GLIMPSES OF THE
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Boeing Developing Fuel-Cell Powered Plane With all of the worries about CO2 emissions produced by conventional jet engines, it is heartening to report that Boeing is developing a prototype plane which will be powered by electricity generated from a hydrogen-powered fuel-cell. Due to fly later this year, the new plane is only small and is at a very early stage of development, but the news is exciting. Of all the various forms of transportation, aviation has seemed to most intractable to solve in terms of CO2 emissions because of the high energy-density required of aviation kerosene. We must all wish Boeing huge success with this development. Sugar Powered Battery Ready To Power Electronics (And It's Green.) New fuel cell technology developed at Saint Louis University in the USA boasts the ability of extracting energy from virtually any sugar source to power portable electronics like cellular phones, laptops, and sensors. The new technology is expected to be biodegradable, environmentally friendly and more energy efficient than current options, providing a green alternative to current Lithium-ion batteries. The cell operates at room temperature and uses enzymes to oxidize sugars, hence generating electricity. So far, researchers have run the batteries on glucose, flat soft drinks, sweetened drink mixes and tree sap. Despite only attaining a maximum of 20 percent efficiency in the conversion of sugar to electricity, researchers say the new batteries will operate three to four times longer on a single charge than current battery technology. More Battery News: Japanese Scientists Invent Completely New Type of Battery Drs Hiroyuki Nishide, Hiroaki Konishi and Takeo Suga at Waseda University have designed a new form of micro battery which consists of a redox-active organic polymer film around 200 nanometres thick. The thin, flexible see-through plastic has high radical density, and the battery has a high charge/discharge capacity. This is just one of many advantages the "organic radical" battery has over other organic based materials according to the researchers. The power rate performance is strikingly high – it only takes one minute to fully charge the battery and it has a long cycle life, often exceeding 1,000 cycles. Micro Robot Will Tour Inside Your Body Meanwhile, other Japanese medical researchers have invented a tiny robot which can be inserted into a human body and which will then start to travel within its host to carry out specific medical functions. Looking like a small insect, the robot, which is just 0.8 inches in length with a diameter of 0.4 inches, can take pictures of your body's interior, take tissue samples, and even administer medicine. The scientists control these functions using an external magnetic field. Palm Prints Better Than Fingerprints Still in Japan, Fujitsu scientists have invented a scanner which reads the pattern of the veins in the palm of your hand. It is claimed that this biological "signature" is more unique (note oxymoron) than fingerprints. Fujitsu claims high reliability for the system – a false acceptance rate of less than 0.00008 per cent and a false rejection rate of 0.01 per cent – and that the complexity of palm veins makes them almost impossible to forge. Unsurprisingly then, the palm readers are already a common sight on Japanese ATMs. Ethics Code For Robots Two months after I wrote about an armed robot sentry being built in South Korea, the government of that same nation is now drawing up a formal code which will govern autonomous robot behaviour. The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007. It is being put together by a five member team of experts that includes futurists and a science fiction writer (of course). One Less "Remote" To Lose Fed up with hunting for lost remote controls? Now American consumers can ring their remotes to see where they are hiding. AT&T has launched a cell phone that also acts as a remote to control TVs and DVD players. The company last week began offering its "Homezone" customers the ability to control their TVs, DVDs and digital video recorders through Web-enabled phones. The interface lets cell phone users schedule or delete recordings on their set-top boxes from anywhere. (Yes, I know the ergonomic demands of phones and remotes are completely different, but when you're always losing damn remotes...) Software Writes Poems and Lyrics American futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil has received a patent for software that can automatically write poems and song lyrics. Kurzweil is distributing his creative software free as part of a screensaver. Download here. I expect to see an improvement in your lyrics in the near future.
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Baby Companion Plays "Womb Sounds" To Lull Baby Back To Sleep I've written a lot about the sort of artificial companions we are going to give our children, now TakarTomy of Japan (there's a lot of Japanese stuff this month) has invented a toy companion which lulls a new baby to sleep. The plush toy features a digital audio player loaded with womb sounds. Apparently an internal microphone was placed into a living womb while music played in the outside surroundings. Put your new baby on a bender of sloshing fluids, heartbeat, and muffled music and he or she will be out faster than you can say "sweet dreams". And what happens when baby wakes to find he's been duped by a giant mouse? No worries, a "baby mood switch" will sense the baby's cries and generate an audible "curiosity trigger" to make baby forget why he was crying in the first place. Another cocktail of womb music and he's back to sleep. Feed, cuddle, repeat. Magic. New High-Speed, Large Format Colour Ink-Jet Printing Technology Unveiled A new method of high-speed colour printing using ink jets was announced at the Global Ink Jet Printing Conference in Prague last month Known as Memjet, the new technique looks set to impact on the printing industry at potentially disruptive levels based on the public demonstrations so far. The new technology prints full-colour images at 60 pages per minute (ppm), (videos here), many times the inkjet industry standard. The technology, which will be a fraction of the price of high-speed colour laser devices, will soon be available for OEMs targeting the home/office, photo-kiosk and label markets. Chinese Scientists Control Pigeons Via Brain Implants (Improbable But True Department) Scientists in China say they have succeeded in controlling the flight of pigeons with micro electrodes planted in their brains, Chinese state media reports. Scientists at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Centre at Shandong University of Science and Technology announced their electrodes could command the pigeons to fly right or left, up or down, Xinhua news agency said. "The implants stimulate different areas of the pigeon's brain according to signals sent by the scientists via computer and force the bird to comply with their commands," Xinhua reported. There's a whole new sport to be developed (and the Chinese government is now sponsoring research into human versions of the brain-control implants). Soldiers Stay Cool With Air-Conditioned Vests In war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan heat exhaustion puts "our boys'' lives in danger. Now scientists at the University of Portsmouth have developed vests with built-in air-conditioning. The developers won't disclose all the nitty gritty details about the classified gear, but we do know that these new vests utilize a combination of air, liquid, and new applications of old technologies such as converting paraffin wax into liquid in chambers within the vests to absorb heat from the body. Mobile Broadband Coming Soon Bad news for 3G mobile phone licence holders, Swedish cellular networking company Ericsson says that is set to achieve data speeds of up to 1Mbps in current GSM networks, enabling mobile broadband services for the world's 2 billion existing GSM subscribers. The company claims that its EDGE Evolution technology will boost data speeds by up to 300% and will significantly improve latency, coverage, and spectrum efficiency. Will Wii Expand The Market For Video Games Of Will Geek Power Win Out? (Of course, the question's spurious.) The new Nintendo Wii lacks the mighty graphics oomph and online connectivity of the new Microsoft XBox or Sony Playstation 3. But it does have motion sensing paddles that allow humans to interact with games by moving their bodies physically. This means that people who aren't interested in teenage-style fantasy and immersion games, can play simulations of tennis, golf and other physical real-world sports. This appears to be opening up a whole new market of people who would never normally think of playing "computer games," and a jolly good thing too. I love the idea of playing virtual tennis and the latest craze of " exergaming"' is a novel way of amusing yourself while improving your fitness. I know XBox and Playstation 3 will do well, but I think the Nintendo Wii might have seen a far bigger market. I want one. Back issues of "Glimpses" are archived here.
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