66795509
submission
Diggester writes:
The weight of water limits how much can be brought on a long bike ride. There isn’t always an option to stop and fill up from a clean stream or drinking fountain, but water could be obtained from a different source: the air. Austrian industrial design student Kristof Retezár has created Fontus: a prototype of a water bottle system that condenses humid air into clean, drinkable water. His design made him a finalist for the 2014 James Dyson Award.
63607405
submission
Diggester writes:
The race for faster and more furious just got big in the imaging and photography department. Japanese researchers have recently designed a motion picture camera which is capable of capturing 4.4 trillion frames per second. That’s right; it makes this snapper the fastest the world over. This technique that is known to be STAMP (sequentially timed all-optical mapping photography) is able to boast 450×450 pixels. The work by the Japanese researchers has been so popular that the Nature Photonics has published it.
59425125
submission
Diggester writes:
Rodrigo García González has been working on the Ooho water bottle for the past few years. The bottle is made out of edible materials, looks like a jellyfish, and has the potential to put an end to the bottled water industry.
Inspired by the juice-filled pearls added to bubble tea and the mad-cuisine creations of chef Ferran Adriá, who uses a technique known as sheperification (encasing liquid into edible membranes), García is on his way to revolutionising the bottled water industry.
36953555
submission
Diggester writes:
Researchers at the University of Cape Town in South Africa have developed a pill that can wipe out malaria with a single dose. It's a development that could save millions of lives in Africa alone, not to mention the rest of the world. But there's a teensy weensy little hurdle that must first be overcome: human testing.
36756289
submission
Diggester writes:
Tata Motors (an Indian car manufacturer) is changing things up with the first car to run on air, the Airpod.
The Airpod's technology was originally created in France at Motor Development International but has since been bought buy Tata in hopes to bring it to the Indian consumer car market. With virtually zero emissions and at the cost of about a penny per kilometer, it is definitely one of the most environmentally and economically friendly vehicles in the world. The tank holds about 175 liters of compressed air that can be filled at special stations or by activating the on-board electric motor to suck air in from the outside. Costing about $10,000, this car could beat out most smart cars from the market.
36529167
submission
derekmead writes:
Apple, as of this morning, is valued at $621 billion, thanks to a stock price that spiked at $663.10 per share (and that has risen this afternoon). That finally beats Microsoft, who previously held the record for most valuable company in 1999 at $619 billion. Incredibly, Apple has almost doubled its valuation in the last year, when it topped Exxon-Mobil for most valuable American company with a valuation of $346 billion.
It’s not the cleanest comparison, but to give you an idea of how much $621 billion actually is, only 23 countries had a GDP higher than that in 2011. So, basically, Apple alone is worth more than what 200+ countries in the world could produce in an entire year.
36318725
submission
Diggester writes:
Physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have achieved the hottest manmade temperatures ever, by colliding lead ions to momentarily create a quark gluon plasma, a subatomic soup and unique state of matter that is thought to have existed just moments after the Big Bang.
The results come from the ALICE heavy-ion experiment (at right) — a lesser-known sibling to ATLAS and CMS, which produced the data that led to the announcement in July that the Higgs boson had been discovered. ALICE physicists, presenting on Monday at Quark Matter 2012 in Washington DC, say they have achieved a quark gluon plasma 38% hotter than a record 4 trillion degree plasma achieved in 2010 by a similar experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, which had been anointed the Guinness record holder.
35967379
submission
Diggester writes:
While people get excited about future internets being powered by quantum particles, nobody really knows how that's going to work yet. But Chinese physicists have taken a step in the right direction, by creating the world's first quantum router.
If it can be made to work on a large scale, quantum information will transform the way we send data: instead of sending just the 0s and 1s of digital code, quantum communication can send information in a superposition of states that represent both 0s and 1s at the same time. It's cool, and it's crazy.
35706179
submission
Diggester writes:
Two men unlucky enough to get both HIV and cancer have been seemingly cleared of the virus, raising hope that science may yet find a way to cure for the infection that causes AIDS, 30 years into the epidemic.
The researchers are cautious in declaring the two men cured, but more than two years after receiving bone marrow transplants, HIV can't be detected anywhere in their bodies. These two new cases are reminiscent of the so-called "Berlin patient," the only person known to have been cured of infection from the human immunodeficiency virus.
35604467
submission
__aaqpaq9254 writes:
A new roundtable at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists explores the question of whether nuclear energy is the answer to climate change, particularly in developing countries where energy needs are so great. This roundtable, like the ones before it, will be translated into Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish within a week of each article's publication. Here's a summary: "From desertification in China to glacier melt in Nepal to water scarcity in South Africa, climate change is beginning to make itself felt in the developing world. As developing countries search for ways to contain carbon emissions while also maximizing economic potential, a natural focus of attention is nuclear power. But nuclear energy presents its own dangers. Below, Wang Haibin of China, Anthony Turton of South Africa, and Hira Bahadur Thapa of Nepal answer this question: "Given nuclear energy's potential to slow global warming, do its benefits outweigh its risks, or do its risks outweigh its benefits for developing countries?"
35443879
submission
Diggester writes:
While Americans worry every year about getting a flu shot or preventing HIV/AIDS, the deadlier silent is actually Hepatitis C; killing over 15,000 people yearly in the U.S. since 2007 and the numbers continue to increase as the carriers increase in age. While there is no vaccine, there is hope in nanoparticle technology.
The breakthrough came from a group of researchers at the University of Florida, creating a "nanozyme" that eliminates the Hep C 100% of the time; before now, the six-month treatment would only work about half the time. The particles are coated with two biological agents, the identifier and the destroyer; the identifier recognizes the virus and sends the destroyer off the eliminate the mRNA, which allows Hep C to replicate.
35266687
submission
Diggester writes:
Asteroids from the inner solar system are the most likely source of the majority of Earth's water, a new study suggests.
The results contradict prevailing theories, which hold that most of our planet's water originated in the outer solar system and was delivered by comets or asteroids that coalesced beyond Jupiter's orbit, then migrated inward.
34926391
submission
Diggester writes:
A group of Researchers at Universiteit Maastricht's Faculty of Psychology & Neuroscience Department of Neurocognition have had enough because they have invented a system that translates thoughts into letters.
This really is an incredible breakthrough for any type of handicap, from serious motor impairment to debilitating speech. The system has been in real-world testing and is an extraordinary success. The patients are set-up to looks at a screen of the alphabet, thinking about each letter for a period of time, then they should be able to think-type in real time. While it is not near the speed of actual typing, it is the only program of it's kind and can only get better.
