One-way sound transmission system allows for sound control, energy-harvesting

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created the first tunable acoustic diode — a device that allows acoustic information to travel only in one direction, at controllable frequencies.

The researchers used experiments, simulations, and analytical predictions to demonstrate one-way transmission of sound in an audible frequency range for the first time.

This new mechanism brings the idea of true soundproofing closer to reality, the researchers said. This enables someone in room A to hear sound coming from room B; however, it would block the same sound in room A from being heard in room B.

To obtain a sharp transition between transmitting and non-transmitting states, the team created a periodic system with a small defect that supports this kind of quick change from an “on” to an “off” transmission state. The system is very sensitive to small variations of operational conditions, like pressure and movement, making it useful in the development of ultrasensitive acoustic sensors to detect sound waves. The system can also operate at different frequencies of sound and is capable of downshifting, or reducing the frequency of the traveling signals, as needed.

The system is based on a simple assembly of elastic spheres — granular crystals that transmit the sound vibrations — that could be easily used in multiple settings, can be tuned easily, and can potentially be scaled to operate within a wide range of frequencies. Its application could reach far beyond soundproofing, the researchers said.

Potential uses include architectural acoustics for sound control within buildings, biomedical ultrasound devices, advanced noise control, and thermal materials aimed at temperature control.

“We propose to use these effects to improve energy-harvesting technologies,” she says. “For example, we may be able to scavenge sound energy from undesired structural vibrations in machinery by controlling the flow of sound waves away from the machinery and into a transducer. The transducer would then convert the sound waves into electricity.” Daraio says the technology can also shift the undesired frequencies to a range that enables a more efficient conversion to electricity.

Touchscreen keyboard morphs to fit your typing style

Typing on a touchscreen is not one of life's pleasures: the one-size-fits-all nature of most virtual keyboards is a hassle that puts many of us off using them. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen journalists put down an iPad, for instance, and pick up a laptop or netbook to do some serious notetaking or writing.

IBM, however, says it doesn't have to be that way. In a recently filed US patent application, three IBM engineers posit the notion of a virtual keyboard in which the position of the keys and the overall layout is entirely set by the user's finger anatomy. That way, they argue, people will be better able to type at speed, with all keys within comfortable range and so end up, with fewer errors.

After an initial calibration stage, in which the keyboard asks users to undertake a series of exercises to set response time, anatomical algorithms get to work, sensing through the touchscreen the finger skin touch area, finger size and finger position for the logged in user.

As this information is gathered - IBM does not say over what period this learning takes place - the virtual key buttons are automatically resized, reshaped and repositioned in response.

The patent shows a keyboard with some keys subtly higher than others, and with some fatter than others. This "adapts the keyboard to the user's unique typing motion paths" governed by their different physical finger anatomies, says IBM, which suggests the idea being used in both touchscreen and projected "surface computing" displays.

There does seem scope for such ideas. In a review of the Apple iPad, review website MacInTouch said: "A touch typist found it frustratingly glitchy versus a real keyboard, producing all sorts of ghost characters when the screen repeatedly misinterpreted his fingers' intentions."

Perhaps anatomical profiling is just what's needed.

Removable ‘cloak’ for nanoparticles helps them target tumors

A new type of drug-delivery nanoparticle that could target nearly any type of tumor and carry virtually any type of drug has been developed by chemists at MIT.

The new nanoparticles are cloaked in a polymer layer that protects them from being degraded by the bloodstream and can survive in the bloodstream for up to 24 hours.

This outer layer falls off after entering the slightly more acidic environment near a tumor, revealing another layer that is able to penetrate individual tumor cells.

The tumor acidity is a byproduct of the tumor’s intensified metabolism. Tumor cells grow and divide much more rapidly than normal cells, and that metabolic activity uses up a lot of oxygen, which increases acidity. As the tumor grows, the tissue becomes more and more acidic.

To build their targeted particles, the researchers used a technique called “layer-by-layer assembly.” This means each layer can be tailored to perform a specific function.

When the outer layer (made of polyethylene glycol, or PEG) breaks down in the tumor’s acidic environment, a positively charged middle layer is revealed, allowing the nanoparticle to penetrate the negatively charged cell membrane.

