frechargable Batteries....

Mind you, that wasn't a typo.

i literally meant.....free chargeable batteries. Batteries which can be charged with out an electric charger. I know....questions arise in your mind like How is this possible? What would the energy source for the battery to get recharged? Here it goes.

After the advent of Lithium-Polymer batteries the size and the weight of the batteries have considerably come down, well radically should be the right fit, as they avoid the metal casing unlike their precedors - Lithium ion, NiCd,NiMH..etc., These currently being used in i-Pod nano.

And now a group of researchers have found a way to integrate or wrap these Li-Poly batteries into ultra thin solar cells. Thus when this pack is exposed to sunlight or indoor light, they get charged.

Every invention will have its own limitation. Yes, these cells can power, until today, only lighter gadgets like smart card, RFID, certain sensors etc., The research is being carried on including these cells in higher gadgets like mobile phones.

Lets wish them all success and expect for a better tomorrow.

notes on Li-Poly batteries-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_polymer

Courtesy: Technology Review(http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18482/)

Flexible Batteries That Never Need to Be Recharged
European researchers have built prototypes that combine plastic solar cells with ultrathin, flexible batteries. But don't throw away your battery recharger just yet.
By Tyler Hamilton

Solar battery: European researchers have integrated thin-film organic solar cells with a flexible polymer battery to produce a lightweight and ultrathin solar battery for low-wattage electronic devices, such as smart cards and mobile phones. The battery can recharge itself when exposed to natural or indoor sunlight, meaning that some electronic gadgets would never need a separate charger. Researchers predict that such a device could be commercially available in some products next year.
Credit: G. Dennler, Solar Energy

Mobiles phones, remote controls, and other gadgets are generally convenient--that is, until their batteries go dead. For many consumers, having to routinely recharge or replace batteries remains the weakest link in portable electronics. To solve the problem, a group of European researchers say they've found a way to combine a thin-film organic solar cell with a new type of polymer battery, giving it the capability of recharging itself when exposed to natural or indoor light.
It's not only ultraslim, but also flexible enough to integrate with a wide range of low-wattage electronic devices, including flat but bendable objects like a smart card and, potentially, mobile phones with curves. The results of the research, part of the three-year, five-country European Polymer Solar Battery project, were recently published online in the journal Solar Energy.
"It's the first time that a device combining energy creation and storage shows [such] tremendous properties," says Gilles Dennler, a coauthor of the paper and a researcher at solar startup Konarka Technologies, based in Lowell, MA. Prior to joining Konarka, Dennler was a professor at the Linz Institute for Organic Solar Cells at Johannes Kepler University, in Austria. "The potential for this type of product is large, given [that] there is a growing demand for portable self-rechargeable power supplies."
Prototypes of the solar battery weigh as little as two grams and are less than one millimeter thick. "The device is meant to ensure that the battery is always charged with optimum voltage, independently of the light intensity seen by the solar cell," according to the paper. Dennler says that a single cell delivers about 0.6 volts. By shaping a module with strips connected in series, "one can add on voltages to fit the requirements of the device."
The organic solar cell used in the prototype is the same technology being developed by Konarka. (See "Solar-Cell Rollout.") It's based on a mix of electrically conducting polymers and fullerenes. The cells can be cut or produced in special shapes and can be printed on a roll-to-roll machine at low temperature, offering the potential of low-cost, high-volume production.
To preserve the life of the cells, which are vulnerable to photodegradation after only a few hours of air exposure, the researchers encapsulated them inside a flexible gas barrier. This extended their life for about 3,000 hours. Project coordinator Denis Fichou, head of the Laboratory of Organic Nanostructures and Semiconductors, near Paris, says that the second important achievement of the European project was the incorporation into the device of an extremely thin and highly flexible lithium-polymer battery developed by German company VARTA-Microbattery, a partner in the research consortium. VARTA's batteries can be as thin as 0.1 millimeter and recharged more than 1,000 times, and they have a relatively high energy density. Already on the market, the battery is being used in Apple's new iPod nano.
Dennler says that the maturity of the battery and the imminent commercial release of Konarka-style organic solar cells mean that the kind of solar-battery device designed in the project could be available as early as next year, although achieving higher performance would be an ongoing pursuit.
The paper's coauthor Toby Meyer, cofounder of Swiss-based Solaronix, says that the prototypes worked well enough under low-light conditions, such as indoor window light, to be considered as a power source for some mobile phones. Artificial light, on the other hand, may impose limitations. "Office light is probably too weak to generate enough power for the given solar-cell surface available on the phone," he says.
Watches, toys, RFID tags, smart cards, remote controls, and a variety of sensors are among the more likely applications, although the opportunity in the area of digital cameras, PDAs, and mobile phones will likely continue to drive research. "The feasibility of a polymer solar battery has been proven," the paper concludes.

the nano-ware

I have been thinking that i have turned out into a philosopherrrr. Then I felt like.....""Man Take a break:!!!!1".
Yea....Philosopher is just a hobbyist in me:D. So now.....lets get into some serious science.

