Charge your iPod with your bike

The BioLogic FreeCharge will be also be available as a separate unit for about $99 next March.


Source: http://bikehugger.com/2009/09/charge-your-ipod-with-your-bik.html

Solar Roads

The US Department of Transportation granted Idaho-based Solar Roadways $100,000 to develop a prototype of its Solar Road Panel, a section of roadway made of glass and solar cells. The panels are meant to replace typical pavement on roads and parking lots.

Source: http://www.solarroadways.com/

Powerbrella

The Powerbrella is a patio umbrella that has solar panels on its top surface. While you relax in the shade, it uses the sun's rays to provide power for outlets in its base.

Source: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/05/powerbrella-jui.php

Melanin Energy Conversion

A schoolboy from Nepal has come up with a recession-busting new solar panel which replaces the silicon component with human hair. Milan Karki, an 18-year-old student from the region of Khotang, devised the idea after discovering that hair pigment Melanin acts as an energy converter.

Each panel, which is around 15 inches square, produces 9 Volts (18 Watts) of energy, and costs $38 to make. This, it has to be said, is mainly due to the price of the raw materials: half a kilo of human hair costs around 25¢ in Nepal. Karki is hoping to commercialize his invention, which can charge a cellphone or power batteries to provide an evening's worth of light, and eventually mass produce it.

Sources: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/09/nepalese-teens.php
http://www.sankofa.ch/texts/Melanin.htm

Visual Voltage displays your energy usage

The energy aware clock is designed to make you aware of your energy consumption
on a daily basis.

Source: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/7501/visual-voltage-exhibition-at-design-vlaanderen-brussels.html

Plug-In Prius

It'll be packing lithium ion batteries, and with those batteries alone, it accelerates up to 62 miles an hour. But the batteries only work on their own for 12.5 miles, with the gas engine assisting that electro-motor for longer distances. Toyota's not saying how fast that electric acceleration will be, but the company does offer this encouraging statistic: It takes just 1.5 hours to charge up its battery pack on a 230 V power supply.

Home gets money back from Electric Company

The $350,000 house, located between Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, creates so much electricity that its owner receives a check from the power company each month.

Source: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/09/energy-producin.php?p=9&cat=undefined#more

Panasonic: New LED bulbs shine for 19 years

The screw-in bulbs are part of the EverLed line, and they're scheduled to hit stores in Japan on October 21, with monthly production at 50,000 units. No changes to lighting equipment used for incandescents are required.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10350053-1.html

GreenSun solar panels

Using jewel-toned plates, the solar concentrators capture from a wide spectrum of light. Even on a cloudy day, they'll produce electricity, although less than on a sunny day with direct light. They're even cheaper than traditional panels, since they don't use as much silicon as standard panels.

Source: http://www.greensun.biz/Technology/

Solar Kiosk Charging Station

The idea is to provide a place for electric vehicles to charge up (in this case, eight of them), giving commuters another option than the outlet at home. It also benefits from the fact that it wouldn't require a lot of infrastructure to be installed, as a city-wide smart grid would.

Source: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/09/this-solar-kios.php

Solar Car Port

Japan-based Sankyo Tateyama Aluminium has begun selling carports [JP] with solar power generation systems installed on their tops.

McKinsey - Evaluating the potential of Solar Technologies

Solar and Wind Calculators

IBM scientists build computer chips from DNA

The company is researching ways in which DNA can arrange itself into patterns on the surface of a chip, and then act as a kind of scaffolding on to which millions of tiny carbon nanotubes and nanoparticles are deposited. That network of nanotubes and nanoparticles could act as the wires and transistors on future computer chips, the IBM scientists said.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/hardware/ibm-scientists-build-computer-chips-dna-833

The Lab

Got an opinion about how General Motors designs its cars and trucks? Let them know.
Give them your idea: http://thelab.gmblogs.com/

LiveFuels

LiveFuels, an algae biofuel start-up, announced a pilot project on Thursday to grow and harvest algae biofuels in open waters with the help of naturally occurring activities in the ecosystem.

The company plans to encourage algae growth with the additive of agricultural-waste products. Then, instead of retrieving the algae itself to be converted into biofuels through a mechanical process, it plans to let algae-eating fish do the conversion.

