Technology

CES: Thought-controlled iPad app gets in your head
Touchscreens? So two years ago. Gesture recognition? How 2010. Everyone knows the future lies in thought-controlled interfaces.
At least that's what InteraXon, a tiny Toronto startup, is hoping to convince attendees of at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. The company, which made waves at the 2010 winter Olympics by allowing users in Vancouver to control the lights on the CN Tower in Toronto with mere thought, will be showing off two new applications for its mind-control technology at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas
China's 'big hole' marks scale of supercomputing race - To make a point about China's interest in supercomputing, David Turek, IBM's vice president of deep computing, displayed a slide with a picture depicting a large construction site for a building that will house a massive computer. Speaking at an IEEE-USA forum here on Thursday, Turek pointed to a photo (below) of a supercomputing center being built in Shenzhen, China, and said, "That's a truck -- that's a big truck, that's a big hole, and that's going to be a big building. And that's only the first building they are going to build there."

How Flexible Solar Panels Could Make Solar Power Competitive - Harry Atwater, a professor from Caltech, says the way to make solar cells that can compete with fossil fuels is to make them thin and flexible. He is not the first to sing the praises of flexible solar cells, but people usually point to their potential applications on tents or backpacks, where they won't do much to reduce carbon emissions or fossil fuel use. Atwater likes them for their potential to reduce shipping and installation costs.

Found: genes that make kids smart - SCIENTISTS have identified more than 200 genes potentially associated with academic performance in schoolchildren. Those schoolchildren possessing the "right" combinations achieved significantly better results in numeracy, literacy and science. The finding emerged from a study of more than 4000 British children to pinpoint the genes and genetic combinations that influence reasoning skills and general intelligence.

3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution - Businesses in the South Park district of San Francisco generally sell either Web technology or sandwiches and burritos. Bespoke Innovations plans to sell designer body parts. The company is using advances in a technology known as 3-D printing to create prosthetic limb casings wrapped in embroidered leather, shimmering metal or whatever else someone might want.

MIT researchers unveil autonomous oil-absorbing robot - Using a cutting edge nanotechnology, researchers at MIT have created a robotic prototype that could autonomously navigate the surface of the ocean to collect surface oil and process it on site.

New catalyst of platinum nanoparticles could lead to
stall-free, stable fuel cells - In the quest for efficient, cost-effective and commercially viable fuel cells, researchers at Cornell's Energy Materials Center have discovered a catalyst -- platinum nanoparticles -- that could make fuel cells more stable, longer lasting, and more resistant to carbon monoxide poisoning.

Coronal mass ejection headed toward Earth - Sky viewers might get to enjoy some spectacular Northern Lights, or aurorae, the morning of Aug. 4. After a long slumber, the Sun is waking up. Early Sunday morning, the Sun's surface erupted and blasted tons of plasma (ionized atoms) into interplanetary space. That plasma is headed our way, and when it arrives, it could create a spectacular light show.

Reading Terrorists’ Minds About Imminent Attack - Using P300 brain-wave testing in a mock terrorism scenario in which make-believe “persons of interest” were planning a crime, Northwestern University researchers were able to detect guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy with no false positives, J. Peter Rosenfeld, Northwestern professor of psychology reports. “Even when the researchers had no advance details about mock terrorism plans, the technology was still accurate in identifying 10 out of 12 terrorists and 20 out of 30 crime-related details,” Rosenfeld said. “The test was 83 percent accurate in predicting concealed knowledge, suggesting that our complex protocol could identify future terrorist activity.”

Reliable Dictation, Down to a ‘T’ - The accuracy of Dragon Naturally speaking is so good that you no longer have to begin by reading a four-minute training text, as in years past. I installed the software on my PC, skipped the training, and dictated one of my old columns, 1,300 words. It achieved 100 percent accuracy, even correctly nailing toughies like “LinkedIn,” “Twitterific,” “freebies” and “twentysomethings.” (It made one error, but I’m letting it off the hook for not recognizing the Web site name Bebo.)

Helping Joints Regrow Themselves - Biomedical engineers at Columbia University Medical Center have implanted a joint-shaped scaffold infused with a growth factor protein that allowed rabbits to begin using their injured forelimbs again in one month.

India develops 35-dollar 'laptop' for schools - 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.

