Archos has unveiled its 3rd generation Android
tablets with its new G9 series, which includes the 8-inch 80 G9 with
1024 x 768 pixel resolution and the 10.1-inch 101 G9 with 1280 x 800
pixel resolution. Powered by a dual-core OMAP 4 processor (1.5GHz ARM
Cortex A9) and running Android 3.1 (Honeycomb), the G9 series also
offers a first for Android tablets - the option of 16 GB of flash
storage or a 250 GB HDD. Read More
Using a virus containing a ‘library’ of DNA,
researchers from the University of Leeds in the U.K., working with the
Mayo Clinic in the U.S., have developed a vaccine that was able to
destroy prostate cancer tumors in mice, while leaving healthy tissue
untouched. Because the virus contains multiple fragments of genes, the
vaccine is able to produce many possible antigens thereby boosting its
effectiveness. The technique could be used to create vaccines to treat a
wide range of cancers, including breast, pancreatic and lung tumors.
Read More
Buckminster Fuller was an American inventor and
futurist whose prolific and widely admired work gave us the geodesic
dome, the remarkable Dymaxion Chronofile, the term ""Spaceship Earth"
and the Dymaxion car. The Norman Foster-built Dymaxion car
had a rare public outing at the exclusive boutique-style Salon Prive
event in London this week. Nice photo file on this one. Read More
Lately we’re hearing a lot about the green energy
potential of fuel cells, particularly hydrogen fuel cells.
Unfortunately, although various methods of hydrogen production
are being developed, it still isn’t as inexpensive or easily obtainable
as fossil fuels such as coal. Scientists from the Georgia Institute of
Technology, however, have recently taken a step towards combining the
eco-friendliness of fuel cell technology with the practicality of fossil
fuels – they’ve created a fuel cell that runs on coal gas. Read More
One of, if not the biggest, hurdles to be
overcome if solar power plants are to replace conventional fossil
fuel-based power plants is cost. To be feasible, solar power plants
generally require investment from forward thinking companies
or governmental tax incentives. In an effort to make solar power
plants – specifically Concentrated Solar Power Towers (CSP) and their
accompanying thermal storage systems – more attractive, the U.S.
Department of Energy (DoE) has awarded Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
US$10.2 million to develop technologies aimed at significantly lowering
the electricity costs of such solar plants. Read More
As the amount of information being electronically
shuttled around the planet continues to grow, so does the need for
effective means of relaying it. The use of optical fibers has definitely
helped in that regard, although thanks to a recent breakthrough at
Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, optical fiber signals may
soon be able to travel four times farther than they are presently able
to. Researchers there have created an optical amplifier, capable of
amplifying light while maintaining a relatively noise-free signal. Read More
It's a hot summer day, you're sweaty and
uncomfortable, and there's a river full of cool, clear water right
beside you. Do you jump in? Not if you're in New York City, as the
rivers that flow through that city are too polluted for swimming ... or
at the very least, that's the perception that most people have of them.