Once the algae-eating fish plump enough, LiveFuels plans to catch them and process them for their oil in the same way people used to harvest whale blubber for oil. Only instead of using the oil for lamps, this harvested oil could fuel cars and trucks, according to LiveFuels.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10308996-54.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=GreenTech

Netscape Founder to make New Browser

Mr. Andreessen is backing a start-up called RockMelt, staffed with some of his close associates, that is building a new Internet browser. Little else is known about RockMelt, and Mr. Vishria was unwilling to discuss it. “We are at very early stages of development,” Mr. Vishria said. “Talking about it at this stage is not useful.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/technology/internet/14browser.html?_r=4&partner=rss&emc=rss

Source: http://www.rockmelt.com/

Universal Phone for blind and sighted people

Thousands of micro pins dynamically raise and lower forming a tactile surface for all to get touchy with. Sighted people get the elusive tactile feedback they’re missing with ordinary touch-screens and blind people get a whole new interface made of braille.

Source: http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/08/13/the-universal-phone-has-sighted-people-jealous/

MagLevAir system launches planes with magnets

The MagLevAir is an airplane shuttle system with reduced noise, space and energy consumption during take off. The airplane is hooked to a maglev shuttle saving expensive cerosin for accerleration during take off. In flight the delta wing shaped airplane uses scram jets. The MagLevAir is part of a hub and spoke system. It could serve in an urban environment and transport passengers across short distances to bigger airports with more standard Airbuses and Boeings.

Source: http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/08/10/plane-takes-off-on-magnets/

A Nanobomb

Scientists turned to nanotechnology, combining tiny particles of metals such as nanoaluminum with iron oxide to make superthermite. That stuff speeds up the chemical reaction that causes explosions by 1000 times. The result? A gigantic boom from these energy-packed nanometals, much more powerful than anything short of a nuclear weapon.

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=14105&ch=nanotech&a=f

Mug for the blind plays a sound when it's full

The Braun Bell Mug has 3 indicative levels on the handle and liquid-level sensors within the mug. The blind folks only need to choose their levels and keep pouring till the bell sounds.

Source: http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/08/06/no-more-overspills-even-if-you-are-blind/

Implanted Hearing Aids

New bone-anchored, implanted hearing aids are starting to be given to patients with poor hearing and with great results.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/hightech-hearing-aid-is-the-ultimate-ipod-accessory-20090809-ee8p.html

Computer input by scratching

This is the idea behind a scratch input — a system that would measure surface scratches and interpret them as commands. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing such an interface. In theory, all you'd need to turn any surface in to an input device would be a kind of stethoscope and a processor to interpret the scratches. The potential applications are innumerable: Scratch your computer to turn it on, or use your desk as a drawing surface for your fingernail, with the drawings appearing on the monitor.

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/scratch-input/

10,000mph hypersonic scramjets

A scramjet can't go as fast as the space shuttle, but it can beat any jet handily, theoretically accelerating up to Mach 15. Don't be planning that trip from New York to L.A. in 45 minutes just yet, though, because this hypersonic technology has a long way to go before it'll find its way into passenger aircraft.

Source: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/08/10000mph-hypers.php

Touchable holographic display

A Wiimotes sense where your hand is, telling the holographic image to adjust based on your location. Then an airborne ultrasound tactile display creates the sensation of touch.

Next Generation Ion Engines

Ion propulsion, which involves electrostatically accelerating ionized Xenon gas to generate thrust, is attractive when compared to chemical thrusters, as the rocket doesn't have to spare a good portion of its payload for fuel. At the same time, ion engines rely on power sources such as solar energy, which loses its effectiveness the farther the craft gets from the sun, and nuclear power, which, politically, is an unpopular power source for a spacecraft.

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23120/

The Folding Bike

Three companies are already interested in cranking out thousands of copies of this compact cycle, and it might not even be exorbitantly expensive, perhaps less than $700.

Source: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/contortionist-folding-bike-video-dominic-hargreaves-royal-college-of-art-student.php?dcitc=th_rss

Low Budget Fusion Reactory

General Fusion has figured out a way to create a "low budget" fusion reactor for less than $1 billion. They're saying they can get this beast online in less than a decade, because it's not using incredibly expensive superconducting magnets or spectacularly powerful lasers to create that long-sought controlled fusion reaction.

Source: http://www.generalfusion.com/

Skylon's Sabre propulsion system

In short, it's a space plane. The creation of Reaction Engines Limited, a British outfit based at the Culham Science Center in Oxfordshire, the Skylon will be able to take off from and land at normal airport runways in order to deliver its payload of up to 13 tons in orbit.

The thrust is created by burning hydrogen and oxygen — a tricky concept, because air in the lower atmosphere can reach temperatures of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. In order to cool the air before compressing and burning it, Reaction Engines have created a heat exchanger pre-cooler, which consists of ultra-fine piping that drops the temperature of the hot intake gases to minus 200°F in just one hundredth of a second.

