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Human Hibernation

2009-12-03T11:00:00.000-08:00

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a $2,227,500 grant to explore the possibility of inducing a hibernation-like state in “non-hibernating mammals” such as humans.

Cheng Chi Lee, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, is the main man behind the research.

Lee discovered that a particular molecule--the 5-prime adenosine monophosphate (5’-AMP) molecule--can induce a short hibernation-like state in mammals that do not normally hibernate. He said he is now trying to find ways to maintain that state long enough to perform major surgeries that could save human lives.

Although he is currently conducting the research on mice, Lee told CNSNews.com that he eventually wants to translate his findings to clinical practice.

“That’s what I think all scientists’ goals are, basically,” he said.

When an animal hibernates, he explained, its cells are deprived of the oxygen it receives during its waking hours. The cells can better endure this low-oxygen state when the animal reaches a state of hypothermia and its metabolism slows.

Similarly, a heart attack or stroke starves an organ of its oxygen. According to Lee, physicians have long been using cooling procedures to help human cells survive these conditions.

“If you follow the ambulance services now in response to heart attack--the first response when you reach a heart attack patient is to bring the body temperature down as quickly as possible while the patient is being transported to the hospital,” Lee said.

“If you cool the body temperature down, then you expand the window of preventing ischemia [oxygen-shortage] damage. It’s really simple, because if the cell is cooled, it needs less oxygen.”

Lee said the same principle applies to organ transplants. When the organ donor and recipient live in different parts of the country, the organ is preserved in an ice cooler or other refrigeration system during transport.

“It’s purely in a cool state, and the reason is that, as you cool the cells down, the need for oxygen decreases dramatically,” Lee said.

“This has been going on for a long time,” he told CNSNews.com. “Doctors have recognized this wonderfulness of the cooling process, but the catch in this area is that the cooling process is very difficult. It’s not very efficient.

“My hope is that by looking at how the body responds to the ability to cool, we can, down the road, provide a system to enhance the process,” Lee said.

In essence, Lee’s research may make hypothermia and human “hibernation” into clinical tools.

“The induction of hypometabolism in cells and organs to reduce ischemia damage holds enormous clinical promise in diverse fields, including treatment of stroke and heart attack,” Lee wrote in the Annual Review of Medicine in 2008.

The NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, which is funding this research, awards $500,000 annually to each researcher for five years. By 2011, this project will have cost $2.5 million. Lee said he hopes to apply for more NIH grants to fund his research for at least five or 10 more years.

“It takes some time for any tools to become common practice,” Lee explained. “If we can get something to clinical usage within five years, then I think we have done very well. That would be my dream. Even 10 years, it will be a very good achievement.”

NIH makes a wide variety of grants for medical research, but the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award is relatively difficult to secure.

“NIH has traditionally supported research projects, not individual investigators,” according to the NIH Web site, “however, complementary means might be necessary to identify scientists with ideas that have the potential for high impact, but that may be too novel, span too diverse a range of disciplines, or be at a stage too early to fare well in the traditional peer review process.”

The research falls under the guidance of a research “roadmap” that NIH created to guide funding of new research projects.

“To address this, the NIH Roadmap has created a new funding program, the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, to encourage creative, outside-the-box thinkers to pursue exciting and innovative ideas about biomedical research,” the Web site said.

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Urban Forest

2009-12-03T10:45:00.000-08:00

MAD architects are now working on a new project, Urban Forest
Located in chongqing, china. Drawing on the mountainous landscape of the country, the commercial high-rise building with over 70 floors is made up of curved, abstracted shaped floors which have been layered slightly off-center from one another to give the facade an organic look as it rises up into the sky.
A central cylindrical core structure supports all the floors and hosts the mechanical systems and elevators.

Each floor is also covered in floor-to-ceiling glass windows, providing expansive views of the city. A walk-around balcony of differing widths hosts the green garden space, as well as pools, trees, and courtyards. Some floors are nothing but open space, while others contain offices or residential space. Each floor is seen as a separate and unique level of the urban forest and is meant to combine both nature and the urban metropolis.

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Laboratory Meat

2009-12-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

SCIENTISTS have grown meat in the laboratory for the first time. Experts in Holland used cells from a live pig to replicate growth in a petri dish.

The advent of so-called “in-vitro” or cultured meat could reduce the billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted each year by farm animals — if people are willing to eat it.

So far the scientists have not tasted it, but they believe the breakthrough could lead to sausages and other processed products being made from laboratory meat in as little as five years’ time.

They initially extracted cells from the muscle of a live pig. Called myoblasts, these cells are programmed to grow into muscle and repair damage in animals.

The cells were then incubated in a solution containing nutrients to encourage them to multiply indefinitely. This nutritious “broth” is derived from the blood products of animal foetuses, although the intention is to come up with a synthetic solution.

The result was sticky muscle tissue that requires exercise, like human muscles, to turn it into a tougher steak-like consistency.

“You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals,” said Mark Post, professor of physiology at Eindhoven University, who is leading the Dutch government-funded research.

Post and his colleagues have so far managed to develop a soggy form of pork and are seeking to improve its texture. “What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue,” Post said.

“We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there. This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it.”

At present there is a question mark over the taste as laboratory rules prevent the scientists eating the fruits of their labour.

The Dutch experiments follow the creation of “fish fillets” derived from goldfish muscle cells in New York and pave the way for laboratory-grown chicken, beef and lamb.

The project, which is backed by a sausage manufacturer and has received £2m from the Dutch government, is seeking additional public funds to improve the technology.

Global meat and dairy product consumption is expected to double by 2050, according to the United Nations. This could have an unprecedented impact on climate change because the warming effect on the atmosphere of methane, a digestive by-product from farm animals, is 23 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. The UN has attributed 18% of the world’s greenhouse gases to livestock.

The Vegetarian Society reacted cautiously yesterday, saying: “The big question is how could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered. It would be very difficult to label and identify in a way that people would trust.” Peta, the animal rights group, said: “As far as we’re concerned, if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal there’s no ethical objection.”

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Computer Control with Brain Implants

2009-11-25T08:42:00.000-08:00

By the year 2020, you won't need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel Corp. researchers. Instead, users will open documents and surf the Web using nothing more than their brain waves.

Scientists at Intel's research lab in Pittsburgh are working to find ways to read and harness human brain waves so they can be used to operate computers, television sets and cell phones. The brain waves would be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in people's brains.

The scientists say the plan is not a scene from a sci-fi movie -- Big Brother won't be planting chips in your brain against your will. Researchers expect that consumers will want the freedom they will gain by using the implant.

"I think human beings are remarkable adaptive," said Andrew Chien, vice president of research and director of future technologies research at Intel Labs. "If you told people 20 years ago that they would be carrying computers all the time, they would have said, 'I don't want that. I don't need that.' Now you can't get them to stop [carrying devices]. There are a lot of things that have to be done first but I think [implanting chips into human brains] is well within the scope of possibility."

Intel research scientist Dean Pomerleau told Computerworld that users will soon tire of depending on a computer interface, and having to fish a device out of their pocket or bag to access it. He also predicted that users will tire of having to manipulate an interface with their fingers.

Instead, they'll simply manipulate their various devices with their brains.

"We're trying to prove you can do interesting things with brain waves," said Pomerleau. "Eventually people may be willing to be more committed ... to brain implants. Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts."

To get to that point Pomerleau and his research teammates from Intel, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, are currently working on decoding human brain activity.

Pomerleau said the team has used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) machines to determine that blood flow changes in specific areas of the brain based on what word or image someone is thinking of. People tend to show the same brain patterns for similar thoughts, he added.

For instance, if two people think of the image of a bear or hear the word bear or even hear a bear growl, a neuroimage would show similar brain activity. Basically, there are standard patterns that show up in the brain for different words or images.

Pomerleau said researchers are close to gaining the ability to build brain sensing technology into a head set that culd be used to manipulate a computer. The next step is development of a tiny, far less cumbersome sensor that could be implanted inside the brain.

Such brain research isn't limited to Intel and its university partners.

Almost two years ago, scientists in the U.S. and Japan announced that a monkey's brain was used to to control a humanoid robot. Miguel Nicolelis, a professor of neurobiology at Duke University and lead researcher on the project, said that researchers were hoping its work would help paralyzed people walk again.

And a month before that, a scientist at the University of Arizona reported that he had successfully built a robot that is guided by the brain and eyes of a moth. Charles Higgins, an associate professor at the university, predicted that in 10 to 15 years people will be using "hybrid" computers running a combination of technology and living organic tissue.

Today, Intel's Pomerleau said various research facilities are developing technologies to sense activity from inside the skull.

"If we can get to the point where we can accurately detect specific words, you could mentally type," he added. "You could compose characters or words by thinking about letters flashing on the screen or typing whole words rather than their individual characters."

Pomerleau also noted that the more scientists figure out about the brain, it will help them design better microprocessors. He said, "If we can see how the brain does it, then we could build smarter computers."

One word: Scary.

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Armored Airbag

2009-11-18T08:36:00.000-08:00

Textron's Tactical RPG Airbag Protection (TRAP) system uses radar to detect incoming warheads and deploy airbags on the threatened side of a vehicle. The airbags prevent the RPGs from exploding at all, and thereby avoids any cloud of shrapnel that could harm nearby infantry or civilians. TRAPS is currently undergoing tests on Humvees, and could also work with the Abrams tank, the Bradley, the Stryker and MRAPs.

The military has focused on countering roadside bombs with drones capable of sniffing out improvised explosives, and painfully realistic virtual simulators for training soldiers on detecting the threats. But DOD Buzz notes that counters to RPGs remain more elusive -- the U.S. military has so far relied on welding steel cages to high-value, lightly armored vehicles such as MRAP minesweepers.

We here at PopSci previously honored a different RPG counter for helicopters that fires nets to neutralize incoming rockets -- a chopper shield that won one of our Invention Awards in 2007.

Defense Tech points to another airbag concept that can deploy at light speed upon detecting blasts from improvised explosives on the road.

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Gecko Biocompatible Adhesive

2009-11-13T06:27:00.000-08:00

The toes of gecko lizards adhere to a wide variety of surfaces, enabling geckos to climb smooth and vertical surfaces, as well as cross indoor ceilings. As this adhesion doesn't utilize liquids or surface tension and it varies with humidity, it is thought to involve capillarity. MIT researchers in collaboration with researchers at two Boston hospitals relied on some of the principles that create geckos' feet adhesiveness, while developing a waterproof adhesive bandage that may soon be used for patching up surgical wounds or internal injuries.

Led by the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) faculty members, MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer and Jeffrey Karp, who is a bioengineer, the team utilized the micropatterning technology that is also used to create computer chips. By pouring a biodegradable polymer into microfabricated silicon molds with 200-to-500-nanometer-wide indentations, the researchers have created a "biorubber" tape with nanoscale hills and valleys on its surface, similar to the flexible nanopillars covering geckos' sticky toes. "We are inspired by the gecko to create a patterned interface to enhance the surface area of contact and thus the overall strength of adhesion." said Karp.

The surface area of this "biorubber" was then coated with a very thin layer of biocompatible sugar-based glue enabling a strong bond even to wet surfaces such as to heart, bladder or lung tissue. When the tape is applied, capillary forces pull tissue into the spaces between the pillars, and the glue adheres to tissue proteins. This biodegradable bandage dissolves over time and does not have to be removed.

Adapting the previously known gecko-like dry adhesive technology for medical applications has been challenging, as a medical adhesive has to be able to stick once and strongly in a wet environment, and to be biocompatible (that does not cause inflammation), biodegradable (that dissolve over time without producing toxins) and elastic (in order to suit the bonded tissues and stretch with them).

The resulting "gecko tape" is the first such tape to show good adhesive strength and safety in animals. The tape's nanopatterned adhesive bonds were twice as strong as unpatterned adhesives when tested against intestinal tissue samples from pigs, and adhesion of the tape's glue-coated form was twice as strong as the same material without the glue when tested in living rats. Moreover, these rats showed only a minor inflammatory response to the adhesive that does not need to be overcome for clinical use.

The elasticity, degradation rate and pillared landscape of the biorubber are tunable hence the new adhesives can be customized for different medical applications. They can also be infused with drugs designed to be released as the biorubber degrades.

A tape-based medical adhesive may have many applications, as it is noninvasive and easy to place. Unlike sutures and staples traditionally used to close wounds, the new tape doesn't puncture the tissue and could be placed in one motion. The medical tape can also be used during minimally invasive surgeries, which are performed through a very small incision; "It's difficult to tie knots in small places. You could have the tape unfold and apply it through the [laparoscopic] needle." says Karp.

Possible applications of the new surgical adhesive tape also include resealing of the intestine after the removal of a diseased segment or after a gastric bypass procedure, as well as patching a hole caused by an ulcer. Moreover, the tape could release drugs that promote healing, even in tissues that stretch and contract, like the heart. "It's elastic, so it should withstand the mechanical forces of the heart," says Karp. This ability of the bioadhesive patch may be utilized to deliver stem-cell-attracting factor that encourages tissue regeneration into damaged areas of the heart after a heart attack.

Another gecko-inspired synthetic adhesive tape has recently been developed in Berkeley University. Other related issues covered by TFOT include the discovery of a non-toxic, natural glue that has the strongest adhesion force of any known natural material, and the development of a painless microneedles skin patch that can replace conventional injections and enable drug delivery.

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1.8 Gigapixel Camera

2009-11-13T05:42:00.000-08:00

According to DARPA, a 1.8-gigapixel (approximate 1800-megapixel) camera exists and already functions as part of the ARGUS-IS project. And yet, the next model, which offers 2.3-gigapixel resolution, is already under way: the US Army has solicited proposals for its design and manufacturing.

Although preliminary design plans for the new camera exist, it is still quite far from becoming a reality. However, the US Army already holds high hopes for the system. For instance, engineers involved in the project are saying that the final version will be both smaller and lighter than previous systems, work in the infrared range to boot, and capture images at a rate of two frames per second.

The mission of the Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance - Imaging System (ARGUS-IS) program is to provide military users a flexible and responsive capability to find, track and monitor events and activities of interest on a continuous basis in areas of interest. This future camera is a major part of the system.

Thanks to its 2.3-gigapixel sensor, the camera should allow the system to continuously cover a range of about 161 square kilometers. This high resolution could zoom in up to 30 centimeters – just enough to make out the outline of hand-held weapons, for instance.

The overall objective of ARGUS-IS is to increase situational awareness, and to give the ability to find and fix critical events in a large area during a short period of time. The system is specifically useful for tactical users in a dynamic battle-space or urban environment.

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Spinal cord treatment

2009-11-11T06:41:00.000-08:00

Scientists last night raised hopes that microscopic nanoparticles could be injected into the spines of paralysed people to help them walk again.

They have conducted experiments on rats which show that the tiny particles can act as a 'sticking plaster' to repair broken nerves.

When the microscopic spheres, known as micelles, were injected into the tails of paralysed rats, they regained the use of all their limbs.

However, the scientists warned it would take many years of research before it was known whether the same technique could work on humans.

Work has been going on for years to see whether micelles, which are about 100 times smaller than red blood cells, could help deliver drugs to different parts of the body.

But this is the first time it has been shown that the micelles can themselves assist the repair of nerve fibres.

In rats, they boosted the repair of damaged nerve cells by 60 per cent.

Dr Ji-Xin Cheng, from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indianopolis, said: 'That was a very surprising discovery. Micelles have been used for 30 years as drug-delivery vehicles in research, but no-one has ever used them directly as a medicine.'

The micelles used in the experiment had an outer shell made from polyethylene glycol (PEG), a sealing agent that has been investigated as a potential spinal injury treatment.

Previous research has shown the chemical can seal the injury site, prevent further damage setting in, and give the nerves a chance to repair themselves.

Secondary damage caused by the flood of biochemical signals and cell death that follows spinal injury is one of the main causes of permanent disability.

Dr Cheng's research showed that PEG-coated micelles were more effective than PEG injected on its own. In tests, the nanoparticles were successfully delivered to areas of damage, and the rats treated with micelles recovered co-ordinated control of all four limbs, whereas those treated with conventional PEG did not.

The nanoparticles were also shown to be non-toxic at the concentrations required. 'With the micelles, you need only about one hundred thousandth the concentration of regular polyethylene glycol,' said Dr Cheng.

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Grenade Launcher

2009-11-03T10:13:00.000-08:00

A new Pentagon project, it's now in the final stages. Yay! :S

To perfect a projectile capable of delivering an electric shock to incapacitate a person tens of metres away. It will be fired from a standard 40-millimetre grenade launcher.

The projectile, being developed by Taser International under a $2.5 million contract, is known as a Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation or HEMI device. Taser will deliver the first prototypes for testing and evaluation early next year.

Wes Burgei, a project engineer at the US Department of Defense's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD), says the self-contained cartridges should be able to hit targets 60 metres away - more than three times the range of the existing XREP shotgun cartridge (New Scientist, 29 August, p 20).

However, the impact force of the projectile remains a worry. "There is a known risk of severe injury from impact projectiles, either from blunt force at short ranges or from hitting a sensitive part of the body," says security researcher Neil Davison, who has recently written a book on non-lethal weapons.

Burgei, however, insists the devices are designed to deliver minimal force upon impact. "A major focus of this project is reducing the projectile's mass and mitigating the impact forces on the target through innovative projectile-nose design," he says. Various nose designs, which disperse the projectile's impact force, are now being tested.

The duration of the shock which the HEMI will deliver to its target has also raised concerns. Marksmen will need time to reach the incapacitated target, and because the weapon is designed for long-range use this could be considerable.

A JNLWD reference book from 2008 suggests incapacitation times could be as long as 3 minutes, although the projectile's range was initially planned to be much higher.

"We should be worried about undesirable effects if people are going to be subjected to bouts of prolonged incapacitation," says Steve Wright, a specialist in non-lethal weapons at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK.

Burgei says the duration of the shocks emitted by the projectiles has yet to be determined. "When requirements become solidified, the incapacitation time can be adjusted to meet them".

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Implantable Biodegradable Circuits

2009-11-03T09:58:00.000-08:00

By building thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates, researchers have made electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body. So far the research group has demonstrated arrays of transistors made on thin films of silk. While electronics must usually be encased to protect them from the body, these electronics don't need protection, and the silk means the electronics conform to biological tissue. The silk melts away over time and the thin silicon circuits left behind don't cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick.
"Current medical devices are very limited by the fact that the active electronics have to be 'canned,' or isolated from the body, and are on rigid silicon," says Brian Litt, associate professor of neurology and bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Litt, who is working with the silk-silicon group to develop medical applications for the new devices, says they could interact with tissues in new ways. The group is developing silk-silicon LEDs that might act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, as well as arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system.

Last year, John Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, developed flexible, stretchable silicon circuits whose performance matches that of their rigid counterparts. To make these devices biocompatible, Rogers's lab collaborated with Fiorenzo Omenetto and David Kaplan, professors of bioengineering at Tufts University in Medford, MA, who last year reported making nanopatterned optical devices from silkworm-cocoon proteins.

To make the devices, silicon transistors about one millimeter long and 250 nanometers thick are collected on a stamp and then transferred to the surface of a thin film of silk. The silk holds each device in place, even after the array is implanted in an animal and wetted with saline, causing it to conform to the tissue surface. In a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the researchers report that these devices can be implanted in animals with no adverse effects. And the performance of the transistors on silk inside the body doesn't suffer.

In the silk-silicon electronics, the silk plays a passive but important role. "Silk is mechanically strong enough to act as a support, but if you pour water on it, it conforms to the tissue surface," says Omenetto. Silk is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for medical implants and is broken down completely by the body into harmless by-products. The silk sheets are flexible, and can be rolled up and then unfurled during surgery, making them easier for surgeons to work with. By adjusting the processing conditions used to fabricate the films, the Tufts researchers can control the rate at which the films will degrade, from immediately after implantation to years.

The biocompatibility of silicon is not as well established as that of silk, though all studies so far have shown the material to be safe. It seems to depend on the size and shape of the silicon pieces, so the group is working to minimize them. These devices also require electrical connections of gold and titanium, which are biocompatible but not biodegradable. Rogers is developing biodegradable electrical contacts so that all that would remain is the silicon.

The group is currently designing electrodes built on silk as interfaces for the nervous system. Electrodes built on silk could, Litt says, integrate much better with biological tissues than existing electrodes, which either pierce the tissue or sit on top of it. The electrodes might be wrapped around individual peripheral nerves to help control prostheses. Arrays of silk electrodes for applications such as deep-brain stimulation, which is used to control Parkinson's symptoms, could conform to the brain's crevices to reach otherwise inaccessible regions. "It would be nice to see the sophistication of devices start to catch up with the sophistication of our basic science, and this technology could really close that gap," says Litt.

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Ocean Energy

2009-11-02T06:29:00.000-08:00

The ocean can produce two types of energy: thermal energy from the sun's heat, and mechanical energy from the tides and waves.

Oceans cover more than 70% of Earth's surface, making them the world's largest solar collectors. The sun's heat warms the surface water a lot more than the deep ocean water, and this temperature difference creates thermal energy. Just a small portion of the heat trapped in the ocean could power the world.

Ocean thermal energy is used for many applications, including electricity generation. There are three types of electricity conversion systems: closed-cycle, open-cycle, and hybrid. Closed-cycle systems use the ocean's warm surface water to vaporize a working fluid, which has a low-boiling point, such as ammonia. The vapor expands and turns a turbine. The turbine then activates a generator to produce electricity. Open-cycle systems actually boil the seawater by operating at low pressures. This produces steam that passes through a turbine/generator. And hybrid systems combine both closed-cycle and open-cycle systems.

Ocean mechanical energy is quite different from ocean thermal energy. Even though the sun affects all ocean activity, tides are driven primarily by the gravitational pull of the moon, and waves are driven primarily by the winds. As a result, tides and waves are intermittent sources of energy, while ocean thermal energy is fairly constant. Also, unlike thermal energy, the electricity conversion of both tidal and wave energy usually involves mechanical devices.

A barrage (dam) is typically used to convert tidal energy into electricity by forcing the water through turbines, activating a generator. For wave energy conversion, there are three basic systems: channel systems that funnel the waves into reservoirs; float systems that drive hydraulic pumps; and oscillating water column systems that use the waves to compress air within a container. The mechanical power created from these systems either directly activates a generator or transfers to a working fluid, water, or air, which then drives a turbine/generator.

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Plasma Shields and Plasmoids

2009-11-02T06:20:00.000-08:00

Real-life plasma shields to protect soldiers are only the beginning. The technology — which use a laser to create a curtain of miniature plasma explosions like firecrackers to turn away an enemy — could be adapted to turn it into a physical shield, capable of warding off projectiles.

Unlike existing defenses only hit incoming projectiles a few meters away. The Plasma Acoustic Shield System (PASS), on the other hand, has a range of a hundred meters.

PASS can put a series of small plasma explosions in the path of an incoming rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), bullet or other projectile. These are only very small explosions, but since they can be precisely placed on the nose of the missile, this is not a problem. (Tracking a missile nose with a laser is exactly what laser infra-red countermeasures do at the moment).

An RPG is a shaped-charge or HEAT warhead: basically a conical explosive charge lined with metal. When it detonates, the metal is blasted into a narrow, high-velocity, armor-piercing jet. If the round tumbles and is facing sideways or backward it will have little effect on any sort of armor.

A Plasma Shield producing a hundred detonations a second could put thirty of them in the path of an incoming RPG round if it’s going at 300 meter per second.

A similar rule applies to bullets: if it’s going sideways when it hits you, even a tungsten-cored round is not going to make it through a Kevlar.

The Russians work on plasma aerodynamics

Their action is based on focusing beams of electromagnetic energy produced by laser or microwave radiation into the upper layers of the atmosphere.
A cloud of highly ionized air arises at the focus of the laser or microwave rays, at an altitude of up to 50 kilometers. Upon entering it, any object–a missile, an airplane, is deflected from its trajectory and disintegrates in response to the fantastic overloads arising due to the abrupt pressure difference.
What is fundamental in this case is that the energy aimed by the terrestrial components of the plasma weapon–lasers and antennas–is concentrated not at the target itself but a little ahead of it. Rather than "incinerating" the missile or airplane, it "bumps" it out of trajectory.

