Technologyquarterly June 12Th 2010
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From Gollum Electric planes Mr Segway’s to “Avatar” take to the skies diffi cult path TechnologyQuarterly June 12th 2010 And now, the electricity forecast Better weather prediction for more reliable wind power TQCOVERJune12.10.indd 1 01/06/2010 14:01 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly June 12th 2010 Contents On the cover Wind power is booming. But there is no use building all those turbines if the wind does not blow reliably. And integrating wind power with other sources is made dicult by its unpredictable nature. That is why wind forecasting is vital, both when planning Power from thin air new wind farms and running existing ones: page 10 Monitor 2 Harvesting ambient energy to power mobile devices, genetically modied trout and Wireless technology: It is already possible to send electricity without wires. salmon, vegetarian robots, Can devices be powered using ambient radiation from existing broadcasts? squishy robots inspired by amoebas, self•healing metals, NYONE whose mobile phone has ever strated the ability to send enough energy using a car’s bodywork as a Arun out of juicewhich means, these across a room to run a at•screen televi• battery, using straw as a days, more than half the world’s pop• sion using its approach, called resonant building material, listening to ulationwill like the idea of getting electri• magnetic coupling. This is di erent from computer keyboards, teaching cal power out of the air. The notion is far Tesla’s approach, but the rm’s founders machines to recognise nods, from new. A little over a century ago, the have acknowledged his pioneering work. and software that makes you inventor Nikola Tesla drew up ambitious In the long run, however, it may be more productive by disabling plans to transmit electrical power without Morgan who is vindicated, as researchers bits of your computer wires. He carried out a series of experi• nd ways to pull power out of the air ments in which electric lights were illumi• without paying for ita technique known nated via electrostatic induction, by con• as energy scavenging or energy har• Wind forecasting necting them to metal sheets suspended in vesting. It is already possible to power 10 Now, the electricity forecast a strong electric eld produced by a distant small electronic devices, such as wireless Making wind power predictable transmitter. In 1898 he proposed a world sensors installed in buildings and industri• system of giant towers that would form al machinery, using a dedicated micro• Inside story both a global wireless communications wave transmitter nearby. The sensors pick 12 From Gollum to Avatar network and a means of delivering elec• up the microwaves with an antenna and How performance capture tricity over large areas without wires. convert the signal into electrical energy. technology works The construction of the rst such tow• But as power requirements drop and er, the Wardencly e Tower, on Long Is• energy•scavenging technology improves, Electric planes land, began in 1901. Tesla’s backers includ• it will become increasingly practical to 15 High voltage ed the nancier J.P. Morgan, who invested power these and other devices using just Now ready for take•o $150,000. But before the tower was com• ambient energythe sea of existing pleted, Morgan and the other backers radio waves produced by television, radio Missile technology pulled out. They worried that the delivery and mobile•phone transmitters. of electricity through the air could not be It sounds too good to be true. There is 17 Peril on the sea metered, and there would be nothing to something magical about it, says Joshua A new arms race looms stop people from helping themselves. Smith, a principal engineer at Intel’s re• But has Tesla had the last laugh after search centre in Seattle. But the science is Brain scan all? Today several rmsincluding Fulton sound, he says. Last year Dr Smith and 19 Mr Segway’s dicult path Innovation, eCoupled, WiTricity and Alanson Sample, a researcher at the Uni• A prole of Dean Kamen, a Powercastare pursuing various technol• versity of Washington in Seattle, powered prolic self•taught inventor ogies that deliver electrical power without a small humidity and temperature sensor wires (though over shorter distances than using nothing more than the energy Tesla had in mind). WiTricity has demon• gleaned from a television station 4.1km (2.5 1 The Economist Technology Quarterly June 12th 2010 Monitor 3 2 miles) away. With their receiver tuned specically to pick up signals from this one megawatt transmitter, they were able to generate 60 microwatts of power. It Dawn of the does not sound like much, but it was enough to power the device and demon• Frankensh strate the principle. In recent weeks Dr Smith and Dr Sample, working