Source: http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/index.html

Wireless power system

The system uses two coils, one at the mains and one on the gadget, both of which have been engineered with the same resonant frequency. When connected up to an electricity supply, the mains coil produces a magnetic field that resonates with the second coil, allowing voltage to build up to power the gadget.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8165928.stm

Shrinking Jug

This flexible container works like a spring. Push a button on the top and a valve opens, and as you press down on the container, the milk is forced out. As you continue forcing out the milk, the container gets shorter and shorter. Inventor claims that it will keep milk from spoiling a week longer.

Source: http://www.jamesdysonaward.org/Projects/Project.aspx?ID=298

Google Wave

In September, you'll be able to browse to Google Wave, called a "personal communications and collaboration tool." This open-source, web-based wonder will let you combine your e-mail, instant messaging and social networking onto one personalized page on the web.

Source: http://wave.google.com/

Future Bike

This amazing bike concept is part exercise machine, part electric scooter, and will even help to pay your fare while providing a seat for the bus ride home.

Source: http://martenwallgren.blogspot.com/2009/06/winner-seymourpowell-award-for.html

Cylinder TV

The rolled-up television uses the company's proprietary spinning LED technology.

Source: http://dynascanusa.com/

Human-powered monorail

New Zealand's Scweeb monorail is probably a healthier (if a little cramped) alternative to the bike.

Source: http://www.shweeb.com/Shweeb/business_opps_IDL=1_IDT=2824_ID=16127_.html

3D camera

Fujifilm's FinePix Real 3D W1 camera aims to take a photo "just as your eyes see it." The camera's 3D system is said to be the only one that can both snap pictures and record video in three dimensions — while never requiring you to wear silly glasses to view them properly.

Source: http://www.fujifilm.com/products/3d/camera/finepix_real3dw1/

Sound wave neurosurgery

The procedure has been used before to remove uterine fibroids (or small, benign tumors in the uterus), and looks like a promising candidate to eliminate tumors from breasts and, hopefully, the brain. The biggest challenge when tackling the brain is getting the ultrasonic beams through the skull with any intensity, but that's handled by a head harness developed by InSightec, which is equipped with 1,000 ultrasound transducers and even built-in cooling to keep the skull from overheating.

Source: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/07/sound-wave-neur.php

MIT electric car charges in 10 minutes

The catch here: that quick charge needs 350 kW of power, enough to bring residential power systems to their knees. Charging stations capable of 356 Volts and 1000 amps would need to be built along highways to make this work. And the battery is quite expensive: $80K!

Source: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/07/mit-electric-ca.php

Moon Publicity

Many people are strongly opposed to creating commercial images on the Moon. We would feel the same way if it were solely for monetary gain.

Source: http://www.moonpublicity.com/mp/

Virtual Reality Windshield

The "IPSE" is a car designed by Jeongche Yoon and Hoyoung Kihl that turns your average drive into an adventure. IPSE's virtual environment system recognizes outside surrounding then translates into virtual objects and living things. For example, in 'underwater' mode, other vehicles appear to the driver as sea creatures. While it drives through a street in the city, the driver doesn't see any buildings, cars and asphalt-paved road but beautiful trees and wild animals running on the charming grass land.

Source: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/07/vr-windshield-t.php

Interactive Data Eyeglasses

The data eyeglasses can read from the engineer’s eyes which details he needs to see on the building plans. A CMOS chip with an eye tracker in the microdisplay makes this possible. The eyeglasses are connected to a PDA, display information and respond to commands.

Source

Flying motorcycle to soar in 2010

Samson Motorworks designs flying motorcycles, and now the company has modified its approach, rolling out the airworthy Switchblade. It's a three-wheeled multimode vehicle (MMV) with a scissors-like wing for flying and a torsion bar lean system for its role as a road rocket.

Samson Motor Works

NTT -- cellphones in 2015

If Japan's number one telecommunications company NTT has its way, there could be a modular cellphone in your future, with various attachments that give the phone magical new powers. The star of the company's soothsaying is the flexible scroll attachment pictured here, giving you a big color screen to read the newspapers and magazines (and blogs) of 2015.

Source

Lithium-sulfur batteries -- triple the power of lithium-ion

A research team from the University of Waterloo has synthesized a prototype of a lithium-sulphur rechargeable battery that, thanks to its peculiar nanoscale structure, can store three times the power of a conventional lithium-ion battery in the same volume while being significantly lighter and potentially cheaper to manufacture.

Source

Maker Bots

MakerBot Industries creates open source robot kits that transform your digital designs into physical objects automatically.

