If you've got a craving for cheap Swedish
meatballs or self assembly furniture, IKEA is normally a safe bet. But
despite announcing its new UPPLEVA "hybrid furniture"
range, IKEA probably wouldn't be your first stop when looking for
consumer electronics … and that's not going to change with the unveiling
of the KNÄPPA flat-pack cardboard digital camera. Read More
An all-electric, 1,088 hp, Croatian
supercar - if you didn't know differently, you might think we were just
stringing a bunch of random adjectives together on a dare. But those
adjectives actually describe a real, live concept car - the Rimac
Concept One - which is now available for reservation ahead of deliveries
in 2013. Read More 
We're used to seeing solar arrays in desert
locations, but this initiative is looking to a new frontier for solar
energy - the rooftops of Los Angeles. The recent approval of a
Feed-in-Tarriff (FiT) rooftop solar program known as CLEAN LA Solar by
the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power opens up over 12,000
acres of potential rooftop space for solar development. Read More
As modern-day piracy continues to be a real
threat to ships in some parts of the world, people are likewise
continually coming up with new ways of projecting crews and passengers
against attacks. While some anti-piracy systems have utilized things
such as sound waves and lasers, a new one uses something that is decidedly lower tech – flailing water hoses. Read More
A group of people including city
planners and architects recently put a challenge to Dutch electronics
company Philips: design an outdoor lighting system that helps to
declutter our streets. The result was FreeStreet, a street lighting
system that does away with vertical streetlight poles in favor of
horizontally-strung cables that have clusters of LED lights built into
them. The system won its designers a 2011 Dutch Design Award, and is
available for use in Europe as of this month. Read More 
It's getting rarer these days to find the kind of
specialist shops that have so much stock from years gone by that
they're more like a mini-museum than a retail outlet. Grays of
Westminster is just such an emporium. Exclusively dealing in products
spanning the whole history of the Nikon Corporation, the award-winning
central London curiosity shop managed to generate a huge online buzz
this week by announcing the sale of an exceptionally rare monster of a
wide-angle Nikkor lens for an equally gargantuan price of £100,000
(US$162,312). Read More
Physicists at the Delft University of Technology,
Netherlands, have achieved a milestone that might soon revolutionize
the world of quantum computing, quantum physics, and perhaps shed new
light on the mystery of the dark matter in our universe. Experimenting
with nanoelectronics, a group led by Prof. Leo Kouwenhoven has succeeded
in detecting the elusive Majorana fermion in the laboratory, without
the need for a particle accelerator. Read More
Following its announcement at CES in
January, Sony’s 2012 flagship BRAVIA LCD TVs have hit stores in the
U.S., with other markets set to follow. Coming in 46- and 55-inch screen
sizes, the HX850 line offers Dynamic Edge LED backlighting with fully
local dimming, and W-Fi internet connectivity and 3D capabilities out of
the box. Read More 
China's CH Auto made a big splash at
the last Auto China by displaying a Ferrari 599 copy named the Aculeus.
This time the company has begun displaying some original talent and has
produced a stylish electric sportscar prototype. Read More 
While modern in car satnav
systems can draw on real-time traffic congestion data and suggest
alternative routes for drivers to avoid high traffic areas, Honda has
taken a different approach to try and minimize the potential for traffic
jams. The company has developed new technology designed to detect
whether a person’s driving is likely to create traffic jams and
encourage them to drive in such a way as to keep traffic flowing. Read More
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang chose his
keynote address at the Nvidia Game Festival in Shanghai last week to
unveil the Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 Dual-GPU video card. Powered by dual
28 nm Kepler architecture-based GeForce GPUs, the GTX 690 delivers what
Huang claims is, “the highest performance of any graphics card in
history.” Read More
Everyone knows that strawberries and
blueberries are good for you. Now a new study by researchers at Brigham
and Women’s Hospital (BWH) has found that eating as little as two
servings of flavonoid-rich strawberries and/or blueberries a week can
delay memory decline in older women by over two years. Read More
A genetic testing mini-lab developed
by researchers at the University of Alberta to set to begin commercial
trials within a year. The Domino system provides a portable, cheap and
powerful alternative to conventional laboratories that delivers a range
of point-of-care diagnostic possibilities including tests for blood
borne diseases such as malaria and those affecting farm animals. Read More
Private space exploration company
SpaceX is currently looking towards May 7th as the rescheduled date for
its Dragon space capsule to lift off from Earth, on an unmanned
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demo mission to
deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Today, the company
performed a static fire test of its Falcon 9
launch vehicle’s nine Merlin engines. The test took place at SpaceX’s
Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and was
part of a full dress rehearsal for the actual launch. Read More
While there were no totally new offerings from Aston Martin at Auto China 2012,
the British luxury automaker took the opportunity to showcase its
personalization capabilities by unveiling three "Year of the Dragon"
special editions. The decked-out DBS Volante, Virage Coupe and V8
Vantage S Coupe on show in Beijing are part of the company's "Dragon 88"
edition which will be limited to, you guessed it, 88 customized sports
cars. Read More
Jawbone is looking to please more of the crowd with a new, larger version of the JAMBOX
portable Bluetooth speaker it brought to market in late 2010. The aptly
named BIG JAMBOX weighs 2.7 lbs (1.23 kg) compared to its smaller
sibling's 0.8 lbs and promises longer battery life as well as bigger
sound - its rechargeable lithium-ion battery provides up to 15 hours of
continuous playback, and 500 hours of standby time on a single charge.
