Cool Tech

[Anenome]

I'm going to list cool tech here, kind of like the cool pictures thread.
Enjoy :)

New discovery might lead to laptops powered through typing (http://www.gizmag.com/self-powered-battery-piezoelectrics-rmit-research/19007/)
http://i.imgur.com/Dcafb.jpg (http://www.gizmag.com/self-powered-battery-piezoelectrics-rmit-research/19007/)

[Anenome]

Awhile back, someone here seemed not to understand what I meant when talking about small nuclear batteries. Well, here ya go:

A nuclear battery the size and thickness of a penny (http://www.gizmag.com/smaller-nuclear-battery/13076/)
http://i.imgur.com/ftQqv.jpg

[Anenome]

Now I just need a lightsaber and a planet full of Wookies...

Australian built Hoverbike prepares for takeoff (http://www.gizmag.com/hoverbike/18813/)
http://i.imgur.com/p3e1z.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/wI8tO.jpg

[sai tyrus]

*waves hand*

"These aren't the droids you're looking for."

[Anenome]

Perhaps you're looking for this 'Droid then? :P

First (glasses-free) 3D Android phone from HTC. Who was it said 3D was a gimmick? It's going to be everywhere. Glasses-free means it's the same tech being used on the Nintendo 3DS (ie: lenticular lens).

Glasses-free HTC EVO 3D smartphone announced for Europe, available in U.S. (http://www.gizmag.com/htc-evo-3d-available/19051/)
http://i.imgur.com/YBInI.jpg
The 3D camera on the back is a nice touch!

[Anenome]

This is going to change everything. The future is going to be awesome.

This machine is a step towards translating all physical objects into digital files. This machine can accept CAD files which digitally represent 3D physical objects, and then print them directly in plastic. They can then be used as is, or made into mold and cast in a heftier material such as aluminum or iron, etc.

New printer produces 3D objects on demand (http://www.gizmag.com/go/2578/)
http://i.imgur.com/2fHGj.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/k9z7A.jpg

[Anenome]

More PCM news:

Phase change materials could be used to develop ‘brain-like’ computers (http://www.gizmag.com/brain-like-computers-using-pcms/19036/)
http://i.imgur.com/t4Vvp.jpg

[spdiscus]

Now I just need a lightsaber and a planet full of Wookies...

Other forums might tar and feather you for that.

[lockwoodx]

So now we have an Imgur dump and a Geek Loogie dump :D

edit: you're welcome for mentioning geek loogie =P

[Anenome]

Other forums might tar and feather you for that.
We all know the Ewoks were actually Wookiees that they decided last minute to make cute and cuddly for toy purposes >_>

[Anenome]

So now we have an Imgur dump and a Geek Loogie dump :D

edit: you're welcome for mentioning geek loogie =P
Think of it as sharing or 'hitting the like button' without the medium of a social network in-between.

And btw, geekologie writes too many low-class sexual references into their pieces for my taste. He writes like a nerd who dwells on sex mentally because he can't get any ._. or something.

[lockwoodx]

You're seriously critiquing the quality of articles from image sites?

Just do like I do and review it in your mind as you take in the interpretation of the piece.

[Cygnus]

Gimmick...

Perhaps you're looking for this 'Droid then? :P

First (glasses-free) 3D Android phone from HTC. Who was it said 3D was a gimmick? It's going to be everywhere. Glasses-free means it's the same tech being used on the Nintendo 3DS (ie: lenticular lens).

Glasses-free HTC EVO 3D smartphone announced for Europe, available in U.S. (http://www.gizmag.com/htc-evo-3d-available/19051/)
http://i.imgur.com/YBInI.jpg
The 3D camera on the back is a nice touch!

[Suicidal ShiZuru]

Gimmick...

Indeed, that phone in particular uses the 3D as a huge gimmick.

[sai tyrus]

This is going to change everything. The future is going to be awesome.]

Read about that. Pretty cool.

[lockwoodx]

This is going to change everything. The future is going to be awesome.

This machine is a step towards translating all physical objects into digital files. This machine can accept CAD files which digitally represent 3D physical objects, and then print them directly in plastic. They can then be used as is, or made into mold and cast in a heftier material such as aluminum or iron, etc.

New printer produces 3D objects on demand (http://www.gizmag.com/go/2578/)
http://i.imgur.com/2fHGj.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/k9z7A.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KG7_lTAji-Y/Th_PpSWEMSI/AAAAAAAAP1U/JZR3f8Ez2cM/s1600/3d_printer.png

[sai tyrus]

Very nice sir.

