If you own a dog or a cat and are having a hard
day at work, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to take a break and play
with them? Well, if you’ve got the money, now you can do it – via the
internet. A consumer version of a system already in use
at some U.S. animal shelters, iPet Companion Home Version lets computer
users remotely control dog or cat toys located in their home, watching
their pets reacting to those toys’ movements in real time. For some
people, it could be the biggest workplace distraction since Facebook.
Read More
Foster + Partners, the same architectural firm behind Apple's new campus,
recently unveiled its plans for the new Kuwait International Airport.
The architects are aiming for LEED Gold appraisal, which will see it
become the first passenger terminal in the world to attain this level of
environmental accreditation. Read More
Laser polishing machine could put hand buffers out of work
By Ben Coxworth
October 7, 2011
When it comes to laborious, monotonous tasks that
are typically performed by hand, the polishing of hard materials has
got to rank right near the top. Although a really lustrous shine may
still require the human touch, scientists have now developed a process
for getting a “good enough” shine, using lasers. Instead of removing a
fine layer of the material’s surface, which is what traditional buffers
and polishes do, the lasers melt it. Read More
Adobe Touch Apps for tablets and Creative Cloud hub unveiled
By Pawel Piejko
October 7, 2011
At the recent Adobe MAX 2011 conference, Adobe
announced a lineup of Touch Apps tailored for Android and iOS-based
devices, including a touch-operated tablet version of Photoshop. Touch
Apps will be available either as standalone products, or as components
of a larger web-based service called Adobe Creative Cloud, which was
also unveiled. Read More
A recent discovery may add support to the theory
that the water on Earth was brought by a rain of comets. Scientists have
analyzed the comet Hartley 2, and discovered that ice found on it has
the same composition as ocean water. The discovery was made utilizing an
orbiting telescope on the Herschel Space Observatory, which can observe
organic molecules by reading their far-infrared wavelengths. Read More
Like it or not, most motorcycle brands have a
reputation for attracting a certain type of rider. In the case of the
BMW rider, the stereotype has a definite touch of the "sensible grandpa"
about it ... at least, that's how things worked until recently. For the
last five or so years, the German manufacturer has been releasing a
bunch of bikes that can actually deliver seriously good fun - albeit in a
sensible kind of way. But there's nothing sensible about the bomb they
dropped in 2010 with the release of the S1000RR. In our latest video road test, Loz Blain and Noel McKeegan cash in their pension checks and climb aboard the formidable BMW superbike. Read More
In a development that could have huge
implications for quadriplegics, paraplegics and those with prosthetic
limbs, researchers from Duke University and the Ecole Polytechnic
Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) have developed technology that has allowed
monkeys to control a virtual arm and touch and feel virtual objects
using only their brain activity. The researchers say it is the
first-ever demonstration of a two-way interaction between a primate
brain and a virtual body and could lead to robotic exoskeletons that not
only that allows paralyzed patients to walk again, but to also feel the
ground beneath them. Read More
Scosche announces radiation detector for iPhone
By Darren Quick
October 6, 2011
As a result of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
disaster following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, radiation
detectors have been a popular item for Japanese consumers. Recognizing
the market for such devices, last month Scosche – a company known for
its car audio and iPod/iPhone accessories
– released its RDTX-Pro radiation detector and app for iPhone and iPod
touch in Japan. With that model apparently flying off the shelves – it
is temporarily out of stock on Scosche’s website – the company has
decided to expand the product line with the announcement of two new
radiation detectors. Read More
SpaceX, the space transport company that made history by building the world's first private reusable spacecraft,
is now embarking on a quest to build the holy grail of space
engineering - a reusable launch rocket. Elon Musk, the company's CEO and
Chief Technology Officer, announced recently at the National Press Club
that computer simulations show their design to be technically feasible.
