PCADS

Remarkably accurate, the Precision Container Aerial Delivery System (PCADS) is a tool that allows airdropping on wildfires, which uses a water-filled plastic bladder stabilized by a wrapper of triple-wall corrugated cardboard material, which can be loaded aboard any cargo plane. When dropped from the plane which can be guided to its target by GPS Global Positioning System , the lid parachutes away, delivering 2000 pounds of fire retardant far more accurately then is currently achieved, and with far less risk to the plane and occupants.

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New Type Of Laser Discovered

A Princeton-led team of researchers has discovered an entirely new mechanism for making common electronic materials emit laser beams. The new laser phenomenon has some interesting features. For instance, in a conventional laser relying on low momentum electrons, electrons often reabsorb the emitted photons, and this reduces overall efficiency. In the new type of laser, however, this absorption is reduced by 90%. This could potentially allow the device to run at lower currents, and also makes it less vulnerable to temperature changes.

Biohackers

SpongeBob Biohacker Pants
Amateurs are trying genetic engineering at home!? Why, SpongeBob, Why?

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Water-Lensed Glasses

British inventor Josh Silver, a former professor of physics at Oxford University, has come up with a game-changer of a product design with his water-lensed glasses.

Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.

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a Biological Fuel Cell

Biological fuel cells use enzymes or whole microorganisms as biocatalysts for the direct conversion of chemical energy to electrical energy. One type of microbial fuel cell uses anodes (positive electrodes) coated with a bacterial film. The fuel consists of a substrate that the bacteria can break down. The electrons released in this process must be transferred to the anode in order to be drawn off as current. But how can the electrons be efficiently conducted from the microbial metabolism that occurs inside a cell to the anode?

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Cloaking objects at a distance

One of the disadvantages of invisibility cloaks is that anything placed inside one is automatically blinded, since no light can get in. Now Yun Lai and colleagues from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have come up with a way round this using the remarkable idea of cloaking at a distance. This involves using a “complementary material” to hide an object outside it.

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Korean Electric Car Maker to Roll Into U.S.

Leo Motors, a Korean startup little known in the United States, has been quietly intensifying its efforts to build a beachhead in California to import and develop its electric vehicle technology, including a so-called zinc air-fuel cell battery that could dramatically increase the range of cars powered by electricity.

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Zinc-air is a high-energy, high-power fuel cell technology that is safe and environmentally benign.

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Final lock of digital website certificates cracked

A team of researchers said they successfully created a rogue certification authority (CA) to create digital certificates that are accepted by all major web browser – and not just those that are running on PCs.

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Photonic Ink’ (P-Ink)

Nature News reports that British and Canadian chemists have developed synthetic opals that can very quickly switch between various colors when a few volts of electricity are applied to them.

This “is an opal-based technology that provides electrically tunable color of any wavelength.

This research project is being led by Geoffrey Ozin, a chemist at the University of Toronto, Canada, and his group, and by Ian Manners of the University of Bristol, UK, and his own group. The project also involved André Arsenault of Opalux, a Toronto-based start-up company which was spun off from the University of Toronto, and by Daniel Puzzo, of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto.

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Broadband Stimulus Plan

In today's deep recession, digital age advocates are trying to persuade President-elect Barack Obama to put billions into a nationwide broadband build-out as part of his planned economic stimulus package.

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Emotive's Neural Wheelchair Control

Our mission is to create the ultimate interface for the next-generation of human-machine interaction, by evolving the interaction between humans and electronic devices beyond the limitations of conscious interface. Emotiv has created technologies that allow machines to take both conscious and non-conscious inputs directly from your mind.

What the World Spends on Research

Research and development drives any high-tech economy, but the U.S. ranks only eighth in the world on R&D spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product.

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Why Virtualization?

Virtual machine technologies enable one physical workstation or server to run multiple operating systems and related applications at the same time.

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Regenerative Medicine

One civilian participated in the regenerative-medicine study after cutting off the tip of his finger in a model plane's propeller. Researchers continually applied the matrix to the wound, and after four weeks, the body grew skin and tissue to replenish the damaged area. With innovative technology developed by the U.S. Army, such regrowth is possible today.

Regenerative Medicine Announcement: Part 1 of 2

Regenerative Medicine Announcement: Part 2 of 2

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Portable Low Output Impedance Ultrasound Transducer Driver

An inexpensive, pocket-sized therapeutic ultrasound device has been developed by a graduate student at Cornell University in New York. It costs about $100 dollars, compared to current ultrasounds that can weigh 30 pounds and coast $20,000.

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Sight Restoration For Individuals With Profound Blindness

With the successful development of a penetrating microelectrode array for implantation in the brain, artificial vision is ready to step beyond the original systems built in the 1960’s.

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Mind Controlled Bionics

The ability to manufacture bionic arms that have the functionality and even feel of a natural limb is becoming very real, with goals of launching a prototype as soon as 2009. Already, primates have been trained to feed themselves using a robotic arm merely by thinking about it, while brain sensors have been picking up their brain-signal patterns since 2003. The time has come for implementing this technology on paralyzed human patients and amputees.

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The Disappearing US Industrial Base

Loren Thompson, a defense expert at the Lexington Institute, has written a number of important briefs in the last few weeks warning about the disappearance of American manufacturing and the potential long term implications that would have on this country’s future.

X-FLEX tape

X-FLEX Blast Protection System has been developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers‘ Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) and Evansville, Ind.–based Berry Plastics Corporation’s Engineered Protective Systems division.

X-FLEX tape would be used to coat the interior sides of exterior walls in order to absorb the shock of a blast, protecting the occupants from flying concrete and metal turned into projectiles.

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The Semantic Web

The idea behind the semantic Web, very broadly, is that things on the Internet will be described with descriptor languages so that computers can "understand" what they are.

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City of the future

Designed by Dutch architecture firm MVDRV, the planned high-density town or "Power-center" will support 77,000 inhabitants will act as a central node with a view to encouraging further developments in the area, an approach used extensively in Korean town planning in recent times.

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U.S. Firms Join Forces to Build Batteries

Fourteen U.S. technology companies are joining forces and seeking $1 billion in federal aid to build a plant to make advanced batteries for electric cars, in a bid to catch up to Asian rivals that are far ahead of the U.S.

