Printable A3-sized solar cells hit a new milestone in green energy
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Imagine a future where solar panels speed off the presses, like newspaper. Australian scientists have brought us one step closer to that reality.
Researchers from the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium (VICOSC) have developed a printer that can print 10 meters of flexible solar cells a minute. Unlike traditional silicon solar cells, printed solar cells are made using organic semi-conducting polymers, which can be dissolved in a solvent and used like an ink, allowing solar cells to be printed.
Not only can the VICOSC machine print flexible A3 solar cells, the machine can print directly on to steel, opening up the possibility for solar cells to be embedded directly into building materials.
“Eventually we see these being laminated to windows that line skyscrapers,” said David Jones, a researcher at University of Melbourne who is involved with the work. “By printing directly to materials like steel, we’ll also be able to embed cells onto roofing materials.”
Printing 10 meters of solar cells in a minute means good things for solar.
(via Printable A3-sized solar cells hit a new milestone in green energy | Ars Technica)
So glad to see continued innovations in this arena - and just cool stuff, you know. ;)
Never saw this charted out before, but great visualization.
From an article about accounting for human capital.
(via @ronaldbaker)
"The truly innovative entrepreneur is not the one who has the greatest greed, but the one who has the greatest care for their customer."
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When you are drawing your weapon for the purposes of clearing a room, a SEAL will tell you, “slow is smooth; smooth is fast.” In other words, if you try to draw your weapon too quickly, chances are, in your attempt to be fast, you’ll fumble or drop or mishandle the thing your very life depends on. But if you can focus on slow, deliberate movements, then your smoothness will translate to getting the job done faster and safer.
Now I have absolutely no occasion to draw a weapon. None whatsoever. But, here’s where this SEAL-ism hits home for me. I can tend to think that frenetic and frenzied and crazy-brained is how I must live to keep up with this world, technology, my schedule, others’ expectations of me, etc. What if approaching life with deliberate calm, a sense of intention, and measured movements would, in the end, yield greater productivity and efficiency?
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A good lesson.
(via dostendorff, via Leeana Tankersley)
"Time is a constraint, not a cost, and it’s certainly not a measure of value."
“Peter Day is on campus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston to talk with Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee about their thought provoking book Race Against the Machine and what the rise of the robots will mean to us all.”
*Fascinating* discussion talking about tectonic shifts in how the economy functions, breaking the historical links between GDP, jobs, productivity, and median income.
A few of the key concepts:
—The power of Moore’s Law is about to be felt as the doubling of computational power begins to break our intuition about the pace of future development. They refer to this effect as the ‘second half of the chessboard’.
—Once that happens, it will necessitate us to re-examine two ares: the distribution of wealth, and how we define meaningfulness in life.
—It’s a good time to be entrepreneurial.
—Future employment preparedness can comes from seeking jobs that are complementary to computers (like data scientists - interpreting collected data), and things machines are not good at (like home health care - things requiring empathy or fine motor skills).
Click the link above to listen to the 28 minutes of audio (with an awesome British accented host).
(via @AzambaInc)
when i was in high school i wanted to play in a band for a living. in college i switched my focus to poetry and later i expanded to video, but esentialy i kept the same goal: i wanted to “make a living” from my art, so i can spend my #rare time alive on what i believe in and what makes me hapy. for the past two years i’ve worked particularly hard at making that hapen. i’ve been sucessful by my definition (yayy!), and one of my bigest guides along the way has been gary vaynerchuk
if you’ve seen many of my videos at all, u have probaly seen clips of gary (here, here, here, here, here). gary’s message is rooted in a strong awareness of YOLO: you only live once, so do what you love. much of gary’s work is teaching specific ways to make it possible to do what u love, he talks about how to build a folowing and community around your work online. much of my aproach to social media community building—how i run my twitter, livestreams, etc—has been adapted from gary’s ideas
the core of gary’s marketing philosophy is to CARE—to be there for your folowers, actualy respond to them, say thanks when people share your work, check out their work in return, make friends and be part of the comunity. this works because when you give back (or give first) so generously, your folowers tend to get more enthusiastic and help share your work. equally simple is gary’s philosophy of personal brand, which is basicaly be yourself.. gary says “there are no damn tactics: be who you are, talk about shit you love”
today i got to interview gary! often gary addresses the concerns of big brands, but this interview is directed at young artists who are trying to build a folowing and eventualy make money from what they love
(back-up mp3 link if the player isn’t working: click here!)
take-away points (SPOLIER ALERT)
- if you’re considering pursuing your art/passion, dont focus on concerns about whether you’ll have success or security within 5-10 years—focus on whether you’ll be 70 years old and have regrets that you never tried!!
- when you eventualy release a book/album/etc and you need your community to actualy follow thru and support you, you should just ask them for what you want, don’t fear rejection.
- when you do IRL events like shows or readings, make the most of any turn-out by giving your full heart and soul to the attendees. connect personaly w/ each person there. then those few ppl wil be the ones to help u get many more ppl out next time
- don’t beat yourself up for sucking at 99.9% of things, just go super hard at the 0.1% you are realy good at!! build around what u are good at
if you like this interview i recomend gary’s book CRUSH IT, and this video of him click here!! u can also follow his twitter and facebook, and look thru his website garyvaynerchuk.com !!
thank you very much :)
"A large part of the beauty of a picture arises from the struggle which an artist wages with his limited medium."
Henri Matisse
Used in my latest post to the Thriveal blog, Endless Limits
Sir Ken Robinson tackles the problem with formal education.
A key quote for me: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
A truly insightful, and humorous, talk — enjoy!
A insightful article, with a particularly poignant closing:
As famed psychologist Dr. Neal Roese recently stated, “On average, regret is a helpful emotion.” It can even be an inspiring one. But it means that we must articulate and celebrate our disappointments, understanding that it’s our capacity to experience regret deeply, and learn from it constructively to ultimately frame our future success.Check out the link above for more! (via @jenniferblumer)
My latest blog post on the Thriveal network is all about how energy, rather than time, is a better way to look at being effective with your life.
To read more, just check out the link above.
"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end (which you can never afford to lose) with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."
Jim Collins
via the Zaarly Employee Handbook (not what you might expect, and a succint must-read)
via Jennifer Blumer
Gary Vaynerchuk shares some thoughts on priorities of relationships in businesses: he argues that most companies, may have it backwards. How we think about our relationships in business, affects the decisions we make and how we conduct our day.
This also connects to another train of thought I’ve been having recently on understanding our time and attention management: instead of looking at my schedule as a series of tasks, beginning to look at my schedule in terms of the relationships they represent.
Recently, I was facilitating a session at a conference on “time management”. One of the main points I wanted to bring up during the discussion, is that it might be more accurate to refer to it as “time and attention management”: time is merely the space within which things can happen, but attention is the focus that actually accomplishes them. Sometimes we can have time, but not attention. An even next level thought is: “personal energy management”. It shifts the discussion from typical “time management efficiencies”, to “life effectiveness”.
Hope you find the video equally as thought provoking!
gary:
We are in the middle of #VaynerDay and I had a thought, do you think most companies have it backwards?
My first post on Thriveal.com’s blog! A key quote below, but just check out the full article using the link above for more:
