Daily Tech News

Thanks to research currently being conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, our unwanted plastic bags may one day be recycled into carbon fiber. Not only that, but the properties of the fibers themselves could be fine-tuned, allowing different types of carbon fiber to be created for specific applications. The Oak Ridge team, led by materials scientist Amit Naskar, start with polyethylene-base fibers – these  could  conceivably come from waste plastic sources, such as shopping bags and carpet backing scraps. Using a “a multi-component melt extrusion-based fiber spinning method,” the surface contours of these fibers can be customized, and their diameter can be manipulated with submicron precision. It is also possible to control their porosity. Bundles of these fibers are dipped into a proprietary acid chemical bath. A process known as sulfonation causes the plastic molecules to bond with one another, transforming each bundle of fiber...

When the petal of a flower is being formed, its shape is achieved by cells in one area expanding more than cells in an adjacent area. This uneven expansion causes the material to buckle, creating the desired curves and creases. Scientists from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst have taken that same principle, and applied it to flat polymer gel sheets that fold themselves into three-dimensional shapes when exposed to water. Some day, such sheets could serve a number of useful purposes. The researchers use a photolithography process, in which parts of each sheet are masked with a thin painted-on coating, followed by an exposure to ultraviolet light. The polymer that is masked from the UV light will uniformly expand like a sponge when exposed to water. In areas that  aren't  masked, however, the UV light causes the molecules within the polymer to become cross-linked. This means that the material in those areas will only experience limited expansion when water is ad...

A significant step on the path to quantum computing has been taken by an international team of researchers applying a 22-year old theory. They have succeeded in creating quantum bits within a semiconductor for the very first time. Classical bits can be assigned one of only two values which are typically used to reflect on or off, true or false, yes or no, and other binary states. In each of these cases, the first, positive state is typically represented by a 1, and the second a 0 (the word bit is itself a contraction of binary digit - binary numbers consisting of strings of 1s and 0s). In current electronics devices, the 1s and 0s are conveyed by voltage variations. Like a classical bit, quantum bits (or qubits) take on values of 0 or 1, but unlike a classical bit, a qubit can assume both values simultaneously, and to varying degrees, through what is known as superposition. Superposition allows a qubit to be assigned the value of a complex variable, and this promises to one day ...

Germany’s IBA stands for “Internationale Bauausstellung,” which translates as international building exhibition. But the IBA_Hamburg site located on the Elbe islands of Hamburg isn’t just a place to showcase buildings, it also serves as a seven-year real-time research and development project aimed at delivering CO2-neutral city development. Central to the site is the IBA information center, known as the IBA_Dock, which is constructed upon a floating pontoon and integrates numerous renewable energy technologies.   With modular superstructures sitting atop a 1,250 m2 (13,454 sq ft) steel-constructed pontoon, the IBA_Dock is based on IMMOSOLAR’s the “zero balance concept,” which focuses on solar energy management and systems that provide buildings with sustainable heat and cooling all year round. Sixteen rooftop solar thermal collectors with a total surface area of about 34 m2 (366 sq ft) are positioned facing south at the relatively steep angle of 50 degrees to maximize the heati...

Sony has developed a power outlet that can identify devices plugged into it, as well as individuals using the plug. The company says such technology could allow the electricity usage of individual devices to be monitored so non-essential devices could be switched off remotely in the event of limited electricity supply, or for the billing of customers charging their electric vehicles or mobile devices in public places. The Authentication Power Outlet relies on Sony’s FeliCa technology – a contactless RFID smart card system developed by Sony mainly for use in electronic payment systems, such as Hong Kong’s Octopus card system. When a device is plugged in, a FeliCa Lite chip built into the plug relays information about the electrical device to a reader/writer built into the outlet. While the plug and outlet communicate through a wireless antenna in the current system, the company is also developing a version that exchanges data through the power cable. While existing electrical ...

Boosting solar cell efficiency is seen as a key factor in making them more practical, but there is another way of looking at the matter ... if the  price  of those cells were lowered, we could generate more power simply by using more of them. That’s where Mississippi-based Twin Creeks Technologies comes into the picture. The company has developed a method of making crystalline silicon wafers which it says could reduce the cost of solar cell production by half. Ordinarily, when crystalline silicon wafers are being made for use in solar cells, a chunk of silicon is cut into wafers that are each 200 micrometers thick. According to Twin Creeks, however, only the very surface of that wafer is “active” – the rest is wasted. Much less waste would occur if the wafers could be made thinner, but using traditional production techniques, such wafers would be too fragile to stand up to the rigors of photovoltaic panel production. In Twin Creeks’ proprietary Hyperion process, thr...

Velcro is pretty handy stuff, but imagine if there was a soft, stretchy material with the same qualities. Well, now there is. Scientists from the University of California, San Diego have created a self-healing hydrogel that binds together in seconds, essentially copying the Velcro process at a molecular level. The new material could potentially find use in medical sutures, targeted drug delivery, industrial sealants and self-healing plastics. The secret to the jello-like polymer hydrogel is its "dangling side chain" molecules, that reach out toward one another like long, spindly fingers. When developing the gel, a team led by bioengineer Shyni Varghese ran computer simulations, in order to determine the optimal length for these molecules. The resulting substance is capable of healing cuts made to itself - or of bonding with another piece of hydrogel - almost instantly. The behavior of the material can be controlled by adjusting the pH of its environment. In lab t...

