Tuesday, 27 May 2008

Hydraulic Transmission Cuts Fuel Costs In Half

Inventor Ernie Brookins has engineered a hydraulic transmission that is able to power vehicles without the need to have the engine running all the time.

The invention could be used on just about any vehicle and Brookins believes the invention could cut motorists’ fuel bills in half.


The hybrid drive system works by capturing, compressing and storing “wasted” drive-train energy. This energy is produced when a vehicle’s engine is running.

The compressed air pushes hydraulic fluid through a piston-driven torque converter that is capable of propelling a vehicle at highway speeds without the engine running, Brookins says.


An embedded computer system, once fully developed, would switch the vehicle’s power source automatically between engine and hybrid drive, though the engine will still have to run around 50 percent of the time.

“If we went out on the road, I could maintain 60 miles per hour with the engine turned off,” Brookins said.

Anything that uses diesel (fuel) or gas for power could utilise the invention. Cars, delivery trucks, school buses, postal vehicles, semi-trailers or even train locomotives would make good candidates.

Brookins said the invention can be available for commercial markets within six months of having investors and other funding sources that can provide the $250,000 needed to mass produce it.

If there is anyone out there interested in backing this breakthrough invention, Forum Business Editor Craig McEwen has contact with Ernie and can be reached at (701) 241-5502

Photo credit: in-forum.com

Tuesday, 27 May 2008

Regenerative Medicine Grows Back Body Parts

A history-making procedure was performed on an American soldier last week to grow back a finger he lost to a bomb attack last year in Baghdad.

Doctors applied a specially formulated powder to the remaining part of the finger in an effort to duplicate what salamanders do naturally – grow back missing body parts.


Army Sgt. Shiloh Harris is part of a major new study called “regenerative medicine” that is being investigated by several of America’s top medical facilities and the Pentagon. $250 million has been dedicated to the research already.

The key to body part regeneration lies in a powder which is made from tissue extracted from pigs.


The powder tricks the body into regrowing the missing part by building a microscopic “scaffold” that attracts stem cells and encourages them to grow into the specific tissue required. If it’s on skin, skin will grow. If its on a tendon, tendon will grow.

All bodies have stem cells. They are what grow our fingers, toes and organs as we are developing in our Mothers’ wombs. Our whole body is essentially made by stem cells.

Although this sounds like science fiction, there have been successful experiments and on a much larger scale.

“They have taken a uterus out of a dog, made one in the lab, put it back in, and had puppies,” said Dr. Steven Wolf of Brooke Army Medical Center.

Also, a human bladder has been regrown and implanted in a patient by researchers and is working perfectly.

Harris will be watched over closely by doctors looking for any side effects that might occur. “It could grow a cancer,” Wolf said. “We will be closely monitoring for that to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“If we can pull this off in missing parts the next step is, ‘OK, can we grow a pancreas? Can we grow and replace that in a diabetic?’ And can we do the same thing with a kidney and can we do the same thing with a heart?”

He hopes that one day people with heart trouble will be told, “That’s OK. We will just grow you another one.

“That is something that is real science fiction,” he said.

Photo credit: CNN

Tuesday, 27 May 2008

Apple Considers Solar iPods And iPhones

Apple has lodged new patent applications that reveal the company is thinking about using solar power for future portable devices such as iPods and iPhones.

Solar-powered chargers have been around for a while, but are cumbersome and require lots of sunlight. Integrating solar panels directly into portable devices might not replace chargers completely, but could dramatically extend the period between top-ups.


According to MacRumors, who has seen one of the patent applications, Apple is planning to stick the solar panels behind the LCD display instead of attaching them to the outside.

This approach would protect the panels from damage as well as maintain Apple’s design work.


The solar panel would absorb any ambient light that passes through the LCD screen which eliminates the need for any additional footprint on the devices.

The technology, if it works, could be used on virtually any portable device including iPods, iPhones, MacBooks, PowerBooks and any future Apple creations.

Apple is not the first to explore this technology. Motorola filed a patent on the same technique in 2001. The legal situation is uncertain.

Monday, 26 May 2008

Microsoft To Stop Book Scanning Operations

Microsoft’s attempt to scan entire libraries in an effort to make the information searchable, will now be abandoned.

It had amassed digital copies of 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles but was under immense competition from market leader Google, who runs a similar service but does not restrict itself to scanning works in the public domain.

Microsoft began their book-scanning business in 2005 and unveiled their MSN book search site in 2006. They stuck to copying only books and documents that were firmly in the public domain, working with publishers to scan their books.


Two separate sites for searching through the content will be taken down and the massive collection of documents will be given to publishers. Live Search will direct users wanting to search for books to non-Microsoft sites, the company said.

The world’s biggest software maker is being pressured to show how it will turn around its unprofitable online business after its collapsed bid for search competitor Yahoo earlier this month.

Satya Nadella, Senior Vice President wrote in a blog post on Friday that digitizing books and archiving academic journals no longer fits with the company’s plan for its search operation.
The move will allow Microsoft to focus on other types of Internet searches, such as travel listings, she wrote.

