Five reasons the robo-car haters are wrong The self-driving cars we've been promised since the dawn of the auto age are here. Google's amazing robo-Prius hybrids have racked up more than 200,000 miles on public roads. Luxury cars boast gadgets that do everything but steer the car for you. Autonomous vehicles will be inherently more unsafe than humans Yes, computers crash. A recent New York Times article featured an interesting quote from NHTSA's chief counsel: "We think it's a scary concept for the public. Ought to be petrified? On the other hand, we'll always have lousy drivers. Hey, I like driving Really? If the actual assembly-line-drudge operation of this machine were so enriching, why is so much of it already being automated? But let's say you're still on a hedonic buzz from that twisty spin you had when you were young and you still had hair and your future lay ahead on that gauzy ribbon of asphalt and not in the closer-than-they-appear rearview mirror. This may be so. Source: Wired.com
BYOD: Bring your own device could spell end for work PC 14 February 2012Last updated at 05:00 By Fiona Graham Technology of business reporter, BBC News Out with the old: You may find yourself using your own device - laptop, tablet and/or smartphone - for work whether you like it or not Do you dream of a world where you have your choice of laptop, smartphone or tablet at work; all of which connect seamlessly one to another, and are constantly updated? Sitting at your desk, feeling the red mist descend as your ancient XP desktop computer tries and fails to open your inbox, this might seem like an impossible dream. But there could be a catch. It's about a year since we last covered BYOC - bring your own computer. Where this happens the company might cover either all or part of the expense, on the understanding that the employee also purchases a support package. Most schemes allowed for access via a virtual private network or similar software application to ensure that data was held securely on the company servers. Continue reading the main story
Sea urchin spine structure inspires idea for concrete 15 February 2012Last updated at 01:57 By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News The spines do not break cleanly, suggesting they are not made solely of single crystals The precise structure of sea urchins' strong spines has been unravelled - and the find may contribute to stronger concrete in the future. The tough spines are known to be made of calcium carbonate, which has a number of naturally occurring forms, some more brittle than others. X-ray studies now show they are built from "bricks" of the crystal calcite, with a non-crystalline "mortar". The results are reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The spines serve as a defence against predators, hard and at the same time shock-absorbing. The urchins' strong spines serve as a defence against predators But efforts to understand exactly how they are put together have yielded confusing results. He told BBC News: "It still hasn't been resolved." Basic recipe
Nanofactories – a future vision | Nanotechnology world Nanotechnology scientists are developing materials which mimic nature. Photograph: Science Photo Library Mimicking nature is a recurring theme in nanotechnology and molecular nanotechnology, inspired by the natural nanostructures found in our own bodies, offers many exciting potential outcomes. "Molecular nanotechnology is the expected ability to build our products with molecular-level precision, as nature can do," says Christine Peterson, president of the Foresight Nanotech Institute in California. "It will bring unprecedented quality, energy efficiency and environmental sustainability". The recent development of an electron-powered molecular "nanocar", by a team led by chemist Ben Feringa at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, hints at the potential. Many of these efforts attempt to use nature's own method of storing and transferring information – DNA. One future prospect for molecular-scale nanotechnology is to build nanofactories. Benefits and risks
The top 10 emerging technologies for 2012 Emerging technologies are critical to building a sustainable and resilient future. But without new understanding, tools and capabilities, their safe and successful development is far from guaranteed. At the Summit on the Global Agenda 2011 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies asked some of the world’s leading minds within the entire GAC Network which technology trends would have the greatest impact on the state of the world in the near future. Below, the Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies presents the technological trends expected to have major social, economic and environmental impacts worldwide in 2012. 1. The quantity of information now available to individuals and organizations is unprecedented in human history, and the rate of information generation continues to grow exponentially. 2. 3. 4. The increasing demand on natural resources requires unprecedented gains in efficiency. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
As strong as an insect’s shell Harvard researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have come up with a tough, low-cost, biodegradable material inspired by insects’ hard outer shells. The material’s inventors say it has a host of possible applications and someday could provide a more environmentally friendly alternative to plastic. The material, made from discarded shrimp shells and proteins derived from silk, is called “shrilk.” It is thin, clear, flexible, and strong as aluminum at half the weight, according to postdoctoral fellow Javier Fernandez, who began work on chitin-based material as a doctoral student at the University of Barcelona and developed shrilk during a year-and-a-half stint working at the Wyss Institute with Director Donald Ingber. A major benefit of the material, which was described in a December issue of the journal Advanced Materials, is its biodegradability, Ingber and Fernandez said. “All this plastic, what’s the point of making something that lasts 1,000 years?”
Nanomaterial dust is more explosion-prone that normal dust In 2008, a sugar refinery in Portwentworth, Georgia exploded, killing 13 people and injuring 42 others. The culprit was a dust explosion. That's the violent combustion of extremely fine particles when they're suspended in an enclosed location's air. Coal, wheat flour, cornstarch and other types of dust can be hazardous in certain industries. These sorts of explosions have been recorded since 1785, so we now know quite a bit about the combustible properties of dust. But dust, according to the US National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), is defined as a finely divided solid with a diameter of less than 420 μm -- those are micrometres. Researchers from Dalhousie University in Halifax, in an study for the American Chemical Society's journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, probed these smaller "nontraditional" dusts to see how they compare to old fashioned wheat and sugar.