[Anenome]

Researchers create artificial lung that works with air rather than pure oxygen (http://www.gizmag.com/artificial-lung/19332/)

http://i.imgur.com/X8Nph.jpg

[lockwoodx]

http://blog.enveeapparel.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/6f9ab_blue_fruits.jpg
http://blog.enveeapparel.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/6ab54_blue_fruits2.jpg

We all love fruit but they’re not exactly cheap and usually demand to be eaten sooner than later, otherwise the ravages of time wreak havoc on them. Blue is a concept fruit bowl that utilizes Action Fresh Blue technology - the same one found in the Halo vacuum and many new refrigerators. The blue wavelength inhibits and kills bacteria thereby prolonging shelf life.

The fruits retain their nutritional value and you get a cool looking dockable, rechargeable bowl to boot. If that still doesn’t convince you, how about the thought of a cool blue glowing ring of light? I mean just that alone is enough to make me wanna go out and get one.

Designer: Ahmet Bektes, Koray Gelmez & Eda Kose

[lockwoodx]

Sorry I don't mean to keep cock-blocking your pics tonight. Wired from too much Rockstar and in a bombing mood lol.

[Anenome]

The problem of battery storage may be about to be solved! This battery combines the best aspects of capacitors and batteries in a truly lightweight and solid-state material! Hello electric cars.

Solid-state capacitor said to combine best qualities of batteries and capacitors (http://www.gizmag.com/solid-state-capacitor/19625/)

http://i.imgur.com/mjDM8.jpg

Capacitors are able to charge and discharge more quickly than batteries, and can do so hundreds of thousands of times. Batteries, on the other hand, are able to store more energy than capacitors. There are also electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs), otherwise known as supercapacitors, that can hold battery-like amounts of energy while retaining the charge/discharge speed of regular capacitors. EDLCs incorporate liquid or gel-like electrolytes, however, which can break down under hot or cold conditions. Now, a new solid-state supercapacitor developed at Houston's Rice University is using nanotechnology to get around that limitation.

The Rice researchers started out by growing an array of 15-20 nanometer bundles of single-walled carbon nanotubes, each up to 50 microns in length. This "nanotube forest" served to maximize the surface area available to electrons.

That array was subsequently transferred to a copper electrode, that included thin layers of gold and titanium to help with electrical stability and adhesion. In an atomic layer deposition process, the bundles (which served as the primary electrodes) were next doped with sulfuric acid to boost their conductivity. They were then covered with aluminum oxide, which served as a dielectric layer, and aluminum-doped zinc oxide, which acted as the counterelectrode. Finally, the circuit was completed with a top electrode of silver paint.

http://i.imgur.com/Shlw0.jpg

The Rice supercapacitor is reportedly stable and scalable, holds a charge under high-frequency cycling, and isn't adversely effected by harsh temperatures. It could also be incorporated into other materials, allowing for electric car bodies that double as batteries, or microrobots that serve as their own power supply.

"All solid-state solutions to energy storage will be intimately integrated into many future devices, including flexible displays, bio-implants, many types of sensors and all electronic applications that benefit from fast charge and discharge rates," said Cary Pint, who co-led the research.

Technology that combines the attributes of capacitors and batteries is also being developed at the University of Illinois, where scientists are creating nanostructured lithium-ion batteries that charge and discharge 10 to 100 times faster than regular li-ions.

[Anenome]

This one is really cool...

Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster (http://mashable.com/2011/09/09/breakthrough-the-secret-to-making-processors-1000-times-faster-video/)

http://i.imgur.com/THWJ5.png

If you want to make processors 1,000 times faster, you’re going to need some serious technology, right? That would be the conventional wisdom. But 3M and IBM (http://mashable.com/follow/topics/ibm/) have unlocked a secret low-tech shortcut.

The companies found a much simpler way to hit that elusive goal — not by creating some spectacular new circuitry or using exotic quantum mechanics, but with the invention of a new variety of a mundane substance: glue.

This is not just any glue. It’s an adhesive that dissipates heat so efficiently that layer upon layer of chips can be stacked on top of each other into silicon “towers” up to 100 layers high, glued together with this special adhesive that keeps things cool. The result? Faster chips for computers, laptops, smartphones and anything else that uses microprocessors.

