Google search getting eyes and ears

Google search getting eyes and ears
Google on Monday unveiled "Goggles" software that lets people search online using pictures taken with cameras in mobile phones based on its Android operating system. "When you take a mobile phone camera and connect it to the Internet, it becomes an eye," Google mobile search vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said while demonstrating Goggles in Mountain View, California.

"Google Goggles lets you take a picture of an item and use the picture as the query." An experimental version of Goggles will be available for people at Google Labs website. Goggles already recognizes books, wine labels, CD covers, landmarks and more, according to Gundotra. He demonstrated by taking a picture of a wine bottle label with a smart phone and almost instantly getting reviews, pictures and other Internet data about the vintage in a Google search results Web page.

"It is our goal to visually identify any image," Gundotra said. "It is in Google Labs because of the nascent nature of computer vision. In the future, you will be able to point (a camera phone) and we will be able to treat it as a mouse pointer for the real world." Google on Monday also added Japanese to a voice-based search service first rolled out about a year ago.

People can now speak Google search subjects into smart phones in English, Mandarin, or Japanese. "In addition to voice search, Google has huge investments in translation," Gundotra said. "Our goal at Google is nothing less than being able to search in all major languages of the world." The California Internet colossus is aiming to deliver a translation service to mobile telephones some time in 2010, according to Gundotra.

People will be able to speak into a mobile telephone to have sentences translated into other languages and delivered back quickly in text and audio forms, Gundotra said while demonstrating an early version of the service. He also showed a "near me now" feature that uses global positioning capabilities in Android-based smart phones to customize map results to show shops, attractions, restaurants or other offerings that are in easy reach. "In the future, there will be many different ways of searching," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience. "We really foresee a world where you can search and find your answer where ever it exists and whatever language it is in."

Check the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhgfz0zPmH4&feature=player_embedded

truCall

trueCall: An innovative device that stops nuisance phone calls from getting through to you.

The Problem of Nuisance Calls

Smith was intrigued by the problem of nuisance calls and carried out extensive research on the subject. He was shocked to discover the anger and anxiety felt by some people who receive unsolicited telephone calls. For example, he came across elderly people who would be afraid to leave their house if they received a silent call in the morning, thinking it might be a burglar checking to see whether they were in or not. He decided that something needed to be done. He searched for a product but couldn’t find one and so he developed his own.

TrueCall is about the size of a paperback book and plugs into a home phone line to create a “safe zone” between the caller and the receiver.

It sits between the wall socket and the phone and checks every call that comes into your house. If it recognizes the caller it lets them through, if it doesn’t it asks them to identify themselves. It records their message and then rings you with a recording of the person giving their name. This leaves you with the choice to accept or reject the caller (many telemarketers might give up by this point). If you decide to reject, the device relays a rejection message to the caller “We are not interested in your call so please hang up now and don’t call us again.” The invention can stop all kinds of nuisance calls including recorded message calls, malicious calls and telemarketing calls.

Facing the Dragons

In a bold move he decided to go on to the BBC TV program Dragon’s Den. It wasn't to gain financial backing as he already had that, having made a fortune from selling previous businesses. But he was after publicity, contacts, credibility, and exposure. His appearance achieved a rare feat of all the dragons wanting in on his business. If anything tells you that you’re onto something big then it’s five multi-millionaire entrepreneurs wanting a slice of your action. He eventually secured £100,000 ($160,000) investment from telecoms magnate Peter Jones.

Since that appearance in July 2009 sales of trueCall have gone through the roof, and more than 30 companies have been in touch wanting to sell the product. Jones has also been introducing Smith to managing directors of his other business interests and there are firm plans to adapt the technology so that it can be adopted by mobile phone users.

Swipe Your Credit Card on a Cell Phone

Swipe Your Credit Card on a Cell Phone
By plugging a small piece of hardware into a phone's audio jack, users can swipe credit cards and transfer money without the need for an additional machine. With a small card reader that attaches to a cell phone, a new company is making it easier for small businesses and even individuals to accept credit card payments. The San Francisco start-up, called Square, which opened just last week, is headed by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey.

Currently, in order to accept credit cards, a business usually has a stationary credit card machine attached to a computerized cash register. For most medium and large businesses, the set-up works fine. But smaller businesses, such as street vendors, farmers markets, and even individuals having garage sales, often don't accept credit cards. Square hopes that these types of sellers may find its new system to be simple enough to incorporate in their micro businesses.

Square's system consists of a small card reader that plugs into a phone's audio jack. The reader is currently compatible only with the iPhone, but the company plans to make versions for Android and Blackberry, as well. To make a payment, a buyer swipes a credit card through the reader, provides a signature on the touchscreen, and has the option of receiving a receipt via email.

Only the person receiving the payment needs to have an account with Square. The company hasn't yet set account prices, but says there will be different levels for individuals who rarely use the system and for small businesses that use it more frequently. If the person paying with their credit card has a Square account, they can also enjoy extra features such as receiving a text message when their card is swiped, and customizing their swipe with an image that displays to the seller.

As for security, the system uses encrypted protocols to send transaction information to credit card companies, and the device is subject to the same regulations as other payment systems. Credit card information is not stored on the seller's phone.

As noted in a recent article in MIT's Technology Review, some people question how useful Square's system will be. Issues such as fraud protection, robustness of the card reader, widespread ATMs, and a small potential market for the device could pose challenges for the new company.

Nevertheless, Square is currently conducting pilot tests in major cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and St. Louis. The company plans to release a commercialized system in early 2010.

More information: http://squareup.com

Self Healing Paint for cell phones

Self-Healing Paint Headed to Japanese Cell Phones

Nissan recently licensed its Scratch Shield paint, which is scratch resistant and even repairs fine scratches, to Japanese cell phone company NTT DoCoMo. The paint has been used on select Nissan and Infiniti cars worldwide since 1995, but this is the first time it will be used outside of the vehicle market. Unlike the vehicle paint, cell-phone scratch-proof paint will only be available in Japan for now. But considering the wear and tear that most cell phones see, demand for the product will almost certainly expand to a worldwide market.
Scratch Shield

Scratch Shield: is a clearcoat that is more scratch resistant compared with conventional clearcoats, helping a vehicle maintain its new look for a longer period of time. The paint also repairs fine scratches, restoring a vehicle's surface close to its original state. Nissan will continue to expand the adoption of Scratch Shield globally


To read more click: http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/TECHNOLOGY/INTRODUCTION/DETAILS/SCRATCH/

Chocolate-Powered Race Car Made Out of Vegetables

The Edible Race Car
If it's impossible for a race car to be "good" for the environment, maybe it can at least be a little friendlier. Meet the WorldFirst F3 project, a Formula 3 race car developed at England's University of Warwick: it has carrot fibers in its steering wheel, potato starch in its side mirrors and cashew-nut shells in its brake pads. The whole thing runs on a biodiesel mix of chocolate and vegetable oil.

In a small effort to make the car even greener than it already is, the designers coated the radiator in a substance that converts ozone emissions into oxygen

Read more: http://www.lolacars.com/newsstory.asp?NewsId=53

The official website: http://www.worldfirstracing.co.uk/

Spiderweb Silk

Spiderweb Silk
Spiders spin webs with a stretchy material that's stronger than steel and far more flexible. But attempts to use the creepy crawlers for making fabrics have had little success — until now. This year British textiles expert Simon Peers and American fashion designer Nicholas Godley unveiled an 11-ft.-long (3.4 m) spider-silk cloth made in Madagascar. Creating it wasn't easy. Each day 70 people collected thousands of golden orb spiders. Workers carefully spooled out the saffron-hued filament from each spider before releasing it. All told, the feat took four years, half a million dollars and more than a million spiders — and, yes, they sometimes bite.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113223398

See the unveiling: http://blip.tv/play/AYGj1hYC

Liquid Granite

Liquid Granite
Breakthrough:
A new fire-resistant building material that is as versatile as concrete, but made primarily from recycled materials.

Inventor:
Professor Pal Mangat, United Kingdom

Cement is considered by some to be something of an environmental menace, being responsible for 5% of the world’s carbon emissions.

The new kid on the construction industry block is a new form of liquid granite invented by Prof Pal Mangat of Sheffield Hallam University. He claims that it has the potential to make concrete redundant because of its incredible properties. It has remarkable load bearing capacity, whilst being a lightweight substance and it’s easy to apply and can be poured.

