Tag Archives: futurism

July 17, 2013 · 9:07 am

Scientists create levitation system with sound waves

Scientists create levitation system with sound waves

By Tia Ghose

Published July 16, 2013

LiveScience
  • acoustic levitation.jpg

    A new technique uses sound waves to levitate objects and move them in mid-air. (Dimos Poulikakos)

Hold on to your wand, Harry Potter: Science has outdone even your best “Leviosa!” levitation spell.

Researchers report that they have levitated objects with sound waves, and moved those objects around in midair, according to a new study.

Scientists have used sound waves to suspend objects in midair for decades, but the new method, described Monday, July 15, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, goes a step further by allowing people to manipulate suspended objects without touching them.

‘If you have some dogs around, they are not going to like it at all.’

– Daniele Foresti, a mechanical engineer at the ETH Zürich in Switzerland 

This levitation technique could help create ultrapure chemical mixtures, without contamination, which could be useful for making stem cells or other biological materials.

Parlor trick
For more than a century, scientists have proposed the idea of using the pressure of sound waves to make objects float in the air. As sound waves travel, they produce changes in the air pressure — squishing some air molecules together and pushing others apart.

By placing an object at a certain point within a sound wave, it’s possible to perfectly counteract the force of gravity with the force exerted by the sound wave, allowing an object to float in that spot.

In previous work on levitation systems, researchers had used transducers to produce sound waves, and reflectors to reflect the waves back, thus creating standing waves.

“A standing wave is like when you pluck the string of a guitar,” said study co-author Daniele Foresti, a mechanical engineer at the ETH Zürich in Switzerland. “The string is moving up and down, but there are two points where it’s fixed.”

Using these standing waves, scientists levitated mice and small drops of liquid.

But then, the research got stuck.

Acoustic levitation seemed to be more of a parlor trick than a useful tool: It was only powerful enough to levitate relatively small objects; it couldn’t levitate liquids without splitting them apart, and the objects couldn’t be moved.

Levitating liquids
Foresti and his colleagues designed tiny transducers powerful enough to levitate objects but small enough to be packed closely together.

By slowly turning off one transducer just as its neighbor is ramping up, the new method creates a moving sweet spot for levitation, enabling the scientists to move an object in midair. Long, skinny objects can also be levitated.

The new system can lift heavy objects, and also provides enough control so that liquids can be mixed together without splitting into many tiny droplets, Foresti said. Everything can be controlled automatically.

The system blasts sounds waves at what would be an ear-splitting noise level of 160 decibels, about as loud as a jet taking off. Fortunately, the sound waves in the experiment operated at 24 kilohertz, just above the normal hearing range for humans.

However, “if you have some dogs around, they are not going to like it at all,” Foresti told LiveScience.

Right now, the objects can only be moved along in one dimension, but the researchers hope to develop a system that can move objects in two dimensions, Foresti said.

Major advance
The new system is a major advance, both theoretically and in terms of its practical applications, said Yiannis Ventikos, a fluids researcher at the University College London who was not involved in the study.

The new method could be an alternative to using a pipette to mix fluids in instances when contamination is an issue, he added. For instance, acoustic levitation could enable researchers to marinate stem cells in certain precise chemical mixtures, without worrying about contamination from the pipette or the well tray used.

“The level of control you get is quite astounding,” Ventikos said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/07/16/scientists-create-levitation-system-with-sound-waves/?intcmp=features#ixzz2ZHRSSz3j

1 Comment

Filed under Humor and Observations

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

June 8, 2013 · 9:50 am

Invisibility Cloak Created

New ‘invisibility cloak’ creates holes in time

By Tia Ghose

Published June 06, 2013

LiveScience

  • Invisibility Cloak

    The magic of science means Harry Potter’s “invisibility cloak” is an impending reality. (Warner Brothers)

A new invisibility cloak for data can make information vanish by creating holes in time, new research suggests.

The researchers, who describe their work June 5 in the journal Nature, found that by tweaking the optical signals in telecommunications fibers, they created a way to essentially mask data sent between a sender and a receiver to outside observers. This isn’t the first time researchers have taken a page from Harry Potter: Last year, scientists also demonstrated a similar invisibility cloak.

But the new “time cloak” can create many time holes in rapid succession, which means masked data could be sent at commercial data speeds, said Martin McCall, a theoretical-optics researcher at Imperial College London who was not involved in the study.

‘Imagine that some cars at the front of the stream speed up and ones behind slow down, so a gap can open up.’

– Martin McCall, a theoretical-optics researcher at Imperial College London 

Time cloak
In 2006, McCall proposed the idea of making optical data (information sent through optical fibers) invisible to an outsider by manipulating the light that transmits that data.

The process involves manipulating the flow of photons, or particles of light, in an optical data stream.

“If you consider light as a flow of particles a bit like cars going down a highway, you can imagine that some of the cars at the front of the stream speed up and ones behind slow down so a gap can open up,” McCall said.

If data are sent within that gap in time, when the photons eventually change speed to close up the gap, it appears to an outside observer as though nothing ever happened.

Last year, Cornell University researcher Alexander Gaeta and his colleagues demonstrated that a time cloak was possible. But that method was able to create short, 12-picosecond time cloaks that were separated by 24 microseconds meaning a user would have to wait a million times the length of the gap to send any more hidden data. That was much too slow for commercial applications.

Commercial cloak
To attempt to speed up the process, Joseph Lukens, an electrical engineering doctoral candidate at Purdue University, and his colleagues began developing a time cloak that used existing commercial equipment and could transmit optical data at high speeds.

They also employed the principle that light is both a particle and a wave at the same time. In their method, they created a pattern in the traveling light beam so that the wave’s peaks were focused on smaller and smaller areas, and the troughs, or dark spots, got bigger and bigger. This time-lensing effect created several spots in time and space where there was zero light, Lukens said.

“By doing this type of interference effect, we focus the light to even smaller points in time,” Lukens told LiveScience. “So, in the middle, we have all of our energy focused on very small points, and between them, we have regions where, if something were to happen, it would not be detected because there’s no light there to pick it up.”