With IBM supplying its microprocessor and silicon expertise and 3M contributing its super-cool adhesive, the two companies aim to stack together processors, memory chips and networks into monster “skyscrapers” of silicon they say will be 1,000 times faster than today’s fastest processor.
When can we get our hands on this breakthrough tech? IBM’s media relations representative Michael Corrado tells us, “By the end of 2013 it should go into production. It’ll show up on servers first, and then a year after that consumers might see it.”

And to think, we were impressed with a promise of processors that will be 20 times faster (http://mashable.com/2010/12/28/1000-core-chip-could-make-pcs-20-times-faster/).

Here’s a video illustrating this exciting new breakthrough (no sound):
rbj5vrXulD0

I think it's not that this would be faster in terms of clock-speed, but rather by this method we will see the world's first three-dimensional chip designs, and there's very interesting things you can do when you have three dimensions.

Talk about computer on a chip designs? Piece of cake. For one thing, you could put all of your system ram on the CPU, eliminating the von neumann bottleneck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture#Von_Neumann_bottleneck). If eliminated in fact, it would be the most radical improvement to CPUs since the invention of mask lithography :P Right now we have on-chip memory called cache which is bleeding fast compared to system ram, but can you imagine if instead of a few megabytes of cache-ram our CPUs suddenly had gigabytes of bleeding-fast ram! Shit just got real.

Thus, a CPU's ability to crunch data will improve massively, resulting in a massive improvement in performance, possibly reaching that "1000 times faster" figure, as CPUs spend a lot of time waiting these days.

Now all we need are superconducting interconnects between transistors :P

And can you imagine what the heat-sink will look like >_> Liquid cooling might be an absolute requirement for 3D chips of this type!

[Anenome]

Thin Film Transforms Any Surface Into a Massive Multitouch Screen (http://singularityhub.com/2011/09/18/thin-film-transforms-any-surface-into-a-massive-multitouch-screen/)

http://i.imgur.com/IWEhl.jpg

Open up a cardboard tube, roll out a transparent film just millimeters thick, apply it on a flat object and *tada* you’ve got an interactive touch surface. Cambridge-based Visual Planet just launched its new massive-sized multitouch thin film drivers so you can create touchscreens from 30 to 167 inches in size! Their touchfoil is a transparent nanowire embedded polymer capable of sensing the touch of a finger, or even pressure from wind and translating that to a computer interface. It works on glass, wood, and other non-conductive surfaces. Along with their many partners, Visual Planet can ship a custom built film (almost) anywhere on the planet and help you create a unique interactive display that will turn heads and hold attention. Check out some of their many applications using LCD screens, rear projection, and more in the videos below. Is this proven technology just a novelty, or will it help transform our environment into a digital wonderland?

[Anenome]

Ruh-roh...

Speed-of-light experiments give baffling result at Cern (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484)
Puzzling results from Cern, home of the LHC, have confounded physicists - because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light.

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.

The result - which threatens to upend a century of physics - will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists.

In the meantime, the group says it is being very cautious about its claims.

This could change everything, if verified.

[Kreigmstr]

There was an article on Business week talking about this. They mentioned that this was instigated by some Japanese researchers detecting neutrinos several hours before they received light from an exploding star in 1987. It also says the findings in CERN match another experiment at the University of Minnesota in 2007.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-09-23/neutrinos-caught-speeding-may-break-einstein-s-cosmic-limit.html

[Anenome]

Honestly, it wouldn't be too surprising (to me as a novice) if light wasn't the fastest thing in the universe, as there's many things so far below the level of a wavelength of light. It would be earth shattering to physics, but that would ultimately be a good thing as we'd learn new answers by asking new questions.

This does open the way for faster gravitation too, should it bear out. Wait and see :)

By that I mean that science had assumed that since nothing could move faster than light that gravitation itself could propagate no faster than light.

[Anenome]

Brewing Up Double-Edged Delicacies for Mosquitoes (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/health/27mosquito.html?_r=2&ref=global-home)

On what food do mosquitoes live? Orgiastic gouts of human blood that distend their abdomens and render them almost unable to move — right?

Well, actually, no.

To lay eggs, females do need blood for its iron and protein. But usually mosquitoes subsist on modest sips of nectar from flowers or from ripe or rotting fruit.

And that, according to scientists from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is an Achilles’ heel — or Achilles’ proboscis — through which the pests can also be poisoned.

“You can’t move flowering trees around,” said Yosef Schlein, a parasitologist at the university’s medical school. “So you have to use movable bait. That’s how we came up with fruit juice.”