Now a days we hear a lot about the "nano". While the world is nanoising, where do we stand?
Like me, most of us don't really know what really is happening on the other side of the world.(I literally mean it.) If you got what i said....lets get to know whats happening in the western world labs. Before getting started, audience please beware of the nanoware. Does that sound familiar.....yea....sounds like software or hardware right.....exactly. Lets take a look into the nano-products out in the market. And lets know the way to quantify them.

If you have time go through the www.technologyreview.com or hold on to me to find the cream of that milk.

Here is an article by a journolist, Apoorva Mandavalli, who really is into the subject.

Courtesy: The Technology Review.


Nanocosmetics: Buyer Beware

There's a lovely jar of night cream that's been sitting on my dresser for a month. According to the salesperson who spent a half-hour on the phone with me extolling its virtues, the cream will dig up the gunk that's clogging my pores, soak up excess oil, and "teach" my cells to make less of it.
Sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Too bad I'm too scared to use it.
The cream, which cost me $163 for half an ounce, is made by New York City-based Bionova. The company's website makes much of its "nano tech platform," and explana­tions of its products feature incomprehensible phrases such as "restoration of the malfunctioning biological information transfer." But details in plain English of how any of this would actually work are sketchy. And the sales­woman's explanation was similarly cryptic. The cream, she informed me, has various "nano complexes" in an exact ratio that is customized for my age, my gender, and my face's precise degree of oiliness--information gleaned from a number of probing questions she asked me.
How, I asked, did I know these tiny particles weren't going to creep under my skin and wreak havoc with my body? No, she assured me, the cream uses chemicals of a regular size, just in nano amounts. "See the difference?"
Not really. Scientists have for decades been doing experiments using chemi­cals in ­nanomolar quanti­ties, which simply means that they're ­extraordinarily dilute. So how was ­Bionova's product special? ­Alexander Sepper, Bionova's vice president for ­research and development, at first echoed the sales rep's statements. "Our nanotech slightly differs from the nano­tech that's made by most companies," he said. "We are not talking about nano­particles but about nano quantities."
I still didn't understand how the product could be called nanotech if it didn't actually use nano-sized particles. Sepper seemed to agree.
"You know, I should be honest with you. In the beginning, we called them simply biocomplexes," he said. "When nanotech came and everyone started to claim nanotech, nanotech, nanotech, of course the marketing people came to us and demanded that we have to accommodate the present situation. My understanding as a scientist is it's more marketing than science." According to Sepper, revenues from the product, which is sold in upscale stores such as Barneys, went up when Bionova began calling it nanotech. But when I pushed him a bit on the use of the word in marketing the cream, he quickly backtracked. "When I said we are using nano quantities, I thought you already knew that we are using nanoparticles. We are using nano quantities of the nanoparticles."

Confused yet? So was I. And so, it seems, is nearly everyone involved in the marketing of nanotech-based products. The fact is, Bionova is not an exception. Cosmetics are among the first consumer products to make use of nanotechnology--or at least to tout its benefits--but nobody, it appears, has a handle on exactly what is in these products, or how those mystery ingredients might affect people's health.
"You've got this situation where people are putting chemicals on the skin when we know very little about [nanotechnology's] safety," says Sally Tinkle of the North Carolina-based National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a division of the National Institutes of Health.


Check the Label
According to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, which is run by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, nearly 400 products on the market claim to use nanotechnology, and 64 of those are cosmetics. And yet no one in the federal government is responsible for overseeing the safety of nanotechnology. "People are miniaturizing the particles, nanosizing them," says Andrew Maynard, science advisor for the Woodrow Wilson project, but he says that companies don't necessarily recognize the risks associated with the unique properties of nanoparticles.
That nanoparticles have unique properties is, of course, exactly the point of using them. When particles of some materials become extremely small, they can exhibit unusual--and interesting--physical and chemical characteristics. Gold nanoparticles, for example, are red and are much more reactive than larger chunks of the metal. Nanoparticle versions of some ingredients used in cosmetics are more stable, improve product texture, and are absorbed better.
Titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, which have been used for decades in sunscreens, are two examples of substances that benefit from nano­technology. Normally, each material forms a thick whitish coating, but nanosizing their particles makes them translucent--and, naturally, more popular among consumers. Some cosmetics companies use other nanoparticles, such as the 60-carbon soccer-ball-shaped molecules known as fullerenes or buckyballs. Zelens, a company based in London, England, claims that fullerenes in its skin cream help to suck up free radicals and slow aging.