This, Musk seems to suggests, is great news for those who have been
considering moving to Mars. Read More
At the Adobe MAX 2011 conference in Los Angeles
this week, Epic Games' CEO Tim Sweeney demonstrated the Unreal Engine 3
running in fully inside Flash as part of his keynote address. The live
technical demonstration saw a version of Unreal Tournament 3 running in
Adobe Flash Player 11, which was also released this week. Adobe says the
development could lead to console-quality 3D graphics in games running
directly in the browser, such as Facebook social games. Read More
Upgrades to extend B-52 Bomber's lifespan until 2044
By David Szondy
October 9, 2011
Mention the "B-52" to most people and they'll
think of either an '80s pop group, a bad hair style, or an ancient
bomber that's a relic of the Cold War. The name conjures up a vintage
warplane featured in grainy footage from the Cuban Missile Crisis, but
what may surprise people is to learn that in the second decade of the
21st century, the B-52 fleet still plays a key role in America's nuclear
deterrence and conventional warfare strategy. Now the US Defense
Department is upgrading the venerable USAF B-52 heavy bomber to allow
the sixty-year old aircraft to continue in active front-line service
until the 2040s. Read More
If taking the dog for a walk sees you being
dragged along with your pooch calling the shots and setting the pace
then the Tug-Preventing Dog Trainer could be just what the doctor – or
vet – ordered. Designed to attach between the leash and collar, the
device will emit an ultrasonic tone whenever the dog pulls on the leash.
To teach the dog to stay in line and associate the sound with pulling
on the leash, the volume of the tone increases the harder the dog pulls.
Read More
To cut down on the amount of mobile phone
chargers relegated to the garbage after a phone upgrade, in 2009 the
European Commission reached a voluntary agreement with 14 major
smartphone manufacturers who committed to providing a standardized charger based on the micro-USB connector
that is compatible with all models of data-enabled mobile phones. Apple
was one of the manufacturers that signed on to the agreement and has
now delivered with the appearance of the Apple iPhone Micro USB Adapter
in the company's U.K. online store. Read More
Naturally occurring compound helps reverse diabetes in mice
By Darren Quick
October 9, 2011
Researchers at the Washington University School
of Medicine in St. Louis have reversed diabetes in mice using a compound
that is made naturally in the body. After diabetic mice were given the
naturally occurring compound, called nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN),
their normal blood sugar metabolism was restored. The researchers say
their findings suggest it might one day be possible for people to take
the compound like a daily vitamin to treat or prevent type 2 diabetes.
Read More
A few days ago deep in the historic Teuteborg
Forest of central Germany, the first stone was laid in the construction
of an intriguing project. For twenty years until 1993 The 80 hectare
(200 acre) site was a massive NATO ammunition depot, supplying the
British Army of the Rhine during the Cold War. After eighteen years of
disuse and six years of planning the extensive sturdy warehousing and
road network is to be converted into the Bilster Berg luxury "drive
resort" and automobile testing facility. Considering who's involved, the
new racetrack should be a pretty spectacular experience. Read More
Neuroscientists have long pondered the mechanism
behind learning and memory formation in the human brain. On the cellular
level, it's generally agreed that we learn when stimuli are repeated
frequently enough that our synapses - the gap-connections between
neurons - respond and become stronger. Now, a team of UCLA
neuro-physicists has discovered that this change in synaptic strength
actually has an optimal "rhythm," or frequency, a finding that could one
day lead to new strategies for treating learning disabilities. Read More
Agilent Technologies has announced it will begin
collaborations with the University of Arizona's Department of Chemical
and Environmental Engineering's BIO5 Institute to develop ways to detect
and treat "emerging contaminants" such as steroids and antibiotics in
drinking water. Read More
Sebastian Vettel won his second World F1 drivers
championship today, and although only taking third place in the Japanese
Grand Prix, he is still on track for the most dominant season in F1
history. His third place at Suzuka gave him 324 of the 375 points on
offer – a stunning 86.4% of available points and still ahead of Michael
Schumacher's best during his reign with Ferrari. Like most other records
in F1, Vettel is once again the youngest to achieve the feat. For Red
Bull Racing, it's the team's second drivers title and it is closing in
on the constructors title with a lead of 130 points and just four races
to go. Perhaps more ominously, the team it has assembled, and the
relationship with both Infiniti and engine-suppliers Renault looks more
than capable of sustaining the success. Read More
World's oldest running car sells for US$4.6 million
By Mike Hanlon
October 7, 2011
The historically-significant 1884 De Dion Bouton et Trepardoux Dos-a-Dos Steam Runabout which we wrote up a few weeks back
has sold at auction for US$4.62 million. Apart from being the winner of
the first automobile race in history, it's also the world’s oldest
running motor car, and now also the most valuable early motor car yet
sold at auction. Read More
When Canadian media artist Nicholas Hanna first
moved to the Chinese city of Beijing, he was quite taken with the water
calligraphy that he saw people creating in the parks. The art form
consists of using a large brush to paint Chinese calligraphy on the
road, in water, so the characters disappear as the water evaporates.