Three young entrepreneurs, however, have proposed a way of getting New
Yorkers into the Hudson, East and/or Bronx Rivers. It's called the +Pool
(Plus Pool) – a public swimming pool that would float in the river,
allowing people to swim in filtered river water. Read More
Everlasting batteries and self-powering portable
electronics have come one step closer to reality, according to the
results of a new research by Australian scientists from Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology (RMIT). The group of researchers successfully
measured piezoelectric thin film’s capability to turn mechanical
pressure into electricity. It may sound like an idea from the realm of
science fiction, but the discovery could eventually lead to laptops
powered through typing. Read More
Last month we reported on the Aurasma augmented reality (AR) app, and compared it to the special sunglasses in the John Carpenter movie They Live,
that let their wearers see the aliens secretly living amongst us. Well,
the new appBlaster iPhone accessory is much, much more reminiscent of
that film. It's essentially a toy gun, that your iPhone mounts on top
of. Running the free Alien Attack AR game, the phone will
proceed to show you the virtual otherwise-invisible aliens that are all
around you, overlaid on real-time video of your your real-life
surroundings. You then use the gun to shoot the little goobers before
they nab you. Read More
Toyota will continue the growing trend among auto
makers of announcing new models and concept cars at places other than
auto shows by unveiling the GRMN Sports Concept II at the Nürburgring
24-hour race this weekend. The GRMN is a lightweight, petrol-electric
hybrid convertible with 295 bhp. The 245 bhp V6 is located centrally and
drives the rear wheels while the front wheels are electrically-powered
to complete the sports-hybrid AWD system. Read More
French manufacturer Archos unveiled a budget-friendly tablet computing option alongside its G9 series
this week. The Arnova 7 tablet features a 7-inch, 800 x 480 pixel
resistive touchscreen, runs Android 2.2 (Froyo) and has AppsLib access
instead of the Android Market, but its most distinctive feature is its
very low price - it's set at just US$99. Read More
Mice are frequently used as lab models when
testing new drugs, and fluorescent dyes are sometimes injected into
their bodies so that researchers can better see how those drugs are
progressing through their systems. Unfortunately, the pictures obtained
in this process start to become murky when imaging anything more than a
few millimeters beneath the skin. Scientists from Stanford University
have now devised a system that utilizes fluorescent carbon nanotubes to
produce clear color images of organs that are located centimeters within
a mouse's body. Read More
Nintendo's 3DS
has been in the wild for a while, but now that the hype surrounding the
device has died down a bit we decided to cast an eye over the console
that promised to revolutionize portable gaming when it was released
earlier this year. The 3DS follows the clamshell form factor Nintendo
first introduced on the Game Boy Advance SP back in 2003 and the look
and feel of the console will be pretty familiar to anyone who has used
any of Nintendo's DS line, but the 3DS sees a couple of useful design
changes in addition to the headline-grabbing 3D capabilities. Read More
The heat given off by electronics, automobile
engines, factories and other sources is a potentially huge source of
energy, and various technologies are being developed in order to capture
that heat, and then convert it into electricity. Thanks to an alloy
that was recently developed at the University of Minnesota, however, a
step in that process could be saved – the new material is able to
convert heat directly into electricity. Read More
With automobiles, we’re currently at a point in
history where some of the advantages of electric vehicles are becoming
apparent, yet the internal combustion engine still has its merits – as a
result, a lot of people are buying gas/electric hybrids. Well, the
LaCie CloudBox sort of represents the same thing, except for data
storage. It’s a hard drive, which people trust and are used to, yet it
automatically backs everything up to the cloud, which seems to be the
direction in which things are heading. Just think of it as a Prius for
your computer. Read More
Over two thousand international exhibitors, 142
aircraft and tens of thousands of visitors gathered at the Le Bourget
exhibition center this week for the 49th International Paris Airshow.
Despite some grey skies and unwelcome rain, crowds were treated to
spectacular daily flying displays and insights into bleeding-edge
aerospace technologies that will shape the way we travel around the
planet - and beyond - in the 21st Century. Gizmag joined the throng of
media organizations soaking up all that the show has to offer - here's
our summary of the week in pictures. Read More
Canadian-based company UrtheCast has announced a
project intended to let a wider audience view the earth from space. A
pair of cameras will be installed on the International Space Station,
recording videos and imagery of the planet. The project's aim is to
create an internet-based video streaming platform, thus allowing for
online viewing of the footage being recorded in space. It's "the world's
first and only near real time high definition video from space,"
according to UrtheCast's website. Read More
Given how poorly light and radio signals are able
to travel underwater, sound is still the best medium for wireless
undersea communications. Conventional underwater microphones – or
hydrophones – have their limitations, however. One of their main
problems is that the deeper they go, the less sensitive they become.