The Russians refer to such balls of plasma as plasmoids. Although there is some speculation that their high-power radar could produce plasmoids in the upper atmosphere for defensive use, this has not been proven. But the laser system used in PASS has been proven.

The technology which produces small plasma detonations in PASS could put larger plasmoids in the path of missiles and aircraft high in the atmosphere. Rather than using massive amounts of energy to burn through the missile’s casing, just a small amount of laser-created plasma could turn the missile’s own speed against it, tripping it up in a piece of cosmic judo. A small, low-energy pulse laser may turn out to be more effective for missile defense than the giant chemical laser in the $7.3 billion ABL.

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Cyber Nerves

2009-11-02T05:54:00.000-08:00

Artificial nerves that allow people with false limbs to feel the heat from a coffee cup or the touch of another person's hand are being developed by scientists.

'Cyber-nerves' are created from a revolutionary material called Pedot that conducts electricity like a wire and which can encourage the growth of new cells.

Strands of Pedot have already been used to connect severed nerves in animals and restore use of defunct muscles.

Researchers are hoping the first tests on people, which could one day help amputees to feel heat, cold and touch with their prosthetic limbs, will start in three years.

Their goal is to splice strands of the material into a patient's nervous system and then connect the cyber-nerves to sensors built into artificial fingers, toes and hands.

Prof Paul Cederna, plastic surgeon at the University of Michigan, said: 'Somebody who has lost both their hands would be able to hold their child's hand again and feel the warmth.'

The creation of Pedot was announced at the American Society of Plastic Surgeons conference in Seattle earlier this month.

The research is being funded by the Pentagon in a bid to help war veterans who have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to Prof Cederna, the new synthetic nerves pave the way to two-way communication between a patient's brain and their prosthetic limb.

Pedot reacts more quickly than normal nerve cells - and is 10 times more efficient at carrying electrical signals than metals currently use.

The plastic also stimulates the growth of healthy new nerve cells.

In one experiment, plastic surgeons grafted Pedot on to the severed leg of a rat.

In a second study, researchers created a 'cup' containing cells, muscle and the Pedot material around the severed nerve of a rat.

After 114 days, new blood vessels and muscles had formed, nerve fibres had regrown and sensation returned for the animal.

Prof Cederna wants to start human trials within three years - and hopes to create the first artificial limbs using cyber-nerves spliced into ordinary nerves within the decade.

He told the Sunday Times: 'It would feel the same as the real thing. There would be no re-learning required from the brain because the nerves already carry all those signals.'

New nerve fibres grew and took over from the damaged ones - bringing back to life muscles which had been useless.

The nerves would be connected to thousands of microscopic sensors that can distinguish hot, cold and touch, he added.

Around 5,000 people are fitted with a prosthetic limb each year. Four out of five are false legs and feet.

Pedot offers most help to the minority who have lost a hand.

Michael Fox, a the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital in London, said there were huge technical obstacles to creating a 'feeling' false hand.

'There is a great risk of the brain receiving wrong signals,' he said. 'I am excited by these advances but it's very early days.'

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Spider Biobased Adhesives

2009-11-02T05:44:00.000-08:00

Scientists know comparatively little about web glue, which coats the silk threads and is among the world's strongest biological glues. Past studies revealed that spiders make web glue from glycoproteins, or proteins bits of sugar attached.

But the ultra-strong glue that spiders use to trap their prey has finally given up some of its genetic secrets, raising the hope that similar substances could one day be synthesised to produce surgical adhesives.

The glue, which the spider secretes onto the central prey-capturing spiral threads of its web, is known to be based on a complex sugary polymer called a glycoprotein. But no one knew how this supersticky molecule did its job, or which genes coded for it.

Now Omer Choresh and colleagues at the University of Wyoming in Laramie have some clues. They took glue-secreting cells from the glands of golden orb-web spiders and extracted messenger RNA from them. They then used this to create a complementary DNA sequence to identify the genes potentially involved in glue creation.

They discovered that the sticky glycoprotein is formed from two separate proteins, each 110 amino acids long, that seem to be encoded by genes on opposite strands of the very same sequence of DNA (Biomacromolecules, vol 10, p 2852).

Choresh believes that by cloning these genes and amplifying them, it should be possible to create a whole new class of biocompatible glues.

A new generation of biobased adhesives and glues -- "green" glues that replace existing petroleum-based products for a range of uses.

Source1
Source 2

Stealth Wind Turbines

2009-11-02T05:30:00.000-08:00

Last month Danish wind turbine company Vestas and U.K. defense contractor QinetiQ demonstrated the first "stealth" wind-turbine blade--their solution to the aviation radar interference problem holding up the installation of gigawatts-worth of proposed wind farms worldwide. Vestas composites specialist Steve Appleton says the firm is eager to test a complete stealth turbine and begin limited production by the end of 2010. "Clearly this technology, if proven fully and then adopted by Vestas, would give us a competitive advantage," says Appleton.

Lingering doubts over how stealthy turbines can be, especially when it comes to long-range military radars, are prompting continued research on alternate solutions. Just last month the U.K. government launched an $8.5 million research project with Calgary-based radar system maker Raytheon Canada to make existing air-traffic control systems capable of recognizing and discounting the radar signature from a wind farm.

Wind turbines can interfere with radar in several ways. The turbines can reflect the radar systems' microwave signals, creating a shadow that erases airplanes from radar operators' screens and clutters those screens with the turbines' signature. The signature is also always changing, as blades accelerate and decelerate with the wind, reaching speeds of well over 200 kilometers per hour. Aviation safety and military authorities insist that the potential for confusion and accidents is real.

Such concerns are stalling more than 10 gigawatts of wind power in the United Kingdom. Last year the U.S. Department of Homeland Security commissioned a study on wind power and radar from the JASON Defense Advisory Panel, a science and technology policy advisory group managed by the Mitre Corporation. This study determined that U.S. authorities had halted development of several gigawatts of wind energy over radar concerns, calling it "a serious impediment to the nation's mandated growth of sustainable energy." Radar concerns raised by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are among the final hurdles holding up Cape Wind from installing 130 turbines in Massachusetts's Nantucket Sound.

The solution offered by QinetiQ and Vestas relies partly on materials analogous to those added to stealth aircraft to absorb some of the radar signal. A five-millimeter coating takes care of the towers, but this coating would add 1,200 kilograms to the large turbine blades. So instead, as was demonstrated in the 44-meter blade installed by the companies on a turbine at a Norfolk, U.K., wind farm last month, two layers of radar-absorbing sheets consisting of glass-reinforced epoxy and plastic foam are laid into the blade's composite structure.

Testing with a mobile radar installation showed that, as expected, the stealth blade produces a markedly smaller signature relative to the turbine's two conventional blades, according to Appleton. He anticipates that subsequent structural testing will confirm that there is no net weight or structural change, since the stealth material simply displaces some of the composite's reinforcing fibers.

Appleton says that the stealth technology should be suitable for any type of wind turbine, and that "any cost increase will prove acceptable to our customers." What is less clear is what proportion of blocked wind farms could be freed up by the stealth technology. "Each site is different and needs assessing to see what the problem is and whether our technology will help," says Appleton. Crucial factors include the type of radar in use, distance from radar towers, and type and distribution of wind turbines.

The JASON report concluded that stealth technology showed "considerable" potential to deal with short-wave radar but is not suitable for reducing interference for long-wavelength L-band radars employed by U.S. air security--a critique that Appleton rejects. "We have already demonstrated an L-band absorber," he claims.

Nevertheless, the U.K. is financing development of Raytheon's alternative solution: using signal-processing algorithms to distinguish stationary targets such as wind turbines and erasing them from air-traffic control radar screens. Brian Smith, Raytheon Canada's general manager, says the key is teaching the systems to recognize wind turbines as false targets, despite their spinning blades. "As the radar spins, it sends out scans every few seconds," Smith says. "Our solution will use an algorithm in tracker software to say this can't really be a plane, because it's standing still."

Smith projects that by 2011 Raytheon will have algorithms in place for both short and long-range radar systems, and will have demonstrated not only that they can erase wind farms from radar screens but also that they can retain valid stationary targets such as hot-air or weather balloons. He estimates that it will take another year to add the algorithms to any of the 250 Raytheon radar systems operating worldwide--about 40 percent of the market.

The JASON report proposed one more approach to addressing radar interference problems: replacing aging analog radar stations with modern digital equipment that is amenable to upgrades such as Raytheon's. "Current circumstances provide an interesting opportunity for improving the aging radar infrastructure of the United States, by replacing radar that inhibits the growth of wind farms with new, more flexible and more capable systems, especially digital radar hardware and modern computing power. Such improvements could significantly increase the security of U.S. airspace."

The FAA has proposed precisely that as a means of allowing the Cape Wind offshore wind farm to be built. It says that adding digital radar at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, one of three radar stations expected to be affected by the project, would help the region's air-traffic controllers see through the anticipated signal clutter. Negotiations between the FAA and Cape Wind are said to be nearing completion. But the price tag, according to the FAA, could be $1.5 million to $15 million.

Source

Tesla on Wireless Energy Transmission

2009-10-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

Water Power Ideal
"In most of the processes of transformation we are confronted with appalling waste and definite limits exist to improvements aiming at economy. No amount of ingenuity can ever circumvent the natural laws imposing these restrictions.

"Water power is a remarkable exception in this respect. In hydraulic development the wheel can have an efficiency of 85 and the dynamo can have an efficiency of 98 per cent. so that the combined efficiency is over 83 per cent. that is to say, we are enabled in this way usefully to apply almost the entire energy furnished by the sun.

"Not only this but the apparatus is simple, well-nigh indestructible, and requires virtually no attention.

"Unfortunately this source of power supply is not adequate to meet all our needs, although the theoretical energy of falling water is, so to speak, unlimited. Assuming for the rain clouds an average height of 15,000 feet and an annual precipitation of 33 inches, the power over the whole area of the United States amounts to more than twelve billion horsepower but a large portion of the potential energy is transformed into heat by friction of the rain drops against the air so that the actual mechanical energy is much smaller.

"Most of the water comes from a height of something like 2,000 feet, and all in all represents over one-half a billion horsepower, but in the form but in the form of available waterpower we cannot obtain more than a fall of 100 feet, so that by harnessing all the falls in the United States not more than eighty million horsepower can be developed.

"So far we have harnessed approximately 8,000,000 horsepower in this country, thus effecting a saving equivalent to nearly one-third of the entire coal mined. By extensive damming the power derived can be greatly increased, possibly to several hundred million horsepower, giving us more power by far than we have now with all our coal. But this is not the limit.

On the Eve of Great Feats.
"We are on the eve of accomplishments which will be of tremendous consequence to the future advancement of the human race. One of these is the control of the precipitation of moisture.

"The water is evaporated and thus raised against the force of gravity. It is then held in suspension in the vapor which we call clouds. Air currents carry this vapor, hither and yon, often to distant regions, where it may remain for long periods at a height, in a state of delicate suspension.

"When the equilibrium is disturbed the water falls to earth [in the] form of rain and through rills and rivers flows back to the ocean.

"Thus the sun, those heat causes the evaporation, even maintains this life sustaining stream. The energy necessary to cause the precipitation of the rain, compared to that rain's potential energy when released, is like that of the spark setting off a charge of dynamite compared to the dynamite.

"If this part of the natural process were under the control of man he could transform the entire globe.

"Many schemes have been proposed to this end, none of which have knowledge offering the remotest chance of success.

"But I have ascertained that with proper apparatus this wonder can be performed.

"Any amount of power will then be at our disposal; we can make out of deserts fertile land and create lakes and rivers almost without effort on our part.

"However our triumph would not be complete if the power could not be conveyed to distances without limit. This achievement, to, is now within our reach. With my wireless system it is practicable to transmit electrical energy over a distance of 12,000 miles with a loss not exceeding 5 per cent. I can conceive of no advances which would be more desirable at this time and be more beneficial to the further progress of mankind."

Syracuse Herald, ca. February 29, 1920

Source

DNA Chips

2009-10-26T06:52:00.000-07:00

In future DNA wouldn’t just control human evolution but also computing evolution, if IBM succeeds to use DNA in development of next-generation microchips.

Scientists at IBM Research and the California Institute of Technology announced a scientific advancement that could be a major breakthrough in enabling the semiconductor industry to pack more power and speed into tiny computer chips, while making them more energy efficient and less expensive to manufacture.

Today, the semiconductor industry is faced with the challenges of developing lithographic technology for feature sizes smaller than 22 nm and exploring new classes of transistors that employ carbon nanotubes or silicon nanowires. IBM’s approach of using DNA molecules as scaffolding – where millions of carbon nanotubes could be deposited and self-assembled into precise patterns by sticking to the DNA molecules – may provide a way to reach sub-22 nm lithography.

The utility of this approach lies in the fact that the positioned DNA nanostructures can serve as scaffolds, or miniature circuit boards, for the precise assembly of components – such as carbon nanotubes, nanowires and nanoparticles – at dimensions significantly smaller than possible with conventional semiconductor fabrication techniques. This opens up the possibility of creating functional devices that can be integrated into larger structures, as well as enabling studies of arrays of nanostructures with known coordinates.

“The cost involved in shrinking features to improve performance is a limiting factor in keeping pace with Moore’s Law and a concern across the semiconductor industry,” said Spike Narayan, manager, Science & Technology, IBM Research - Almaden. “The combination of this directed self-assembly with today’s fabrication technology eventually could lead to substantial savings in the most expensive and challenging part of the chip-making process.”

The lithographic templates were fabricated at IBM using traditional semiconductor techniques, the same used to make the chips found in today’s computers, to etch out patterns. Either electron beam or optical lithography were used to create arrays of binding sites of the proper size and shape to match those of individual origami structures. Key to the process were the discovery of the template material and deposition conditions to afford high selectivity so that origami binds only to the patterns of “sticky patches” and nowhere else.

Source

Maglev - High Speed Trains

2009-10-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

Maglev, or magnetic levitation, is a system of transportation that suspends, guides and propels vehicles, predominantly trains, using magnetic levitation from a very large number of magnets for lift and propulsion. This method has the potential to be faster, quieter and smoother than wheeled mass transit systems. The power needed for levitation is usually not a particularly large percentage of the overall consumption, most of the power used is needed to overcome air drag, as with any other high speed train.

The highest recorded speed of a Maglev train is 581 kilometres per hour (361 mph), achieved in Japan in 2003, 6 kilometres per hour (3.7 mph) faster than the conventional TGV speed record. This is slower than many aircraft, since aircraft can fly at far higher altitudes where air drag is lower, thus high speeds are more readily attained. The technology has the potential to exceed 6,400 kilometres per hour (3,977 mph) if deployed in an evacuated tunnel.

The first commercial Maglev "people-mover" was officially opened in 1984 in Birmingham, England. It operated on an elevated 600-metre (2,000 ft) section of monorail track between Birmingham International Airport and Birmingham International railway station, running at speeds up to 42 km/h (26 mph); the system was eventually closed in 1995 due to reliability and design problems.

Germany and Japan are both developing maglev train technology, and both are currently testing prototypes of their trains (The German company "Transrapid International" also has a train in commercial use).
The Shanghai Maglev Train is the first commercial high-speed maglev line in the world. The system and trains were built to the Transrapid standard. Construction began in March 2001, and public service commenced on 1 January 2004.
During a test run on 12 November 2003, a maglev vehicle achieved a Chinese record speed of 501 km/h (311 mph).
The train set and tracks were manufactured using German technology.

The same line made its first open-to-the-public commercial run about a year later in December of 2003. The Shanghai Transrapid line currently runs to and from the Longyang Road station at the city's center and Pudong airport. Traveling at an average speed of 267 mph (430 kmh), the 19 mile (30 km) journey takes less than 10 minutes on the maglev train as opposed to an hour-long taxi ride. China is building an extension of the Shanghai line that will run 99 miles (160 km) to Hangzhou. Construction is scheduled to begin in fall 2006 and should be completed by the 2010 Shanghai Expo. This line will be the first Maglev rail line to run between two cities.

Source 1
Source 2

Armor A50

2009-10-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

Silicon Power the Taiwan Flash Memory Manufacturer, Following their success of the Armor A10 on October 21st 2009 has release their new Armor A50 an ultra protected portable hard drive with similar concept of A10. But in this new A50 has added shock proof ability for better data protection and its a new range of ultra rugged portable hard drives and also feature fingerprint proof.
The Silicon Power Armor A50 features a USB 2.0 interface with maximum transfer rate 480MBps, a LED status light to indicated current transfer modes, its compatible with USB 1.1, OneTouch backup button, plug and play ability. The Armor A50 come with 60 days trial version of norton Antivirus software and with 2 year warranty.

The Silicon Power Armor A50 will available in four capacity size, 250GB, 320GB, 500GB and 640GB. There is now word on pricing and the availability.

Source

BlackBerry Bold 9700

2009-10-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

RIM has officially announced it’s latest and boldest BlackBerry device yet - the BlackBerry Bold 9700. This latest device in the BlackBerry Bold product series is a better and much improved version of the previously released Bold 9000. The smartphone features a 624 MHz processor with 256MB RAM, 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus and A-GPS to provide faster location fix in support of AT&T Navigator with real-time traffic data. Design-wise, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 features a slimmer form factor plus an enhanced trackpad. Older design features of the BlackBerry Bold 9000 are also carried over to the 9700. This includes the slightly changed keyboard and leather back design. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 runs the OS 5.0.

Among the key features of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 include high resolution display in 65,000 colors, trackpad navigation that lets you slide your finger to scroll through menus and icons, multimedia features including data and audio files synching on desktop, on-board 256MB memory plus micro SD card support, video recording and speedy network connections.

Technical specs of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 include a 3.2MP camera with auto-focus, image stabilization, video recording, flash and 2x digital zoom. It also features a 2.44-inch display, 624Mhz processor, Wi-Fi with UMA support, A-GPS, Bluetooth, 3.5mm headphone jack, and optical trackpad.

The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is a 1900/1800/900/850 MHz on GSM, 2100/1900/850/800 Mhz smartphone.

It will be available in the coming weeks for $300 with a two-year contract. A $100 mail-in rebate will be given when signing up for a qualifying plan.

Sources
cellphonenews.com
infosyncworld.com

Graphene

2009-10-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

Graphene is a sheet of carbon just one atom thick - the thinnest known material in the universe and the strongest ever measured.

It is 200 times stronger than steel and can carry one million times more electricity than copper.

These properties give graphene a number of potential new applications, such as its use in the circuitry of faster computers or more powerful mobile phones, but graphene sheets are difficult and expensive to produce.

Professor Dario Alfč and Dr Monica Pozzo (UCL Earth Sciences) are part of a group trying to understand and characterise the mechanisms for the growth of graphene for one particular method of production.

The method, known as Chemical Vapour Decomposition, involves sending hydrocarbon molecules to an iridium surface that is heated between room temperature and 1000 degrees.

When they hit the surface these molecules loose their hydrogen atoms, which fly into space, leaving the remaining carbon atoms sticking to the iridium, where they start to self-assemble in small ‘nano-structures’. The nano-structures eventually develop into fully formed graphene sheets.

Professor Alfč, Dr Pozzo and their colleagues led by Dr Alessandro Baraldi and Dr Silvano Lizzit at ELETTRA, the Synchrotron light laboratory in Trieste, Italy, have begun to unravel how that process takes place, and thus how it might be controlled.

Professor Alfč said: “This method to grow graphene is well known; however, the mechanism that takes us from a carbon-covered surface to the formation of a fully formed graphene sheet is yet to be understood.

“We discovered that the growth of graphene starts with the formation of small islands of carbon with an unusual dome structure, in which only the atoms at the perimeter are bound to the iridium substrate while the central atoms detach from it, making the island bulge upwards at the centre.

“The structure resembles that of the Eden Project building in Cornwall. We also found that the size of these ‘geodesic nanodomes’ depended on the temperature of the iridium substrate, and the manipulation procedure, suggesting possible routes to control the size of graphene sheets at the nanoscale.

“These could be used in the future as building blocks for new generation electronic circuits, for example to make much faster computers, or mobile phones sending data at much higher rates.”

Source physorg.com

EuroHawk

2009-10-21T07:50:00.000-07:00

EuroHawk is a symbol that Europe is finally equipping its military with modern equipment.

EuroHawk is a transatlantic collaboration, and its SIGINT system will provide the ability to detect and collect information from electronic intelligence (ELINT) radar emitters and communications emitters, and will be connected to ground stations that can receive and analyze the data.

Since 1992, NATO has been seeking a new aircraft that took advantage of improving technology to get a clearer picture of the situations on the ground. By 2002 they finally formed a joint venture, the Alliance Ground Surveillance program. Political considerations almost immediately beset the program. The initial idea was to mount the radar on manned airplanes but after lengthy debate in 2007, NATO decided to buy unmanned aircraft only for AGS. The debate and political dithering also took a toll. "It's been an exercise in frustration," Ben-Ari says. National pride, budgets, lobbying for roles for each nation's industrial base and the overall need for total consensus between the 15 nations involved in the program continue to hamper AGS's development, he says. The hardware was supposed to be flying by 2010; last week NATO released a statement optimistically projecting that AGS could be available by 2012.

EuroHawk is a sign of progress amid this foot-dragging, according to Ed Walby, Grumman's business development director for high-altitude systems. "EuroHawk is a pathfinder for Europe," Walby says. EuroHawk's adoption will force Germany to create standards and ways to operate unmanned aircraft in Europe and beyond. This includes plans for hiring personnel for new positions, integrating the system into mission planning, training staff and settling airspace issues. (European airspace is more crowded than U.S. airspace, so they are eager to figure out how to employ the automatic takeoff and landing abilities that are instilled in the EuroHawk.) Since European Union nations share these standards, EuroHawk—which is scheduled to be operational in 2011, a full year before AGS's most recent estimate—will pave the way for the unmanned AGS aircraft.

Source popularmechanics.com

Sun Powered Vertical Village

2009-10-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

The Vertical Village by Graft Lab is a multiple-use development for Dubai, which is designed to provide space for residential, hotel and entertainment facilities, while harnessing solar energy to the maximum. The complex is expected to be certified by a LEED Gold rating.

The complex is organized to reduce solar gain and maximize solar production, which is the most powerful renewable source of energy in the desert. The buildings are massed as self-shading slabs at the north of the site on the east-west axis to reduce long-angle sun penetration.

The southern end of the site is equipped with a vast solar collector array that automatically positions itself toward the sun to generate the maximum possible solar electricity. The solar roof, which the complex is equipped with, behaves like a leaf, with veins that break the solar field into manageable portions and help transport energy, which in this case is solar heated water that is used to reduce the amount of air conditioning the building requires.

Each hockey-stick-shaped building within the village is self-shading on its north side and on the east-west axis to reduce long-angle sun penetration. A massive bed of solar collectors lies at the south end of the complex and has the ability to automatically position itself toward the sun to maximize solar-energy aggregation. The roof of the village has veins like a leaf which can break up the solar field into smaller, more manageable portions.

Beneath the roof lie the entertainment center, which consists of cinemas, restaurants, shops and a theater. The residential and hotel buildings have been sliced and leaned to create large scale focal points, giving a unique address to each slab, which open up, interlock, disappear and then reappear as one approaches the complex.

Source inhabitat.com

Solar Jacket

2009-10-21T06:59:00.000-07:00

Im a huge fan of Back to the future, so when I see this kind of clothing devices I get really exited... yeah, Im a geek, sorry.

The Ecotech Solar Jacket, a new clothing piece from Zegna Sport. Made almost entirely from recycled plastic, it is not only environmentally friendly but also solar-powers your MP3, keeps you protected from the elements and has Italian good-looks to boot.