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Carbon-nanotube coated smart yarn

Chinese and U.S. researchers have developed a carbon nanotube-coated smart yarn which can conduct electricity and be woven into textiles to detect blood or to monitor health.

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Toshiba, IBM, AMD Develop World's Smallest FinFET SRAM Cell

Toshiba, IBM, and AMD today announced that they have together developed a Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) cell that has an area of only 0.128 square micrometers (μm2), the world’s smallest functional SRAM cell that makes use of fin-shaped Field Effect Transistors (FinFETs).

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Cognitive computing: Building a machine to learn from experience

Scientists are studying complex wiring of the brain to build the computer of the future, one that combines the brain’s abilities for sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition and its low power consumption and compact size. Understanding the process behind these seemingly effortless feats of the human brain and creating a computational theory based on it remains one of the biggest challenges for computer scientists.

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Engineering algae to make fuel

In a paper in a special energy issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley describe a method for using micro-algae for making biofuel.

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Tiny magnetic crystals in bacteria act as a compass

Researchers say their study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, could provide fresh clues to explain biomagnetism – a phenomenon in which some birds, insects and marine life navigate using the magnetic field that encompasses the Earth.

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Panasonic Develops A Gallium Nitride (GaN) Power Device with A New Junction Structure

Panasonic today announced the development of a Gallium Nitride (GaN) -based diode with a new junction structure called "Natural Super Junction". The new GaN diode with low operating loss is applicable to a variety of consumer and industrial power switching systems.

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Scientists Restore Movement to Paralyzed Limbs through Artificial Brain-Muscle Connections

Researchers in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have demonstrated for the first time that a direct artificial connection from the brain to muscles can restore voluntary movement in monkeys whose arms have been temporarily anesthetized. The results may have promising implications for the quarter of a million Americans affected by spinal cord injuries and thousands of others with paralyzing neurological diseases, although clinical applications are years away.

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A bionic arm

Claudia Mitchell is one of only four people in the United States to have undergone the procedure, but the results will give hope to many who have lost a limb. "I just think about moving my hand and elbow and they move," she told her doctors.

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HAL(Hybrid Assistive Limb): Exoskeleton from Cyberdine

When a person attempts to walk, for instance, the brain sends electrical impulses to muscles. when they arrive at muscles, faint bio-electrical signals appear on skin surfaces. HAL's system works as described below.

1. The bio-electrical sensors attached to the skin read the signals
2. The computer immediately analyzes how much power the wearer intends to generate
3. Calculates the adequate amount of power assist and command power units
4. Power units generate torque and put limbs into action.

These process is completed a fraction of a second earlier than the muscles actually move.Source

Live Voiceless Phone Calls

Ambient Corporation today gave the first live demonstration of how its new technology, the Audeo, will enable voiceless communication either face-to-face or via phone.

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Wheelchair controlled by thought

Michael Callahan hopes to assist individuals without the use of speech and mobility to communicate through the application of neuroscience. By interfacing near the source of vocal production, he has been able to translate unspoken thought of the mind from intercepted neuronal activity at the vocal cords. The method that Callahan has developed produces complete fluent speech with 70% accuracy from neurological signals.

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Another concept from Japan: A team of researchers led by professor Kazuo Tanaka from University of Electro-Communications has developed a prototype of an electric wheelchair that users can use their brain to control simply by thinking of which direction to head towards. Before taking the mind-controlled wheelchair for a stroll, you’d need strap on a skullcap outfitted with a network of sensors. The sensors interpret the users brain waves, allowing the user to control the wheelchair’s direction by thinking, “move left” or “move right.” It’s amazing that the wheelchair is 80% accurate in interpreting the users intentions and moving in the desired direction.

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The Gravitonus Work Station

The Gravitonus is a workstation that keeps the user in the most ergonomically optimized position at all times. This workstation is now being adapted for quadriplegics with the addition of ACCS, or alternative computer control system.

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Transistors beyond silicon

Sometime in the future, a new kind of hybrid chip might be made possible by manufacturing techniques that essentially glue together materials with incompatible molecular structures. This could result in chips that integrate radio or optical communications functions. It could also make it possible to run transistors at lower power without losing all of their speed advantages.

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New Report on "The future of the Internet"

Key findings:

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world in 2020.

• The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.

• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the Internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.

• Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing “arms race,” with the “crackers” who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.

• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who’s connected, and the results will be mixed in terms of social relations.

• “Next-generation” engineering of the network to improve the current Internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.

Find the report here

People Powered Electric Generation

Tokyo Japan

With this experiment, vibration from 100,000 people is converted to energy. The “piezoelectric floor” is embedded in the walk. The person steps on the yellow part (see arrow in the picture) and electricity is generated.

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Graphene transistors clocked at 26GHz

If graphene ever becomes the material of choice for a new generation of superfast chips, then the work of Yu-Ming Lin and buddies at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in upstate New York may well turn out to be one of the foundations of that revolution.

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Transparent thin film transistor

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

A KAIST research team led by Profs. Jae-Woo Park and Seung-Hyup Yoo of the Electrical Engineering Division has developed a home-grown technology to create transparent thin film transistor using titanium dioxide., university authorities said.

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Innowattech's energy harvesting system

Innowattech has developed a new alternative energy system that harvests mechanical energy imparted to roadways, railways and runways from passing vehicles and converts it into green electricity.

The system, based on a new breed of piezoelectric generators, harvests energy that ordinarily goes to waste and can be installed without changing the habitat.

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Video

Success in processing and displaying optically received images directly from the human brain

Osaka, Japan: Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International

The group of researchers at Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, including Yukiyasu Kamitani and Yoichi Miyawaki, from its NeuroInformatics Department, said about 100 million images can be read, adding that dreams as well as mental images are likely to be visualized in the future in the same manner.

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ATR

NEURON HOME PAGE

Researchers Find Brain Cells That Are a Key to Learning

Using a new imaging technique called Arc catFISH, researchers from the University of Washington have visualized individual neurons in the amygdalas of rat brains that are activated when the animals are given an associative learning task.

