Sega's latest in pissing entertainment technology
Via Core77
Showing posts with label The Future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Future. Show all posts
Friday, January 14, 2011
Piss Like A True Gamer: The Men's Room Peeing Game
Sega's latest in pissing entertainment technology
Via Core77
Yikes! It's a YikeBike, The Future Of Personal Transportation
With a 6 mile range, a 15mph top speed, and a $3,500 price tag, it ain't cheap, it ain't fast, and it doesn't go far, but it's still the coolest looking bike on the block!
Now, this isn't the bike to just jump on and ride into the sunset, it takes a bit of a learning curve and some practice before trying it out on the streets. The last thing you want to do is pay $3,500 bucks to just crash the thing head on into an innocent pedestrian. Yikes, I wonder if that is why they call it the "YikeBike? Who knows. The only other thing I have to say is that if you like unicycles, then the YikeBike is like a super futuristic unicycle sure to get you from point A to point B. Will it replace the Segway? It's possible, at the least it could offer up some competition.
Here is a promo video for the YikeBike. For more information visit yikebike.com
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Stanford researcher uses living cells to create 'biotic' video games (w/ Video)
(PhysOrg.com) -- The digital revolution has triggered a wild proliferation of video games, but what of the revolution in biotechnology? Does it have the potential to spawn its own brood of games? Stanford physicist Ingmar Riedel-Kruse has begun developing "biotic games" involving paramecia and other living organisms. He hopes the games lead to advances in education and crowd-sourcing of laboratory research while helping to raise the level of public discourse on bio-related issues.
Read more -- Stanford researcher uses living cells to create 'biotic' video games (w/ Video)
Read more -- Stanford researcher uses living cells to create 'biotic' video games (w/ Video)
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
The 'Spaser' Heats Up Laser Technology
Tel Aviv University develops a groundbreaking nano-laser for medicine and electronics
Lasers have revolutionized the communications and medical industries. They focus light to zap tumors and send digital TV signals and telephone communications around the world.
But the physical length of an ordinary laser cannot be less than one half of the wavelength of its light, which limits its application in many industries. Now the Spaser, a new invention developed in part by Tel Aviv University, can be as small as needed to fuel nano-technologies of the future.
Prof. David Bergman of Tel Aviv University's Department of Physics and Astronomy developed and patented the theory behind the Spaser device in 2003 with Prof. Mark Stockman of Georgia State University in Atlanta. It is now being developed into a practical tool by research teams in the United States and around the world.
"Spaser" is an acronym for "surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" ― and despite its mouthfilling definition, it's a number one buzzword in the nanotechnologies industry. The Spaser has been presented at recent meetings and symposia around the world, including a recent European Optical Society Annual Meeting.
Seeing your DNA up close
Spasers are considered a critical component for future technologies based on nanophotonics ––technologies that could lead to radical innovations in medicine and science, such as a sensor and microscope 10 times more powerful than anything used today. A Spaser-based microscope might be so sensitive that it could see genetic base pairs in DNA.
It could also lead to computers and electronics that operate at speeds 100 times greater than today's devices, using light instead of electrons to communicate and compute. More efficient solar energy collectors in renewable energy are another proposed application.
"It rhymes with laser, but our Spaser is different," says Prof. Bergman, who owns the Spaser patent with his American partner. "Based on pure physics, it's like a laser, but much, much, much smaller." The Spaser uses surface plasma waves, whose wavelength can be much smaller than that of the light it produces. That's why a Spaser can be less than 100 nanometers, or one-tenth of a micron, long. This is much less than the wavelength of visible light, explains Prof. Bergman.
Fuelling the buzz
In the next year, the research team expects even more buzz to be created around their invention. In 2009, a team from Norfolk State University, Purdue University, and Cornell University managed to create a practical prototype.
The Spaser will extend the range of what's possible in modern electronics and optical devices, well beyond today's computer chips and memories, Prof. Bergman believes. The physical limitations of current materials are overcome in the Spaser because it uses plasmons, and not photons. With the development of surface plasma waves ― electromagnetic waves combined with an electron fluid wave in a metal ― future nano-devices will operate photonic circuitry on the surface of a metal. But a source of those waves will be needed. That's where the Spaser comes in.
Smaller than the wavelength of light, nano-sized plasmonic devices will be fast and small. Currently the research team is working on commercializing their invention, which they suggest could represent a quantum leap in the development of nano-sized devices.
Source: Reprinted news release via American Friends of Tel Aviv University
Lasers have revolutionized the communications and medical industries. They focus light to zap tumors and send digital TV signals and telephone communications around the world.
But the physical length of an ordinary laser cannot be less than one half of the wavelength of its light, which limits its application in many industries. Now the Spaser, a new invention developed in part by Tel Aviv University, can be as small as needed to fuel nano-technologies of the future.
