Smallist

Is there anything nanotubes can’t do? Scientists are looking at the possibility of miniature “coaxial” style nanotube cables for solar power collection. Remember how plants achieve near 100% efficiency through a quantum effect? It sounds like this is similar. Via Slashdot.

Elsewhere in nanotube news, Nanoexa has announced 3kw / kg energy density in a lithium ion battery. The article is short on perspective with regard to that figure (usually energy density is measured in kilowatt hours, not kilowatts), but a helpful autobloggreen reader cites their press release as claiming “50% higher energy density than existing lithium ion cells.” Not bad! Here’s the press release (pdf).

Via autobloggreen.

An 18mm long strand of carbon nanotube? I’d hate to find one of these in my salad. However, they’re electrically conductive and have a lot of tensile strength. Some day a braid of these might get us the first space elevator. Via /.

Dancer is a 4-inch, 18 ounce Chihuahua. He’s being submitted to the Guiness Book of World Records as the smallest dog. More pictures, and video, available at the Orlando Sentinel.

Wal-mart has announced that they will reduce packaging size for the environment:

As part of its environmental push, Wal-Mart has asked its suppliers to cut back on the amount of packaging used in its Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores.

Kistler, who is helping to lead Wal-Mart’s effort to cut down on packaging, knows the retailer’s new view does not sit well with marketers, who for years have followed the idea: “If it is massive, you win.”

Marketers have used oversized boxes and big displays to try to make their product stand out from the gaggle of competitors that peer out at shoppers from store shelves.

Now, Wal-Mart wants suppliers to think small. Their ability to do future business with the retailer could depend on it.

I like to think they were inspired by Smallist. Of course, I also like to think I’m a billionaire astronaut.

In an industry that measures payload by the pound, it makes sense to keep things tiny. Boeing has just launched a pico satellite, that weighs about a kilogram. Called Cubesat Testbed 1, the vehicle is capable of determining its attitude by sensing the earth’s magnetic field and the sun, and adjusting it with something called a magnetic torque coil. It also has an antenna, rechargable lithium ion batteries, and two redundant radios. Or one redundant radio, really. I suppose the first one is non-redundant.

But wait, there’s more! According to Wikipedia, seven different Cubesats were launched on the same Dnepr rocket. Cubesat is a design specification, not a specific vehicle. Among the other mini-borgs was part of the “Multi-application survivable tether” program, designed to test applications of space ropes. Some day, they’ll enable spacecraft to use all sorts of acrobatics to boost orbits, swing payloads higher, even propel a spacecraft using the Earth’s magnetic field.

When I first read the Boeing press release, I immediately imagined a spherical vehicle,sort of a miniature Sputnik. But since there’s no pressurized compartment, and no need for streamlining, a cube makes perfect sense from a design standpoint. So much for tiny flying saucers.

Peat bog swimmer Paedocypris is the world’s smallest fish, and the smallest vertebrate too. Today, the Natural History Museum of London figured out who its closest relatives are. (Zsa Zsa’s husband wasn’t on the list, rimshot) Most of the cousins live in peat bogs too. The thing doesn’t even have a skull — the brain just protrudes from its head like the aliens in Invaders from Mars.

Second in line as smallest fish is the male of a small deep sea angler, Photocorynus spiniceps. The female gets to a respectable 50 mm, making the 6 mm male look like a parasite. I hope she has a good personality, because she is extraordinarily homely.

“Heartlander” is a caterpillar-like robot designed to walk on the surface of the heart. It’s 2cm long, and holds onto the heart by suckers attached to a vacuum line. It can be used to install pacemaker leads, inject drugs, or attach other medical devices. While current minimally invasive techniques can work by accessing the interior of the heart through veins and arteries, the exterior is typically hard to work with because the chest cavity is tight, and the heart is beating.

Video and more information can be found at the project website.

Sorry mom and pop. Home Depot is creating smaller stores, to get around zoning difficulties, and to fit into the available nooks and crannies of smaller neighborhoods. They may be more profitable than the big stores, since they’ll be dropping lumber, an item requiring lots of square footage and producing little profit.

Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.