Scientists from California’s Stanford University have now found a
solution to that problem, in the form of a hydrophone that is designed
to perform like an orca’s ear. Read More
Only a short time ago, if you'd asked me to describe a modern guitar effects unit, something like the GR-55 from Boss would probably have come to mind. Since the introduction of iPhone and iPad music creation apps like IK Multimedia's AmpliTube app,
however, multi-effects processing and amp/cab emulation have risen up
from the stomp box on the ground and into the hands of the player. Now
DigiTech have announced a new unit which offers the best of both worlds.
Docking an iPad in the iPB-10 Programmable Pedalboard allows guitarists
to drag and drop a chain of effects using the accompanying app and then
use the physical footswitches to control the action. Read More
One of the most anticipated commercial airplanes in recent years made an appearance at the 49th Paris Airshow this week. The first flight-test 787 Dreamliner
(ZA001) spent two days on static display on the tarmac at Le Bourget
and will take a short tour through Europe before returning to the U.S.
Read More
Last year in the Nürburgring 24 Hour race, Porsche's 911 GT3 R Hybrid
held the lead for more than eight hours before problems unrelated to
the hybrid system saw it relegated through the field. The organizer of
the event thought the performance potential of the vehicle was so
auspicious that for this year it crippled the rear-mounted petrol
engine's performance to just 448 bhp. So Porsche built a completely new
vehicle to the same design around the new regulations, lowered the
weight, upped the electrical drive to the front wheels to 200 bhp and
set out to run the same lap times. Not only did it achieve the same lap
times, it delivered even better fuel consumption, and four hours after
the start of this year's race, it hit the lead once more ... Read More
Pentax has announced the first pocket-friendly
interchangeable lens camera to sport its new bayonet lens mount. The
company says that its Q mount is about a third less in diameter than the
more familiar K-mount, thanks to a reduction in the distance from the
lens mount surface to the image sensor and by tweaking the size of the
lens image circle to be proportionate to the sensor. The Pentax Q also
makes use of a compact camera-sized sensor and sacrifices the onboard
optical viewfinder, mirror box, focusing plate and autofocus sensor to
help keep proportions to a minimum - making it about the same size as my
Umbra credit card case. Other features of note include a programmable
dial on the front for quick access to frequently-used settings, the
ability to shoot full high definition video and a built-in flash that
can pop up to help reduce red-eye. Read More
Despite research by automakers such as Audi and events such as DARPA's Grand Challenge,
we're still waiting for fully autonomous cars to chauffeur us about
town. Volkswagen has presented a new system called Temporary Auto Pilot
(TAP), which is a link between existing driver assist technologies and
completely automated vehicles. While still being monitored by the
driver, TAP allows semi-automatic driving on a highway at speeds of up
to 130 km/h (80 mph). Read More
A NASA-led research team has created a new map
using ground and satellite data that accurately quantifies the amount
and location of carbon stored in Earth's tropical trees and forests.
Based on data from the early 2000s, the map focuses on 2.5 million
hectares of tropical forest in seventy-five countries. Data shows that
tropical forests contain 247 billion tons of carbon, and of this carbon
stock, almost half is held in Latin American forests. Almost the same
carbon stock is stored in sub-Saharan Africa in its entirety, compared
with 61 billion tons of carbon stored in Brazilian forests alone. Read More
The company behind the now-abandoned Kno digital textbook
has announced the beta release of a new digitized textbook reading
application for the iPad. The free to download Textbooks for iPad app
offers students access to a vast library of exact digital replicas of
real-world textbooks with the added bonus of an enhanced, interactive
reading experience, some useful organizational tools and social sharing
features. Read More
Unlike human brains that make no real distinction
between memory and computation, computers currently deal with
processing and memory separately. This means data has to be constantly
moved around, resulting in a speed and power “bottleneck.” Now, using
phase change materials that can store and process information
simultaneously, researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK have
developed a new technique that could lead to the development of
“brain-like” computers. Read More
After nearly 30 years of service, the Space
Shuttle fleet is due to enter retirement with the last ever mission
scheduled for takeoff on July 8, 2011. In its lifetime, the world’s
first Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) has provided information that will
prove invaluable for the next generation of spacecraft that will succeed
it. One such craft is the Skylon, an unpiloted, single-stage, reusable
spaceplane currently under development by UK-based Reaction Engines Ltd.