Supported by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Schlein and his research partner Günter C. Müller concocted an array of nectar poisons known as Attractive Toxic Sugar Baits that are easy to make, environmentally friendly and inexpensive.

In tests in Israel and in West Africa, the baits knocked down mosquito populations by 90 percent...

[Anenome]

HP plans to release first memristor memory alternative to flash and solid state drives in 18 months (http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/10/hp-plans-to-release-first-memristor.html)
HP intends to have an alternative technology to flash on the market in eighteen months, (http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/06/10/2011/51988/ief2011-hp-to-replace-flash-and-ssd-in-2013.htm) an alternative to DRAM in three to four years and, following DRAM, a replacement for SRAM, Stan Williams, Senior Fellow at HP, told the IEF2011 meeting in Seville this morning...

...We have a lot of big plans for it and we're working with Hynix Semiconductor to launch a replacement for flash in the summer of 2013 and also to address the solid-state drive market," Williams told the audience of the International Electronics Forum.

Williams said that the memristor metrics being achieved, in terms of energy to change a bit, read, write time, retention and endurance, were so compelling that the HP-Hynix team now considered flash replacement a done deal...

..."Now we’re going after DRAM, and we think we can do two orders of magnitude improvement in terms of switching energy per bit."

HP’s technology allows the memory layers to be put directly on top of the processor layer making for very fast systems on chip.

"We put the non-volatile memory right on top of the processor chip, and, because you’re not shipping data off-chip, that means we get the equivalent of 20 years of Moore’s Law performance improvement," said Williams.

"We’re running hundreds of wafers through the fab," said Williams, we’re way ahead of where we thought we would be at this moment in time."

HP’s approach is memristor, thin film technology which it allows it to stack an "arbitrary number of layers," said Williams, with 500 billion memristors per layer at 5nm.

Asked if HP was going back into the components business, Williams replied: "We’re the world’s largest purchaser of DRAM and the second largest buyer of flash and we’re trying to disrupt and re-arrange our supply chain. The plan is to license this technology to anyone who wants it, and we’ll teach them how to make it. But you’ll have to stand in line, we have a bunch of people queued for it. We’re doing this because, frankly, we didn’t see a hell of a lot of innovation happening out there."

Asked about the competition, Williams said: "Samsung has An even larger group working on this than we do."

...Williams touted the cross-point nature of the memristor memory switch or resistive RAM device as a memory capacity advantage over flash memory. "Whatever the best in flash memory is, we'll be able to double that."


Wow. Just wow. This is going to change the entire industry. Full-size SSDs, here we come.

[stalazon]

^ If that hits the market in the next couple years? Fuck yeah!

[Anenome]

Btw this:
"We put the non-volatile memory right on top of the processor chip, and, because you’re not shipping data off-chip, that means we get the equivalent of 20 years of Moore’s Law performance improvement," said Williams.
Means they've broken the Von Neumann bottleneck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture#Von_Neumann_bottleneck)! It's revolutionary!

20 years of Moore's Law performance improvement means 13 orders of magnitude improvement over current chips! That's a generation of improvement, instantly! It would be like going from 100mhz chips to today's 4ghz chips (but the improvement won't be speed, but rather crunching ability--it will seem much, much faster tho).

[Anenome]

Photoshop's new "unblur" tech makes audience gasp:

xxjiQoTp864

[Anenome]

Origo’s 3D Printer Could Be The Last Toy Your Ten Year Old Will Ever Need

http://i.imgur.com/VYNbZ.jpg
Origo (http://www.origo3dprinting.com/) may be the last toy you ever have to buy for your child. The prototype 3D printer under development by Artur Tchoukanov and Joris Peels allows children aged ten and up to design figurines and shapes on a computer, and then print them out to play with. Instead of buying your children more toys, let them make their own. Check out the incredible idea behind Origo in the concept video below.

24309743

[LilBunnyFuFu]

Photoshop's new "unblur" tech makes audience gasp:

xxjiQoTp864

Fuck me sideways! That is astounding! I gasped, at home, alone.

Also, what the hell kind of screen was that? It looked impressive!

[Suicidal ShiZuru]

Interesting tech but what a terrible freaking presentation.

[lockwoodx]

kMriPq9k278

Now for some useful cool tech that is launching this valentines day.

[Ravijn]

Maybe we will get hover boards soon?

Ws6AAhTw7RA

[Anenome]

Maybe we will get hover boards soon?
Buy a skate rink, line it with superconducting material and NO2 cool it. Put powerful neodymium magnets on a board and there you go :P But if you fall on the near-absolute-zero frozen floor...