Tata Motors continued to upstage its far-longer established automaking peers at the 82nd Geneva Motor Show overnight with the Tata Megapixel concept, a new four-seater range extended electric vehicle (REEV). The Megapixel is the evolution of last year's Pixel concept and uses four in-wheel 10kW motors and a 325 cc single cylinder petrol range-extending engine that generates 22kW while charging the lithium ion phosphate battery. The result is a range of 900 km and an electric-only range of 87 km.   The Megapixel is a good looking little beastie, and was developed by Tata's design centres in India, the UK and Italy. As a global car concept, this is both the company's evolving idea of the ideal city car for global urban environments, and the one you're most likely to see first if you don't live in India. Tata Motors is India's largest automobile company, with enormous prospects. A few decades from now, India will be a superpower, with the world's ...

Unless you're a rodent, it's probably too early to get excited about the possibility of being able to eat all you want, be a couch potato and still not gain weight, but new research using a strain of specially-modified mice indicates that just such an unlikely scenario might one day be possible. Recently, a team of scientists from UC Irvine (UCI), Yale and Marche Polytechnic University in Ancona, Italy discovered they could bring this metabolic miracle about in the lab by blocking the actions of a marijuana-like compound that regulates energy metabolism. To bring about this hypermetabolic state, the researchers, led by UCI pharmacology professor Daniele Piomelli, altered forebrain neurons in mice to reduce production of a substance called 2-Arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG). Evidently, all mammalian brains contain 2-AG, a naturally-produced endocannabinoid compound. The team believes this plays a role in regulating the forebrain neural circuits that take part in energy dispersal....

Universities and scientific organizations all over the world are currently looking into ways of growing functioning heart cells  on  the heart, to replace the tissue that dies when a heart attack occurs. As things currently stand, the body replaces that tissue with non-beating scar tissue, leaving the heart permanently weakened. Most of the experimental techniques for generating new tissue involve introducing some sort of micro-scaffolding to the affected area, providing a framework for new cells to grow on. That scaffolding has consisted of materials such as  carbon nanofibers  and  gold nanowires , which would have to be surgically applied to the heart, sort of like a Band-Aid. Now, however, researchers from the University of California, San Diego are reporting success in animal trials, using an injectable hydrogel. The team is being led by Karen Christman, a professor in UCSD's Department of Bioengineering. They started by obtaining cardiac connect...

When Chaotic Moon Labs debuted the Kinect-powered  Board of Awesomeness  - and its mind-reading offspring, the  Board of Imagination  - that was apparently just a preview of a more practical product the company had in the works. Grocery store chain, Whole Foods, recently gave a demonstration of Chaotic Moon's latest device, which uses the same technology in a self-propelled shopping cart. The "Smarter Cart," as it's been named, can detect what items are placed in it, match those to a shopping list, and even follow shoppers around the store on its own. Like Chaotic Moon's Board of Awesomeness project, the Smarter Cart uses a Kinect sensor synced with a Windows 8 tablet to control its motion, but with one key difference. Instead of having someone actively directing where the device moves, the cart monitors the user and follows them like a lost puppy as they move about the store and pick out their items. The Kinect's voice recognition is also implemented...

Wireless charging of mobile devices is all the rage if the number of wireless chargers hitting the market is anything to go by. Until now, most of the units on offer follow the flat slab design ushered in by the  Powermat  and  WildCharge  that sees recharging devices laid down flat on the charger. LG followed that form factor with its  WCP-700 Wireless Charging Pad  but has come up with something slightly different for its successor, the WCD-800. The new unit is designed to hold the mobile device upright so you can watch a video or make a video call while the charger goes about its business. Unveiled at  Mobile World Congress 2012  (MWC 2012), the WCD-800 is designed in the shape of a cradle with a lip that supports the mobile device in either vertical or horizontal orientation. Like competitor devices, the unit uses electromagnetic induction to recharge a device's batteries without the need for cables and LG says the unit is as efficie...

For those who don't suffer the talkative gladly, a pair of Japanese researchers may have come up with just the thing - a portable device that can painlessly jam a person's speech from up to 30 meters (98 ft) away. Ingeniously dubbed the "SpeechJammer," you aim it like a gun and, if it's anywhere near as effective as the Delayed Auditory Feedback exhibit I tried at my local science museum, it works like a charm. The inventors, Kazutaka Kurihara with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Ochanomizu University's Koji Tsukada, explained that their prototype creation works by recording the offending speech with a directional microphone, adding a 0.2-second delay, and firing it right back at the run-on talker with a directional speaker. Our brains need instant feedback to continue governing speech properly - mess with that synchrony and, as I experienced at San Francisco's Exploratorium, your jabbering soon stammers ...

Panasonic named its two new Android handsets ELUGA, an acronym of sorts for "elegant user-oriented gateway," to symbolize the slim pair of phones that aim to combine both design and function. The electronics manufacturer introduced the ELUGA and ELUGA Power handsets this past week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, extending the number of Android devices unveiled at the show from the likes of  LG ,  Samsung ,  HTC ,  Sony ,  Viewsonic  and  Huawei , just to name a few. While most handset manufacturers claim the phone already combines design and functionality, the features on the ELUGA phones measure up. One standout feature: both phones are both waterproof and dustproof, so you can go about your business and not worry about every little spill near your handset. The phones are compliant with the international standard IP57 water and dustproofing standard. You might not want to take either phone for a swim, but the ELUGA line can withstand up...

A see-through screen, digital 3D objects manipulated by hand, perspective adjustments according to the user's viewing angle - these are the core features of a prototype computer desktop user interface created by Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group. The prototype uses a "unique" Samsung transparent OLED display through which the user can see their own hands to manipulate 3D objects which appear to be behind the screen. A demo video appears to show a working prototype of a computer markedly different from those we use today. Yes it includes a familiar keyboard and trackpad - but these are placed behind the OLED display. The user simply lifts their hands from these input devices to manipulate on-screen (or more accurately  behind -screen) objects, such as selecting a file or window. The video shows the interface in action with a series of program windows stacked behind one another, with the user selecting the desired program by hand, using the depth of the w...