Prof. David Bergman of Tel Aviv University's Department of Physics and Astronomy developed and patented the theory behind the Spaser device in 2003 with Prof. Mark Stockman of Georgia State University in Atlanta. It is now being developed into a practical tool by research teams in the United States and around the world.
"Spaser" is an acronym for "surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" ― and despite its mouthfilling definition, it's a number one buzzword in the nanotechnologies industry. The Spaser has been presented at recent meetings and symposia around the world, including a recent European Optical Society Annual Meeting.
Seeing your DNA up close
Spasers are considered a critical component for future technologies based on nanophotonics ––technologies that could lead to radical innovations in medicine and science, such as a sensor and microscope 10 times more powerful than anything used today. A Spaser-based microscope might be so sensitive that it could see genetic base pairs in DNA.
It could also lead to computers and electronics that operate at speeds 100 times greater than today's devices, using light instead of electrons to communicate and compute. More efficient solar energy collectors in renewable energy are another proposed application.
"It rhymes with laser, but our Spaser is different," says Prof. Bergman, who owns the Spaser patent with his American partner. "Based on pure physics, it's like a laser, but much, much, much smaller." The Spaser uses surface plasma waves, whose wavelength can be much smaller than that of the light it produces. That's why a Spaser can be less than 100 nanometers, or one-tenth of a micron, long. This is much less than the wavelength of visible light, explains Prof. Bergman.
Fuelling the buzz
In the next year, the research team expects even more buzz to be created around their invention. In 2009, a team from Norfolk State University, Purdue University, and Cornell University managed to create a practical prototype.
The Spaser will extend the range of what's possible in modern electronics and optical devices, well beyond today's computer chips and memories, Prof. Bergman believes. The physical limitations of current materials are overcome in the Spaser because it uses plasmons, and not photons. With the development of surface plasma waves ― electromagnetic waves combined with an electron fluid wave in a metal ― future nano-devices will operate photonic circuitry on the surface of a metal. But a source of those waves will be needed. That's where the Spaser comes in.
Smaller than the wavelength of light, nano-sized plasmonic devices will be fast and small. Currently the research team is working on commercializing their invention, which they suggest could represent a quantum leap in the development of nano-sized devices.
Source: Reprinted news release via American Friends of Tel Aviv University
Friday, January 07, 2011
Cereal Boxes That Light-Up [Video]
Last year at CES 2011, I noticed these awesome cereal boxes that are infused with printable electronics that allows them to light-up. As the awesomeness started to settle in, I realized that out of many of the other technologies and gadgets featured at the show, these cereal boxes were my favorite. I absolutely refuse to buy any more cereal until these hit the store shelves!
Via Neowin
Via Neowin
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Princeton Scientists Construct Synthetic Proteins That Sustain Life
In a groundbreaking achievement that could help scientists "build" new biological systems, Princeton University scientists have constructed for the first time artificial proteins that enable the growth of living cells.
The team of researchers created genetic sequences never before seen in nature, and the scientists showed that they can produce substances that sustain life in cells almost as readily as proteins produced by nature's own toolkit.
"What we have here are molecular machines that function quite well within a living organism even though they were designed from scratch and expressed from artificial genes," said Michael Hecht, a professor of chemistry at Princeton, who led the research. "This tells us that the molecular parts kit for life need not be limited to parts -- genes and proteins -- that already exist in nature."
The work, Hecht said, represents a significant advance in synthetic biology, an emerging area of research in which scientists work to design and fabricate biological components and systems that do not already exist in the natural world. One of the field's goals is to develop an entirely artificial genome composed of unique patterns of chemicals.
"Our work suggests," Hecht said, "that the construction of artificial genomes capable of sustaining cell life may be within reach."
Nearly all previous work in synthetic biology has focused on reorganizing parts drawn from natural organisms. In contrast, Hecht said, the results described by the team show that biological functions can be provided by macromolecules that were not borrowed from nature, but designed in the laboratory.
Although scientists have shown previously that proteins can be designed to fold and, in some cases, catalyze reactions, the Princeton team's work represents a new frontier in creating these synthetic proteins.
The research, which Hecht conducted with three former Princeton students and a former postdoctoral fellow, is described in a report published online Jan. 4 in the journal Public Library of Science ONE.
Hecht and the students in his lab study the relationship between biological processes on the molecular scale and processes at work on a larger magnitude. For example, he is studying how the errant folding of proteins in the brain can lead to Alzheimer's disease, and is involved in a search for compounds to thwart that process. In work that relates to the new paper, Hecht and his students also are interested in learning what processes drive the routine folding of proteins on a basic level -- as proteins need to fold in order to function -- and why certain key sequences have evolved to be central to existence. Proteins are the workhorses of organisms, produced from instructions encoded into cellular DNA. The identity of any given protein is dictated by a unique sequence of 20 chemicals known as amino acids. If the different amino acids can be viewed as letters of an alphabet, each protein sequence constitutes its own unique "sentence."