At the end of the path, the researchers would undo the operations so that to an outside observer, it would seem as though the holes never existed.

The new method covers 46 percent of the spots in a cable, through which the optical data runs, with time holes that can be repeated at 12.7 gigabits per second a speed used in commercial applications.

The new technique could one day be used to create ultrasecure Internet communications, or to foil communications between criminals such as terrorists. On a more mundane level, it could be used to avoid data traffic jams at connection points in networks, Lukens said.

The findings are a significant advance, McCall said.

“It does make it possible to do these things at telecommunication data rates,” McCall told LiveScience. “And as we all know, once the tabletop demonstration has been shown, it’s then a matter of technology the miniaturization, the efficient system engineering tend to follow.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/06/06/new-invisibility-cloak-creates-holes-in-time/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2VeUZwyPt

1 Comment

Filed under Humor and Observations

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

June 1, 2013 · 10:48 am

Next-generation flying car

Terrafugia unveils next-generation flying car

Published May 07, 2013

FoxNews.com

  • tfx-660.jpg
    Terrafugia
  • txf-takeoff-660.jpg
    Terrafugia
  • txf-flying-660.jpg
    Terrafugia
  • txf-road-660.jpg
    Terrafugia
  • txf-parked-660.jpg
    Terrafugia
It’s a flying car!
At least more than the last one was.

Terrafugia, creators of the Transition street-legal airplane, have unveiled their vision for the next generation of personal aircraft, the TF-X.

The TF-X is closer to being a direct replacement for the automobile than the Transition, which features retractable wings that allow it to be driven on public roads and is primarily intended for use as a conventional aircraft that takes off and lands from an airport runway.

It’s also a hybrid, in more ways than one.

Although it flies like a fixed-wing aircraft, the four-seat TF-X was designed to take off and land vertically with the help of collapsible, electrically-powered rotors mounted on the ends of its fold-up wings. They draw their energy from a battery pack of yet-to-be-determined size and chemistry that can either be charged via an electrical outlet, or by the gas turbine engine that powers a rear-mounted propeller when the TF-X is in flight.

On the ground, the TF-X is propelled by electric motors in the wheels that are also run off of the battery pack, or in series hybrid mode where the turbine generates electricity after the battery charge is depleted.

A pilot’s license will still be required to fly the TF-X, but Terrafugia says a five-hour training session is all it will take to learn how to operate the vehicle. However, the idea is that you won’t have to do much of the flying at all.

Thanks to the FAA’s NextGen program, which will require all aircraft to be equipped with satellite transponders sending their exact location to a centralized air traffic management system starting in 2020, the TF-X could be able to fly entirely by itself from takeoff to landing. The pilot will still be ultimately responsible for the operation of the vehicle, and can fly it manually, but shouldn’t need to do more than enter a destination into a navigation system, sit back and enjoy the ride.

A 500-mile range is planned along with a top speed of 200 mph, and a built-in parachute will bring it safely to the ground in the event of any major mechanical failures along the way.

But don’t plan to impress the neighbors by lifting off from your driveway just yet. Terrafugia says the powerful prop wash of the TF-X will require a clear 100-foot diameter zone for takeoffs and landings, which will likely need to be regulated like helicopter pads are today. Terrafugia envisions more of these being established by cities and towns with the advent of vehicles like the TF-X.

They’ll have plenty of time to sort it out. Terrafugia figures it’ll be 8 to 10 years before the TF-X makes it from the drawing board to the skies, and even the Transition is still a couple of years away from entering production. The company is aiming to start delivering the $279,000 vehicles in early 2015.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/05/07/terrafugia-unveils-next-generation-flying-car/#ixzz2UvtwfInC

1 Comment

Filed under Humor and Observations

Tagged as , , , ,

May 16, 2013 · 11:33 am

Teenager Designs Better Nuclear Plant

Meet the teenager who designed a safer nuclear power plant

By Elizabeth Palermo

Published May 15, 2013

TechNewsDaily

  • tayler-wilson-ted

    Taylor Wilson (TED)

Do nuclear power plants need a redesign? Critics of nuclear energy seem to think so, and so does nuclear energy advocate, Taylor Wilson. A physics wunderkind, Wilson became the youngest person to ever create fusion at age 14. And since graduating from high school last year, he’s devoted himself to finding innovative solutions to the world’s biggest problems.

The now nineteen-year-old Wilson recently spoke to a TED audience about his design for a small, modular fission reactor that is both less expensive and much safer to operate than today’s nuclear reactors.

Its assembly-line construction, 30-year fuel life and low usage cost make Wilson’s reactor an ideal source of electricity for both developing nations and space explorers, according to the young scientist.

To get an idea of how today’s nuclear reactors work, Wilson first explained to his listeners at TED how electricity is produced using a steam turbine. In a steam turbine system, water boils and turns to steam, which turns the turbine and creates electricity.

Nuclear fission, Wilson said, is really just a fancy tool for getting the water in a steam turbine system to boil quickly and steadily.

Today’s nuclear power plants produce steam for their turbines using pressurized-water reactors — or big pots of water under high pressure — which are heated up with help from uranium dioxide fuel rods encased in zirconium. These rods control and maintain the nuclear fission reaction.

When nuclear power was first used to heat water in a turbine system, it was a big advancement in existing technology. But Wilson said his idea for a redesign stemmed from the suspicion that it wasn’t really the best way to do it.

“Is fission kind of played out, or is there something left to innovate here?” Wilson said he asked himself. “And I realized that I had hit upon something that I think has this huge potential to change the world.”

Instead of finding a new way to boil water, Wilson’s compact, molten salt reactor found a way to heat up gas. That is, really heat it up.

Wilson’s fission reactor operates at 600 to 700 degrees Celsius. And because the laws of thermodynamics say that high temperatures lead to high efficiencies, this reactor is 45 to 50 percent efficient.

Traditional steam turbine systems are only 30 to 35 percent efficient because their reactors run at low temperatures of about 200 to 300 degrees Celsius.

And Wilson’s reactor isn’t just hot, it’s also powerful. Despite its small size, the reactor generates between 50 and 100 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 homes, according to Wilson.

