Daily Tech News

It’s not Black Friday yet, but if you’re in the market for a dirt-cheap smartphone you don’t have to wait. Walmart’s got a contract-free, dual-core Android that will only set you back $9.82. For ten bucks , you get a phone with a 3.8-inch touchscreen, a dual-core processor clocked at 1.2GHz, WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 support, and a 3-megapixel rear camera. The same phone would cost you $60 over at Best Buy right now, so it’s a pretty impressive deal. That probably accounts for why it is currently out of stock. Vice, however, thinks that it’s “perhaps even more impressive” that the $10 LG phone has better specs that the original iPhone, but let’s think about that for a moment. The reality is that they’re cramming hardware that’s  vastly superior  to the iPhone’s (single-core 411Mhz chip, 128MB of RAM) into  smartwatches  these days. The fact that even a humble $10 phone is superior to a device that went on sale the year President Obama was elected really shouldn’t ...

Lazy eye, or amblyopia, is a reasonably common disorder affecting around  two or three percent of children  that can lead to serious loss of vision in the long term. The two most common methods of early treatment are eye patches and eye drops, but both require a disciplined approach and are uncomfortable in their own ways. Researchers have now developed electronic glasses that can be programmed to automatically build the brain's reliance on the weaker eye, with the initial trials suggesting they might be as effective as traditional methods of treatment. Amblyopia comes about when the nerve pathways between the brain and eye don't develop as normal in early childhood, leading the sufferer to favor one eye over the other. Over time, the weaker eye will start to wander and the brain can even eventually come to ignore its signals completely. It is important to treat the condition early while the eyes and brain are still developing, so as to limit the risk of blindness l...

New desalination technique pushes salt to one side with shock waves As access to clean water continues to be an issue throughout the developing world, there's an increased demand for easier ways to turn contaminated and salty water into something you can drink. Researchers at MIT may have found a solution using a method they are calling shock electrodialysis. It uses electric shock waves to separate contaminated or salty water into two separate streams, with a natural barrier between each one. The method developed at MIT is unlike most traditional desalination systems that either use some type of membrane less filter that can become clogged over time, or boiling methods that require extensive amounts of energy to produce clean water. The MIT process sends water through an inexpensive porous material made of tiny glass particles, and across membranes or electrodes sandwiched on each side. As electricity is applied to the system, the salty water divides into zones of d...

Fans of  The Simpsons  may recall Lisa using genetic engineering to create a super tomato that she hoped would cure world hunger. Now researchers at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) have come close to the real thing, not through genetic engineering, but with the use of nanoparticles. Although the individual fruit aren't as large as Lisa's creation, the team's approach has resulted in tomato plants that produced almost 82 percent more fruit by weight, with the fruit also boasting higher antioxidant content. The new technique developed by Ramesh Raliya, PhD and Pratim Biswas, PhD, both at WUSTL's School of Engineering & Applied Science, involves the use of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide nanoparticles to boost the tomato plant's ability to absorb light and minerals. The titanium oxide increases chlorophyll content in the plant's leaves to improve photosynthesis, while zinc is an essential nutrient that also helps the function of enzymes within th...

An interactive swarm of flying 3D pixels (voxels) developed at Queen's University's Human Media Lab is set to revolutionize the way people interact with virtual reality. The system, called BitDrones, allows users to explore virtual 3D information by interacting with physical self-levit Queen's professor Roel Vertegaal and his students are unveiling the BitDrones system on Monday, Nov. 9 at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in Charlotte, North Carolina. BitDrones is the first step towards creating interactive self-levitating programmable matter -- materials capable of changing their 3D shape in a programmable fashion -- using swarms of nano quadcopters. The work highlights many possible applications for the new technology, including real-reality 3D modeling, gaming, molecular modeling, medical imaging, robotics and online information visualization. "BitDrones brings flying programmable matter, such as featured in the futuristic Disn...