(REL). The Skylon got a shot in the arm last month with the release of a
technical review of Skylon carried out by the European Space Agency
(ESA) that concluded there are “no impediments” that would prevent the
continued development of the Skylon and its SABRE engine. Read More
Since I enviously eyed my very first Sony
All-in-One computer in the early 1990s, the space-saving desktop form
factor has found its way into most manufacturer's product ranges. With
its latest VAIO L Series addition, Sony brings 3D visuals to the party,
along with a touch-enabled bezel for shortcut activation and feature
control. It's powered by a second generation Core i7 processor supported
by DDR3 memory and is given a generous helping of fast hard disk
storage. Read More
With the rising price of fuel and more stringent
emissions regulations, there is a strong need for the aviation industry
to begin taking steps to earn its green wings. It's not surprising
therefore that biofuel was one of the hot topics at this week's Paris Air Show with both Boeing's 747-8
and Gulfstream's G450 business jet making the trip across the Atlantic
on biofuel blends. The G450 flew in from Morristown, New Jersey, after a
seven hour flight in which one of its Rolls-Royce engines was powered
by a 50/50 blend of Honeywell Green Jet Fuel and petroleum-based jet
fuel. Read More
NAU, the design studio behind the 360-degree Immersive Cocoon
we checked out earlier this month, has penned this streamlined,
zero-local-emission Ecco Camper concept with a view to inspiring a new
way of getting away from it all in the 21st Century. Read More
Sixty-one year old motorsport legend Nobuhiro
'Monster' Tajima, almost certainly the oldest world class athlete
competing in any sport today, won his sixth consecutive Pikes Peak
International Hill Climb on Sunday, at the same time as breaking the
long standing 10 minute barrier for the course which rises 1.5
kilometers from start to oxygen-starved finish. Nissan's electric LEAF established a new electric car record for the course and Ducati's "four bikes in 1" Multistrada defended its 2010 win with a new record too. Read More
Sony has taken the wraps off its new VAIO Z
Series at a press event in Europe. Weighing in at 1.2 kg (2.64 lb) and
measuring 16.65 mm (0.65 in) thin, the “ultra-mobile” notebook PC sports
a 13.1-inch, 1600 x 900 pixel, anti-reflective display and packs a
full-voltage Intel Core i5 or i7 CPU along with solid state drive.
Designed for users who don’t want to choose between desktop power and
notebook portability, the VAIO Z Series also comes with a Power Media
Dock that connects to the notebook via a “Light Peak” optical cable to
add quad monitor support, an optical drive, extra connectivity options
and AMD Radeon HD graphics. Read More
If you're finding it hard to shed those extra
pounds because you're chained to desk all day and can't find time to fit
in some exercise then the Elliptical Machine Office Desk will mean
there's no more excuses. Consisting of an adjustable-height desk that
pairs with a semi-recumbent elliptical trainer, it's claimed the setup
will allow the average user to burn about 4,000 calories in a typical
working week. And with a healthy body and a healthy mind said to go hand
in hand, the setup might even make you more productive in the office.
Read More
Perhaps fearing that the brand is losing touch
with "passionate drivers", Toyota is developing a new "affordable"
sports car to fill the gap it left when it dropped the Supra and MR2
from its lineup. The FT-86 II concept, built on a Subaru platform under a
partnership agreement, is a rear wheel drive coupe with smart styling
that's clearly aimed at younger drivers. Toyota showed off the car in
Melbourne, ahead of this weekend's Australian International Motor Show -
and took the opportunity to give the press an advance look at the Prius
C concept, Prius V, 2012 Hilux and all-new Yaris as well. Pics inside.
