Once the last of NASA’s space shuttle
fleet shuffle off to retirement in a few months the space agency will
be totally dependent on the Russian Soyuz to ferry astronauts to and
from the International Space Station. At a cost of around US$63 million
per seat, or more than $753 million a year, NASA
is turning to the commercial companies to provide a more economical
option. As part of the second round of funding for the agency’s
Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) initiative that aims to stimulate
development of privately operated crew vehicles to low Earth orbit, it
will dole out grants totaling $269.3 million to four private companies.
One of the recipients is SpaceX, which has been awarded $75 million to develop a launch escape system for its Dragon spacecraft. Read More
Internal combustion engines are likely to remain
in widespread use for some time yet, but it's possible that we may be
bidding adieu to that most iconic of engine parts, the spark plug.
Researchers from Japan's National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS)
are creating laser igniters that could one day replace spark plugs in
automobile engines. Not only would these lasers allow for better
performance and fuel economy, but cars using them would also create less
harmful emissions. Read More
Fastec TS3 Cine shoots 720p at 720 frames per second
By Paul Ridden
April 21, 2011
Despite the numerous digital cameras which now
offer high definition recording capabilities, if you want to slow things
down for Matrix-like action scenes, you usually have to
sacrifice the resolution. There are somewhat unwieldy broadcast quality,
high-speed solutions available, but the TS3 Cine from the Fastec
Imaging Corporation puts high definition super slow motion in the palm
of your hand. The DSLR-sized camera offers 720p resolution at 720 frames
per second (fps), but if you do want to shed some pixels, then up to
20,000 fps capture is also possible. Read More
Nobody likes scratches in their car's finish.
That's part of the reason why over the years, a number of research
facilities have tried to develop self-healing paint. These efforts have
resulted in products containing things such as microcapsules that burst open when scratched, elastic resins, and even a chemical derived from the exoskeletons of crustaceans.
Now, scientists from the U.S. and Switzerland have developed polymers –
which could be used in paint – that heal their own scratches when
exposed to ultraviolet light. Read More
Supple - the wheel chair becomes the sphere-chair
By Paul Ridden
April 21, 2011
Despite not becoming the personal transport revolution that it was designed to be, the Segway has provided a wealth of design fodder for numerous self-balancing concepts, prototypes and production
single occupancy vehicles. Mohamad Sadegh Samakoush Darounkolayi's
entry into this year's Michelin Design Challenge, however, probably owes
more to the Disney/Pixar film WALL-E – hopefully the users of
his Supple concept won't end up being the grossly overweight, lethargic,
mentally-challenged descendants of humanity like those aboard the Axiom
cruise ship. Read More
While the metal bodywork of cars certainly can
be melted down and recycled, the process requires a lot of energy, and
therefore isn't entirely eco-friendly. Making cars out of
easier-to-recycle materials is certainly one approach to the problem,
but designers Kenneth Cobonpue and Albrecht Birkner have another idea –
cars with sustainably-sourced, biodegradable bodies. To that end, they
have created the Phoenix, a full-sized rolling chassis made from rattan
and bamboo. Read More
One of the most imaginative concept cars we’ve ever seen turned up at Auto Shanghai
this week and it didn’t come from Japan, Germany, France or America –
it was the result of two years work in China by Geely engineers and is
the synthesis of over 60 IP-protected ideas. In essence, it’s an ultra
compact, two-door, four-seater with a built-in, folding three wheeled
electric scooter in the rear. When the scooter is docked, the car shares
both its battery and electric motor to extend the all-electric range or
ensure the scooter is fully charged. The vehicle is proposed as having
choice of gas-electric hybrid or fully electric powerplants. Sheer
genius … and a catchy name which must surely attract a legal challenge.