with Scott Southwood, another researcher at the Food science: Fast•growing University of Washington, have built a genetically modied trout and weather sensor that measures tempera• salmon could soon be the rst ture and light levels and sends a packet of data every ve seconds by radio. It is transgenic animals on the table entirely powered by ambient energy. HE Belgian blue is an ugly but tasty Ambient radio waves have largely Tcow that has 40% more muscle than it been ignored as a potential power source should have. It is the product of random until recently, because the power of a mutation followed by selective breed• broadcast radio signal rapidly decreases ingas, indeed, are all domesticated crea• with distance. That is not to say that radio tures. But where an old art has led, a new waves cannot pack a punch from a dis• one may follow. By understanding which Behold, the transgenic salmon (top) tance. Advocates of satellite solar pow• genetic changes have been consolidated in er, for example, dream of beaming giga• the Belgian blue, it may be possible to taken from a chinook salmon, is a version watts of solar power down to Earth from design and build similar versions of other of the growth•hormone gene itself. Un• geostationary satellites more than species using genetic engineering as a modied salmon undergo a period of 35,000km up. The same approach has short•cut. That is precisely what Terry restricted growth when they are young. been used in ground•based experiments Bradley, a sh biologist at the University of Together these two pieces of DNA produce to beam one kilowatt of power over a Rhode Island, is trying to do. Instead of growth hormone during that lull, abolish• distance of several kilometres, notes Peter cattle, he is doing it in trout. His is one of ing it. The result is a sh that reaches mar• Fisher, a physicist at the Massachusetts two projects that may soon put the rst ketable size in 18•24 months, as opposed to Institute of Technology. But ambient biotech animals on the dinner table. 30 months for the normal variety. radiation is much weaker. Belgian blues are so big because their It is one thing to make such sh, of One way to address this problem is to genes for a protein called myostatin, a course. It is quite another to get them to harvest radiation from multiple sources. hormone that regulates muscle growth, do market. First, it is necessary to receive the Last year Nokia, the world’s largest hand• not work properly. Dr Bradley has approval of the regulators. In America the set•maker, raised eyebrows with research launched a four•pronged attack on the regulator in question is the Food and Drug showing that this approach could scav• myostatin in his trout. First, he has in• Administration, which Aqua Bounty says enge nearly 100 times as much energy as troduced a gene that turns out a stunted it has been petitioning for more than a Dr Smith’s approach. Markku Rouvala, an version of the myostatin receptor, the decade and which published guidelines engineer at Nokia Research Centre in molecule that sits in the surface mem• for approving genetically engineered Cambridge, England, harvested as much brane of muscle cells and receives the animals in 2009. Aqua Bounty has now as 5 milliwatts of power using a wide message to stop growing. The stunted led its remaining studies for approval, band receiver capable of mopping up receptor does not pass the message on and hopes to hear the result this year. Dr radio signals between 500MHz and properly. He has also added two genes for Bradley has not yet applied for approval. 10GHzincluding radio, TV, Wi•Fi and non•functional variants of myostatin. It seems unlikely that either of the new mobile•phone signalsfrom nearby trans• These churn out proteins which bind to procedures will yield something that is mitters. It takes at least 20 milliwatts to the receptors, swamping and diluting the unsafe to eat. But what happens if the keep a mobile phone operating in standby e ect of functional myostatin molecules. creatures escape and start breeding in the mode, but Nokia hopes that power scav• Finally, he has added a gene that causes wild? For that to be a problem, the mod• enging might eventually deliver 50 milli• overproduction of another protein, folli• ied sh would have to be better at surviv• watts, enough to trickle•charge a phone. statin. This binds to myostatin and renders ing and reproducing than those honed by At the Consumer Electronics Show in it inoperative. millions of years of natural selection. On January, RCA showed o a gadget de• The upshot of all this tinkering is a the face of it, this seems unlikely, because signed to harvest energy from nearby trout that has twice the abdominal muscle the characteristics that have been engi• Wi•Fi transmitters, which can then be mass of its traditional counterparts.