Oasys, who’s technology was developed by the environmental engineering program at Yale University, aspires to provide low cost seawater desalination and water treatment. The patented technology, Engineered Osmosis (EO), aims to produce drinking water at less than half the cost of current desalination methods. This is done by reducing the amount of high-pressures needed (which current methods rely on), reducing electricity and fuel demands by more than 90%. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that 2.4 billion of the world’s 6.8 billion people live in highly water-stressed levels, and it is innovations such as EO that must be funded by government initiatives to help the developing world.
Space Shuttle Endeavour, a project created and developed by NASA (the U.S government’s space agency), has successfully launched after several failed attempts (due to mechanical issues such as fuel leaks, and threats from bad weather). There has been 22 Endeavour launches before this one, each with its own mission. The 23rd mission (named STS-127) aims to upgrade the Japanese Experiment Module (pronounced Kibō in Japanese), which is a test lab that allows for materials to be tested with the environment of space. Another task will be to update the solar-array batteries used to power the space station. Good luck to the seven crew members, and we hope our readers enjoy the HD video provided by NASA.
The internet is all about free speech, at least it was designed that way. There’s been an increasing trend of censorship (blocking access to websites) in societies that it may eventually limit the development of the web as a global community. Not only that, but there’s a rising trend in users (mainly bloggers) afraid to publish their opinions online because web surveillance in their region will eventually track these views back to the original writer. Thankfully, there is a solution to this. Several censorship and privacy tools have been launched over the past few years, all of which allow a user to surf the web anonymously. The way they manage to do this is by re-routing the user to several servers all over the internet, rather than a direct connection between the user and the website they are visiting. The most notable and secure service is Tor, an open-source project aiming to create anonymity online.
Octatron, a security company that develops military and law enforcement solutions, is undergoing the acceptance of several patents for its SkySeer. The solution is a computer controlled UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), powered by electricity, used for short-range surveillance. The drone includes a camera, as well as a built in GPS navigation system, giving it the ability to circulate a set area while recording and sending (to a computer) what it sees below. What makes the SkySeer unique is its miniature size, allowing it to be used for law enforcement, rather than the typical UAV drones used in the military. Further information including the product brochure is available below.
Rive Technology, a clean energy company backed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has completed the development of a catalyst that could make the refining of crude oil more efficient, increasing the amount of petroleum delivered by up to 9% . The process uses a zeolite catalyst (which is already heavily used in the petrochemical industry) to break up the hydrocarbons in crude oil. What makes Rive’s technology unique is that the zeolites are enhanced (their pores are altered to become larger), allowing for a larger reaction which in turn gives the refiner more gasoline. See below for more information.
