Where did it go? And nanogeneration.

Today was one of those days where I thought - Goddamn, research is a great life! I woke up at 9:15am (yes!), worked productively until 12:30 and then went strawberry picking at a sweet local farm nearby. The strawberries were $1.50/pound. Not including the several pounds of "free" strawberries that I ingested while picking.

Moving on to equally fascinating topics - a lake in Chile has been reported missing. A ranger was quoted by BBC as saying, "We (patrolled) again in May and to our surprise we found that the lake had completely disappeared. All that was left were chunks of ice and an enormous fissure." I would have loved to see that.

Now for a word on local versus large-grid energy production. There is an interesting part of BBC called "The Green Room" where environmental issues are introduced and debated. This week, Clemens Betzel argues for the advantages of 'microgeneration" - small scale generation of power from local sources. The best known current example is probably photovoltaic solar roof panels. Mr. Betzel argues for one step further, the widespread implementation of nanogeneration. He defines nanogeneration as the process of making every day products self-sufficient. In fact, Clemens Betzel owns a company called G24 Innovations which will build new solar products designed for in home use. He hopes that it will solve one of the main problems with solar energy right now - namely that batteries are incredibly inefficient at storing energy. The storage capacity of batteries is very important to the future of solar technology, especially in non-sunny areas.

G24 Innovations has a pretty cool website - check out: http://www.g24i.com

One of the cool innovations detailed on the site is the so called "Graetzel Cell," which was invented by Dr. Micheal Graetzel in 1988. It was the first attempt to merge nanotechnology and solar power. Additionally, although there are still problems with the energy efficiency issue, the materials used to make these cells (now called dye-sensitized cells) are much cheaper to make than other types of solar cells.

Another cool piece of news from BBC - Google is attempting to make their entire firm carbon neutral by 2008 (WOW - that is the most optimistic and ambitious date I have heard for a carbon neutrality project yet). As part of their plan that will give one million dollars in grant money to encourage hybrid adoption. They will also make their computers much more energy efficient (computer, especially when left turned on, can be a drastic drain on power). Google co-founded the Climate Savers Computing Initiative to make computers more energy efficient.

Just some food for thought. I have to go to sleep now - am waking up before 7am tomorrow to travel to NY and learn about plant anatomy.