Mangat is keeping the exact formulation of Liquid Granite close to his chest, but says that it is made from an inorganic powder of which between 30 and 70 per cent is recycled industrial waste materials. It uses less than one third of the amount of cement that is found in precast concrete, and the inventor hopes to reduce that even further as he continues to develop the product over the coming years.

Reduces Fire Risks

This new substance not only boasts some impressive environmental credentials, but it is also a breakthrough in reducing fire risks in buildings. It can withstand temperatures of up to 1,100 degrees Celsius whilst maintaining structural properties. And unlike concrete it does not explode in high temperatures. The innovative material has been given a four-hour fire rating which means that it gives top level protection in the event of a fire.

“The fact that it has a high level of fire resistance means it can be used in areas where fire safety is crucial, such as around power stations, and in domestic and commercial buildings it can offer added time for evacuation in case of an emergency.” said Prof Pal Mangat.

Licensing of the Innovation

Although developed at Sheffield Hallam University the material is being made available through Liquid Granite Ltd (a company based in the north of England), and is now being used by a few organizations. It has been supplied to the Olympic Village (for the 2012 Olympic Games which are being held in the UK) and the Stratford Shopping Centre in East London.

Read more at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091029161253.htm

Tweeting by Thinking

Tweeting by Thinking
Plenty of people's Twitter feeds appear to be connected directly to their egos, but one scientist's is actually wired to his brain. In April, University of Wisconsin doctoral student Adam Wilson — working with adviser Justin Williams, above — tweeted 23 characters just by thinking. He focused his attention on one flashing letter after another on a computer screen while wearing a cap outfitted with electrodes that monitored changes in his brain activity to figure out which character he wanted. His efforts spelled out "USING EEG TO SEND TWEET," among other messages. The feat marks a major step forward in establishing communication for people with "locked in" syndrome, which paralyzes the body, except for the eyes, but leaves the mind alert. For now, though, it's slow going: with the speediest brain tweeters reportedly managing just eight characters a minute, it's a good thing they're limited to 140.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1934027_1934003_1933954,00.html#ixzz0XkatSCSx

3 D Camera

The 3-D Camera
This year the maker of the world's first digital camera, Fujifilm, introduced a 3-D digital camera: the FinePix Real 3D W1. The 10-megapixel FinePix has two lenses, set about as far apart as human eyes, which snap shots of an object from slightly different angles. Those images are then combined into one, creating the illusion of depth. Its 3-D images can be viewed — without clumsy 3-D glasses — on the camera's back LCD screen or displayed in a special digital photo frame.

Using an “Advanced 3D Mode,” the FinePix W1 digital camera also allows the user to adjust the settings to suit the scene being photographed. When using the “Individual Shutter 3D Shooting Mode,” the camera shifts to take the second shot after taking the first shot, and saves a single 3D image in the camera manually. This allows the user to edit the 3D images, which is particularly useful for landscape photography, or macro shots, where the 3D effect can be too strong. “Interval 3D Shooting” mode allows further flexibility, making it possible to take two shots from different viewpoints continuously while the photographer is moving, for example by train, airplane, or car…etc., to achieve 3D images of long-distance views.

The FinePix W1 also shoots conventional two-dimensional images. The "Advanced 2D Mode" lets users take two different shots simultaneously by pressing the shutter once. With "Tele/Wide Simultaneous Shooting," it’s possible to take a close-up photo of the subject and, at the same time, a photo with a wider span - just by changing the settings of the two lenses. With "2-Color Simultaneous Shooting" mode, users can take photos of the same scene with different color tonalities, like "Standard" or "Fujichrome," just by changing the processing signals on the two sensors.

Read more: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0910/09100101fujifilm3dshipping.asp
Check out the website: http://www.fujifilm.com/products/3d/camera/finepix_real3dw1/features/page_02.html

Wooden Bone

New Artificial Bone Made of Wood
A new procedure to turn blocks of wood into artificial bones has been developed by Italian scientists, who plan to implant them into large animals, and eventually humans.

Wood-derived bone substitute should allow live bones to heal faster and more securely after a break than currently available metal and ceramic implants.

The researchers chose wood because it closely resemble the physical structure of natural bone, "which is impossible to reproduce with conventional processing technology."

"Our purpose is to convert native wood structures into bioactive, inorganic compounds destined to substitute portions of bone," said Anna Tampieri, a scientist at the Instituto Di Scienza E Techologia Dei Materiali Ceramici in Italy.

To create the bone substitute, the scientists start with a block of wood -- red oak, rattan and sipo work best -- and heat it until all that remains is pure carbon, which is basically charcoal.

The scientists then spray calcium over the carbon, creating calcium carbide. Additional chemical and physical steps convert the calcium carbide into carbonated hydroxyapatite, which can then be implanted and serves as the artificial bone.

The entire process takes about one week and costs about $850 for a single block. One block translates to about one bone implant.

Read more at: http://news.discovery.com/tech/artificial-bone-made-wood.html

The Handheld Ultrasound

The Handheld Ultrasound
The stethoscope of the 21st century may have arrived. On Oct. 20, GE unveiled the Vscan, a medical imaging tool as compact as a cell phone and as powerful as a large ultrasound console. Doctors can use it to look inside a patient's body and instantly see fluid around the heart, for example, or a baby in the breech position. In a field where minutes can make the difference between life and death, the Vscan — not yet commercially available — could improve the way medicine is practiced everywhere, from cutting-edge ERs to makeshift village clinics.

See the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdmohNERH1c
Read more at: http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/10/21/2009-10-21_oh_baby_new_handheld_ultrasound_gadget_looks_like_ipod_flip_phone_combo.html

Fold your cardboard speakers

The Foldable Speaker
Taking an entertainment center on the road can be a pain, as even the smallest portable speakers weigh a pound or two and take up valuable space. Chicago-based OrigAudio has come up with an ingenious solution: self-powered, 1-watt speakers made of heavy-duty recycled paper. Assembly is easy: simply fold the paper into a 3-in. (7.6 cm) cube. For travel, unfold it and slip the flat sheet into your laptop sleeve. Sold through the company's website, Origaudio.com, and at select retailers, the speakers ($16 a pair) can be hooked up to any audio device with a headphone jack. Part of the proceeds supports the nonprofit Music National Service, which brings music to public schools and low-income communities. Origami has never sounded so good.

Check out the speakers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQdLV6EB5RY&feature=player_embedded
Read more: http://asia.cnet.com/crave/2009/10/16/foldable-cardboard-speakers-from-origaudio/

EnergyHub Dashboard

The Smart Thermostat
A couple of years ago, Seth Frader-Thompson was driving a Prius. Priuses have little screens on the dashboard that tell you what gas mileage you're getting, in real time, as you drive. It crossed Frader-Thompson's mind that houses should have something similar. So he built the EnergyHub Dashboard, a little device, with a screen, that can talk wirelessly to your furnace and your various appliances and let you know exactly how much electricity (or gas) each one is using and how much it's costing you. It can also turn appliances on and off and raise or lower the temperature in your house so you can rein in the real power hogs. EnergyHub is currently partnering with utilities for trials and will be available direct to consumers in early 2010.

Read more: http://earth2tech.com/2008/12/19/smart-home-startup-energyhub-to-sell-its-gear-mid-2009/

Flyvertising

Eichborn - Banners on flies (for real) - ambient, Germany
Jung von Matt just invented flyvertising. At the recent Frankfurt book convention they attached banners to 200 flies and set them loose to do their jobs as miniature sky ads around the convention center. In German, it's called a Fliegenbanner. Fliegenbanner, what a silly word.

No flies were harmed during this stunt. But a lot of people laughed.

The weight of the banner itself, attached with a string and some sticky stuff that allowed it to eventually fall off without harming the fly, was so that the fly could fly with it, but not very high and they kept landing on visitors.

Check the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldC7FQiUJ6s&feature=player_embedded

Wheelchair with Vision

This smart wheelchair has laser vision
Spletzer, an associate professor of computer science and engineering, recently received a five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop a robotic wheelchair that navigates on its own, with no human guidance or remote control, through a crowded city.