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Practical Brain-to-Cyber Interfaces Closer to Reality

University of Portsmouth researcher Paul Gnanayutham is working to create an inexpensive, easy-to-use interface that allows a computer to read, interpret and display thoughts and feelings based on eye movement, the use of face muscles and/or brain waves
People suffering from physically debilitating illnesses such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka Lou Gehrig's Disease) and traumatic brain injuries often find themselves trapped inside their own bodies, unable to speak, gesture or otherwise communicate with the outside world. Scientists have shown they can create computer interfaces that sense, interpret and display a locked-in person's brain waves, eye movements or facial expressions, but the challenge has been to find cost-effective ways of harnessing this technology for consumer use.

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Calculating the probability of immortality

The odds are not good. As David Eubanks of Coker College in South Carolina puts it:

“Imagine that some subject survives each year (or other time period) with a probability p. Assuming for a moment that p exists and is constant over time, it’s easy to compute the dismal odds of long term survival as a decaying exponential. Unless p = 1, the probability of n-year survival approaches zero.”

In other words, the probability of surviving forever is exactly zero.

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Simple detection devices made of paper & adhesive tape: MicroPADS

MicroPADs transported four separate liquid samples to 64 designated reservoirs within 5 minutes. In 27 out of 30 tries, the devices moved the liquids without mixing them. That means the microPADs theoretically can simultaneously test for thousands of potentially harmful chemicals--such as dioxin, lead, or mercury--and for diseases such as diphtheria, malaria, or typhoid. And the results can be transmitted from fieldworkers to centralized laboratories by taking a cell-phone photo of the results on the colored dots (see photo). The researchers estimate that each microPAD could cost as little as 3 cents when manufactured in commercial quantities.

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Bulletproof Paper

A new “nanopaper”—made of tightly woven nanosize cellulose threads—proven in lab tests to be stronger and tougher than cast iron.

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A perfect Place to Store Electricity

The superinsulating capacity of titanium nitride occurs only at supercold temperatures, within one-tenth of one degree of absolute zero, the temperature at which all motion ceases. Superinsulation thus joins the ranks of other bizarre phases of matter that exist under extreme conditions, like superconductivity and Bose-Einstein Condensate (a condition in which, at almost absolute zero, large groups of atoms blur together into a single quantum state). Just as a superconducting material allows a current to pass through it without any resistance, a superinsulating material can hold a charge infinitely long without leakage.

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The missing Memristor found

In 1971 Leon Chua reasoned from symmetry arguments that there should be a fourth fundamental element, which he called a memristor (short for memory resistor). Although he showed that such an element has many interesting and valuable circuit properties, until now no one has presented either a useful physical model or an example of a memristor. The other three are: the resistor, the capacitor and the inductor.


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A nasal spray for sleep

A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.

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Change.gov

Digg-like tool lets Change.gov visitors pick policy questions!

Change.gov

Open For Questions

The next Internet experience

The next Internet experience will be built around video and virtualization as the industry moves to the usage of collaboration tools, John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, said during his C-Scape 2008 keynote speech.

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Haptic computing

HTX Helmet

Helmet enables wearer to feel blows to the head when fired upon.

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Gaming Vest

The force-feedback game vest, which was initially developed by a physician for medical research, has eight zones that supposedly simulate the sensations of gunshots, explosions, and "fear-inducing finger taps."

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Microsoft ESP Showcases the Future of Immersive Simulation Experiences

Microsoft© ESP™ is a visual simulation software development platform that brings immersive games-based technology to training and decision support for commercial, government and education organizations.

MS ESP site

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Printed, paper battery

Along with its ability to function in temperatures up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and down to 100 below zero, the device is completely integrated and can be printed like paper. The device is also unique in that it can function as both a high-energy battery and a high-power supercapacitor, which are generally separate components in most electrical systems. Another key feature is the capability to use human blood or sweat to help power the battery.

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3D touch

The idea of virtual touch in computing is as foreign to most people as the concept of television was in the age of radio. But, like the innovation of TV, the Novint Falcon, powered by a patented 3D touch technology, represents an entirely new way to experience games.

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Novint

Top 100 Cloud Computing Companies

SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal expands its list of most active players in the fast-emerging Cloud Ecosystem.

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E. coli as Future Source of Energy

By genetically modifying the bacteria, Thomas Wood, a professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, has “tweaked” a strain of E. coli so that it produces substantial amounts of hydrogen. Specifically, Wood’s strain produces 140 times more hydrogen than is created in a naturally occurring process, according to an article in “Microbial Biotechnology,” detailing his research.

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Sound Wave-Powered Devices Possible

Converting sound waves into the energy. It's not as far-fetched as it may seem thanks to the recent work of Tahir Cagin, a professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University.

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Texas A&M Source

Sonic Nausea

A little device that clips onto a 9-volt battery and emits ultra-high frequency soundwaves which leads most in its vicinity to throw-up.

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Smartbolt tells you when it's tight

There’s also a high resolution version that will show you when the bolt has been over tightened. Bolts can be manufactured in M10 to M32 sizes.

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Neural Prosthetic Device

A neural prosthetic device developed at Boston University has partially restored the speech of a mute human volunteer.

A surgical procedure performed by a team from Boston University, Massachusetts led by Professor Frank Guenther, has enabled a mute man to speak again. An electrode implanted in the patient’s brain made it possible for the patient to produce vowels by thinking them, using a speech synthesizer. In the future, this breakthrough may help patients with similar injuries produce entire sentences, using signals from their brains.

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The Speech Lab

Revolutionary high speed 'Cloud' computing software being developed

University of Melbourne, Australia

Revolutionary new software which harnesses the power of networked computers to analyze data at high speeds is being developed by new start-up company Manjrasoft Pty Ltd and researchers within the University of Melbourne, Australia.

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High-Temp Superconducting Nanowire System is First of its Kind

Scientists from the California Institute of Technology have, for the first time, created an array of nanowires that are superconducting at relatively high temperatures. This work, published recently in Nano Letters, could lead to the incorporation of superconducting nanowires into emerging nanotechnologies.

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Gas pump made of minerals has no moving parts

Scientists have discovered that a type of hard mineral called zeolite can provide a high rate of gas flow in a micro-scale gas pump. Because the pump is based simply on temperature differences and has no moving parts, it could provide reliable and precise control of gas flow for a variety of applications, such as gas-sensing breath analyzers and warfare agent detectors.