Read More
There just aren't enough superlatives to
adequately describe the exploits of Ettore Bugatti and the remarkable
history of his marque, let alone its resurrection as a world-beating
performance car manufacturer. The 882 kW (1,200 PS) Bugatti Super Sport
reclaimed the title of the fastest production car in the world last
year and it has now been joined at the top of the heap by its sibling,
the 736 kW (1,001 PS) Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport
which is now the fastest and most powerful convertible in the world. It
has an electronically limited top speed of 407 km/h (252.9 mph) with
the roof on, and will best 360 km/h (223.7 mph) sans lid. Special
editions of both cars greeted the throngs at Auto Shanghai this week.
Read More
After a good deal of speculation, Dell has
announced two new additions to its Alienware gaming brand and one
updated favorite. The new flagship M18x desktop replacement notebook –
modestly described by the company as the "most powerful 18-inch gaming
laptop in the universe" – features a factory-overclocked second
generation Core i7 processor, dual graphics and supports up to 32GB of
DDR3 memory. The M14x comes in two display options, dual or quad Core i7
processors and an impressive eight hour battery life. The refreshed
M11x gets treated to some new processors, USB 3.0 and HDMI 1.4
connectivity. Read More
How to encrypt your Postbox (or other) email on OS X
By Tim Hanlon
April 21, 2011
Even if you're using IMAP to access your email,
certain newer email clients like Thunderbird 3 and Postbox will download
and store your emails locally in plain text. This leaves many users
making a difficult choice between leaving sensitive data unencrypted, or
venturing into overkill territory by using a tool like FileVault, PGP
Whole Disk Encryption or TrueCrypt - which see you encrypting your
entire home directory or hard drive and dealing with a performance
overhead. This article will show you how to encrypt only your Postbox
email on a Mac, but can easily be adapted to other email clients (or
other folders like your Documents folder). Read More
Nintendo will show a playable model of the next-generation Wii
gaming console at E3 Expo in June. The company confirmed the reveal
date in a short statement earlier today and although there's still no
official word on exactly what the successor to the Wii (codenamed
“Project Cafe”) holds in store, the rumors are gaining momentum. Read More
For the past several years, scientists from
around the world have been engaged in the development of nanogenerators –
tiny piezoelectric devices capable of generating electricity by
harnessing minute naturally-occurring movements, such as the shifting of clothing or even the beating of a person's heart.
So far, while they may have worked in principle, few if any of the
devices have been able to generate enough of a current to make them
practical for use in consumer products. Now, however, scientists from
the Georgia Institute of Technology are claiming to have created "the
world's first practical nanogenerator." Read More
It's probably still going to be a while before
autonomous, self-aware androids are wandering amongst us. That scenario
has come a little closer to reality, however, with researchers from the
University of Southern California having created a functioning synapse
circuit using carbon nanotubes. An artificial version of the connections
that allow electrical impulses to pass between neurons in our brains,
the circuit could someday be one component of a synthetic brain. Read More
For the last ten years, Michelin North America
has challenged designers from around the world to create innovative
vehicle concepts. The company put those concepts before some judges, and
then displayed a chosen few at the North American International Auto Show
(NAIAS). The 2011 "Plus 10: The Best is Yet to Come" challenge was to
come up with a vehicle that could be enjoyed by people local to the
designers in 2021. From the record number of entries received,
Michelin's judges chose 34 works to go on display. Let's take a quick
look at some of them ... Read More
Golf balls may be small and the ocean may be
huge, yet traditional plastic-skinned balls that are whacked into the
sea are nonetheless a source of pollution, and a potential hazard to
marine life – anyone remember the Seinfeld episode where a
whale got one of Kramer's golf balls down its blowhole? It would
certainly stand to reason that biodegradable balls would be the logical
choice for golfers who want to use the ocean as their driving range, and
such balls do already exist. A team from the University of Maine,
however, have recently created golf balls made from lobster shells ...