Another innovative component of Wilson’s take on nuclear fission is its source of fuel. The molten salt reactor runs off of “down-blended weapons pits.” In other words, all the highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium collecting dust since the Cold War could be put to use for peaceful purposes.

And unlike traditional nuclear power plants, Wilson’s miniature power plants would be buried below ground, making them a boon for security advocates.

According to Wilson, his reactor only needs to be refueled every 30 years, compared to the 18-month fuel cycle of most power plants. This means they can be sealed up underground for a long time, decreasing the risk of proliferation.

Wilson’s reactor is also less prone to proliferation because it doesn’t operate at high pressure like today’s pressurized-water reactors or use ceramic control rods, which release hydrogen when heated and lead to explosions during nuclear power plant accidents, like the one at Fukushima in 2011.

In the event of an accident in one of Wilson’s reactors, the fuel from the core would drain into a “sub-critical” setting- or tank- underneath the reactor, which neutralizes the reaction. The worst that could happen, according to Wilson, is that the reactor is destroyed.

“But we’re not going to contaminate large quantities of land,” said Wilson. “So I really think that in the, say, 20 years it’s going to take us to get fusion and make fusion a reality, this could be the source of energy that provides carbon-free electricity.”

Wilson said his idea could help combat climate change, bring affordable power to the developing world and power rockets to explore space.

“There’s something really poetic about using nuclear power to propel us to the stars,” Wilson said, “Because the stars are giant fusion reactors. They’re giant nuclear cauldrons in the sky … there’s something poetic about perfecting nuclear fission and using it as a future source of innovative energy.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/05/15/teenager-designs-safer-nuclear-power-plants/?intcmp=features#ixzz2TTvuJwJc

3 Comments

Filed under Humor and Observations

Tagged as , , , , ,

May 14, 2013 · 6:04 pm

Faster than light drives a reality?

Warp speed, Scotty: Faster than light drives a reality?

By Jillian Scharr

Published May 14, 2013

TechNewsDaily

  • The 100 Year Spaceship

    NASA appears to be debating a way to permanently colonize another planet, boldly going where no one has ever gone — and where no one could come back, some fear. (Paramount)

In the “Star Trek” TV shows and films, the U.S.S. Enterprise’s warp engine allows the ship to move faster than light, an ability that is, as Spock would say, “highly illogical.”

However, there’s a loophole in Einstein’s general theory of relativity that could allow a ship to traverse vast distances in less time than it would take light. The trick? It’s not the starship that’s moving — it’s the space around it.

In fact, scientists at NASA are right now working on the first practical field test toward proving the possibility of warp drives and faster-than-light travel. Maybe the warp drive on “Star Trek” is possible after all. [See also: Warp Drive: Can It Be Done? (Video)]

‘Nature can do it. So the salient question is, can we?’

– Physicist Harold ‘Sonny’ White, with NASA’s Johnson Space Center 

According to Einstein’s theory, an object with mass cannot go as fast or faster than the speed of light. The original “Star Trek” series ignored this “universal speed limit” in favor of a ship that could zip around the galaxy in a matter of days instead of decades. They tried to explain the ship’s faster-than-light capabilities by powering the warp engine with a “matter-antimatter” engine. Antimatter was a popular field of study in the 1960s, when creator Gene Roddenberry was first writing the series. When matter and antimatter collide, their mass is converted to kinetic energy in keeping with Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence formula, E=mc2.

In other words, matter-antimatter collision is a potentially powerful source of energy and fuel, but even that wouldn’t be enough to propel a starship to faster-than-light speeds.

Nevertheless, it’s thanks to “Star Trek” that the word “warp” is now practically synonymous with faster-than-light travel.

Is warp drive possible?
Decades after the original “Star Trek” show had gone off the air, pioneering physicist and avowed Trek fan Miguel Alcubierre argued that maybe a warp drive is possible after all. It just wouldn’t work quite the way “Star Trek” thought it did.

Things with mass can’t move faster than the speed of light. But what if, instead of the ship moving through space, the space was moving around the ship?

Space doesn’t have mass. And we know that it’s flexible: space has been expanding at a measurable rate ever since the Big Bang. We know this from observing the light of distant stars — over time, the wavelength of the stars’ light as it reaches Earth is lengthened in a process called “redshifting.” According to the Doppler effect, this means that the source of the wavelength is moving further away from the observer — i.e. Earth.

So we know from observing redshifted light that the fabric of space is movable. [See also: What to Wear on a 100-Year Starship Voyage]

Alcubierre used this knowledge to exploit a loophole in the “universal speed limit.” In his theory, the ship never goes faster than the speed of light — instead, space in front of the ship is contracted while space behind it is expanded, allowing the ship to travel distances in less time than light would take. The ship itself remains in what Alcubierre termed a “warp bubble” and, within that bubble, never goes faster than the speed of light.

Since Alcubierre published his paper “The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast travel within general relativity” in 1994, many physicists and science fiction writers have played with his theory —including “Star Trek” itself. [See also: Top 10 Star Trek Technologies]

Alcubierre’s warp drive theory was retroactively incorporated into the “Star Trek” mythos by the 1990s TV series “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

In a way, then, “Star Trek” created its own little grandfather paradox: Though ultimately its theory of faster-than-light travel was heavily flawed, the series established a vocabulary of light-speed travel that Alcubierre eventually formalized in his own warp drive theories.

The Alcubierre warp drive is still theoretical for now. “The truth is that the best ideas sound crazy at first. And then there comes a time when we can’t imagine a world without them.” That’s a statement from the 100 Year Starship organization, a think tank devoted to making Earth what “Star Trek” would call a “warp-capable civilization” within a century.

The first step toward a functional warp drive is to prove that a “warp bubble” is even possible, and that it can be artificially created.

That’s exactly what physicist Harold “Sonny” White and a team of researchers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas are doing right now.

NASA’s warp drive project
According to Alcubierre’s theory, one could create a warp bubble by applying negative energy, or energy created in a vacuum. This process relies on the Casimir effect, which states that a vacuum is not actually a void; instead, a vacuum is actually full of fluctuating electromagnetic waves. Distorting these waves creates negative energy, which possibly distorts space-time, creating a warp bubble.