Hanna decided to put his own spin on it, and rigged up a cargo tricycle
with a computer-controlled dot matrix water release system, that squirts
out passages of Chinese poetry on the road behind him as he rides. Read More
Even though it's not called iPhone 5, Apple's latest version of its iconic smartphone - the iPhone 4S
- is reportedly proving to be quite the hot potato with consumers.
Apple says pre-orders topped a million in its first day, stomping all
over the company's previous iPhone pre-order single-day record of
600,000 for the iPhone 4. Read More
With companies these days justifiably concerned
about the security of the mobile devices provided to their workforce,
many workers find themselves carrying around two mobile phones – one for
personal use and another for business. Sure, mobile phones aren’t the
huge pocket-stretching devices they once were but for the sake of
convenience, one is most definitely better than two. Now researchers at
Fraunhofer have developed software that allows the creation of two
virtual smartphones in a single device, providing security for companies
while letting workers install their own apps. Read More
U-Boat Worx has introduced a worldwide private
charter program for its range of mini-submersibles. The charter fleet
includes the three-seat C-Quester 3 and two person C-Explorer 2, with the deep-diving, five-passenger C-Explorer 5 joining once it's completed late this year. Read More
Automobile manufacturers have been leveraging
their brand names on other modes of transport for years, with bicycles a
common focus from companies including BMW, Audi and McLaren. Porsche
has also been producing bikes for years and has now expanded its
Driver’s Selection range with the addition of two new bikes – the Bike
RS and the Bike S. Both models are 29-inch wheelers and are constructed
from lightweight materials and high-end components with performance in
mind. Read More
India has already churned out the world's cheapest car
and is now launching what's billed as the world's cheapest 7-inch
touchscreen tablet. The result of efforts by India's Ministry of Human
Resource and Development to develop a low cost computing device that
could be used by students across the country, Aakash, or "sky" in Hindi,
is set to be sold to students at the government subsidized price of
US$35. The regular retail price of the tablet is expected to be around
US$60 when the unit hits the shelves as a commercial version called the
UbiSlate 7. Read More
Flying wing prototype takes wind-power to new heights
By Pawel Piejko
October 10, 2011
Wind can be an unpredictable and unstable source of power, and high in the sky where it is more stable, it's difficult to exploit. Airborne wind turbines
could provide a solution to this problem, but although the idea has
been around since the 19th century, it's never been exploited on a
larger scale. California's Makani Power aims to change that with its
innovative flying wing turbine design. Wing 7 is essentially a cross
between a UAV and a wind turbine that's tethered to a ground station
from which it ascends to a height of around 1,300 feet (400m) and flies
autonomously, generating up to 20-kilowatt of power in a 20mph (35km/h)
wind. Read More
Levytator – the curvy, energy-saving escalator
By Darren Quick
October 10, 2011
For over a century, escalators have followed a
fairly straight path – with the exception of a few spiral and curved
escalators found in cities including Reno and Osaka. Now a researcher at
City University London has developed a new type of escalator called the
Levytator that is capable of following freeform curves. This is
achieved by replacing the traditional rectangular steps with curved
modules that also allows the modules to be placed in a continuous loop.
Not only does this open up the design possibilities for architects, it
could also cut energy usage in half compared to conventional escalators.
Read More
Electronics giant LG has announced the Korean
launch of what is claimed to be the highest resolution IPS (in-plane
switching) display available on any smartphone. The Optimus LTE has a
4.5-inch, 329 pixels per inch resolution "True HD IPS" screen which is
said to offer crisp, clear visuals and render colors in their most
natural tones. Beneath the display, the smartphone is powered by a
dual-core processor, runs on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and benefits from
a large capacity battery. Read More
University of Maryland takes 2011 Solar Decathlon crown
By Paul Ridden
October 10, 2011
On the last two occasions, the overall winner of the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon
has gone to Germany's Technische Universität Darmstadt but this year
the top honor has stayed with one of the home teams. As the name might
suggest, the University of Maryland's winning WaterShed
project features some novel innovations to make the best use of water,
in addition to an intriguing internal waterfall that helps reduce the
load on the structure's air conditioning system. Read on for a brief
look at the top five winning projects, as well as the People's Choice.