Twitter mood maps reveal emotional states of America - America, are you happy? The emotional words contained in hundreds of millions of messages posted to the Twitter website may hold the answer. Computer scientist Alan Mislove at Northeastern University in Boston and colleagues have found that these "tweets" suggest that the west coast is happier than the east coast, and across the country happiness peaks each Sunday morning, with a trough on Thursday evenings. The team calls their work the "pulse of the nation". Mislove team's project page
Vibration-powered Generators Replace AA, AAA Batteries - Brother Industries Ltd developed small vibration-powered generators that can replace AA and AAA batteries. For example, when the generator, which the company calls "Vibration-powered Generating Battery," is set inside a remote control, it is possible to use the remote by shaking it to generate power.



Talking to Your Phone - A startup makes a new entry in the race to build the virtual personal assistant.

H+ Summit @ Harvard: The Rise of the Citizen Scientist - On June 12-13 of this year, Harvard University hosted the H+ Summit, organized by the nonprofit Humanity+ and loosely focused on the theme, Rise of the Citizen Scientist. An interesting lineup of speakers and topics.

Cellphone-based optometry solution allows for low-cost eye exams - The MIT Media Lab introduces an interactive, portable, and inexpensive solution for estimating refractive errors in the human eye. While expensive optical devices for automatic estimation of refractive correction exist, their goal is to greatly simplify the mechanism by putting the human subject in the loop.

Chinese Supercomputer Is Ranked World’s Second-Fastest, Challenging U.S. Dominance A Chinese supercomputer has been ranked as the world’s second-fastest machine, surpassing European and Japanese systems and underscoring China’s aggressive commitment to science and technology. The Dawning Nebulae, based at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, China, has achieved a sustained computing speed of 1.27 petaflops — the equivalent of one thousand trillion mathematical operations a second — in the latest semiannual ranking of the world’s fastest 500 computers.

Breakthrough in stem cell culturing For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been cultured under chemically controlled conditions without the use of animal substances, which is essential for future clinical uses. The method has been developed by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and is presented in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Copy Machines, a security risk? CBS video reveals the security risk inherent in having hard drives in photocopiers.

Scientists create first synthetic cell Scientists have created the first cell controlled by a human-made genome — a step closer to artificial life that is drawing both praise and warnings of potential dire consequences.

Google Gives Away Video Software to Lure Developers Google committed a substantial act of charity on the first day of its annual I/O developers' conference in San Francisco this week, giving away a piece of intellectual property acquired just three months ago at a cost of more than $120 million. This seemingly humble piece of code is being promoted by Google and a consortium of major software and hardware vendors as a crucial tool that will bring about a new wave of online innovation. Google combined VP8 with an existing open-source audio codec, called Vorbis, to create a new free video format called WebM. The new format is designed to complete the capabilities of HTML5, the latest version of the free and open code that underlies the Web.(Technology Review)

Quantum teleportation achieved over 16 km Scientists in China have succeeded in teleporting information between photons further than ever before. They transported quantum information over a free space distance of 16 km (10 miles), much further than the few hundred meters previously achieved, which brings us closer to transmitting information over long distances without the need for a traditional signal.

Khosla Company EcoMotors Snags $18M to Develop “breakthrough” Car Engine
The company is currently developing an engine prototype (pictured right) that could improve fuel economies by up to 60 percent (achieving 100 miles per gallon), while halving the weight and size of standard gas and diesel-powered engines

Mick Jagger Talks Tech, Gives the Finger to the Recording Industry
The ridiculous hyperbole and heavy-handed tactics from the recording industry make it difficult to sympathize, and impossible to empathize, with greedy executives who incessantly whine about music downloading. That unceasing diatribe, then, makes it wholly refreshing and empowering when established artists such as Mick Jagger openly disavow or mock the anti-piracy crusade.(switched.com)

Thin-film Solar with high effeciency
Solexant is printing inorganic solar cells with nanomaterials

Making the entire cell using a roll-to-roll process gives the company an advantage over other thin-film photovoltaic companies that print on glass, which is heavier and limited to smaller areas, says Solexant CEO Damoder Reddy. "The cost benefit is dramatic, allowing us to produce cells for 50 cents a watt,"
How to 'unlock' the brains of coma patients

There will be few who didn't shiver when they heard the story of Rom Houben, a 46-year old Belgian man believed to be in a coma for over 20 years, who it has now emerged was conscious the whole time.

How many other people are out there, imprisoned by their own bodies? How might we discover more of them?

see link for full article on Ron Houben being fully aware while in a coma and the implications for others in the same situation.

Collider Sets Record, and Europe Takes U.S.’s Lead
Tiny spitfires of energy blossomed under the countryside outside Geneva late Tuesday night, heralding the arrival of a new European particle collider as the biggest, baddest physics machine in the world.
Modern cars vulnerable to hacks
Using a laptop and custom-written software, security researchers have hacked into the control systems of a family car, disable the brakes and turn off the engine while the vehicle was moving.