InTouch allows file transfer through just TOUCH

The inTouch technology is developed by researchers from the VTT Research Center of Finland which lets a ring, bracelet, or even a smart fingernail act as a conduit to transfer information between devices simply and securely – even when the devices are owned by different people.

The team at the Smart Interaction Solutions lab at the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, led by Dr. Jani Mäntyjärvi has been experimenting with different devices in different forms that can act as a “touch conduit” of information between different devices.

The basic idea is that the user wears a ring, or bracelet, watch, or even a “smart fingernail” (i.e. a small chip embedded in an artificial fingernail) that has some small amount of memory, an antenna, but no battery. The system would require the devices to have a special antenna that sends out enough energy to power the ring or other inTouch device, just like how an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chip works.

When the user touches their device with an inTouch ring, for example, a special icon appears. If the user wants to upload a small amount of information, like a website address, or a small picture, the data is actually stored in the ring. Then when the user touches another device equipped with the same technology, they can initiate a download from the ring back into the device.

The chips and antennas involved are very small, and since they have no batteries, can be placed in any number of wearable accessories, clothing, jewellery, or, as mentioned, a fashionable fake fingernail.

Check out the video below

 

Team Austria wins Solar Decathlon 2013

 

The US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is a biennial competition that challenges college teams to build affordable, energy-efficient and aesthetically pleasing solar-powered houses. Team Austria (Vienna University of Technology) has just been announced the overall winner of 2013 event at Orange County Great Park in California, after the closest competition in its history. Second place went to University of Nevada Las Vegas and DesertSol, with the Czech Technical University achieving third place overall.

This year marks the first time that all of the entries tied for a win in the Energy category, as every house was successful in producing more energy than it consumes.

The Austrian team also shared a joint third-place award for the Engineering category. The team’s LISI (Living Inspired by Sustainable Innovation) house is a tribute to the forested regions of Austria, but also showed its relevance to the temperate Solar Decathlon site as a model for open space and outdoor living with generous deck space and a fully opening living area.

With a theme that stresses the importance of wood, the LISI house is built of 93 percent timber, including wood fiber and cellulose insulation, baked ash cladding, silver fir ceiling panels, oiled oak on the patio and ramp, and pressed bark chip on the walls of the bedroom and bath spaces. The team uses the analogy of a tree to explain the timber core as trunk and the lace-like curtain which surrounds the structure, as leaves. The curtain, the house’s most striking feature, is a Teflon fabric that has been cut in a pattern designed by the students but which is very robust despite its delicate appearance, and is similar to material used by the military for camouflage. It provides UV protection for the open areas of the house and light weather-proofing.

DesertSol also has the full array of energy technologies, including passive elements such as shading and ventilation and a layered insulation system that brings it to an r30 rating for the walls (against a standard of around r18). The UNLV team were the only US team to place in the top three, and shared a joint third place for the Engineering award.

Jessi Combs breaks 48-year old land speed record

Back in 1965, Lee Breedlove set the women’s land speed record on Utah’s Salt Lake Flats with an average speed of 308.51 mph (496.49 km/h) over four runs. That record stood for 48 years until this month, when Jessi Combs smashed it in her 52,000 hp North American Eagle Supersonic Speed Challenger with a speed of 392.954 mph (632.39 km/h).

As the Federation International de Automobile (FIA) is the governing body for land speed records, strict rules regarding engines and wheel configurations had to be followed in order to properly qualify. The FIA rules require the vehicle to be considered a “car” sporting four wheels. So in order for the Eagle to blast across at the lake bed at subsonic speeds, solid billet aluminum wheels were chosen. Solid aluminum wheels not only reduce rolling weight but remove traditional concerns regarding centrifugal forces associated with rubber tires. The solid wheel system also allows the driver to focus on “piloting” the ground based fighter rather than having to drive it.

The NAE crew hopes to break the existing land speed record of 761 mph (1,225 km/h) in the Eagle in 2014, this time with team owner Ed Shadle at the stick. In the meantime, Jessi Combs next plans to chase down the existing female speed record of 512 mph (824 km/h) achieved in 1976 by stunt woman Kitty O’Neil in a three-wheeled racer.