and they have a couple of advantages over similar products. Read More
Call me old fashioned if you will, but there's
nothing more pleasing than the soft, natural and warm sound produced by a
tube amplifier. The Block amplifier by industrial designer Mateusz
Glówka is as much a visual treat as a sonic one. The somewhat harsh
geometric lines are offset by the gratifying glow of the half dozen
tubes on display outside the stainless steel and aluminum housing and,
in a novel twist, the main sound board is attached with hinges so that
it can be raised for dusting the electronics. The tube amplifier is a
working prototype at the moment, but the designer told Gizmag that he
expects production models to be available soon. Read More
As our use of mobile technology increases, so
does our demand for more built-in device storage capacity in smaller and
smaller form factors. Only a few weeks have passed since Intel began
using its 25 nanometer (nm) NAND flash memory in its 320 series SSD storage solutions
and just days since the company joined with Micron Technology to
announce the breakthrough 20nm process technology. Now SanDisk and
Toshiba have developed and fabricated NAND flash memory modules with
19nm process technology. Read More
Samsung's shock, water and dust-proof W200 Pocket Cam
By Paul Ridden
April 24, 2011
Despite the killing off of the FLIP
there's still some movement left in the Pocket HD camcorder market.
Samsung's latest release is a shock, water and dust-proof rugged unit
capable of recording full high definition video and snap 5.5 megapixel
stills. The bright lens and LCD screen are coated to help keep videos
blur-free and the sensitivity is twice that of previous models thanks to
the inclusion of backside-illumination technology. Read More
Whether browsing through the latest technology
news, following the exploits of your favorite musician or film star or
looking up exotic holiday destinations, chances are you will bump into a
language that's not your own. Thanks to online translation services,
most of us can usually get the gist of what's going on, but there are
occasions when typing a word into a translation box is just not
convenient. Penpower Technology has an alternative solution in the form
of an application that uses the camera on the iPhone and Google's
translation service to offer instant word translation and definition.
Read More
While motion controllers are becoming a staple for console gamers with the release of the Wii, PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect, PC gamers have been left wanting. Razer
is looking to change that with its Hydra motion controller which has
been developed specifically for PC gamers. Unlike other console-based
motion control systems, the Hydra uses magnetic tracking technology by
way of a base station that emits a magnetic field that Razer says allows
the exact location and orientation of the handheld controllers to be
detected with millimeter and degree accuracy. Read More
Fisker Karma PHEV headed to showrooms after company raises US$1 billion
By Darren Quick
April 20, 2011
Following a series of funding setbacks that has seen the launch of Fisker Automotive’s Karma
four-door saloon plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) sports car pushed back
from the initial late 2009 launch date a number of times, there’s
finally some good news. According to Gigaom, the company has surpassed
its US$1 billion funding goal and plans to have vehicles in dealer
showrooms in May or June and will begin fulfilling its 3,000-some
pre-orders from June or July. Read More
The newest addition to the gyrocopter genre
arrived at Aero Friedrichshafen this week, in the form of a
side-by-side, fully-enclosed, composite construction Cavalon gyrocopter
for just EUR65,000. The gyrocopter is to the helicopter what the
microlight is to traditional small aircraft. Invented in 1923 by
Spaniard Juan de la Cierva, the gyrocopter uses quite a different layout
to the helicopter to give it stability at low speed. It is cheap to
run, takes off and lands on a ridiculously small footprint, and has a
powered pusher propeller in addition to an unpowered main rotor. Read More
Audi's A3 e-tron concept to be shown at Auto Shanghai for
the first time today, is a plug-in hybrid technical study based on the
company's four-seat RS 3 Sportback. It uses a turbocharged, direct
injection, 211 hp, 1.4 litre TFSI unit and a 27 hp electric motor to
give the E-Tron a top speed of 144 mph plus exceptional frugality and
energy efficiency. Read More
Eglin Air Force Base has just taken delivery of a
piece of hardware that would surely be the ultimate toy for flight sim
gaming fans. The F-35 Lightning II Full Mission Simulator (FMS) system
includes a high-fidelity 360-degree visual display system and a
reconfigurable cockpit that can simulate all three variants of the F-35 Lightning II for U.S. and international partner services – the conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) F-35A, the short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B, and the F-35C carrier variant. Read More
As anyone who has seen Back to the Future
will remember, the movie ended with Doc Brown fueling the
time-traveling DeLorean’s “Mr. Fusion” reactor with household waste.