This unique jacket features a detachable solar cell system located in each of the sleeves. Once the sun’s energy is harnessed, it is fed to washable internal leads connected to a rechargeable battery device – also detachable – which is located in the inside pocket. Then it’s ready to power your portable communication device or MP3 player.

The material of the Ecotech jacket will help protect you from the wind and rain, and the solar cells on the sleeve also serve to power a heating system located inside the collar, guaranteeing comfort and warmth. And, as the external fabric, linings, paddings and breathable membrane are all made from 100% regenerated plastics, you’ll not only be wearing an Italian-designed jacket, you’ll be carrying a clear conscience as well.

The battery requires about five hours of direct sunlight to fully recharge and is normally contained in an inner pocket but can also be placed in a separate neoprene case. After charging, it can be used to power your mobile communication device, MP3 player or camera. As the solar panel sleeves and battery are detachable, they can also be charged even when you’re not wearing the jacket. The adapter sets (provided) ensure compatibility with most mobile communication brands.

Back to the future 2, here we go! :D

Source gizmag.com

Eco-Villages

2009-10-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

Ecovillages are intentional communities with the goal of becoming more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Some aim for a population of 50-150 individuals because this size is considered to be the maximum social network according to findings from sociology and anthropology. Larger ecovillages of up to 2,000 individuals exist as networks of smaller subcommunities to create an ecovillage model that allows for social networks within a broader foundation of support. Certain ecovillages have grown by the nearby addition of others, not necessarily members, settling on the periphery of the ecovillage and effectively participating in the ecovillage community.

Ecovillage members are united by shared ecological, social-economic and cultural-spiritual values. An ecovillage is often composed of people who have chosen an alternative to centralized electrical, water, and sewage systems. Many see the breakdown of traditional forms of community, wasteful consumerist lifestyles, the destruction of natural habitat, urban sprawl, factory farming, and over-reliance on fossil fuels, as trends that must be changed to avert ecological disaster. They see small-scale communities with minimal ecological impact as an alternative. However, such communities often cooperate with peer villages in networks of their own. This model of collective action is similar to that of Ten Thousand Villages, which supports the fair trade of goods worldwide.

Related Links
gen.ecovillage.org/
ecovillages.com

Source en.wikipedia.org

Exoplanets: 32 new discoveries

2009-10-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

"HARPS is a unique, extremely high precision instrument that is ideal for discovering alien worlds," says Stéphane Udry, who made the announcement. “We have now completed our initial five-year programme, which has succeeded well beyond our expectations.”

The latest batch of exoplanets announced today comprises no less than 32 new discoveries. Including these new results, data from HARPS have led to the discovery of more than 75 exoplanets in 30 different planetary systems. In particular, thanks to its amazing precision, the search for small planets, those with a mass of a few times that of the Earth — known as super-Earths and Neptune-like planets — has been given a dramatic boost. HARPS has facilitated the discovery of 24 of the 28 planets known with masses below 20 Earth masses. As with the previously detected super-Earths, most of the new low-mass candidates reside in multi-planet systems, with up to five planets per system.

In 1999, ESO launched a call for opportunities to build a high resolution, extremely precise spectrograph for the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile. Michel Mayor, from the Geneva Observatory, led a consortium to build HARPS, which was installed in 2003 and was soon able to measure the back-and-forward motions of stars by detecting small changes in a star’s radial velocity — as small as 3.5 km/hour, a steady walking pace. Such a precision is crucial for the discovery of exoplanets and the radial velocity method, which detects small changes in the radial velocity of a star as it wobbles slightly under the gentle gravitational pull from an (unseen) exoplanet, has been most prolific method in the search for exoplanets.
In return for building the instrument, the HARPS consortium was granted 100 observing nights per year during a five-year period to carry out one of the most ambitious systematic searches for exoplanets so far implemented worldwide by repeatedly measuring the radial velocities of hundreds of stars that may harbour planetary systems.

The programme soon proved very successful. Using HARPS, Mayor’s team discovered — among others — in 2004, the first super-Earth (around µ Ara); in 2006, the trio of Neptunes around HD 69830; in 2007, Gliese 581d, the first super Earth in the habitable zone of a small star; and in 2009, the lightest exoplanet so far detected around a normal star, Gliese 581e. More recently, they found a potentially lava-covered world, with density similar to that of the Earth’s.

“These observations have given astronomers a great insight into the diversity of planetary systems and help us understand how they can form,” says team member Nuno Santos.

The HARPS consortium was very careful in their selection of targets, with several sub-programmes aimed at looking for planets around solar-like stars, low-mass dwarf stars, or stars with a lower metal content than the Sun. The number of exoplanets known around low-mass stars — so-called M dwarfs — has also dramatically increased, including a handful of super Earths and a few giant planets challenging planetary formation theory.

“By targeting M dwarfs and harnessing the precision of HARPS we have been able to search for exoplanets in the mass and temperature regime of super-Earths, some even close to or inside the habitable zone around the star,” says co-author Xavier Bonfils.

The team found three candidate exoplanets around stars that are metal-deficient. Such stars are thought to be less favourable for the formation of planets, which form in the metal-rich disc around the young star. However, planets up to several Jupiter masses have been found orbiting metal-deficient stars, setting an important constraint for planet formation models.

Although the first phase of the observing programme is now officially concluded, the team will pursue their effort with two ESO Large Programmes looking for super-Earths around solar-type stars and M dwarfs and some new announcements are already foreseen in the coming months, based on the last five years of measurements

Source physorg.com

Honda Bicycle Simulator

2009-10-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

Honda to begin Japan-wide sales starting February 2010, of the Honda Bicycle Simulator developed for the purpose of traffic safety education. By safely experiencing the possible risks bicycle riders may face, users will improve their ability to predict risks and increase safety awareness. In addition, rider evaluation session which will follow the riding simulation will help users learn traffic rules and manners in an enjoyable way. The simulator contains different courses such as “going to school,” “going to the grocery store,” “going to cram school” and “going to a local shopping street” to offer realistic experiences for user groups of different ages.

Honda will aim for widespread use of this simulator by a range of customers including public offices, law-enforcement organizations, driving schools and educational institutions which conduct bicycle safety education programs primarily for school children and senior citizens. Honda will begin accepting pre-sale orders in November of this year.

Source fareastgizmos.com

Rinspeed sQuba

2009-10-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

Based on the Lotus Elise, the Rinspeed sQuba made its debut at the 2008 Geneva Auto Show and is the world’s first real submersible car. It is also the first car that likely requires both a valid driver’s license and scuba certification to operate.

The sQuba has a steel chassis with carbon nano tubes for body panels. Three electric motors, stationed in the rear of the vehicle, take the place of a combustion engine. One does the work on land, and the other two do the work under water, and they get added support from a pair of Seabob jet drives at the front of the vehicle.

It is a permanent convertible—for good reasons: an enclosed cabin presents safety issues when the car submerges, and the air in that cabin would create too much buoyancy to reasonably overcome under water. According to Rinderknecht, two cubic meters of cabin air required a two-ton increase in vehicle weight, “giving the sQuba the land mobility of a turtle."

The laser driving. The sQuba solves the problem of drivers falling asleep on the road by permitting autonomous driving—Ibeo of Hamburg developed a laser sensor system that allows the occupants to catch some shut-eye and still reach their destination.

Cool concept, but I don't think it's going to be cheap.

Related Link
rinspeed.com

Source futurecars.com

Thermal knife

2009-10-19T08:49:00.000-07:00

A new thermal knife, the plasma scalpel, capable of simultaneous division of tissue and coagulation of blood vessels, is described.
A high temperature argon gas plasma (unrelated to blood plasma) is created by passing the gas through a direct current arc, ionizing the gas and elevating its temperature to 3000 degrees C.
A small plasma cutting jet is formed by a nozzle at the tip of the handpiece. Liver resections and muscle transections performed in a canine model, and full thickness burn excisions in a pig skin model showed effective division of tissue and significantly less blood loss when compared to the steel scalpel.
Wound healing studies of histologic comparisons and wound breaking strength were performed for steel, plasma, laser, and electrosurgical scalped incisions in the skin of mice and rats. All thermal knife wounds showed localized tissue damage at the edges of the incision, but the events of healing began at the same time.

Compared to the steel scalpel, there was a three to six day delay in the onset of healing, but healing occurred in the normal fashion and all thermal knife wounds reached the same healed breaking strength as the steel scalpel wounds. Clinically, the plasma scalped has been used for 138 procedures in 96 patients. The majority of cases have been transection of muscle, hepatic resection or debridement, or soft tissue debridement. Muscle transection data for the plasma scalped compared to the electrosurgical scalpel has shown virtually no blood loss with a shorter time to hemostasis for the plasma scalpel. The plasma scalpel has proved to be an effective thermal knife, capable of simultaneous division and coagulation.

Further development work and proof of its efficacy in the clinical setting are necessary to establish the plasma scalpel and adequately demonstrate its proper role in surgery.

Source ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Water in Space

2009-10-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

It's now official that water has been found on the moon, and scientists have long seen it on Mars as well. In fact, water is all over the solar system and the rest of the galaxy – and since water is key to life as we know it, these discoveries raise the hope that we are not in fact alone.

The inner planets
Although the moon remains drier than any desert on Earth, new observations from three different spacecraft have uncovered what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.

On Mars, giant cracks were recently found etched across crater basins that hinted at ancient lakes, and liquid water is thought to have been common across a vast region of ancient Mars billions of years ago. Craters recently even revealed that more water ice is buried closer to the red planet's equator than would be expected, "which implies there was more water in the atmosphere of Mars in the not too distant past," explained Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program.

But liquid and frozen water are not limited to Earth's closest neighbors in space.

Even hellish Venus may once have been lush with oceans. Although space probes in the 1960s found the surface of Venus was now hot enough to melt lead, images collected from the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft suggest hints of past oceans. A runaway greenhouse effect – a far magnified version of the global warming seen occurring on Earth – apparently led its seas to evaporate away. "Its water, by absorbing heat, might have actually helped contribute to its greenhouse warming," Meyer said.

The outer worlds and beyond
Most moons of the solar system's gas giants are also rich in water.

On Saturn's moon Titan, "cryovolcanoes" are thought to erupt with cold slurries of water ice and ammonia.

Another Saturnian moon, Enceladus, is thought to have an ocean beneath its icy shell that likely feeds jets of water ice seen spurting from that moon.

Jupiter's moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, Neptune's Triton and the Uranian moons Titania and Oberon are also thought to potentially harbor hidden seas.

The outer worlds themselves are rather icy. Neptune and Uranus are often dubbed "ice giants" because they are rich with water, ammonia, and methane. Pluto is thought to consist roughly of 30 percent water ice. Beyond them lie the Kuiper Belt, Oort Cloud and the scattered disk, home to untold numbers of comets and icy dwarf planets such as Eris.

In fact, water is often found as ice or gas around stars and in the clouds between them. Signs of water have even been seen on planets outside our solar system.

What does it mean?
The fact that water is abundant should not be such a surprise. "Water is ridiculously common, one of the most common molecules in the universe," said Nicolas Cowan, an astronomer and astrobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

What seems rare is finding water in liquid form. In space, it either vaporizes if it is too hot or freezes if it is too cold .

"The only time you ever find it stable as a liquid is when you get enough atmosphere down to provide enough pressure to keep it liquid," Cowan explained.

Scientists looking for aliens consider liquid water "the Holy Grail, the thing that people really want to find," Cowan said. "Water is the main requirement we can see that life on Earth seems to have." Although life also needs a source of energy of some kind, in many ways, "you don't have to worry too much about that," Meyer added, since Earth shows that life can live off many different kinds of energy, from the sun or heat or chemicals.

Source space.com

Food Production Problems by 2050

2009-10-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

By 2050, the worlds population is expected to rise from 6.7 billion to 9.1 billion and feeding that many extra mouths, plus finding the space to grow the food to feed that many mouths, is going to take a serious amount of work and the FAO reports that we literally need to start today. That's before we factor in the droughts, floods, water scarcity, fluctuating temperatures, and other problems that will arise from climate change, essentially tying one hand behind our back while we try to grow our own food to feed ourselves.

Developing countries, in particular, will need an additional investment of $83 Billion (yes, Billion) USD, per year, just in food production to even come close to providing enough food by 2050. This is 50% more than they are currently receiving. Making this statistics game even worse, climate change is expected to reduce food production 30% in Africa and 21% in Asia. Plus, the increased use of land and resources to produce biofuels, presents another fight over resources and space. When developing communities are living on the edge, and then hit with climate change-related disasters, a likely outcome will be that we can expect an increase in refugees, which will further stress areas that are only marginally able to take provide for their own populations.

Is this even possible?

Well, the odds sure are stacked against the human race to get this done. If land is a problem, would vertical farms work, especially in areas that are under severe weather fluctuations? There are a few in existence now, but we'd need to figure out the kinks now if we're going to feed an additional 3 billion people in the next few years.

Going vegetarian is another option and advocated by many groups for a variety of reasons. The amount of land and resources needed to produce meat is vastly more than to produce fruits and vegetables, aside from the carbon footprint, animal rights issues and water pollution associated with factory farms. If we need to feed billions of people, we need a major shift in diet, not just a Meatless Monday.

Cities can also start producing their own food, particularly in dense, urban areas, aka become locavores. Detroit for example, is undergoing what they call a "food revolution" by turning blighted, unused properties into abundant community gardens. While many people are advocating for "natural landscaping" in yards instead of using lawns, another option is to to stop using lawns for decoration and start putting them to use producing food. Neighbors could work together and ensure that everyone grows something different, so we're not all stuck with tomatoes one season.

Mmm... should I start to cross my fingers?

Source treehugger.com

World's Most Powerful Laser

2009-10-15T09:04:00.000-07:00

This March, researchers at the National Ignition Facility demonstrated a 1.1 megajoule laser designed to ignite nuclear fusion reactions by 2010. But the facility's technology, which is housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, cannot yet generate enough energy to drive a practical power plant. So, even as physicists look forward to next year's demonstration, they're working on even more powerful lasers that could make possible a method for a kind of laser-induced fusion called fast ignition.

This week, at the annual meeting of the Optics Society of America in San Jose, CA, researchers from the University of Texas presented plans to build an exawatt laser that would be three orders of magnitude more powerful than anything that exists today. Today's most powerful lasers operate on the order of about a petawatt, or 10 to the power 15 (one quadrillion) watts. An exawatt is 10 to a power of 18 watts. Exawatt lasers will be able to concentrate that power in areas measuring micrometers, creating tremendous intensities.

One way to increase the power of a laser is to decrease the duration of the laser pulse. But working with laser pulses on the order of picoseconds or even femtoseconds is difficult because such pulses are made up of a wide bandwidth of light frequencies that damage optical glass, including the phosphate glass often used to amplify laser light, for example at the National Ignition Facility.

Todd Ditmire, director of the High Intensity Laser Science Group at the University of Texas at Austin, reported at this week's meeting that a new type of glass should be able to handle the intense pulses of light needed to create an exawatt laser. The glass would be doped and used to create devices called amplifiers--when light from a laser shines on the glass amplifier, ions in the glass absorb the light and re-emit it at higher energy. "The glass is just a host--it's a transparent material that holds the ions," says Ditmire.

The advantage of sticking with glass instead of another material is that manufacturers can readily make it into large devices, which increases the power of the resulting beam. In contrast, titanium sapphire can act as an amplifier for high-power lasers, but it's difficult to make in big pieces, says Ditmire. Working with German manufacturer Schott, the Texas group has begun characterizing the properties of their new type of glass, which combines silicate, the material that makes up everyday glass objects, with the metal element tantalum. Ditmire says his group is now working with Schott to create larger pieces of the material that will be assembled to make a prototype laser.

Ditmire expects that the first application of exawatt lasers will be as energy sources for medical particle accelerators. Bombarding tumors with protons causes fewer side effects than x-ray therapy because the protons release their energy all at once, sparing surrounding tissues. However, proton therapy hasn't come into wide use because it requires large particle accelerators. Compact exawatt lasers should be powerful enough to accelerate protons for medical therapy.

But the most exciting potential application for exawatt lasers is in fusion power plants that rely on a process called fast ignition. In the early stages, the National Ignition Facility will use petawatt lasers to compress a pellet of gold fuel until it heats up to 100 million °C, triggering fusion. Also at the conference this week, researchers from the facility reported that they've completed another step along the way to controlled fusion reactions, describing preliminary tests of their system using a 500,000-joule pulse to implode a fusion fuel pellet.

Fast ignition works differently. Instead of a single pulse, the technique would use lower-power lasers to "compress the fuel without worrying about heating it, and then a short-pulse [exawatt] laser that acts as a spark plug," igniting the fusion reaction, says Ditmire.

"Whether this will work is controversial," Ditmire admits. Aiming such a short pulse might be problematic. In theory, though, the fast-ignition process should take less energy to operate. The most important measure of the performance of a fusion reactor is its gain, or the ratio of the energy required to operate the lasers to the amount of energy produced by the reaction. The Livermore facility's goal is a gain of 15 to 20. "You need a gain of 100 to make a fusion power plant, and calculations show that exawatt lasers could get it," says Ditmire.

Source technologyreview.com

Capsosomes

2009-10-15T08:51:00.000-07:00

The transporter must be able to interact with the surroundings in order to receive the signal to unload its cargo. A team led by Frank Caruso at the University of Melbourne has now developed a microcontainer that can hold thousands of individual "carrier units—a "capsosome". These are polymer capsules in which liposomes have been embedded to form subcompartments.

Currently, the primary type of nanotransporter used for drugs is the capsule: Polymer capsules form stable containers that are semipermeable, which allows for communication with the surrounding medium. However, these are not suitable for the transport of small molecules because they can escape. Liposomes are good at protecting small drug molecules; however, they are often unstable and impermeable to substances from the environment. The Australian researchers have now combined the advantages of both systems in their capsosomes.

Capsosomes are produced by several steps. First, a layer of polymer is deposited onto small silica spheres. This polymer contains building blocks modified with cholesterol. Liposomes that have been loaded with an enzyme can be securely anchored to the cholesterol units and thus attached to the polymer film. Subsequently, more polymer layers are added and then cross-linked by disulfide bridges into a gel by means of a specially developed, very gentle cross-linking reaction. In the final step, the silica core is etched away without damaging the sensitive cargo.

Experiments with an enzyme as model cargo demonstrated that the liposomes remain intact and the cargo does not escape. Addition of a detergent releases the enzyme in a functional state. By means of the enzymatic reaction, which causes a color change of the solution, it was possible to determine the number of liposome compartments to be about 8000 per polymer capsule.

"Because the capsosomes are biodegradable and nontoxic", says Brigitte Staedler, a senior researcher in the group, "they would also be suitable for use as resorbable synthetic cell organelles and for the transport of drugs." In addition, the scientists are planning to encapsulate liposomes filled with different enzymes together and to equip them with specific "receivers" which would allow the individual cargo to be released in a targeted fashion. This would make it possible to use enzymatic reaction cascades for catalytic reaction processes.

Source sciencedaily.com

Luminous clothes

2009-10-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

Clothes made of this material could come in handy for cyclists, joggers and pedestrians on dark winter days, scientists at The William Lee Innovation Centre (WLIC), in the University’s School of Materials, who developed the product, say.

The high visibility jackets currently being used by emergency services, cyclists and highway maintenance workers - depend on external light sources to glow.

As such, they tend to be ineffective in low light situations. Since they always require a light source from something like vehicle headlights to make them visible, there is often the risk of the wearer being seen too late.

Clothes made of the electroluminescent yarn, however, allow the wearer to be permanently visible, thereby improving his/her personal safety.

The yarn consists of an inner conductive core yarn, coated with electroluminescent ink - which means it emits light when an electric current is passed through it - and a protective transparent encapsulation, with an outer conductive yarn wrapped around it.

When the electroluminescent (EL) yarn is powered with an inverter, the resultant electrical field between the inner and outer conductor causes the electroluminescent coating to emit light.

The emission of light occurs between the contact points between the outer yarn and the inner yarn.

WLIC head Dr Tilak Dias says the EL yarn is a novel technology, which emits light when powered by a battery. Its development is based on thin film electroluminescent technology, he says.

He says apart from being incorporated into clothing worn by cyclists, joggers and pedestrians, the EL yarn could also be used to weave or knit flexible road safety signs that communicate written instructions.

On a more glamorous note, Marie-Jacqueline, a French fashion designer, and LumiGram, have teamed up to create a very unique collection of Men’s and Women’s tops, based on fiber optic fabric.

When powered on by an embedded electronic module, the fiber optic fabric emits a colored light along the full length of the fiber, producing a stunning and classy luminous effect. A small switch allows turning the fabric light on/off.

“This collection of Tops perfectly demonstrates the amazing possibilities in term of design brought by this new technology, which allows us to give a magical dimension to our creations”, says Marie-Jacqueline. “The beautiful luminescence of the fiber optic fabric brings a unique depth and personality to our collection”.

Sources
thaindian.com
free-press-release.com

Floating Wind Turbine

2009-10-14T17:47:00.000-07:00

On the weekend of 6 June, boats hauled a 120-meter-tall steel tower into the Amoy Fjord off Stavanger, Norway. Pulled upright and filled with ballast water, the tower became the buoy for the world’s first full-scale floating wind turbine. The turbine, now placed 10 kilometers from the coast, is expected to start feeding power into the mainland grid by mid-July. Over the next two years, Norwegian energy company StatoilHydro will test how the 2.3-megawatt turbine holds up in 220-meter-deep water.

Much could go wrong. Corrosion, floating debris, sea ice, and marine growth are some of the concerns. More important, the buoy, which is tethered to the seabed with three cables, must keep the turbine from pitching and rolling too violently in ocean swells. If the buoys and cables fail, the blades could hit the water, or in the worst case, the entire turbine could overturn.

That could be disastrous for the more than US $62.5 million project. But the turbine’s developers at StatoilHydro don’t seem too worried. The buoy is based on a tried-and-tested design used for floating oil- and gas-drilling platforms. The ballast-filled steel cylinder extends 100 meters underwater, pulling the center of mass low to keep the turbine upright. The turbine can move sideways but can’t bob up and down much. ”We did a small-scale test in 2005 that gave us very promising results,” says Øistein Johannessen, StatoilHydro’s spokesperson for new energy. ”Both pitch movements and acceleration forces will be stronger [in the sea], but our initial hypothesis is that our motion controller will overcome these challenges.”

Blue H Technologies, in the Netherlands, is the only other company planning to generate power from floating turbines. It installed a prototype deep-water platform with an off-the-shelf 80-kilowatt turbine off Puglia, in southern Italy, in the summer of 2008. The company is now making its own turbines and expects to deploy an operational 2-MW unit next year. And it’s pushing for authorization for a 3.5-MW demonstration project off Martha’s Vineyard, an island off of the northeast U.S. coast. ”[We hope] to benefit from an interest in offshore wind energy from the current administration,” Neal Bastick, CEO of Blue H, says. ”The U.S. has no wind farms approved offshore, period, yet it has ideal conditions for offshore wind.”

But what advantage do floating turbines have over existing offshore turbines, whose bases are driven up to 30 meters beneath the seabed? Wind farms that are out of sight and far from busy coasts would face less public opposition, says Jason Jonkman, a wind technology researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo. Winds on open oceans are also stronger and steadier than in coastal areas, so turbines would be more productive. Floating turbines make the most economical sense for deep waters, because fixed turbines must be built taller and wider at the bases the deeper you go. ”Beyond 50 meters, it’s not cost effective to build a massive structure that’s pounded into the seabed,” Jonkman says.

Floating wind farms would be ideal for countries such as Norway, Italy, and Japan, which don’t have shallow coastal waters. And there’s a strong case to be made for the United States, where 810 of the more than 1000 gigawatts of offshore wind potential are in waters deeper than 30 meters, according to the World Energy Council.

At least over the next decade, most new offshore wind energy is going to come from fixed turbines. And the development will be nearly all in Europe. The European Wind Energy Association predicts the European Union will have installed 35 GW of wind power in shallow waters by 2020.