 

Land Rover completes world-first hybrid expedition

Hours after introducing its first-ever hybrid model back in August, Land Rover set out on a 10,472-mile (16,853-km) expedition across Europe and Asia. Fifty-three days later, the company is pleased to report that its world-first hybrid journey along the Silk Trail was successful.

Land Rover called the trip from its home in Solihull, UK to the Mumbai, India home of parent company Tata the “final extreme engineering sign-off test” of the Range Rover Hybrid. The 300 GB of data that it collected along the way were forwarded back to its engineering team and will be used to tweak the engine and transmission software for performance in all types of extreme terrain, altitude and temperatures.

In the face of all the adversity, the hybrid prototypes were still able to deliver a typical fuel economy around 36.5 mpg (6.4 L/100km), according to Land Rover. Not surprisingly, given the rugged nature of the journey, that’s short of Land Rover’s estimated 44.1 mpg (5.3 L/100km) combined capabilities. Land Rover credits the instant torque of the 35 kW motor, which assists the 3.0-liter V6 turbo-diesel engine, for helping the team keep pace in the ICE-stifling thin air of high-mountain terrain.

In the end, the Land Rover convoy completed 10,472 miles over the course of 53 days, winding its way through France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China (including Tibet), Nepal and India. Land Rover says that its navigation of China’s rugged, mountainous Xinjiang-Tibet highway was a first for an out-of-country vehicle.

Now that that’s out of the way, Land Rover can move closer to Range Rover Hybrid production. It plans to begin delivering the new model in select markets during the first quarter of next year.

Air New Zealand is sponsoring an amazing research exploration experience

Antarctica inspires us with its stark, serene landscapes. But unfortunately, it’s an ecosystem that’s under threat. Air New Zealand and Antarctica New Zealand have endeavored to sponsor research on Antarctica, and now they want to shine a spotlight on the incredible work the scientists are doing there. In Antarctica: No Ordinary Place, No Ordinary Assignment, Air New Zealand will select one spokesperson to tag along with National Geographic photographer Jason Edwards to document the fascinating and crucial research happening in one of the world’s most fragile and unique environments.

New software could allow cyborg insects to map buildings

Living remote-control cockroaches are now a thing. They actually exist. Besides wowing people and sparking ethics debates, however, the cyborg insects may ultimately have some very worthwhile applications. A team led by North Carolina State University’s Dr. Edgar Lobaton has brought one of those applications a step closer to reality, by developing software that would allow “swarms” of the cockroaches to map hazardous environments such as collapsed buildings.

The cockroach-guiding technology, which was also developed at NC State, involves fitting Madagascar hissing cockroaches with “backpacks” containing an inexpensive, lightweight, commercially-available chip, along with a wireless receiver and transmitter, and a microcontroller.

That microcontroller is wired into the cockroach’s antennae and sensory organs known as the cerci. When commands are sent wirelessly by a remote human operator, the controller electrically stimulates one or more of the antennae and/or cerci, dictating the directional movements of the insects.

In the building exploration scenario, a swarm of sensor-wearing remote-control cockroaches or other insects – known collectively as “biobots” – would be released into a damaged structure. Their human operators would give them some time to disperse in a random pattern, and would then send a signal causing the biobots to proceed to the nearest wall and follow along its base.

Down the road, it is hoped that insects equipped with other types of sensors could also be used to map the location of radioactive or chemical threats.

Adidas gets in on the smartwatch action with the miCoach Smart Run

The miCoach Smart Run is obviously designed for the serious runner. We’re looking at features like a heart monitor, the ability to play MP3s, and even a virtual coach shouting at you (or perhaps speaking politely) through your connected Bluetooth headset.

The Adidas watch also, of course, tracks the basic stuff, like speed, distance, and route, courtesy of built-in accelerometer and GPS. Like most smartwatches, it gives your wrist a gentle vibration to let you know to look at its 1.45-in. color touchscreen. Unlike most other smartwatches, though, it’s a standalone device, and doesn’t require a constant smartphone connection to be useful.

