Everything Is Broken — The Message. Quantum positioning system steps in when GPS fails - tech - 14 May 2014. Lost without your GPS? Accelerometers based on super-cooled atoms could keep track of your position with stunning precision IN 2016 a British submarine will slip its moorings and set sail under the guidance of the quantum world. The navigation system it will be testing should record the vessel's position with 1000 times more accuracy than anything before.
If successful, the system, known as quantum positioning, could be miniaturised for use in aircraft, trains, cars and even cellphones. This would provide a backup navigation tool in cities' concrete canyons, or in autonomous vehicles, where a loss of GPS signal can be dangerous. GPS doesn't work underwater, so submarines navigate using accelerometers to register every twist and turn of a vessel after it submerges and loses its last positioning fix. The DSTL team wants this set-up to be usable in the real-world setting of a submarine, where the size of the force would correspond to the movements as the sub swings around in the sea. Printable functional 'bionic' ear melds electronics and biology. Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can "hear" radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability. The researchers' primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue.
The scientists used 3D printing of cells and nanoparticles followed by cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what they term a bionic ear. "In general, there are mechanical and thermal challenges with interfacing electronic materials with biological materials," said Michael McAlpine, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton and the lead researcher. "Previously, researchers have suggested some strategies to tailor the electronics so that this merger is less awkward.
McAlpine's team has made several advances in recent years involving the use of small-scale medical sensors and antenna. Playing pong with cells. Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Caltech engineers build electronic chips that repair themselves. Imagine that the chips in your smart phone or computer could repair and defend themselves on the fly, recovering in microseconds from problems ranging from less-than-ideal battery power to total transistor failure. It might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), for the first time ever, has developed just such self-healing integrated chips. The team, made up of members of the High-Speed Integrated Circuits laboratory in Caltech's Division of Engineering and Applied Science, has demonstrated this self-healing capability in tiny power amplifiers. The amplifiers are so small, in fact, that 76 of the chips-including everything they need to self-heal-could fit on a single penny.
"It was incredible the first time the system kicked in and healed itself. The team's results appear in the March issue of IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. A Video Showing MIT Researcher Joe Pompei's Audio Spotlight. Innovative Magnetics Research in Huntsville. Liquid Armor. How to Build the Perfect Soldier (HUNGRY BEAST)
3D-printer with nano-precision. Printing three dimensional objects with incredibly fine details is now possible using "two-photon lithography". With this technology, tiny structures on a nanometer scale can be fabricated. Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have now made a major breakthrough in speeding up this printing technique: The high-precision-3D-printer at TU Vienna is orders of magnitude faster than similar devices (see video). This opens up completely new areas of application, such as in medicine. The 3D printer uses a liquid resin, which is hardened at precisely the correct spots by a focused laser beam. The focal point of the laser beam is guided through the resin by movable mirrors and leaves behind a polymerized line of solid polymer, just a few hundred nanometers wide.
This high resolution enables the creation of intricately structured sculptures as tiny as a grain of sand. This amazing progress was made possible by combining several new ideas. Tough gel stretches to 21 times its length, recoils, and heals itself. CONTACT: Caroline Perry, (617) 496-1351 Cambridge, Mass. - September 5, 2012 - A team of experts in mechanics, materials science, and tissue engineering at Harvard have created an extremely stretchy and tough gel that may pave the way to replacing damaged cartilage in human joints.
Called a hydrogel, because its main ingredient is water, the new material is a hybrid of two weak gels that combine to create something much stronger. Not only can this new gel stretch to 21 times its original length, but it is also exceptionally tough, self-healing, and biocompatible—a valuable collection of attributes that opens up new opportunities in medicine and tissue engineering. The material, its properties, and a simple method of synthesis are described in the September 6 issue of Nature. The researchers pinned both ends of the new gel in clamps and stretched it to 21 times its initial length before it broke. (Photo courtesy of Jeong-Yun Sun.)
"It's very promising," Suo adds. Low-cost, finger-nail sized radar. EU-funded researchers have squeezed radar technology into a low-cost fingernail-sized chip package that promises to lead to a new range of distance and motion sensing applications. The novel device could have important uses in the automotive industry, as well as mobile devices, robotics and other applications. Developed in the 'Silicon-based ultra-compact cost-efficient system design for mm-wave sensors' (Success) project, the device is the most complete silicon-based 'system-on-chip' (SoC) package for radar operating at high frequencies beyond 100 GHz. 'As far as I know, this is the smallest complete radar system in the world,' says Prof.
Christoph Scheytt, who is coordinating the project on behalf of IHP in Frankfurt, Germany. 'There are other chips working at frequencies beyond 100 GHz addressing radar sensing, but this is the highest level of integration that has ever been achieved in silicon.' 'In this area, size matters a lot,' Prof. A novel substrate to solve attenuation. New Virus-built Battery could Power Cars, Electronic Devices. For the first time, MIT researchers have shown they can genetically engineer viruses to build both the positively and negatively charged ends of a lithium-ion battery. The new virus-produced batteries have the same energy capacity and power performance as state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries being considered to power plug-in hybrid cars, and they could also be used to power a range of personal electronic devices, said Angela Belcher, the MIT materials scientist who led the research team.