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Silicon ribbons pave the way for graphene-like sheets

There is one thing that graphene can’t do and that is to fit easily into the silicon-based electronics industry. And while graphene based chips hold much promise, it’s hard to see chip makers re-tooling to use carbon instead of silicon in the near future.

That’s why a number of groups have become to look at the possibility of making silicon versions of grahene, a material called silicene. Silicon nanowires made their first appearance in 2005. And now Christelle Leandri at the Center for Interdisciplinary Nanoscience in Marseille, France, and a few buddies have made silicene for the first time, albeit in the form of stripes or nanoribbons.


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Supersolids

Almost 40 years ago, two Russian physicists predicted the existence of a new state of matter called a supersolid. They reasoned that at very low temperatures, the rules of quantum mechanics would allow a solid to move with zero resistance and that this would allow one solid to move through another like magician walking through a wall.

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Welcome to the Talking Web

That's the purpose of FlowGram's Flowgrams. Available at flowgram.com, Flowgram is a free beta Web service that lets users combine live Web pages and other content and create a shareable narrated walk-through.

Flowgram

Unified cloud interfaces on the horizon

Portability between clouds is clearly a problem, especially if you need to replicate an environment or application within your enterprise. You are effectively stuck, if not actually locked-in to the cloud provider you sign on with.

According to the post, the "unified cloud interface" (aka cloud broker) will serve as a common interface for the interaction with remote platforms, systems, networks, data, identity, applications, and services.

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X-Ray Vision Camera

This technology has been adapted and marketed to make real xray cameras, x-ray vision, and x-ray infrared pass filters. Unlike the Xray glasses you probably saw advertised in the back of comic books when you were a kid, this technology really does see through many types of clothing. The filter is ideal for law enforcement officers, and security and surveillance personnel.

Source and to Buy

A Great Idea

Interactive Tattoos

Utilizing future technology, Dattoos have yet to reach fruition. The final concept aims to achieve a convergence of the following capabilities: DNA-reader and identification technology; nanosensors and interactive "touch reading" for finger tips (Braille); pattern and image recognition; self-learning and educational applications; living materials that change shape and feel; flexible OLED displays; full voice interaction, directional laser speakers; bionic nano chips; and cyborg components.

Researchers in cerebral tissue breakthrough

OSAKA Japan--Researchers have created cerebral tissue from human embryonic stem cells, an achievement thought likely to lead to a breakthrough in tackling Alzheimer's disease as well as pave the way for new regenerative treatments and other drugs, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

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AIST Makes Highly Elastic Plastic from CO2

Japan

Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) made a highly elastic and strong plastic from CO2.

With an elastic modulus of 2.4Gpa and a strength of 17.9Mpa, the plastic is expected to be used as an environment-conscious material that may replace petroleum-based plastics like polyethylene and polypropylene.

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New Display Device Claims 'Newspaper Quality'

Japan


Funai Electric Advanced Applied Technology Research Institute Inc developed a new reflective display device that the company claims has display properties "equivalent to those of newspaper."

Phote shows a comparison between the new display device and a newspaper is shown on the left. On the right are a reflective LCD panel and electronic paper (from Funai's promotional materials).

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Undergroud navigation system

Aichi Steel Corp. said Tuesday it has developed the first navigation system employing a geomagnetic sensor that can provide location information and directions in underground malls and other complexes.

The system — comprising a geomagnetic sensor, an acceleration sensor and a microprocessor — can display current location and directions even in underground shopping malls where radio waves for the satellite-based Global Positioning System cannot be received.

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Radar technology to predict arrival of strong winds developed

Japan

Two research institutes in Japan have jointly developed technology to foretell areas which might be hit by strong winds an hour ahead of time by using a radar observation network in the Tokyo metropolitan area, researchers said Monday.

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Race heats up for Space Elevator

One location being considered by NASA for such a platform is off the coast of Perth, according to the West Australian co-author of the book Leaving The Earth By Space Elevator, Philip Ragan.

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China, U.S. to collaborate on solar energy technology

China

The Institute of Electrical Engineering (IEE) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which is affiliated with the Department of Energy, signed a memorandum of understanding over the weekend.

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The Ulgy 105 MPH Car

MoonBeam took Jory about a year (1000 hours) to engineer and build working about 20 hours a week. It's out of pocket price including the donor 1985 Honda Elite 150 and another 84 Honda 125 was $2500.

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Graphene-based memory eyed by researchers to replace flash

A research team at Rice University led by James Tour with Yubao Li and Alexander Sinitskii have discovered that memory cells created by graphene (thin sheets of graphite) can be 5x as dense while requiring significantly less power to operate. In addition, the lab has already experimented with up to 20K cycles and there was "no discernable degradation."

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Europe's Digital Library

Europe's answer to Google Books went on line today and was immediately bogged down by traffic. The site, www.europeana.eu, gives viewers access to some 2 million books, images, paintings and other cultural objects.

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La Portal The Europeana site is temporarily not accessible due to overwhelming interest after its launch (10 million hits per hour).

World's first custom-made bones

University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Medicine

If successful, the Japanese method could open the way for doctors to create new bones within hours of an accident so long as the patient has electronic data on file.

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University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Medicine

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Model Predicts Equipment Remaining Life, Links to Inventory

Nagi Gebraeel, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, has developed models that use data from real-time sensor measurements to calculate and continuously revise the amount of remaining useful life of different engineering systems based on their current condition and health status. These predictions are then integrated with maintenance management and spare parts supply chain policies as part of an autonomous “sense and respond” logistics paradigm.

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New Tool Can Measure ‘Reality’ of Virtual Worlds

A research team, led by North Carolina State University’s Dr. Mitzi M. Montoya, has developed a new way of measuring how “real” online virtual worlds are – an important advance for the emerging technology that can be used to foster development of new training and collaboration applications by companies around the world.