Read More
We’ve seen a growing number 3D printers
that use additive manufacturing technology to form objects one layer at
a time, usually from resin or ABS plastic. But Markus Kayser, an MA
student at the Royal College of Art in London, has created a 3D printer
that creates 3D objects using two things found in abundance in the
desert – sun and sand. As well as being powered by the sun via two
photovoltaic panels, the Solar-Sinter also focuses the sun’s rays to
heat sand to its melting point so it then solidifies as glass when it
cools, allowing the computer controlled device to produce glass objects
from 3D computer designs. Read More
Shooting movies and television shows using
digital SLR (DSLR) cameras that also record high definition video is
becoming much more widespread - in fact, the Season 6 finale of House
was shot using Canon's EOS 5D Mark II camera, and Philip Bloom is said
to have shot a number of scenes for the upcoming Lucasfilm World War II
film Red Tails using the very same model. If you're looking to
make your own DSLR epic, then you'll want to keep things steady while
chasing someone down the stairs or running after your star through a
busy city street. The Mount Kestrel Duopod concept from designer Ben
Millett is a solid-looking shoulder-mounted steadicam rig that can also
double as a floor-standing, two-legged camera platform. Read More
It’s a conundrum every serious photographer faces
... do you set your exposure so that the brightest objects in a scene
are properly exposed but the darkest are underexposed, or so that the
darkest are properly exposed but the brightest are overexposed? Or do
you go with some compromise, where only the half-way-between objects
look right? That’s where high dynamic range (HDR)
cameras come into play. Combining several levels of exposure in one
shot, they act like the human eye, allowing properly-exposed dark and
bright objects to co-exist within the same picture. Now, New Mexico’s
Contrast Optical Design & Engineering is set to release its AMP
camera, for shooting HDR video. Read More
Earlier this month, the Japan Automobile Federation (JAF) and Nissan began testing
a new roadside service vehicle equipped with a charger, to assist
stranded electric vehicles (EVs). Now, the American Automobile
Association (AAA) is about to launch a similar pilot project, where
mobile charging units will join the roadside assistance fleets in six
test regions - a significant marker along the path to mass adoption of
the EV in North America. Read More
Near Field Communication (NFC) was initially
promoted as a mobile payments method, but the technology has since been
applied to a broader range of applications - and the list is still
growing. One of these is a new system allowing for NFC
implementation in a car key, which has been launched by the Dutch
company NXP Semiconductors. The system is a production-ready single-chip
solution dubbed KEyLink Lite (codenamed NCF2970) that enables a
connection between a "smart" car key and external NFC-compliant devices,
such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops. Read More
If a just-announced research project is
successful, then maybe – just maybe – diabetics will finally be free of
having to perform daily finger prick blood tests and insulin injections.
Based on new findings regarding the body’s production of insulin, Mayo
Clinic endocrinologists Yogish Kudva and Ananda Basu are in the process
of developing an artificial pancreas, that would automatically deliver
the hormone when needed. Read More
When we think of robots, we tend to think of
clean, antiseptic automatons that don’t suffer from yucky things like
halitosis, flatulence or body odor ... unlike us humans. According to
London designer Kevin Grennan, however, this difference alienates us
from robots, and will keep us from ever fully accepting them as anything
other than machines. His solution? Robots that secret human odors, in
situations in which people would secrete those odors. While
some of his odor-secreting devices are purely conceptual, he has
produced a working model of at least one – a sweating robotic armpit.
Read More
Despite the facts that there isn't much
appropriate 3D content, and the viewing angles required for the 3D
effect are limited (as was described in our Nintendo 3DS review) the list of glasses-free 3D gadgets increases. The HTC EVO 3D
smartphone was the latest addition, but certainly won't be the last.
Perhaps not many readers have heard of the Chinese manufacturer Gadmei,
although there is at least one reason to become acquainted with it. The
company has released its P83 portable media player (PMP), which is
capable of displaying 3D videos and images that are viewable without
glasses, and is certainly one of the most inexpensive devices of its
kind offered so far. Read More
The U.S. Army has opened a System Integration
Laboratory (SIL) at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, modeled after forward
operating bases in Iraq and Afghanistan to test technologies aimed at
creating more energy-efficient base camps. The various energy-efficient
technologies being tested are expected to reduce base camp fuel
requirements by 20 percent or more and water demand by up to 75 percent.