To see if space-time distortion has occurred in a lab experiment, the researchers shine two highly targeted lasers: one through the site of the vacuum and one through regular space. The researchers will then compare the two beams, and if the wavelength of the one going through the vacuum is lengthened, i.e. redshifted, in any way, they’ll know that it passed through a warp bubble. [See also: How Video Games Help Fuel Space Exploration]

White and his team have been at work for a few months now, but they have yet to get a satisfactory reading. The problem is that the field of negative energy is so small, the laser so precise, that even the smallest seismic motion of the earth can throw off the results.

When we talked to White, he was in the process of moving the test equipment to a building on the Johnson Space Center campus that was originally built for the Apollo space program. “The lab is seismically isolated, so the whole floor can be floated,” White told TechNewsDaily. “But the system hadn’t been [activated] for a while so part of the process was, we had the system inspected and tested.”

White is now working on recalibrating the laser for the new location. He wouldn’t speculate on when his team could expect conclusive data, nor how long until fully actuated warp travel might be possible, but he remains convinced that it’s only a matter of time.

“The bottom line is, nature can do it,” said White. “So the salient question is, ‘can we?'”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/05/14/warp-speed-scotty-star-trek-ftl-drive-may-actually-work/?intcmp=features#ixzz2TJpE9oFk

1 Comment

Filed under Humor and Observations

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

May 1, 2013 · 2:03 pm

27 Science Fiction Technologies Made Real in 2012

27 SCIENCE FICTIONS THAT BECAME SCIENCE FACTS IN 2012

We may never have our flying cars, but the future is here. From creating fully functioning artificial leaves to hacking the human brain, science made a lot of breakthroughs this year.
 1. QUADRIPLEGIC USES HER MIND TO CONTROL HER ROBOTIC ARM


At the University of Pittsburgh, the neurobiology department worked with 52-year-old Jan Scheuermann over the course of 13 weeks to create a robotic arm controlled only by the power of Scheuermann’s mind.
The team implanted her with two 96-channel intracortical microelectrodes. Placed in the motor cortex, which controls all limb movement, the integration process was faster than anyone expected. On the second day, Jan could use her new arm with a 3-D workspace. By the end of the 13 weeks, she was capable of performing complex tasks with seven-dimensional movement, just like a biological arm.
To date, there have been no negative side effects.
Source: gizmodo.com

2. DARPA ROBOT CAN TRAVERSE AN OBSTACLE COURSE

Once the robot figures out how to do that without all the wires, humanity is doomed.
DARPA was also hard at work this year making robots to track humans and run as fast as a cheetah, which seems like a great combination with no possibility of horrible side effects.
Source: jwherrman

3. GENETICALLY MODIFIED SILK IS STRONGER THAN STEEL


Photo Courtesy of Indigo Moon Yarns.

At the University of Wyoming, scientists modified a group of silkworms to produce silk that is, weight for weight, stronger than steel. Different groups hope to benefit from the super-strength silk, including stronger sutures for the medical community, a biodegradable alternative to plastics, and even lightweight armor for military purposes.
Source: bbc.co.uk

4. DNA WAS PHOTOGRAPHED FOR THE FIRST TIME


Using an electron microscope, Enzo di Fabrizio and his team at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa snapped the first photos of the famous double helix.
Source: newscientist.com / via: davi296

5. INVISIBILITY CLOAK TECHNOLOGY TOOK A HUGE LEAP FORWARD


British Columbia company HyperStealth Biotechnology showed a functioning prototype of its new fabric to the U.S. and Canadian military this year. The material, called Quantum Stealth, bends light waves around the wearer without the use of batteries, mirrors, or cameras. It blocks the subject from being seen by visual means but also keeps them hidden from thermal scans and infrared.
Source: toxel.com

6. SPRAY-ON SKIN


ReCell by Avita Medical is a medical breakthrough for severe-burn victims. The technology uses a postage stamp–size piece of skin from the patient, leaving the donor site with what looks like a rug burn. Then the sample is mixed with an enzyme harvested from pigs and sprayed back onto the burn site. Each tiny graft expands, covering a space up to the size of a book page within a week. Since the donor skin comes from the patient, the risk of rejection is minimal.
Source: news.discovery.com

7. JAMES CAMERON REACHED THE DEEPEST KNOWN POINT IN THE OCEAN


Cameron was the first solo human to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench. At 6.8 miles deep, it is perhaps more a more alien place to scientists than some foreign planets are. The 2.5-story “vertical torpedo” sub descended over a period of two and a half hours before taking a variety of samples.
Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

8. STEM CELLS COULD EXTEND HUMAN LIFE BY OVER 100 YEARS


When fast-aging elderly mice with a usual lifespan of 21 days were injected with stem cells from younger mice at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Pittsburgh, the results were staggering. Given the injection approximately four days before they were expected to die, not only did the elderly mice live — they lived threefold their normal lifespan, sticking around for 71 days. In human terms, that would be the equivalent of an 80-year-old living to be 200.
Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

9. 3-D PRINTER CREATES FULL-SIZE HOUSES IN ONE SESSION


The D-Shape printer, created by Enrico Dini, is capable of printing a two-story building, complete with rooms, stairs, pipes, and partitions. Using nothing but sand and an inorganic binding compound, the resulting material has the same durability as reinforced concrete with the look of marble. The building process takes approximately a fourth of the time as traditional buildings, as long as it sticks to rounded structures, and can be built without specialist knowledge or skill sets.
Source: gizmag.com

10. SELF-DRIVING CARS ARE LEGAL IN NEVADA, FLORIDA, AND CALIFORNIA


Google started testing its driverless cars in the beginning of 2012, and by May, Nevada was the first state to take the leap in letting them roam free on the roads. With these cars logging over 300,000 autonomous hours so far, the only two accidents involving them happened when they were being manually piloted.
Source: en.wikipedia.org