The nanoparticles’ innermost layer can be a polymer that carries a cancer drug, or a quantum dot that could be used for imaging, or virtually anything else that the designer might want to deliver.

These particles are the first that have been successfully tested in living animals by targeting acidity, the researchers said.

FDA approves eyesight-enhancing technology

The FDA has approved the use of a refractive surgery technology called the Rochester Nomogram, says Scott MacRae, M.D., who helped develop the formula at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

With the aid of the Nomogram, 99.3 percent of the eyes that MacRae operates on using LASIK surgery have vision of 20/20 or better. The Nomogram was first created and tested about five years ago by MacRae working together with Manoj Venkiteshwar, Ph.D.

Venkiteshwar and MacRae helped to create a field known as customized ablation, a form of LASIK that corrects subtle imperfections, bringing about a super-crisp quality of eyesight. Beyond making vision on the order of 20/15 or 20/16 possible or even commonplace in some groups of patients, the technology also increases the eye’s ability to see in situations where there is low light or little contrast.

They calculated the subtle effects that customized ablation can have on the eye and how the eye shunts around light. Specifically, they found that fixing subtle imperfections that hadn’t even been recognized before offered new opportunities for enhancing a person’s vision. They developed the Rochester Nomogram to allow surgeons to take advantage of this information during refractive surgery.

The FDA approval is the latest development in a nearly 20-year-long project by University of Rochester scientists and physicians to study and improve human vision, explains MacRae. MacRae is the author of two best-selling books on customized ablation, including Customized Corneal Ablation: The Quest for Supervision.

How to ‘print’ a nylon bike

EADS, the European aerospace and defense group, has unveiled the world’s first bike “grown” from powder, allowing complete sections to be built as one piece.

Known as the “Airbike,” it is made of nylon but strong enough to replace steel and requires no conventional maintenance or assembly. It can be built to rider specification and requires no adjustment.

The “revolutionary” manufacturing process is known as Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM). It allows single products to be grown from a fine powder of metal (such as titanium, stainless steel or aluminum), nylon or carbon-reinforced plastics. Similar in concept to 3D printing, the bike design is perfected using computer-aided design and then constructed by using a powerful laser-sintering process that adds successive, thin layers of the chosen structural material until a solid, fully-formed bike emerges.

The technology is likely to be employed in industrial applications such as aerospace, the motor industry and engineering. Studies show that for every 1kg reduction in weight, airlines can save around $3500 worth of fuel over the lifespan of the aircraft, with corresponding reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions.

The company claims the process itself uses about one-tenth of the material required in traditional manufacturing and reduces waste, and allows products to be produced quickly and cheaply on “printers” located in offices, shops and houses. It would allow replacement components to be produced in remote regions, improving logistics on humanitarian relief and military operations.

World's First Eye-controlled Laptop Presented At CeBIT 2011

Computer manufacturer Lenovo has partnered with Swedish startup Tobii Technology to launch the world's first eye controlled laptop which will be on display as from today at CeBIT in Hannover.

The prototype is a fully functional model and according to the manufacturer provides with a more intuitive interface as it relies on the human eyes to point, select and scroll and complements, rather than replace, existing control interfaces.

Henrik Eskilsson, CEO of Tobii Technology, says that it is only a matter of years before the technology becomes an integral part of the average computer as the tracking technology is mature enough and only needs to be miniaturised and mass produced to cut down on price.

Only 20 eye controlled laptops have been produced for demonstration and development purposes; one of the more obvious applications of the laptop would be help people with special needs.

Others include the capability to zoom pictures or maps and automatically centre on the area you wish to look at; glance at an icon or widget to bring up more information.

In addition, the screen's brightness can be auto dimmed and brightened as it recognised the user's eyes, in order to save power.

Tobii's technology relies on 13 patent families that cover aspects such as sensor technology, illumination methods, data transfer mechanisms and eye control interaction techniques.

Amongst them is what it calls a physiological 3D model of each individual's eyes which it calls TrueEye, something that could be used for biometric applications.

Barbara Barclay, general manager of Tobii North America, hinted at future collaborations saying that "what we find most exciting are the opportunities that eye control as part of multi-modal interfaces offer consumer electronics manufacturers in a range of product categories".

These could include more intuitive user interfaces for smartphones and mobile devices as well as gaming applications (integration with accessories like the Kinect for example).