Armed with high-fidelity lasers and detailed maps, the “smart” wheelchair will avoid stationery objects like parking meters and light poles as well as “random events” like pedestrians and bicyclists. It will transport users who may not be able to see or walk to their doctor’s appointments, to the pharmacy, to the grocery store.
Helping robots see with lasers

In order to “see” and respond to its environment as it navigates around a city, says Spletzer, a robot must possess two things: sensors that detect and recognize familiar landmarks and a database with maps that show where those landmarks will be.

Spletzer and his students have taken a cue from Google Street View, which allows Internet users to take virtual tours of distant cities, block by block and building by building, by looking at thousands of stored images. These images are of little use to robots equipped with lasers, says Spletzer, because robots do not see what humans see. But the concept is applicable to the robotic wheelchair. Spletzer and his students are fitting the robotic wheelchair with a low cost LIDAR (an acronym for light detection and ranging) laser similar to, but much less expensive than, those that enabled Little Ben to detect other vehicles, highway lane markers and the edge of the pavement. They have made high-fidelity, 3-D laser maps of portions of South Bethlehem and of the Stabler Arena parking lot on Lehigh’s Goodman Campus. The team’s robotic wheelchair, guided by LIDAR but not GPS devices, has traversed a 1-kilometer route and arrived at its destination to within an accuracy of 20 centimeters.

“We have a server vehicle drive around and make a hi-fi 3-D map of the environment,” says Spletzer. “The robotic wheelchair can download this map and navigate the environment, halfway in the real world, halfway in the virtual world.

“The robot identifies landmarks—trees, poles, building faces and corners—in the real world and looks for them in the laser map. Once it finds them, it will be able to accurately estimate its position in the real world. It doesn’t need GPS, because of the accuracy of the server vehicle maps and because of the LIDARs.”

Read more at: http://www.physorg.com/news177062541.html

Leaf Log

British inventor's green idea of using leaves to make fire logs
An inventor has come up with a new green fuel - logs made from leaves. With one million tonnes of leaves falling from British trees every year, Peter Morrison decided to harness the waste and turn it into energy. By collecting and compacting the dead matter, his company has turned them into environmentally-friendly ‘logs’ to burn in open fires and wood stoves.

The logs, said to be 70 per cent carbon neutral, are also being considered by bosses of a major power station to cut their carbon emissions. Each log, weighing 2lb 10oz, is made from about a binliner-full of leaves. It generates more heat than wood and burns for longer.

Now the company - BioFuels International Limited (BIFL) - has started supplying the 11in-long logs, which burn for about three hours, to shops such as B&Q. Mr Morrison says that as well as being cleaner and greener than burning wood or coal, the leaf logs are very efficient, creating 28,000 kilojoules of energy compared to 29,000 produced by the finest grade coal. The leaves come from parks across the Heart of England. After being harvested by the likes of Birmingham City Council, Walsall Borough Council, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council and the University of Birmingham, BIFL collects the leaves and turn them into logs.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1226943/British-inventors-green-idea-using-leaves-make-logs.html#ixzz0XH5CBXL1

Buy your customized newspaper

Billed as Europe's first "personalised paper", "niiu", a newspaper tailored to readers' individual wishes and delivered to their door before 08:00 am, made its first appearance in Berlin on Monday.
Customers of the paper choose what topics they want to read about -- be it sport, politics, fashion or any from a wide choice -- and receive news only on their chosen subject collated together and delivered like any other paper.

Articles are pulled together from major German papers such as Handelsblatt, Bild and Tagesspiegel, foreign titles such as the International Herald Tribune or the New York Times, as well as major blogs and Internet news sources.

For the right to print their news, "niiu" pays a licence to these papers, which in turn reach a younger audience, as "niiu" is aimed mainly at students, who pay 1.20 euros (1.79 dollars) to get their news fix. Non students are expected to stump up 1.80 euros.

The two German entrepreneurs who came up with the idea were delighted with their first day in business, having launched the concept in mid-October. More than 1,000 people have already signed up on the Internet to receive the "niiu", said Wanja Oberhof, 23, one of the founders. "That has exceeded all our expectations," he told AFP. "It's not just students, the interest is much wider," he added. The pair hopes to be printing 5,000 copies in the next six months, first in Berlin before rolling it out nationwide.

At a time when newspapers globally are struggling with competition from Internet news sources, the founders acknowledge that "niiu" is a risky venture. However, they said that young people were tired of trawling the web for news and would pay for the tailored service their paper offers. Eventually, clients will be able to choose the length of the paper delivered -- for example, eight pages on a busy Monday morning but 60 pages on a Friday when there might be more time to read. Initially, however, the paper consists of 16 pages.

Read more at: http://forum4editors.com/2009/10/a-brand-niuu-day-for-the-printed-newspapers-is-coming/
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4899459,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf

Aircraft that can see for themselves

Aircraft that can see for themselves (w/ Video)
Australian researchers have made two important advances in the development of unmanned aircraft capable of seeing for themselves as they fly fast and low over dangerous terrain.

A team from the The Vision Centre and Queensland Brain Institute has developed highly effective new visual systems inspired by honey bees and how they navigate successfully around the landscape, despite their tiny brains.

The two innovations, one of which provides stereo vision to enable aircraft to see their way around obstacles in very low-level flight, and the other which controls the aircraft’s attitude by watching the horizon, offer light, low-cost, highly-efficient technologies for use in unmanned aircraft (UAVs).

Both will be unveiled for the first time at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, in St Louis, USA from October 11-15. Richard Moore and his colleagues at The University of Queensland node of the ARC Vision Centre, based at the Queensland Brain Institute, have developed a stereo system employing two cameras and two sophisticated, highly curved mirrors, for observing the terrain as it flows beneath the aircraft. The cameras feed back information on height and distance to the terrain and its obstacles in a steady flow.

“You know how things that are close seem to speed by, whereas things farther away seem to travel more slowly,” Richard said.

"Our design eliminates that distortion, enabling us to use the flow of optical data from all parts of the landscape in view to navigate the aircraft, even if it is moving very fast.”

Read more and see video at: http://www.physorg.com/news173621893.html

Touch-free Computing

Touch-free Computing: Microsoft's new user interface uses hand gestures in the air and tracks eye movement.
Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie is doing the rounds at a number of prestigious colleges in the States showing off Microsoft’s vision for technology to solve the world’s biggest problems. Of course, one must use the latest in natural user interfaces for this task.
A feature of this year’s tour appears to be a next-generation computer – one that docks and undocks from a transparent glass display and allows for not only pen and voice input as you’d come to expect from natural user interfaces, but also incorporates touchless gestures and eye-tracking to interact with the information at hand.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid3924348001?bctid=48751387001

Gorillapod: wrap your camera on any tree or railing

A flexible tripod with over two dozen flexible joints that bend and rotate, allowing a camera to be mounted on almost any surface.

The Gorillapod lets you take your pocket camera to places it has never been before to get the shot you want. Hang your camera from the branch of a tree, wrap it round a railing, or leave it dangling from a door knob - the Gorillapod’s ball and socket type joints bend and twist almost 360 degrees so the legs can be contorted into a variety of different positions.

It’s the brainchild of inventor and visionary JoeBen Bevirt who first came up with idea in the late 1990s whilst at Stanford University. He took a course called Integrated Design for Marketing and Manufacturability and was part of a group of students given the task of coming up with a better tabletop tripod. He designed one with flexible legs and called it Gorillapod, but it stayed at the concept stage for years as after graduation he initially pursued other activities. Gorillapod came swinging back into his life in 2004. A friend had continually been pestering him to turn it into a product, and so he embarked on the project whilst learning about manufacturing in China. “I thought it shouldn’t be too hard, so I worked on a prototype and it turned out to be a fair bit more challenging. The first couple of manufacturers that I worked with gave up because the injection moulding tooling to make the socket joints was tricky, and it took more time and capital than I expected. But it turned out to be incredibly worth it.”

Major Improvements

For Gorillapod to become a marketable commodity many improvements had to be made on the original Stanford design. And even when they were completed there were still many more refinements that had to be attended to until Bevirt was happy with the results. He says that he has a “scrappy iterative approach” to inventing. “Basically you build lots of prototypes and you test them and do it again and again and again and figure out what works and what doesn’t work. You build lots of different concepts and compare and contrast them, and you take the good things from one and couple with another.” And what comes out at the other end is a viable product.