Yet a move to floating deepwater turbines is inevitable, according to NREL. That evolution could speed up if StatoilHydro and Blue H show that the economics of floating turbines work out better. StatoilHydro plans to make bigger 5-MW turbines in the long run, which could bring down energy costs. Today’s shallow-water turbines cost between $2.4 and $3 million per megawatt to install, according to the World Energy Council. But since floating turbines wouldn’t need seabed construction, large ships, or equipment out at sea, or require decommissioning a large installed structure, Blue H is ”bullishly sure we’ll be significantly less expensive,” says 'Blue H's Bastick.

Source spectrum.ieee.org

Subaru Hybrid Car

2009-10-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

If there's one automaker that refuses to mess with success, it's Subaru. The quirky Japanese company has stuck to its boxer engines and standard AWD for decades and has carved out a nice niche for itself. As the realities of the 21st century sink in, though, even Subaru must adapt. The Subaru Hybrid Tourer Concept represents the first step.

Though it may appear like an over-stylized, Japanese market Legacy Wagon on the outside, it's what's underneath that counts -- Subaru's first hybrid drivetrain, which combines a pair of electric motors and a lithium-ion battery with the tried-and-true Symmetrical AWD and boxer engine. The pair of electric motors -- one mounted at each axle -- can propel the car at low speeds or assist in acceleration as well as act as generators to recapture braking energy.

Primary power will come from a 2.0L horizontally-opposed, turbocharged and direct-injected four-cylinder engine. Likely a variant of the EJ20, it is the automaker's first direct-injected engine and is said to offer improved fuel efficiency and performance and lower emissions compared with its port-injected counterparts. It is also the first application of Subaru's start/stop technology, which shuts down the engine when the vehicle is stationary. The engine sends power to all four wheels via Subaru's new Lineartronic CVT.

The 20 kW (27 hp) rear electric motor will propel the car at low speeds, and assist in acceleration and hill climbing. The 10 kW (14 hp) front electric motor acts as a generator to recapture brake energy and recharge the lithium-ion battery but will also provide additional propulsion for climbing hills. The Hybrid Tourer Concept's total output isn't known as Subaru has not yet released power numbers for the gasoline engine.

In addition to the hybrid drivetrain, the Hybrid Tourer Concept will also showcase Subaru's Eyesight + (plus) technology, which uses stereo video cameras to track potential obstacles in the car's path and assist in collision avoidance. Able to recognize everything from pedestrians to cyclists to other vehicles, the system constantly monitors their positions and paths and also monitors the car's blind spots. It can also act as a lane departure warning system and as active cruise control.

The Hybrid Tourer's interior features plenty of concept car showbiz. For example, the top of the dashboard can be moved up or down "to provide an optimal driving environment for the driver depending on driving conditions," whatever that means. Other tricks include special windshield glass that will reduce driver eye strain, new leather that's more breathable, ventilated seats and a flat rear floor despite the AWD drivetrain, although as it has only four seats, Subaru seems to have gone to lot of effort for minimal benefit.

On the outside, the Hybrid Tourer Concept looks more or less like a brand new Japanese-market Legacy Wagon that's been remolded into a sportier shape. A faster D-pillar and stylized tail lights recall the sharp rake and lenses of the new Mitsubishi Lancer Sportback, but look far more aggressive than the rear of the Legacy Wagon. In front, Subaru's new design language has been exaggerated, with deep vents around the fog lights, a gaping grille, a more pronounced hood bulge and sharper headlights. Subaru has ditched the traditional four doors in favor of massive and highly impractical gullwing doors that do away with the B- and C-pillars and allow easy access to all four seats.

You can forget the show-floor eyewash -- the real story is Hybrid Tourer Concept's powertrain, which is almost certainly destined for production Subarus in the near future. The Eyesight + technology is also likely for production, though don't expect it in U.S. market Subarus. We'll find out more when the Hybrid Tourer Concept makes its debut at the Tokyo Motor Show on October 21 and 22.

Source motortrend.com

San Francisco Bridge City

2009-10-14T17:16:00.000-07:00

San Francisco's Bay Bridge is being redone; a large portion of the bridge will remain unused, but in good shape. What can city planners do with this unique, unused space?

Science fiction writer William Gibson thought about the Bay Bridge in his 1993 novel Virtual Light and local San Francisco architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello thought hard about the fate of the Bay Bridge, and hit upon the same idea as Gibson. If you take a close look at the abandoned side of the bridge, that span of the bridge is still very sturdy, and could easily bear the weight of buildings or other structures. Why dismantle and waste it when you could turn it into a unique neighborhood?

Successful bridge neighborhoods have been built in Florence, Italy and in London, England. Why not here in the United States?

If you know where to look, science fictional ideas are becoming architectural reality. In Arena Salix in Germany, supple young willow branches are used to replace metal superstructures in creating a beautiful outdoor pavilion (see photo). In creating this structure, which changes with the seasons like a living tree, the designers were able to bring the work of science fiction writer Jack Vance in to being. In his 1954 novel The Houses of Iszm, Vance wrote about house trees that were grown to order.

Well... it sounds like a cool idea, if it wasn't for those damn earthquakes.

Source livescience.com

DASH

2009-10-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

Aptly called DASH (Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod), the six-legged insect-inspired robot can reach speeds of 1.5 meters per second and is flexible/strong enough to be dropped from a height of 28 meters without breaking. A single DC motor powers the legs and a small servomotor to slightly deform the robot’s body, allowing it to make turns.

DASH was created using a fabrication process called smart composite microstructures, or SCM. Developed by UC Berkeley researchers, the process is quick, inexpensive, and purpose-built for the design challenges of microrobots.

SCM allows for complicated, functional folded structures that move using elastic deformation rather than through the use of traditional mechanical elements like pin joints or bearings. It integrates large flexible joints, created by a laser micro-machining and lamination, with novel actuators. The result is a robot made up of composite materials that can not only withstand a drop from a tall building, but also immediately dash off, undamaged.

DASH is but one of several ongoing projects underway at the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab. For instance, check out the synthetic gecko adhesive which cleans itself during use, as the natural gecko does. Or the Micromechanical Flying Insect (MFI) Project, an effort to develop a 25 mm (wingtip-to-wingtip) device capable of sustained autonomous flight.

Among the goals of the researchers is to; “Harness features of animal manipulation, locomotion, sensing, actuation, mechanics, dynamics, and control strategies to radically improve millirobot capabilities.”

Source blogs.zdnet.com

Building a Sun

2009-10-14T16:46:00.000-07:00

An international team of researchers is building a machine to recreate the sun. This will happen in Balmy, south of France. It will take tens of thousands of tonnes of steel and concrete, plus a whole host of more unusual materials: beryllium, niobium, titanium and tungsten; frigid liquid nitrogen and helium. Oh, and a supply of burnt coconuts.

This eclectic mix of ingredients will be turned into ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor - the next big thing in nuclear fusion research. When completed in 2018, the reactor will fuse together two heavy isotopes of hydrogen to release vast quantities of energy. In theory, the result will be clean electricity galore with no carbon emissions and far less radioactive waste than today's nuclear fission reactors leave behind.

While the concept of nuclear fusion is simple, the practicalities are not. That's because the nuclei themselves are reluctant participants: each carries a positive electrical charge and these repel one another, so forcing two nuclei together is almost impossible. Only at stupendously high temperatures do the nuclei acquire enough energy to overcome their mutual aversion, smash into one another, and fuse.

It is much the same picture in the sun. There, heat is generated from the fusion of hydrogen nuclei. But the fuel barely smoulders even at 15 million kelvin, the temperature of the sun's core. It is consumed so slowly that the supply lasts for billions of years.

At a fusion power plant, the fuel needs to be burned on human, not cosmological, timescales. The heavier isotopes deuterium and tritium are a little easier to burn than ordinary hydrogen, but even so, to get a good blaze going inside ITER the temperature will have to be racked up to a hellish 150 million kelvin. That brings a mountain of engineering problems. Not least is how to contain a plasma of electrons and atomic nuclei that is 10 times as hot as the sun's core.

Even the most hardy of construction materials cannot withstand temperatures of more than a few thousand kelvin. So the solution is to weave a cage for the plasma from magnetic fields.

ITER follows the design of several smaller experimental reactors where physicists have already achieved the temperatures required for fusion. The nuclear fuel is held inside a ring-shaped reactor called a tokamak.

Magnets outside the ITER ring combine to generate a spiralling field that holds the superhot plasma in place. To make its magnetic cage, ITER will use superconducting coils of niobium-alloy wire weighing a total of 10,000 tonnes and cooled by a supply of liquid helium. Outside the magnetic cage, a vacuum isolates the confined plasma from the reactor's inner wall - and this is where the coconut comes in.

Trapped in its cage, the fusion fuel is simultaneously cooked in three different ways. While electrical circuits force a current through the plasma, it is blasted with microwaves and bombarded by high-energy atoms generated by small particle accelerators dotted around the ring. Even under this triple-pronged attack, so far no tokamak has yielded much fusion energy. ITER should do better by firing up a much bigger, denser ring of plasma. A lot of power will have to be pumped in to start the plasma sizzling, but if all goes to plan, 10 times as much will emerge.

All that power poses a threat to ITER because the magnetic cage is not impregnable. The violet-hot plasma will radiate X-rays, a trickle of charged particles will always escape, and the fusion reaction will create high-energy neutrons, which are electrically neutral and can't be contained by magnetism. So despite the magnetic cage, ITER's plasma will blast the surrounding walls with several megawatts of heat per square metre, far more than in previous tokamaks or conventional nuclear fission reactors.

The solution is simple: use water to carry the heat away. "Of course this is exactly what we want from fusion in the end - to extract the heat," says Mario Merola, head of the ITER division responsible for internal components of the reactor.

Once again, it's the practicalities that are the problem. The main reactor wall, known as the blanket, will be made from 440 stainless steel blocks nearly half a metre thick and riddled with high-pressure water pipes. This steel blanket should absorb most of the neutrons, which will heat the blanket from within. Near the inner wall, the water pipes can be no more than 2.5 centimetres apart, otherwise the steel between them would become dangerously warm and soft.

For the innermost surface facing the plasma, steel is no good. Incoming plasma particles would chip iron atoms out of the steel and back into the chamber, where they would pollute the fuel and damp down the fusion reactions. So the ITER team has chosen to face the wall with tiles made of beryllium. While beryllium is toxic to humans, it is quite palatable to the plasma because it is such a light element, close in atomic weight to deuterium and tritium. So although some beryllium will get blasted off the walls, it won't quench the reactor's fire.

The steel and beryllium plates will also be battered by mechanical forces generated by the interaction of the electric currents and magnetic fields passing through them. Each 4-tonne plate will experience forces of up to the weight of 100 tonnes, so they will have to be firmly locked in place - and sturdily built, even though they are punctured with holes for the pipes. "The design of the blanket modules is one of the most technically challenging parts of the whole machine," says Merola.

A different kind of armour plate is needed around the bottom of the chamber. Here, a device called the divertor is used to keep the plasma pure. The main by-product of the fusion reaction is helium nuclei, which would eventually build up and stifle the nuclear fire. The divertor's job is to skim off the outermost layer of plasma, which can then be cooled and siphoned off to have the helium "ash" and other impurities removed. The surface of the divertor will get hot enough to melt beryllium, so it will be covered in tungsten and carbon fibre, both materials with melting points above 3000 kelvin.

Fusion remains a controversial goal, not least because of the expense of the research still required. ITER alone will cost more than $10 billion. Sceptics also like to point out that ever since the idea was first touted in the 1950s, fusion's promise of clean power has receded endlessly into the future.

The ITER team are now hoping to drag it closer to the present. If they can successfully hold a slice of the sun at the reactor's heart, we might finally be on the verge of getting usable energy out of this electric dream.

Source newscientist.com

MagPul FMG9 - Folding Submachine Gun

2009-10-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

The Bushmaster Adaptive Combat Rifle (ACR) is the production name for an updated version of the Masada Adaptive Combat Weapon System. In late January 2008, Bushmaster entered into a licensing agreement with Magpul whereby Bushmaster would take over production, future development and sales of the Masada. It is a patent pending self-loading rifle platform designed by Magpul Industries of Erie, Colorado. The rifle was initially developed over a period of four months, completely independent of government funding. Prototypes were displayed at the 2007 SHOT Show in Orlando, Florida. Originally scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2008, Bushmaster announced on May 16, 2008, that the consumer release would be delayed until Q1 2009, due to a focus on military projects. On November 18, 2008, Bushmaster released a statement saying, "The ACR is being redesigned to be a superior offering to compete for the next generation US Army infantry carbine and subcompact weapon requirement and will be available to select customers in 2009." The ACR was one of the weapons displayed to U.S. Army officials during an invitation-only Industry Day on November 13, 2008. The goal of the Industry Day was to review current carbine technology prior to writing formal requirements for a future replacement for the M4 Carbine.

In it’s closed position, while you’re carrying it around, the MagPul FMG9 is designed to look something like a portable radio, and incorporates a detachable tactical white light.

The MagPul FMG 9 9mm subgun essentially shows in microcosm all of MagPul’s creativity and product design and development strengths (including ergonomics and "usernomics")–and, yes, perhaps even a desire to entertain–in one little lethal foldable SMG package. No matter how one feels about mini-subguns or micro-subguns, one must acknowledge the rapid-design & development skill the FMG9 showcases. You really have to see the FMG9 folding/foldable subgun being opened, closed, and handled to fully appreciate it.

Sources
wikipedia.org
defensereview.com

E Cigars

2009-10-13T16:59:00.000-07:00

An electronic cigarette or "e-cigarette" is a battery-powered device that provides inhaled doses of nicotine by heating a nicotine-chemical solution into a vapor. It is an alternative to smoked tobacco products, such as cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. In addition to nicotine delivery, this vapor also provides a flavor and physical sensation similar to that of inhaled tobacco smoke, while no tobacco, smoke, or combustion is actually involved in its operation.

An electronic cigarette usually takes the form of some manner of elongated tube, though many are designed to resemble the outward appearance of real smoking products, like cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. A common design is also the "pen-style", so named for its visual resemblance to a ballpoint pen.

Most electronic cigarettes are reusable devices with replaceable and refillable parts. A number of disposable electronic cigarettes have also been developed.

The legal status of electronic cigarettes varies by country.

Most popular e cigars:
The first and most popular device that we sell is the super mini e cigarette, also known as the RN4081. It is 102mm long and looks the most like a regular cigarette. One of the reasons that it is so popular is because of its appearance.

Another e cigarette is the RN4072. The pen style is 155.5mm long and looks the least like a real cigarette. Both the atomizer and the battery are longer on the pen style making it our longest e cigarette. The best feature of the pen style is the size of the cartridge. It is massive and holds a lot of liquid. Each cartridge is about the equivalent of a whole pack of cigarettes. That makes the pen style cheaper to operate than the super mini when you are just buying cartridges for it. The cartridges are also very easy to refill, they pop right out and you have direct access to the liquid container. Refilling with liquid makes your e smoking experience far less expensive.

A third kind of e cigarette is the DSE901. It is 119.5mm long and has a large easily accessible cartridge for refilling or for popping on a new one. You can get them in white so they look like a regular cigarette or in fancy colors so they show a little flair.

Sources
ecigarettecigar.com/
wikipedia.org

Jet Man

2009-10-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

Swiss-born pilot and adventurer Yves Rossy is the self-proclaimed "first jet-powered flying man in the history of aviation".

Before developing his jet-propelled wing, Rossy spent much of his professional life as a pilot—first in the military, flying the Tiger F5 and the Mach 2 Mirage III—then as a commercial co-pilot, flying DC-9s and Boeing 747s for Swissair. He's also an experienced hang-glider and paraglider, he's sky surfed off a hot air balloon over the Matterhorn, and he has over 1,100 parachute jumps under his belt.

Rossy rides aboard a small aircraft until they reach an altitude of 7,500 feet. At that point, with the device strapped to his back, Rossy leaps from the plane. During free-fall, he begins a steady glide with his wings extended. Then he fires the four Jet-Cat P200 jet engines, and BOOM—he's off, reaching speeds of 186 miles per hour. When ready or when he runs out of fuel, Rossy pulls his chute and flutters to earth.

According to Rossy, the body experiences very little stress during flight. Furthermore, a heat-resistant suit—plus the chilly air temperature—protects him against the heat of the engines.

Yves Rossy's jet-propelled wing is a thing of beauty, but it didn't start out that way. Rossy experienced some low points along the way. For example one early failed prototype featured an inflatable wing; another failed effort featured a wing made from rigid carbon, but in 2004 at an air show he went into a spin and was forced to release the wing, which tore his parachute. A year later while in-flight he experienced uncontrollable oscillations, and had to release the wing, which was largely destroyed by ground impact.

Not until November of 2006 during a text flight over Bex, Switzerland did he finally see the kind of performance he wanted—a flight that amounted to "a waking dream lasting 5 minutes and 40 seconds." He experienced another setback in 2007, but since then it's been pretty smooth sailing for the Swiss adventurer, including a successful September 2008 flight across the English Channel, from Calais to Dover.

Next up for the Jet Man? A flight across the Grand Canyon.

Sources
jet-man.com
futurecars.com

Nokia 6350 Slider Phone

2009-10-13T16:33:00.000-07:00

Recently Nokia and AT&T launched the new 6350 mobile phone. The Nokia 6350 is a colorful fold phone designed to give users optimum comfort in their hand. The mobile device boasts of various useful mobile features including 3G and HSDPA connectivity through AT&T 3G network.The Nokia 6350 is available now at all AT&T retail stores. AT&T subscribers can get for $29.99 plus a two-year service contract after mail-in rebate. And since it is being released through AT&& the Nokia 6350 supports various services including AT&T Navigator and AT&T Video Share.

The Nokia 6350 is a quad-band GSM phone with 2 megapixel camera, 2-inch TFT main LCD and a 1.36-inch secondary QVGA display, A-GPS, microSDHC car slot, stereo Bluetooth, music player, speakerphone and up to 4 hours of talk time. It has a dedicated camera key, volume key, numeric keypad, GPS key and external dedicated media key.

In addition, the Nokia 6350 also support VGA video capture and playback at 15 fps. It also has a music player and supports music files such as MP3, AAC, AAC+ and more.

The Nokia 6350’s camera feature has up to 4x digital zoom and various modes for adjusting your photos white balance. The phone also supports Java games and is preloaded with some nice little games. You can download other games as well.

The Nokia 6350 is a quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 phone.

Source cellphonenews.com

Geothermal power

2009-10-13T16:23:00.000-07:00

Geothermal power (from the Greek roots geo, meaning earth, and thermos, meaning heat) is power extracted from heat stored in the earth. This geothermal energy originates from the original formation of the planet, from radioactive decay of minerals, and from solar energy absorbed at the surface. It has been used for space heating and bathing since ancient Roman times, but is now better known for generating electricity. There are only a handful of locations across the world which are capable of producing viable and efficient levels of electricity from geothermal energy sources. As a result of this, as of 2007, less than 1% of the worlds electricity supply comes from geothermal sources. An additional 28 GW of direct geothermal heating capacity is installed for district heating, space heating, spas, industrial processes, desalination and agricultural applications.

Geothermal power is cost effective, reliable, and environmentally friendly, but has historically been limited to areas near tectonic plate boundaries. Recent technological advances have dramatically expanded the range and size of viable resources, especially for applications such as home heating, opening a potential for widespread exploitation. Geothermal wells release greenhouse gases trapped deep within the earth, but these emissions are much lower per energy unit than those of conventional fossil fuels. As a result, geothermal power has the potential to help mitigate global warming if widely deployed in place of fossil fuels.

Prince Piero Ginori Conti tested the first geothermal generator on 4 July 1904, at the Larderello dry steam field in Italy. The largest group of geothermal power plants in the world is located at The Geysers, a geothermal field in California, United States.[3] As of 2004, five countries (El Salvador, Kenya, the Philippines, Iceland, and Costa Rica) generate more than 15% of their electricity from geothermal sources.

Contrary to popular belief geothermal energy is not technically a renewable energy source. There is widespread debate as to its effectiveness for electricity generation or heating.
The production of electricity from geothermal energy sources can be a highly powerful and efficient method of usage, yet location is key for an efficient geothermal power station.

The three main power plant designs which use geothermal as an energy source are; "dry steam", "flash steam", and "binary-cycle" power stations.

Where Geothermal Energy is Found:
Naturally occurring large areas of hydrothermal resources are called geothermal reservoirs. Most geothermal reservoirs are deep underground with no visible clues showing above ground. But geothermal energy sometimes finds its way to the surface in the form of:

Volcanoes and fumaroles (holes where volcanic gases are released)
Hot springs
Geysers

Most Geothermal Resources Are Near Plate Boundaries
The most active geothermal resources are usually found along major plate boundaries where earthquakes and volcanoes are concentrated. Most of the geothermal activity in the world occurs in an area called the Ring of Fire. This area encircles the Pacific Ocean.

When magma comes close to the surface, it heats ground water found trapped in porous rock or water running along fractured rock surfaces and faults. These features are called hydrothermal. They have two common ingredients: water (hydro) and heat (thermal).

Geologists use various methods to look for geothermal reservoirs. Drilling a well and testing the temperature deep underground is the most reliable method for finding a geothermal reservoir.

Use of Geothermal Energy
Some applications of geothermal energy use the Earth's temperatures near the surface, while others require drilling miles into the Earth. The three main uses of geothermal energy are:

Direct use and district heating systems use hot water from springs or reservoirs near the surface.

Electricity generation power plants require water or steam at very high temperature (300° to 700°F). Geothermal power plants are generally built where geothermal reservoirs are located within a mile or two of the surface.

Geothermal heat pumps use stable ground or water temperatures near the Earth's surface to control building temperatures above ground.

Geothermal Power Plants:
Geothermal power plants use hydrothermal resources that have two common ingredients: water (hydro) and heat (thermal). Geothermal plants require high temperature (300°F to 700°F) hydrothermal resources that may come from either dry steam wells or hot water wells. We can use these resources by drilling wells into the Earth and piping the steam or hot water to the surface. Geothermal wells are one to two miles deep.

Types of Geothermal Plants
There are three basic types of geothermal power plants:

Dry steam plants use steam piped directly from a geothermal reservoir to turn the generator turbines. The first geothermal power plant was built in 1904 in Tuscany, Italy, where natural steam erupted from the Earth.

Flash steam plants take high-pressure hot water from deep inside the Earth and convert it to steam to drive the generator turbines. When the steam cools, it condenses to water and is injected back into the ground to be used over and over again. Most geothermal power plants are flash steam plants.
Binary cycle power plants transfer the heat from geothermal hot water to another liquid. The heat causes the second liquid to turn to steam which is used to drive a generator turbine.

Sources
wikipedia.org
tonto.eia.doe.gov
www.clean-energy-ideas.com

BlackBerry Bold 2

2009-10-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

Canadian mobile-phone maker Research In Motion is working on delivering a second flavor of its popular BlackBerry Bold device, this is no secret to anyone, yet the actual release date for the new Bold II (9700) is not yet known. However, it seems that the phone is getting ready to make an appearance on the market in the not-too-far future, and that it should come to at least two carriers in North America.

The device will be a smaller form factor than the original Bold, and will come with a battery casing reminiscent of the Bold 9000. It has been already rumored a few times before to be heading to the market sometime in mid-November, yet the latest news on it show some more specific launch dates. To be more precise, BGR says that the Bold sequel is set to come to T-Mobile's lineup on November 11, which should come in line with the recently spotted October-21 announcement date.

At the same time, the news site also says that the upcoming device will also head to the airwaves of Rogers in Canada, and that it should make an appearance with the operator on October 26. In case the device will indeed come to the Canadian carrier that day, it might also make an appearance in the US sooner than stated above. Nothing is official for the time being, yet we'll keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Source news.softpedia.com

Trash Can Nuclear Reactors

2009-10-10T11:24:00.000-07:00

NASA has made a series of critical strides toward the development of new nuclear reactors the size of a trash can that could power a human outpost on the moon or Mars.

