German startup develops tinted windows that generate electricity. The next great advance in solar power generation is always right around the corner, right? New solar technologies are often much less impressive in practice than they are on paper, but a startup called Heliatek may finally have something to really shake up the energy sector. Heliatek, which is based in Dresden, Germany, has modified techniques used to make touchscreens to create a translucent solar cell that can be used as a tinted window. Heliatek’s new transparent solar panels are very similar in design to OLED displays. Both rely on a thin layer of organic molecules deposited on a flexible backing.
The idea of printing organic solar cells like this isn’t new, but past cells printed in this manner tended to have very short lifespans. Efficiency is the holy grail of solar cells, and it’s the unique application of oligomers that makes these new transparent solar cells technologically feasible. Perhaps the biggest hurdle Heliatek will have to deal with is a depressingly realistic one. Google Self-Driving Car Takes Blind Man To Taco Bell. Google uploaded a video of a self-driving car test, showing Steve Mahan, a legally blind man behind the wheel, and stopping at Taco Bell for a burrito.
Google says in the video description, “We announced our self-driving car project in 2010 to make driving safer, more enjoyable, and more efficient. Having safely completed over 200,000 miles of computer-led driving, we wanted to share one of our favorite moments. Here’s Steve, who joined us for a special drive on a carefully programmed route to experience being behind the wheel in a whole new way. We organized this test as a technical experiment, but we think it’s also a promising look at what autonomous technology may one day deliver if rigorous technology and safety standards can be met.” “95% of my vision is gone.
I’m well past legally blind,” says Mahan in the video. “You lose your timing in life. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing Google put out a lot more videos similar in nature to the one above, to promote the company’s efforts. 9 Implants that make human healthy body even more useful. Here’s a list of 9 ways you can modify your body to be even more useful, from bionic implants to portable power generators. 1. RFID Chips – A nice and easy way to start out with body hacking is to implant an RFID chip into you. An RFID chip is just a passive antenna that’s pre-configured to transmit a specific code when it’s brought near an RFID reader. Generally, RFID is used as a key of sorts; so for example, you can set up your computer or your phone to unlock only when you pick them up.
Or install an RFID-enabled deadbolt on your front door and an RFID reader in your car and you won’t need to carry your keys around anymore. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Source. Sphero Drives a Car. Productivity Future Vision (2011) Interactive floors, walls, windows and surfaces- EyeClick. Microsoft Ponders Future of Kinect, Tech. Wavelight - Rescue Lights by Zhang Yakun, He Siqian, Zhu Ningning, Chen Chen & Mu Zhiwei.
Lighting The Oceans With Wave Power The Wavelight concept coverts mechanical energy captured by ocean waves into electrical energy to illuminate a series of LED lamps. Each lamp is tethered to its neighbor with a weight anchored to the sea floor. The lights are designed to attract attention for rescue operations or to warn passing ships to steer clear.
A very intriguing design but are LEDs powerful enough? Designers: Zhang Yakun, He Siqian, Zhu Ningning, Chen Chen & Mu Zhiwei. The $1,000 Genome, and the New Problem of Having Too Much Information. Scientists needed $3 billion and 13 years to sequence the three billion base pairs encoded in a single human genome—the first time. By 2011, eight years after that first project was completed, the cost of sequencing a human genome had fallen to $5,000, in a process that took just a few weeks. And in January, Jonathan Rothberg, a chemical engineer and the founder of the biotech company Ion Torrent, unveiled an approach that is faster and cheaper still. He says his machine will be able to sequence a human genome, some 3.2 gigabytes' worth of data, in two hours for just $1,000.
Now thousands, and soon enough millions, of patients will have their genetic makeup laid bare, which presents an entirely new problem: How to analyze all that information? Rothberg had introduced the first sequencing machine that could perform millions of chemical reactions on a fiber-optic array in 2004. But in 2010, he replaced the fiber-optic array with a semiconductor chip. And sequencing will only get cheaper. Turn Your Home Router Into a Super-Powered Router with DD-WRT. Wireless is everywhere and routers are the force that makes it happen, so why not supercharge yours to take proper advantage of it? DD-WRT will let you boost your router’s range, add features, and more. DD-WRT has a ton of features—more than we can cover in this guide, which is focused on helping you get your router upgraded.
Stay tuned, as we’ll go into more depth in a couple more days on all the great things you can do with it, but even if you don’t use the additional features, DD-WRT is worth installing to make your router work better. What Is DD-WRT? Here’s our router. DD-WRT is an open-source alternative firmware for routers. Router Support Turning your home router into an almost professional-level tool is a great project that has one major caveat: support. For our purposes, the important spec to consider is NVROM, or ROM. Preparation The most important thing in any project is research. The friendly forum gave us some useful info for our particular model.
The Process.