11. VOYAGER I LEAVES THE SOLAR SYSTEM


Launched in 1977, Voyager I is the first manmade object to fly beyond the confines of our solar system and out into the blackness of deep space. It was originally designed to send home images of Saturn and Jupiter, but NASA scientists soon realized eventually the probe would float out into the great unknown. To that end, a recording was placed on Voyager I with sounds ranging from music to whale calls, and greetings in 55 languages.
Source: space.com

12. CUSTOM JAW TRANSPLANT CREATED WITH 3-D PRINTER


A custom working jawbone was created for an 83-year-old patient using titanium powder and bioceramic coating. The first of its kind, the successful surgery opens the door for individualized bone replacement and, perhaps one day, the ability to print out new muscles and organs.
Source: telegraph.co.uk

13. ROGUE PLANET FLOATING THROUGH SPACE


Until this year, scientists knew planets orbited a star. Then, in came CFBDSIR2149. With four to seven times the mass of Jupiter, it is the first free-floating object to be officially defined as an exoplanet and not a brown dwarf.
Source: sciencenews.org

14. CHIMERA MONKEYS CREATED FROM MULTIPLE EMBRYOS


While all the donor cells were from rhesus monkeys, the researchers combined up to six distinct embryos into three baby monkeys. According to Dr. Mitalipov, “The cells never fuse, but they stay together and work together to form tissues and organs.” Chimera species are used in order to understand the role specific genes play in embryonic development and may lead to a better understanding of genetic mutation in humans.
Source: bbc.co.uk

15. ARTIFICIAL LEAVES GENERATE ELECTRICITY


Using relatively inexpensive materials, Daniel G. Nocera created the world’s first practical artificial leaf. The self-contained units mimic the process of photosynthesis, but the end result is hydrogen instead of oxygen. The hydrogen can then be captured into fuel cells and used for electricity, even in the most remote locations on Earth.
Source: sciencedaily.com

16. GOOGLE GOGGLES BRING THE INTERNET EVERYWHERE


Almost everyone has seen the video of Google’s vision of the future. With their Goggles, everyday life is overlaid with a HUD (Head’s Up Display). Controlled by a combination of voice control and where the user is looking, the Goggles show pertinent information, surf the web, or call a loved one.
Source: heraldsun.com.au

17. THE HIGGS-BOSON PARTICLE WAS DISCOVERED


Over the summer, multinational research center CERN confirmed it had discovered a particle that behaved enough like a Higgs boson to be given the title. For scientists, this meant there could be a Higgs field, similar to an electromagnetic field. In turn, this could lead to the scientists’ ability to interact with mass the same way we currently do with magnetic fields.
Source: forbes.com

18. FLEXIBLE, INEXPENSIVE SOLAR PANELS CHALLENGE FOSSIL FUEL


At half the price of today’s cheapest solar cells, Twin Creeks’ Hyperion uses an ion canon to bombard wafer-thin panels. The result is a commercially viable, mass-produced solar panel that costs around 40 cents per watt.
Source: extremetech.com

19. DIAMOND PLANET DISCOVERED


An exoplanet made entirely of diamonds was discovered this year by an international research team. Approximately five times the size of Earth, the small planet had mass similar to that of Jupiter. Scientists believe the short distance from its star coupled with the exoplanet’s mass means the planet, remnants of another star, is mostly crystalline carbon.
Source: io9.com

20. EYE IMPLANTS GIVE SIGHT TO THE BLIND


Two blind men in the U.K. were fitted with eye implants during an eight-hour surgery with promising results. After years of blindness, both had regained “useful” vision within weeks, picking up the outlines of objects and dreaming in color. Doctors expect continued improvement as their brains rewire themselves for sight.
Source: telegraph.co.uk

21. WALES BARCODES DNA OF EVERY FLOWERING PLANT SPECIES IN THE COUNTRY


Photo Courtesy of Virtual Tourist.

Led by the National Botanic Garden’s head of research and conversation, a database of DNA for all 1,143 native species of Wales has been created. With the use of over 5,700 barcodes, plants can now be identified by photos of their seeds, roots, wood, or pollen. The goal is to help researchers track things such as bee migration patterns or how a plant species encroaches on a new area. The hope is to eventually barcode both animal and plant species across the world.
Source: walesonline.co.uk

22. FIRST UNMANNED COMMERCIAL SPACE FLIGHT DOCKS WITH THE ISS


SpaceX docked its unmanned cargo craft, the Dragon, with the International Space Station. It marked the first time in history a private company had sent a craft to the station. The robotic arm of the ISS grabbed the capsule in the first of what will be many resupply trips.
Source: nytimes.com

23. ULTRA-FLEXIBLE “WILLOW” GLASS WILL ALLOW FOR CURVED ELECTRONIC DEVICES


Created by New York–based developer Corning, the flexible glass prototype was shown off at an industry trade show in Boston. At only 0.05mm thick, it’s as thin as a sheet of paper. Perhaps Sony’s wearable PC concept will actually be possible before 2020.
Source: bbc.co.uk

24. NASA BEGINS USING ROBOTIC EXOSKELETONS


The X1 Robotic Exoskeleton weighs in at 57 lbs. and contains four motorized joints along with six passive ones. With two settings, it can either hinder movement, such as when helping astronauts exercise in space, or aid movement, assisting paraplegics with walking.
Source: news.cnet.com

25. HUMAN BRAIN IS HACKED


Usenix Security had a team of researchers use off-the-shelf technology to show how vulnerable the human brain really is. With an EEG (electroencephalograph) headset attached to the scalp and software to figure out what the neurons firing are trying to do, it watches for spikes in brain activity when the user recognizes something like one’s ATM PIN number or a child’s face.
Source: extremetech.com

26. FIRST PLANET WITH FOUR SUNS DISCOVERED


Discovered by amateur astronomers, the planet closely orbits a pair of stars, which in turn orbit another set of more distant stars. It’s approximately the size of Neptune, so scientists are still trying to work out how the planet has avoided being pulled apart by the gravitational force of that many stars.
Source: io9.com

27. MICROSOFT PATENTED THE “HOLODECK”


The patent suggests Microsoft wants to take gaming beyond a single screen and turn it into an immersive experience — beaming images all over the room, accounting for things like furniture, and bending the graphics around them to create a seamless environment.
Source: bbc.co.uk

Found on: buzzfeed.com

2 Comments

Filed under Humor and Observations

Tagged as , , , , , ,

April 7, 2013 · 1:37 pm

Personal Drone for $700

As if the proliferation of thousands of drones over foreign and now domestic airspace was not enough of a loss of privacy and rights, we now enter an era of personal drones.  As with all things, the abilities will go up and the cost will go down from here.  Having your own fleet of spy drones could be as common as your I-phone or droid is right now.  It’s a scary new world of technological innovation that will have to be absorbed to see how it truly effects us all.  I for one, do not think it is a good idea that my neighbors can fly drones to my window, over my pool, or watch my backyard barbecues.  With simple variations they can be modified to be armed, making future worries about gun control seem obsolete.  You decide.