Three recent tests at different NASA centers and a national lab have successfully demonstrated key technologies required for compact fission-based nuclear power plants for human settlements on other worlds.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., offers a one-of-a-kind test facility which, without using nuclear materials, enables engineers to simulate the nuclear power process of heat transfer from a reactor to a power converter.

"The recent tests bear out that Fission surface power system could be an important source of energy for exploration on the moon and Mars," said Mike Houts, project manager for nuclear systems at Marshall. "This power system could provide an abundant source of reliable, cost-effective energy and may be used anywhere on the lunar surface."

For this particular test series, the Marshall reactor simulator was linked to a Stirling engine, developed by NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The Stirling engine, named for 19th-century industrialist and inventor Robert Stirling, converts heat into electricity.

The Marshall reactor simulator included a specialized pump, provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, and a coolant loop filled with a mixture of sodium and potassium. The coolant loop provided heat to the Stirling engine at conditions very similar to an actual fission-based surface power system. The joint testing helped resolve potential integration issues and provided information and experience needed to reduce technology risks associated with this system concept.

The testing of the Stirling engine with the Marshall reactor simulator may well be a key factor in demonstrating the readiness of fission surface power technology, and could provide NASA with an efficient and robust system to produce power in the harsh environment on the moon and Mars.

NASA's current plan for human space exploration is to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 on expeditions that could lead to a permanent outpost for exploring the lunar surface and testing technologies that could aid a manned mission to Mars.

The space agency has been studying the feasibility of using nuclear fission power generators to support future moon bases. Engineers performed tests in recent weeks as part of a joint effort by NASA and the Department of Energy.

Nuclear fission power plants work by splitting the nuclei of atoms in a sustainable, controllable reaction that releases heat, which can then be funneled through a power converter to transfer that energy into usable electricity.

"A small fission-based nuclear reactor coupled with a Stirling engine could provide up to 40 kilowatts of usable energy, enough to support a moon base or Mars outpost," said Houts. That's about the same amount of power needed to supply eight houses on Earth, NASA officials have said. The test series was conducted as part of the fission-based surface power project, within NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program, which is tasked with developing advanced technologies that will enable NASA to conduct future human exploration missions, while reducing mission risk and cost.

The next step for NASA's fission power project is to combine its radiator, engine and alternator successes into a single non-nuclear power plant demonstration. That test is slated to begin in 2012, NASA officials said.

Source sciencedaily.com

Eco Shower

2009-10-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

Eco-thinkers have come up with an amazing new way to create drinking water - by putting plants in the bottom of a shower.

After you have washed in the special eco-shower the water passes down into a series of physical filters and is treated by plants such as reeds and rushes growing around your feet.

Designer Jun Yasumoto, said: 'These plants have been proven to be able to remove the chemicals from your shampoo. Using a natural filtering principle called phyto-purification, the bathroom becomes a mini-eco-system by recycling and regenerating the wastewater.

"With this project, we tried to combine the pleasure of taking a shower with the satisfaction of recycling water. We wanted the recycling process to actually interact with the use of shower."
The waste water passes into a chamber below the shower floor where it goes through a maze of filters.

Included in the network is sand, reeds, rushes, a mesh filter, water hyacinths and lemnas, and finally a carbon filter.
And the inventors - all graduates from French national design school Ecole Nationale Supirieure de Creation Industrielle - hope that the impact of their concept doesn't just alter the way we bathe.

"We thought that by conceiving this very intricate relation between the recycling of water and the user experience, we could get the users to also re-think the way they use water," said Yasumoto.

After posting their seven-year-old design on the internet, the eggheads have been inundated with queries about where their shower can be bought.

"No prototype has been made as the project is just a concept for the moment, but it is interesting to see the positive feedback we are getting since we put these images online," Yasumoto said.

"It has made us think we should keep on developing this idea and start thinking of ways to integrate it and bring it closer to reality."

Source dailymail.co.uk

Car Cam Voyager

2009-10-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

The Car Camera with Built-In LCD Screen provides you with the hard evidence you need while on the road. Avoid rising insurance premiums by proving that you're not to blame in case of an accident. The camera simply mounts on your dashboard, plugs into your car lighter, and is ready to record real-time video. The video records onto a SD card (up to 32Gb for 48 hours of extended recording) and can be easily played back on any TV or computer.
DIY Installation - Simply Plug It In Your Car's Lighter And You're Ready To Record

Advanced Recording Features Ensure You Will Always Get The Evidence You Need
This camera offers advanced features such as a back-up battery that will continue recording even if you're car goes dead. That means that in case of an accident you will continue recording the evidence you need to protect yourself. The camera also automatically protects recorded files every 15 minutes so you won't have to scan through hours of video, you can find the video segment you need. And when your memory card has been exceeded, the camera will simply overwrite and continue recording. You never even have to look at your recorded footage until you have an accident or need to refer back to a specific situation.

Some of the features include:
Easy to start recording by simply plugging the power jack into the cigar-lighter.
2 recording modes that you can easily customize to suit your security needs.
Full stop with warning sound.
Overwrite the earliest recording file while memory card is full
Protected recording files a separate video is created every 15 minutes in (200MB) segments.
Automatic battery back-up; 15 minutes of post-event video in an event of a power failure.
Up to 32GB micro SD card compatible
Assures clearer, smooth and more fluent image transmission.
Never miss the details with high resolution 720x480 pixels, and high frame rate of 25 ~ 30 frames per second.
Wide-angle 2.0 mega pixel camera records the moments before and after a presumed incident.

Intereted? Check it here

OLEDs TV

2009-10-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

Plasma, and LCD televisions will soon be a thing of the past, imagine a television screen as thin as a piece of paper that weighs no more than a few ounces. Or, so flexible it could be worn around your wrist and is virtually indestructible.

The primary benefit of OLED displays over traditional LCDs is that OLEDs do not require a backlight to function, and consume less power during operation. OLED displays are expected to be more efficiently manufactured than LCDs and plasma displays.

The AMOLED technology have full layers of cathode, organic molecules and anode, the anode layer overlays a thin film transistor (TFT) array that forms a matrix. The TFT array itself is the circuitry that determines which pixels get turned on to form an picture.
The fledgling technology of making ultra-thin displays using organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) is starting to bear fruit finally with Sony, Samsung SDI and other makers introducing new applications.

OLEDs are made by placing a series of organic thin films between two conductors. When electrical current is applied, a bright light is emitted. The OLED materials emit light and do not require a backlight (unlike LCDs). In fact OLED TVs are better than LCDs in many ways:

OLED TVs have Faster refresh rate, better contrast and better color reproduction.

OLED TVs are really thin - the Sony XEL-1 for example is just 3mm thick. The new prototypes by Sony are merely 0.3mm thick!

OLEDs have a much better viewing angle - almost 180 degrees.

Better for the environment - they draw less power, and contain no bad metals.

OLEDs can actually be made flexible or transparent. Imaging a foldable large OLED TV that takes no space when not used. In the future we might see an OLED displays that is actually rollable. So maybe you could just roll it when you want to watch some TV, and then remove it when not needed.
Or perhaps the OLEDs will be so thin and transparent that they will just be invisible when not in use - you'll just see the bare wall, but when lit up, it'll display your TV picture.

Just a matter of time until we can star archiving our LCD and Plasma Tvs.

Sources
oled-display.net
oled-info.com

Iphone: The MiLi Power Pack

2009-10-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

The iPhone is many technology devices in one – a mobile phone, a music device, a camera and a way to connect to the Internet and send email. Unfortunately all those awesome apps have a habit of sapping the iPhone’s battery. Good thing, Phonesuit introduced the MiLi Power Pack. The MiLi Power Pack will give you the freedom to use your iPhone without the daily worries of running out of battery life! Enjoy your iPhone for voice, music, video, games and business applications with extended, stable power. You can now experience up to two days or more of uninterrupted iPhone power, depending on your usage.

The MiLi is a rechargeable (via USB) external battery concealed inside a svelte protective hard-shell case, and it offers twice, yes twice, the battery life of the iPhone alone – up to 390 hours standby time. The MiLi Power Pack utilizes high quality lithium-polymer battery technology. This allows the MiLi to have a small, lightweight package with an extremely powerful, high capacity battery. The MiLi iPhone battery offers an impressive 2000mAh of charging capacity. And thanks to MiLi’s smart chip you can extend your overall iPhone battery life by using the iPhone’s internal battery only when it’s absolutely necessary.

If you’re looking for a super smart protective case and a take-anywhere battery for your iPhone, the MiLi Power Pack will offer you both and more. The PhoneSuit MiLi Power Pack is available in eight different high gloss colors to choose from.

Source geekiegadgets.com

Vertical Farming

2009-10-08T08:21:00.000-07:00

Why would we want to build skyscrapers filled with lettuce when we've been farming on the ground for 10,000 years? Because as the world's population grows--from 6.8 billion now to as much as 9 billion by 2050--we could run out of productive soil and water. Most of the population growth will occur in cities that can't easily feed themselves. Add the fact that modern agriculture and everything associated with it--deforestation, chemical-laden fertilizers and carbon-emitting transportation--is a significant contributor to climate change, and suddenly vertical farming doesn't seem so magic beanstalk in the sky.

An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices.

"Vertical farming could allow food to be grown locally and sustainably," says Glen Kertz, CEO of Valcent, a tech company based in El Paso, Texas, that's trying out the process. His firm uses hydroponic greenhouse methods to grow upward rather than out. The result saves space--vital in urban areas--and allows farmers to irrigate and fertilize with far less waste.

The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes, a wide variety of herbs, and other produce has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent need to scale up this technology to accommodate another 3 billion people. An entirely new approach to indoor farming must be invented, employing cutting edge technologies. The Vertical Farm must be efficient (cheap to construct and safe to operate). Vertical farms, many stories high, will be situated in the heart of the world's urban centers. If successfully implemented, they offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (year-round crop production), and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.

60% of the human population now lives vertically in cities. This means that, for the majority, we humans are protected against the elements, yet we subject our food-bearing plants to the rigors of the great outdoors and can do no more than hope for a good weather year. However, more often than not now, due to a rapidly changing climate regime, that is not what follows. Massive floods, protracted droughts, class 4-5 hurricanes, and severe monsoons take their toll each year, destroying millions of tons of valuable crops. Don't our harvestable plants deserve the same level of comfort and protection that we now enjoy? The time is at hand for us to learn how to safely grow our food inside environmentally controlled multistory buildings within urban centers. If we do not, then in just another 50 years, the next 3 billion people will surely go hungry, and the world will become a much more unpleasant place in which to live.

Dickson Despommier (A professor of environmental health at Columbia University in New York City) has drawn up models for a 30-story, city-block-size vertical farm that would have transparent walls to maximize sunlight and would produce enough food for 50,000 people. "With about 160 of these buildings, you could feed all of New York," he says. His idea has intrigued architects, but Despommier concedes that it would cost hundreds of millions to build a full-scale skyscraper farm. That's the main drawback: construction and energy costs would probably make vertically raised food more costly than traditional crops. At least for now.

Sources
verticalfarm.com
time.com

Micro Nuclear Battery

2009-10-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

Nuclear power has long provided steady energy sources for everything from homes to deep space probes. Now researchers have begun developing a tiny nuclear battery the size of a penny that could provide power in a smaller, lighter, and more efficient package.

Most people probably think of nuclear power that involves fission and the splitting of atoms. But nuclear power can also come from the natural radioactive decay of isotopes such as plutonium-238 -- a much gentler process that has powered nuclear generators aboard spacecraft such as NASA's Cassini probe.

"The radioisotope battery can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries," said Jae Kwon, an electrical and computer engineer at the University of Missouri.

"The critical part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure of the solid semiconductor," Kwon noted.

The researchers hope to get around that problem by using a liquid semiconductor rather than a solid semiconductor. Eventually they also want to boost battery power, shrink its size, and eventually end up with a battery thinner than a human hair.

Source popsci.com

Asteroid Apophis'Toward Earth

2009-10-08T07:45:00.000-07:00

Using updated information, NASA scientists have recalculated the path of a large asteroid. The refined path indicates a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036.

The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields. The new data were documented by near-Earth object scientists Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. They presented their updated findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in Puerto Rico on Oct. 8.

"Apophis has been one of those celestial bodies that has captured the public's interest since it was discovered in 2004," said Chesley. "Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million."

The information provided a more accurate glimpse of Apophis' orbit well into the latter part of this century. Among the findings is another close encounter by the asteroid with Earth in 2068 with chance of impact currently at approximately three-in-a-million. As with earlier orbital estimates where Earth impacts in 2029 and 2036 could not initially be ruled out due to the need for additional data, it is expected that the 2068 encounter will diminish in probability as more information about Apophis is acquired.

The science of predicting asteroid orbits is based on a physical model of the solar system which includes the gravitational influence of the sun, moon, other planets and the three largest asteroids.

NASA detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

Related links
jpl.nasa.gov

Source sciencedaily.com

Underground City in Nevada

2009-10-08T07:34:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Frank Herbert’s famous 1965 novel Dune, the futuristic underground city of Sietch Nevada focuses on conserving water in an increasingly arid world.The innovative oasis project, from Matsys Designs, focuses on gathering limited water resources from the earth’s surface while securing communities from water wars in a futuristic American Southwest.

Sietch Nevada makes the storage, use, and collection of water central to urban life in a not so distant future. The city of Sietch Nevada is situated underground among a network of storage canals covered with residential and commercial structures. Energy and water resources are harvested from the earth’s surface while deep under the city are vast aquifers to store the water.

Water shortages will affect many areas of the United States and the world, possibly leading to “water wars” between states and countries if global temperatures continue to rise throughout the next century, as predicted in reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

According to a recent study, over the coming century the Southwest will essentially transition into a state of “perpetual drought” due to the effects of global warming. This prediction leads to the questions of whether the worsening arid conditions of the Southwest should be called a drought or whether the regional climate is changing.

the word "sietch" itself is defined thusly by Herbert:
'Fremen: 'Place of assembly in time of danger.' Because the Fremen lived so long in peril, the term came by general usage to designate any cave warren inhabited by one of their tribal communities.

The city of Sietch Nevada also doubles as a secure bunker-like fortress against the inevitable wars over water. (?)

Sources
greenmuze.com
livescience.com

MoonWater - A rocket to find water

2009-10-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

Crashing a rocket into the Moon will create “one more dimple” on the lunar surface and could find water ice on Earth’s nearest neighbour, according to a Durham University expert.

Dr Vincent Eke’s research has helped inform NASA’s decision about where to crash its probes into the Moon’s surface in search of water.
The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) and its Centaur rocket will smash into a crater in the Cabeus region of the Moon’s South Pole next week. Impact has been timed for approximately 12.30 pm BST (4.30 am PDT) on Friday, October 9.

Approximately 350 tonnes of material will be propelled into the sunlight so scientists can study its composition using ground-based telescopes.

Cabeus was identified in a previous study led by Dr Eke as a site with high concentrations of hydrogen – a key element in water.

According to the findings, water in the form of ice could be found in the frozen confines of the Moon’s polar craters where temperatures are colder than minus 170 degrees Celsius.

Sept. 2009 data from three spacecraft, including India’s Chandrayaan-1 probe, showed that small amounts of H2O coated particles that make up the Moon’s soil.

Dr Eke, in the Institute for Computational Cosmology, at Durham University, said: “Water ice could be stable for billions of years on the Moon provided that it is cold enough.

“If ice is present in the permanently shaded lunar craters of the Moon then it could potentially provide a water source for the eventual establishment of a manned base on the Moon.

Dr Eke’s previous study analysed data from NASA’s 1998 Lunar Prospector mission, which showed that hydrogen was concentrated in the permanently shaded craters of the Moon’s polar regions.

If hydrogen is present as water ice, then the data would imply that the top metre of the surface in these craters holds about 200,000 million litres of water in total.

Source sciencedaily.com

3D HDTV

2009-10-07T08:20:00.000-07:00

As 3-D versions of movies continue to attract an audience, it’s inevitable that film studios and consumer electronics companies want to duplicate the success at home. The time is at hand, with Sony and Panasonic recently announcing a new advanced generation of 3-D TV products that should be available within the next year in the United States.

The glasses used to achieve the 3D effect — with red-and-green lenses, infamous for inducing headaches and nausea — are used to view a type of 3-D process called "anaglyph." The stereoscopic effect, which gives 3-D video the illusion of depth, comes from two superimposed images, one green and one red, depicted from slightly different perspectives. Each of the viewer’s eyes sees the opposite colored image.

"In order to see stereoscopic 3-D you need to send a right-eye view to the right eye and a left-eye view to the left eye," said Robert Boudreau, technology development manager for display commercial technology at Corning, a supplier of glass for LCD TVs. "The 3-D effect is created in the brain once the person’s eyes see these two views."

Much-improved process
Anaglyph 3-D is often underwhelming, especially for viewers used to high-definition, 2-D material. Then there are those unpleasant sensations.
While anaglyph is available in 1080p resolution, such as the "Hannah Montana" concert Blu-ray disc, "it does strain the eyes because each eye sees different colors and it is often difficult for people to view this type of 3-D, especially if they have a dominant eye," said Boudreau.

If you've seen a 3-D movie in the theater recently, the massive leap in color fidelity and dimensional effects compared to anaglyph films is due to a newer 3-D process that uses polarized glasses and a special theater screen. Projected images for the right and left eye are alternated rapidly and the polarized glasses pick up the correct image for each eye.

Left- and right-eye images are synchronized with the LCD shutters on the glasses by a signal sent from the TV. The LCD shutters quickly block out left- and right-eye views so that each eye sees only the intended image in sequence. The technology works with both LCD and plasma HDTVs.

The active shutter approach has one critical advantage over polarized 3-D: higher resolution.

Since polarized systems use filters to display only alternate lines of the video image to each eye, the vertical resolution is cut in half and image fidelity suffers. All the available screen resolution is used in active shutter products.

Source msnbc.msn.com

Samsung Behold II

2009-10-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

Samsung and T-Mobile USA announced the new Samsung Behold II, the first Android-powered smartphone from the joint efforts of the two companies. Featuring full touch-screen, the Samsung Behold II boasts of the TouchWiz user interface and T-Mobile’s high-speed 3G network. The Samsung Behold II is actually a follow-up to the previously released Samsung Behold smartphone and is being targeted for an early Holiday release. It is said to be the first T-Mobile phone that features a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen. Hence it provides crisper colors and wider viewing angles.

It is equipped with the TouchWiz user interface. This feature allows you to customize the phone easily using widgets located in a slide out tray on the left side of the home screen. It also provides one-touch access to your favorite and most commonly used features and applicaitons.

The Samsung Behold II also offers 3 different home screens which you can further customize using drag and drop widgets onto the screen. It is also loaded with Samsung’s intuitive cube menu providing quick access to six top multimedia features such as music, photos, videos, web, YouTube and Amazon MP3 music downloads.

And since the Samsung Behold II runs on the Android platform, you” have access to built-in Google mobile services such as Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, GTalk and thousands of applications and games available for download from the Android Market.

Other features of the Samsung Behold II include Wi-Fi, support for Exchange ActiveSync, IM, 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash, five shooting modes, video capture and playback, visual voicemail, mp3 player, up to 16GB external memory, A-GPS and Bluetooth 2.1.

The Samsung Behold II will most probably hit the market sometime in November. No pricing information is available yet.

Source cellphonenews.com

Advanced Tactical Laser

2009-10-07T07:31:00.000-07:00

The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) program is a US military program to mount a high energy laser damage weapon on an aircraft, initially the AC-130 gunship, for use against ground targets in urban or other areas where minimizing collateral damage is important. The laser will be a 100 kilowatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL). It is expected to have a tactical range of approximately twenty kilometers and weigh about 5,000–7,000 kg. This program is distinct from the Airborne Laser, which is a much larger system designed to destroy enemy missiles in the boost phase.

The Advanced Tactical Laser can place a 10-centimeter-wide beam with the heating power of a blowtorch on distant targets for up to 100 shots and produce a four-inch-diameter beam of energy that can slice through metal from a distance of 9 miles.

It can provide powerful capabilities for both lethal and non-lethal ultra-precision engagement of threats with little or no collateral damage. This is often critical in urban environments and congested chokepoints that are vulnerable to terrorist activities or insurgent operations. Operated from a ground, sea or airborne platform, ATL offers the ability to place a precisely calibrated energy pulse on a target from either close in or from a standoff distance of several miles. While the ATL provides a laser weapon that can be used for lethal warfare when warranted, the ATL can also affect less-than-lethal engagements that can help control high-risk situations for both military and humanitarian purposes. Its rapid energy delivery coupled with its high-resolution, non-cooperative observation and surveillance capabilities provide unique defensive operational capabilities in densely populated areas. ATL can exploit the target vulnerabilities to cause the target to be destroyed for military purposes OR to cause limited damage to the extent that its functionality and/or mobility is impaired for humanitarian purposes such as saving the lives of captives or hostages. The ATL can achieve this result in a covert, non-destructive, and non-intrusive mode that negates unnecessary loss of life.

In a recent test at the White Sands Missile Range, a specially equipped C-130 plane fried a parked truck with a powerful laser. And while we still haven't seen evidence of the laser "defeating" a ground target, as Boeing puts it, a video of it scorching a direct hit on the hood of a truck is still pretty amazing.
this is the first time the megawatt-powered chemical laser has been used to engage a target in a combat simulation situation.

Great news, this humanitarian (?) destructive laser is not very far away in the future so we can start scorching mercenaries and the enemies of the free world (?).

Check the video.

Sources
popsci.com
globalsecurity.org
wikipedia.org

PUNCH: Digital Camera

2009-10-07T06:33:00.000-07:00

This is a camera which was inspired by the loss of tangible memories. It is meant to connect both physical and digital while minimizing excess materials and the hardships in sharing images.

The PUNCH takes regular digital images but allows its users to physically punch a rasterized image of their photo. The punched image gives information which can connect its users to the digital gallery.

This is an innovative camera designed by Matty Martin that after converting the image into a half-tone, the puncturing mechanism moves dot by dot. When all dots are precisely aligned reproduce the image, the camera screen tells you it's ready. Insert the paper in the slot, punch firmly as instructed, and get your image on paper!

And after that, you can show the photo to a webcam, and it will automatically take you to a gallery with more—normal—images associated with the paper one.

Source wired.co.uk

Samsung AMOLED 12M

2009-10-06T08:18:00.000-07:00

Recently, Samsung announced their upcoming mobile phone called the Samsung AMOLED 12M aka SCH-W880. This Samsung mobile phone boasts of 12-MP camera with 3x optical zoom lens is scheduled for an early October release in the Korean market.According to Samsung the AMOLED 12M combines the latest camera technology with the world’s most advanced WVGA AMOLED full touch screen. The result a great mobile camera phone that produces great image quality. Boosting the AMOLED 12M’s camera feature is a 3x optical zoom (not digital) that would enable users to take close-up shots without noise and distortion in image output. It also has a 2x digital zoom.

Other camera features of the AMOLED 12M mobile phone include dedicated camera key, rapid image saving which allows users to move to the next shot within just 2 seconds, high quality video recording (1280×720) at 30 fps, Touch Auto-Focus which permits users to select a focus point with the touch of a finger, Smart Auto feature lets users capture perfectly balanced images as the camera automatically changes its shooting mode based on the object, background, and lighting, Xenon flash, shake reduction, face recognition, and 4GB of built-in memory.

Pricing and inernational release dates for the Samsung AMOLED 12M is yet to be known.

Source cellphonenews.com

Thought Communication

2009-10-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) can be used for capturing brain signals and translating them into commands that allow humans to control (just by thinking) devices such as computers, robots, rehabilitation technology and virtual reality environments.

This experiment goes a step further and was conducted by Dr Christopher James from the University's Institute of Sound and Vibration Research. The aim was to expand the current limits of this technology and show that brain-to-brain (B2B) communication is possible.

