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from the it-keeps-going-and-going-and-going-and-going-and-going.... dept.
Zhongwei Chen, a chemical engineering professor at Waterloo, and a team of graduate students have created a low-cost battery using silicon that boosts the performance and life of lithium-ion batteries. Their findings are published in the latest issue of Nature Communications .
Waterloo's silicon battery technology promises a 40 to 60 per cent increase in energy density, which is important for consumers with smartphones, smart homes and smart wearables.
The environmentally safe technology could also make dramatic improvements for hybrid and electric vehicles. The findings could mean an electric car may be driven up to 500 kilometres between charges and the smaller, lighter batteries may significantly reduce the overall weight of vehicles.
Current lithium-ion batteries normally use graphite anodes. The Waterloo engineers found that silicon anode materials have a much higher capacity for lithium and are capable of producing batteries with almost 10 times more energy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 29 2015, @08:35PM
That's an interesting thought. 20 years ago I read a thought-provoking book, Home from Nowhere [amazon.com], that posited a return to walkable, mixed-use communities. Its chief villain was single-use zoning (such as you find in American suburbs).
Will better battery technology itself change what it means to live & work? Well, you can live in the middle of nowhere and telecommute now, but do most people? No, because something about human contact remains valuable to society. Yahoo, for example, recently changed its policies to disallow telecommuting. Why? We don't know, but something in the company's data on productivity must indicate something. Even with Skype and videoconferencing, people still hop on planes and trains for business meetings.
The real estate angle and the pricing of plots based on proximity is another wrinkle. How you come down on that seems a personal decision. I could never afford a house in my neighborhood, but I love that I can take my kids to Prospect Park and stumble onto a parade and a ceilidh two blocks removed from each other, happening independently. I love that I can hop on the subway and take my family to see all the treasures of the ages at the Metropolitan Museum, for free. Others love unencumbered vistas from their easy chairs and a pasture full of thoroughbreds. YMMV.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday October 31 2015, @01:00AM
Ok, wandering pretty far from the topic of battery tech, but here goes.
I suspect telecommuting is not that popular currently because our technologies aren't yet quite up to the job, as well as for political reasons. A virtual reality conference and work room takes a bit more hardware and networking bandwidth than is available at commodity prices. A web cam on a laptop and a two way connection doesn't cut it. "Something about human contact"? That has disadvantages too, like fist fights and the ever present possibility a disgruntled employee will go postal. Surveillance and control is a more common problem-- most employers these days seem to feel they have the right to spy on and micromanage their employees, and telecommuting makes that harder. Telecommuting makes it more difficult to achieve the infantilization of the workers, trying to turn us into little more than slaves.
I find it sad that in many ways, the US Civil War is still being fought, the age long East-West conflict going all the way back to the Greeks vs the Persians, is still not over, the lessons are still being learned and relearned. There are many people in management positions who don't know how to manage, or more like just can't believe in people, can't believe that not everyone is a naturally lazy, unmotivated slacker, and resort to an autocratic, pushy, Captain Obvious, whip cracking, slave driver style. The Confederacy never had a real chance of winning the Civil War, as the economies and populations were such an imbalance. Their only real hope was that the Union would not be willing to fight. Despite having more land and an easier climate, the Confederacy had far fewer people and a far smaller economy, and the main reason for that was that slavery is a very inefficient way to harness mankind's productivity. We've seen this over and over. In the Mexican War of 1848, the Mexicans lost because the troops were little better off than slaves, and had little heart or stomach for a fight. They had superior numbers and the advantage of defense, but lost anyway. One of the most significant differences between the Middle Ages and Modern times is the change in government from absolute monarchies to democracies. The American Revolution was the "shot heard around the world", and while it took a few centuries to depose all the monarchs, it happened, with World War I finishing off the German Kaiser, the Russian Czar, and the Austrian Emperor and his empire. Xenophon and Alexander the Great were able to defeat the mighty Persian Empire thanks in large part to their adoption of Eastern (meaning autocratic) style government as opposed to the Greek Western (democratic) style. Persian troops were not strongly motivated. So long as they were winning, they would fight, to avoid being punished for cowardice or dereliction of duty, but soon after a battle started going badly, they would break and run.
But how are our corporations run? Much like early Medieval feudal societies. What really is the point of anointing one person to be CEO, rather than governing the company through more democratic means? So this person can forbid telecommuting, because ... he or she doesn't like it, and that because it makes it more difficult to micromanage the workers?