This year’s National Instruments weeklong event NIWeek 2013 begins today and runs Monday, August 5 through Thursday, August 8 in Austin, Texas, U.S.

Dennis Cravens, a long-time researcher who pioneered laser-induced reactions and has worked on energy cells as diverse as James Patterson‘s Patterson Power Cell, will be conducting a live demonstration experiment from booth #922 under the name Neo-Coulombic.

From the NIWeek 2013 Program [.pdf]:

Neo-Coulombic is a small private research group specializing in “long shot” technology involving methods of thermal energy generation using hydrogen and metals. physicsandbeyond.com

Cravens described his device to E-catworld.com as:

… the simplest demo I could come up with at NIWeek. It is not intended to prove anything , just to something to make “Joe Six pack” take notice and give him something to about. There will be no input, no flows to measure, no HV to scramble the instruments, no calculations to explain . . . just one brass sphere warmer than the other, and the bath temperature.

I know full well I will get a lot of people that will want added bells and whistles but I hope the target audience (the average engineer type walking by with their family) can understand the system within in 30 seconds at the booth. One sphere is hotter than the other so it must have a power source of some kind inside- what is it? Come back on Thursday and see inside.

It is just two brass spheres in a constant temperature bath (80C Lab Armor aluminum bead bath). One is a sample and one is the control. The sample just stays warmer than the control (for the full 5 days of the expo). Temperatures will be monitored and displayed via a Lab View interface (after all, this is NI) during the expo.

I hope to cut open the sample on the last day to show there are no hidden items.

The theme for the 2013 summit is “Deploying the smart grid—effective deployment techniques for smart grid embedded control and monitoring systems.” and focuses on conventional alternative energies, a switch from last year’s strong focus on breakthrough energy.

NIWeek 2012 put LENR front and center, with opening remarks by National Instruments President and CEO James Truchard indicating his strong interest and support of the topic. Robert Duncan, Vice-Provost for Research at University of Missouri and organizer of the recently held 18th International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF-18) also spoke at the event and Francesco Celani, of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) performed a live demonstration of his cell. Defkalion Green Technologies, developers of the Hyperion reactor, gave a presentation, as did Akito Takahashi, of Technova, Inc. Numerous new energy researchers attended, and a panel discussion brought many to the stage for an open debate on the future of LENR.

Dennis Cravens is the sole representative from the new energy community scheduled to appear this year, but that doesn’t mean NI support has waned.

Truchard recently gave the Keynote Address at ICCF-18 and currently supports a number of new energy projects to varying degrees, with NI software, equipment, and more.