Dr. Chris James demonstrating brain to brain communication using BCI to transmit thoughts, translated as a series of binary digits, over the internet to another person whose computer receives the digits. Credit: University of Southampton.

New research from the University of Southampton has demonstrated that it is possible for communication from person to person through the power of thought alone.

Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) can be used for capturing brain signals and translating them into commands that allow humans to control (just by thinking) devices such as computers, robots, rehabilitation technology and virtual reality environments.

This experiment goes a step further and was conducted by Dr Christopher James from the University's Institute of Sound and Vibration Research. The aim was to expand the current limits of this technology and show that brain-to-brain (B2B) communication is possible.

Dr James comments: "Whilst BCI is no longer a new thing and person to person communication via the nervous system was shown previously in work by Professor Kevin Warwick from the University of Reading, here we show, for the first time, true brain to brain interfacing. We have yet to grasp the full implications of this but there are various scenarios where B2B could be of benefit such as helping people with severe debilitating muscle wasting diseases, or with the so-called 'locked-in' syndrome, to communicate and it also has applications for gaming."

His experiment had one person using BCI to transmit thoughts, translated as a series of binary digits, over the internet to another person whose computer receives the digits and transmits them to the second user's brain through flashing an LED lamp.

While attached to an EEG amplifier, the first person would generate and transmit a series of binary digits, imagining moving their left arm for zero and their right arm for one. The second person was also attached to an EEG amplifier and their PC would pick up the stream of binary digits and flash an LED lamp at two different frequencies, one for zero and the other one for one. The pattern of the flashing LEDS is too subtle to be picked by the second person, but it is picked up by electrodes measuring the visual cortex of the recipient.

The encoded information is then extracted from the brain activity of the second user and the PC can decipher whether a zero or a one was transmitted. This shows true brain-to-brain activity.

Source physorg.com

Tesla coil

2009-10-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

When Nikola Tesla invented the AC (alternating current) induction motor, he had great difficulty convincing men of his time to believe in it. Thomas Edison was in favor of direct current (DC) electricity and opposed AC electricity strenuously. Tesla eventually sold his rights to his alternating current patents to George Westinghouse for $1,000,000. After paying off his investors, Tesla spent his remaining funds on his other inventions and culminated his efforts in a major breakthrough in 1899 at Colorado Springs by transmitting 100 million volts of high-frequency electric power wirelessly over a distance of 26 miles at which he lit up a bank of 200 light bulbs and ran one electric motor! With this souped up version of his Tesla coil, Tesla claimed that only 5% of the transmitted energy was lost in the process. But broke of funds again, he looked for investors to back his project of broadcasting electric power in almost unlimited amounts to any point on the globe. The method he would use to produce this wireless power was to employ the earth's own resonance with its specific vibrational frequency to conduct AC electricity via a large electric oscillator. When J.P. Morgan agreed to underwrite Tesla's project, a strange structure was begun and almost completed near Wardenclyffe in Long Island, N.Y. Looking like a huge lattice-like, wooden oil derrick with a mushroom cap, it had a total height of 200 feet. Then suddenly, Morgan withdrew his support to the project in 1906, and eventually the structure was dynamited and brought down in 1917.

A Tesla coil is a special transformer that can take the 110 volt electricity from your house and convert it rapidly to a great deal of high-voltage, high-frequency, low-amperage power. The high-frequency output of even a small Tesla coil can light up fluorescent tubes held several feet away without any wire connections. Even a large number of spent or discarded fluorescent tubes (their burned out cathodes are irrelevant) will light up if hung near a long wire running from a Tesla coil while using less than 100 watts drawn by the coil itself when plugged into an electrical outlet! Since the Tesla coil steps up the voltage to such a high degree, the alternating oscillations achieve sufficient excitations within the tubes of gases to produce lighting at a minimal expense of original power! Fluorescent tubes can be held under high-tension wires to produce the same lighting up effect. Remember the farmer a few years ago who was caught with an adaptive transformer under a set of high tension lines that ran over his property? Through the air, he pulled down all the power he needed to run his farm without using any connecting apparatus to the lines overhead! Any electrical engineer with the proper materials can do the same thing.

Incandescent bulbs burn high resistance filaments that gobble up energy. Fluorescent tubes burn filaments (cathodes) to create an electrical flow that sets their internal phosphorus coatings aglow. Using a Tesla coil, high voltage AC can light up glass-enclosed vacuum bulbs coolly without any gases inside them at all! Any number of cold light bulbs can be lit using only one Tesla coil, and since there is nothing inside them to burn out, they can last indefinitely. It seems like a low cost form of street lighting, doesn't it?

When Tesla was determining the resonant frequencies of the earth to potentially transmit unlimited electric power, he also recognized frequencies that acted as a damping field to nullify electric power. With the advent of the wireless and Tesla's unique investigations into broadcasting electricity, a dozen or more inventors thereafter announced their own means for transmitting electrical energy without wires. One British inventor, H. Grindell-Matthews, actually demonstrated his "mystery ray" apparatus in 1924 to a Popular Science Monthly writer in London (See: Pop. Sci. Monthly, Aug. 1924, P. 33). When his beam was directed toward the magneto system of a gasoline engine, it stopped the system. Afterwards, it ignited gun powder, lit an electric lamp bulb from a distance and killed a mouse in seconds! Grindell-Matthews said the secret was involved with the "carrier beam" he used to conduct a high-voltage, low-frequency electrical current. During 1936, Guglielmo Marconi experimented with extremely low frequency (ELF) waves and displayed their exceptional ability to penetrate metallic shielding. These waves could affect electrical devices, overload circuits and cause machines like generators, electric motors and automobiles to stall. Diesel engines, which do not rely on electrical ignition, were not affected. Mysteriously, Marconi's research on the subject was never found after the war.

Source mind-course.com

M-thel

2009-10-06T07:45:00.000-07:00

The fixed-site version Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) THEL, was developed by TRW Inc. under a $89 million contract. During several tests in the USA, the system has shot down 25 Katyusha rockets, but has not been deployed.

THEL laser weapon intercepts a BM21 rocket in flight. The system also known as Nautilus, has not progressed much since the end of the demonstration program, since the lack of mobility and the fixed base limitations of the system made in insufficient to counter long range rockets currently employed by Hezbulla at the Israeli northern border with Lebanon. While Katyusha rockets had a range of 20 kilometers, and could hit only a few urban targets, the long range rockets have a range of 70 kilometers and can hit strategic facilities and large urban areas in the Haifa bay. A laser-based defense against such weapons must rely on more systems, which could be rapidly mobilized to protect a much larger area. Such design is currently being implemented under the MTHEL program. Similar threats could face US contingencies in other parts of the world. This requirement is driving the need for an air-mobile version of the beam weapon. In July 2006, Northrop Grumman unveiled the SkyGuard system, based on the THEL, designed to protect airfields and fixed sites from rocket, artillery and mortar (RAM) attacks.

Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser (MTHEL)
A study completed in 2001 concluded that the rocket interceptor has "lots of promise" and further development should be pursued, primarily in enabling system's mobility. Mobility considerations for the future mobile systems include system mobility (road and off road capabilities) and air transportability, including the type of transport aircraft it should fit on (C-130, C-17 or C-5). Conclusions of these studies will define the necessary size- reduction technologies required for the future version.Further studies of the system include the use of such laser beam weapons to provide "hard kill" defenses against artillery projectiles, UAVs and cruise missiles.

During a test conducted on Aug. 24, 2004 the system shot down multiple mortar rounds, demonstrating potential its battlefield application for to protection against common threats. The test represented actual mortar threat scenarios. Targets were intercepted by the THEL testbed and destroyed; both single mortar rounds and salvo were tested.

Source defense-update.com

China's High Speed trains

2009-10-06T07:15:00.000-07:00

As politicians in the US and UK continue to debate the merits of building high-speed rail networks, China is threatening to leave them stuck in a siding with plans for over 6,000km of high-speed rail lines and a new order for 80 trains with a top speed of 380km per hour.
Canadian engineering giant Bombardier announced this week that a joint venture between its transportation arm and China-based rail firm CSR Sifang has secured a $4bn (£2.5bn) contract to provide the Ministry of Railways with 80 of the Zefiro 380 model, termed "very high speed".
Bombardier, which is expected to secure $2bn in revenue though its share of the contract, said that the trains will be built at its facility in Qingdao, with the first trains delivered from 2012 and the order completed by 2014.

The 80 trains include 20 eight-car trainsets and 60 16-car trainsets. The company says that they also include a new propulsion system that will deliver overall energy savings per passenger of up to 50 per cent compared to existing rolling stock.
Bombardier Transportation president and chief operating officer André Navarri hailed the deal as a landmark order and praised China's Ministry of Railways for supporting "one of the most far-reaching high-speed rail initiatives anywhere in the world".
His comments were echoed by Jianwei Zhang, president and chief country representative for Bombardier China, who said the deal underlined China's commitment to building a high-speed rail network. "China has a clear vision of the critical role high-speed rail must play in a sustainable transportation system, and is making the strategic investments necessary to ensure that vision is realised," he said.
"This country is selecting the most advanced technologies to build the most advanced rail network in the world."
The contract follows a number of similar deals. Bombardier has committed to providing 20 250km per hour sleeper trains and 20 high-speed trains to the Ministry of Railways.

Source businessgreen.com

Green Roofs

2009-10-05T08:38:00.000-07:00

Rooftops covered with plants — logically dubbed “green roofs” — could help fight global warming, scientists now suggest.

Green roofs are growing more popular in cities, with the number of green roofs increasing by more than 35 percent from 2007 to 2008 in the United States, representing more than 3.1 million square feet installed last year. In Germany, widely considered the leader in green roofing, some 12 percent of all flat roofs are green, with the German green roof industry growing 10 to 15 percent annually.

“In Stuttgart in Germany, 25 percent of all roofs there are green. It’s just normal. I think we can get to that level here,” said researcher Brad Rowe at Michigan State University, an environmental scientist in East Lansing. “It’s possible to choose plants where you don’t need to water them if you’re in a place like Arizona, if you have the right cactus species, for instance.”

These roofs can reduce heating and air conditioning costs, with Department of Energy simulations projecting they can lead to a roughly 10 percent reduction in natural gas consumption and a 2 percent drop in electricity use for a typical building. Moreover, green roofs last two to three times longer than standard roofs because they are protected from ultraviolet radiation and the extreme fluctuations in temperature that cause roof membranes to deteriorate. They also retain and detain storm water, which could otherwise exacerbate flooding and erosion.

“They can also bring in birds and butterflies, help improve biodiversity,” Rowe said. “And there’s also aesthetics, and how do you put a dollar value on that?”

In addition to soaking up pollution and noise, the plants in green roofs naturally absorb carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas behind global warming. However, nobody had measured the potential impact of green roofs on carbon dioxide levels until now.

Scientists at Michigan State University measured carbon levels in plant and soil samples collected from 13 green roofs in Michigan and Maryland over a two-year period.

The researchers found that replacing traditional roofing materials with green roofs in an urban area the size of Detroit, with a population of about one million, would capture more than 55,000 tons of carbon. That is roughly similar to eliminating a year’s worth of carbon dioxide emitted by 10,000 mid-sized SUVs and trucks.

The challenges green roofs now face in the United States are in the arenas of policy and costs.

“The government should not necessarily mandate them, but it can provide incentives for them, just as they do in Germany and elsewhere,” Rowe told LiveScience. “And green roofs are more expensive, but only initially. Over time, they’re cheaper once you consider their benefits energy-wise. It takes about 11 to 14 years to break even.”

Source livescience.com

DNA Nanosensor

2009-10-05T08:23:00.000-07:00

A portable instrument based on an ultrasensitive nanoscale sensor could detect bacteria in minutes, helping to catch infectious diseases early and prevent their spread. The simple, low-cost device should be available within three years, says Benjamin Miller, professor of dermatology and biomedical engineering at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and codeveloper of the sensor.

Right now, diagnosing common bacterial infections requires growing cultures in a laboratory over a period of days, but diagnosis could be greatly speeded by a number of new sensors based on various nanomaterials that are being developed for ultrasensitive, rapid DNA detection. The new instrument would take from 15 minutes to two hours for a diagnosis and could be used in doctor's offices, hospitals, and homes.

Each sensor is a hairpin-shaped strand of DNA, complementary to the genetic sequence being targeted, that is fixed on a gold film. Gold quenches the glow of a fluorescent molecule attached to one end of the DNA. The DNA stays folded over until a target genetic sequence links to it. Its unfolding results in the fluorescent molecule moving away from the gold film and glowing, which can be seen under a fluorescent microscope.

Lighthouse Biosciences in West Henrietta, NY, is commercializing disposable cartridges to be used with the nanosensor technology. A blood or urine sample to be tested would be placed directly on the cartridge. The cartridge will be a lab-on-a-chip, with rapid, miniaturized ways to prepare the sample for testing. "In the cartridge there are steps for cleaning up samples, that is, extracting material you're interested in and amplifying the [bacterial] DNA," Miller says. The cartridge will then be placed in a small portable instrument that does the fluorescence imaging and analysis. Each cartridge should cost a few dollars, Miller says.

By attaching different DNA strands on the gold film, the same cartridge could screen for multiple pathogens, Miller says. So far, the researchers have made a sensor to detect antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria that cause skin infections. They are now working on detecting bacteria responsible for common urinary-tract infections. The sensors could also be used to quickly spot bacteria in food or bioterror agents in water supplies, or even to screen for genetic disorders or cancer.

In a newer version of the sensor, Miller and colleagues stick DNA strands on silver nanoparticles. The silver nanoparticles make the fluorescent signal 10 times brighter. Plus, because thin layers of silver nanoparticles are transparent, the sensor could be coated on glass and optical fibers to make new types of detecting instruments, Miller says.

In the other nanosensors being developed for ultrasensitive, rapid DNA detection, researchers are using carbon nanotubes, nanowires, and nanoparticles. All of these approaches promise high accuracy, portability, and low cost. "If you could make a portable device that would sit in your doctor's office, then, using a small amount of fluid, your doctor could screen you for a genetic abnormality," says Michael Strano, a chemical engineering professor at MIT who has made nanotube sensors that detect DNA electrically.

Nanosphere in Northbrook, IL, which makes a DNA nanosensor based on research by Northwestern University chemistry professor Chad Mirkin, is far ahead of the game. The Food and Drug Administration has already approved the company's sensors for certain genetic and infectious diseases, and additional versions are pending FDA approval or in clinical trials.

Nanosphere's sensor is a microarray coated with DNA strands complementary to the target DNA and incorporated into a test cartridge. Gold nanoparticles, also coated with complementary DNA, are introduced, followed by target DNA, which binds to both the microarray and a nanoparticle. Then the nanoparticle is coated with silver to amplify the light that is scattered from the particle; the light is captured using a digital camera sensor. This method of detection is 100,000 times more sensitive than detecting fluorescence, says William Moffitt, CEO of Nanosphere.

Miller calls Nanosphere's technology fantastic. However, he adds, Lighthouse Biosciences's diagnostics test is simpler and requires fewer steps.

Source technologyreview.com

Light Peak - Coming soon

2009-10-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

Sometime next year, says Intel, the first components will appear that use fiber to shuttle data between your computer and other devices, such as digital cameras.

The technology, which Intel calls Light Peak, will be enabled via a small chip and separate optical module.

There are a lot of reasons for going optical, the most obvious being speed: data can be delivered faster on optical cable than on current metal-based cables. Light Peak can carry data at 10 gigabits per second in both directions simultaneously, and Intel expects it will reach 100 gigabits per second in the next decade. By comparison, the ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus (U.S.B.) connectors on virtually all PCs today deliver data at a maximum speed of about 480 megabits per second — or about 1/20th the initial speed of Light Peak.

“What that means to a consumer is they will be able to transfer video, for example, much faster,” said Jason Ziller, director of Intel’s optical input-output program office. “At a 10-gigabit-per-second transfer rate, you can transfer a full-length Blu-ray movie in less than 30 seconds,” Mr. Ziller said.

But that’s not the only potential benefit of Light Peak. Today, most PCs come with a jumble of connectors of different shapes and sizes, identified by a babel of acronyms such as HDMI, DVI, and eSATA. One of Light Peak’s greatest promises is to reduce all of this to one single type of connector — if device makers decide to adopt it.

“Consumers will be able to connect to a broader array of devices with the same connector and cable — for example, displays, storage, peripherals, phones, and docking stations,” Mr. Ziller said.

For example a U.S.B. device theoretically could work over a Light Peak connection, obviating the need for a separate connector, said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies, a market research firm.

The ultra-thin fiber, about the width of a human hair, could also allows for skinny cables and small connectors. That would be a godsend for laptops, whose thinness, in some cases, is limited by the size of the connectors on the edge of the laptop.

But whether all of this promise ultimately becomes reality depends to a large extent on computer makers.

“You have the TVs on one side, the PCs and cameras on the other. These industries are trying to make sure their little ecosystems stay stable. Theoretically, Light Peak makes perfect sense. But I do think there’s a lot of politics that hold standards in place,” Mr. Kay said.

The next generation of USB, 3.0., might provide enough performance improvements to satisfy most hardware manufacturers. And even in the best case, a transition to Light Peak will take years, Intel said.

“We expect the first products to come out either compatible to an existing connector or with a unique Light Peak connector in addition to existing connectors,” he said. “We don’t expect a single connector for all to happen for quite some time, as it is a long-term transition for the system manufacturers.”

Indeed, Mr. Kay said it will take a big company like Apple to drive adoption. “Remember when you had keyboard and mouse connectors that were purple and green? Well, Apple one day with the iMac just said, ‘We’re getting rid of all of that. USB is what you gotta have.’ Because they were Apple, they could do that,” he said.

Source bits.blogs.nytimes.com

New World Order - Single Global Currency

2009-10-05T07:53:00.000-07:00

Definition: A single global currency is one that is accepted throughout the world. The U.S. dollar is generally used as a world currency now. In 2006, 66% of the world's central bank reserves, and more than 43% of all cross-border transactions, were in dollars. Most oil contracts are written in dollars.

The next closest reserve currency is the euro. Only 25% of central bank reserves, and 39% of cross-border transactions, were in euros.

In March 2009, China and Russia suggested the world adopt a single global currency. The goal would be to create a reserve currency “that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies." In other words, China is concerned its $2 trillion dollar holdings will be worth less if dollar-inflation sets in. This could happen as a result of increased U.S. deficit spending and printing of U.S. Treasuries to support U.S. debt. China would like the IMF to develop a currency to replace the dollar. (Source: FT.com, China Calls for a New Reserve Currency, March 23, 2009)[p/]

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner mentioned that the U.S. is open to the idea. However, President Obama supports a strong dollar.

The dollar became the world's reserve currency in the Bretton-Woods agreement, made after World War II. The world's developed countries met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to peg the rate of exchange for all foreign currencies to the U.S. dollar. At that time, the dollar was backed by its value in gold. By the early 1970's, countries began demanding gold for the dollars they held to combat inflation. Rather than allow Fort Knox to be depleted of all gold reserves, President Nixon untied the dollar to gold. By that time, the dollar had already become the world's dominant reserve currency.

There's a lot of information online about this. Things are happening, and influential people is saying out loud that we need a New World Order. Maybe we shoud really start paying attention and ask ourselves, what is the true agenda of the people organising this events.

Of course we are not so happy about this news, I suppose we are the kind of people who don't really like to centralize everything. One currency, one bank, one goverment. Nothing good ever came out of centralizing power.
Stay tuned.

Related links
singleglobalcurrency.org

Source
about.com
about.com
youtube.com

Virtual Worlds

2009-10-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. These avatars are usually depicted as textual, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional graphical representations.

The computer accesses a computer-simulated world and presents perceptual stimuli to the user, who in turn can manipulate elements of the modeled world and thus experiences telepresence to a certain degree. Such modeled worlds may appear similar to the real world or instead depict fantasy worlds.

Massively multiplayer online games commonly depict a world very similar to the real world, with real world rules and real-time actions, and communication. Players create a character to travel between buildings, towns, and even worlds to carry out business or leisure activities.

Virtual worlds are not limited to games but, depending on the degree of immediacy presented, can encompass computer conferencing and text based chatrooms. Sometimes, emoticons or 'smilies' are available, to show feeling or facial expression. Emoticons often have a keyboard shortcut.

Until now it seemed that only gameplayers were attracted to this kind of games.

Nowadays Facebook is the flavor of the moment, but want to know what the next big thing is?
Three-dimensional communities.

In a recent study Gartner predicted that by 2011 up to 80% of active Internet users, or 250 million people, will participate online in virtual worlds.
Soon you won't merely be reading about your friend's day at work or blogging about a recent film you've seen, but rather your avatar, or 3-D digital character, will be watching movies and listening to music with your friends' avatars. You will walk through virtual malls together and dance the night away at virtual nightclubs. Millions of residents on dozens of virtual worlds are already doing so.

Take Kaneva for example. Since it launched in March 2007, its membership has swelled to 800,000. It is geared toward people ages 18 to 34 and is, in essence, a virtual world version of MySpace.
Kaneva is the creation of Christopher Klaus, 34, who had the money to get it going without venture capital. Klaus started Internet Security Systems when he was a Georgia Tech student and last year sold that outfit to IBM for $1.3 billion.
"Virtual worlds are still in the very early stages," says Klaus. "We are where MP3s were seven years ago. Our goal is to combine the virtual world with social networking and videogaming."

The key to Kaneva's rapid growth is in its accessibility. It's aimed not at videogaming geeks but at ordinary folk. "Second Life currently has huge mind share, but they are after a different market," says Klaus. "We want people who have never played videogames before." Kaneva encourages residents to create avatars that are online versions of their real identities, linking photos of themselves and lists of hobbies to their animated avatars. Second Life, in contrast, fosters taking on an alternative identity, including imaginary beasts.
On Kaneva, registrants can decorate their virtual houses with their own photos, upload their favorite music and stream YouTube videos and television shows. Like Second Life, Kaneva has a "micro" currency that can be bought for real money; take ten real-world dollars into a Target (nyse: TGT - news - people ) and you can buy 1,500 units, then use these to buy furniture or outfit your avatar with cool clothes to wear at the Dance Party 3-D contest.

Both Second Life and Kaneva are free to join. They get revenue by selling virtual money, leasing virtual land and, in the case of Kaneva, by promoting real-world commerce (especially TV shows).

But that's not all according to games.venturebeat.com.

People are paying real money for digital goods in all sorts of online applications ranging from Facebook apps to massively multiplayer online games. The No. 1 thing they buy is virtual money. Other top items include virtual weapons and gifts for social networking friends, according to a survey released today.

Free-to-play games, where you can start playing for free and then buy items in the game as you need them, now account for more than half of all virtual goods transactions, according to the July survey by market researcher VGMarket and virtual goods platform company PlaySpan. About 58 percent of gamers made purchases in free-to-play games in the past year. About 34 percent made purchases in MMO games (or virtual worlds such as Eve Online), and 23 percent made purcahse in social networking games.

Virtual goods and micro transactions have become a favorite business model for game companies this year, particularly as ad-based models sink in the recession and gamers shy away from buying $60 games in stores.

The survey is based on 2,425 people who responded to surveys on PlaySpan’s various properties: the PlaySpan Marketplace, Spare Change, and Ultimate Game Card. The median purchase was the highest in free-to-play games at $75, followed by MMOs ($60), and social networks ($50). The average player is currently playing three online games and 80 percent of the players report buying digital goods for their own use. About 20 percent spend money on digital goods as gifts for others.

About 71 percent of users bought virtual currency that can be used to buy things inside game worlds. Some 37 percent bought weapons. About 30 percent bought subscription codes. Some 26 percent bought clothing for their virtual characters. Twenty-five percent bought power-ups that made virtual characters stronger.

The good thing about digital goods is that game publishers can use the data to tweak the game, forecast their revenue, and make investments in the right areas, said Michael Gluck, president of VGMarket in Hollywood, Fla. San Jose, Calif.-based PlaySpan’s virtual goods and monetization platforms are used in more than 1,000 online games, virtual worlds and social networks.