Read More
Releasing scents during the projection of a film
reportedly predates the introduction of sound. One early attempt at
"Smell-O-Vision" involved a wad of cotton soaked in rose oil being
placed in front of an electric fan during a newsreel in 1906, but
despite such experiments, this is one technology that just hasn't taken
off ... although the quest to add an extra olfactory experience to
movies and, more recently, video games
continues. This latest effort comes from French company Olf-Action
which has created SMELLIT - a device designed to bring an aromatic
dimension to your video game and movie experiences. Read More
Undergraduate student, Adam Duran, made excellent
use of his time at Stanford University, where he attended a two-month
summer course organized by the Army High-Performance Computing Research
Center (AHPCRC). Together with his mentors, Adrian Lew and Sohan
Dharmaraja, he created a potentially game changing application that
should make the lives of visually impaired people both easier and less
expensive. The application turns a tablet into a Braille writer and thus
saves the blind from having to purchase a device that may cost up to
ten times more than a tablet. Read More
Adobe sneak peeks amazing "de-blurring" plug-in for Photoshop
By Vincent Rice
October 11, 2011
Adobe showed what it calls a "sneak peek" of some
technology at last week's MAX conference, that may or may not make its
way into a future version of Photoshop (we're pretty sure it will). It's
a method for de-blurring photographs by analyzing them and constructing
the motion path that the camera lens followed to create the original
blur. Using some highly advanced magic, the resulting blur can then be
removed to an impressive degree – blurred text, for instance, becomes
readable. The algorithm seems to work on low resolution phone pics just
as well. Now, when they say "enhance that section right there" in just
about every modern police procedural TV show, it might actually mean
something. Video after the break. Read More
While the thought of building a worldwide
infrastructure of charging stations for electric vehicles may seem
daunting, you know what would make it even more challenging? If each
station had to separately cater to each make of EV on the road – think
of how many different styles of mobile phone chargers are currently out
there, for instance, and then picture that applying to cars.
Fortunately, however, a consortium of automakers has developed the
Combined Charging System – it will allow any one vehicle to charge its
batteries using a variety of different charging methods. Read More
Three years ago, Virgin Atlantic Airways grabbed some headlines when it experimentally ran one of its 747s on a mixture of standard jet fuel and biofuel.
While some called it a publicity stunt, it was the first time that a
commercial airliner had flown using biofuel – albeit only in part of one
of its four fuel tanks. Today, however, the airline announced that it’s
developing an aviation fuel that will have half the carbon footprint of
conventional fuel. The carbon savings won’t result from how cleanly the
fuel burns, but from how it’s obtained. Read More
Three new electric scooters have just been
launched by New York's evolve motorcycles. All models use lithium-ion
batteries which are said to offer the highest ranges in the industry,
feature the latest electrical and charging technologies, and come with
one year's roadside assistance. The top-of-the-range titanium model has a
range of 60 miles (96.5 km) and a top speed of 70 mph (112.6 km/h), but
even the featherweight of the bunch can manage a respectable 40 mph
(64.3 km/h). There's also a smartphone app in development, that will
allow riders to connect and share on the road. Read More
While you may feel quite virtuous when you leave
all your glass containers out for recycling, you might be surprised to
know that much of your colored glass won’t be used. That’s because even
though there’s a fairly constant demand for recycled clear glass, glass
in colors such as green, brown and blue isn’t all that sought-after, so
many recycling centers don’t bother processing it. As a result, waste
colored glass is now being stock-piled in some locations, waiting for a
use. Thanks to research conducted at the University of Greenwich,
however, that glass may soon be used for filtering pollutants out of
ground water. Read More
The Igloo Village, which is part of Hotel
Kakslauttanen, is guaranteed to give guests a prime position for viewing
the northern lights display during the winter months. Located in the
Arctic Circle near Finland's Urho Kekkonen National Park, guests can
stay in a glass-roofed igloo or brave the cold in a traditional snow
igloo. Read More
If there are two obstacles that are still keeping
the general public from embracing electric cars, those would have to be
the vehicles’ limited driving range and long charging times. Well,
Nissan has achieved a major milestone regarding one of those two
problems – last week, Japan’s Nikkei news agency reported that the
automaker has developed an experimental system that can fully charge an
EV battery in just ten minutes. Read More
California roll house morphs into its enviornment
October 11, 2011
Designer Christopher Daniel has conceptualized
plans for this prefabricated house, which morphs and adapts according to
its setting. Dubbed California Roll, the structure is best suited to a
desert environment and incorporates a homogeneous exterior which
reflects the sun's heat. Read More
Graphene “Big Mac” brings next gen computer chips a step closer
By Darren Quick
October 11, 2011
Since its discovery in 2004, the two-dimensional
layer of carbon atoms known as graphene has promised to revolutionize
materials science, enabling flexible, transparent touch displays, lighter aircraft, cheaper batteries
and faster, smaller electronic devices. Now in what could be a key step
towards replacing silicon chips in computers, researchers at the
University of Manchester have sandwiched two sheets of graphene with
another two-dimensional material, boron nitride, to create what they
have dubbed a graphene "Big Mac". Read More
A recent study shows that ISPs – which long
maintained that data was their biggest expense – are grossly
overcharging for data. The price increases to our mobile or land-based
internet appear to be based on greed, not need. Read More
Winners announced for Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE
By Ben Coxworth
October 12, 2011
Last July, in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the X PRIZE Foundation launched the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE.