In terms of hardware, that 1.45-in. screen has a pretty low resolution, at 184 x 184 (just 179 pixels per inch). The watch weighs 79 g (2.8 oz), and is pretty beefy, at 15.6 mm thick. It has a stainless steel face and a silicone strap. Adidas estimates a mere four hours of “training mode” battery life, though that supposedly extends to eight hours if you adjust the data computing to once every five seconds.

This definitely looks like being one of the most advanced wearable fitness trackers, but we’d also expect to see many more devices like this within the next year. Another factor to consider is whether you’ll eventually be buying a more general-purpose smartwatch. Current offerings from Samsung, Sony, and others include some fitness tracking apps, and the next round will likely add more advanced sensors and software.

The Adidas miCoach Smart Run will be available this November for US$399.

Columbia University students design low cost humanoid “Rosie the Robot”

A team of students at Columbia University, led by Jason Ravel, has taken inspiration from a number of sources, including the Turtlebot by Willow Garage, Boxie the Robot from MIT, and Rosie the Robot from The Jetsons, to design a human-sized general purpose robot called Talos. Built for just US$800, this low cost robot has arms, a face, and can answer voice commands.

This first version of Talos was designed to carry out several simple functions. The original concept was to use the robot for telepresence operations, like guarding the lab at night. The robot can retrieve an object and bring it to a person; it can respond to several simple voice commands, like “follow me” or “shake hands”; it can be controlled by a remote application on a tablet computer; and it can dance, as an entertainment function.

The robot project as an open source hardware platform that other robotics students could expand and modify as the software is built on an open architecture that allows for expansion and the addition of new abilities. The team sees Talos as a model for a lower-cost humanoid robot that can function in a home or office environment.

Next steps in the project will be improving the object recognition and retrieval capability. The team will also be working on new navigation functions that use landmarks and can make maps as the robot roams around.

Inception for real: Mice gets implanted with artificial memories

 

An ongoing collaboration between the Japanese Riken Brain Science Institute and MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory has resulted in the discovery of how to plant specific false memories into the brains of mice. The breakthrough significantly extends our understanding of memory and expands the experimental reach of the new field of optogenetics.

The ability to learn and remember is a vital part of any animal’s ability to survive. In humans, memory also plays a major role in our perception of what it is to be human. A human is not just a survival machine, but also reads, plans, plays golf, interacts with others, and generally behaves in a manner consistent with curiosity and a need to learn.Many experiments were conducted to come to a conclusion.

These kinds of experiments show us just how reconstructive the process of memory actually is,” said Steve Ramirez, a graduate student in the Tonegawa lab and the lead author of the paper. “Memory is not a carbon copy, but rather a reconstruction, of the world we’ve experienced. Our hope is that, by proposing a neural explanation for how false memories may be generated, down the line we can use this kind of knowledge to inform, say, a courtroom about just how unreliable things like eyewitness testimony can actually be.” Perhaps they can also provide a solution for the problem of lost keys.

 

Turn sunshine and water to produce Hydrogen fuel….Reveals new Technique

 

A new technique developed by a University of Colorado Boulder team converts sunshine and water directly into usable fuel. The technique involves concentrating sunlight in a solar tower to achieve temperatures high enough to drive chemical reactions that split water into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen molecules. In this way, the team says it should be able to cheaply produce massive amounts of hydrogen fuel.

The team’s solar thermal system concentrates sunlight off a vast array of mirrors into a single point at the top of a tall tower to produce very high temperatures. When this heat is delivered into a reactor full of metal oxides, the oxides heat up and release oxygen. The reduced metal oxide now gains a chemical composition that makes it ready to bind with oxygen atoms. Introducing steam into the reactor, which can also be produced by heating water with sunlight, causes the compound to draw oxygen atoms out of the water molecules, leaving behind hydrogen molecules that can be collected as hydrogen gas.

According to the team, huge solar plants spread across many acres could produce much more fuel per acre than biofuels for the same amount of acreage. Another advantage that this process has over other renewable technologies, such as wind and photovoltaics, is that it directs sunlight to directly drive chemical reactions to produce fuel for use in combustion engines or fuel cells. In contrast, photovoltaic processes first convert sunlight into electricity, reducing overall efficiency.