The Macani wing is transformed into a kite by tethering it to the ground. The aerodynamics remain the same but the wing can harness the energy in the wind by pulling against the tether. The onboard avionics computer navigates the wing in a circular path that mimics the tip of a wind turbine blade.

The advantage of the Macani wing lies in the effectivity. The tip of a wind turbine is the most effective part. In some cases the last 25% of the blade is responsible for 75% of the energy generated. The Macani wing captures all of the benefit of the blade tip using a fraction of the material. At a wingspan comparable in length to one wind turbine blade, the Macani wing can move higher in the sky and access 10x as much energy.

Energy is extracted from the Macani wing with small rotors driving high-speed generators. The electricity is transmitted to the ground via conductors in the tether. There it is converted to grid-quality power and connected to the grid.

On the website of Macani Power you can see the Macani wing in motion with all technical details. It is an interesting and innovative new idea around wind energy.

In areas like Pakistan where the floods leave the people without drinkable water in villages which aren’t reachable this kind of water filter system can help. It can be used permanently filtering about 1,200 liters (317 gallons) per day. It weighs only 20 kilograms (44 pounds).

A very interesting new invention which hopefully can soon be available on the market.

Supercapacitors bridge the gap between batteries, which offer high energy densities but are slow, and “conventional” electrolytic capacitors, which are fast but have low energy densities.

The newly developed devices offer four times higher energy than batteries and three times faster than conventional supercapacitors which are used in backup power supplies, wind power generators and other machinery. These new devices are called “micro-supercapacitors” because they are only a few micrometers (0.000001 meters) thick.

This new device might be the goal on the research for a more capable battery for alternative energy devices.

Within this year, E-Mart is planning to install EV recharging facilities at six stores around Seoul and expand the service to 25 stores in the city in a near future.  E-Mart and others allow their clients to recharge their electric vehicles for free.

Introducing these natural chemicals into mosquito breeding sites will cause the mosquitoes to sense risk of predation to their progeny and avoid laying their eggs there.  Applying such synthetic compounds to mosquito breeding sites would not only result in much fewer mosquitoes in the immediate area but probably reduce mosquito populations overall. Also, mosquitoes, by concentrating their eggs in considerably fewer breeding sites perceived as predation-risk free, would increase competition among the mosquito larvae resulting in fewer and weaker emerging adults.

These results can be a breakthrough in providing a natural, environmentally friendly and inexpensive option to the other known strategies.  Prof. Leon Blaustein of the University of Haifa explains: “While we see this as a potentially large breakthrough in developing another weapon against mosquitoes, the work, is not over. We hope this breakthrough will spur further research to chemically determine other effective predator-released chemicals, particularly ones that are long lasting and then tested for their efficacy.”

This idea isn’t entirely new but this system made the vehicles too heavy to be energy efficient and fast enough. The students would like to show with their project work that through the most modern materials and the optimization of the used technology such electric vehicles can move fast and energy-efficiently.

An electric vehicle as city car which doesn’t need batteries - wouldn’t this be a great car of the future? See more on their website which is unfortunately only in German.

About 140 scientists from Europe, America, Africa, Asia and Australia deal with questions all around this subject from the 25th to the 30th of July in Münster, Germany  - during the fifth international conference about Fog Fog collection and Dew. The conference is held this year for the first time in Europe.

Collecting fog for drinking water happens already in areas with very little rain, but with considerably passing-through clouds being a useful water resource.

“The ‘milking’ of such clouds with big nets is very successful and is increasingly used in semiariden semitropical areas of South America, Africa and Asia “, explains Otto Klemm from the Westphalian Wilhelm’s university (WWU) Münster.

So-called shading nets are used. Under favorable conditions more than five liters (1.3 gallons) of water  per square meter (10.7 square feet) of net surface can be collected per day as annual average.

With 40 one-square-meter nets a considerable amount of water can be won, enough to supply people and small agricultural unities with water.

The plane, which has flown for 26 continuous hours and at up to a height of more than 8,000 metres, has the wingspan of a Airbus (61 metres) but just a fraction of the weight at 1,600kg. Some 12,000 solar cells and high-performance batteries store energy that allow the delicate plane to fly through the night.

Congratulations to Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard and his team!

We have decided to focus our attention toward other writing projects that we’ve neglected for many months.

From time to time we’ll update you with innovations that we find too important to not pass along and we’ll notify our followers on Twitter.

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