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MU Engineer Creating More Sensitive, Safer Landmine Detectors

In a landmine radar system, ground-penetrating radar scans the surface for underground objects. Besides sensing landmines, the radar also has undesirable responses from clutter objects, such as scrap metal debris, plant roots and rocks. Dominic Ho, the Dowell Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering in the MU College of Engineering, is working with Army employees and private defense contractors to enhance the system, and distinguish between true positive signals that are from landmines and false positive signals that are from clutter objects and can be ignored safely.

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Researcher develops inference technique that estimates how many people will fall sick in an epidemic

In his third year of internal Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) funding, Jaideep Ray has figured out a way to determine the number of people likely to be infected and die from noncommunicable illnesses like anthrax — ailments that could be caused by a potential bioterrorist attack — as well as communicable diseases like smallpox.

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Tiny Solar Cells Built to Power Microscopic Machines

The cells were made of an organic polymer and were joined together in an experiment aimed at proving their ability to power tiny devices that can be used to detect chemical leaks and for other applications, says Xiaomei Jiang, who led the research at the University of South Florida.

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IBM to build 'brain-like' computers

IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains. Part of a field called "cognitive computing", the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists. IBM has been granted $4.9M from Darpa.

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bug-sized, flying spies

Photo, taken from computer animation video and released by the U.S. Air Force, shows the next generation of drones, called Micro Aerial Vehicles, or MAVs. The MAVs could be as tiny as bumblebees and capable of flying undetected into buildings, where they could photograph, record, and even attack insurgents and terrorists.

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g-Eclipse

The g-Eclipse project aims to build an integrated workbench framework to access the power of existing Grid infrastructures. The framework will be built on top of the reliable eco-system of the Eclipse community to enable a sustainable development. The framework will provide tools to customize Grid users' applications, to manage Grid resources and to support the development cycle of new Grid applications.

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Aids Cure?

A patient from Berlin has been AIDS free for two years after having a bone marrow transplant to cure his leukaemia.

The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. Hütter, a soft-spoken hematologist who isn't an AIDS specialist, deliberately replaced the patient's bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

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Shape-Shifting Materials

Intel researchers are also investigating how millions of tiny micro-robots, called catoms, could build shape-shifting materials.

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Wireless Power Technology

The magic of WREL is that it promises to deliver wireless power safely and efficiently.

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MIT's 6-D Display

Researchers at MIT have recently created “‘6D”’ images which are extraordinarily realistic.

Associate professor at the MIT media lab, Ramesh Raskar, says “Even if you have the best hologram out there, the hologram does not look real.” However, the new system has a comparatively low-resolution laboratory proof-of-concept but could be applied in training and teaching purposes. Raskar also adds, “In training someone how to carry out industrial inspections, an image of the device to be inspected would respond just like a real object when the inspector shines lights on it from different angles, for example.”

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Stem cells prompted to grow new eyes

Stem cells from frog eggs can be genetically prodded to develop into functional eyes in tadpoles.

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Yahoo's GLUE

Try it out?

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First Wraparound View of Vehicles in Real Time

Japan

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. announced today the development of a new video-processing technology that enables a complete wraparound view of a vehicle's perimeter in real time, to enhance the driver's field of view.

Source

Searaser - hydro power from the sea

Hydro energy for the production of electricity is the next most efficient energy source and has advantages over direct wind systems in being clean, storable and controllable.

Source

7 promising new green-power technologies

From algae-based biofuel to electric-vehicle batteries to garbage that creates ethanol, the ways we can push aside fossil fuels are multiplying at a rapid pace.

Source

Pocket Projector

Smaller than most smart phones, this new micro-portable projector fits in your palm and is the ideal companion to ultra-portable media devices such as iPods, PDA’s, smart phones and digital cameras.

Source

University of Melbourne, Australia - Tech Transfer

http://www.research.unimelb.edu.au/ventures/technologies/index.html

Reverse Osmosis-Capable Subsurface Drip Irrigation

University of New South Wales, Australia

The technology enables crop producers to use brackish (with a high salt content) water as a source of irrigation for high value crops, where other sources of water are unavailable.

http://www.nsinnovations.com.au/industry/technologies/environmental/07_2178~reverse~osmosis.pdf

Biopolymer Adhesive for Tissue Repair

University of New South Wales, Australia

A novel tissue repair technology developed at the University of New South Wales presents a tremendous licensing opportunity for a company with existing expertise in the tissue repair and wound healing sector.

UNSW scientists have developed a proprietary laser activated polysaccharide adhesive system that has been demonstrated in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo. This polysaccharide adhesive system is an alternative to albumin solders and other biological glues, and alleviates many of their associated disadvantages.



http://www.nsinnovations.com.au/industry/technologies/biotechnology/index.html

http://www.nsinnovations.com.au/industry/technologies/biotechnology/ncds/04_1838_Biopolymer_adhesive_NCD.pdf

Modular Decentralized Control of Reconfigurable Redundant Systems

University of New South Wales, Australia

The demand for automation has seen a growing need for robotic devices with more sophisticated control mechanisms. The School of Mechanical Engineering at UNSW has developed a manipulator (a sub-class of robotic devices) which is able to adapt to its surroundings, avoid obstacles and achieve stable motion through an unmapped environment with a known target. NSi seeks interested end-users of this technology and/or funds to develop a complete proof of concept prototype.

http://www.nsinnovations.com.au/industry/technologies/mechanical/index.html

Industry Training Using Virtual Reality

University of New South Wales, Australia

The dangerous nature of industries like mining, construction, policing and the military make it difficult to adequately train staff in a realistic environment. Most training methods are both costly and inadequate.

The solution developed by UNSW provides a virtual version of the dangerous environment. This removes the risks and costs of training people in the dangerous real world by immersing the trainees in a highly realistic 3 dimensional virtual world.

http://www.nsinnovations.com.au/industry/technologies/itc/07_2091~vrsoftware~icinema.pdf

Ink Jet Printing for High Efficiency Silicon Solar Cells

University of New South Wales, Australia

Inkjet printing is seen as a suitable method for carrying out a range of processes involved in the fabrication of solar cells.

http://www.nsinnovations.com.au/industry/technologies/renewables/05_1910_ink_jet_printing_ncd.pdf

A compact portable solar powered energy concentrator

University of New South Wales, Australia

In order to use solar energy to either produce high temperatures for increased chemical reaction kinetics for example, or high radiant energy flux for surface interactions, it is necessary to focus the incoming sunlight to increase the local radiation flux.