The top Online Games / Virtual Worlds according to virtualworldsnews.com

1. Runescape
2. Gaia Online
3. IMVU
4. World of Warcraft
5. Club Penguin
6. MySpace
7. Meez
8. Maple Story
9. Neopets
10. The Sims

So now you know. you have a little more than a year to create your online 3d multiplayer friends-making virtual world and become a millionaire.

Source
wikipedia.org
games.venturebeat.com
forbes.com

Plastic Bridge

2009-10-02T14:17:00.000-07:00

The US Army, seeking to embiggen its green image, has proudly announced the building of the world's first bridge made from recycled plastic and able to support heavy loads. To test the recycloplast bridge, troops drove a monster 70-ton Abrams Main Battle Tank across it.

“This represents a ‘first of its kind’ event in terms of how we partnered with industry, the R&D community and government in looking for sustainable solutions to infrastructure challenges,” said Colonel Stephen J Sicinski during the dedication ceremony last week.

The M1 Abrams is one of the heaviest main battle tanks - and therefore one of the heaviest ground vehicles - in current service, with modern examples generally tipping the scales at over 70 tons. The mighty machine is powered by a 1500 horsepower gas turbine and features heavy depleted-uranium armour plate - with an outer facing of explosive slabs on upgraded tanks, intended to disrupt the armour-piercing plasma jets formed by shaped charge warheads or roadside mines.

The M1's use of old uranium from nuclear powerplants is one kind of recycling, but the new bridges built at the US Army's Fort Bragg training centre are another. Made from high-strength thermoplastic processed out of 100 per cent recycled plastic bottles and suchlike, they are described by their makers as "the first known structures of their type to support loads in excess of 70 tons".

The recycloplast bridges are also said to be corrosion resistant compared to other bridge materials, meaning that they need almost no maintenance. Steel structures typically need regular repainting and inspection to guard against rust: timber needs expensive and potentially troublesome coatings or treatments. Procurement officials estimated that there would be a 34 to 1 return on the extra expense of the plastic bridges from reduced maintenance costs.

The recyclothermoplast material comes from makers Axion International, who developed it in cooperation with boffins at Rutgers University. The firm sees it as taking on many structural and building tasks in coming years, replacing "last-generation materials, such as wood, steel or concrete".

Source theregister.co.uk

Microelectrodes Brain implants

2009-10-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

Scientists at University of Michigan have created brain implants tested in rats that can more clearly record signals from surrounding neurons. The findings could eventually lead to more effective treatment of neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and paralysis.

The newly developed brain implants use nanotubes coated with PEDOT, which is a bio-compatible and electrically conductive polymer that has been shown to record neural signals better than conventional metal electrodes. The coating allows the electrodes to operate with less electrical resistance than current metal electrode sites, which means they can communicate more clearly with individual neurons.

According to the researchers, in the experiment, they implanted two neural microelectrodes in the brains of three rats. PEDOT nanotubes were fabricated on the surface of every other recording site by using a nanofiber templating method. Over the course of seven weeks, the team monitored the electrical impedance of the recording sites and measured the quality of recording signals.

According to Mohammad Reza Abidian, a post-doctoral researcher at the U-M Department of Biomedical Engineering, microelectrodes and neuroprosthetic devices hold the promise to return functionality to individuals with spinal cord injuries and neurodegenerative diseases.

Source blogs.zdnet.com

Dissolvable glass to fix bones

2009-10-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

Doctoring broken bones in the future could be easier and simpler – thanks to a metallic glass material that can be used to make dissolvable screws, pins or plates. Bone fractures or breaks are routinely fixed in place with metal implants to encourage healing. These are usually made from corrosion-resistant steel or titanium, but have to be removed in a second operation once the bones have mended.

In an effort to make this extra surgery a thing of the past, materials scientists led by Jörg Löffler at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have designed a metallic glass that dissolves harmlessly in the body. The idea is to make small supporting objects from this material, such as pins or nails, which would disappear over time.

The biggest challenge has been finding a suitable material. Requirements include strength, flexibility and durability, coupled with the ability to be absorbed without toxic side-effects. The best candidates for the job are magnesium alloys – but when these dissolve in the body they produce bubbles of hydrogen gas, which hinder bone growth.

To get around this problem, the Swiss team adjusted the components of the alloy to 60% magnesium, 35% zinc and 5% calcium, moulded in the form of metallic glass. This is made by rapid cooling of the combined mixture of molten metals – a process that prevents the conventional metallic structure from forming. Instead, the metals have an amorphous glass-like structure that is brittle but strong.

In animal studies, there was no sign that hydrogen bubbles were forming. "By changing the composition of the alloy, we believe that we are changing the corrosion reaction that takes place," explains Bruno Zberg, lead author on the paper, which is published this week in Nature Materials. The researchers also found that they could adjust the speed of corrosion by varying the zinc content of the alloy, which may prove useful when designing different types of implant.
Slow dissolution

"The glasses usually dissolve at a rate of around one millimetre per month – although it depends on the size of the implant and location in the body," Zberg told physicsworld.com. "Either way, the number of metal ions being released into the bloodstream is relatively low and they are diluted in the blood quite quickly."

"This is certainly a novel approach and an interesting concept, but there are still issues to address," says Robert Hill at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, UK. "Early steel implants suffered from fatigue failure after they corroded – so it is important to ensure that this new material does not become critically weakened in the same way." Another danger, Hill notes, is that threading on screws could corrode, or fibrous tissue could form around shrinking implants, making them come loose.

A further question remains over whether the dissolving metals will help or hinder the growth of new bone in their vicinity. Zberg notes that this also depends on the quantity being released – but acknowledges that these questions will all need further investigation in the future.

Source physicsworld.com

Active Denial System

2009-10-02T06:42:00.000-07:00

The Active Denial System (ADS) is a less-lethal, directed-energy weapon developed by the U.S. military.[1] It is a strong millimeter-wave transmitter primarily used for crowd control (the "goodbye effect"). Some ADS systems such as HPEM ADS are also used to disable vehicles. Informally, the weapon is also called pain ray. Raytheon is currently marketing a reduced-range version of this technology. The ADS is currently being considered for deployment in the Iraq War.

The ADS works by directing electromagnetic radiation, specifically, high-frequency microwave radiation at a frequency of 95 GHz (a wavelength of 3.2 mm), toward the subjects. The waves excite water molecules in the epidermis to around 130 °F (55 °C), causing an intensely painful sensation of extreme heat. While not burning the skin under ordinary use, the burning sensation is similar to that of an incandescent light bulb being pressed against the skin. The focused beam can be directed at targets at a range in excess of 700 meters. The device can penetrate thick clothing, although not walls.

At 95 GHz, the frequency is much higher than the 2.45 GHz of a microwave oven. This frequency was chosen because, due to the stronger absorption of water at those frequencies, they penetrate the skin to a depth of less than 1/64 of an inch (0.4 mm), which is where the nerve endings are located.

A spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory described his experience as a test subject for the system:

"For the first millisecond, it just felt like the skin was warming up. Then it got warmer and warmer and you felt like it was on fire.... As soon as you're away from that beam your skin returns to normal and there is no pain."

While the effects can be unpleasant, ADS has undergone extensive testing since its inception more than 12 years ago. Many aspects of the research are classified, making independent evaluation impossible. The beam is designed only to affect an individual for a short moment, due to safety presets and features, but these settings can be overridden by the operator. According to a public release, there have been over 10,700 "shots" by ADS.

The ADS is currently only a vehicle-mounted weapon, though U.S. Marines and police are both working on portable versions.

The defense contractor, Raytheon, has developed a smaller version of the ADS, named the Silent Guardian. This stripped-down model is primarily marketed for use by law enforcement agencies, the military and other security providers. The system is operated and aimed with a joystick and aiming screen. The device can be used for targets up to 550 m away.

Michael Hanlon—who volunteered to experience its effects—described it as "a bit like touching a red-hot wire, but there is no heat, only the sensation of heat." Contrary to Raytheon's claims that the pain ceases instantly upon removal of the ray, Hanlon said that the finger he subjected "was tingling hours later."

Cool, this doesn't worry me one bit. People with the hability to inflict pain and leave no proof of it.

Source Wikipedia

Battery Recycling - What to do with them?

2009-10-01T16:41:00.000-07:00

If you are having a difficult time finding out what to do with used batteries and where you can take them to be recycled or safely treated and disposed, then you should find a solution on this page.
Whether you have a AAA, AA, C, D, watch, button, hearing aid or car battery, there is a solution.

Environmental Hazards of Batteries
People are using more and more household batteries. The average person owns about two button batteries, ten normal (A, AA, AAA, C, D, 9V, etc.) batteries, and throws out about eight household batteries per year.

Batteries may produce the following potential problems or hazards:

Pollute the lakes and streams as the metals vaporize into the air when burned.
Contribute to heavy metals that potentially may leach from solid waste landfills.
Expose the environment and water to lead and acid.
Contain strong corrosive acids.
May cause burns or danger to eyes and skin.

Battery Facts and Stats:
Consumption

Americans purchase nearly 3 billion dry-cell batteries every year to power radios, toys, cellular phones, watches, laptop computers, and portable power tools.

Inside a battery, heavy metals react with chemical electrolyte to produce the battery's power.

Wet-cell batteries, which contain a liquid electrolyte, commonly power automobiles, boats, or motorcycles.

Nearly 99 million wet-cell lead-acid car batteries are manufactured each year.

A car battery contains 18 pounds of lead and one pound of sulfuric acid.

Recycling and Disposal

Mercury was phased out of certain types of batteries in conjunction with the "Mercury-Containing and Rechargeable Battery Management Act," passed in 1996.

Recycling batteries keeps heavy metals out of landfills and the air. Recycling saves resources because recovered plastic and metals can be used to make new batteries.

Household batteries contribute many potentially hazardous compounds to the municipal solid waste stream, including zinc, lead, nickel, alkalines, manganese, cadmium, silver, and mercury.

In 1989, 621.2 tons of household batteries were disposed of in the US, that's double the amount discarded in 1970.

In 1986, 138,000 tons of lead-acid batteries were disposed of in the US

Regular flashlight batteries can be disposed of in the trash (generally, some states, like California, have more restrictive rules) , though it is best to take them to a recycler.

Mercury-oxide and silver-oxide button batteries are often collected by jewelers, pharmacies, and hearing-aid stores who sell them to companies that reclaim the metals.

In 1993, 80 to 95% of automobile batteries were recycled

What you can do
Batteries are constantly being reformulated - check the labels
Source Reduction Changes in Household Batteries
Read labels. Mercury reduction in ordinary alkaline batteries began in 1984 and continues today. During the last five years, the industry has reduced the total amount of mercury usage by about 86 percent. Since 1992 most alkaline batteries are manufactured with "no mercury added". Some batteries such as the alkaline battery have had about a 97 percent mercury reduction in the product. Newer alkaline batteries may contain about one-tenth the amount of mercury previously contained in the typical alkaline battery. Some alkaline batteries have zero-added mercury, and several mercury-free, heavy-duty, carbon-zinc batteries are on the market.

Prevention of Household Battery Waste
To reduce waste, start with prevention. Starting with prevention creates less or no leftover waste to become potentially hazardous waste. The following are steps to take to prevent household battery waste.

Check to see if you already have the batteries on hand before buying more.

When suited to the task buy hand operated items that function without batteries.

Look for the batteries that have less mercury and heavy metals.

Consider rechargeable batteries for some needs, but remember that they also contain heavy metals such as nickel-cadmium.

Rechargeable Batteries
Rechargeable batteries result in a longer life span and use fewer batteries. However rechargeable batteries still contain heavy metals such as nickel-cadmium. When disposing of rechargeable batteries, recycle if possible.

The use of rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries can reduce the number of batteries entering the waste stream, but may increase the amount of heavy metals entering the waste stream unless they are more effectively recycled. As of 1992, the percentage of cadmium in nickel-cadmium batteries was higher than the percentage of mercury in alkaline batteries, so substitution might only replace one heavy metal for another, and rechargeable batteries do use energy resources in recharging.

Rechargeable alkaline batteries are available along with rechargers.

Where to Recycle Your Batteries
Recycling of non rechargeable batteries is still somewhat rare, but recycling used RECHARGEABLE household batteries is now possible! The battery manufacturers have funded a joint recycling center. To find a center near you that will take them, click here! (in the US or Canada))( Which types do they take? Nickel Cadmium (Ni-Cd), Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH), Lithium Ion (Li-ion), and Small Sealed Lead* (Pb) rechargeable batteries are commonly found in cordless power tools, cellular and cordless phones, laptop computers, digital cameras, two-way radios, camcorders and remote control toys.

Note that California is a bit of a special case. California regulations require recycling for more types of batteries than other states. See this page for detailed information about how and where to recycle batteries in California.

For more information about the program and the sponsors, click on Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation.

Related Link
batteryrecycling.com

If you are interested in obtaining more information, please check the source link.
Source ehso.com

Garmin-Asus nüvifone G60

2009-10-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

The Garmin-Asus nüvifone G60 is at long last among us.

This smarphone brings not only voice and mobile Internet capabilities, but the full suite of navigation and guidance capabilities that Garmin packs into its high-end GPS navigation systems. The unit's embedded maps of North American users can get turn-by-turn directions wherever they got, and integrated Wi-Fi, full HTML Web browsing, and a 3 megapixel camera help the G60 keep up with the rest of the cool smartphones.

"The nüvifone weaves location into nearly every facet of its functionality making it ideal for people who depend on location to navigate everyday life," said Garmin president and COO Cliff Pemble, in a statement. "The nüvifone has Garmin's easy-to-use interface, so navigating to a meeting directly from its calendar or contacts pages, or geotagging an email or photograph with a location stamp, is intuitive, useful, and fun."

The G60 will come pre-loaded with maps and an extensive point-of-interest database for North America, and can easily be mounted in a vehicles for use as a portable navigation device. The G560 incorporates a full GPS receiver with Garmin's HotFix technology for rapidly acquiring location data, and offers a "Where am I?" feature so users can quickly get information on the nearest hospital, police station, gas stations, intersections, and addresses with a single touch. And for folks using it as an in-vehicle system, the G60 will remember where it was when it was removed from a windshield mount, making it easy to get back to the car later.

The G60 also includes a full HTML Web browser so users can connect to the Internet using either AT&T's 3G network or available Wi-FI hotspots.

The Garmin-Asus nüvifone G60 will cost $299 (on contract).

Source news.digitaltrends.com

Nasal Spray that Improves Memory

2009-10-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

To make this discovery, Marshall and colleagues had 17 healthy young men spend two nights in the laboratory. On each night after reading either an emotional or neutral short story, they sprayed a fluid into their nostrils which contained either interleukin-6 or a placebo fluid. The subsequent sleep and brain electric activity was monitored throughout the night. The next morning subjects wrote down as many words as they could remember from each of the two stories. Those who received the dose of IL-6 could remember more words.

"If a nasal spray can improve memory, perhaps we're on our way to giving some folks a whiff of common sense, such as accepting the realities of evolution," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "This is exciting piece of interdisciplinary science, since IL-6 had previously been considered a by-product of inflammation, not an agent that affects cognition."

Interested? Don't forget (?) to check the source link below.
Source www.physorg.com

ROBO-ONE 16 - Robots competition

2009-10-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

obo-One is a robot competition category of bipedal humanoid robots. The first ROBO-ONE contest was held in Japan in 2002 and consisted of an initial judged autonomous "Demonstration" stage, followed by one-on-one matches. In Japan, ROBO-ONE has spawned a whole series of related competitions including ROBO-ONE J, ROBO-ONE Special, ROBO-ONE Grand Prix, and the ROBO-ONE Technical Conference events. ROBO-ONE type contests have been held in several other countries including South Korea (official) and the United states (unofficial held by Robogames).

The robots are usually built with RC Servos as actuators and mounted together with sheet metal shapes. The most common frame material is aluminum. However, there have been entries constructed with steel, plastic, and even wood. Different sensors are used by the robot for balance and to perceive its surroundings. A small onboard micro controller or equivalent is used to control the robots movements and if the robot is autonomous it is also programmed to adjust the robots behavior in response to sensor inputs.

There have been fifteen competitions in Japan. ROBO-ONE 13 was held on March 22 and 23, at Korakuen Hall" in Takamatsu[1]. ROBO-ONE 14 was scheduled for October 11th - 12th, 2008. ROBO-ONE 14 took place in at the Pacifico Yokohama Exhibition Hall. ROBO-ONE 15 was held in Kawasaki in May 4th, 2009. ROBO-ONE 16 was held in Toyama City, Toyama Prefecture, on September 26th - 27th, 2009.

Here are some links for your appreciation
Link01
Link02

Future Bicycles

2009-10-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

You'd think there's not much more to innovate when it comes to Bicycles, right?
Well... think again.

Di-Cycle
The Di-Cycle concept bicycle is amphibious and was designed specifically for the Dutch city of Helmond to allow residents a smooth transition between land and water travel.

Folding bicycle
This folding bicycle by Thomas Owen has a futuristic-looking design that compacts into an incredibly small package. It’s meant to make bicycle transport in urban environments easier by creating a super-portable bike that can go practically anywhere.

Eco-Friendly Adaptable bicycle
The Versabike is fully adjustable so anyone can configure it to their own specific needs. That means it can be shared by multiple people, and can grow with a child. The eco-friendly design has recyclable parts and can expand out or contract while in motion.

Backpack Bicycle
Chang Ting Jen’s entry into the International Bicycle Design Competition recognizes the need to take the Bicycle with you, offering a bicycle that easily folds up to be worn as a backpack. It’s made of plastic and weighs 5.5kg, and even turns into a handcart.

Cardboard Bike
This bicycle is waterproof, lightweight and only costs $30. It’s also fully recyclable, thanks to its almost 100% cardboard construction. Product design student Phil Bridge created it as a low-cost, eco-friendly option that can be easily mass produced.

Want to see more amazing designs? Please check the source link below.
weburbanist.com

Rock Rain in planet COROT-7b

2009-10-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

The exoplanet, COROT-7b, was discovered in February by the COROT space telescope launched by the French and European space agencies. Last month this planet became the first one outside our solar system to be confirmed as a rocky body — most other known exoplanets are gas giants.

It is nearly twice the size of Earth and about five times the mass of our world. Calculations have indicated it has a density about that of Earth's, which means it is likely made up of silicate rocks, just as Earth's crust is.

The planet is likely much less hospitable to life though, as it is only about 1.6 million miles (2.6 million km) away from its parent star — 23 times closer than Mercury sits to the sun.

To find out what COROT-7b's atmosphere might be like, Fegley and his colleagues modeled it. They found that COROT-7b's atmosphere is made up of the ingredients of rocks and when "a front moves in," pebbles condense out of the air and rain into lakes of molten lava below.

"Sodium, potassium, silicon monoxide and then oxygen — either atomic or molecular oxygen — make up most of the atmosphere," Fegley said. But there are also smaller amounts of the other elements found in silicate rock, such as magnesium, aluminum, calcium and iron.

The rock rains form similarly to Earth's watery weather: "As you go higher the atmosphere gets cooler and eventually you get saturated with different types of 'rock' the way you get saturated with water in the atmosphere of Earth," Fegley explained. "But instead of a water cloud forming and then raining water droplets, you get a 'rock cloud' forming and it starts raining out little pebbles of different types of rock."

Observers have recently spotted sodium in the atmospheres of two other exoplanets.

Source livescience.com

Thermal Laser Gun

2009-10-01T08:14:00.000-07:00

The Pentagon's efforts to develop a beam weapon that can deter an adversary by causing a burning sensation on their skin has taken a step forward with the development of a small, potentially hand-held, version. The weapon, which is claimed to cause no permanent harm, could also end up being used by police to control civilians.

The idea of the weapon is to "create a heating sensation that repels individual adversaries", according to the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) in Quantico, Virginia, which develops less-lethal weapons for the US military and coastguard.

Tests with a rifle-mounted infrared laser, carried out at a US air force lab near Dayton, Ohio, have determined a combination of laser pulse power and wavelength that causes an alarming, hot sensation on the skin, but which stops short of causing a burn, says JNLWD project engineer Wesley Burgei.

"We have established the minimum irradiance to cause a sensation and have characterised where thermal injury begins," he says. "But the exact operating irradiance which balances a useful military effect with a conservative margin of safety has not been nailed down yet."

That's something that will have to be done before the weapon is deployed, as too powerful a laser beam could permanently blind someone if fired at their eyes. Weapons that do this are banned under the UN Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons.

Burgei says it is possible to create a beam that will affect the skin without damaging the cornea, and do so at a wavelength that does not penetrate to the retina "and would therefore be retina safe".

The JNLWD says that tests at the Air Force Research Laboratory's human effectiveness lab have established that the skin heating effect causes no permanent damage - suggesting it may have "military utility". The tests also highlighted areas in need of improvement before troops can use it, says lab manager Semih Kumru - though what those features are has not been revealed.

The proposed system is rifle mounted, with a sight above it and a visible low-power laser beam that the soldier uses to aim the invisible infrared laser. The solid-state laser system is battery-powered, and could become hand-held "in the near future", Burgei says.

The weapon, which has been evolving since 2005, is officially known at the Pentagon as the Thermal Laser System. The US National Institute of Justice, which is also funding the weapon's development in the hope that it may prove useful for the police, refers to it as the IR-Lesslethal device.

The Pentagon already has a large crowd control weapon called the Active Denial System that can heat whole groups of people, causing them to flee. It uses a flat-plate antenna mounted on a truck or aircraft to aim a 2-metre-wide microwave beam at the crowd.

Like all supposedly non-lethal weapons that could be used to control civilians, the Pentagon's new portable weapon is raising concerns. "I'd like to know why they want another advanced pain compliance weapon like this," says Steve Wright, non-lethal weapons analyst at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK. "Persuading by pain rather than brain - through conversation - has led to push-button torture in the past. If it leaves no mark on the skin how will anyone prove it's been abused?"

Source newscientist.com

Google Wave

2009-09-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
It's still in beta phase, but sooner than we think it could be among us(?)
As google say in their page, here is a looong video explaining everything.

Source wave.google.com

Final Fantasy XIII Trailer

2009-09-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

The New Final Fantasy is here. Check out the amazing graphics this game has. Enjoy!

Flying Car

2009-09-30T14:03:00.000-07:00

The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month.

If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months’ time.

Its manufacturer says it is easy to keep and run since it uses normal unleaded fuel and will fit into a garage.

Carl Dietrich, who runs the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, said: “This is the first really integrated design where the wings fold up automatically and all the parts are in one vehicle.”

The Transition, developed by former Nasa engineers, is powered by the same 100bhp engine on the ground and in the air.

Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph. Up to now, however, it has been tested only on roads at up to 90mph.

Dietrich said he had already received 40 orders, despite an expected retail price of $200,000 (£132,000).

“For an airplane that’s very reasonable, but for a car that’s very much at the high end,” he conceded.

There are still one or two drawbacks. Getting insurance may be a little tricky and finding somewhere to take off may not be straightforward: the only place in the US in which it is legal to take off from a road is Alaska.

Dietrich is optimistic. He said: “In the long term we have the potential to make air travel practical for individuals at a price that would meet or beat driving, with huge time savings.”

Source business.timesonline.co.uk

Moon Landing Hoax

2009-09-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

Moon landing hoaxes by proponents, are claims that some or all elements of the Apollo Project and the associated Moon landings were falsifications staged by NASA and members of other involved organizations.

Since the conclusion of the Apollo program, a number of related accounts espousing a belief that the landings were faked in some fashion have been advanced by various groups and individuals. Some of the more notable of these various claims include allegations that the Apollo astronauts did not set foot on the Moon; that NASA and others intentionally deceived the public into believing the landings did occur by manufacturing, destroying, or tampering with evidence, including photos, telemetry tapes, transmissions, and rock samples; and that the deception continues to this day are common to most of the conspiracy theories. (wikipedia)

Here is a very interesting video about this hoax by Jarrah White. You decide.