How to make a digital microscope for £15

Headphones Built Into Your Hoodie N other Tech Clothing

A phone built into the sleeve of a dress. Gloves that enable you to swipe a touchscreen on the ski slope. Solar-powered backpacks. Here are nine examples of apparel that blurs the line between clothing and tech gear.

Pimp up your Kinect Controller

Texting with no Hands!

2ND GENERATION EXOSKELETON ROBOTIC SUIT

Ultra High speed Process

Researchers at Sun Yat-Sen University in China have demonstrated a way to record on ferromagnetic films using laser-assisted ultrafast magnetization reversal dynamics. The development will allow for practical use of new technology for recording more than 6,000 terabits (6 petabits) of data on a single 5-inch disc, using ultra-high-density magneto-optical storage devices.

The new ultrafast recording technique uses “time-resolved polar Kerr spectroscopy” combined with an alternating magnetic field strong enough to re-initialize the magnetization state of gadolinium-iron-cobalt (GdFeCo) thin films. The researchers showed that the magnetization reversal could occur on a sub-nanosecond time scale, which implies that next-generation magneto-optical storage devices can not only realize higher recording densities but also ultrafast data writing of up to a gigahertz — at least thirty times faster than that of present hard disks in computers.

Laser-assisted magnetic recording was demonstrated on a sub-picosecond time scale under a saturated external magnetic field. “We found that the rate of magnetization reversal is proportional to the external magnetic field,” says Tianshu Lai, “and the genuine thermo-magnetic recording should happen within several tens to hundreds of picoseconds when we apply a smaller magnetic field than the coercivity of the recording films.”

Rescue Robot in Action

Less Than 1 Year Until The Internet Runs Out of Addresses

With a maximum of just over 4 billion unique addresses, the Internet will run out of Internet addresses in about 1 year’s time, due to an explosion of data about to happen to the Web — thanks largely to sensor data, smart grids, RFID and other Internet of Things data; the increase in mobile devices connecting to the Internet; and the annual growth in user-generated content on the Web.

The solution: IPv6, the next generation Internet Protocol, which uses a 128-bit address, vs. 32 bit with the current IPv4.

India develops 35-dollar 'laptop' for schools

India has come up with a 35-dollar touch-screen "laptop" -- a computing prototype that it aims to make available to students from elementary schools to universities.

The gadget, developed by the elite Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science, is part of a push to give students a better education and technical skills needed to boost India's economic growth.

The first users are expected to be university students with introduction of the Linux-based computing device targeted for next year.

The ministry is going to install broadband Internet at all of its 22,000 colleges so students can use the 1,500-rupee (35-dollar) device, government spokeswoman Mamta Verma told AFP on Friday in New Delhi.

The tablet gadget, which can be run on solar power, is equipped with an Internet browser, video-conferencing capability and a media player, among other facilities.

"This is part of the national initiative to take forward inclusive education," Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal told reporters on Thursday.

"The solutions for tomorrow will emerge from India," he said.

Sibal said the cost of the motherboard, chip, processing and other components cost a total of around 35 dollars but the government may subsidise 50 percent of the price for students.

Sibal said the government, which hopes the cost of the device can eventually fall to 10 dollars, is in discussions with global manufacturers to start mass production of the device.

India, whose 63 percent literacy rate lags far behind many other developing nations, such as China with 94 percent, is making efforts to improve its troubled education system, which lacks investment in schools and teachers.

Why HOT water freezes quicker than COLD water

HOT water sometimes freezes faster than cold water - but why? This peculiar phenomenon has baffled scientists for generations, but now there is evidence that the effect may depend on random impurities in the water.

Fast-freezing of hot water is known as the Mpemba effect, after a Tanzanian schoolboy called Erasto Mpemba (see "How the Mpemba effect got its name"). Physicists have come up with several possible explanations, including faster evaporation reducing the volume of hot water, a layer of frost insulating the cooler water, and differing concentration of solutes. But the answer has been very hard to pin down because the effect is unreliable - cold water is just as likely to freeze faster.

James Brownridge, who is radiation safety officer for the State University of New York at Binghamton, believes that this randomness is crucial. Over the past 10 years he has carried out hundreds of experiments on the Mpemba effect in his spare time, and has evidence that the effect is based on the shifty phenomenon of supercooling.