Angela Belcher holds a display of the virus-built battery she helped engineer. The battery -- the silver-colored disc -- is being used to power an LED. The new batteries, described in the April 2 online edition of Science, could be manufactured with a cheap and environmentally benign process: The synthesis takes place at and below room temperature and requires no harmful organic solvents, and the materials that go into the battery are non-toxic.
Source: MIT News /... Coming Soon: Artificial Limbs Controlled by Thoughts. Bill Gates looks to new toilets to improve world sanitation. 15 August 2012Last updated at 09:21 ET Prof Michael Hoffman shows off his winning design - a solar-powered toilet Bill Gates is, in a manner of speaking, flushing his money down the toilet. His charitable organisation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is looking for future loos that can improve sanitation around the world. At the Reinvent the Toilet fair, hosted at its Seattle campus this week, designs included a lavatory that used microwave energy to turn poo into electricity. Another turned excrement into charcoal, while a third used urine for flushing. In total 28 designs were shown off at the fair and the winner was a team from the California Institute of Technology.
Led by Prof Michael Hoffman, the toilet they designed was solar-powered and generated hydrogen gas and electricity. "We couldn't be happier with the response that we've gotten," Bill Gates said at the event. Preventable deaths Bill Gates: "The current design has a real problem" The iPhone Has Passed a Key Security Threshold.
Less than a month after Apple first shipped the iPhone in June 2007, a group called Independent Security Evaluators documented deep security design flaws in the device. Apple’s most embarrassing flub: every iPhone application that Apple had written ran with so-called root privileges, giving each one complete control over the entire phone. Hackers found bugs in those apps that could be used to take over the phone from the inside. Apple didn’t fix the design flaw until January 2008. But after that rocky launch, Apple invested heavily in iPhone security. It’s still possible for a hacker to take over a phone, but it’s increasingly difficult, largely because each app runs in its own isolated “sandbox.” In fact, in its efforts to make its devices more secure, Apple has crossed a significant threshold.
Thing reviewed:iOS Security Apple, May 2012 Mass-market cryptography hasn’t been thought of as a potential threat to law enforcement since the “crypto wars” of the 1990s. Enter the iPhone. Viewpoint: Changing the way the internet is governed is risky. 14 June 2012Last updated at 23:01 GMT By Prof Alan Woodward Department of Computing, University of Surrey Many people may be unaware that the US Department of Commerce has the power to decide how the internet works Governance is the establishment and enforcement of norms, rules and decision-making procedures. It is not the "law" as such, but rather a structure by which everyone agrees to abide, which can be captured locally by specific laws. One of the most successful examples we have of governance on a global scale is that which affects international waters, where a United Nations agency called the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) handles the treaties and conventions defining how everyone must behave.
For the reason I'll come to shortly, I recently began asking people: "Who do you think should govern the internet? " I find myself having to explain that the internet is already governed, even though most think it is not. US control Continue reading the main story The internet overseers. Entropy can lead to order, paving the route to nanostructures. Researchers trying to herd tiny particles into useful ordered formations have found an unlikely ally: entropy, a tendency generally described as "disorder. " Computer simulations by University of Michigan scientists and engineers show that the property can nudge particles to form organized structures. By analyzing the shapes of the particles beforehand, they can even predict what kinds of structures will form. The findings, published in this week's edition of Science, help lay the ground rules for making designer materials with wild capabilities such as shape-shifting skins to camouflage a vehicle or optimize its aerodynamics.
Physicist and chemical engineering professor Sharon Glotzer proposes that such materials could be designed by working backward from the desired properties to generate a blueprint. "We studied 145 different shapes, and that gave us more data than anyone has ever had on these types of potential crystal-formers," Glotzer SAID. "It's all about options. Marc Goodman: A vision of crimes in the future. Brain-Scanning Binoculars Harness Soldiers' Unconscious Minds to Locate Threats. Soldiers scanning the battlefield for threats may soon get a new tool: a brain-scanning set of binoculars that can pick up on a soldier's unconscious recognition of a potential threat and bring it to his conscious attention. It's just one of many ways DARPA and other military research groups are looking to have soldiers mind-meld with their machines and materiel, and as the BBC reports, it demonstrates how remarkably close we are to deploying mind-control on the battlefield.