And, if a protein is 100 amino acids long (most proteins are even longer), there are an astronomically large number of possibilities of different protein sequences, Hecht said. At the heart of his team's research was to question how there are only about 100,000 different proteins produced in the human body, when there is a potential for so many more. They wondered, are these particular proteins somehow special? Or might others work equally well, even though evolution has not yet had a chance to sample them?
Hecht and his research group set about to create artificial proteins encoded by genetic sequences not seen in nature. They produced about 1 million amino acid sequences that were designed to fold into stable three-dimensional structures.
"What I believe is most intriguing about our work is that the information encoded in these artificial genes is completely novel -- it does not come from, nor is it significantly related to, information encoded by natural genes, and yet the end result is a living, functional microbe," said Michael Fisher, a co-author of the paper who earned his Ph.D. at Princeton in 2010 and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California-Berkeley. "It is perhaps analogous to taking a sentence, coming up with brand new words, testing if any of our new words can take the place of any of the original words in the sentence, and finding that in some cases, the sentence retains virtually the same meaning while incorporating brand new words."
Once the team had created this new library of artificial proteins, they inserted those proteins into various mutant strains of bacteria in which certain natural genes previously had been deleted. The deleted natural genes are required for survival under a given set of conditions, including a limited food supply. Under these harsh conditions, the mutant strains of bacteria died -- unless they acquired a life-sustaining novel protein from Hecht's collection. This was significant because formation of a bacterial colony under these selective conditions could occur only if a protein in the collection had the capacity to sustain the growth of living cells.
In a series of experiments exploring the role of differing proteins, the scientists showed that several different strains of bacteria that should have died were rescued by novel proteins designed in the laboratory. "These artificial proteins bear no relation to any known biological sequences, yet they sustained life," Hecht said.
Added Kara McKinley, also a co-author and a 2010 Princeton graduate who is now a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "This is an exciting result, because it shows that unnatural proteins can sustain a natural system, and that such proteins can be found at relatively high frequency in a library designed only for structure."
Source: Reprinted news release via Princeton University
The team of researchers created genetic sequences never before seen in nature, and the scientists showed that they can produce substances that sustain life in cells almost as readily as proteins produced by nature's own toolkit.
"What we have here are molecular machines that function quite well within a living organism even though they were designed from scratch and expressed from artificial genes," said Michael Hecht, a professor of chemistry at Princeton, who led the research. "This tells us that the molecular parts kit for life need not be limited to parts -- genes and proteins -- that already exist in nature."
The work, Hecht said, represents a significant advance in synthetic biology, an emerging area of research in which scientists work to design and fabricate biological components and systems that do not already exist in the natural world. One of the field's goals is to develop an entirely artificial genome composed of unique patterns of chemicals.
"Our work suggests," Hecht said, "that the construction of artificial genomes capable of sustaining cell life may be within reach."
Nearly all previous work in synthetic biology has focused on reorganizing parts drawn from natural organisms. In contrast, Hecht said, the results described by the team show that biological functions can be provided by macromolecules that were not borrowed from nature, but designed in the laboratory.
Although scientists have shown previously that proteins can be designed to fold and, in some cases, catalyze reactions, the Princeton team's work represents a new frontier in creating these synthetic proteins.
The research, which Hecht conducted with three former Princeton students and a former postdoctoral fellow, is described in a report published online Jan. 4 in the journal Public Library of Science ONE.
Hecht and the students in his lab study the relationship between biological processes on the molecular scale and processes at work on a larger magnitude. For example, he is studying how the errant folding of proteins in the brain can lead to Alzheimer's disease, and is involved in a search for compounds to thwart that process. In work that relates to the new paper, Hecht and his students also are interested in learning what processes drive the routine folding of proteins on a basic level -- as proteins need to fold in order to function -- and why certain key sequences have evolved to be central to existence. Proteins are the workhorses of organisms, produced from instructions encoded into cellular DNA. The identity of any given protein is dictated by a unique sequence of 20 chemicals known as amino acids. If the different amino acids can be viewed as letters of an alphabet, each protein sequence constitutes its own unique "sentence."
And, if a protein is 100 amino acids long (most proteins are even longer), there are an astronomically large number of possibilities of different protein sequences, Hecht said. At the heart of his team's research was to question how there are only about 100,000 different proteins produced in the human body, when there is a potential for so many more. They wondered, are these particular proteins somehow special? Or might others work equally well, even though evolution has not yet had a chance to sample them?
