Some interesting technology

The March 7th, 2009 issue of The Economist Technical Quarterly has some items of interest:

Cool Earth Solar of Livermore, California is using balloons as solar energy collectors.

Narasimharao Kondamudi, Susanta Mohapatra, and Manoranjan Misra of the University of Nevada at Reno have found a way to turn coffee grounds into biodiesel.

David Whitten of the University of New Mexico and Kirk Schanze of the University of Florida have built "micro-sized 'roach motels'" for capturing bacteria in hospitals and on the surfaces of ships.

Nicholas Kotov and his team at the University of Michigan have come up with a way to coat cotton threads with carbon nanotubes which can be used to carry electricity, and to add an additional material that reacts with human serum albumin, in order to detect bleeding, which might be used by the military in monitoring soldiers.