Resonantware: Near-future ubiquitous networking devices visualized by designers.

posted by Amit at 6:52 AM Comment (0)

Scramjet smashes world speed record

"Scramjets start operation at about Mach 6, or six times the speed of sound. Therefore, the aircraft needed to be boosted by an auxiliary rocket to its autonomous operating altitude."


posted by Farookh at 8:02 PM Comment (0)

The Sixth Great Extinction The Earth Policy Institute is tracking rates of animal extinction and comparing them to the great extinctions of the past, 65 million years ago (meteorite wipes out the dinosaurs), 208 million years ago, 245 million years ago (massive volcanic eruptions), 367 million years ago, and 440 million years ago (ice age). In each great extinction, 70-95% of all species of land or sea creatures suddenly (within a few thousand years) disappear. Current annual rates of species extinction are between 1,000-10,000 times greater than average extinction rates since the dinosaurs disappeared, indicating that the sixth known great extinction is underway. This will be the first known extinction precipitated substantially by a single species, and the first one that a single species could act to prevent.

posted by Kaushik at 4:58 PM Comment (0)

Ancient Indians made 'rock music': Archaeologists have rediscovered a huge rock art site in southern India where ancient people used boulders to make musical sounds in rituals.

posted by Kaushik at 8:54 AM Comment (0)

The sound of science : "Lars Liljeryd woke up one morning in 1996 with a hangover and an idea that would transform the science of digital audio.
A Swedish inventor and erstwhile rock drummer, Liljeryd had toyed with ways of compressing and transforming audio for years. That morning, he came up with a way of radically shrinking the amount of information needed to store a song or speech in digital form. "

posted by Farookh at 6:45 PM Comment (0)

Stretchy wires form bendy circuits: Rubbery electronics might be possible using gold springs.: "US researchers have made electronic circuits that can stretch like rubber. The flexible wires might create wearable electronics or artificial nerves that can bend inside the body."

posted by Farookh at 11:28 PM Comment (0)

Robot builder could 'print' houses

"A robot for 'printing' houses is to be trialled by the construction industry. It takes instructions directly from an architect's computerised drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs."

Sweet!

posted by Farookh at 11:30 PM Comment (0)

USB Swiss Army Knife

"The USB Swiss Army Knife is available with 64 or 128MB memory, plus all the usual extras - knife, corkscrew and tin-opener. The 64MB version will cost 55 euros; the price of the 128MB version is tba."

posted by Farookh at 11:23 PM Comment (0)

Came across Findory – a news portal that serves news that is personalized as you browse the site. Also gives the reason why it suggested a particular news article. TiVo for news?

“Findory News is a newspaper built just for you. Other web news sites show the same news to everyone, but not everyone is the same. Findory News shows you articles that you want to see. It adapts to your reading habits and emphasizes news articles from around the world that are most likely to be interesting to you.”

posted by Farookh at 11:12 PM Comment (0)

Calm mind creates complex tunes

As the listener relaxes more, different instruments start to play. The system could be employed as a useful stress-management application in the future.

posted by Farookh at 10:36 PM Comment (0)

Mars rovers see Earth, moons and stars
The Spirit rover on Mars took the first picture of Earth ever made from the surface of another planet. It also did a little astronomy, imaging bright stars.


posted by Farookh at 10:21 PM Comment (0)

Digital Archive of Art

Professor Jeffery Howe and a couple of contributors have made a wide variety of art available at The Digital Archive of Art, at http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/art/ . This site has over 20,000 scanned images divided into several categories, including painting, architecture, and sculpture.

posted by Farookh at 10:11 PM Comment (0)

posted by Farookh at 10:44 AM Comment (0)

Water-powered toy car

Looking ahead for a water-powered laptop!

posted by Amit at 11:50 PM Comment (0)

Fluid lense from Philips

Unlike high-end digital cameras, this new lens does not require mechanical moving parts because it works by manipulating two fluids in a tiny transparent tube.

The shape of the lens is adjusted by applying an electric field, whereby one of the two fluids is drawn to the edges while the other fluid fills up the remaining space in the tube. By changing the current, this lens can be shaped hollow, curvex or anything in between, so that it can focus on objects far away or as close as five centimeters.


posted by Amit at 5:08 AM Comment (0)

Broadband over Power Lines: "A unit of Cinergy Corp. today will become the nation's first electric utility to offer high-speed Internet service to customers via its power lines, turning every electrical outlet in homes or offices into a Web connection."

1 Mbps up and down unlike DSL which is asymmetric.

posted by Farookh at 10:23 PM Comment (0)

NTT announces holographic memory breakthrough: Called Info-MICA (Information-Multilayered Imprinted CArd), the new memory is capable of storing 1GB of data within the size of a postage stamp. For data storage, digital data is converted to a two-dimensional image which is then stored using holographic principles, on the special multi-layered media. For data retrieval, a laser beam will be used to re-convert the interference patterns back to the images and then the original data.

Also see http://www.info-mica.com/

Pity it is read-only. Perhaps we'll soon be able to buy movies for a couple of dollars that we can play on our cellphones.

posted by Kaushik at 10:41 AM Comment (0)

Antarctic dinosaurs found in icy graves: "Two new species of dinosaur, one a meat eater, the other a plant eater, have been found in Antarctica, by an international team of scientists."

posted by Farookh at 9:38 PM Comment (0)