Hecht and his research group set about to create artificial proteins encoded by genetic sequences not seen in nature. They produced about 1 million amino acid sequences that were designed to fold into stable three-dimensional structures.
"What I believe is most intriguing about our work is that the information encoded in these artificial genes is completely novel -- it does not come from, nor is it significantly related to, information encoded by natural genes, and yet the end result is a living, functional microbe," said Michael Fisher, a co-author of the paper who earned his Ph.D. at Princeton in 2010 and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California-Berkeley. "It is perhaps analogous to taking a sentence, coming up with brand new words, testing if any of our new words can take the place of any of the original words in the sentence, and finding that in some cases, the sentence retains virtually the same meaning while incorporating brand new words."
Once the team had created this new library of artificial proteins, they inserted those proteins into various mutant strains of bacteria in which certain natural genes previously had been deleted. The deleted natural genes are required for survival under a given set of conditions, including a limited food supply. Under these harsh conditions, the mutant strains of bacteria died -- unless they acquired a life-sustaining novel protein from Hecht's collection. This was significant because formation of a bacterial colony under these selective conditions could occur only if a protein in the collection had the capacity to sustain the growth of living cells.
In a series of experiments exploring the role of differing proteins, the scientists showed that several different strains of bacteria that should have died were rescued by novel proteins designed in the laboratory. "These artificial proteins bear no relation to any known biological sequences, yet they sustained life," Hecht said.
Added Kara McKinley, also a co-author and a 2010 Princeton graduate who is now a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "This is an exciting result, because it shows that unnatural proteins can sustain a natural system, and that such proteins can be found at relatively high frequency in a library designed only for structure."
Source: Reprinted news release via Princeton University
CES 2011 Live Streaming Video Via Crunchgear
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011 has taken over Las Vegas! Can't make it? No problemo! CES 2011 is live streaming via Crunchgear. The video is below. Don't miss a thing!
Monday, December 27, 2010
Video Chat In Real Holographic 3-D With Microsoft's Kinect [Video]
Oliver Kreylos is at it again, hacking the Kinect into a real holographic 3-D video chat system.
Watch the video below to see the holographic capabilities of his Kinect hack. I know it may not be a "true" hologram, but what he has going here is something special. It's truly amazing. The "sci fi" holographic dream is nearly a reality. The future looks promising!
Via Popsci
Further reading -- http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/Kinect/
Click here for more cool videos
Watch the video below to see the holographic capabilities of his Kinect hack. I know it may not be a "true" hologram, but what he has going here is something special. It's truly amazing. The "sci fi" holographic dream is nearly a reality. The future looks promising!
Via Popsci
Further reading -- http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/Kinect/
Click here for more cool videos
Scientists Make Fuji The Dolphin An $83,000 Artificial Fin [Video]
Meet Fuji, the 37 year-old disabled dolphin. Several years ago, Fuji lost about 75% of her fin due to a very bad disease. Depressed and out of work, Fuji sought out any possible way to make a living.
Then In 2004, Bridgestone, the Japanese tire company, made her an artificial fin that gave her back her freedom. She can now perform tricks and stunts just like any other dolphin at her home in the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. The fin cost about $83,000 and is made mostly out of silicone. She now has a great life and has been sporting the artificial fin for 6+ years without any problems.
Rock on, Fuji!
Via Singularityhub, Diagonaluk
Then In 2004, Bridgestone, the Japanese tire company, made her an artificial fin that gave her back her freedom. She can now perform tricks and stunts just like any other dolphin at her home in the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. The fin cost about $83,000 and is made mostly out of silicone. She now has a great life and has been sporting the artificial fin for 6+ years without any problems.
Rock on, Fuji!
Via Singularityhub, Diagonaluk
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Futuristic Bionic Ballerina Outfit Has Built-In LED Lights And Lazers [Video]
In the video is Milena, a ballerina that has been training in Russia since the age of five. Watch her dance around and show off this Bionic Ballerina outfit to its full potential.
Via Dvice
Don't miss these videos:
In The Future There Is Sky Mowing
Beautiful Time Lapse Video Of The Stars Going Into The Night
In The Year 2525 Music Video
Michio Kaku On Transferring Human Consciousness Into Robots
Mars Movie: I'm Dreaming of a Blue Sunset
Christmas Greetings From Gwar
Echo The Flying Robot Quadrotor Plays Jingle Bells On The Piano [Video]
Echo decided to get some creative juices flying and perform for us some Jingle Bells on his favorite keyboard.
Echo is a flying robot of the quadrotor kind. He has a solid black frame and 5 sexy sets of blades. Any fembots interested? He's single!