Gecko-inspired adhesive can hold 300kg A Darpa-funded team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has invented "Geckskin" -- a gecko-inspired adhesive that can safely hold 300kg on a flat surface, or stick a 42-inch plasma television to a wall. Geckos have amazed biologists for years, because their feet can produce an adhesive force that's roughly equivalent to four kilograms, despite the lizard only weighing about 140 grams. The animal doesn't slip and is equally at home on vertical, slanted, even backward-tilting surfaces. "Amazingly, gecko feet can be applied and disengaged with ease, and with no sticky residue remaining on the surface," says biologist Duncan Irschick. Plenty of researchers -- including material scientists and roboticists -- have tried to copy the gecko's foot. Every square millimeter of a gecko's footpad contains about 14,000 hair-like setae which grip onto surfaces. But previous efforts to translate those microscopic hairs to larger scales were unsuccessful.
Cost of gene sequencing falls, raising hopes for medical advances (Credit: Silky M/Wikimedia Commons) In Silicon Valley, the line between computing and biology has begun to blur in a way that could have enormous consequences for human longevity. Bill Banyai, an optical physicist at Complete Genomics, has helped make that happen. His digital expertise was essential in designing a factory that automated and greatly lowered the cost of mapping the three billion base pairs that form the human genome. The promise is that low-cost gene sequencing will lead to a new era of personalized medicine, yielding new approaches for treating cancers and other serious diseases. Now that is changing: exponential increases in processing power and transistor density are accompanied by costs that fall at an accelerating rate. “For all of human history, humans have not had the readout of the software that makes them alive,” said Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology.
The magnetic soap that could clean up oil spills Environment posted on January 26, 2012, at 7:30 AM A magnet pulls metallic soap out of water. British researchers have found a way to imbue soap with magnetic properties, which could have huge implications in the way we fight ecosystem-damaging oil spills. It does. It's simple: A detergent that you can move with magnets would be much easier to gather up and remove from the water. Scientists from the University of Bristol added iron-rich salts to create "metallic centers within the soap particles," says Ted Thornhill at Britain's . Yep.
World Economic Forum lists top 10 emerging technologies for 2012 The World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies has drawn up a list of the top 10 emerging technologies for 2012 (Image: Shutterstock) Our goal here at Gizmag is to cover innovation and emerging technologies in all fields of human endeavor, and while almost all of the ideas that grace our pages have the potential to enhance some of our lives in one way or another, at the core are those technologies that will have profound implications for everyone on the planet. For those looking to shape political, business, and academic agendas, predicting how and when these types of technologies will effect us all is critical. Recognizing this, the World Economic Forum's (WEF's) Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies has compiled a list of the top 10 emerging technologies it believes will have the greatest impact on the state of the world in 2012. 1. Source: World Economic Forum Blog About the Author Post a CommentRelated Articles
Boffins boost fuel-cell future with 'nanowire forest' High performance access to file storage Researchers at a California university have developed a nanowire-based method to efficiently harvest hydrogen for fuel cells without the need for electricity, which is commonly generated by greenhouse-gas producing fossil fuels or nuclear reactors with their problematic waste. "This is a clean way to generate clean fuel," said Deli Wang, a professor at the UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering, where the breakthrough was made. Hydrogen may be the most abundant element in our universe, but here on earth it's commonly found bound up with other elements such as nitrogen or fluorine – and, of course, with oxygen to create good ol' H2O. The trick has been to separate out the hydrogen without the need for expensive, and often dirty, electrical power. The nanowire forest, tinted green in this image for emphasis (source: Jacobs School of Engineering) "We are trying to mimic what the plant does to convert sunlight to energy," said Sun.
A Manhattan Project for green innovation? Try open innovation instead! Read this post in Bahasa. Last week the World Bank launched a new approach to fostering green innovation called the Indonesia Green Innovation Pilot Program. Its aim is to learn how open innovation principles can foster the generation of market-based solutions to clean energy. A core team of designers (Catapult and Inotek) will work with rural communities, the public and private sectors to design clean energy solutions that can be adopted by the market. Keeping in line with open innovation, its first activity is to identify challenges or “problems” that will be addressed by the program through a crowdsourcing approach. So if you are in any way familiar with rural communities and energy issues in Indonesia, the program invites you to submit a challenge here until March 17. But, if you think coming up with the kind of technology required to tackle climate change will require something akin to a Manhattan Project, rest assured, you're not alone.
How to survive the next 100,000 years MacGregor Campbell, contributor Will humans be around in the deep future? Given the track record of most mammals, we've got a pretty good shot at surviving for at least the next 100,000 years and possibly even a million years or more. Of course, that's not to say we won't face any challenges. We can expect threats we've encountered before, like colossal volcanic eruptions and pandemic bugs, as well as new ones like out-of-control technology. In this animation, we give you a sneak peek at what could be in store for future generations of humans.