The GPS-stabilized Phantom isn’t exactly a toy, but that doesn’t stop it from being serious fun.
By Clay DillowPosted 03.04.2013 at 2:01 pm10 Comments
DJI's Phantom In Flight

DJI’s Phantom In Flight Also pictured: NYC’s famous Flatiron Building. Dan Bracaglia

It’s a sign of the times when new consumer-grade, commercially available remote-controlled drones just show up unsolicited at our offices with an invitation from the manufacturer to take them for a spin. Drones are big news these days, their reputation alternately buoyed and tarnished by their efficacy as machines of warfare and the lack of solid legalities governing their use, and likewise by their limitless potential across a range of commercial applications and their similarly limitless potential for abuse where personal privacy is concerned.

But aforementioned concerns notwithstanding, unmanned aerial systems will soon be everywhere and DJI Innovations’ Phantom is the kind of system that will surely be a part of that shift. Designed for neither industry nor government, the Phantom is a pretty serious UAS designed for you and me–the average consumer that simply wants to fly. So you can imagine the unrestrained glee with which we unboxed this unexpected arrival in the afternoon post.

WHAT IT IS
DJI is a maker of flight control systems for UAS as well as a handful of complete unmanned aerial vehicles, mostly geared toward aerial photography applications. Most of these platforms are somewhat complex and quite expensive–in other words, best suited for commercial customers or the most serious and well-heeled hobbyists. The Phantom is DJI’s attempt at packaging its technology in a way that is both inexpensive and user-friendly, so much so that anyone can get into unmanned flight. It’s certainly not the only consumer-oriented UAS (see ourearlier review of the Parrot AR Drone 2.0) or the least expensive–in fact, it’s a few hundred dollars more than other recreational RC quadcopters. But Phantom lives in a space between the toy quadcopter you might pick up for the kids at Brookstone and the professional-grade hardware that aerial photographers or search and rescue authorities might use.

The features that set it apart: serious range and altitude, a durable construction that withstood the serious abuse (both intentional and unintentional) we threw at it, and a satellite-based stabilizing capability that proved quite effective. But that’s not all there is to the Phantom; there were a few aspects of this product that we found clumsy, non-intuitive, and unnecessarily difficult. So if you’re seriously interested in this kind of technology I strongly recommend you read all the way to the end of this post where Phantom gets a chance to redeem itself, because I’m going to lead off with all the things I didn’t like about this otherwise incredibly fun little machine.

WHAT’S BAD
It’s Not Really “Ready To Fly”: Consumer products should be relatively easy to use right out of the box, and indeed DJI describes Phantom as an “all in one solution ready to fly.” But unboxing the drone is not so simple. Attaching the legs with a phillips screwdriver, attaching the propellors with the provided fasteners–this is all stuff that’s expected when you purchase something with “some assembly required.” But actually transitioning from an open box to a vehicle that’s “ready to fly” requires a bit more work. The “Quickstart Manual” is a densely-worded 16 pages long. The battery charging procedure requires its own set of instructions. The calibration process (that is, the process that orients the vehicle’s assorted gyros and accelerometers, as well as syncs it up with various GPS satellites–more on those later) requires some steps that seem nonsensical, like “flip this switch ten times” (ten times!). We don’t mind a learning curve, nor do we mind a little assembly, but “ready to fly” is a stretch.

We Don’t Speak Robot: The basic interface between user and machine is a standard RC helicopter-style controller, the dual-joystick kind that has rotor throttle and vehicle rotation pegged to one joystick and lateral movements controlled by the other. But that’s where the simplicity ends. Much of the rest of the machine-human communication is conducted through a blinking LED on the rear of the ‘craft that speaks in something of a colorized morse code that you, the user, must memorize if you don’t want to keep the quickstart manual (16 pages!) next to you at all times. In different flight modes, the blinking colored lights and their many patterns mean different things. Example: When syncing Phantom to GPS satellites, one yellow blink means you have more than six GPS positioning satellites at your disposal. If you have exactly six, you get a yellow blink, followed by red. Less than five? One yellow, three reds. Exactly five? One yellow, a pause, two reds. Switch to a different flight mode, and the language (and color pattern) changes. It’s kind of like Richard Dreyfus communicating with the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind with all those blinking lights and tones. That is to say, it’s kind of annoying.

The Controller And Aircraft Don’t Talk To Each Other Enough: Aside from the fact that it’s kind of huge, we don’t take issue with Phantom’s handheld RC controller. If you’ve ever flown a RC helicopter, you’ll take to it immediately. One thing we loved about the latest Parrot AR Drone is that in “Absolute Control” mode the user can always control the drone from his or her point of view–that is, no matter which way the “front” of the drone is facing, it will always travel forward, backward, left, or right respective to the direction the pilot is facing. Phantom’s controller lacks the hardware that makes this kind of intuitive flight possible, and while it does have a couple of helpful flight modes (“Home Lock” and “Course Lock”) that peg the directional orientation of the drone either to it’s point of takeoff or the direction it’s facing at takeoff (respectively), if you are walking around and turning as you fly the drone–and you’ll want to–it’s pretty easy to lose that intuitive link between the direction you are facing and the direction the drone is facing.