Echo was filmed at Flying Machines Arena in Switzerland by Sergei Lupashin, Markus Hehn, Angela Schöllig and Raffaello D'Andrea.
Via Gawker
More cool videos:
In The Future There Is Sky Mowing
Beautiful Time Lapse Video Of The Stars Going Into The Night
In The Year 2525 Music Video
Michio Kaku On Transferring Human Consciousness Into Robots
Mars Movie: I'm Dreaming of a Blue Sunset
Christmas Greetings From Gwar
Echo is a flying robot of the quadrotor kind. He has a solid black frame and 5 sexy sets of blades. Any fembots interested? He's single!
Echo was filmed at Flying Machines Arena in Switzerland by Sergei Lupashin, Markus Hehn, Angela Schöllig and Raffaello D'Andrea.
Via Gawker
More cool videos:
In The Future There Is Sky Mowing
Beautiful Time Lapse Video Of The Stars Going Into The Night
In The Year 2525 Music Video
Michio Kaku On Transferring Human Consciousness Into Robots
Mars Movie: I'm Dreaming of a Blue Sunset
Christmas Greetings From Gwar
Friday, December 24, 2010
In The Year 2525 Music Video
The video below is a modernized music video of one of my favorite songs In the year 2525 by 
Zager & Evans
. In the year 2525, what will we find?My favorite part:
"Now it's been 10,000 years, Man has cried a billion tears,
For what, he never knew. Now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night, The twinkling of starlight.
So very far away, Maybe it's only yesterday."
Via frythegears and special thanks to Richard F Sterling for suggesting this!
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Michio Kaku On Transferring Human Consciousness Into Robots [Video]
What exactly is human consciousness?
Via BigThink
Check out Michio Kaku's latest book Physics of the Impossible.
Don't miss these:
Scientists Building Computers That Can Understand Human Emotions
"We're building emotionally intelligent computers, ones that can read my mind and know how I feel," Professor Robinson says. "Computers are really good at understanding what someone is typing or even saying. But they need to understand not just what I'm saying, but how I'm saying it."
Here is a video documentary explaining the process:
I guess in the future there will be no need for human to human contact? If computers can read your emotions and behave in a way that simulates a human being; who needs friends? Hm, I can imagine this technology being used to replace psychologists in the far future, can't you?
Hehe, that would be funny. That is until the created turn on the creators and with there new found knowledge of the entire human psyche, what could stop them?
Source: Cambridge University
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Robot Beethoven Plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star On The Piano [Video]
Don't you find this extremely adorable?
Via Botjunkie
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Futuristic Taiwan Tower To Have Floating Observatories
 |
| Credit: DSBA |
The conceptual design of the tower was made by a team from the companies Dorin Stefan Birou Arhitectura (DSBA), Upgrade.Studio, and Mihai Cracium, and led by DSBA principal architect Stefan Dorin from Romania. The tower design won first prize in the recent Taiwan Tower Conceptual International Competition. Dorin explained the design represented a "technological tree," with elevator observatories shaped like the island of Taiwan, which is leaf-shaped.
The tower, standing over 300 meters high, will include an information center, museum, office tower, conference venue, fixed and floating observation decks, restaurants, and an urban park. Read more at Physorg
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Thursday, November 18, 2010
Magnetic Trapping Will Help Unlock The Secrets Of Anti-Matter
As part of a major international experiment called ALPHA*, based at CERN in Switzerland, researchers have helped to achieve trapping and holding atoms of 'anti-hydrogen', which has not previously been possible.
The project involves physicists at Swansea University led by Professor Mike Charlton, Dr Niels Madsen and Dr Dirk Peter van der Werf and the University of Liverpool under Professor Paul Nolan, all supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
This breakthrough will make it possible to study 'anti-matter' closely for the first time, and so develop unprecedented insight into its composition/structure and improve understanding of the fundamental physical principles that underpin the Universe and the way it works.
For nearly a decade, scientists have been able to undertake the controlled production of anti-hydrogen atoms in the laboratory – a breakthrough which Swansea University also contributed to, with EPSRC support**. But as anti-matter particles are instantly annihilated when they come into contact with matter, it has not, until now, been feasible to study anti-hydrogen atoms in any detail.
ALPHA has therefore developed techniques that not only cool and slow down the anti-particles that make up anti-hydrogen and gently mix them to produce anti-hydrogen atoms, but also trap some of the anti-atoms for long enough so they can be studied.
The key focus of this effort has been the development of electromagnetic traps that have a number of cold species inside. These traps don't just provide the conditions needed to cool the anti-particles prior to mixing. The cold anti-atoms formed also have a tiny 'magnetic moment'*** which means they respond to magnetic fields. By arranging the magnet coils in the right way, it is possible to set up a magnetic 'well' in the centre of the anti-particle mixing zone where anti-hydrogen has been trapped.