Makerbot

World's smallest VGA display

Display maker Kopin has managed to pack a liquid-crystal display (LCD) with VGA resolution (600 x 480 pixels) onto a screen that measures just over a quarter-inch diagonally. That means individual color dots are 2.9 x 8.7 micrometers. For those scoring at home, a typical piece for paper is about 100 micrometers thick.

Source

Navy/Raytheon's 100kW weaponized laser

The 100 kilowatt experimental Free Electron Laser (FEL) uses superconducting electron accelerators to produce high-power laser beams that could target cruise missiles, airplanes or boats.

Source

Restoring Sight With Stem Cells Grown on Contact Lenses?

Three patients with severe damage to the corneas of their eyes have achieved dramatic improvements in their vision thanks to contact lenses coated with their own stem cells.

Source

Talking to Animals

Researchers have endowed lab mice with the human version of a gene involved in language, and while the mice didn’t exactly sit up and start reciting poetry about cheese, they did show some intriguing differences in both their vocal patterns and brain structure.

Source

Samsung Mobile Display show 6.5 inch Flexible AMOLED Display

Samsung Mobile Display's (SMD) prototype is more flexible than any previous model before. Also it is a new processes that does not require low-temperatures to produce the display and productions costs are lower than other competitive products. The new process is simpler and improves efficiencies necessary for mass production.

Source

TriCorder Device

In partnership with the Technical Support Working Group (TSWG), Boeing and Washington University's School of Medicine in St. Louis, S&T's Tech Solutions group is developing the Standoff Patient Triage Tool (SPTT), a device that classic Star Trek fans will recognize for its resemblance to the medical diagnostic tool known as the tricorder. The device can check body temperature, heart rate and respiration of victims up to 40 feet away.

Source

My fav video - Obama Man

Isn't this GREAT!!

Japan claim that new underware can burn fat for diets

Fabric specialist Teijin promises to weave its new Nanofront fiber into underwear that willbe on the market by next summer. It claims the garment’s nanotech fibers create tiny amounts of friction that, multiplied across the surface of the skin, is enough to burn subcutaneous fat.

Source

World’s first 3D digicam

The unnamed device is set to join the FinePix range later this year and will be the first digicam to combine two snaps taken from dual lenses into a 3D photograph. As with a normal camera, those appear on a rear screen for glasses-free viewing, plus they can be printed on magical extra-dimensional paper.

Source

FujiFilm

Japanese University Robot Research

Please see: http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Frobot.watch.impress.co.jp%2F&lp=ja_en&btnTrUrl=Translate

BrainPort

The sunglasses are part of a breakthrough vision device known as BrainPort, under development by the NEI-supported researchers of Wicab, Inc., for which Hogle serves as director of product development. BrainPort is built on the concept of sensory substitution, which means that when one sense malfunctions, another sense can compensate, serving as a stand-in.

Source

Air Battery

Researchers at the University of St Andrews, with associates at Strathclyde and Newcastle, have developed a new type of air-fueled battery that could provide up to 10 times the energy storage of existing designs, paving the way for a new generation of electric cars and portable devices.

Source

The ENose

The ENose is able to determine what are the exact contaminants in the air with a sensitivity level that allows it to accurately select a ‘smell’ of one out of approximately 10,000 parts per million. Through experiments performed by the Brain Mapping Foundation, it was found that ENose was able to distinctly pick up the smell of healthy human cells and cancerous cells.

Source

Brain Mapping

Artificial Trees That Harvest Sun and Wind to Generate Electricity

Place thousands of these units, dubbed nanoleaves, on a natural-looking, though fake plastic tree—and one could have electricity production without spoiling natural landscapes.

Source

Solar Botanic

A rotating Space Elevator

“The idea came by itself,” Golubović told PhysOrg.com. “I was thinking how to make things move easily and quickly up the traditional Tsiolkovsky-type space elevators. In my kitchen, I was mixing coffee in my cup too vigorously and the centrifugal force on the rotating coffee won over gravity to make some of the coffee lift and splash out the cup. This was my ‘eureka’ that lead to adding a similar conceptual feature to the old space elevator idea, the internal rotation. Indeed, much like the coffee would lift and splash out the cup if rotated fast enough, the climbers on our Rotating Space Elevator will be lifted up by the centrifugal force winning over gravity.”

Source

Using Gravitational Waves to Generate Radio Signals

The mechanism is straightforward. Create a uniform magnetic field of the same scale as a gravitational wave and place it in the path of an incoming wave. The subsequent squeezing and shaking of this magnetic field should then generate electromagnetic radiation, just as any other kind of shaking would.

