Wireless highway charges electric cars

Road works. Inconsiderate drivers. Congestion. Today’s drivers have their fair share of stress already. But now there is a new malaise for the modern motorist: range anxiety. That is the term given to drivers of electric cars that are struck by the sudden fear that their vehicle does not have enough charge to reach its destination. Most of us have experienced that sinking feeling when the little orange indicator light comes on to tell us we are low on petrol, but there is not a gas station in sight. Imagine that, combined with the feeling that you get when your cellphone starts beeping because the battery is low, and you are nowhere near a plug. That gets you close to the feeling of range anxiety. It is an interesting phenomenon, particularly when you begin to look at how many of us actually use our cars. According to the US Bureau of Transportation Studies, 78% of drivers do less than 40 miles (65km) a day – a trivial distance for many of today’s electric cars. In fact, the poster child of electric cars – the Tesla – has a range of 300 miles (485km) using some batteries. According to, Dr Richard Sassoon, of Stanford University, there are “three main reasons” that many of us choose the internal combustion engine over its cleaner, quieter alternative. “One is the short range that an electric vehicle can travel between charges, and that’s based on the size of the battery,” he said. “The second is the lack of a sufficient charging infrastructure, and the third is that even if you can charge, it takes a long time to charge – several hours. That means you’re going to have to take a break in your trip in order to charge your vehicle.” Researchers and firms are trying to tackle all of these problems. Firms, such as Better Place, have started building battery “switching stations” that allow drivers to pull in and swap their batteries as easily as filling up with gas, whilst countless researchers are developing more efficient batteries. But Dr Sasson believes there may be another answer: recharging roads.

iPads let doctors work more efficiently

iPads not only make doctors feel more efficient at their jobs, the device actually improved their work flow according to a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers gave iPads to 115 University of Chicago internal medicine residents so they could access electronic patient records, the hospital’s paging system to order tests, and medical publications for reference information. Other types of tablet were not included in the study. The researchers were concerned the shift of many hospitals to electronic medical records actually made things more difficult for doctors, because it increased time needed to complete “indirect care” tasks like updating medical records, and holds up doctors when waiting for an available computer. Dr. Mike Klein, a surgery resident at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn who wasn’t involved in the study, told HealthPop in an email, “The problem with desktop computers is that anyone in the hospital can access them, so they need to be password protected.” He says that means residents need to log on and wait for a few minutes for the computer to load every time they update a patient’s chart. “Multiply this by 30 or 40 times per day and it becomes a big problem.” For the new study, the researchers were interested in seeing whether having better access to these tools through device would help the residents perform their jobs better. Four months after giving out iPads, 90 percent of the residents said they were using the tablets for work, and most of them said they used it every day. More than three quarters of residents said the iPads had helped them save about an hour a day, and 68 percent said delays in patient care were prevented because of the tablet.

Soon, mobile phones to project images and movies on wall

Mobile phones presently available in the market can help users view high quality images and video, but the phones’ small size sets insurmountable limits on screen size, and thus the viewing experience. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, EpiCrystals Oy and the Aalto University are developing a better laser light source for projectors that will be integrated into mobile phones, which will enable accurate and efficient projection of, for example, photographs and movies on any surface. Mobile phones equipped with the laser light source can be within the ordinary consumer’s reach already in a few years time. Small-size laser projectors 1-2 centimetres in length can be integrated into many kinds of electronic appliances, such as digital or video cameras, gaming devices and mobile phones. Integrated micro projectors could, in practice, project images the size of an A3 sheet of paper on a wall. The challenge is to develop a small, energy-efficient and luminous three-colour (RGB) light source, whose manufacturing costs can be kept low, for use in the projectors. Solutions for these challenges are sought in a project combining Finnish know-how, whose parties are VTT, EpiCrystals Inc. and the Aalto University. “The project has successfully combined multi-technological know-how from VTT and its partners in the project, from manufacturing materials and the accurate focusing of laser chips all the way to production line design,” said Principal Scientist Timo Aalto from VTT. “The project was launched last autumn, and we are now entering the stage where we can move from brainstorming and design to building prototypes.