What is the technology?
The invention uses micro and nano-fabrication techniques to produce an array of micro-lenses to focus light onto an array of micro-channels tens of micrometers wide. The micro-channels contain specific components, such as thin film selective surfaces, photovoltaic cells or titanium dioxide photo-catalysts.

http://www.nsinnovations.com.au/industry/technologies/renewables/07_2082_microreactor_ncd.pdf

University of New South Wales - Tech Transfer

http://www.nsinnovations.com.au/industry/technologies/index.html

Quantum Computing

Researchers in the U.K. and the U.S. on Friday published a paper detailing discoveries that might bring a fully functional quantum computer one step closer to reality.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/153945/researchers_take_a_step_ahead_in_quantum_computing.html

http://prl.aps.org/

Quantum Computing

Researchers in the U.K. and the U.S. on Friday published a paper detailing discoveries that might bring a fully functional quantum computer one step closer to reality.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/153945/researchers_take_a_step_ahead_in_quantum_computing.html

http://prl.aps.org/

Australian National University - Tech Transfer

http://www.anu.edu.au/commercialisation/technology-opportunities.php

Intranasal flu vaccine protective against seasonal and H5N1 avian influenza infections

Australian National University

Scientists from the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the ANU have developed a new flu vaccine effective in inducing Tc as well as Ab responses.

http://www.anu.edu.au/commercialisation/pdf/Mohammedausbiotech.pdf

Rendering for an Interactive 360º Light Field Display

http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/3DDisplay/

Teleportation concept

The University of Queensland, Australia

“We propose a scheme which allows an atom laser beam to disappear at one location and reappear at another,” Dr Bradley said. “We feel that our scheme is closer in spirit to the original fictional concept,” Dr Haine said. “What differentiates our scheme from what is usually termed quantum teleportation is that our scheme does not require the sender and receiver to share entangled states, as there is no measurement step involved in sending the information.

http://www.uq.edu.au/research/index.html?page=67880&pid=67756

Skin cancer vaccine

Ian Frazer, Director of the Diamantina Institute at The University of Queensland

What we've learnt together, through the study of animal models, is that the skin has natural defences which switch off killer T cells (the cells we can produce by vaccination that are designed to get rid of “bad” skin cells). We've also found a number of ways to overcome these blocks and let the immune system work.

We now want to test vaccines based on this knowledge in clinical trials, to find out whether we can develop vaccines that could be used to treat people at risk of skin cancer. We're particularly interested in the skin cancers caused by papillomavirus – we've vaccines to prevent papillomavirus infection, but no vaccines to treat existing infections with these viruses at the moment, and that's what we're working to produce.

http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=16608

Bluebox Ideas Competition

Bluebox is the technology transfer and commercialisation company for the Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

A robotic ultrasound technique for use in cancer treatment developed by Queensland University of Technology researcher Professor Christian Langton from the Faculty of Science was selected as the winner of the bluebox Ideas Competition for 2008.

First place ($10,000):
# Professor Christian Langton – “A robotic ultrasound technique for use in cancer treatment” (Faculty of Science)


# Runners up ($7,500): Toby Gifford – “Interactive music software to accompany human musicians" (Faculty of Creative Industries)
# Professor Nathan Efron, Nicola Pritchard and Katie Edwards – “A testing device to determine neuropathy” (Faculty of Health)


# Finalist: Reece Clothier and Duncan Greer – “An automated airspace guidance system” (Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering)


# Notable mentions: Ritwik Majumder – “Stability and control of microgrid” (Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering)
# Sarah Bankins and Naomi Puchala – “Understanding, meeting and managing the expectations of different generations: Managers and graduates online learning product” (Faculty of Business)
# Hugh Brown – “Musowiki.net” (Faculty of Creative Industries)
# Associate Professor Neil King – “Developing an electronic device for monitoring appetite and health” (Faculty of Health)
# Christian Flender – “Model-driven service engineering” (Faculty of Information Technology)
# Professor Des Butler – “Air Gondwana” (Faculty of Law)
# Dr Tristan Croll and Dr Sean Richards – “A next-generation model of full thickness skin” (Faculty of Science)

http://www.qutbluebox.com.au/news/upcomingeven/competitions/index.jsp

Shade tolerant solar cells

Queensland University of Technology Research, Austrialia

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) researchers have developed novel solar cell array components which, when subjected to partial shading, may be capable of generating the same level of power output as if the solar cell array was uniformly illuminated.

http://www.qutbluebox.com.au/docs/Flyer-ShadeTolerantSolarCells.pdf

Queensland University of Technology Research, Austrialia - Tech Transfer

http://www.qutbluebox.com.au/

University of Adelaide, Australia - Tech Transfer

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/aripl/

University of Technology, Sidney, Australia Research Projects

http://www.research.uts.edu.au/projects/index.html

Australia's Intelligent Grid Research Program

The Intelligent Grid Research Program is an Australian collaboration between five universities investigating technologies and practices to make our electricity networks smart, greener and more efficient.

The electricity “grid” is a collective name for all wires, transformers and infrastructure that transport electricity from power plants to users. In all networks, some energy is lost as it is travels, making distribution inefficient.

An “intelligent” electricity grid has a minimal amount of waste and a highly efficient use of power. It is an electricity network that uses distributed energy resources and advanced communication and control technologies to deliver electricity more cost-effectively, with lower greenhouse intensity and in response to consumer needs.

http://igrid.net.au/

Dwindling phosphorus supplies a threat to global food production

University of Sidney, Australia

"Like oil, global production of quality phosphate rock is likely to reach a peak after which demand will outstrip supply," said ISF Director Stuart White. "Our research suggests we could see a global peak of phosphorus by 2030, and there are no alternatives on the market that could replace phosphate rock at any significant scale".

http://www.newsroom.uts.edu.au/news/detail.cfm?ItemId=13395

The innovative athletes’ cooling jacket

RMIT University, Australia

The innovative athletes’ cooling jacket was developed by RMIT.

http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse;ID=rwzk4daba29j

University of Auchland - Tech Transfer

http://www.uniservices.auckland.ac.nz/pageloader.aspx?page=708d8d0d82

University of Toronto, Canada - Tech Transfer

http://innovations.utoronto.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=9&Itemid=51

VisualComplexity.com

VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web.