No Built In Camera, No Drone’s-Eye View: Adding features adds expense, and in the case of aircraft they can also add weight which reduces performance and flight duration. But cameras are so small and cheap these days–the Parrot AR Drone 2.0, the most popular comparable recreational quadcopter, comes with two built-in HD cameras–that we were struck by the fact that the Phantom has none. While it does come with a mount for a GoPro camera (sold separately), that means that it also doesn’t offer a drone’s-eye view, which is one of the more fun aspects of the Parrot and a nice way to pilot the vehicle beyond line of sight (which we aren’t endorsing, since doing so violates FAA rules–but still).

Battery Life: I’d preface this complaint by pointing out that there is nothing about Phantom’s battery life that is not absolutely par for course. Phantom runs on a small, dense lithium-polymer brick that takes roughly 45 minutes to an hour to charge fully. DJI claims a full charge is good for ten to fifteen minutes of flight time. That’s not very long. The good news: we found that we were able to squeeze even a little more flight time than that out of our machine (perhaps because on these flights we were not carrying the added weight of a camera). And fifteen minutes is about average for this kind of product. So this isn’t really a complaint about Phantom, but it is something you should be aware of before you invest in the thing. Somebody please invent a better battery already.

Phantom: All Lit Up

Phantom: All Lit Up:  Dan Bracaglia 

WHAT’S GOOD
This Drone Knows Its Place: Now that the negative stuff is out of the way, let’s plunge into the many things Phantom gets right. First of all, the unique thing about Phantom is its GPS stabilization. That is, when in GPS flight mode Phantom is actually locating itself in space via several GPS satellites, and this allows for some very stable flight characteristics. With GPS enabled, you can be running Phantom at a dead lateral sprint and then let off the directional control. Phantom will actually pitch slightly in the opposite direction of travel (like applying brakes) and then correct itself back to the point in space where you first let off the accelerator (with GPS disabled, Phantom will right itself and cease acceleration when you release the directional control, but its momentum will continue to carry it some distance). Likewise, with GPS enabled Phantom can hover very precisely even in moderate winds, helpful for capturing aerial photography or video (more on that in a moment).

A good way to test this is to trigger the failsafe landing mode, which returns Phantom to its point of origin should it lose communication with the controller. Flying it on a soccer pitch adorned with plenty of painted lines for reference, we cut the power to the controller several times. Each time Phantom ceased lateral motion, climbed to sixty feet, slowly returned to the airspace over its point of takeoff, and landed itself on the ground below. Even with a stiff breeze blowing it never missed the mark by more than a couple feet, well within the standard margin of error for GPS technology.

It’s GoPro Ready: We love the GoPro. It goes pretty much anywhere, even where the user can’t or won’t, and returns amazing video and still images. Disappointed as we are that there’s no built in camera, the addition of the included GoPro mount is a nice compromise for the user who wants to quickly and relatively cheaply turn Phantom into an aerial photography rig (see some of what we captured with ours in the video below).

It Goes Fast, It Goes Far, It Goes Really, Really High: If I haven’t yet mentioned that this thing is really fun to fly, let me drive home the point here. Other quadcopters are fun, but this thing really moves. DJI lists its maximum flight velocity at 10 meters per second or roughly 22 miles per hour, but it sure feels a lot faster when you’re skimming across the surface of a body of water or careering around a tree-filled park (not recommended). The maximum operating range is listed at 300 meters, or more than three football fields–far enough to get beyond the line of sight that, by the way, the FAA strictly demands you maintain between you and your UAV at all times. The FAA also demands you keep it below 400 feet, so we’re not even going to tell you how high it goes (as law-abiding citizens we couldn’t possibly know), but suffice it to say that it goes very, very high. Very.

Crashes Hardly Slowed It Down: While we didn’t intentionally try to break our Phantom, we did do some questionably intelligent things with it, like fly around our office (we really don’t recommend indoor flight). At one point during an outdoor flight we failed to tighten one of the propellor fasteners down adequately after some on-the-ground maintenance and threw a propellor at roughly 50 feet up, sending our Phantom tumbling from the sky (and providing some excellent video). We crash-landed it several times. We broke propellors (DJI provides spares) and cracked our GoPro mount. But the vehicle itself shows no signs of slowing down.

PRICE
$679. There are a handful of authorized vendors listed on DJI-Innovations’ website, or you can order from the company directly.

VERDICT
If it seems like the top half of this review was overly critical, well, it’s a review and this is a first-generation product. The bottom line is: This is a really, really fun machine. To be fair, some of the hardware and setup complaints, like the multi-step battery charge procedure, likely stem from DJI doing its best to use generic, off-the-shelf components to keep the cost down. And while the user interface takes a while to get the hang of, make no mistake–I personally found this UAS to be a whole lot of fun, and so did the many Popular Science staffers here that piloted it.

At nearly $700, DJI’s Phantom is no cheap toy and it shouldn’t be treated like one (in fact, it’s a little too complicated a machine for unsupervised use by children). But that’s the point. It’s a UAS that lives in a space somewhere between the toy recreational quadrotors already on the market and the far more serious multi-thousand-dollar unmanned hardware that is aimed at government and commercial work. These technologies are already taking to the sky for some applications and will only proliferate as the FAA further opens up the national airspace to UAS opeations in the next few years. Phantom exists in a pretty empty space right now, but we’d be surprised if it stays that way for long.

Leave a comment

Filed under Humor and Observations

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

April 4, 2013 · 10:42 pm

New engine could boost electric cars

New internal combustion engine could boost electric cars

By 

Published March 13, 2013

FoxNews.com

  • A revolutionary new internal combustion engine doesn’t go in circles, at all.
Developed by engineers at the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Vehicle Concepts, the Free Piston Linear Generator is an all-new type of powerplant designed to be used as a range extender for electric cars.

The motor is comprised of two pistons, on either side of a single combustion chamber. Instead of using a crankcase to convert linear piston movement into rotational energy to turn a driveshaft or conventional electric motor, the pistons are mounted on air springs that generate electricity directly as they move back and forth.

As an added benefit, the design allows the size of the combustion chamber and its compression ratio to be infinitely adjusted without having to change parts, allowing it to run on a variety of fuels, including diesel, natural gas and hydrogen.