A patent was filed via his patent attorney and in 2005 Bevirt created a company called Joby as a vehicle for all the inventing he wants to do. Gorillapod was the first product, and it has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. It is sold through national and international retailers as well as via the company website and has spawned further products using the same flexible Gorillapod idea; so now there are Gorillamobile stands for mobile devices and a Gorillatorch - a hands-free flashlight.

World's First solar-powered Flight

Pioneering Swiss solar-powered plane rolled out
An aircraft dubbed 'Solar Impulse', HB-SIA prototype, is rolled out of a hangar for an initial series of stationary tests involving engines and electromagnetic interference in Duebendorf aerodrome near Zurich.
All four sun-fuelled electric motors were switched on for the first time under open skies after the completed high-tech plane was pushed out of the hangar. "With its engines running at full power, it gave the impression of wanting to get off the ground straightaway... but it won't be long now before we release the brakes and let it roll its first few metres," said Andre Borschberg, co-founder and chief executive of Solar Impulse.

The ultralight single seater with the wingspan of an Airbus A380 airliner is being prepared for a maiden flight over the coming weeks when weather conditions allow. Solar Impulse staff said the slender craft, which only weighs as much as a medium-sized car (1,600 kilogrammes, 3,527 pounds), needs particularly clear conditions and less than a light breeze (three knots) for its first excursion in the air. It is due to make a few airborne hops down the runway at the Dubendorf airbase before December 20.

Borschberg said the aircraft was venturing into new flying territory. "Compared to its weight and size, it is lighter than the best performing gliders," he explained.

The prototype, which is slightly smaller than the craft that is expected to fly around the world, was first unveiled while it was being built in its hangar in June. It is primarily aimed at testing the cutting edge technology used to build and control the aircraft, and to fly through the night.

A first non-stop 36 hour flight through darkness is planned in Switzerland from spring 2010, with the prospect of a five stage flight around the world in 2012.

Air bags in back seat belts of SUV

Ford to put air bags into back seat belts of SUV

Ford's inflatable seat belts are designed for the rear seat. Air bags have long been mounted in the steering wheel, dashboard and sides of vehicles. Now, they're in the seat belts. Ford Motor Co. plans to introduce seat belt-mounted air bags in the back seat of the 2011 Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle, which will hit the market next fall. Ford says it's the first automaker to mass produce the technology.
The belts have a cylindrical air bag that stretches from the buckle to the shoulder and fits inside a pocket sewn into the belt. The car sends a signal that releases the bag, which inflates more gently than a front air bag, so it's safer for children.

Srini Sundararajan, the Ford engineer who was chiefly responsible for developing the device, says the wider belts and bags help distribute crash forces across the occupant's chest, so there's less chance of serious injury. It also supports the head and neck.

"The top two lifesaving devices today are the seat belt and the air bag. This combines them into one great feature," Sundararajan said. Ford has been working on the technology for a decade and had to overcome numerous challenges bringing it to market.

Front air bags are powered by a device that generates hot gas. They deploy very quickly because they need to cover a greater distance before they reach the driver or passenger. Seat belt air bags don't have that distance to cover, so they can deploy more gently, using cold gas technology, although Srini said they're still fully deployed in a tenth of a second.

Read more at: http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=AP&date=20091105&id=10661000
Check out the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN5htEaRk4A&feature=player_embedded

Not an artificial limb, but a real hand.

SmartHand: an artificial hand which can give the wearer the FEEL of a real hand.

In one sense, our hands define our humanity. Our opposable thumbs and our hands' unique structure allow us to write, paint, and play the piano. Those who lose their hands as a result of accident, conflict or disease often feel they've lost more than mere utility. A new invention from Tel Aviv University researchers may change that. Prof. Yosi Shacham-Diamand of TAU's Department of Engineering, working with a team of European Union scientists, has successfully wired a state-of-the-art artificial hand to existing nerve endings in the stump of a severed arm. The device, called "SmartHand," resembles ― in function, sensitivity and appearance ― a real hand.

Robin af Ekenstam of Sweden, the project's first human subject, has not only been able to complete extremely complicated tasks like eating and writing, he reports he is also able to "feel" his fingers once again.

In short, Prof. Shacham-Diamand and his team have seamlessly rewired Ekenstam's mind to his SmartHand. Prof. Shacham-Diamand's contribution to the project, on which TAU collaborated with Sweden's Lund University, is the interface between the body's nerves and the device's electronics. "Perfectly good nerve endings remain at the stem of a severed limb," the researcher says. "Our team is building the interface between the device and the nerves in the arm, connecting cognitive neuroscience with state-of-the-art information technologies." Prof. Shacham-Diamand runs one of the top labs in the world for nano-bio-interfacing science: the Department of Electrical Engineering ― Physical Electronics Lab under the Bernard L. Schwartz Chair for Nano-scale Information Technologies. "Our challenge," remarks Prof. Shacham-Diamand, "was to make an electrode that was not only flexible, but could be implanted in the human body and function properly for at least 20 years."

The artificial SmartHand, built by a team of top European Union scientists, will belong to Ekenstam, the test subject, as long as he wishes. "After only a few training sessions, he is operating the artificial hand as though it's his own," says Prof. Shacham-Diamand. "We've built in tactile sensors too, so the information transfer goes two ways. These allow Ekenstam to do difficult tasks like eating and writing." Ekenstam told a television interviewer, "I am using muscles which I haven't used for years. I grab something hard, and then I can feel it in the fingertips, which is strange, as I don't have them anymore. It's amazing."

This particular multi-million dollar project focused on hands, but the TAU/EU team could also have built bionic legs to be wired to the brain. The team first chose to build a hand, however, because of its unique challenges. "The fingers in the hand are the most complex appendages we have," Prof. Shacham-Diamand observes. "The brain needs to synchronise the movement of each digit in a very complicated way."

With the help of the TAU team, the SmartHand project was able to integrate recent advances in today's "intelligent" prosthetic hands with all the basic features of a flesh-and-blood hand. Four electric motors and 40 sensors are activated when the SmartHand touches an object, not only replicating the movement of a human hand, but also providing the wearer with a sensation of feeling and touch.
While the prototype looks very "bionic" now, in the future SmartHand scientists plan to equip it with artificial skin that will give the brain even more tactile feedback. The researchers will also study amputees equipped with the SmartHand to understand how to improve the device over time.

Now your domain name can be in Hindi- not English

The Internet is set to undergo one of the biggest changes in its four-decade history with the approval of international domain names - or addresses - that can be written in languages other than English. The non-profit body that oversees Internet addresses approved Friday the use of Hebrew, Hindi, Korean and other scripts not based on Latin characters in a decision that could make the Web dramatically more inclusive.

The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - or ICANN - voted to allow such scripts in so-called domain names at the conclusion of a weeklong meeting in Seoul, South Korea's capital. The decision by the board's 15 voting members was unopposed and welcomed by applause and a standing ovation. It followed years of debate and testing.
"This represents one small step for ICANN, but one big step for half of mankind who use non-Latin scripts, such as those in Korea, China and the Arabic speaking world as well as across Asia, Africa, and the rest of the world," Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's CEO, said ahead of the vote.

Domain names - the Internet addresses that end in ".com" and other suffixes - are the key monikers behind every Web site, e-mail address and Twitter post.

Since their creation in the 1980s, domain names have been limited to the 26 characters in the Latin alphabet used in English - A-Z - as well as 10 numerals and the hyphen. Technical tricks have been used to allow portions of the Internet address to use other scripts, but until now, the suffix had to use those 37 characters.

That has meant Internet users with little or no knowledge of English might still have to type in Latin characters to access Web pages in Chinese or Arabic. Although search engines can sometimes help users reach those sites, companies still need to include Latin characters on billboards and other advertisements.

Now, ICANN is allowing those same technical tricks to apply to the suffix as well, allowing the Internet to be truly multilingual.

Read more at: http://www.physorg.com/news176099055.html
Now your domain name can be in Hindi- not English

Color-changing roof tiles

Color-changing roof tiles absorb heat in winter, reflect it in summer

A team of recent MIT graduates has developed roof tiles that change color based on the temperature. The tiles become white when it's hot, allowing them to reflect away most of the sun's heat. When it's cold they turn black and absorb heat just when it's needed.

The team's lab measurements show that in their white state, the tiles reflect about 80 percent of the sunlight falling on them, while when black they reflect only about 30 percent. That means in their white state, they could save as much as 20 percent of present cooling costs, according to recent studies. Savings from the black state in winter have yet to be quantified.