"Every type of particle has its anti-matter equivalent which is its mirror image in terms of having, for instance, the opposite electrical charge" says Professor Charlton. "Because hydrogen is the simplest of all atoms, anti-hydrogen is the easiest type of anti-matter to produce in the laboratory. By studying it for the first time, we will be able to understand its properties and establish whether it really is the exact mirror image of hydrogen.
"That understanding will hopefully enable us to shed light on exactly why almost everything in the known Universe consists of matter, rather than anti-matter, and what the implications are in terms of the fundamental way that the Universe functions."
In order to detect the anti-hydrogen atoms they were released from the trap. The silicon detector used to determine the positions of the resulting annihilations was developed and built at Liverpool. Professor Nolan comments that "the unique clean room and workshop facilities in Liverpool, together with detector and electronics expertise, allowed us to build this complex and unique instrument that is now part of the ALPHA experiment."
Dr Niels Madsen notes: "Trapping of anti-hydrogen is a major breakthrough in antimatter physics. Having the anti-atoms trapped will allow for comparisons of matter and anti-matter to a level that until now would have been considered wishful thinking."
The initiative is expected to run for several years, with ALPHA commencing tests on anti-hydrogen atoms in around five years time.
Source: Reprinted news release via Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
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Wednesday, November 17, 2010
What Will Threaten Us In 2040? Tiny Robots?
These scenarios may sound like science fiction, but according to Dr. Yair Sharan, Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Technological Analysis and Forecasting (ICTAF) at Tel Aviv University, they're all within the realm of possibility in the next few decades. That's why it's critical for nations to be aware of the risks, and primed to mitigate them to avert another 9/11 or Mumbai terror attack.
As head of a pan-European project called FESTOS (Foresight of Evolving Security Threats Posed by Emerging Technologies: http://www.festos.org), Dr. Sharan and his colleagues are looking 30 years into the future to determine what our real technological threats will be. At the end of their three-year project, already underway, they'll issue a detailed task report to describe the threats and suggest to leaders of democratic nations how they can avoid them.
Forecasting disaster
Part of ICTAF's work looks for "signals" in politics, news reports, and advanced high-tech coverage to assess what technologies and applications could be used for future crime and terror. "While America did not foresee the scale of 9/11, the signs were there that such an act was a possible event," says Dr. Sharan. He calls 9/11 an example of a "wild card" –– an event or scenario with a low probability and a very high impact. "Our mission is to forecast wild card calamities, natural and manmade, so that nations can be alert and poised to avoid human casualties."
The FESTOS team's method also uses questionnaires and interviews with 250 experts from the United States and Europe in a variety of disciplines including chemistry, robotics and computer sciences. The research team analyzes the data to determine and classify future threats, and proposes strategies to mitigate the risks.
At Tel Aviv University, researchers dig into the numbers to estimate threat probabilities. With the input of technology pioneers and scientists, they are exploring what inventions might be available that are meant to improve our lives, but have the potential to be used for malicious purposes. They are "technology mapping," looking into possibilities such as robot terrorists, dangerous new chemicals, and pioneering materials born of biotech and nanotech.
The probability is that tomorrow's terror attacks will be information technology-related, Dr. Sharan predicts. Forecasters envision an attack on a country's energy supply, or a cyber attack on a major airport, especially since hackers of the White House and the Iran nuclear facility have shown how vulnerable critical infrastructure systems can be.
Experience with terrorism provides an advantage
Unfortunately, Dr. Sharan observes, democratic nations like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain have learned over the last decade that threats from terror are not limited to Israel. But Israel's unrelenting experience with terrorism, and Tel Aviv University's demonstrated expertise in forecasting, have created a laboratory for work that can have a profound impact on Western policy making and planning. And knowing what's possible will arm future leaders with the tools to protect their citizens.
After the forecasts in the FESTOS study are collected, the results will be shared with decision and policy makers in governments in Europe, Israel, the USA and other democratic nations. Policy makers will then be able to prepare for "foreseen" surprises.
Tel Aviv University is also taking a leading role in another significant foresight project. ICTAF centre now heads the Israel component of the Millennium Project — previously under the auspices of the United Nations — to assess the future state of the world in the areas of politics, science and technology, health practice, and economics.
Source: Reprinted news release via American Friends of Tel Aviv University
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International Research Team Trap 38 Antimatter Atoms
In the movie Angels and Demons
, scientists have solved one of the most perplexing scientific problems: the capture and storage of antimatter. In real life, trapping atomic antimatter has never
been accomplished, until now.A team made up of researchers from the University of Calgary, institutions across Canada and around the world have discovered how to trap atomic antimatter and the results of their discovery is published in the journal Nature.