Although it currently exists only as an oversized technical demonstrator installed in a laboratory, the team behind it believes that it can be downsized into a compact unit that weighs about 125 pounds and puts out up to 40 hp. Several of the generators could be installed side by side to meet the power requirements of various vehicles.

The main hurdle holding back the widespread acceptance of electric cars are the expensive, heavy and relatively low-capacity batteries currently available, and the technology is improving at a snail’s pace. Range extenders allow automakers to use smaller, cheaper batteries that are good enough for everyday driving, while offering convenient long-range, though not zero-emissions, capability.

However, the motors found in cars like this on the road today, like the Chevrolet Volt and Fisker Karma, are simply internal combustion engines that have been converted from use in conventional vehicles, and not optimized for the task at hand. Future generations of plug-in hybrids are expected to feature engines specifically designed to act as range extenders, and the Free Piston Linear Generator is just one idea.

A spokesperson for the center says a production version of the Free Piston Linear Generator could be on the road within four or five years if an industrial partner comes on board to develop the technology for commercial use.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/03/13/new-internal-combustion-engine-could-boost-electric-cars/?intcmp=features#ixzz2PZ49Xjr7

Leave a comment

Filed under Humor and Observations

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

March 20, 2013 · 2:46 pm

Star Trek’s Tractor Beam Created

Star Trek ‘tractor beam’ created by scientists

Published January 27, 2013

SkyNews

  • Tractor Beam

    In “Stak Trek,” Federation starships relied upon tractor beams to hold and tow other vessels. Scientists may not be there yet, but they have managed to tow a small particle using light beams.

A team of scientists has created a real-life miniature “tractor beam” – as featured in the Star Trek series – in a development which may lead to more efficient medical testing.The microscopic beam – created by scientists from Scotland and the Czech Republic – allows a source of light to attract objects.

Light manipulation techniques have existed since the 1970s, but researchers say the experiment is the first instance of a beam being used to draw objects towards light.

Researchers from the University of St Andrews and the Institute of Scientific Instruments (ISI) in the Czech Republic say development of the beam may be an aid to medical testing, such as in the examination of blood samples.

A tractor beam was used to pull in spaceships and other large objects in the popular US science fiction show.

Normally, when matter and light interact, a solid object is pushed by the light and carried away in a stream of photons.

However, in recent years, researchers have realised that there is a space of parameters when this force reverses.

The scientists have now demonstrated the first experimental realisation of the concept.

Professor Pavel Zemanek of the ISI said: “The whole team have spent a number of years investigating various configurations of particles delivery by light.

“I am proud our results were recognised in this very competitive environment and I am looking forward to new experiments and applications. It is a very exciting time.”

Dr Oto Brzobohaty, also of the ISI, said: “These methods are opening new opportunities for fundamental phonics as well as applications for life-sciences.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/01/26/star-trek-tractor-beam-created-by-scientists/#ixzz2O3mTPFXo

2 Comments

Filed under Humor and Observations

Tagged as , , , , , ,

March 15, 2013 · 2:59 pm

First 3D Printed Working Automobile to be Made

 

In my continuing effort to preach to the world that the biggest revolution in technology in our lifetimes is 3d printing, here is yet another example.  The first “printed” car is to be manufactured and available in two years.  For other stories on this topic, type “3d printing” into the search box on the Home page.  You really should, the technology is already here, and it is amazing.

First 3D Printed Car To Hit The Roads In Two Years 

From NoCamels on 3/11/2013 at 4:27 PM

Avner Meyrav, NoCamels – Israel Innovation News

It might just be the precursor to the next industrial revolution and slowly but surely, 3D printing is expanding its presence into the realm of manufacturing. Now it seems that one of the first major industries to benefit from 3D printing is the same one that spawned the assembly line revolution – the automotive industry.

Israeli company Stratasys, already a major player in the field and its subsidiary, RedEye On Demand, will be part of a project aimed at putting the first 3D printed car on the roads within two years, in partnership with KOR EcoLogic.

“A future where 3D printers build cars may not be far off after all,” says Jim Bartel, VP of Stratasys and RedEye On Demand. “Jim Kor and his team at KOR EcoLogic had a vision for a more fuel-efficient car that would change how the world approaches manufacturing and today we’re achieving it. URBEE 2, the name of the car, shows the manufacturing world that anything really is possible. There are few design challenges [3D printing] capabilities can’t solve.”

A car built from 40 pieces

KOR EcoLogic will be in charge of the design end, building every inch of the car using computer aided design software. The design will then be turned into reality using RedEye On Demand and Stratasys printers. While standard cars have hundreds or even thousands of small parts, the URBEE 2 will be built using only 40 extremely complex interlocking pieces, made possible by 3D printing.

The material used to build the car will be a strong but lightweight plastic and the two-passenger vehicle will be able to travel at speeds of up to 70mph. According to Bartel, the car will also be highly fuel efficient. To prove it, Bartel explains, his team will try to set a world record by traveling in the car from San Francisco to New York City on only 10 gallons of fuel.

“As a mechanical engineer, I’ve always believed we could use technology to help us solve some of society’s greatest challenges, like minimizing our dependence on oil and reducing ozone emissions,” says Jim Kor, president and senior designer for Winnipeg-based KOR EcoLogic.

He adds: “How cool is it that American manufacturing can evolve to tackle these challenges head-on? Our team is excited to launch URBEE 2, putting a next-generation vehicle on the road that will eventually be sold to the public.”

URBEE 2 was preceded by URBEE 1, a prototype built entirely using 3D printing in 2011. While serving as proof to 3D printing’s potential, the car had no side mirrors or windshield wipers – both of which will be included in its updated version.

“With the Urbee 1 project, I learned that product design is nearly unencumbered by considerations on how parts can be made with digital manufacturing. That liberation is incredibly powerful and holds a lot of potential for the future of manufacturing,” says Kor.

.ORG-Connection: NoCamels.com is the leading news website on Israeli innovations in English. It covers all the latest Israeli innovations in the fields of technology, health, environment and lifestyle.

Leave a comment

Filed under Humor and Observations

Tagged as , , , , , ,