“We believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer and content partner,” wrote Nadella.

Last week, Microsoft announced its new Live Search Cash Back system that they hope will gain them a bigger share of the search market by offering a Cash Back incentive to users who make purchases on advertisers’ sites. Microsoft is a distant third in the search market behind Yahoo and market leader Google.

Google’s book project began in 2004, working with the New York Public Library, Harvard University and other organisations for the mass scanning of books. Though they haven’t detailed a way to make book searches profitable, they could run ads alongside search results much as they do with traditional searches. There is also the option of a profit share with publishers when books are sold.

Photo credit: Stephen Brashear – AP


Monday, 26 May 2008

Samsung Creates 256GB Solid State Drive

Samsung has announced at their fifth annual Samsung Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei, the development of one of the thinnest, highest speed and largest capacity solid state drives to date with 250GB of storage.

Most PCs and laptops today, including the new MacBook Air, have only 64GB Solid State Drives.

The 2.5-inch drive is based on NAND Flash memory and has a sequential read speed of 200 megabytes per second (MB/s). It also has a fast sequential write speed of 160MB/s leaving Samsung claiming some of the fastest transfer rates for SSD data – 2.4 times faster than ‘a typical HDD’. Despite this performance increase, the drive still only consumes 0.9 Watts in active mode.


The drive is only 9.5mm think, making it the world’s thinnest SSD. A 25% improvement over the former leader.

Intel is also planning to announce high-capacity SSDs later this year which would provide some serious competition for Samsung. It has also been reported that Google has been testing Intel’s SSD technology for possible use in their expansive data centres.

Both companies will utilise multi-level cell (MLC) technology combined with a high-speed Serial ATA (SATA) II interface.

“With development of the 256GB SSD, the notebook PC is on the brink of a second stage of evolution. This change is comparable to the evolution from the Sony Walkman to NAND memory-based MP3 players, representing an initial step in the shift to thinner, smaller SSD-based notebooks with significantly improved performance and more than ample storage,” said Jim Elliott, Samsung Semiconductor’s vice president of memory marketing.

Samsung is expected to begin production of the SSD by the end of the year. A 1.8-inch version of the drive is also expected to be available by then.

Photo credit: Gizmodo


Monday, 26 May 2008

NASA’s Phoenix Probe Lands On Mars

NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander successfully touched down on the Martian planet on Sunday and sent through its first images.

“It’s surprisingly close to what we expected and that’s what surprises me most,” said the mission’s principal investigator, Peter Smith. “I expected a bigger surprise.”


The landing ends the probe’s 296-day journey to the Red Planet’s arctic plains with a landing that was right on target. NASA’s Ed Weiler, compared the feat to landing a hole-in-one from 10,000 miles away with a golf ball.

At mission control, (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California) they celebrated the successful landing but the team is waiting anxiously for the next set of indicators to verify the health of the lander.


NASA was nervous about the landing and justifiably so. Phoenix’s twin, named Polar, malfunctioned during its decent in 1999 and crashed. Another spacecraft, the Mars Climate Orbiter also failed the same year.

Project manager for the Phoenix mission, Barry Goldstein told CNN. “It was better than we could have imagined,” referring to the landing.

During its journey, the Phoenix depended on electricity from solar panels built into the craft’s cruise stage. This was jettisoned seven minutes before entering the Martian atmosphere. Batteries are providing the craft with electricity until its own pair of solar arrays are spread open.

The Phoenix will remain on Mars for 90 days, analysing the permafrost and soil for signs of life – past or present.

“We are not going to be able to answer the final question of is there life on Mars,” said Peter Smith, principal investigator and optical scientist with the University of Arizona. “We will take the next important step. We’ll find out if there’s organic material associated with this ice in the polar regions. Ice is a preserver, and if there ever were organics on Mars and they got into that ice, they will still be there today.”

Photo credit: NASA

Sunday, 25 May 2008

Electronic High-Contrast Magnifying Glass

Electronic magnifying glasses are set to help people who suffer with poor sight due to macular degeneration, diabetes or other diseases.

These devises have many advantages over traditional magnifying glasses such as built-in illumination and the ability to enlarge print from either nearby or distant objects. Also, using special electronics, they can display high-contrast images which makes them easier to read.

“Optical devices can’t increase the contrast like these devices,” said Lighthouse International’s chief of low-vision programs, Dr. Bruce P. Rosenthal. “Loss in contrast causes as many problems as loss of visual acuity,” he said.


The electronics in these devises can make black print darker and even switch black lettering on a white background to white lettering on a black background, which is preferred by some people who suffer from macular degeneration.

Supermarket shopping is one activity that can be particularly difficult for the visually impaired. These devices could help them get out and about and maintain a feeling of independence and self-sufficiency.

“One of the concerns we have in working with the visually impaired is depression,” he said. When people feel they can complete everyday activities just like everyone else, he added, “the more they can cope and feel that their lives are no different than others,” said Dr, Rosenthal.

