Like I always say, keep looking at nature because your problem may have already been solved. You just have to look a little closer.
Video cameras on your cellphone could soon be good enough to record a jazz concert, a nighttime street scene, or a candlelit dinner. A Swedish start-up has created an algorithm, inspired by dung beetles, that can be integrated into camera modules to offer high-quality video in extremely low light situations.
Not really ice up the nose, but the idea is something I’ve seen before. You’ve read stories where someone who has “drowned” in icy cold water but is revived later due to having a low enough body temperature to keep brain damage to minimum.  This is a great new tool for EMT’s to give those in need an edge.
After cardiac arrest, lowering someone’s body temperature can prevent life-threatening brain damage. It’s so critical that New York City requires ambulances to take some patients up to 20 minutes out of the way to hospitals with cooling equipment. EMTs could improve patients’ chances further using RhinoChill, a new portable nose spray that cools the brain on the scene.
Synthetic crystal insulation that reflects heat! Wow this is a good one!
Deep-space probes and scientific devices in Antarctica could soon get a new form of insulation based on synthetic crystals that stop and reflect heat. Such material could eventually lead to the best insulation ever created, even at room temperatures.
The crystals work by manipulating phonons, or vibrational waves that can carry either sound or heat depending on the frequency. Each crystal structure consists of alternating layers of silicon dioxide and a polymer material, so that the spacing between similar layers matches the wavelength of phonons. That allows the material to block and reflect back the phonons in the form of heat.
How would you solve a problem, especially one where you need water and normal resources are too far away? How about if you went fishing for water?
Catching fog with nets is the solution to water scarcity for people who live beyond the reach of utility lines in this sandy hillside shantytown overlooking Peru’s capital, Lima.
Good vibrations yea! Power generated from random vibrations which could mean that as you move you can make your own energy. Never again without a power source for your mobile devices?
Tiny generators developed at the University of Michigan could produce enough electricity from random, ambient vibrations to power a wristwatch, pacemaker or wireless sensor.
The energy-harvesting devices, created at U-M’s Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems, are highly efficient at providing renewable electrical power from arbitrary, non-periodic vibrations. This type of vibration is a byproduct of traffic driving on bridges, machinery operating in factories and humans moving their limbs, for example.
The Parametric Frequency Increased Generators (PFIGs) were created by Khalil Najafi, chair of electrical and computer engineering, and Tzeno Galchev, a doctoral student in the same department.
Most similar devices have more limited abilities because they rely on regular, predictable energy sources, said Najafi, who is the Schlumberger Professor of Engineering and also a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
I love simple and I love this invention! Come on people lets start following this example and make something happen.
No one really knows why, but for an open wound, simply applying suction dramatically speeds healing times. (The theory is that the negative pressure draws bacteria out, and encourages circulation.) But for almost everyone, that treatment is out of reach–simply because the systems are expensive–rentals cost at least $100 a day and need to be recharged every six hours.
Wrap your head around this little goody. If this is something that can be brought to market we really are on the verge of a new age.
Could you imagine a laptop battery that lasted for 500 hours? How about an electric car that boasts a range many times that of a gasoline vehicle? For that matter, think about environmental sensors that could be scattered into the air like dust and collect data. While the last thing might not exactly be what you want for Christmas, a breakthrough in energy production made by MIT researchers could make such technology a reality during the next few years.
Actually I doubt they would care about money and instead start demanding more equipment if they continue on the course set by this first robot scientist.
When it comes to being a scientist, Adam is quite the standout. No, he is not a Nobel Prize Laureate or even a prodigy. He’s more like a prototype – the first robot to design, perform, and interpret a series of scientific experiments leading to a new discovery. As anyone who has taken a high school science class can confirm, taking detailed notes is an integral part of doing science. Unfortunately, this is one area where even the most dedicated scientists can fall short. Unless of course that scientist is a robot that can record the experiments as they are being performed. As if the development of an autonomous robot with a knack for science wasn’t impressive enough, Adam quickly wowed his creators by solving a yeast genetics puzzle that had baffled researchers for decades! And it’s not difficult to imagine the advantages of a robot scientist in the laboratory. Adam and his counterparts will significantly increase the rates at which important advancements are made, inching us closer to the time when robots are more our colleagues than our tools. Check out the video below to see Adam carrying out a typical experiment. Continue Reading »
This is an interesting idea but I think for it to work it would require a lot more surface cooling to actually work. When you’ve been through several hurricanes as I have here in Florida, it’s hard to imagine being able to make a difference in the power of a hurricane. I think you would have to also consider the long term effects a device like this would have on ocean.
Getting more from what you already have is a key to true invention.
The new fuel-injection system is placed into this sports car which weighs approximately the same as the Toyota Prius hybrid and has similar aerodynamics. The new fuel injection system gets better gas mileage than the Prius hybrid. Continue Reading »