Read More
People have been using pens to jot down their
thoughts for thousands of years but now engineers at the University of
Illinois have developed a silver-inked rollerball pen that allows users
to jot down electrical circuits and interconnects on paper, wood and
other surfaces. Looking just like a regular ballpoint pen, the pen’s ink
consists of a solution of real silver that dries to leave electrically
conductive silver pathways. These pathways maintain their conductivity
through multiple bends and folds of the paper, enabling users to
personally fabricate low-cost, flexible and disposable electronic
devices. Read More
Earlier this year we ran a story on molybdenite,
a mineral that held an advantage over graphene for use in electronic
devices due to the existence of "band gaps" in the material that are
needed for devices such as transistors, computer chips and solar cells.
Now MIT researchers have overcome that deficiency by finding a way to
produce graphene in significant quantities in a two- or three-layer form
with the layers arranged just right to give the material the
much-desired band gap. Read More
Traditional solar cell production techniques are
usually time consuming and require expensive vacuum systems or toxic
chemicals. Depositing chemical compounds such as CIGS on a substrate
using vapor phase deposition also wastes most of the expensive material
in the process. For the first time, engineers at Oregon State University
(OSU) have now developed a process to create "CIGS" solar cells with
inkjet printing technology that allows for precise patterning to reduce
raw material waste by 90 percent and significantly lower the cost of
producing solar cells with promising, yet expensive compounds. Read More
If you’ve ever watched the Tour de France and
winced as all those skinny-wheeled racing bikes bounced over the
cobblestone roads ... well, you were right to do so. Not only are such
hard, rough surfaces capable of bending rims, but they’re also hard on
hub bearings – as the axle shaft flexes ever-so-slightly in response to
hitting bumps, the ball bearings that encircle it are pressed against
the hub’s bearing races, both causing friction and potentially damaging
the bearings. Japan’s Kondo Machine Corporation, however, has created a
product that is claimed to minimize this problem. It’s the
“jet-engine-inspired” GOKISO Aerospace Hub, and we spied it last week at
the 49th Paris Air Show. Read More
There are a lot of nice new electronic gizmos
that you could buy for 1,000 euro, which currently equals out to about
US$1,435. You could purchase the world’s smallest interchangeable-lens
camera (the Pentax Q) and have change left over, you could buy six LaCie CloudBox hard drive/cloud storage devices, six HTC EVO 3D smartphones, or you could get yourself a pair of earbuds ... AKG’s K3003 reference class 3-way earphones, to be precise. Read More
The range of gadgets capable of stereoscopic glasses-free 3D viewing is slowly increasing, with the LG Optimus 3D, Sharp Aquos SH-12C and Nintendo 3DS gaming console already on the market. HTC has now announced that its first glasses-free 3D smartphone, the HTC EVO 3D,
will be available in Europe in July. Unveiled in March 2011 and
introduced in the U.S. by Sprint on June 24, the EVO 3D features a
stereoscopic 3D display, allowing users to view three-dimensional images
without glasses, plus the phone is able to capture pictures in 3D. Read More
"Adventure" bikes are about as practical and
unglamorous as motorcycling gets. They're fairly ugly to look at,
they're often ridden hard and put away wet, they're taken to dirty
places and they have dirty things done to them. Which to my mind has
always made them a preserve of the hardcore rider - these are not ridden
by Harley polishers or leather-clad latte sippers, they're ridden by
folks that like to get out and throw motorcycles around out where it's
tough. So it's encouraging to see that the adventure class is heating up
more than ever in 2011 - and two new middleweight all-roaders from
Suzuki and Honda now come into a mix that's becoming almost saturated
with bikes like the Kawasaki Versys, the BMW F800GS, the Yamaha Tenere
and Triumph's Tiger 800. Read More
0 comments:
Post a Comment