The team, which the students call Thermeleon (rhymes with chameleon, because of its color-changing property), was one of the competitors in this year's Making and Designing Materials Engineering Contest (MADMEC). Nick Orf PhD ’09, a member of the Thermeleon team, explains that he and his teammates originally tried to develop a color-shifting roof tile using a system of mixed fluids, one dark and one light, whose density would change with temperature: the dark substance would float to the top when it was cold, and white would float when it was hot. But the system proved too complicated, and instead they hit on a simpler, less expensive method.
Now, they use a common commercial polymer (in one version, one that is commonly used in hair gels) in a water solution. That solution is encapsulated — between layers of glass and plastic in their original prototype, and between flexible plastic layers in their latest version — with a dark layer at the back.

When the temperature is below a certain level (which they can choose by varying the exact formulation), the polymer stays dissolved, and the black backing shows through, absorbing the sun's heat. But when the temperature climbs, the polymer condenses to form tiny droplets, whose small sizes scatter light and thus produce a white surface, reflecting the sun's heat.
Read more at: http://www.physorg.com/news174209373.html

Fingerprint technology beats world's toughest tests

Fingerprint technology beats world's toughest tests
Technology developed by the University of Warwick that can identify partial, distorted, scratched, smudged, or otherwise warped fingerprints in just a few seconds has just scored top marks in the world's two toughest technical fingerprint tests. The technology is also being rapidly taken up by the UK building trade who are delighted to have fingerprint technology which can cope with the often worn and ravaged builders' thumbprints.
Many other fingerprint techniques have tried to identify a few key features on a finger print and laboriously match them against a database of templates.

The University of Warwick researchers consider the entire detailed pattern of each print and transform the topological pattern into a standard co-ordinate system. This allows the researchers to "unwarp" any finger print that has been distorted by smudging, uneven pressure, or other distortion and create a clear digital representation of the fingerprint that can then be mapped on to an "image space" of all other finger prints held on a database. Instead of laboriously comparing a print against each entry in a database any new print scanned by the system is unwarped and over laid onto a virtual "image space" that includes all the fingerprints available to the database. It does not matter whether it's a thousand or a million fingerprints in the database the result comes back in seconds.

The technology has impressed more than just the construction industry. In the past week the technology has been examined by two of the world's most respected technical fingerprint benchmarking tests. Tests by the National Physical Laboratory ranked Warwick Warp's fingerprint Technology best overall for accuracy. A test of 36 finger print technologies by the US's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) ranked Warwick 3rd overall"

Read more at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091026093731.htm

Small sounds replicated virtually

Researchers bring noise to virtual worlds
Cornell computer scientists have developed a practical method to generate the crashing and rumbling sounds of objects made up of thin "harmonic shells," including the sounds of cymbals, falling garbage cans and lids, and plastic water-cooler bottles and recycling bins.

The work by graduate students Jeffrey Chadwick and Steven An and Doug James, associate professor of computer science, will be presented at the SIGGRAPH Asia conference in Yokohama, Japan, in December.

As virtual environments become more realistic and immersive, the researchers point out, computers will have to generate sounds that match the behavior of objects in real time. Even in an animated movie, where sound effects can be dubbed in after the fact from recordings of real sounds, synthesized sounds can match more realistically to the action. So the goal is to start with the computer model of an object already created by animators, analyze how such an object would vibrate when dropped or struck, and how that vibration would be transferred to the air to radiate as sound.

When a thin-shelled object is struck or falls, the metal or plastic sheet slightly deforms and snaps back, triggering a vibration. To simulate the deformation, the computer divides the shell into many small triangles and calculates how the angles between triangles change and how much the sides of the triangles are stretched. What makes this difficult is that the shell vibrates in several different ways at once, and these modes of vibration are "coupled" -- energy transfers from one to another and back again. Previous methods of sound synthesis for shells did not take this into account, James said, and the result was a clean, clear sound, appropriate for bells and wind chimes, but not for things that crash and rumble.

The calculation must be stepped through time at audio frequencies, in this case seeing how the object will look every 1/44,100 of a second. Time-stepping a large mesh of triangles would take weeks of computer time, so the researchers approximate the response by sampling a few hundred triangles (out of thousands) and interpolate between them, a process they call "cubature."

The final step is to map out how the sound waves radiate to determine how the event will sound to a listener at any particular location. Calculating how vibrations of the object move the air is a standard, off-the-shelf process used by engineers who design real-world objects (a lot of work goes into making machinery quieter), but it's too slow for sound synthesis, so the radiation model is pre-computed to save time.

Even with these refinements, the system is not ready for real time, James reported. The computations for simple demonstrations still take about an hour on a laptop computer.

"There's some hope that we can speed this up," he said, "by making other approximations." Nevertheless, he said, previous methods of generating these sounds could take weeks, "but now we can do it in hours." The work on thin shells is part of a larger project in James' lab to synthesize a variety of sounds, including those of dripping and splashing fluids, small objects clattering together and shattering glass.

New computer security mimics nature

Ants vs. worms: New computer security mimics nature:
In the never-ending battle to protect computer networks from intruders, security experts are deploying a new defence modelled after one of nature's hardiest creatures -- the ant.

Unlike traditional security devices, which are static, these "digital ants" wander through computer networks looking for threats, such as "computer worms" — self-replicating programs designed to steal information or facilitate unauthorized use of machines. When a digital ant detects a threat, it doesn't take long for an army of ants to converge at that location, drawing the attention of human operators who step in to investigate.

The concept, called "swarm intelligence," promises to transform cyber security because it adapts readily to changing threats.

"In nature, we know that ants defend against threats very successfully," explains Professor of Computer Science Errin Fulp, an expert in security and computer networks. "They can ramp up their defence rapidly, and then resume routine behavior quickly after an intruder has been stopped. We were trying to achieve that same framework in a computer system."

Current security devices are designed to defend against all known threats at all times, but the bad guys who write malware — software created for malicious purposes — keep introducing slight variations to evade computer defences.

As new variations are discovered and updates issued, security programs gobble more resources, antivirus scans take longer and machines run slower — a familiar problem for most computer users.

Glenn Fink, a research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash., came up with the idea of copying ant behavior. PNNL, one of 10 Department of Energy laboratories, conducts cutting-edge research in cyber security.

Read more at: http://www.physorg.com/news173108776.html

A car that emits only water

Japanese automakers rev up efforts in hydrogen cars: a car that can be refuelled in minutes but emits only water
It already exists -- Hollywood star Jamie Lee Curtis has one. So does Honda president Takanobu Ito.
Yet while some see them as the ultimate environmentally-friendly automobiles, the high production cost means that affordable hydrogen-powered fuel-cell cars are still more of a dream than reality. Manufacturers such as Honda, however, are making a renewed push behind the vehicles, which run on electricity generated by a reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, belching out nothing more harmful than water vapour.
The big challenge for automakers is to reduce the production cost of hydrogen-powered vehicles - currently several hundred thousand dollars each.
"We believe that the fuel-cell electric vehicle will be the ultimate form for automobiles in the future," Ito said at the Tokyo Motor Show which opened Wednesday. "It has advantages such as zero CO2 emissions in use, can travel considerable distances without refuelling and can be quickly refuelled," he said. Honda last year began delivering about 200 FCX Clarity hydrogen-powered cars on lease to US and Japanese customers, including some Hollywood celebrities.
Toyota, pioneer of hybrids powered by a petrol engine and an electric motor, has said it plans to launch a fuel-cell car by 2015. It is applying its hybrid technology to the vehicles, swapping the petrol engine for a fuel-cell stack."We can't concentrate on just one technology," said Takeshi Uchiyamada, the chief engineer of the first-generation Prius hybrid.
Toyota president Akio Toyoda says he expects that eventually electric cars will be used for short distances and fuel-cell hybrids for long journeys.
Nissan and Mazda have developed their own fuel-cell vehicles and leased them to governments and corporate clients, while Suzuki Motor is showcasing a car, a wheelchair and scooter -- all powered by fuel cells -- at the Tokyo Motor Show.
Read more at: http://www.motoring.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5217688

Easier To Browse Web Sites On Mobile Devices

IBM Makes It Easier To Browse Web Sites On Mobile Devices
The Web has turned consumers into do-it-yourself travel agents, data entry clerks and librarians. With the rise of blogs and social media, they have also been turned into syndicated columnists. As such, many have also been forced to become amateur Webmasters, faced with the challenge of cramming content into a format readable on mobile devices, including cellphones -- an increasingly common way to access the Internet.
To help Webmasters of all skill levels, IBM researchers in Tokyo have developed a visual editor technology that enables Webmasters to arrange their Web site content reading flow in a logically-ordered sequence -- without changing the existing content -- that can be easily read on the small screens of mobile devices. The editing tool can also improve the browsing experience for visually impaired Web surfers who use voice browsers to read Web content. The visual editor uses smoothly connecting arrows to show in what order voice browsers would present content. To edit the reading flow, Webmasters need only drag, drop and re-arrange the arrows. This is an improvement over more cumbersome methods, such as using voice browsers to check reading flow line by line, and requiring Webmasters to copy and paste large amounts of content to a memopad to check reading flow.