Source

Large-Scale Model of Mammalian Thalamocortical Systems

Does it have consciousness? That is the question.

Source

Kill chip

The basic model would consist of a tiny GPS transceiver placed in a capsule and inserted under a person's skin, so that authorities could track him easily.

Model B would have an extra function — a dose of cyanide to remotely kill the wearer without muss or fuss if authorities deemed he'd become a public threat.

Source

Digital Watermarking

Digital watermarking is a process of invisibly embedding information on the entire surface of a still image. The information can be retrieved even if the image is edited (trimmed, rotated, embossed, etc) or compressed. Therefore, the technology is applicable to digital rights management, providing information on the destination and origin of data in case it is leaked to unauthorized users.

Source

Fujitsu develops world’s fastest processor

While its 45-nanometer architecture doesn't pack its components together as tightly as Intel's latest 32-nanometer configuration, it accomplishes that world-record blistering speed while sipping one third the power of Intel's flagship chip.

Source

Foam Car

a car that manages 100 miles to the gallon and has a respectable top speed of 70 miles an hour. It's made out of 90% foam.

Source

Dynamic Lamp

It has a dynamo on the inside of the globe that converts kinetic energy and gets its glow going.

Source

Electronic Inks

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati’s Novel Devices Laboratory have developed what they call electrofluidic display technology over the past two years in collaboration with color experts from ink and pigments manufacturer Sun Chemical Corp. Sun Chemical also funded the work and has applied for a patent on the technology with the university.

Source

Mind-Controlled Robot

Honda Research Institute have unveiled the world’s first brain to machine interface.

Source

Dasher

Dasher is a one finger user interface that allows text entry.




Source

Copulins

Men seem to lose all ability to think clearly when exposed.

Source

Intel's CloneCloud

Gaming may lead the way to a new technology era: the 3rd rebirth of computing, when incompatibility between devices, games and platforms will become a distant memory. Instead, the private cloud will funnel resources to smartclients -- more than thin clients but less than PCs. Intel's CloneCloud project could help make this idea a reality.

Source

Clonecloud

WolframAlpha

WolframAlpha, a powerful new service that can answer a broad range of queries, has become one of the most anticipated Web products of the year.

Source

WolframAlpha

Glowing Bandaid

Scientists have unveiled a revolutionary sticking plaster that can kill off skin cancer cells. The technology uses OLEDs, or organic light-emitting diodes, to zap tumors, and can also heal conventional wounds. And, unlike existing skin cancer treatments, which usually take place in hospital, the OLED band-aid will allow the disease to be treated while the patient is at home — or work.

Source

Vertical Farms

A vertical farm such as the Harvest Green Tower would also have other benefits beyond greening a skyline. Power generated from methane emissions, collected rainwater and wind turbines could also be given back to the grid if it produces more than it uses. Harvest could also provide space for agriculture students and scientists to study animals and seeds.

Source

Company in the News

ETV Motors, a year-old Israeli startup developing turbine powertrains for electric vehicles, has raised $12 million in a first round of venture financing led by The Quercus Trust.

ETV Motors

Robotic Hand Powered by Compressed Air and Rubber Bands

It's name is RAPHaEL (Robotic Air Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments), and it was built by four Virginia Tech mechanical engineering students as part of a larger project to create a humanoid robot. The arm alone, having no motors, and a safe, inexpensive design with adjustable grip, has potential for use as a prosthesis. Its four creators have already won a slew of engineering awards - here's hoping their next trophy is for turning it into a medical device.

Source

Transparent plastic solar cells

Solar company Konarka has developed a transparent solar cell that it hopes will be built onto electricity-generating windows.

Source

Seed Bombs

This design concept aims to drop these beneficial guided missiles — each loaded with multiple warheads of artificial soil and seeds — onto areas that have been foolishly raped by deforestation.

Source

Warp Drive not impossible

Some physicists say the faster-than-light travel technology may one day enable humans to jet between stars for weekend getaways. Clearly it won't be an easy task. The science is complex, but not strictly impossible, according to some researchers studying how to make it happen.

Source

Spinning Fan lifts flying car

Entecho is using a proprietary centrifugal fan that allows for the creation of an extremely compact craft with VTOL capabilities and high lifting efficiencies. The company currently has two VTOL platforms; the Hoverpod, a manned Personal Aerial Vehicle (PAV) and the Mupod, a micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).

Source

Entecho

Human blood fuel cells

Researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver have developed a tiny fuel cell that uses brewer's yeast feeding on the sugar in human blood to generate electricity.

Source

We can now grow organs

As the sheep-based chimera organ technology stands at the moment, says the man who is pioneering it, the only viable destination for the pancreas underneath his sheep would be a diabetic chimpanzee.