Read More
The two-hundred and ninety-five feet (ninety
meter) tall Building 54 on MIT's Cambridge campus has become the canvas
for a number of carefully planned and daringly executed visual displays
over the years, not strictly allowed by the administration but often
looked upon with some appreciation. The building is home to the
Institute's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science
(EAPS) and has a host of meteorological instruments and radio
communications equipment on its roof - but its the grid-like windows to
the front that have become the main attraction to hackers, as they are
known. The latest hack is the successful realization of a long-standing
challenge, a huge playable game of Tetris. Read More
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang chose his
keynote address at the Nvidia Game Festival in Shanghai last week to
unveil the Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 Dual-GPU video card. Powered by dual
28 nm Kepler architecture-based GeForce GPUs, the GTX 690 delivers what
Huang claims is, “the highest performance of any graphics card in
history.” Read More
U.S researchers are developing a tiny middle ear
"microphone" that could remove the need for any external components on
cochlear implants. Led by University of Utah engineer Darrin J. Young,
the research team has produced and tested a prototype of the device
which uses an accelerometer attached to the tiny bones of the middle ear
to detect sound vibration. Read More
Currently, virtually all touchscreen displays
found in our electronic devices rely on a coating of indium tin oxide
(ITO). It is used because of its electrical conductivity, its optical
transparency, and the ease with which it can be deposited onto a display
as a thin film. Using graphene, researchers at the University of Exeter
have developed a viable alternative to increasingly expensive ITO that
they claim is the “most transparent, lightweight and flexible material
ever for conducting electricity.” Read More
VP-400 emergency system gets pilots to a safe landing
By Martin Hone
April 29, 2012
Imagine that you are flying along in your own
aircraft when, suddenly, the engine stops. Now what? In a logical
extension of the technologies now available, Laminar Research's Austin
Meyer and avionics outfit Vertical Power have come up with a system
designed to comprehensively answer that question by locating your best
emergency runway option and getting you safely there - the VP-400. Read More
Everyone knows that strawberries and
blueberries are good for you. Now a new study by researchers at Brigham
and Women’s Hospital (BWH) has found that eating as little as two
servings of flavonoid-rich strawberries and/or blueberries a week can
delay memory decline in older women by over two years. Read More
A genetic testing mini-lab developed
by researchers at the University of Alberta to set to begin commercial
trials within a year. The Domino system provides a portable, cheap and
powerful alternative to conventional laboratories that delivers a range
of point-of-care diagnostic possibilities including tests for blood
borne diseases such as malaria and those affecting farm animals. Read More
Glass has a unique look - despite its clarity you
can tell there is a material there by the way it reflects light, and
that it isn't plastic or crystal. Glass, however, carries problems, like
glare, fogging, and collects dirt. A group of MIT researchers has found
a new way to create arrays of conical micron-scale surface nanotextures
to produce glass that is self-cleaning, non-glare, and non-fogging. The
researchers believe the nanotextured surface can be made at low enough
cost to be applied to optical devices, the screens of smartphones and
televisions, solar panels, car windshields and even windows in
buildings. Read More
A University of Dundee research team led by Prof.
Mike MacDonald has demonstrated that both levitation and twisting
forces can be applied to an object by application of ultrasonic beams.