But here's the rub: though some nanomaterials clearly have advantages, such materials might also pose risks. Will the smaller particles penetrate the skin? Can they clog airways and trigger immune responses? Will they lodge in the body's tissues, including the brain?
The simple answer is that no one knows. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal agencies have research programs in place that may eventually answer some questions about the toxicity and environmental impact of nanoparticles. But such research will take time and a great deal more money. Through the federal government's National Nano­technology Initiative, the United States has spent an estimated $6.5 billion on various types of nanotechnology research, but only 4 percent of last year's budget went to assessing potential risks. In the meantime, the best the FDA can do is to say it has "no evidence at present to suggest that any of the materials currently in use pose a major safety concern."

Nano Mysteries
Unlike pharmaceuticals, cosmetics don't have to pass safety tests before they are sold. Cosmetics companies are free to sell their products without such testing--at least until a problem crops up. And so far, nanoparticles used in cosmetics seem to have a clean record.
John Bailey, executive vice president for science at the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association, an industry trade group in Washington, DC, points out that sunscreens using titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles have been used "safely and effectively by consumers for decades" and have been reviewed and approved by the FDA. But whether that record of safety can be extrapolated to other nanoparticles in other types of cosmetics is less certain. The danger is that conventional safety tests for cosmetics and other products might not pick up the special risks nanoparticles pose.

For example, NIH's Sally Tinkle has found that under certain conditions--if the skin is stretched a certain way or rubbed with enough force--nanoparticles can move below its top, dead layer. If the skin has cuts and abrasions or has been damaged in some other way, particles can get through to the layers underneath. "That's well established," says Tinkle. What happens once these particles reach the bloodstream is unclear. Some studies have found that smaller particles are cleared faster than larger ones and so are safer, but others suggest that once inside the body, nanoparticles travel through the blood, lodge in the lungs and brain, and accumulate over time, with effects that are still poorly understood.

Definitive answers to these toxicity questions may take some time to emerge. But given that nanoparticles behave differently from their larger counterparts, it makes sense to have a regulatory system that is able to recognize this size-dependent behavior. And it makes sense to provide regulatory oversight based on the unique chemistry of nanoparticles.
That kind of oversight might not be welcomed by the cosmetics industry, but without it, the entire promising field of nanotechnology could be in danger. If a safety problem is associated with a cosmetic product marketed for its nano ingredients (even if it doesn't really have any), the public perception of nanotech could be affected more generally. In Germany, there's already been one scare with a spurious nano product. In March 2006, after the "Magic Nano" spray bathroom cleaner was released, a number of people who had used it fell ill. Amid the confusion that followed, nobody, including the manufacturers, seemed to know exactly what was in the product. But the damage to nanotech's reputation had been done. "What it really highlights is the confusion about what people actually mean by the terms," says Maynard. "We need transparency in this whole area."

In Bionova's case, I'm still not sure whether the cream on my dresser contains any nanoparticles, and if it does, whether they will help or hurt me. Since the small dark-blue jar arrived, salespeople from the company have called me four times--ostensibly to check on whether I have any questions. During the first call, the sales rep told me that for the first few days of use, when the cream is opening up my pores and cleaning them out, "your skin is going to look aggravated. It's going to look itchy; it's going to look flaky."
I've yet to do more than smell the cream, and I doubt I ever will, so I won't know whether glowing skin would follow the flakiness, as the salesperson assured me. No matter how lovely the jar is or what lofty promises are made on behalf of its contents, the specter of tiny little nano-whatevers making their way through my body is enough to keep me away.
Apoorva Mandavilli is senior news editor at Nature Medicine.

the pursuit of happYness

Its been sometime since i blogged it. I have got several reasons for this but are needless to mention.I loved the way i started this week.

Though it commenced with a bad news, I planned it in a way that i will never get struck with this ill feeling. Monday is a great day, Yugadi - a Telugu new year day. This very day i planned to watch a movie, The pursuit of happYness and i did so. I loved the move right from the intro through the END (though the movie doesn't put on The END...its a kind of unconventional movie). Unconventional because its a movie made on a real life story of a person named, Christopher Gardner, who is still alive. Isn't it unconventional to make a movie about the person who is alive?? (well..at least i think so.)I badly wanted to know the secret of happiness for which i watched happYness. This movie gives in a whole picture of way or the race of being or becoming happy. W Smith was at his best. And of course his son (in the reel and also in real) was a baby next door. I really hate narrating the movies but I would love to put on a trailer to make you feel like watching the movie."Don't ever let somebody tell you...you cant do something...not even me" - is my favorite of the movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcZTtlGweQTime

to sign off.btw...i borrowed a Charlie Chaplin's DVD. Going to watch it this weekend.Some people ask me, why do i blog? Its helps me in being myself.