Well, a student and a professor from the School of Industrial and
Aeronautic Engineering at Barcelona’s Universitat Politècnica de
Catalunya (UPC) have taken a step towards making that scenario a reality
by adapting a radio-controlled model car to run on hydrogen fuel
derived from waste aluminum and water. In a nod to the movie, they have
named the car the dAlh2Orean ... as in, d-aluminum-water-rean. Read More
Pretty much any time a patient is placed under a
general anesthetic, a plastic endotracheal tube is inserted down their
throat, in order to keep their airway open. The procedure is known as
intubation, and has so far always been performed by hand. In this age of
robotic surgery, however, it’s perhaps not surprising to hear that
surgeons at Montreal’s McGill University Health Centre are now trying
out a remote-control intubation system on human subjects. Read More
Spending many hours in front of a computer screen
battling demons and monsters or laying waste to enemy outposts can
really take it out of your poor keyboard. Swedish high-end gaming
accessory manufacturer Mionix believes that the rage-proof durability of
its new mechanical keyboard should give you the means to tackle any
gaming marathon with confidence. Read More
Japan's Final Audio Design has been turning out
audiophile-pleasing, premium audio equipment since the 1970s, and has
just unveiled its latest high-end earphones. Taking the core design
behind the company's Opus horn speaker series, the Piano Forte X-VIII
Series is said to deliver a concert hall-like sound experience thanks to
a large diameter driver unit installed in a soundstage-expanding
metallic earpad housing. However, there is quite a heavy price to pay
for such lightweight dynamic clarity. Read on for more details ... Read More
As things currently stand, cyclists have two
options for carrying drinking water on rides: bottles in frame-mounted
cages, and hydration backpacks with sipping tubes. Bottles aren’t always
that readily-accessible, however – not a big deal if you stop
to drink, but more bothersome if you’re trying to drink on the fly, as
happens in a race. Hydration backpacks, while much handier, can be
uncomfortable. Showers Pass’ VelEau 42 is claimed to address both of
these problems, by mounting a backpack-style hydration system on the
bike instead of the rider. Read More
According to the latest DisplaySearch Quarterly
Mobile Phone Shipment and Forecast Report, the mobile phone market
reached 1.6 billion units in 2010, and will increase further to 1.8
billion units this year – there are less than seven billion humans on
Mother Earth, so that’s more than one new mobile phone for every man,
woman and child. The growth is being driven by continuously growing
emerging markets and the trend to upgrading to smart phones. Read More
Suzuki is having a bet each way in the
performance vs fuel efficiency stakes with the unveiling of two new
additions to its long-running line of Kizashi concepts at the New York International Auto Show.
While the Kizashi EcoCharge hybrid concept combines a 2.0-liter petrol
engine,15kW motor and a 115-volt air-cooled lithium-ion battery to
optimize fuel efficiency, it's show floor stablemate the Kizashi Apex
Concept is geared toward performance. Read More
Absence not only makes the heart grow fonder, it
can also make for a pretty unfulfilling sex life. While technology has
allowed lovers to bridge the tyranny of distance in terms of sight and
sound, getting touchy feely is a different matter. Men and women have
been looked after separately with devices like RealTouch and the OhMiBod,
but we haven't really seen technology designed to allow couples to
engage in remote sex. Hong Kong-based Remote Pleasure is looking to
change that with a set of sex toys that can be controlled by your
partner over the internet. Read More
At long ranges, snipers
must compensate not only for crosswinds and the fact that bullets
travel in a curved trajectory, but also allow for even very small barrel
disruptions that can cause a shooter to miss their intended target by a
wide margin. Contending with such difficulties makes feats such as the 1.53 mile (2.47 km) sniper kills by British Corporal Craig Harrison even more impressive, but a new type of rifle sighting system developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
(ORNL) could take one of these variables out of the equation. The
fiber-optic laser-based sensor system precisely measures the deflection