This latest breakthrough is part of a wide-ranging U.K. research effort to develop a device not unlike the "sonic screwdriver" made famous by the TV series Doctor Who. Read More
Honda has unveiled a demonstration house in
Saitama, Japan, to showcase and test its new Honda Smart Home System
(HSHS). Featuring a line-up of innovative energy production, management
and conservation solutions, the company hopes HSHS will free homeowners
from the constraints of on-grid living somewhat, give them a leg up on
self-sufficiency when disaster strikes and help reduce carbon dioxide
emissions both at home and on the road by networking electric vehicles
into the mix. Read More
There was a time not so long ago, when amateur
film-makers were simply told, “If you want your footage to look
professional, use a tripod.” While that advice still stands, the market
is now being flooded with relatively inexpensive devices that allow
basement videographers to smoothly execute camera moves that were
previously only possible using Hollywood-style gear. One of the latest
contenders in this field is MoveeGo, a two-device system that lets users
of small cameras get SteadiCam-like handheld shots, or sleek tracking
shots. Read More
Turn your iPhone into a networked night vision scope
By C.C. Weiss
April 30, 2012
Imagine if you could turn your iPhone into an
advanced night vision recording device, tuned to your every espionage
whim. No, there's not an app for that ... but there is the USNV Night
Vision iPhone Adapter. Before you get too excited about it, you should
note that it doesn't directly turn an iPhone into a night vision scope –
you'll still need an actual separate scope. What the NViA does is
bridge the iPhone with the night vision scope to leverage iPhone
features like video recording, geo-tagging and messaging ... because
when you're in the middle of a midnight tail, sometimes you want to go
back and scour the footage for more clues – or I assume that you might
want to do that, if you were some type of vigilante running around the
city with a pair of infrared goggles. Read More
Sometimes the most advanced innovations are
rooted in the simplest questions. In this case, the question was, "If we
can help a person with no legs to run, why can’t we help a person with
an injured leg to walk?" The answer was the Flex Leg. Read More
As fruit matures, it releases a gas known as
ethylene, that causes the ripening process to begin. Once that process
is under way, more ethylene is released, kicking the ripening into high
gear. Currently, produce warehouses use expensive technologies such as
gas chromatography or mass spectroscopy to measure ethylene levels, in
order to gauge the ripeness of fruits that are in storage. A scientist
from MIT, however, is developing small, inexpensive ethylene sensors
that could be used in places such as supermarkets. There, they could let
shopkeepers know which batches of fruit need to sold the soonest, in
order to minimize spoilage. Read More
Private space exploration company
SpaceX is currently looking towards May 7th as the rescheduled date for
its Dragon space capsule to lift off from Earth, on an unmanned
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demo mission to
deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Today, the company
performed a static fire test of its Falcon 9
launch vehicle’s nine Merlin engines. The test took place at SpaceX’s
Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and was
part of a full dress rehearsal for the actual launch. Read More
Ask anyone who lives near a MotoX park for one
word to describe it, and that word is most likely going to be "noisy."
There is one track in the U.S. which is very neighbor-friendly in that
respect, however. On the face of it, the Dark Green Motorsports track in
Penrose, North Carolina might seem like any other, with all the thrills
of hops, table tops, camel backs and doubles, but there's no volumous
clattering from a two-stroke engine to be heard at this 1,400 meter
(0.869 of a mile) dirt bike park – all of the Zero MX bikes available
for rental at Dark Green are 100 percent electric. Read More
Many drivers would be lost – quite literally –
without their in-car navigation systems. When installed in vehicles that
some people would say are already overcrowded with instrumentation,
however, could such systems be just one visual distraction too many?
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and AT&T Labs are
addressing that concern, by experimenting with a system that conveys
navigational cues through vibrations in the steering wheel. Read More
Walk Score has ranked the 25 largest US cities by
the usefulness of their transit systems. New York sits at the top of
the list released by the website, which otherwise provides its users
with information about the most walkable inner-city neighborhoods. San
Francisco came second in the public transit rankings, with Boston,
Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia rounding out the top five. Read More
Last week that giant multinational of aluminum
production Alcoa announced its new "smog-eating" architectural panels -
in other words cladding stuck to a building's exterior that can remove
pollutants from the surrounding air. The aluminum panels, branded
Reynobond with EcoClean technology, have a titanium dioxide coating
which breaks down pollutants in direct sunlight. Read More
Most cameras today have settings that log the
time, date, camera settings, and even location of any photos taken.