In addition to Web pages, the tool can be applied to electronic presentations, PDF documents and Flash content to improve their contextual reading flow.

Global mobile subscriptions are expected to reach 4.6 billion by the end of the year, according to the International Telecommunication Union. IBM Research is making a five-year, US $100 million investment to advance mobile services and capabilities for businesses and consumers worldwide. Through this effort, IBM is aiming to drive new intelligence into the underpinnings of the mobile Web to create new efficiencies in business operations and people's daily lives.
More information: For more information about IBM's mobile Web initiative, please visit http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/24254.wss
Check the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBCcSMcZ3A0&feature=player_embedded

Bladeless fan

Bladeless Fan
"Conventional three-bladed fans chop at the air and fire chunks of it at you, like wedges of cheese," Dyson says. "Plus, they can be dangerous if children's fingers get in the grille - and they are tough to clean."

His answer is a fan with no visible blades that he calls the Air Multiplier. Its key component is a hollow plastic hoop with an aerofoil cross section - like an aircraft wing bent into a circle. Set vertically on a pedestal, it contains a motor-driven "impeller" which forces air into the hollow rim of the hoop.

From there, air emerges through a slot that directs it over the hoop's aerofoil surface. This generates low pressure towards the centre of the hoop, which in turn creates a steady draught by drawing the surrounding air through it. The strength of the draught can be varied by adjusting the speed of the impeller.
See the video at: http://brightcove.newscientist.com/services/player/bcpid2227271001?bctid=44555602001
Read more at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17968-hole-on-a-stick-aims-to-reinvent-the-desktop-fan.html

Salt and Paper Battery May One Day Replace Lithium Batteries

Salt and Paper Battery May One Day Replace Lithium Batteries
A new thin-film battery has electrodes made of polymer-coated paper and an electrolyte made of salt-soaked paper. A laboratory prototype shows the cell pressed between glass slides and packaged in an aluminum pouch.
Salt and paper battery can be used in many low-power devices, such as medical implants, RFID tags, wireless sensors and smart cards. This battery uses a thin-film which makes it an attractive feature for many portable devices that draws a low current.

At Uppsala University in Sweden, researchers have developed a flexible battery made of two inexpensive materials: cellulose and salt. The cellulose is derived from a polluting algae found in seas and lakes. The algae's walls contain cellulose that has a different nanostructure, which gives it 100 times the surface area.

The battery is made by coating the paper, made from this cellulose, with a conducting polymer and inserting a salt-solution-soaked filter paper between the paper electrodes. Chlorine ions travel from the batteries positive terminal to the negative terminal while current is produced in the external circuit by the flow of electrons. The battery can be recharged in tens of seconds because the ions flow through the thin electrode quickly. In comparison to a lithium battery that would take 20 minutes to recharge.

The salt and paper battery is still in the early stages of development as compared to other thin-film technologies. For a battery to be cost effective you need to able to obtain the material at relatively low cost and have a good manufacture process in place. The battery could be produced commercially in about three years and made available to distributors.

Read more at: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23472/?a=f

Wi-Fi signals can see through walls

Wi-Fi signals can see through walls
Researchers at the University of Utah, USA, have discovered that variations in signal strengths in wireless networks can be used to "see" movements of people on the other side of walls or doors:

The scientists, Joey Wilson and Neal Patwari, detected movements by measuring the signal strength of the radio waves between the nodes of wireless network devices. The presence of people moving through the field is registered as a change in signal strength. The space is interrogated by many signals that are picked up by many receivers, and this allows a picture of the movement in the space to be built up. The technique is called variance-based radio tomographic imaging.

Wilson and Patwari set up a 34-node network outside a living room in a house to test the system, and were able to detect movements to about three feet through the wall. At present the scientists are only able to detect movements, and are not yet able to generate images, but they are sure this will be possible in the future. They are equally confident they will be able to improve accuracy, even with fewer nodes. They also say that adding GPS to each node would enable it to work out its own location, and this should improve the imaging process.

The researchers expect the system to find application in search and rescue operations, such as finding people trapped under collapsed buildings after earthquakes. The scientists envisage emergency workers using Wi-Fi radio technologies to install a network of sensors around an emergency area to detect the presence of survivors and bodies.

According to Wilson and Patwari, the radio sensors could be deployed around a disaster site by the emergency workers, either by dropping them or throwing or launching them in some way. Each sensor would then form part of a network and begin to transmit information about signal strength measurements across the web of sensors to a base station computer. The computer would correlate the information and determine the likely locations of survivors.

The advantage of this technique over existing systems capable of sensing what is on the other side of a wall is the price, since the nodes in the network are cheap and off-the shelf. The disadvantage of a cheap and simple system is its potential use as a spy tool by nosy neighbors, peeping toms or burglars, and all the privacy and safety issues such uses raise.

Solar IVY

Solar Ivy: Introducing GROW: a new approach to solar and wind power
GROW is a hybrid energy delivery device that provides power via the sun and wind, and draws inspiration from ivy growing on a building.

Solar Ivy utilizes a structural stainless steel mesh system, which is manufactured by Carl Stahl Decorcable in Germany. Their system is designed to enable plants (such as ivy and other crawlers) to grow up the sides of buildings without causing damage to the building's exteriors, a typical problem of many vertical gardens.

These leaves are made of 100% recyclable polyethylene, and are available in a variety of colors and opacities. The solar cells are thin film flexible photovoltaic modules encapsulated in Tefzel, and are manufactured by PowerFilm Solar. Solar Ivy is a flexible system that can adapt to most building types, sizes, orientations and latitudes. GROW have the ability to provide varying degrees of opacity to modulate heat gain, light transmission and view. Because of the modular design, future iterations of Solar Ivy will be able to include more efficient and less expensive PV modules once those products are both available and cost effective. This modularity also makes Solar Ivy easy to support and update: if one leaf should fail, it can be replaced very easily.

Mini gas-fired power plants in people's basements

Home power plants project unveiled in Germany
A technician of German automaker Volkswagen's adjusts a mini gas-fired power plant at the VW plant in the northern German city of Salzgitter. An ambitious project was unveiled in Germany on Wednesday to install mini gas-fired power plants in people's bas
The Hamburg-based renewable energy group Lichtblick and its automaker partner Volkswagen say the plants would produce not only heating and hot water but also electricity, with any excess power fed into the local grid. The two firms said the concept of "SchwarmStrom" (literally, "swarm power") would allow Germany to abandon nuclear and coal power stations sooner and help compensate for the volatility of renewables like wind and solar power.

The plants also reduce harmful carbon dioxide emissions by up to 60 percent compared to conventional heat and electricity generation, they added in a joint statement. In the coming year the programme will install 100,000 of the mini plants, producing between them 2,000 megawatts of electricity, the same as two nuclear plants, Lichtblick and VW said.

"SchwarmStrom is revolutionising power production in Germany. It clears the way for more renewable energy and an exit from power from nuclear and coal," the statement added. "The home power plants together form a huge, invisible power station that doesn't make the countryside ugly or require additional infrastructure." The project "is thoroughly feasible if the project reaches the forecast size," Claudia Kemfert of the DIW research institute told AFP. She added by way of comparison that "just getting rid of incandescent light bulbs would be the same as shutting down one nuclear reactor."

Gas plants have an advantage over nuclear power stations in that the heat produced by the latter is wasted, the DIW energy expert said. But "the most ecological would be to feed these mini-plants with biogas" rather than natural gas, Kemfert noted.