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not."

i missed it...time to catch the next train.

its all over pradeep, says my eyes.
nothing to worry pradeep....it has just begun, says heart.

whom should i go with?? my eyes or my heart??

let me get started.
i have been rejected by the MIT.

NOT living up to the potential is a crime.

Yes, it is and i am the culprit.

I don't really feel sad for being rejected, but i really feel bad for letting my parents', friends' and especially my EC's hopes down. My dad was initially hesitant but later happy for me when he came to know that i was dreaming of studying abroad. He started saying, "Son, i think you can make it. they need guys just like you."he said that coz he had the same old picture the pradeep who grew before him. But he was unaware how rusty the same pradeep has become in his absence.
Pradeep, you are a relic - said friends. Man you look awesome, you are going to make it - said my EC.
I swear, they were never wrong. Coz they don't see the real me. They get to see a Pradeep+Potential. And this Potential remains to be potential for ever until you live up to it. And finally it really looks ugly when the potential overtakes you. Its all over....yes its all overrrrrrr keeps saying my eyes.

You have got your own role to fulfil in this world.

Be a role model of the real you.

Sometimes I keep thinking, how big this universe is? whats the exact count of the stars in the sky? does any other planet possess life? who is going to find answers for all these Qs?
Yea...i keep thinking i finally fall asleep and dream of answering these questions myself to this world. I wake with the same passion. I am going to achieve something is my motto when i step out of my house. The day passes on and when i look back ......i realise, DAMNNNN i did nothing.
yesssss THIS "nothing" is a tricky. NOTHING for me could be something for you....if not your neighbour or at least his neighbour. It really makes sense when you live your life and keep enjoying the way you do it. Coz you mark your own way when you live your life. No matter you win or lose, you should pass on. There are many ppl looking at you and a few in that "many ppl" are following you. It has just begun, Yes it has just begun.......says my heart.

Whom should i go with? Let me take the help of my brain.
Eyes go with more of an instinct.
But heart is stable enough to show you the next step.

I am not going to end my journey! I have just missed one....time to catch the next train!

Remember, there is always a tomorrow....but you pave a path for a better tomorrow when you are good today!

Signing off with dampen eyes but a strengthened heart.

PS: want to know how terrific the smell of victory would be?? Go visit this blog of Brian, a student who got into MIT in `02.
http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/misc/miscellaneous/dont_worry_be_happy.shtml

the D Day is fast approaching.

Its almost the D-Day. Decison day for many. But Doom day for some.(a part of I feel the same)
While i put these words in here, i think of what if its NO from them. A "NO" would shatter my dreams.(but the inner voice says, there is life beyond MIT)

To be frank, there was never a day with out dreaming about being at MIT and taking part in each and every mighty activity. But there were many confrontations aswell. Once again IV(inner voice) consoles by saying "You dreamt a lot beyond MIT. MIT is just any other way to reach your goal. Its definitely not the only way". And then i am recharged. :)

Past five years, staying away from the family, have been the years of learning, learning to live. I had to work hard to self-start, self-motivate and even self-initiate. Dad always says "Give out your best and never think of the results". He is verymuch true. But in my lifetime, i never remember a moment or incident i gave my best. I never said this to him. He asks me, "Son, how did you do?". I answer, "I did just fine, dad". Had there been any victories or any glorious moments, i just consider them to be the resultants of the relative competitiveness. Einstein's relitivity applies even here. If there is any reason i lose the admission thats only my MATH2 factor. I would have definitely done better with some dedication and practice. But what keeps me from working hard? I know, its just the feeling that -I i am a gifted. I try to overcome this feeling, trust me i really do. But this feeling, a kind of superiorty complex, sucks you in so that you will never be able to get out of it.

And when i see someone who does the things i didnt, a feel of Inferiority complex follows it. This one is also a killer. It makes you to hide in a shell and show yourself to the world.

I always feel, life is a balance of these two feelings, superior and inferior. He who balances these is the ultimate VICTOR. When you do your best, you are already riding this bycycle with the wheels S and I in an efficient way.

Time to signoff. By the next time i visit, i will be out of the cradle of confusion. I will get know to what point did my deeds counted upto.

I really want to....but can I??This reminds me of a devine saying -

"I asked GOD for what i want, but he gave me what I need." - Swami Vivekananda.