Source

Explore flu trends across the U.S. with Google

See interactive map here

Prosthetic Speech Implant Turns Your Thoughts to Words

People who have lost their ability to speak still have active speech centers in their brain. Seeking to tap into the neurons firing in those centers, researchers at Boston University implanted a series of electrodes into the brain of Erik Ramsey, a man who has been in a locked-in state since a brain stem injury when he was 16. The researchers have had to come up with complex software to decode the raw signals into speech — in other words, to translate Ramsey's thoughts about speaking into actual sounds.

Source

Mind Control Orchestra

Most musicians spend years training their bodies to draw beautiful sounds from their instruments, but not the Multimodal Brain Orchestra. This group of musicians from the University Pompeu Fabra in Spain create both music and video through a direct reading of their brain waves, working in concert with an 'emotional conductor'.

Source

Flying Exoskeleton

The "exoskeleton flying vehicle" is described by the company as a "single operator power lift vehicle."

Source

Bendable Concrete Heals Itself

Traditional concrete is brittle and is easily fractured during an earthquake or by overuse. By contrast, the new concrete composite can bend into a U-shape without breaking. When strained, the material forms hairline cracks, which auto-seal after a few days of light rain.

Source

A real invisibility cloak

Unlike previous such "cloaks", the new work does not employ metals, which introduce losses of light and result in imperfect cloaking. It's made from silicon.

Source

Numerious Black Holes in Milky Way

Astronomers suspect that hundreds of medium-sized black holes are roaming loose in the Milky Way. These rogues, according to a new study, are the orphaned central black holes of the many smaller galaxies that the Milky Way has swallowed over its billions of years of existence. If one of them is discovered, it could provide important clues about the evolution of our galaxy.

Source

Chinese Stem Cell Medicine

"In China's Guangdong Province there's been 'almost miraculous' progress in actually using stem cells to treat diseases such as brain injury, cerebral palsy, ataxia and other optic nerve damage, lower limb ischemia, autism, spinal muscular atrophy, and multiple sclerosis. One Chinese biotech company, Beike, is now building a 21,500 square foot stem cell storage facility and hiring professors from American universities such as Stanford. Two California families even flew their children to China for a cerebral palsy treatment that isn't available in the US. The founder of Beike is so enthusiastic, he says his company is exploring the concept of using stem cells to extend longevity beyond 120 years."

Source

Internet Brownouts

Internet users face regular “brownouts” that will freeze their computers as capacity runs out in cyberspace, according to research to be published later this year.


Source

GE's 500GB holographic storage discs

GE has developed a micro-holographic disc that's the same size as present-day CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. Instead of the two-dimensional surfaces used for Blu-ray's 50GB, holographic storage uses three dimensions to store digital data. These discs can store 500GB of data by using holographic light patterns to densely pack three-dimensional data.

Source

Paper Flexpeakers

Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute: An effective range of 500Hz to 200KHz leaves an awful lot of lower frequencies lacking, but perhaps someone will invent a paper subwoofer one of these days.

Source

Sending emails through the Earth

Hidden photons are a class of particles predicted by so-called supersymmetric extensions to the standard model of particle physics. Unlike normal photons, hidden photons could have a tiny mass and would be invisible because they would not interact with the charged particles in conventional matter. This means hidden photons would flit through even the densest materials unaffected.

Source

Trash Energy

"Trash will move from being a liability to an asset, providing a clean source of energy that can be used right where it is produced," says Stuart Haber, the company's CEO.



Source

IST Energy

Quantum Computers

Quantum computers have arrived at last, experts say – but instead of replacing standard computing methods, they are complementing them.

Source

Humanity's carbon budget

Humans must not inject more than 1 trillion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere in total.

Source

Predicting the future

Real-time web search – which scours only the latest updates to services like Twitter – is currently generating quite a buzz because it can provide a glimpse of what people around the world are thinking or doing at any given moment.

The latest research from Google, though, suggests that real-time results could be even more powerful – they may reveal the future as well as the present.

Source

Could the net become self-aware

In engineering terms, it is easy to see qualitative similarities between the human brain and the internet's complex network of nodes, as they both hold, process, recall and transmit information. "The internet behaves a fair bit like a mind," says Ben Goertzel, chair of the Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute, an organisation inevitably based in cyberspace. "It might already have a degree of consciousness".

Source

Gel that moves

A chemical gel that can walk like an inchworm, or looper caterpillar has been demonstrated in a Japanese robotics lab. The video shows the material in action. It was created in the Shuji Hashimoto applied physics laboratory at Waseda University, Tokyo.