of the barrel relative to the sight and automatically adjusts the
crosshairs to match. Read More
Montreal's Lito has thrown its hat into the ring with a new electric motorcycle
that makes some pretty outrageous claims. A full 12 kilowatt-hours'
worth of onboard lithium polymer batteries gives the Sora a massive 300
km range – that's 185 miles between charges. Or you can choose to wrap
the throttle on and scream up to a top speed of 200 km/h (125 mph). With
chopper/fighter bad boy looks and some interesting and innovative
features like in-dash touch screen GPS and electronically adjustable
ergonomics, the Sora looks like an absolute animal of a machine. You
can't help but think that if it had an accessible pricetag, it would
look very tempting to the average biker. Read More
Efforts to create a working "invisibility cloak" have generally involved the use of artificial materials with a negative refractive index known as metamaterials. Another promising technique
involves the use of a natural crystal called calcite that boasts an
optical property known as birefringence, or double-refraction. While
both methods have proven successful in rendering very small objects
invisible in specific wavelengths of light by bending and channeling
light around them, both techniques require the "cloak" to be orders of
magnitude larger than the object being concealed. Researchers are now
reporting progress in overcoming this size limitation using a technology
known as a "carpet cloak." Read More
What's it like to drive a hydrogen powered car?
It depends on which one. In the case of BMW's Hydrogen 7, essentially a
760i with its 6.0 liter V12 tweaked to burn hydrogen instead of petrol,
one might suspect it's pretty much like the donor vehicle. In the case
of Mercedes-Benz's B Class-based F Cell, powered by electricity from a lithium-ion battery pack fed by an on-board fuel cell, you might think different. Read More
Anyone who has finger-painted, sketched with a
pencil and painted with a brush will tell you that the three activities
feel different when you're doing them, and that feel influences
the look of the finished piece of artwork. It would seem to follow that
if you were trying to simulate the experience of using a paintbrush
when creating art on a touchscreen device, you would use a brush, and
not a stylus or your finger ... that's the thinking behind the Flow, a
capacitive paintbrush designed for use on the iPad and similar devices. Read More
There was a time not all that long ago, when
hydraulic brakes on mountain bikes were viewed as super-high-end
equipment for the elite few. Now, virtually all bikes over the mid-range
price point have them. At last weekend's Sea Otter mountain biking
trade show in Monterey, a new product was unveiled that could lead to
the same thing happening with gear-shifting, as German component-maker
Acros presented its A-GE hydraulic shifting system to the world. Read More
For the last few years, data security breaches by
those who are supposed to safeguard our personal data have never been
far from the front pages of the popular press. Incredibly, on numerous
occasions employees entrusted with sensitive data have been exposed
circumventing strict security procedures put in place to keep our
personal information confidential. Now, Kingston has launched a new
Flash drive storage solution which offers ease-of-use functionality to
users and allows security to be managed centrally by employers. Read More
If you own an iPhone or 3G iPad running iOS4,
then you might be interested in knowing that the device has been keeping
a record of your travels in a hidden, unencrypted file. Users do not
opt into using the service, the database is restored after backups, and
it migrates onto other synced devices. While no one is necessarily
accusing Big Brother Jobs of watching you, it is a curious feature, and
one that could pose a security threat to some users. Read More
PlayStation 3 owners in the audience will likely
have noticed an inability to connect to the PlayStation Network (PSN)
over the past week, though Sony today made an announcement revealing
that things are much worse than a week without access to online
multiplayer gaming. At some stage between the 17th and 19th of April, a
hacker gained access to Sony's systems. Sony believes the hacker was
able to retrieve the personal information of 77 million PSN accounts,
and say it is possible that credit card details were also retrieved.
