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.

Source

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?

Source

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.

Source

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?

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

Why Virtualization?

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

Source

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

Source

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.

Source

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

Source

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.

Source

Source

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.

Source

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

Source

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).

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

Source

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.

Source

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

Bulletproof Paper

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

Source

Source

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.

Source

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.


Source

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

Haptic computing

HTX Helmet

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

Source

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."

Source

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

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source and video of working engine

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

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.

Source

The Speech Lab