What Happened To This Invention?? Science and technology: Welcome to the thingternet. Unbelievable: Boston Dynamics BigDog (March '08) Ten things mobiles have made, or will make, obsolete. 5577_16c0.jpeg (JPEG-afbeelding, 401x3593 pixels) 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. Sun and his coauthors were led by three faculty members: Zhigang Suo, Allen E. and Marilyn M. Laptop buying guide. While our laptop and mobile PC buying guide will give you the tools to go out and research, shop for, and buy the perfect laptop, hybrid, or Windows tablet, there's no harm in starting off with a few favorite picks for 2013. It's hard to go wrong with the latest version of Apple's MacBook Air.
Both the 13-inch and 11-inch models have updated Intel Core i5 processors and excellent battery life. For a Windows version of something similar, check out Samsung's expensive 13-inch Ativ Book 9 Plus , which has a better-than HD screen. The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2 Pro has a similar higher-res display and a flexible hinge that converts into a tablet, for less than $1,000. Since the 2012 version of our buying guide, a couple of big-picture things have changed. Most buying guides and shopping advice tend to get bogged down in the specs, mechanically listing subcategories within subcategories. Three rules for buying a laptop 1. And it's not just underpowered plastic boxes in that price range, either. Apple vs convertable laptops. Windows 8 convertible laptops are pushing up prices on the humble hinge. Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a story pointing out that some of the success of Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system will be dependent upon a piece of hardware no one is paying attention to: a hinge.
That's because the part is what puts the "convert" into convertible laptops, letting users switch between tablet and notebook modes. It's even being used in all-in-one desktops like the Sony Vaio Tap 20, which folds into a massive tablet. With manufacturers heavily pushing Windows 8 convertible systems, the hinge has suddenly become a critical, if largely ignored, component. But it turns out that not everyone has ignored the hinge. According to Digitimes, the rollout of convertible laptops has made the hinge a hot commodity, potentially raising the price that suppliers can charge manufacturers to obtain the parts for their new convertibles.
Gallery: The Top 25 Innovations of the Last 25 Years. 'Earthscraper' concept hides a 1,000-foot skyscraper underground. The folks over at Mexican architecture group BNKR Arquitectura call this thing an "earthscraper," and the reason why should be obvious: it's a monstrous, beautiful, 65-story inverted skyscraper that hides a mini city underground.
Designed to be built smack-dab in the center of Mexico City, BNKR's Earthscraper wouldn't ruin the skyline there (though, really, who would object to something that looks like this?) And is designed in such a way that it would incorporate Mexico's history in its design. The top ten floors — which, here, would be the "bottom" ten — is a museum and cultural center dedicated to the Aztecs. Below that you've got retail space, then apartments and finally, deep underground, businesses. Because, you know, that's where business do their best work. Our favorite detail: the interior of the structure is actually hollowed out, and there are bridges that extend out into the center of it so you can look down. Click to enlarge. Turning bacteria into butanol biofuel factories. Graduate student Brooks Bond-Watts and post-doctoral fellow Jeff Hanson examine cultured E. coli used to produce the biofuel n-butanol.
(Photo by Michael Barnes) University of California, Berkeley, chemists have engineered bacteria to churn out a gasoline-like biofuel at about 10 times the rate of competing microbes, a breakthrough that could soon provide an affordable and “green” transportation fuel. The advance is reported in this week’s issue of the journal Nature Chemical Biology by Michelle C. Y. Chang, assistant professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley, graduate student Brooks B. Bond-Watts and recent UC Berkeley graduate Robert J. Various species of the Clostridium bacteria naturally produce a chemical called n-butanol (normal butanol) that has been proposed as a substitute for diesel oil and gasoline.
“We are in a host that is easier to work with, and we have a chance to make it even better,” Chang said. Related links: Chip-based human organs to revolutionize drug development | Video.