"Water hardly ever freezes at 0 °C," says Brownridge. "It usually supercools, and only begins freezing at a lower temperature." The freezing point depends on impurities in the water which seed the formation of ice crystals. Typically, water may contain several types of impurity, from dust particles to dissolved salts and bacteria, each of which triggers freezing at a characteristic temperature. The impurity with the highest nucleation temperature determines the temperature at which the water freezes.

Brownridge starts with two samples of water at the same temperature - say, tap water at 20 °C - in covered test tubes and cools them in a freezer. One will freeze first, presumably because its random mix of impurities give it a higher freezing point.

If the difference is large enough, the Mpemba effect will appear. Brownridge selects the sample with the higher natural freezing temperature to heat to 80 °C, warming the other to only room temperature, then puts the test tubes back in the freezer. The hot water will always freeze faster than the cold water if its freezing point is at least 5 °C higher, Brownridge says.

It may seem surprising that moving the finish line by only 5 °C makes enough of a difference, when the hotter sample starts out 60 °C behind in the race. But the bigger the temperature difference between an object and its surroundings - in this case, the freezer - the faster it cools. So the hot sample will do most of its cooling very quickly, helping it to reach its own freezing point of -2 °C, say, before the cooler water gets to its freezing point of -7 °C.

Wireless 'thought-to-text' cap

LONDON — A team of researchers from IMEC, the Holst Center and the lab of neuro- and psychophysiology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven has presented Mind Speller, a thought-to-text device intended to help people with motor disabilities.

A number of research institutes are working on similar devices which make use of electro-encephalogram (EEG) brainwaves and positive biological feedback so that individuals can use thought processes alone to control a cursor or a computer action.

The Mind Speller,uses a portable device, the size of a matchbox, connected to a cap that contains electrodes located at specific positions on the head to capture the relevant EEG-signals. The electronics in the matchbox are developed by IMEC and the Holst Center. It contains IMEC's and Holst Center's proprietary eight-channel EEG-chip to process the EEG signals, a commercially available microcontroller that digitizes the EEG signals and a 2.4-GHz radio that transmits the EEG signals wirelessly to a nearby PC. The data is interpreted on the PC by signal processing algorithms developed by the team of Professor Marc Van Hulle at the lab of neuro- and psychophysiology of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

"The Mind Speller is a generic device that can be easily adjusted to different users. Therefore, it could be a cost-efficient communication solution for people with temporal impairments for whom the existing solutions are too expensive. Moreover, the Mind Speller may help those patients that are not helped with the existing devices driven by motor activity, as the Mind Speller is based on a different principle, using P300 EEG potentials to read people's thoughts," said Professor Van Hulle.

IMEC is adapting the electronics to allow it to work with dry electrodes, thus making the system less difficult to use.

Your Life: The Shirt-Pocket Movie

by Eirc A Taub

Think of it as Twitter with pictures. With a miniature wearable camcorder called the uCorder, you can document every mundane aspect of your life, from tying your shoes to going into the subway.
uCorder

The uCorder is about the size of a stick of gum. You can attach it to your belt, put it on a lanyard around your neck or slip it into a shirt pocket. Additional flash memory can be added to either of the two models, the $80 IRDC150 and $100 IRDC250, which come with 1GB and 2GB of memory, respectively, giving you either 36 or 72 minutes of video. The larger-capacity model can also double as a Web cam, using the included mount.

The uCorder records in 640 by 480 resolution using the AVI format. A built-in LED can help in low-light situations.

Playing videos from the device was simple. I just connected the uCorder to my Mac and double-clicked on the file that appeared on the desktop. In my tests, I found the video to be of good quality, but the audio was filled with lots of background noise and hum. While the device comes with a lanyard, don’t dangle the uCorder from it while you’re walking around, or you’ll be taking a lot of pictures of your shirt as the device twirls around your neck.

While the video quality was certainly acceptable watching in a small computer screen, don’t expect to use the uCorder to record life’s important events. Leaving a camcorder to find its own way around your neck or in your pocket will not make for the most compelling imagery. However, if you’re interested in recording a college lecture or the interaction between you and your date, it might do the trick.

The Blue Brain Project