[Anenome]

Man reinvents the wheel:
30555070
Yes, the bicycle actually works! Arad’s revolutionary wheel design has the power to change the future of bicycles. A traditional bicycle wheel consists of many different parts and materials including a hub, axle, bearings, spokes, tubes, rubber tire, and more. Arad’s wheels are 100% steel; there are no other materials or complicated assembly involved. I imagine if the “Two Nuns Bicycle” was mass manufactured, the cost would be lower than a traditional bicycle.

Who wouldn’t want to ride on an inexpensive, innovative bicycle like this?

[LilBunnyFuFu]

The only problem I see with that is traction. On wet ground or loose dirt and gravel you wouldn't have any grip. And when I first saw it I thought that, based on the design of the wheels and their unique "flower" appearance, that they would bend and separate to allow traction when climbing stairs. I think with a little more refinement you could do just that.

[Anenome]

The only problem I see with that is traction. On wet ground or loose dirt and gravel you wouldn't have any grip. And when I first saw it I thought that, based on the design of the wheels and their unique "flower" appearance, that they would bend and separate to allow traction when climbing stairs. I think with a little more refinement you could do just that.
Yeah, I figure you put a rubber strip along the outside edge for the metal to press into, and curve the metal a bit so it isn't flat like in that vid, and you'd have something that works. Also would be nice if they put plastic washers in there to silence the metal from rubbing on itself.

[lockwoodx]

I wonder what the max weight it supports is.

[Anenome]

I just bought one of these Mighty Wallets, it's ultra-thin, made of Tyvek, and sports a number of designs, even blank ones that can be written on, as well as leather-prints:
http://www.mightywallets.com/

[lockwoodx]

Not bad for 15 bucks but I'll stick to my genuine Tumi.

[Ravijn]

MgN4r1YufcI

[Anenome]

MgN4r1YufcI
That's dope. I seriously thought of these probably 15 years ago, but have never seen it done. One concern was if people have polarized sunglasses they might be able to see it, but if you use circular-polarization you should be good (circle polarization still kinda blows my mind that it's even possible).

[lockwoodx]

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZvrM0-hantU/TtOAb4snJZI/AAAAAAAAQ8E/FhrEexQDMAc/s1600/inv+geekfill.jpg

[Anenome]

Bridgestone's airless tires are designed to never go flat (http://www.gizmag.com/bridgestone-airless-tires/20710/)

http://i.imgur.com/hcLYJ.png

This week at the Tokyo Auto Show in Japan, Bridgestone showed off its latest development - puncture-less air-free tires. The tires are still in the concept phase, but have been successfully tested on single-person vehicles in Japan traditionally used for elderly people.
The 9-inch wheels have thermoplastic-resin spokes that radiate from the rim to the tread, curving to the left and right for maximum structural support. The tires' solid design doesn't require air, and consequently can't be punctured - so, no more flat tires.

Also interesting is the material the tires are made of, which is entirely recyclable.

Still in the testing phase, Bridgestone plans to heavily evaluate the tires' performance on traditional cars before making them available to the general pubic.

[Ravijn]

5dlUi3DnrzA#!

I'll take one please.

[Anenome]

Breakthrough could double solar energy output (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/environment/la-me-gs-breakthrough-double-solar-energy-output-20111216,0,3897047.story)

http://i.imgur.com/DrTaz.jpg

A new discovery from a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin may allow photovoltaic solar cells to double their efficiency, thus providing loads more electrical power from regular sunlight.

Not only that, but it’s way cheap. Chemistry professor Xiaoyang Zhu and his team discovered that an organic plastic semiconductor could double the number of electrons harvested out of one photon of sunlight. Yep, plastic...

This could be the start of the solar revolution. The amount of energy put out by the sun is by far more than we could ever use, even with nighttime cutting off the source, so we'd just store it for night-use.

With enough solar harvesting we could eliminate oil importation entirely. We could switch to biodiesel for instance, using algae to produce diesel on the cheap in a sustainable way.

This article says they're getting efficiencies now of 41% or so, and economic viability is around the 30% mark. Prepare for a future where your roof is a solar cell :P

[lockwoodx]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IrNgrqIb8Gs/TwrdWgqU0NI/AAAAAAAARf4/iRVknkx-QvQ/s1600/tumblr_lu2r4fdg2z1qahhxwo1_500.gif

[Anenome]

IBM researchers make 12-atom magnetic memory bit (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16543497)

http://i.imgur.com/dOKNs.jpg
Researchers have successfully stored a single data bit in only 12 atoms.