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

Research in Action

University of Toronto, Canada

Every year, the Department of Computer Science (DCS) opens its doors to host “Research in Action,” a research showcase that welcomes over 100 industry representatives from the Greater Toronto Area and beyond.

http://web.cs.toronto.edu/dcs/index.php?section=191

Hebrew University of Jerusalem - Tech Transfer

http://www.yissum.co.il/

Faculty Research Interests

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

http://www.huji.ac.il/dataj/controller/ihoker/

Catholic University of Louvain, Norway - Tech Transfer

http://lrd.kuleuven.be/en/entrepreneur/int_property/technology.htm

Norwegian University Science & Technology - Tech Transfer

http://www.tto.ntnu.no/index.php?p=23-50-47

University of British Columbia, Canada - Tech Transfer

http://www.uilo.ubc.ca/industry_investment.asp

University of Waterloo, Canada - Tech Transfer

http://www.research.uwaterloo.ca/ttlo/technologies.html

McGill University, Canada Tech Transfer

http://www.flintbox.com/search.asp?sID={90B01DE7-078C-44AC-B1ED-5301F440D92F}

Smart Wheelchair Able to Avoid Collisions

University of British Columbia, Canada

Pooja Viswanathan has developed a smart wheelchair for elderly people suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.

http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/ubcreports/2008/08nov06/wheelchair.html

Engineering students showcase innovative tech projects

University of Waterloo, Canada

Automatic Bicycle Transmission

Automatic Garbage Pickup Robot

Home Energy Distribution and Storage System

Smart Avalanche Transceiver

http://newsrelease.uwaterloo.ca/news.php?id=4934

http://eceprojects.uwaterloo.ca/symposium.html

A new laser technique from TAU seals and heals wounds

Tel Aviv University

Using carbon dioxide lasers to seal wounds inside the body and out with a technique known as “laser welding,” a team of Tel Aviv University researchers have perfected a new device to heat body tissue in a precisely controlled manner.

“It could also become a device for the battlefield, allowing soldiers to heal each other on contact with a laser wand,” says Prof. Abraham Katzir, who currently holds the Carol and Mel Taub Chair in Applied Medical Physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University

http://www2.tau.ac.il/news/engnew.asp

A beauty machine

Tel Aviv University

Prof. Daniel Cohen-Or of the Blavatnik School of Computer Sciences built a beauty machine that, with the press of a button, turns a picture of your own ordinary face into that of a cover model. While its output is currently limited to digitized images, the software may be able to guide plastic surgeons, aid magazine cover editors, and even become a feature incorporated into all digital cameras.

http://www2.tau.ac.il/news/engnew.asp

HighTech system to cut hospital-related infections by half

Tel Aviv University

Hospitals are supposed to be havens for healing, but the numbers tell a different story. Too many people are infected by illnesses they acquire after they’ve been admitted, and hospital-related infections continue to be the number-two killer of hospitalized Americans after heart disease.

http://www2.tau.ac.il/news/engnew.asp

Putting the Squeeze on Polymers is easier at the Nanoscale

Trinity College Dublin

A new discovery about polymer flow at the smallest scales.

According to Dr Graham Cross, film thickness and molecular intertwining are crucial: “You can think of polymer materials like cooked spaghetti, with long chains knitted together to form a tough substance. However, when the polymer film is made thinner and thinner, the polymer chains lie-down on a plane instead of becoming tangled in three dimensional space. The polymer chains begin to behave in isolation as they find it increasingly difficult to intertwine with each other. Their viscosity is decreased and this increases the flow.”

http://www.tcd.ie/Communications/news/pressreleases/pressRelease.php?headerID=1001&pressReleaseArchive=2009

A Showcase of Leading-Edge Technologies Developed by TCD Researchers in Information & Communications Technology

Trinity College Dublin

1.Metakall – Pay-as-you-go electronic payment architecture

2.Anamates - Animating with ease

3.CITU – Automatic Image Annoation

http://www.tcd.ie/Communications/news/pressreleases/pressRelease.php?headerID=1035&pressReleaseArchive=2009

Environmental Engineering Provides Safe Drinking Water

Trinity College Dublin

The first full-scale continuous flow solar disinfection system for a village community has been installed in Ndulyani in the Mutomo area of Kenya to supply safe drinking water for approximately 600 people. The system has been developed over several years by successive research students under the supervision of Laurence Gill in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering.

http://www.tcd.ie/Communications/news/news.php?headerID=1042&vs_date=2008-11-1

Iron-based Materials Could Unlock Superconductivity's Secrets

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are decoding the mysterious mechanisms behind the high-temperature superconductors.

http://www.physorg.com/news145800057.html

http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2008_1112.htm#htc

Study Shows How Personalities Differ

Although members of the same species share more than 99 percent of their genetic makeup, individuals often have small differences.

http://www.physorg.com/news145793087.html

Quantum cloaking makes molecules invisible

The University of Upssala, Sweden

"We propose a method for detecting and manipulating quantum invisibility based on THz cloaking of molecular identity in coherent nanostructures,” says Jessica Fransson.

http://arxivblog.com/?p=712

http://www.uu.se/en/node4

Second Life Fling Causes Real Life Divorce

It seems the honeymoon of romance in Second Life's alternative world has collided with bump in the divorce courts of real world, certainly that is the case of one British couple, Amy Taylor and David Pollard who are now seeking a legal split.

