47343299
submission
cylonlover writes
"Air travel today is a nightmare of long drives to crowded airports, long queues that move at a snail's pace, and long, boring waits in identical lobbies drinking overpriced coffee. It would be so much easier and less frustrating if catching a plane were like catching a train. If Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has its way, its Clip-Air project will one day produce modular aircraft that will allow you to board a plane at a London railway station and disembark in the middle of Rome without ever setting foot in an air terminal."Link to Original Source
47286773
submission
cylonlover writes
"Imagine the first manned mission to Mars is three months out from Earth when a one-of-a-kind vital component fails. Today, such an accident would mean a choice between desperate invention and death, but it may not be too long before astronauts will just download a file and print out any part as needed. Turning such a potential drama into a simple task is the goal of NASA and Made in Space Inc., whose plan is to send a 3D printer to the International Space Station (ISS) next year as part of demonstration to show the potential of the technology."Link to Original Source
47176429
submission
cylonlover writes
"MIT researchers have developed a new technique that can be used to accurately predict the annual yield of a photovoltaic solar array located anywhere on the planet, taking into account local climate, panel orientation, and obstructions from nearby buildings. As a proof of concept, the scientists have mapped out the 17,000 rooftops of Cambridge, Massachusetts and created a user-friendly web interface that residents can use to look up their homes and get an accurate projection of the cost and return on investment of placing a PV panel over their heads."Link to Original Source
47111857
submission
cylonlover writes
"In its purest form, graphene is quite remarkable: it is the strongest material known to man. It derives the bulk of its strength from two factors. Firstly, each carbon atom is surrounded by six others in a highly stable honeycomb structure, with the atoms locked firmly in place by very strong covalent bonds; secondly, its extremely simple, two-dimensional structure leaves little room for weakening defects to appear in the lattice. A study conducted at Columbia University has revealed that even when stitched together from much smaller fragments, large sheets of graphene still retain much of their mechanical properties. The discovery may be a crucial step forward in the mass-production of carbon nanotubes that could be used to manufacture flexible electronics, ultra-light and strong materials, and perhaps even the first space elevator."Link to Original Source
46990115
submission
cylonlover writes
"A team of scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore has developed a new image sensor from graphene that promises to improve the quality of images captured in low light conditions. In tests, it has proved to be 1,000 times more sensitive to light than existing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) or charge-coupled device (CCD) camera sensors in addition to operating at much lower voltages, consequently using 10 times less energy."Link to Original Source
46966031
submission
cylonlover writes
"As part of Inition's current AR vs VR event, part of the Digital Shoreditch festival, Julian Williams, CEO of Wizdish, is showing off his invention, which, accompanied by another Kinect sensor and Oculus Rift, lets people navigate a VR space by donning special shoes and sliding their feet over the slippery dish. If the Oculus Rift demos by Inition and friends tell us anything, it's that though the device may be well suited to standard video games, it has much greater potential for immersion when combined with a dedicated, safe environment (as with the vertigo demo) or when complemented by other technology like Kinect, the Wizdish and IGS Glove."Link to Original Source
46937789
submission
cylonlover writes
"Science fiction may well become reality with the development of a real life Iron Man suit that would allow astronauts or extreme thrill seekers to space dive from up to 62 miles (100 km) above the Earth‘s surface at the very edge of space, and safely land using thruster boots instead of a parachute. Hi-tech inventors over at Solar System Express (Sol-X) and biotech designers Juxtopia LLC (JLLC) are collaborating on this project with a goal of releasing a production model of such a suit by 2016. The project will use a commercial space suit to which will be added augmented reality (AR) goggles, jet packs, power gloves and movement gyros."Link to Original Source
46906635
submission
cylonlover writes
"Open a magazine, go to a shop, get handed a business card or look at a flyer and the odds are pretty good these days that you’ll be staring at a QR code. Those boxy little patterns turn any bit of paper into an interactive medium that, with a quick scan by a smartphone, will unleash all sorts of information, but can they save lives? Mercedes-Benz believes that they can and plans to use QR codes on all its future cars to provide information that will help rescuers reach victims quickly and safely."Link to Original Source
46801495
submission
cylonlover writes
"Six week-old Kaiba Gionfriddo was out at a restaurant with his family, when he stopped breathing and started turning blue. It turned out that he had a severe form of tracheobronchomalacia, a rare condition in which the trachea collapses due to flaccid supporting cartilage. Although he survived that incident, he proceeded to stop breathing on a regular basis, requiring daily resuscitation. Given the seriousness of the situation, his doctors decided to go for broke and try something new – an implanted 3D-printed tracheal support splint."Link to Original Source
46768397
submission
cylonlover writes
"With its previous circumnavigation of the planet, it had already set the record for longest distance traveled by a purely solar-powered boat. Now, the Tûranor PlanetSolar (which is also the world’s largest solar-powered watercraft), has broken its own 2010 record for fastest Atlantic crossing by a solar-powered boat. As part of a scientific expedition that began last month, the catamaran set out from Las Palmas, Spain on April 25th. It proceeded to spend 22 days, 12 hours, and 32 minutes traveling 2,867 miles (5,310 km) across the Atlantic Ocean, before reaching the island of St. Martin in the French West Indies on May 18th."Link to Original Source
46732517
submission
cylonlover writes
"The Pebble smartwatch is one of the standout Kickstarter success stories, attracting over US$10 million in funds to exceed its $100,000 target more than 100 times over. Another smartwatch is following a similar trajectory on the crowdfunding site, exceeding its own $100,000 goal in a day. While the Agent smartwatch shares some things in with common with the Pebble, it also boasts a number of features that set it apart."Link to Original Source
46663227
submission
cylonlover writes
"Recently the media has been saturated with overly-hyped reports that NASA's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) may have detected dark matter. These claims may have some justification if the word "may" is shouted, but they rest on a number of really major assumptions and guesses, some of which are on weak and shifting soil. So just what was seen in the experiment, and what are the possible explanations?"Link to Original Source
46584835
submission
cylonlover writes
"Given the low costs and extensive applications that could be possible with flexible paper circuit boards, we've seen many ideas for their production, from printing with silver ink to embedding chips within paper. Now, however, scientists have developed an elegant method for selectively changing the very nature of the paper itself into conductive graphite. Unlike polymer-based flexible circuits, these paper circuits are, ironically, able to withstand the high temperatures generally used in the production of electronics."Link to Original Source
46492825
submission
cylonlover writes
"Due to their relative faintness compared to their parent stars, most known exoplanets have been discovered using indirect detection methods – that is, detecting the effects they have rather than observing them directly. There are numerous indirect methods that have proven useful in the detection of exoplanets and now yet another, which relies on Einstein’s special theory of relativity, has joined the list with the discovery of an exoplanet known as Kepler-76b."Link to Original Source
46455977
submission
cylonlover writes
"Invisibility cloaks have been around in various forms since 2006, when the first cloak based on optical metamaterials was demonstrated. The design of cloaking devices has come a long way in the past seven years, as illustrated by a simple, yet highly effective, radar cloak developed by Duke University Professor Yaroslav Urzhumov, that can be made using a hobby-level 3D printer."Link to Original Source