Currently it takes about a million atoms to store a bit on a modern hard-disk, the researchers from IBM say.

They believe this is the world's smallest magnetic memory bit.

According to the researchers, the technique opens up the possibility of producing much denser forms of magnetic computer memory than today's hard disk drives and solid state memory chips.

"Roughly every two years hard drives become denser," research lead author Sebastian Loth told the BBC.

"The obvious question to ask is how long can we keep going. And the fundamental physical limit is the world of atoms.

"The approach that we used is to jump to the very end, check if we can store information in one atom, and if not one atom, how many do we need?" he said.

Below 12 atoms the researchers found that the bits randomly lost information, owing to quantum effects...

Looks like SSDs are gonna have a harder time catching up to spinning disks than we thought :P

Bring on the petabyte drives! :D

[Anenome]

Tiny magnetically-levitated robots could change the game for robotics (http://www.gizmag.com/magnetically-levitated-microbots/21171/)

This is frickin' amazing and could change everything. Unfortunately, no embeddable video. Click the link for two amazing videos.

[Anenome]

Graphene: The perfect water filter (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120126100639.htm)

http://i.imgur.com/3KDY4.jpg (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/115909-graphene-the-perfect-water-filter)

http://i.imgur.com/AA1hE.jpg

In an experiment, the University of Manchester researchers filled a metal container with a variety of liquids and gases and then covered it with a film of graphene oxide. Their most sensitive equipment was unable to register any molecules leaving the container, except water vapor. The graphene oxide filter even prevented helium gas from escaping, which is notoriously finicky.

In another experiment, Dr Nair & Co. sealed a bottle of vodka with the graphene filter. This allowed just the water to evaporate, effectively distilling it into super-vodka. Beyond silly experiments, though, it’s easy to see the awesome potential of this new filter. With an ever-increasing strain on the world’s water supplies, water filtration is one of the hottest (and most valuable) topics at the moment — and by the sound of it, if graphene oxide really is completely impermeable to everything except water, this new filter would make clean water out of anything. Sea water, gray water, sewage…

[Anenome]

2012 a Big Year for MakerBot – New 3D Printer, $Millions in Funding, and Huge Growth Ahead (http://singularityhub.com/2012/01/22/2012-a-big-year-for-makerbot-%E2%80%93-new-3d-printer-millions-in-funding-and-huge-growth-ahead/)
Three years ago they had three employees and were still trying to keep their equipment from breaking down. Now MakerBot employs 75, has millions in funding, and 7500+ of their printers in use. The Brooklyn-based company is the epitome of a successful tech startup, all the more remarkable because their devices are completely open source hardware – free for anyone to build or modify on their own. MakerBot hopes to continue their phenomenal growth of the past few years by starting off 2012 with a bang. They’ve just released the Replicator, a bigger and badder 3D printing bot that can produce almost anything out of hard plastic up to the size of about a loaf of bread. It can even use two colors at once. The winner of the Best Emerging Tech Award at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, the Replicator is just one of the many ways in which MakerBot is staying on top of the 3D printing world.
euZivv8ySyA

oRXpfnCAlM8

[Suicidal ShiZuru]

I remember everyone doubted the MakerBot. I'm glad to see it succeed.

[lockwoodx]

Makerbot... because building models was too geeky, but it's ok when a machine makes it for you. Damn razy Americans!!!

[Anenome]

Makerbot... because building models was too geeky, but it's ok when a machine makes it for you. Damn razy Americans!!!
Lockwood wouldn't download a car :P

[Whimbrel]

Hey, I remember when I posted about that steering wheel desk thing a long time ago

Now somebody made a poster out of it. I feel so abused. And I like it.

Check out the user submitted product images here-

http://www.amazon.com/Wheelmate-Laptop-Steering-Wheel-Desk/dp/B000IZGIA8/ref=cm_cmu_pg__header

[lockwoodx]

Lockwood wouldn't download a car :P

If the chinese can find a way to pirate it, you bet they will!