Source

What's going on?

Left-handed spiral galaxies dominate northern skies.
And right-handed ones are more common in the south, according to a new survey. This alignment points directly towards the mysterious cold spot in the cosmic microwave background, which was discovered in the southern hemisphere in 2004

Source

Thought Control

Honda has developed technology that enables humans to direct robot movements through thought. Although it is still in the embryonic stages with no practical applications for the foreseeable future, researchers are mulling some far-out possibilities, such as driving a car without a steering wheel.

Source

Face Mining

"Accurate face recognition is coming," says Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition, a face recognition start-up spun out from Carnegie Mellon University.

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Super Sunglasses

Researchers have developed a material that almost instantaneously changes from clear to dark blue when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light, and it just as quickly reverts to clear when the light is turned off. The new material, one of a class called photochromics, could be useful in optical data storage as well as in super-fancy sunglasses.

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Peugeot Electric Car

Peugeot announced a contest for budding car designers asking them to "Imagine the Peugeot in the Worldwide Megalopolis of tomorrow." By all accounts, the contest was a success with over 2,500 entries. Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar, a 27-year-old designer from Columbia, has been named the winner, which comes with the prize of seeing his Peugeot RD concept design come to life as a full-size clay model, a check for 10,000 euros and an Xbox 360 game console.

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Fart Power

Yes, some college students have captured our imaginations again. A new electrical farting machine could improve fuel cell technology by turning C02 in the atmosphere into methane.

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Self-Healing Plastics

Department of Chemical Engineering/Product Technology, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG, Groningen, The Netherlands.

Inspired by the phenomenon of self-healing in biological systems, the synthesis of man-made self-healing polymeric materials has become a newly emerging paradigm and a fascinating area of research.

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Solar Energy to become bigger

Gartner has predicted that the photovoltaic market will grow at a 17 percent compound annual growth rate between 2008 and 2013.

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Virus Battery

MIT researchers have used a genetically modified virus to assemble materials for an energy-efficient battery, which they say could be used in hybrid cars.

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Biometric - Ear Noise

Scientists at the University of Southampton have developed a system that can authenticate your identity by eliciting and listening to specific sounds emitted by your ear. The concept is based on otoacoustic emissions (OAE), which are sounds emitted by the mammalian inner ear in response to an audio stimulation. Their existence was first demonstrated experimentally by David Kemp in 1978 but, since then, the noises have not found an application beyond testing for hearing defects.

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Computer-Human Interaction

MIT -- Imagine being able to check your email on any blank wall, simply by drawing an @ sign in the air with your finger, or being able to check the time by using that same finger to draw a circle, which produces the image of an analog watch right on your wrist.

See Video Here

The future of Robots

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The end of Moore's Law

IBM researcher says Moore's Law at end or close to it.

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TV is changing

Is the way TV is now brought to your home going to change? Once there were only three network channels. Then, Cable and satellite TV emerged, which expanded to hundreds, now thousands, of channels. Internet and network providers really kicked things into gear. Cellphones made it even crazier. Throw in Netflix, Xbox and PlayStation 3 streaming, along with Roku, Amazon Video on Demand, Apple TV, Blockbuster MediaPoint, Vudu, Zvbox, Boxee, and XStreamHD, and it's just plain nuts. TV is getting complicated, and everyone, particularly the networks, are scrambling to keep up. Will it go the way of printed newspapers?

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Flat light bulbs

AGFA-Gevaert NV and IMEC of Belgium, and Holst Center, Philips Research and TNO of the Netherlands announced that they have prototyped a 12 x 12cm flexible OLED lighting panel by using highly-conductive transparent resin electrodes in place of ITO (indium tin oxide).

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Megnetic flying micro-robots

A research team lead by professor Mir Behrad Khamesee manipulated magnetic fields to levitate and move a robot weighing less than one gramme around three axes.

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The Neurostep

The Neurostep is a pacemaker-like device implanted inside the thigh. It uses nerve cuffs to sense and stimulate nerve activity in the paralyzed leg, allowing greater mobility for those suffering from neurological disabilities such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury or cerebral palsy. It has been engineered to integrate with the body’s natural sensing and stimulation network and designed to closely mimic specific functions that have been interrupted or lost due to disease or injury.

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Biochar

University of Georgia researchers have created a machine that turns organic trash into charcoal-like pellets farmers can turn into fertilizer. Gasses given off during the process can be harnessed to fuel vehicles of power electric generators.