Read More
For years, people living in high-altitude or
coastal arid countries have been collecting drinking water by harvesting
fog. More specifically, they've mounted pieces of fine netting over top
of containers, left the setup overnight, then collected the fog
droplets that got caught in the net and rolled down its fibers into the
container. While it might sound like a rather insubstantial way of
acquiring water, under the right conditions it can yield a surprisingly
large amount of liquid. Now, inspired by the Namib Beetle, a chemical
engineering graduate student from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) is looking to improve on the technique. Read More
Adding that spark of magic to digital devices is
the secret ingredient in the success of many products and services. That
spark is often personalization; the concept of a device or service
being mine and for only me, building an attachment to transcend the mere
bundle of plastic and circuitry in front of you. Researchers at the
University Of Newcastle have been working on ways to make more
emotionally meaningful forms of digital communication by producing what
they are calling "Lovers' Boxes". Resembling an antique wooden jewellery
box, each conceals the latest technology to play back messages recorded
by a loved one. Read More
For the past couple of years, people wishing to
create ultra-high-resolution panoramic photographs have been able to do
so, using their own digital camera and a GigaPan
robotic tripod. The device slowly pans the camera back and forth across
a user-determined vista, triggering it to take up to several hundred
shots in the process. The included software then stitches all the photos
together – side-to-side and top-to-bottom – creating one big
panorama, which retains its resolution even when details are zoomed in
on, much like Google Earth. So, what could top that? Time-lapse videos
created using GigaPan Time Machine software, as it turns out. Read More
Statistics show that smartphone users rank high
amongst the uploaders to photo sharing sites like Flickr, but this
point-and-shoot convenience can rob users of some basic photographic
skills such as framing, composition and using different lenses.
Scotland's David McCourt hopes that his Slow Photography camera will
help mobile phone camera users get a feel for using a professional grade
digital camera, without selling the family car to pay for one. Read More
Carbon fiber may boast an impressive
strength-to-weight ratio, and it looks cool, but it does have at least
one shortcoming when compared to other building materials – it's
difficult to recycle. Nonetheless, Trek Bicycle has begun a program that
will see much of the company's waste carbon fiber being sent to a
specialized recycling facility, where it will be processed for use in
other products. According to the Cyclingnews website, the initiative
should keep up to 54,000 pounds (24,500 kg) of the material out of
landfills and in use, every year. Read More
Not too long ago, overclocking
a processor to squeeze out every last drop of performance was the
domain of relatively few dedicated hardware or gaming enthusiasts, but
is now becoming more and more commonplace. We could feel the salivation
at Alienware's announcement of a new gaming laptop
that's factory-overclocked to 4GHz. Now ORIGIN has announced that its
EON17-S performance notebooks are available with mobile processors
overclocked to a world-beating 4.5GHz. Read More
Cameras, camcorders and smartphones
have had it, now laptops are getting the in-built projector treatment.
Fujitsu is about to release two LIFEBOOK notebooks in Japan which
feature a mobile projector where you might expect to find an optical
drive – giving those who regularly provide on-site training or pitch
business proposals an always-at-hand option for displaying
presentations. Read More
Queuing at the gas pump is no fun, but imagine if
everyone in the line was taking hours, not minutes, to top up the tank.
Catering for long charging times is one of the challenges of building a
workable infrastructure for electric vehicles,
and Coulomb Technologies is taking this factor into consideration in
the development of its open-platform ChargePoint Network. Last year the
company introduced an app
that locates the nearest charging station and tells you whether its in
use. In its latest innovation, drivers can ease their range anxiety by
reserving charging stations ahead of time. Read More
Sony has announced its intention to crash into the tablet PC
market with two devices set for release later this year. Codenamed S1
and S2, both models will support WiFi and WAN (3G/4G) connections and
run on the tablet-oriented Android 3.0 OS. There's little in the way of
specifications available at this stage, but Sony is clearly looking to
stand-out from the crowd in terms of form-factor. The S1 features a
9.4-inch display and looks pretty much like a "traditional" tablet aside
from its wedge-shaped "off-center of gravity" design aimed at improving
stability, grip and comfort. S2 gets a little more radical with its
portable, horizontally hinged design and dual 5.5-inch displays which
can be used separately or combined as a single large screen. Read More
0 comments:
Post a Comment