[Anenome]

Graphene acts as plasmonic antenna, leads towards 0.1nm wires in chips (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/116549-graphene-acts-as-plasmonic-antenna-leads-towards-0-1nm-wires-in-chips)
http://i.imgur.com/NTUxy.jpg
Are you sick of graphene-related breakthroughs (http://www.extremetech.com/tag/graphene) yet? No? Excellent! That’s good news because I’m about to write the coolest, sexiest, most scientific sentence you’ll ever see on ExtremeTech. A team of researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has shown that single-atom silicon defects in sheets of graphene act like atomic antennae, turning graphene into a plasmonic device capable of converting optical signals into electronic signals and vice versa.

Was that as good for you as it was for me? Anyway, getting back to business, the basic gist of this discovery is that the scientists may have found an incredibly novel way of transmitting data on an atomic scale. As it stands, the smallest communication channels in state-of-the-art CMOS are 0.05 microns, or 50nm. Here we are talking about two sheets of graphene connected by a two-atom silicon wire that’s around 0.1nm in diameter...

Holy shit

[Agnostic Pope]

Holy shit indeed. Wait what does this mean?

[Anenome]

Holy shit indeed. Wait what does this mean?
Well, there's the specter of plasmonic transistors ;)
As far as applications for this discovery go, we’re really treading along the bleeding edge. Most plasmonic applications are purely theoretical at the moment. Plasmons could be used as an interconnect on computer chips, as they support frequencies up to hundreds of terahertz (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/114975-nano-scale-terahertz-antenna-created-hand-held-tricorders-incoming), while copper wires max out in the gigahertz range. You’ll be happy to hear that some scientists have created a plasmonic transistor called a plasmonster, too.
Also along the same lines, plasmons have been used — in a lab setting — to perform very high resolution lithography and microscopy.

So, how about a CPU that runs in the dozens of terahertz? :P (Interconnects are always much faster than the resulting chip). Might also be able to create some light-based CPUs, since it's the interchange of electricity and light that's been largely missing. Could improve fiber-optic switching as well.

[Anenome]

83 year-old woman got 3D printed mandible (http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/02/05/83-year-old-woman-got-3d-printed-mandible/)

http://i.imgur.com/7sLpf.jpg
The University of Hasselt (Belgium) announced today that Belgian and Dutch scientists have successfully replacing a lower jaw with a 3D printed model for a 83 year-old woman. According to the researchers, It is the first custom-made implant in the world to replace an entire lower jaw.

The lower jaw of the elderly woman was badly infected and needed to be removed. Considering the age of the patient, a “classical” microsurgical reconstructive surgery takes too long time and can be risky. Therefore a tailor-made implant is the best choice.

Normally it takes a few days to produce a custom implant, but with 3D printing technology it takes only a few hours.


(note: Pictured above a prototype from 2008, not the actual implant! You can bet the actual is more sophisticated!)

[Anenome]

Scientists 'Record' Magnetic Breakthrough (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120207133506.htm)

http://i.imgur.com/hU1Kz.jpg

An international team of scientists has demonstrated a revolutionary new way of magnetic recording which will allow information to be processed hundreds of times faster than by current hard drive technology.

The researchers found they could record information using only heat -- a previously unimaginable scenario. They believe this discovery will not only make future magnetic recording devices faster, but more energy-efficient too...

Modern magnetic recording technology employs the principle that the North pole of a magnet is attracted to the South pole of another and two like poles repulse. Until now it has been believed that in order to record one bit of information -- by inverting the poles of a magnet -- there was a need to apply an external magnetic field. The stronger the applied field, the faster the recording of a magnetic bit of information.

However, the team of scientists has demonstrated that the positions of both the North and South poles of a magnet can be inverted by an ultrashort heat pulse, harnessing the power of much stronger internal forces of magnetic media.

So basically we're now using (femtosecond?) laser pulses to record magnetic hard-disks. I never would've called that one >_>

Aaaand this probably means that HDD performance will start to match the speed of SSDs.

[Anenome]

D-Shape 3D printer can print full-sized houses (http://www.gizmag.com/d-shape-3d-printer/21594/)
http://i.imgur.com/QzxLo.jpg
When printing your future house, there's no need to stick with flat walls and box shapes--those are anachronisms of our building materials. What shapes would people choose to live in if any shape were equally efficient and cost-effective? I think we'd choose lithe curves, hobbit-hole-style rounded dwellings.
The D-Shape is potentially capable of printing a two story building - complete with stairs, partition walls, columns, domes, and piping cavities - using only ordinary sand and an inorganic binder. The resulting material is said to be indistinguishable from marble, and exhibits the same physical properties, with durability highly superior to that of masonry and reinforced concrete.

