of the infrared spectrum, Novack says it should be possible to modify the process and build smaller antennas to work with mid and near-infrared.

Meanwhile Song, and Garret Moddel's team at the University of Colorado in Boulder, have independently taken a significant step in tackling the current-conversion problem by creating novel diodes capable of handling high optical frequencies (see "The devil's in the diodes"). Both groups expect to combine the diodes and antennas into working prototypes within months. "There's a potential for this to be a real game-changer," says Moddel.

The devil's in the diodes
Semiconductor diodes act like valves, converting alternating current into direct current. To work with the novel antennas, they have to operate at the AC frequencies being received and match the conductive properties of the antenna.

Semiconductors are ill-suited for this, as they tend to become less conductive when shrunk to the size of the antennas. Several groups have tackled this problem, creating diodes based on different concepts. One is that at tiny scales, the physical geometry of the device influences current flow: by creating asymmetry in the geometry, electrons can be funnelled to flow one way only.

Seasonal Greetings

Wishing you all Seasonal Greetings and

a Happy New Year from Brighton UK.

From Stuart Buchanan

'Groundbreaking' Paperless Eco Comics Announced by Mohawk Media

The first digital comic book from the Eco Comics range available now to download or view online is Heroic High, an adventure set on an island superhero community, written by Chris Bunting and drawn by Kit Wallis.


LONDON.- British publisher Mohawk Media has announced Eco Comics, a range of environmentally-friendly, paperless comic books.

The first digital comic book from the Eco Comics range available now to download or view online is Heroic High, an adventure set on an island superhero community, written by Chris Bunting and drawn by Kit Wallis.

Editor Stuart Buckley says: “Paper used in the production of comic books can have a damaging effect on the environment, and paying perhaps the biggest price is the tiger, whose habitat this threatens.

“As for sustainable forestry, world-leading environmental organisations have criticised its weak regard for social and ecological issues.

“We believe these downloadable, paperless comics are groundbreaking, having been deliberately designed to have a minimal carbon footprint.

“The added bonuses for the reader are lower cover prices for the same level of quality entertainment, while knowing that they’re being eco-friendly.”

To download Eco Comics go to mohawkmedia.co.uk/economics. Following a quick payment system, you can download or view the comics online in various formats, including a page-flip format. PDFs are also available and can be downloaded to iPad.

Buckley continues: “Buying Eco Comics only takes minutes. It’s much faster and easier than going to a comic book store! We hope Eco Comics is the start of an evolution, taking advantage of the latest technologies to help minimise the impact of comic production on the environment.”