The devices do have a predictable drawback however, cost. They are priced at around $700 to $1300 which is a lot more than the traditional magnifying glass, plus most private insurance plans and Medicare will not cover them.

Despite the cost, adoption of the technology could still be high as it has the potential to make a vast improvement to their quality of life of many people. It may enable some to improve their education or even return to work.

One of the devices is called the Quicklook Focus ($995). It has a single camera that focuses automatically at the touch of a button and weighs 8.8 ounces (250g). It has a 4.3″ screen and magnification starts at three times the original size. The battery runs for four and a half hours at full power, seven at reduced brightness. It should be available mid-June at www.freedomvision.net.

Another device is called the SenseView Duo ($1,299). It weighs 7.8 ounces (221g) and has two cameras – one for close-up reading like a food label or a book and one for distant objects over eight feet away like a classroom blackboard. Like the Quicklook Focus, it also has a 4.3″ LCD screen but it can also take up to 20 photos, allowing you to casually browse a shot of a railway timetable for example, scanning up, down, left and right to read all the information. The battery runs for 5 hours. It should be available at the end of this month from www.gwmicro.com

Photo credit: The New York Times


Friday, 23 May 2008

OMDM E-K50 II Mobile LED Advertising Display

OMDM has created a new mobile outdoor advertising display called the E-K50 II which is currently being exhibited at the CHITEC 2008 technology fair in Beijing.

One look at the display, while quite attractive, brings on visions of the dystopian nightmare in George Orwell’s novel 1984, with Big Brother monitoring you from telescreens everywhere you go.


The display is mounted on a white four-wheeled platform (which looks much like a convertible) to provide mobility and has built-in speakers to help convey the advertiser’s message.

LED’s are an energy efficient alternative to power-hungry neon signs. This reason alone makes it a very compelling choice for advertising companies. We’re bound to see more of them in the future.

Friday, 23 May 2008

World’s First Floating Wind Turbine

Plans for the world’s first full-scale floating wind turbine have been unveiled today by Norwegian energy company StatoilHydro.

The company hopes to dramatically cut the cost of building and maintaining offshore wind farms and plans to invest £40m/$80m in the pilot project.

The project will see a 2.3MW, 80m diameter wind turbine (provided by Siemens) fastened to the top of a ‘Spar-buoy’ 10km off the coast of Norway. The large buoy will be moored using three anchor points in the seabed.


Information manager for new energy at StatoilHydro, Øistein Johannessen, said that the Spar-buoy technology was already widely used in the offshore oil and gas industry and could provide a basis for wind turbines in waters with depths of up to 700m.

According to Johannessen, record oil prices have caused the demand and therefore the cost for such buoys to rise. He added that floating buoys could still be a far more cost effective way to install offshore wind turbines rather than mooring the turbines directly to the seabed.

“In the long term we hope that this will provide a means of making offshore wind energy cost competitive [with the grid],” he said.

Work is scheduled to begin on the project later this year with a start-up of the turbine planned for autumn 2009.

More: StatoilHydro

Photo credit: businessgreen.com

Friday, 23 May 2008

NASA Prepares To Land Phoenix On Mars

NASA is preparing to land their Phoenix lander on Mars – a procedure they call the ‘7 minutes of terror’.

With the successful rover missions, Spirit and Opportunity behind them, you would think they would be more optimistic about this upcoming landing.

“I do not feel confident. But in my heart I’m an optimist, and I think this is going to be a very successful mission,” said Peter Smith, principal investigator and optical scientist with the University of Arizona. “The thrill of victory is so much more exciting than the agony of defeat.”

Sunday night will be the big night, when the Phoenix lander will hit the Martian atmosphere traveling at nearly 13 thousand miles per hour. It’s on-board computers will be working at speed to deploy it’s parachute, jettison the heat shield, extend its three legs, release the parachute and finally fire its thrusters to slow its descent to hopefully make a soft landing.


The Mars Phoenix Lander team will be biting their nails as they watch the event unfold from computer monitors at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory In Pasadena, California.

“Everything has to go right,” said Ed Weiler, NASA Associate Administrator. “You can’t afford any failures.”

One of the worries for the Phoenix team, is the landing system itself. Since the Viking missions in the late 1970’s, NASA has not successfully landed a probe on Mars using stabilising thrusters and landing legs. The successful Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity rovers used massive airbags to cushion the impact on landing.

The Phoenix Lander was simply too big and heavy to use this method of landing and with plans to launch larger spacecraft in the future, NASA will need to learn to reliably land with thrusters and landing legs.

“We landed on Mars with rockets and legs twice with Viking. It’s not impossible by definition, we have proof of it,” said Weiler. “Humans will have to land on landing legs. Eventually we want to send humans there, obviously.”

The landing site for Phoenix is near the northern polar ice cap on the Northern plains of Mars. There it will dig and scoop with its robotic arm and look for organic chemical evidence of life past or present.

The Phoenix Lander was launched towards Mars last August.

Photo credit: NASA

« Older Entries  
  Newer Entries »