As with previous X PRIZE competitions, this one was intended to
encourage private sector scientific research, by offering a cash prize
to whichever team could best meet a given challenge. In this case, teams
had to demonstrate a system of their own making, that could recover oil
from a sea water surface at the highest Oil Recovery Rate (ORR) above
2,500 US gallons (9,463.5 liters) per minute, with an Oil Recovery
Efficiency (ORE) of greater than 70 percent. Today, the winning teams
were announced. Read More
Some good news for Xbox 360 owners who have been
looking with envy at the generous storage included with recent gaming
bundles like Gears of War 3 – Microsoft is about to release a 320GB HDD for its popular console. Read More
Taiwan's ViewSonic has applied the same IPS
(in-plane switching) display technology used in its award-winning
monitors to a new tablet heading for European users. The screen of the
budget-friendly ViewPad 10e is said to have the same pixel density and
resolution as Apple's iPad 2, and like the ARCHOS G9's, the Android tablet makes do with just the one front-facing camera. Read More
Romo the robot uses your smartphone as its brain
By Ben Coxworth
October 12, 2011
When you think about it, smartphones are more
than just fancy phones – they’re actually tiny portable computers. Given
that so many people now own these tiny computers, why should they have
to pay to buy another computer that’s built into an electronic
device, when they could instead just use their existing smartphone as
the “brain” of that device? That’s the approach that has been taken by
products such as the Bubo camcorder rig, and now also by Romo-The Smartphone Robot. Read More
It appears that there's a number of customers
willing to pay a lot to be in possession of a lifelike replica of their
face or even their whole head ... or at least, REAL-f hopes so. The
Japanese company offers extremely realistic 3D models of human faces and
heads made using vinyl chloride resin, based on its own technique
called 3DPFs (3 Dimension Photo Forms). Read More
Having completed its first flight
earlier this year, the Northrop Grumman-built U.S. Navy X-47B Unmanned
Combat Air System Demonstration (UCAS-D) aircraft achieved another
milestone on September 30 with its first flight in cruise mode. Part of
the on-going “envelope expansion” program to demonstrate the aircraft’s
performance under a variety of altitude, speed and fuel load conditions,
the flight took place at Edwards Air Force Base and saw the aircraft
retracting its landing gear and flying in cruise configuration for the
first time. Read More
RoChair offers a unique form of wheelchair propulsion
By Ben Coxworth
October 11, 2011
Imagine if the only way of propelling yourself on
a bicycle was to reach down and turn one of the wheels with your hand.
It would be pretty inefficient, yet that’s essentially how a wheelchair
works. Of course, wheelchairs are set up so that the push-rims can be
reached very easily, but the propulsion process still comes down to the
wheels being directly pushed forward by hand. ROTA Mobility, however,
has an alternative. It’s called the RoChair, and it’s a wheelchair that
is rowed by pushing and pulling on a front-and-center-mounted lever.
Read More
Android currently accounts for 50-percent of the smartphone market. So does the release of the iPhone 4S mean that Apple could overtake Android in the market share battle? Almost certainly not. But we are beginning to see record sales numbers
for the release of the 4S which, when combined with opening up the
market a bit more by adding another carrier (Sprint), could see Apple
take a bigger bite out of the pie. Read More
Home-built rocket climbs to 121,000 feet in 92 seconds
By Pawel Piejko
October 11, 2011
Launched from Black Rock Desert in Nevada on
September 30 in an attempt to win John Carmack's 100kft Micro Prize,
Derek Deville's home-built Qu8k rocket reached an altitude of 121,000
feet (36.8 km) after 92 seconds flight ... and captured some excellent
video footage along the way. Read More
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