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3D HDTV remote surgery system

The da Vinci® Si™ system sports high definition 3D video and an array of other gadgets that come with fashion and ownership value similar to a family Rolls Royce sedan.



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The Wave

The car is meant to be an affordable electric vehicle for commuters — it can get up to 170 miles on a charge. It starts at $34,000.

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The PUMA

A motorized wheelchair? I like the concept!

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Fusion Power Research

When scientists at the U.S. National Ignition Facility fire up their 192 lasers for a nanosecond or two, blasting 1.8 megajoules of ultraviolet energy at a deuterium and tritium target, we'll see if fusion power is created.

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Flat, flexible loudspeakers

UK engineers have developed a new speaker technology. Flat, flexible loudspeakers, or FFL, have been fine-tuned using layers of flexible laminates and are about the size of a standard piece of paper.

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LLNL

A new metasearch engine

Weiyi Meng, a professor of computer science at Binghamton University, State University of New York is working on the next, great search engine technology. In the not too distant future....

Asking a questions, such as "What do Americans think of universal health care?" His new search engine will create a report indicating trends in opinion based on what has been posted to the Web. It will give the answer not pages with possible answers.

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Here are a couple of metasearch engines: Allinonenews

MySearchView

Live 3D TV Technology

The 3D TV system, called TransCAIP, captures a live scene using an array of 64 video cameras that are all connected via Ethernet cables to one PC, which converts images from all the video cameras into images for the display. Each video camera contains a built-in HTTP server, which sends motion JPEG sequences to the PC.

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3D-based Captchas

YUNiTi.com, a social Web site, have been working on 3D-based Captchas for a few weeks and have implemented the method on their Web site. The site announced Wednesday that it has created a 3D Captcha method that is unbreakable by current computer technology, yet much easier for humans to identify.

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YUNiTi.com

Opposed Piston Opposed Cylinder Engine

The movie explains it all....see source


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The Water Cone

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Smart Dew

A remarkable new invention from Tel Aviv University — a network of tiny sensors as small as dewdrops called "Smart Dew" — will foil even the most determined intruder. Scattered outdoors on rocks, fence posts and doorways, or indoors on the floor of a bank, the dewdrops are a completely new and cost-effective system for safeguarding and securing wide swathes of property.

Unlike conventional alarm systems, each droplet of Smart Dew can be programmed to monitor a different condition. Sounds could be picked up by a miniature microphone. The metal used in the construction of cars and tractors could be detected by a magnetic sensor. Smart Dew droplets could also be programmed to detect temperature changes, carbon monoxide emissions, vibrations or light.

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Tel Aviv University

Water-induced superconductivity

Exposure of undoped SrFe2As2 epitaxial thin films to water vapor induces a superconducting transition.

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The Internet has yet to stop working

Spurred by a new wave of Skype-linked families, Hulu-watching flash mobs, and HD-video downloaders, global internet traffic is likely to quadruple by 2012. That’s an internet 75 times larger than it was just five years ago. It will be generating 27 exabytes—nearly 7 billion DVDs worth—of data each month.

Internet service providers are simply ramping up their infrastructure upgrade plans in response to the traffic growth.

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My dog ate my homework

Earlier this month, the controversial Indian-German Lohafex expedition fertilised 300 square kilometres of the Southern Atlantic with six tonnes of dissolved iron. The iron triggered a bloom of phytoplankton, which doubled their biomass within two weeks by taking in carbon dioxide from the seawater. Dead bloom particles were then expected to sink to the ocean bed, dragging carbon along with them.

But No! The ocean's food-chain did what it was supposed to do. Everything is normal!

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The Government and social networking sites

GSA signs deals for agencies to use social networking sites. After nine months of negotiations, the General Services Administration signed agreements with four video-sharing and social networking sites: Flickr, Vimeo, blip.tv and YouTube. GSA also is negotiating with the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace.

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Australian ISP Argues For BitTorrent Users

A BitTorrent cannot be used to distribute pirated content because a packet does not represent a substantial portion of the infringing material.

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Open Cloud Manifesto v1.0.9

A call to action for the Worldwide Cloud Community.

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Surgical Robot

After making a small incision, the robot compensates for the natural shake and movement of the organ caused by heartbeats so that surgery can proceed as if the organ is still. That little trick could enable minimally invasive, endoscopic heart surgeries in the future.

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Waseda University

Synthetic human blood

British scientists are on course to become the first to create synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells.

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GlideCycle: fun bike for Everyone

Perfect for overweight individuals, disabled folks, amputees, or even injured able-bodied people, the no-impact GlideCycle lets folks exercise outdoors with ease.

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British steam car

Out to break 100-year-old land-speed record.

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