“This is a major discovery. It could enable experiments that result in dramatic changes to the current view of fundamental physics or in confirmation of what we already know now,” says Dr. Rob Thompson, head of physics and astronomy at the University of Calgary and co-investigator in the ALPHA collaboration, one of two teams competing to gain a better understanding of antimatter and our universe.
Both teams, ALPHA and the Harvard-led ATRAP, have been at this race for over five years, conducting experiments in close quarters at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), the world's largest particle physics lab, located in the suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. CERN is the only laboratory in the world with the proper equipment where this research can be carried out.
“These are significant steps in antimatter research,” said CERN Director General Dr. Rolf Heuer, “and an important part of the very broad research programme at CERN.”
The goal of the competition involves trapping and storing the simplest of all antimatter atoms, antihydrogen, with the purpose of studying it. Hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element.
“We know a lot about matter, but very little about antimatter. We assume there was as much antimatter created in the Big Bang as matter. There are many questions. Where is the antimatter? Where did it go? And why does it appear that there is more matter than antimatter?” says Dr. Makoto Fujiwara, adjunct professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary and a research scientist at TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics.
ALPHA-Canada scientists and students have been playing leading roles in the experiment. “It's been a rare privilege and a tremendous learning experience taking part in this groundbreaking international endeavour,” says Richard Hydomako, a PhD student at the University of Calgary.
Trapping antimatter is tricky. When matter and antimatter get too close, they destroy each other, in a kind of explosion, leaving behind the energy which made them. The challenge is cooling the atoms off enough, 272 degrees below zero, so that they are slow enough to be trapped in a magnetic storage device.
“We've been able to trap about 38 atoms, which is an incredibly small amount, nothing like what we would need to power Star Trek's starship Enterprise or even to heat a cup of coffee,” says Thompson , one of 42 co-authors of the Nature paper along with the University of Calgary’s Makoto Fujiwara and graduate students Richard Hydomako and Tim Friesen.
“Now we can start working on the next step which is to use tools to study it,” adds Thompson.
The paper entitled Trapped Hydrogen is published in Nature
Source: Reprinted news release via University of Calgary
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Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Researchers Aim To Harvest Solar Energy From Pavement To Melt Ice, Power Streetlights
The heat radiating off roadways has long been a factor in explaining why city temperatures are often considerably warmer than nearby suburban or rural areas. Now a team of engineering researchers from the University of Rhode Island is examining methods of harvesting that solar energy to melt ice, power streetlights, illuminate signs, heat buildings and potentially use it for many other purposes.
"We have mile after mile of asphalt pavement around the country, and in the summer it absorbs a great deal of heat, warming the roads up to 140 degrees or more," said K. Wayne Lee, URI professor of civil and environmental engineering and the leader of the joint project. "If we can harvest that heat, we can use it for our daily use, save on fossil fuels, and reduce global warming."
The URI team has identified four potential approaches, from simple to complex, and they are pursuing research projects designed to make each of them a reality.
One of the simplest ideas is to wrap flexible photovoltaic cells around the top of Jersey barriers dividing highways to provide electricity to power streetlights and illuminate road signs. The photovoltaic cells could also be embedded in the roadway between the Jersey barrier and the adjacent rumble strip.
"This is a project that could be implemented today because the technology already exists," said Lee. "Since the new generation of solar cells are so flexible, they can be installed so that regardless of the angle of the sun, it will be shining on the cells and generating electricity. A pilot program is progressing for the lamps outside Bliss Hall on campus."
Another practical approach to harvesting solar energy from pavement is to embed water filled pipes beneath the asphalt and allow the sun to warm the water. The heated water could then be piped beneath bridge decks to melt accumulated ice on the surface and reduce the need for road salt. The water could also be piped to nearby buildings to satisfy heating or hot water needs, similar to geothermal heat pumps. It could even be converted to steam to turn a turbine in a small, traditional power plant.
Graduate student Andrew Correia has built a prototype of such a system in a URI laboratory to evaluate its effectiveness, thanks to funding from the Korea Institute for Construction Technology. By testing different asphalt mixes and various pipe systems, he hopes to demonstrate that the technology can work in a real world setting.
"One property of asphalt is that it retains heat really well," he said, "so even after the sun goes down the asphalt and the water in the pipes stays warm. My tests showed that during some circumstances, the water even gets hotter than the asphalt."
A third alternative uses a thermo-electric effect to generate a small but usable amount of electricity. When two types of semiconductors are connected to form a circuit linking a hot and a cold spot, there is a small amount of electricity generated in the circuit.