Unfortunately though, no camera out there can automatically note what a
picture actually shows ... until now, that is. Matt Richardson, a
student in the Computational Cameras class at New York University‘s
Interactive Telecommunications Program, recently created a quirky device
called the "Descriptive Camera," which works like a regular camera, but
instead of displaying images, it prints out a description of the
photo's content in plain English. Read More
Spain's green racing pioneers Quimera Responsible
Racing and the UK's Alex Letteriello and his small team at Evelio
Electric Supercars have joined forces to develop an all-electric
supercar designed to race in drifting competitions, where cornering is
undertaken with a thrilling sideways slide. The quite simply stunning
AEDC (All Electric Drift Car), or K1 Evelio to use its given name, is
capable of quietly speeding from zero to 60 mph (96.5 km/h) in just 3.2
seconds, has an average range of 150 miles (241.4 km) per charge and is
expected to reach speeds of 170 mph (273.5 km/h). Read More
German solar technology specialist Heliatek has
set a new benchmark for the efficiency of organic solar cells. In
independent tests, a new world record efficiency of 10.7 percent was
achieved for the company's latest tandem organic photovoltaic (OPV)
cells ... and 15 percent may be just a few years away. Read More
"It's not because of Climate Change. It's because
I've never been able to leave food on my plate." This is the motto of
sustainable housing design firm Infiniski, whose dwellings are up to
80-percent comprised of reused, recycled and non-polluting materials.
Among them are, you guessed it, shipping containers, but also railway
tracks, forklift paletts and even old bottles. Though each house is
tailored to the needs of the client, the one thing they have in common -
in spite of the eye-catching design - is surprising affordability. Read More
High hopes have been maintained for decades
concerning optical logic, optical switching matrices (e.g. for
communications), and optical computing. The missing link in actualizing
this promise is a practical circuit element that allows one light to be
turned on or off purely by application of another light to the device -
rather like voltage on the control gate of a field effect transistor.
This missing link has now been developed through a novel application of
the complex behavior exhibited by coupled lasers. Read More
It's been just over 100 years since the notorious
RMS Titanic met its fate with an iceberg on its maiden voyage, sending
it to the bottom of the Atlantic along with over 1,500 passengers. Since
then, the doomed passenger liner has become almost a legend, thanks in
no small part to James Cameron's blockbuster movie about the disaster.
Next to the film though, the Titanic may soon be getting literally its
biggest tribute yet (bigger than the world's largest Titanic museum).
Australian billionaire, Clive Palmer, recently announced plans to
construct a life-sized, seaworthy replica of the ship - with some modern
upgrades to keep it from sinking of course. Read More
Hot on the heels of last week’s preview of
Intel’s 3rd-generation Core i5 and i7 Ivy Bridge mobile processors,
Dell’s Alienware high performance PC gaming brand has announced Ivy
Bridge availability in its refreshed M14x, M17x, and M18x gaming
laptops. The three units also get new GPU and storage options, a
dedicated Creative Sound Blaster chip, and THX TruStudio software. Read More
Auto China
is probably the most influential automobile show in the world at
present. China now produces and consumes more cars than any other
nation, so its needs will heavily influence personal transport globally
in coming decades. Some early trends are emerging as to what we'll see,
and as congestion in China increases and parking centrally becomes
prohibitively expensive, a car will increasingly only get you part of
the way to your destination. Geely and BMW both showed cars with
inclusive last-mile transport at Auto China, but the number of last mile
Transportation Appliance options under development by auto
manufacturers is growing rapidly. Read More
It’s hard to convey the pain of a migraine to
those who are fortunate enough not to suffer them. Compounding things,
many sufferers get no relief from, or cannot tolerate, commonly
prescribed or over-the-counter pain medications. Now researchers have
shown that applying a mild electrical current to the brain via
electrodes attached to the scalp can prevent migraines from occurring
and reduce the severity and duration of those that do occur. Read More
Nothing can put a dampener on a summer holiday
like a coliform bacteria outbreak. But even worse than being told to
keep out of the water in the event of an outbreak is not being
told to keep out of the water in the event of an outbreak and ending up
paying the price. Researchers at McMaster University have now developed a
paper strip test that is cheap to produce, extremely portable, simple
to use, and detects E. coli in water in 30 minutes. Read More
While there were no totally new offerings from Aston Martin at Auto China 2012,