One morning, 28-year old Amy Taylor, awoke to find her husband Dave, who is 40, having sex with a prostitute, not a real one you understand, but his avatar character Dave Barmy was getting a little pay-to-play action on the side in cyberspace.

http://www.redherring.com//blogs/25481

Ancient Rome in 3D

Google Earth: A new highlight for Earth is a layer visualizes ancient Rome as it is believed to have looked like in 320 A.D. It includes buildings that have withstood test of time, like the famous Coliseum, in addition to objects that no longer exist, as well as roads and terrain. Users can experience a breathtaking Rome in 360 degrees, fly though streets and even see the detailed interior of some buildings.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/40188/98/

Virtual Learning

Educators will be confronted with students who know the metaverse well.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/65082.html?wlc=1226665208

Bionic Vision Australia "Bionic Eye"

Australia

Bionic Vision Australia will pursue the development of the most technologically advanced bionic eye to improve the sight of people with degenerative or inherited retinal disease.

http://www.reuters.com/article/blogBurst/science?type=scienceNews&w1=B7ovpm21IaDoL40ZFnNfGe&w2=B80EKKDZW7XjzuNGrifTUKY&src=blogBurst_scienceNews&bbPostId=Cz3F0oK3q4KWdCz6qIFHFZFoosB3aowMCIP1IsB1thie4EfRoL&bbParentWidgetId=B80EKKDZW7XjzuNGrifTUKY

http://www.bionicvision.org.au/

Surfing the Censored Internet

The biggest example of this is what is called The Great Firewall of China, the system used by the Chinese government to control what Chinese citizens can read and access on the Internet. What is it like to have access to a censored and controlled Internet, where there's always a chance that a site you want to go to is blocked and inaccessible?

Click here to try "BAIDU"

Low Flying Robot helicopters

Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have modified an unmanned commercial civilian helicopter to fly fast and low while avoiding obstacles such as buildings, trees or power lines.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn15150

http://www.ri.cmu.edu/labs/lab_21.html

New Protein Patterning Technique

Canadian researchers have created a new protein patterning technique that’s enabled them to reproduce complex cellular environments and a miniature version of a masterpiece painting.

”We see this technique as being very relevant to neuroscience and immunology research. With this system, we laid down a chemical gradient to guide the growth of nerve fiber, which is very useful in studying nerve damage and repair,” says Santiago Costantino, the study’s lead author and a scientist at the Université de Montréal and Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital Research Centre.

http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2015&Itemid=206

Children and Cyber Bullying

Ireland

A significant percentage of young children are subjected to bullying and abuse via their mobile phone and popular social network accounts. In Ireland, the industry has been asked to come up with solutions for this problem and a government office is due to publish a guide on the issue in the near future.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/1113/breaking77.htm

Your future and your DNA

Earlier this month, a Mountain View, Calif., company called Complete Genomics announced that by next year it will be able to read out an entire personal genome for $5,000.

So far, hundreds of diagnostic tests are on the market, with hundreds more on the way. Mail-order genetic testing services are legion.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122539728499285289.html

User-Generated Government

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-146728

The Memory Molecule

A new study by researchers from the Medical College of Georgia and the Shanghai Institute of Brain Functional Genomics shows that an enzyme called alpha calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (αCaMKII) [this is a type of CaM Kinase] is essential for the formation and retrieval of memories. By briefly altering levels of αCaMKII activity at different stages of the memory process, they were able to prevent the transfer of new memories from short-term to long-term storage and to selectively erase specific memories as they were being recalled.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-power-of-the-memory-molecule

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=experts-short-term-memory-to-long-term

https://my.mcg.edu/portal/page/portal/News/archive/2008/494AA8A8CB7B2366E0440003BAD149FF

Is the Brain the ultimate computer interface?

Technology now exists that uses brain signals to control a cursor or prosthetic arm. How much further development of brain-machine interfaces might progress is still an imponderable.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=jacking-into-the-brain

Brain Implants

Surgeons have implanted a novel neural prosthesis into a paralyzed patient’s brain. The high-tech device enables the patient to communicate his thoughts to a computer, which translates them into spoken words. Nine people so far have received brain-implanted prostheses.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=putting-thoughts-into-action

Can Coal really be clean?

Throughout this past election season we heard about “clean coal.” The phrase sounds great to Americans concerned about our dependence on foreign oil, and the U.S. has enough coal to generate our electricity for hundreds of years. But what do “clean coal” technologies really entail, and can an ancient energy source responsible for 40% of U.S. CO2 emissions really clean up its act?

The US DOE sees "zero emissions" coal technology as a core element of its future energy supply in a carbon-constrained world. It had an ambitious program to develop and demonstrate the technology and have commercial designs for plants with an electricity cost of only 10% greater than conventional coal plants available by 2012, but with the cancellation of FutureGen this is in doubt.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/clean-coal.htm

http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf83.html

http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/futuregen/

Steam Powered Car

This svelte steam powered car was created using salvaged parts (including tea kettles) and is capable of achieving speeds of 170mph! Developed by Edward Montagu and created by a team of graduate students in the University of Southampton, the car will soon attempt to shatter the record for the fastest steam powered vehicle in the world - previously set in 1906.

http://www.inhabitat.com/

http://www.southampton.ac.uk/

NOTE: I could not find any information about this car on the southampton website.

Also see: http://www.steamcar.co.uk/index.htm

Using plasma to turn garbage into electricity

Recently St. Lucie County in Florida announced that it has teamed up with Geoplasma to develop the United States’ first plasma gasification plant. The plant will use super-hot 10,000 degree fahrenheit plasma to effectively vaporize 1,500 tons of trash each day, which in turn spins turbines to generate 60MW of electricity - enough to power 50,000 homes!

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/11/12/plasma-plants-vaporize-trash-to-generate-energy/

http://www.geoplasma.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_arc_waste_disposal

$30.7M Intelligent Transportation System for the Massachusetts Highway Department

The completed system will provide MassHighway an advanced traffic management system with the capability to monitor traffic for congestion and incident management while providing real-time roadway information to the traveling public. A shared resource platform will provide additional marketable infrastructure capacity enabling economic development initiatives as well as broadband deployment opportunities. The entire system is designed to be fully scalable for ease of future technology upgrade deployment, ensuring MassHighway's ability to expand their ITS network and deployed technologies well into the future.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/Adesta/MassHighway/prweb1586624.htm

Blink of the Eye Transmission Speed System On A Chip

National Taiwan University (NTU)

The system on a chip combines Front-End Circuits and an antenna array to reach the ultimate transmission speed. In practice the SoC chip can download a 4-GB video in about 10 seconds. The same video would take up to 2-hours using WiFi, 1.5-hours using ADSL and 4.5-hours using Bluetooth to complete the download.

http://www.physorg.com/news145636894.html