Source youtube.com/WhiteJarrah

Autonomous Living Unit by Eduardo McIntosh

2009-09-30T12:46:00.000-07:00

Designer Eduardo McIntosh has proposed a way of putting all the functions of a home into a single chair.

Called Autonomous Living Unit, the project envisages furniture that could be installed in derelict buildings and deserted housing projects to “provide for the basic needs of the 21st century human being."
Autonomous Living Unit was presented as part of an exhibition called Future Cities: Past, Present at the d3 gallery in New York last month. Here are more details from designer Eduardo McIntosh:

Autonomous Living Units is a somewhat satirical project that stands at the intersection of the current housing crisis, the tendency of people in developed countries to live on their own and the trend of turning architecture into a consumer product.

The project poses a scenario in which living units (homes) have evolved into the most minimal yet visually alluring objects that can still provide for the basic needs of the 21st century human being.

Because of the morphing of architecture into furniture, the Living Units could be inserted in derelict areas and ruined housing projects.

This project was exhibited among others at the d3 Gallery in New York for the “Future Cities: Past, Present” exhibition in April 2009.

Source dezeen.com

Honda Personal Mobility Device

2009-09-30T12:26:00.000-07:00

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Pursuing the concept of “harmony with people” Honda has developed a new personal mobility technology and unveiled U3-X, a compact experimental device that fits comfortably between the rider’s legs, to provide free movement in all directions just as in human walking – forward, backward, side-to-side, and diagonally. Honda will continue research and development of the device including experiments in a real-world environment to verify the practicality of the device.

This new personal mobility device makes it possible to adjust speed and move, turn and stop in all directions when the rider leans the upper body to shift body weight. This was achieved through application of advanced technologies including Honda’s balance control technology, which was developed through the robotics research of ASIMO, Honda’s bipedal humanoid robot, and the world’s first omni-directional driving wheel system (Honda Omni Traction Drive System, or HOT Drive System), which enables movement in all directions, including not only forward and backward, but also directly to the right and left and diagonally. In addition, this compact size and one-wheel-drive personal mobility device was designed to be friendly to the user and people around it by making it easier for the rider to reach the ground from the footrest and placing the rider on roughly the same eye level as other people or pedestrians.

Honda is planning to showcase the U3-X at the 41st Tokyo Motor Show 2009 (sponsored by JAMA) which will begin on October 24, 2009 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan.

Striving to propose the next-generation mobility which expands the joy and fun of mobility, Honda has been conducting robotics research since 1986, including ASIMO, walking assist devices and U3-X, at the Honda R&D Co., Ltd. Fundamental Technology Research Center in Wako, Saitama, Japan.

Key features of U3-X:

Free movement just as in human walking
1. Device control featuring application of balance control technology cultivated through ASIMO research:
The incline sensor detects the incline of the device based on the weight shift of the rider and determines the rider’s intention in terms of the direction and speed. Based on the data, precise control is applied to return the device to an upright position, which achieves smooth and agile movements and simple operation by weight shift only.

2. HOT Drive System (Omni-directional driving wheel system):
Honda developed the world’s first wheel structure which enables movement in all directions including forward, backward, side-to-side and diagonally. Multiple small-diameter motor-controlled wheels were connected in-line to form one large-diameter wheel. By moving the large-diameter wheel, the device moves forward and backward, and by moving small-diameter wheels, the device moves side-to-side. By combining these movements the device moves diagonally.

Compact size which fit between the user’s legs
3. Compact and innovative package:
The combination of the balance control technology and the HOT Drive System enabled the one-wheel style compact and innovative package of the device. In addition, the device adopts a light-weight monocoque body in which the foldable seat, footrests and body cover that also function as the frame are stored in the body of the device, achieving highly portable convenience.

Key specifications of the experimental model
Length×Width×Height(mm): 315×160×650
Weight: less than 10kg
Battery Type: Lithium ion battery
Operation time (with fully charged battery):1 hour

Source businesswire.com

Bionic Limbs With Artificial Intelligence

2009-09-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

The artificial limbs from Ossur can think to help you walk better. The Rheo Knee, Power Knee, and Proprio Foot prosthetics all carry onboard artificial intelligences that help amputees use their bionic limbs with security and accuracy. Not only do the limbs move in a natural way and provide the strength to climb stairs foot over foot, they learn the user’s gait. Overtime, the bionic limbs will know how you walk better than you do.

Based in Reykjavik, Iceland Ossur is a global leader in prosthetics, braces, and orthopedic education. The founder developed some of the first artificial limbs by testing them on his daughter. The new wave of bionic limbs may be drastically better than older models, but this isn’t enough for current CEO Jon Sigurdsson. His goal is to create limbs that are as good or better than the real thing. Certainly the knees and feet with artificial intelligence go a long way to helping amputees walk and run as well as their peers

Both the Rheo knee and Proprio foot contain onboard computers that perform minute changes to the prosthetic to help it respond to variations in movement. The Proprio flexes to match terrain, and adjusts the ankle to fit different slopes. The Rheo adjusts actuators to control leg swing. Together, this provides the user with increased security. The embedded AIs can learn an amputees gait in just 15 steps, but continues to adjust as the user grows accustomed to the devices.

It’s the Power Knee, however, that really makes me worry about amputee world domination. This thing is so cool. It provides enough strength for users to climb stairs easily and will actually prepare itself for the next step. The AI is also smart enough to match the powered movement with the user’s natural gait. On level ground the knee uses its strength to help propel you forward, letting you walk further without getting tired.

All while making them smart and safe enough for use by amputees. Once the technology really gets going, we could see limbs with power and agility far greater than ordinary human function.

Under Sigurdsson guidance, the company is seeking to develop, or partner with groups developing, powered motion, neuro-sensing, and osseointegration (bone grafting the prosthetic). They’ve also started Ossur Academy, a seminar system that helps to educate professionals, amputees, and their families in the finer points of artificial limbs and advanced orthopedic supports. Combining technology and teaching is a key ingredient in developing a field quickly.

Whether or not they are ultimately successful, Ossur’s devices show that artificial limbs have as much promise to augment humanity as the exoskeletons we’ve seen from Cyberdyne and Sarcos. The artificial intelligence alone may make bionic limbs the easiest to use. Hopefully, Ossur’s approach will allow them to create a next generation of powered limbs that are better than before.

Source singularityhub.com

CornerShot Pistol

2009-09-29T09:37:00.000-07:00

The CornerShot, a weapon system platform that provides the ability to observe and engage a target from behind a corner. In other words, it allows you to see and shoot around corners without exposing yourself to deadly return fire by a terrorist or hostile. The Corner Shot attaches to most top-tier semi-auto and select-fire pistols, like the Glock 17/18/19, SIG Sauer P226/228, Browning Hi-Power, and Beretta M9/92F/M93R, which are currently being employed by military Special Operations Forces units, anti-terrorism & counterterrorism units, PMC operators, and law enforcement SWAT/SRT teams around the world.

CornerShot Weapons SystemsCornerShot turns your pistol into a pistol-caliber, (very) short-barreled rifle with a swiveling front section. In other words, this short-barreled rifle has an omni-directional barrel. The CornerShot's lever allows the operator to quickly swivel the weapon system in either direction, depending on the direction of the corner and hostile threat, and then turn it back straight just as quickly.

The front of the CornerShot is designed as a swivel-mount for modern semi-auto pistols like Glocks, SIG's, HK USP, Browning, and Beretta etc. A camera lens is attached to the front of the swiveling pistol mount, and a white light is mounted underneath the camera. Mounted on the left side of the "receiver" is a flip-out/swing-out camcorder-style video monitor -- only the Corner Shot's video monitor features a sighting reticle and is heavily reinforced for hard use, just like the rest of the unit.

CornerShot's latest innovation: a swiveling 40mm grenade launcher.
With all the firepower available to the U.S. military and Law Enforcement Officers today, sometimes besting the terrorist comes down to one basic question: Will you see him before he sees you? The Technology Solution for the Future is here Today.

The Corner Shot made its original debut in late 2003, but recently it's been given a bit more oomph - to the tune of a 40mm grenade launcher. Meet the Corner Shot 40™ Personal Grenade Launcher (PGL), which gives military Special Operations and private military company (PMC) operators the ability to go 40 mike-mike on the bad guys from around the corner while conducting urban warfare and counterinsurgency operations and a 37mm version for Law Enforcement gas canister use in on the way -- quite a step up from your NATO Standard 9mm Parabellum (9x19mm) pistol and submachine gun ammo.

Source www.golangroup.com

Palm webOS 1.2.0

2009-09-29T09:10:00.000-07:00

A new version of webOS, 1.2.0, is now available.

Some of the new features include:

Email filters.

Ability to download files in the browser.

Capability to download songs from the Amazon MP3 store over a 3G connection in addition to Wi-Fi.

The integration of LinkedIn contacts.

Backup of bookmarks.

Tap a phone number in a calendar note to dial it.

The capability to pause podcasts

Cut and paste for Web pages and e-mails.

And many more, to check all of them, click here.

Lamborghini Murcielago II - 2012

2009-09-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

Lamborghini supercars tend to have a relatively long lifespan. The Countach stayed in production for sixteen years from its introduction in 1974 until the Diablo replaced it in 1990, which in turn anchored Sant'Agata's line-up for eleven years until the Murcielago was introduced in 2001. Now eight years in production, the steel-bodied Raging Bull has grown pretty long in the tooth, even if it can still hold its own against its contemporary competition.

In order to keep it fresh, the Murci has spawned a seemingly endless succession of variants, from the original through the LP640, 40th Anniversary and Versace editions, fixed roof and roadsters versions, the Reventón, LP650-4 Roadster and LP670-4 SuperVeloce. Lambo's done a good job of keeping its biggest, baddest fighting bovine with the times, but they know it's about time this aging bull be put to pasture. However if the latest reports are any indication, it may yet be a couple of years more before the Murci meets its replacement.

When it does come along, though, Auto Motor und Sport says we can expect the new flagship Lambo to ditch the Murci's outmoded steel chassis in favor of an aluminum one – likely based on the Audi R8's. Draped in aluminum and carbon fiber, the chassis will, in all likelihood, carry a revised version of the Bizzarrini-designed V12 that was the company's first engine and which has, with considerable modification, carried on in the company's supercars ever since. While the wheelbase is expected to carry over from the outgoing Murcielago, the front overhang is expected to shrink, while all-wheel-drive will continue to put the power down to the tarmac.

Source www.autoblog.com

Garmin Nuvifone G60

2009-09-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

Built in partnership with Taiwanese PC maker Asustek, navigation device maker Garmin said the Nuvifone G60 has a full-GPS system that provides turn-by-turn driving directions, traffic warnings and a search engine that can suggest nearby gas stations, restaurants and and other places of interest.

It comes with preloaded maps of North America, Eastern and Western Europe or specific Asia-Pacific regions.

The handset also has with standard features found on high-end smartphones such as high-speed HSDPA Internet with a built-in Web browser, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, a 3.2-megapixel auto-focus camera with geo-tagging capabilities and an MP3 player.

AT&T said the Garmin Nuvifone G60 will sell for $300 with a two-year contract starting October 4.

Source store.garminasus.com

2019. Genome sequences Era

2009-09-28T12:08:00.000-07:00

2019 All Babies Will Get DNA Sequencing At Birth?

DNA sequencing costs are falling so far so fast that in 10 years DNA sequencing of babies will be commonplace at birth. Cuckolds will learn of their plight while standing outside hospital delivery rooms.

Every baby born a decade from now will have its genetic code mapped at birth, the head of the world's leading genome sequencing company has predicted.

A complete DNA read-out for every newborn will be technically feasible and affordable in less than five years, promising a revolution in healthcare, says Jay Flatley, the chief executive of Illumina.

Only social and legal issues are likely to delay the era of “genome sequences”, or genetic profiles, for all. By 2019 it will have become routine to map infants' genes when they are born, Dr Flatley told The Times.

Of course, this won't be commonplace in the poorer countries. But in industrialized countries a complete DNA sequence at birth will come to be seen as prudent for many reasons. Most obvious: Before the father's name gets placed on the birth certificate the hospital will verify just who is dad.

Genetic diseases that cause damage when the wrong foods are consumed will be known about from the start. Also, knowledge of genetic factors that contribute to autism might eventually become useful to help initiate treatment that'll alter the direction of brain development to make the disorder less severe.

Why else get sequenced at birth? To transfer the data to exclusive competitive kindergartens and grade schools which will of course evaluate applications for admission of Jill and Johnnie at least partially based on their genetic potential.

Sounds great in theory. But I have already seen Gataca, and I didn't find this technology very amusing.

Source www.futurepundit.com

Nanotechnology and water pollution

2009-09-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

How can nanotechnology be used to reduce water pollution?

Nanotechnology is being used to develop solutions to three very different problems in water quality.

One challenge is the removal of industrial water pollution, such as a cleaning solvent called TCE, from ground water. Nanoparticles can be used to convert the contaminating chemical through a chemical reaction to make it harmless. Studies have shown that this method can be used successfully to reach contaminates dispersed in underground ponds and at much lower cost than methods which require pumping the water out of the ground for treatment.

The challenge is the removal of salt or metals from water. A deionization method using electrodes composed of nano-sized fibers shows promise for reducing the cost and energy requirements of turning salt water into drinking water.

The third problem concerns the fact that standard filters do not work on virus cells. A filter only a few nanometers in diameter is currently being developed that should be capable of removing virus cells from water.

Source www.understandingnano.com

Photon Force of Light

2009-09-28T10:04:00.001-07:00

Science fiction writers have long envisioned sailing a spacecraft by the optical force of the sun's light. But, the forces of sunlight are too weak to fill even the oversized sails that have been tried. Now a team led by researchers at the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science has shown that the force of light indeed can be harnessed to drive machines — when the process is scaled to nano-proportions.

Their work opens the door to a new class of semiconductor devices that are operated by the force of light. They envision a future where this process powers quantum information processing and sensing devices, as well as telecommunications that run at ultra-high speed and consume little power.

The research, appearing in the November 27 issue of Nature, demonstrates a marriage of two emerging fields of research — nanophotonics and nanomechanics. – which makes possible the extreme miniaturization of optics and mechanics on a silicon chip.

The energy of light has been harnessed and used in many ways. The "force" of light is different — it is a push or a pull action that causes something to move.

"While the force of light is far too weak for us to feel in everyday life, we have found that it can be harnessed and used at the nanoscale," said team leader Hong Tang, assistant professor at Yale. "Our work demonstrates the advantage of using nano-objects as "targets" for the force of light — using devices that are a billion-billion times smaller than a space sail, and that match the size of today's typical transistors."

Until now light has only been used to maneuver single tiny objects with a focused laser beam — a technique called "optical tweezers." Postdoctoral scientist and lead author, Mo Li noted, "Instead of moving particles with light, now we integrate everything on a chip and move a semiconductor device."

"When researchers talk about optical forces, they are generally referring to the radiation pressure light applies in the direction of the flow of light," said Tang. "The new force we have investigated actually kicks out to the side of that light flow."

While this new optical force was predicted by several theories, the proof required state-of-the-art nanophotonics to confine light with ultra-high intensity within nanoscale photonic wires. The researchers showed that when the concentrated light was guided through a nanoscale mechanical device, significant light force could be generated — enough, in fact, to operate nanoscale machinery on a silicon chip.

The light force was routed in much the same way electronic wires are laid out on today's large scale integrated circuits. Because light intensity is much higher when it is guided at the nanoscale, they were able to exploit the force. "We calculate that the illumination we harness is a million times stronger than direct sunlight," adds Wolfram Pernice, a Humboldt postdoctoral fellow with Tang.

"We create hundreds of devices on a single chip, and all of them work," says Tang, who attributes this success to a great optical I/O device design provided by their collaborators at the University of Washington.

It took more than 60 years to progress from the first transistors to the speed and power of today's computers. Creating devices that run solely on light rather than electronics will now begin a similar process of development, according to the authors.

"While this development has brought us a new device concept and a giant step forward in speed, the next developments will be in improving the mechanical aspects of the system. But," says Tang, "the photon force is with us."

Source www.physorg.com

Audi R8 5.2 FSI quattro

2009-09-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

The R8 5.2 adapts the 5.2-liter V10 from the Lamborghini Gallardo, slightly detuned for use in the all-wheel-drive Audi coupe. A nearly identical version of the same engine will power Audi's new $330,000 R8 LMS racing car that's being developed for GT3 events in 2009.

In the R8 5.2, the normally aspirated, direct-injection 10-cylinder engine makes 518 horsepower and 391 pound-feet of torque. It can be mated to a six-speed manual gearbox or an R tronic sequential automatic with steering-wheel-mounted rocker switches.

Audi says the car can zip from zero to 60 mph in less than 3.9 seconds but will return up to 17 mpg in average fuel economy with the R tronic. Both transmissions come with a launch control program for quick starts with electronically controlled tire-slip reduction.

The R8 5.2 rides on unique 10-spoke 19-inch wheels, shod with 235/35R-19 rubber in front and 295/30R-19s in the rear. High-performance ceramic brakes with composite discs are optional.

Audi has made subtle visual changes to distinguish the V10 variant from the standard eight-cylinder R8. In addition to all-LED headlamps, the R8 5.2 gets wider side sills, matte aluminum exhaust grilles, a larger rear window, chrome single-frame grille, accented side blades, and front air inlets and front apron lip painted in high-gloss black.

Source www.edmunds.com

Key Chain Digital Camera

2009-09-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

Don't leave home without it... and don't let your wife near it (?).

The Key Chain Digital Camera & Video Recorder is a mini sized video recorder that can capture hi-quality still images, or live video!
With a build in infrared light you can even record in the dark! The video and images are stored onto the unit itself and are password protected. Only you can access the data by connecting the unit to your computers USB interface!

Technical SpecsTechnical Specs:
Video format:AVI
Video Resolution 640X480
Still image Resolution 1280X960
Battery:280mha 3.7V
Battery Life 2-3 hours continuous

Want one? Really? Ok, click here then.

AS50 Sniper rifle

2009-09-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

The AS50 is a long range sniper rifle using .50 cal ammunition. It is the latest product
of British firearms producer Accuracy International and was designed and produced in 2006. The AS50 is highly accurate rifle which can use explosive or incendiary bullets. It uses a gas operated semi-automatic action for quick firing. It is also lightweight and easily transportable.

The barrel is floating free and uses dual chamber muzzle brake to reduce recoil which is very
low for this kind of rifles. On the rail there is mounted an optical sight. It is efficient up
to a mile away. This rifle has not seen action yet as it still waits to get into the service.

AS50 Sniper Rifle Specifications:

Weight: 14.1kg empty
Length: 1.369 m
Cartridge: 12.7×99 mm NATO 5 rounds
Caliber: 12.7 mm .50 BMG
Action: semi-automatic rate of fire
Range: over a mile

Source future-weapons.org

Floating Ecopolis

2009-09-28T08:54:00.000-07:00

The Lilypad, a floating ecopolis for climatic refugees, is the creation of Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut.

"It is" he says, "a true amphibian, half aquatic and half terrestrial city, able to accommodate 50,000 inhabitants and inviting biodiversity".

Callebaut imagines his structure at 250 times the scale of a lilypad, with a skin made of polyester fibres coated in titanium dioxide which would react with ultraviolet light and absorb atmospheric pollution.

The Lilypad comprises of three marinas and three mountain regions with streets and structures strewn with foliage. "The goal is to create a harmonious coexistence of humans and nature," said Callebaut.

With a central fresh water lagoon acting as ballast, the whole construction would be carbon neutral utilizing solar, thermal, wind, hydraulic, tidal and osmotic energies.

With high density populations living in low-lying areas -- The Netherlands, Polynesia, Bangladesh -- the ecopolis, its creator believes, could be the answer to mass human displacement that global warming is predicted to cause.

In its most recent 2007 report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted sea levels will rise by 60-90 cm during this century. Some climate scientists like James Hansen think that if greenhouse gas emissions aren't checked then those figures might be much, much worse.

In practice, Callebaut envisages the Lilypad sailing the seas, following currents like a futuristic cruise ship. He also thinks that it could "widen sustainability in offshore territories of the most developed countries such as Monaco".

Source edition.cnn.com

Water on the Moon

2009-09-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

NASA scientists have discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the Moon. Instruments aboard three separate spacecraft revealed water molecules in amounts that are greater than predicted, but still relatively small. Hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, also was found in the lunar soil. The findings were published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.

The observations were made by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3 ("M-cubed"), aboard the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. NASA's Cassini spacecraft and NASA's Epoxi spacecraft have confirmed the find.

"Water ice on the Moon has been something of a holy grail for lunar scientists for a very long time," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This surprising finding has come about through the ingenuity, perseverance and international cooperation between NASA and the India Space Research Organization."

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From its perch in lunar orbit, M3's state-of-the-art spectrometer measured light reflecting off the Moon's surface at infrared wavelengths, splitting the spectral colors of the lunar surface into small enough bits to reveal a new level of detail in surface composition. When the M3 science team analyzed data from the instrument, they found the wavelengths of light being absorbed were consistent with the absorption patterns for water molecules and hydroxyl.

"When we say 'water on the Moon,' we are not talking about lakes, oceans or even puddles," explained Carle Pieters, M3's principal investigator from Brown University, Providence, R.I. "Water on the Moon means molecules of water and hydroxyl that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimeters of the Moon's surface.

The M3 team found water molecules and hydroxyl at diverse areas of the sunlit region of the Moon's surface, but the water signature appeared stronger at the Moon's higher latitudes. Water molecules and hydroxyl previously were suspected in data from a Cassini flyby of the Moon in 1999, but the findings were not published until now.

"The data from Cassini's VIMS instrument and M3 closely agree," said Roger Clark, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist in Denver and member of both the VIMS and M3 teams. "We see both water and hydroxyl. While the abundances are not precisely known, as much as 1,000 water molecule parts-per-million could be in the lunar soil. To put that into perspective, if you harvested one ton of the top layer of the Moon's surface, you could get as much as 32 ounces of water."

For additional confirmation, scientists turned to the Epoxi mission while it was flying past the Moon in June 2009 on its way to a November 2010 encounter with comet Hartley 2. The spacecraft not only confirmed the VIMS and M3 findings, but also expanded on them.

"With our extended spectral range and views over the north pole, we were able to explore the distribution of both water and hydroxyl as a function of temperature, latitude, composition, and time of day," said Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland. Sunshine is Epoxi's deputy principal investigator and a scientist on the M3 team. "Our analysis unequivocally confirms the presence of these molecules on the Moon's surface and reveals that the entire surface appears to be hydrated during at least some portion of the lunar day."

The discovery of water molecules and hydroxyl on the Moon raises new questions about the origin of "Moon water" and its effect on lunar mineralogy. Answers to these questions will be studied and debated for years to come.

Source science.msfc.nasa.gov

Spyder RT motorcycle

2009-09-25T14:10:00.000-07:00

The Canadian concern Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP) has released its model in the touring version of the Spyder - Spyder RT.
Now Spyder is offered in two basic versions - RS (Roadster Sport) and RT (Roadster Touring).
Touring Spyder will be produced in three models - a simple Spyder RT, the average Spyder RT Audio and Convenience and the most complete top-end Spyder RT-S. Complete RT will be available only in silver, RT Audio and Convenience - in silver or blue, and RT-S - in blue or black.
The engine for all devices one - V-Twin Rotax brand volume 998ss. Bore 97mm, stroke 68mm. Maximum power is true would be slightly lower than the Spyder RS - 100 hp instead of 106. Maximum torque - 104 Nm at 5 500 rpm. Compression ratio 12,2. Dry weight machines - 421 kg. Dimensions (length, width, height) - 2667 x 1582 x 1510 mm. Wheelbase 1708 mm.

In the U.S. base price Spyder RS is 16,5 thousand dollars, and RT has already proposed for 21 000 in the simple version, 23 000 in the average acquisition and 25 000 in total.

Source future-motorcycles.com