URI Chemistry Professor Sze Yang believes that thermo-electric materials could be embedded in the roadway at different depths – or some could be in sunny areas and others in shade – and the difference in temperature between the materials would generate an electric current. With many of these systems installed in parallel, enough electricity could be generated to defrost roadways or be used for other purposes. Instead of the traditional semiconductors, he proposes to use a family of organic polymeric semiconductors developed at his laboratory that can be fabricated inexpensively as plastic sheets or painted on a flexible plastic sheet.
"This is a somewhat futuristic idea, since there isn't any practical device on the market for doing this, but it has been demonstrated to work in a laboratory," said Yang. "With enough additional research, I think it can be implemented in the field."
Perhaps the most futuristic idea the URI team has considered is to completely replace asphalt roadways with roadways made of large, durable electronic blocks that contain photovoltaic cells, LED lights and sensors. The blocks can generate electricity, illuminate the roadway lanes in interchangeable configurations, and provide early warning of the need for maintenance.
According to Lee, the technology for this concept exists, but it is extremely expensive. He said that one group in Idaho made a driveway from prototypes of these blocks, and it cost about $100,000. Lee envisions that corporate parking lots may become the first users of this technology before they become practical and economical for roadway use.
"This kind of advanced technology will take time to be accepted by the transportation industries," Lee said. "But we've been using asphalt for our highways for more than 100 years, and pretty soon it will be time for a change."
Source: Reprinted news release via University of Rhode Island
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"We have mile after mile of asphalt pavement around the country, and in the summer it absorbs a great deal of heat, warming the roads up to 140 degrees or more," said K. Wayne Lee, URI professor of civil and environmental engineering and the leader of the joint project. "If we can harvest that heat, we can use it for our daily use, save on fossil fuels, and reduce global warming."
The URI team has identified four potential approaches, from simple to complex, and they are pursuing research projects designed to make each of them a reality.
One of the simplest ideas is to wrap flexible photovoltaic cells around the top of Jersey barriers dividing highways to provide electricity to power streetlights and illuminate road signs. The photovoltaic cells could also be embedded in the roadway between the Jersey barrier and the adjacent rumble strip.
"This is a project that could be implemented today because the technology already exists," said Lee. "Since the new generation of solar cells are so flexible, they can be installed so that regardless of the angle of the sun, it will be shining on the cells and generating electricity. A pilot program is progressing for the lamps outside Bliss Hall on campus."
Another practical approach to harvesting solar energy from pavement is to embed water filled pipes beneath the asphalt and allow the sun to warm the water. The heated water could then be piped beneath bridge decks to melt accumulated ice on the surface and reduce the need for road salt. The water could also be piped to nearby buildings to satisfy heating or hot water needs, similar to geothermal heat pumps. It could even be converted to steam to turn a turbine in a small, traditional power plant.
Graduate student Andrew Correia has built a prototype of such a system in a URI laboratory to evaluate its effectiveness, thanks to funding from the Korea Institute for Construction Technology. By testing different asphalt mixes and various pipe systems, he hopes to demonstrate that the technology can work in a real world setting.
"One property of asphalt is that it retains heat really well," he said, "so even after the sun goes down the asphalt and the water in the pipes stays warm. My tests showed that during some circumstances, the water even gets hotter than the asphalt."
A third alternative uses a thermo-electric effect to generate a small but usable amount of electricity. When two types of semiconductors are connected to form a circuit linking a hot and a cold spot, there is a small amount of electricity generated in the circuit.
URI Chemistry Professor Sze Yang believes that thermo-electric materials could be embedded in the roadway at different depths – or some could be in sunny areas and others in shade – and the difference in temperature between the materials would generate an electric current. With many of these systems installed in parallel, enough electricity could be generated to defrost roadways or be used for other purposes. Instead of the traditional semiconductors, he proposes to use a family of organic polymeric semiconductors developed at his laboratory that can be fabricated inexpensively as plastic sheets or painted on a flexible plastic sheet.
"This is a somewhat futuristic idea, since there isn't any practical device on the market for doing this, but it has been demonstrated to work in a laboratory," said Yang. "With enough additional research, I think it can be implemented in the field."
Perhaps the most futuristic idea the URI team has considered is to completely replace asphalt roadways with roadways made of large, durable electronic blocks that contain photovoltaic cells, LED lights and sensors. The blocks can generate electricity, illuminate the roadway lanes in interchangeable configurations, and provide early warning of the need for maintenance.
According to Lee, the technology for this concept exists, but it is extremely expensive. He said that one group in Idaho made a driveway from prototypes of these blocks, and it cost about $100,000. Lee envisions that corporate parking lots may become the first users of this technology before they become practical and economical for roadway use.
"This kind of advanced technology will take time to be accepted by the transportation industries," Lee said. "But we've been using asphalt for our highways for more than 100 years, and pretty soon it will be time for a change."
Source: Reprinted news release via University of Rhode Island
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