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A Sixth Sense for a Wired World
2007-12-31 07:02:00
Steve Haworth holds up a rare earth magnet with his magnetic implant.What if, seconds before your laptop began stalling, you could feel the hard drive spin up under the load? Or you could tell if an electrical cord was live before you touched it? For the few people who have rare earth magnets implanted in their fingers, these are among the reported effects -- a finger that feels electromagnetic fields along with the normal sense of touch.It's been described as a buzzing sensation, a tingling, an oscillation, movement, pure stimulation and, in the case of body-modification expert Shannon Larrett's encounter with a too-powerful antitheft gateway at a retail store, "Like sticking your hand in an ultrasonic cleaner."Body-mod artists Jesse Jarrell and Steve Haworth's original idea was to implant a magnet to carry metal gadgets. It turns out that doesn't work: If you try to carry something magnetic on your implant regularly, the pinched skin between the magnets dies and your body rej...
More About: Sense , World , Wired , Sixth Sense

i-Snake 'will transform surgery'
2007-12-31 06:45:00
'Experts are developing a flexible surgical robot, known as the i-Snake , which they say could revolutionise keyhole surgery.'The i-Snake is highly flexibleIt could enable surgeons to do complex procedures previously possible only through more invasive techniques.A team at Imperial College London has been granted £2.1 million for the work.They envisage using the i-Snake - a long tube housing special motors, sensors and imaging tools - for heart bypass surgery.But it could also be used to diagnose problems in the gut and bowel by acting as the surgeon's hands and eyes in hard to reach places inside the body.The Imperial College team, which includes health minister and surgeon Lord Ara Darzi, will test the device initially in the laboratory before it is used on patients.Minimally invasive surgery has obvious advantages - it can mean smaller scars, reduced hospital stays and shorter recovery times.Surgeons are also looking at ways to avoid skin incisions altogether.One approach is Na...
More About: Surgery

Can baking soda curb global warming?
2007-12-30 13:18:00
Some scientists have proposed compressing carbon dioxide and sticking it in underground caves as a way to cut down on greenhouse gases. Joe David Jones wants to make baking soda out of it. Jones, the founder and CEO of Skyonic, has come up with an industrial process called SkyMine that captures 90 percent of the carbon dioxide coming out of smoke stacks and mixes it with sodium hydroxide to make sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda. The energy required for the reaction to turn the chemicals into baking soda comes from the waste heat from the factory. "It is cleaner than food-grade (baking soda)," he said. The system also removes 97 percent of the heavy metals, as well as most of the sulfur and nitrogen compounds, Jones said.Luminant, a utility formerly known as TXU, installed a pilot version of the system at its Big Brown Steam Electric Station in Fairfield, Texas, last year. Skyonic, meanwhile, hopes to install a system that will consume the greenhouse gas output of a large--500 mega...
More About: Global Warming , Baking , Global , Soda , Baking Soda

Sshhh, It's Listening!
2007-12-30 10:02:00
ScienceDaily (Dec. 30, 2007) ? 'Keyboards are a necessary part of today?s computers, right? Maybe not for much longer. A group of European scientists have used acoustic sensors to turn wooden tabletops and even three-dimensional objects into a new type of computer interface.'Sound vibrating a windowpane or through a tabletop is something most people experience daily. Sound waves travel well through most solid materials. Now, European researchers have exploited the excellent propagation of sound waves through solids to turn everyday objects ? including 3D objects ? into a new kind of computer interface.By attaching sensors to solid materials, researchers from TAI-CHI, a project working with Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction, were able to locate exactly and track acoustic vibrations. Tapping on discrete areas of a whiteboard could generate musical notes on a computer. Tracking the sound of a finger scrawling words on a sheet of hardboard could translate, in...
More About: Listening

IBM Dishes Five Predictions for Future
2007-12-28 17:07:00
'Company offers its second annual pitch of five predictions for what we'll see in the next five years.'Drained by your commute? Blood-sucking utility bills got you down? Wondering if that tomato in your dinner salad was really organic?The cures to those bills and more may arrive within five years, according to IBM.The company recently released its second annual set of "Next Five in Five" predictions, visions that sketch out a future where driving is a relative pleasure, eco-friendly devices save you money and super doctors use advanced technology to probe your body's innermost depths in search of disease.IBM's contention that driving will become safer and less aggravating may be particularly tantalizing for many.The company said that during the next five years, a "wave of connectivity" between vehicles and roadways will help keep traffic flowing smoothly, drive down pollution and get you to your destination easier, "without the stress."This will be accomplished through "intelli...
More About: Future , Predictions , Dishes

How to Turn your Wii into a Virtual Reality Device
2007-12-28 16:45:00
'Nintendo, watch and learn!'Softpedia has shown you cool uses of the Wiimote, courtesy of Johnny Chung Lee and it seems that the man is at it again, delivering us a neat invention, based once again on Nintendo's hot console. There's even a great tutorial video beneath, so feel free to check it out or even try it yourself, in case you want to test the Wii's potential. This time, we're dealing with a head tracking device created with the aid of a Wii remote and head mounted sensorbar.You'll also be able to use two infra-red LEDs instead of the standard Wii sensor bar, in order to track the location of your head and get a bite out of virtual reality. As shown in the video below, the display will react perfectly to your movements (of the head and body), turning into some sort of window towards the VR universe. It's a great illusion of 3D space and depth and this experiment uses a software, which is in fact a "custom C# DirectX program as is primarily provided as sample code for ...
More About: Reality , Desktop , Virtual Reality , Virtual , Device

Fuel Cell Prototype Works with Toxic Waste!
2007-12-27 19:03:00
'New device filters heavy metals from water and produces energy at the same time.'While some groups of scientists are still struggling to develop the highly efficient hydrogen fuel cells they have promised some decades ago, others are slowly moving towards alternative solutions that would not only burn fuel, but would also clear toxic waste messes created during mining operations, and could produce electricity in much the same way as the traditional fuel cells.The new idea involves using contaminated water, with high amounts of heavy metals that can seep all the way through the layers of earth to the underground water deposits, contaminating themas well. Most of the times such toxic water eliminated in industrial process contains metals, like arsenic or lead of iron, that are relatively difficult and expensive to filter out.In the hope that they would succeed in attacking two problems at the same time, meaning the water decontamination process and creating an alternative source of...
More About: Fuel , Cell , Works , Prototype , Waste