Lichtblick said another advantage of its plan was that tens of thousands of generators could be mobilised to meet a surge in demand or if drought made it hard to cool nuclear plants or a calm spell idled wind turbines. VW will contribute to the project by providing a gas-powered engine similar to one used in its popular Golf model.

But LBBW auto analyst Stefan Sigrist told AFP: "This is mainly a marketing offensive. It is chic for VW to bask in a greener light." Although the generators are not a new concept, the project is novel in that Lichtblick would retain control over the plants after their installation. Households would pay around 5,000 euros (7,250 dollars) to have the generators set up along with an appropriate heating system.

But individuals would then pay a lower price for heating and receive a modest "rent" for hosting the generator, as well as a bonus at the end of the year calculated on electricity revenues that resulted from Lichtblick's sales.

Stop Piracy at the source

IR light from behind the cinema screen prevents pirates from recording films at movie theatres

National Institute of Informatics, Japan in co-operation with Sharp, has developed a technique to render any recording unwatchable by flashing pulses of infra-red (IR) light from behind the cinema screen. The pulses pass through tiny holes in the screen originally designed to allow through sound, and cause interference to any video cameras held by members of the audience. The IR light, while invisible to human eyes, is also impossible to filter out without rendering the recording too blurry to watch. The team says best results are achieved at a speed of 10 pulses per second.

Films screened at cinemas are already digitally watermarked to prevent them from being copied digitally, but there has been no way of reliably stopping pirates from recording films using video cameras. The damage caused by bootleg film recordings is estimated at around 3 billion dollars a year, according to the American Film Institute.

e-Cycler connects people with recyclables but no recycling service, and people who want to collect recyclables for profit.

e-Cycler is a new website that makes the process of collecting - and having collected - recyclables look much more like a part time job than a random act of frugal greenness. It connects people who have recyclables but no recycling service with people who want to collect recyclables for profit.


Both Collectors and Discarders Can Make Money
Two types of people sign up with e-Cycler - those who want to collect recyclables in order to turn a profit, and those who want someone to come pick up their recyclables (and possibly also make a profit). The website connects the two people, and collectors can make either 100% profit from what they collect and take in to centers in exchange for cash, or they can make a 60% profit, giving 40% to the person from whom they collected the recyclables. It's up to the person setting their recyclables out whether or not they want to simply give them away, or gain some extra pocket change themselves.

And e-Cycler Wants Money Too
e-Cycler wants to turn their own profit, so they are initializing a small fee on the collector for each lead they receive from the site on who they can go collect from. Even if you as a collector are paying a fee to e-Cycler and giving 40% to the discarder, if you're hard up for some extra income and/or have a passion for seeing recyclables actually get recycled, the cut in profit may still be made up for in the saved time of going straight for a batch of recyclables rather than randomly scouring gutters and trash bins during daily walks.

What's the Impact of All These Collectors?
While this is a great system to help get recyclables to recycling facilities in areas where there isn't curbside pickup provided by the city, we are still curious about the impact of having people most likely driving around in cars and pickup trucks collecting the recyclables and driving to centers to turn them in. Maybe there could be an option for reduced fees for collectors who use bicycles with carts rather than cars. No matter what, e-Cycler seems like a better option than having no curbside recycling at all, and likely a smaller impact than city garbage trucks grumbling down the roads.

Check out the website: http://ecycler.com/

New technology to clean cabin air during flights

AirManager cleans cabin air

The global spread of viruses such as swine flu could be slowed by new air-sanitation technology on aircraft, claimed its UK developers.

The AirManager technology from Cheshire-based Quest International UK has completed trials with five European airlines. The units are now being prepared for installation across one European airline's entire fleet of Avro RJ aircraft. AirManager, which is being distributed internationally by BAE Systems, works using a patented non-thermal plasma technique known as CCFT (Close-Coupled Field Technology).

Inventor David Hallam, director of Quest International, explained a high-voltage coil in a dielectric arrangement generates the contained electrical field. This field destabilises compounds and materials in the air passing through it. A combination of high-voltage forces and oxidative stress within the field attacks inorganic and organic compounds at the molecular level and effectively strips them down to their component elements. Any inert particulate materials are then passed through a 3M-manufactured High Air Flow (HAF) filter, which has an electrostatic surface area designed to attract, capture and retain particles down to 0.1 micron in size. The air is cycled 30 times before it is released into the cabin area.

Hallam said AirManager can remove up to 99.999 per cent of all pathogens in a single pass and an even greater amount of airborne viruses can be destroyed in the same amount of time. A unit is also claimed to be able to eliminate volatile organic compounds and offensive cabin smells from the air. He added: 'It is important to show you are doing everything in your power to stop transmission on board. Swine flu is one pandemic; there will be others, and with international travel these things spread a lot faster than they would have historically. So anything that can cut down on that has got to be a good thing.'

Read the full article at: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/Article.aspx?liArticleID=313201

Bed that turns into wheelchair

Panasonic develops bed that turns into wheelchair
The invention is designed to help people with limited mobility maintain an independent lifestyle, the firm said in a statement. "Now, the user can join the family meal by converting the bed into a wheelchair and moving to the dining table without the need of assistance from other people," it said. Panasonic will exhibit the Robotic Bed at a home care and rehabilitation exhibition in Tokyo from September 29 to October 1, it said.
"It is still a concept model and we will not be selling it soon," said Panasonic spokeswoman Yuka Arii. "We plan to bring it to markets in or after 2015. But we don't know the price yet." Japan has one of the world's oldest populations and faces a constant shortage of care workers.
Read more at: http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=22017

Filming photons, one million times a second

Filming photons, one million times a second
European researchers have created a CMOS (semiconductor) camera capable of filming individual photons one million times a second. The breakthrough will impact on all the most advanced areas of science and makes Europe the world leader in the technology.

The scientists wanted to create the fastest, highest resolution CMOS (semiconductor) video camera, but to do that they needed to choose an ultra-fast photo detector. They also needed to choose between two competing timing mechanisms or stopwatches, Time to Analogue Convertors (TAC) and Time to Digital Convertors (TDC).

The timing mechanism is important. It can tell, to within a few tens of picoseconds, when the photon arrives at the detector. It creates stunning resolution in time.

Imaging technology has advanced rapidly over the last few years. But the demands of science have advanced even more rapidly. New scientific fields like proteomics - studying the different proteins that form the human body - pose a problem because they require cameras that are capable of recording data at photon-resolution, and extremely fast. That problem is now essentially solved thanks to the work of the Megaframe project, which developed a CMOS video camera that can capture 1024 individual photons at one million frames a second. It can record, to within 100 picoseconds, when the photon arrived at each detector. It is insanely fast.
Must Read more: http://www.physorg.com/news173957578.html

FON

You pay for internet access at home, so why must you pay for it again at the coffee shop, the airport and the hotel? That frustration spawned Spanish Wi-Fi startup Fon. It's a simple idea: Give and you shall receive. "Foneros" first agree to share their home wireless connections with other Fon customers using a special router, which splits the signal into public and private streams. In exchange, they get the privilege of using any of the network's wireless signals anywhere in the world for free. Fon has inked important deals with TimeWarner Cable in the United States, BT in Britain and Neuf in France, and its network has expanded to an impressive 600,000 registered users worldwide. Free global internet for the price you already pay at home?

FON is the world’s largest WiFi community and the best way to get connected to the internet for free!
When you buy any Fonera (FON’s line of revolutionary WiFi routers) and connect it to your existing broadband connection, you create a FON Spot (a secure WiFi access point) that allows you to share your WiFi connection with other FON members.

The Fonera 2.0 series allows you to do even more with your WiFi. You can upload videos to YouTube, and photos to Facebook, Picasa or Flickr and download torrents or files, directly to or from an external hard disk...even when your computer is off!

* Founder: Martin Varsavsky
* Funding: Approx. $35 million from Skype, Google, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Excite, Digital Garage and BT
* Employees: Approximately 90 worldwide

Check out their website: http://www.fon.com/en/
For a quick tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlhaNaFc89U&feature=player_embedded#at=41

Filming photons, one million times a second

Filming photons, one million times a second

European researchers have created a CMOS (semiconductor) camera capable of filming individual photons one million times a second. The breakthrough will impact on all the most advanced areas of science and makes Europe the world leader in the technology.