The specific binocular device that DARPA is developing is known as Sentinel (for System for Notification of Threats Inspired by Neurally Enabled Learning, because that's not an unwieldy acronym or anything), and it basically uses the power of the human brain to scan and filter imagery in realtime, picking up on both what the soldier recognizes consciously and what his unconscious might perceive as well. Cesar Harada: A novel idea for cleaning up oil spills. Software Better at Detecting Frustration Than Humans. Did you know that you smile when you’re frustrated? Starting at 1:20 in the video below, witness a behavior that you may find novel – and doubly so because you’re a human being who is exquisitely tuned to reading the emotional expressions of others. By training a feature-detecting algorithm to decompose subjects’ facial expressions into individual “action units,” M. Ehsan Hoque of the MIT Media Lab discovered not only that smiling is quite common when test subjects are frustrated, but also that software is better than humans at differentiating frustration smiles from happiness smiles.
“For frustrated smiles, humans performed below chance, whereas the algorithm did better than 90 percent,” says Hoque. Subjects’ frustration smiles included activation of the groups of facial muscles known as action unit 12, or raising of the corners of the lips, as well as action unit 6, in which cheeks are raised. Tube-Shaped Scaffold May Help Nerve Cells Connect to Prosthetics | 80beats. Nothing helps create pure randomness › News in Science (ABC Science)
News in Science Monday, 16 April 2012 Darren OsborneABC Counting on nothing Quantum fluctuations within a vacuum are helping Australian researchers create billions of random numbers. The random number generator, created by Professor Ping Koy Lam, Dr Thomas Symul and Dr Syed Assad from the Australian National University (ANU), uses highly sensitive light detectors to 'listen' to an empty space. Until recently a vacuum was thought to be completely empty. But modern quantum theory now suggests that it is filled with virtual sub-atomic particles spontaneously appearing and disappearing, creating random noise. This 'vacuum noise' may affect, and ultimately pose a limit to, the performance of fibre optic communication, radio broadcasts and computer operation. "Random number generation has many uses in information technology. Currently, random number generators use computer algorithms. Their work first appeared in Applied Physics Letters.
Tags: computers-and-technology, physics, weird-and-wonderful. How Seagate's Terabit-Per-Square-Inch Hard Drive Works. Magnetic hard disks will soon be able to store one terabit (a trillion bits) per square inch. Seagate has demonstrated that landmark storage density using a new magnetic recording method that can cram 10 terabits, and perhaps even more, onto every inch of a standard 3.5-inch disk. Disks made with current technology can hold about 3 terabytes. The technology, called heat-assisted magnetic recording, involves heating the magnetic regions on a disk that hold individual data bits, allowing those regions to be made tinier. Seagate says the method promises to keep increasing storage density, and it could lead to 60-terabyte hard drives. “One of the most exciting things about heat-assisted magnetic recording is that it’s in its infancy,” says Ed Gage, principal technologist of heads and media R&D at Seagate.
The company is targeting 2015 for its first commercial product featuring the technology. Today’s hard disks are made of magnetic cobalt-platinum alloys. Amazing 3D Printer Video. Avi Rubin: All your devices can be hacked. MIT researchers produce miracle LED: puts out twice as much power as it takes in. Stretchy Solar Cells Power "Super Skin" Microsoft's 3D Transparent Interface Makes Us Feel Like We're Living in the Future.
Scientists revolutionize electron microscope: New method could create highest resolution images ever. New Video Shows Japanese Speech-Jamming Gun in Action | Underwire. All-carbon-nanotube transistor can be crumpled like a piece of paper. What makes a robot fish attractive? Robot fish moves to the head of the school. Pasta-shaped radio waves beamed across Venice. Breakthrough Quadcopter Does Previously Impossible Acrobatics. Scientists Build Tiny Chip that Can 'Swim' Through a Patient's Blood. Single-atom transistor is end of Moore's Law; may be beginning of quantum computing. Gecko feet inspire amazing glue that can hold 700 pounds on smooth wall. The blind codemaker. Hard drive breakthrough: New magnetic recording technique uses heat to process information much faster than current technology.
Scientists create first free-standing 3-D cloak. Hybrid silkworms spin stronger spider silk. Jumping droplets take a lot of heat, as long as it comes in a cool way. Nano Paint Could Make Airplanes Invisible to Radar. Panoramic Camera Ball — Atomik – We Find The Awesome For You. University - Princeton technique puts chemistry breakthroughs on the fast track. Britta Riley: A garden in my apartment. Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything. Turning windows into powerplants. Biologists develop device to cool off athletes, soldiers. Justin Hall-Tipping: Freeing energy from the grid. Moving forward, spin goes sideways. This 20kW Power Plant Flies Itself. Scientists Use Carbon Nanotubes to Create an Underwater Invisibility Cloak. Microsoft Wants You to Control Your Phone by Touching Yourself. 07.30.2008 - New technique to compress light could open doors for optical communications.
Physicists to develop new way of electronic computing. New Polymer Coating Heals Itself With 1 Minute of UV Exposure | 80beats. New Self-Inflating Tire Technology. A Nanotech Teabag Delivers Potable Water for Less than a Cent - Environment. Technology Review: The Authority on the Future of Technology.