the British luxury automaker took the opportunity to showcase its
personalization capabilities by unveiling three "Year of the Dragon"
special editions. The decked-out DBS Volante, Virage Coupe and V8
Vantage S Coupe on show in Beijing are part of the company's "Dragon 88"
edition which will be limited to, you guessed it, 88 customized sports
cars. Read More
In an attempt to combine the vertical take-off
and landing (VTOL) capabilities of a helicopter, with the speed, range
and altitude capabilities of a fixed wing aircraft, tiltrotor aircraft,
such as the AgustaWestland AW609 and the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey
rely on powered rotors mounted on rotating shafts or nacelles at the
end of a fixed wing. But the tiltrotor design isn’t the only option for
aircraft looking to get the best of both worlds. Like Aerovironment’s SkyTote, the Flexrotor is designed to transition from vertical to horizontal flight without any pivoting of its rotor. Read More
Microsoft is looking to unify electrical
appliances within the home and establish itself in the burgeoning “smart
home” market with the development of HomeOS. Essentially a lightweight
“smart home” operating system that aims to make it easy for users to
manage their home networks and ease the creation of applications by
third party developers, HomeOS is designed to provide a central hub
through which various household devices can be controlled. Read More
Looking for a place to stay that's sustainable,
fun and suspended? The one-of-a-kind, mobile AirHotel, designed by a
group of Belgian artists, may be just the ticket. Made from recycled
materials, the quirky hotel's six elevated or hanging rooms are each
unique in their own way and all come with an unusual form of room
service that ranges from a love song to a disco party. Read More
In an attempt to reach out to potential campers
and backpackers that don't like the idea of goin' natural for days on
end, tent and gear manufacturer Nemo Equipment has developed the Helio
shower. Lying between bulky powered systems and basic portable gravity
showers, it uses a lightweight, manual pressure system to give you a
warm clean-down in the wilderness. Read More
Doctors and scientists wishing to decode a human
genome can now do so in a day for US$1,000 a pop using the
recently-released Ion Proton
sequencer. With a price tag of $149,000, though, the machine isn’t
cheap – nor is it the be-all and end-all of desktop gene sequencing. For
one thing, the tiny $900 MinION
sequencer should be available soon. Also, a team of scientists from Oak
Ridge National Laboratory and Yale University have now developed a
concept of their own, which could end up providing an even less
expensive high-speed sequencer. Read More
Jawbone is looking to please more of the crowd with a new, larger version of the JAMBOX
portable Bluetooth speaker it brought to market in late 2010. The aptly
named BIG JAMBOX weighs 2.7 lbs (1.23 kg) compared to its smaller
sibling's 0.8 lbs and promises longer battery life as well as bigger
sound - its rechargeable lithium-ion battery provides up to 15 hours of
continuous playback, and 500 hours of standby time on a single charge.
Read More
One of the keys to great photography is knowing
when to hit the shutter button, but sometimes that's easier said than
done. Triggertrap Mobile is an iOS app which aims to help you capture
that elusive shot by turning your iPhone or iPad (2 or new) into a smart camera trigger capable of making your camera take a photo at exactly the right moment. Read More
You don't have to be a carpenter to find yourself
regularly grabbing for a tape measure. Unfortunately, if you're not a
carpenter, you probably find yourself grasping at loose air and denim as
you remember that you don't wear a tool belt. The iTapemeasure is a
combination app and case that attaches a digital tape measure to your
iPhone, so you always have one at hand. Read More
Ordinarily, if you wanted to include blue, green
and red laser light sources in the same device (such as a BluRay
player), you would need to build in three separate lasers – each one
incorporating different semiconductor materials. Now, however, engineers
from Rhode Island’s Brown University have succeeded in creating
different colors of lasers, all using the same nanocrystal-based
semiconductor. Among other things, this opens the door to digital
displays that could produce various colors of laser light
simultaneously. Read More
Higher-density batteries, more efficient
thin-film solar cells, and better catalysts may all soon be possible,
thanks to a new technique that allows nanowires to be “decorated” with
nanoparticles. Using the novel technology, scientists from Stanford
University have been able to festoon the outside surfaces of nanowires
with intricate chains of metal oxide or noble metal nanoparticles,
thereby drastically boosting the effective surface area of the
nanowires. Other researchers have previously tried to achieve the same
end result, but apparently never with such success. Read More
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