The scientists wanted to create the fastest, highest resolution CMOS (semiconductor) video camera, but to do that they needed to choose an ultra-fast photo detector. They also needed to choose between two competing timing mechanisms or stopwatches, Time to Analogue Convertors (TAC) and Time to Digital Convertors (TDC).

The timing mechanism is important. It can tell, to within a few tens of picoseconds, when the photon arrives at the detector. It creates stunning resolution in time.

Imaging technology has advanced rapidly over the last few years. But the demands of science have advanced even more rapidly. New scientific fields like proteomics - studying the different proteins that form the human body - pose a problem because they require cameras that are capable of recording data at photon-resolution, and extremely fast. That problem is now essentially solved thanks to the work of the Megaframe project, which developed a CMOS video camera that can capture 1024 individual photons at one million frames a second. It can record, to within 100 picoseconds, when the photon arrived at each detector. It is insanely fast.

Must Read more: http://www.physorg.com/news173957578.html

Holograms That Respond To Touch

Holograms That Respond To Touch
Japanese scientists have developed a technology that allows holograms to respond to human touch.

Using ultrasonic waves and Nintendo Wii controllers, scientists created a software program that tracks the movements of a person's hand and allows holograms to respond to the "touch" of a hand. By using ultrasonic waves, the scientists have developed software that creates pressure when a user's hand "touches" a hologram that is projected. In order to track a user's hand, the researchers use control sticks from Nintendo's popular Wii gaming system that are mounted above the hologram display area.

Possible uses include holographic controls on hospital machines that could replace easily contaminated physical controls.

Read more at: http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE58F1KP20090916

Become a human antenna with your own carpet radio

Become a human antenna with your own carpet radio

When I was young I had a tall, wiry friend we nicknamed ‘the Human Antenna’. Now anyone, regardless of height, can rival my friend just by walking on a unique carpet recently created by Swiss designer Florian Kräutli. The carpet appears to be a typical modern rug and would look at home in most abodes, except that is has one unusual hi-tech feature - this white carpet is also a radio.

The carpet is constructed of looms from conductive thread and capable of transforming into an antenna. The carpet picks up the radio waves which the body receives, and makes them audible. To change a radio frequency you just walk on a carpet or sit or stand in a different position. The video below shows the range of signals the carpet attracts - from soft static to louder static - so I’m not sure the concept is ready for the mass market just yet, but the potential is there.

In the meantime, the carpet could be useful as a good variation on the popular ‘Twister’ game – first one to contort into a position that attracts a recognizable radio station wins. Hours of fun for the entire family or a few drunken friends? I’m not sure Kräutli had this in mind when he designed the floor covering.

But for those who like to entertain, it’s a great way of ensuring your house has the potential to deliver wall-to-wall sound.

See the video at: http://vimeo.com/5334661
Information source: http://www.gizmag.com/human-antenna-carpet-radio/13015/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=3a99ce2838-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email

Solar panel which looks like roof tile

Not your average solar panel: The SRS solar roof tile
Thanks to a system created by SRS Energy and offered exclusively as an upgrade option to customers of US Tile (the largest manufacturer of clay tile in the United States), those wishing to benefit from rooftop solar energy will no longer have to worry about any panels being stuck on the side of the roof and spoiling the aesthetics. The Solé Power Tile system is the first building-integrated photovoltaic roofing product designed to blend in with curved roof tiles commonly found in the Pacific West and Southwest of the United States.

According to SRS Energy: "triple-junction amorphous silicon thin-film technology incorporated within the Solé Power Tile" is manufactured by United Solar Ovonic and "allows the system to produce an estimated 8-20% more energy than incumbent crystalline silicon panels of the same rated power."

Any power generated by the system which is not used by the building (or stored in batteries if that option is chosen) is fed into the grid. Utility companies then give a credit for the amount of energy generated meaning financial benefits can be enjoyed from day one. Each system is monitored to provide feedback so that checks can be made against any credits made.

Details and installation photographs can be viewed on both SRS's website and US Tile's website.

Read more at: http://www.gizmag.com/srs-curved-solar-roof-tiles/12584/

Emergency light works on telephone line

Telephonic Emergency Light
This is a unique light which does not require any power supply or does not need any charging. It works on your normal landline telephone connection. Just keep this light plugged in to you phone line. Whenever there is a power failure, just press the ON button. The light will instantly light up giving you enough light in your room or office.

• This is a powerless Emergency Light which draws power from telephone line.
• ZERO COST Operation: No electricity bill, No batteries, No fuel, simply plug in your phone line and enjoy unlimited lighting. ( No phone bill also)
• 21 Super bright white LED lights which does not need replacement as their life is 1,00,000 hours.
• Indoor & Outdoor use: For outdoor use, there is an optional power source wherein you can insert 3AAA size batteries and use it without the phone line also.
• City Usage: In cities, where are no frequent power cuts, people usually does not charge emergency lights and keep daily. They also do not have fully charged torches or lamps. But if suddenly power goes off, this light can be very useful as phone lines still works.
• Village Usage: In towns where there are frequent power cuts, this light can be used on zero cost operation.
• Slim design can be mounted on wall or can be kept on table.
• Can be easily carried while traveling.

Check the link: http://www.shoponlineindia.net/pages/tlamp/

Monkeys cured of colour blindness- next target humans

Scientists cure colour blindness in monkeys - humans next?
Researchers have delivered promising results by successfully treating two squirrel monkeys with defective colour perception using a gene therapy that could also safely eradicate colour blindness in humans. Millions of people around the world, including 3.5 million Americans, 13 million people in India and 16 million in China, are affected by colour blindness. It is a congenital problem, largely experienced by men, that renders its sufferers incapable of discerning mainly red and green hues: seemingly trivial but, in reality, a necessity for everyday practicalities such as recognizing traffic lights.

According to Jay Neitz, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Washington, “Nothing happened for the first 20 weeks…but we knew right away when it began to work. It was as if they woke up and saw these new colours. The treated animals unquestionably responded to colours that had (previously) been invisible to them.” It has taken more than 18 months of testing the monkeys' ability to discern 16 hues, with some varying as much as 11-fold in intensity. The monkeys were able to trace colour patterns on a computer touch screen and, when they chose correctly, they were rewarded with grape juice.

Read more at: http://www.gizmag.com/scientists-cure-color-blindness-in-monkeys/12881/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=2f43e924c1-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email

Braille Label maker developed by students

Students design portable Braille label maker
Karina Pikhart ’09 displays the braille labelmaker she and her teammates designed, starting last year as a project in the Product Engineering Processes class (2.009). Photo - Patrick Gillooly;

One everyday problem for people who are blind or have very limited sight is distinguishing things that are completely identical to the sense of touch, such as different CDs and DVDs, or canned goods that are all the same size and shape. To cope with that difficulty, many people make Braille labels to attach to these items.

But the existing devices for doing this are either expensive and heavy — one costs about $650 and has limited portability — or light and inexpensive but very difficult for a blind person to operate, and limited in the number of characters they can imprint.

A team of MIT students in last fall's Product Engineering Processes (2.009) class searched for a better way. They came up with a prototype device that is small and easily portable, can produce the entire panoply of possible Braille characters (including commonly used two-character contractions), and can be relatively easily loaded and operated by touch. Although it is still under development, they hope the device, which they have named the 6dot Braille Labeler, can ultimately be produced for sale at around $200.

Some of the students continued to refine the product after the class ended, producing an improved version that won a $7,500 prize in the spring IDEAS competition (a joint project of the MIT Public Service Centre and the Edgerton Centre that recognizes innovations that benefit communities worldwide). Eight students from the mechanical engineering department, some who graduated in June and others who are still enrolled, joined by two others, are in the process of forming a company to continue development of the labeller. Over the summer they conducted field tests around the country with 25 potential users of the product, giving each about a half-hour to work with the device.

"Blind people really wanted to see this product on the market," says Karina Pikhart '09, who is CEO of the new company. "We worked really closely with blind people" in developing it, she says, because "you really can't develop a product without being in close touch with the people you're developing it for. They gave us a lot of good feedback." One of the comments they received was that the clear quality of the Braille produced by the device "felt like what really neat handwriting must look like," she says.
Read more at: http://web.mit.edu/press/2009/braille-0821.html