The building process is very close to what we'd expect of a huge 3D printer. A nozzle moves along a pre-programmed path, extruding a liquid adhesive compound on a bed of sand with a solid catalyst mixed in. The binding agent reacts with the catalyst, and the solidifying process begins. Meanwhile, the remaining sand serves to support the structure. Then, another layer of sand is added and the whole process is repeated. Since it's computer assisted, no specialist knowledge is required to use the printer. All that's needed is a CAD design file... Reportedly, the building process takes a quarter of the time required to build an equivalent structure with traditional means.
http://i.imgur.com/ujuPV.jpg

29984723

[Anenome]

Vortex radio waves could boost wireless capacity “infinitely” (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/120803-vortex-radio-waves-could-boost-wireless-capacity-infinitely)

http://i.imgur.com/BlVhU.jpg?3831

Science! Damn that's awesome :D
After four years of incredulity and not-so-gentle mocking, Bo Thide of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics and a team in Italy have finally proven that it’s possible to simultaneously transmit multiple radio channels over exactly the same wireless frequency. In theory, according to Thide, we could potentially transmit an “infinite number” of TV, radio, WiFi, and cellular channels at the same time over the same frequency, blasting apart our highly congested wireless spectrum.

The transmitter, sliced on one edge and offset to produce the corskcrew-wave shape!:
http://i.imgur.com/j1KNc.jpg

[Anenome]

New technology allows for high-speed 3D printing of tiny objects (http://www.gizmag.com/two-photon-lithography-fast-3d-printer/21800/)

http://i.imgur.com/wGyaE.jpg

I, for one, would like to welcome our new micro-machine overlords.
Are 3D printers not amazing enough already? Apparently some scientists at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) didn't think so, as they have now built one that can create intricate objects as small as a grain of sand. While the ability to 3D-print such tiny items is actually not unique to the TU Vienna device, the speed at which it can do so is. According to the researchers, this makes the commercial production of things such as medical implants much more viable.
5y0j191H0kY

[Anenome]

IBM unveils one trillion bit-per-second optical chip (http://www.gizmag.com/ibm-holey-optochip/21799/)


http://i.imgur.com/vRFPC.jpg?8910

Isn't that one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen? :)
Last Thursday at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference in Los Angeles, a team from IBM presented research on their wonderfully-named "Holey Optochip." The prototype chipset is the first parallel optical transceiver that is able to transfer one trillion bits (or one terabit) of information per second.

To put that in perspective, IBM states that 500 high-def movies could be downloaded in one second at that speed, while the entire U.S. Library of Congress web archive could be downloaded in an hour. Stated another way, the Optochip is eight times faster than any other parallel optical components currently available, with a speed that's equivalent to the bandwidth consumed by 100,000 users, if they were using regular 10 Mb/s high-speed internet.

One of the unique features of parallel optic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_optical_interface) chips is the fact that they can simultaneously send and receive data. The Holey Optochip capitalizes on that feature, for its record-setting performance.

Holy download speed, Batman!

[BeardedSonOfNel]

YguB-keZ4Tk

[BeardedSonOfNel]

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors.

uK367T7h6ZY

[Anenome]

If Iran was serious about building nuclear power for energy, they'd be using thorium. They don't need uranium. That's how we know they're going for a nuclear bomb.

[BeardedSonOfNel]

Russia working on electromagnetic radiation guns.


WHILE many believed it to be an April Fool's Day joke, Vladimir Putin has confirmed Russia has been testing mind-bending psychotronic guns that can effectively turn people into zombies.

The futuristic weapons - which attack their victims' central nervous system - are being developed by scientists and could be used against Russia's enemies and even its own dissidents by the end of the decade.

Mr Putin has described the guns, which use electromagnetic radiation like that found in microwave ovens, as entirely new instruments for achieving political and strategic goals.


Russia always talks big, but this would be nasty if true!

Read the rest here (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/technology/sci-tech/russia-working-on-electromagnetic-radiation-guns/story-fn5iztw3-1226317396841).

[Anenome]

Kit lets you build your own retro Nixie Tube Desk Clock (http://www.gizmag.com/diy-nixie-tube-desk-clock-kit/22516/)
http://i.imgur.com/D6KHs.jpg?1?2232
WANT
If you’re a fan of things retro and an electronics do-it-youselfer, this might might be just the thing for you – it’s a kit that lets you built your own clock, that displays the time using wonderfully outdated nixie tubes.

The kit is priced at US$149.99.
Source: ThinkGeek (http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/lights/ebe6/#tabs)