Fellow GEEK

Now Microrobots can Propel Themselves Through your Body

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:09:24 -0700

As much progress as we’ve made with minuscule micro machines we’ve long suffered the problem of not being able to propel them through our bodies. Sure we now have tiny robots capable of targeting cancer cells manipulate building blocks etc but they haven’t been able to actually move rendering them all but useless. Until now. At the International Solid State Circuit Conference engineer Ada Poon an assistant professor at Stanford demonstrated a remote controlled micro machine navigating through a liquid specifically blood. Power was delivered wirelessly. Basically this means that we finally have a method for driving a robot through the blood stream. Says Poon Such devices could revolutionize medical technology Applications include everything from diagnostics to minimally invasive surgeries. Continue Reading

Hercule Exoskeleton Sets the bar for Human Assistance Devices

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:44:25 -0700

Okay so we’ve had exoskeletons for years devices letting humans carry heavy weights and walk under the load with ease. But until now they all had incredibly short battery lives so most stayed tethered. Basically they were great tech demos but not good for much more. A new exoskeleton called Hercule doesn’t have this problem. It can help someone for example a soldier carry 220 pounds 99 Kilograms for up to 12.4 miles at a ordinary walking speed. And the motion is completely driven by your leg so it feels like you’re walking as usual. The Hercule is light weighing just 50 pounds. It was designed by Ekso Bionics previously Berkeley Bionics and based Continue Reading

We've Found a Gene that May Let us Live Longer

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:26:19 -0700

Humans hate dying. Its ingrained into our very makeup that we hate death. and yet for the entire span of our existence we’ve been able to do little more than preventive maintenance to keep us running. That might be changing though. A gene found in humans proves to lengthen the lives of mice by 15%. And while mice are a long way from humans they’re much closer than worms where another gene was found that falsely was thought to lengthen life span sirtuin 2. The new gene comes from the sirtuin family again this time sirtuin 6. When mice were genetically engineered to have higher levels of SIRT6 in their blood than normal they lived longer. It was that Continue Reading

Microsoft Office Spotted Running on iPad

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:00:52 -0700

In what can only be described as a case of hell freezing over and pigs flying Microsoft’s premier document editing suite has been spotted running on Apple’s portable future computer the iPad. The photos leaked by the Apple and News Inc. crossbreed digital newspaper The Daily the photos don’t show much more than a Microsoft Office logo on an iPad. Further no one seems to be able to confirm whether this photo is real or not but The Daily isn’t just some rumour rag. It’s run by veteran reporters and staffed with knowledgeable connected researchers I the photo proves to be real it means that at least Microsoft Word Excel and PowerPoint are in development as those are the icons on the Continue Reading

Augment Reality with cool new Lightbeam Pico Projector

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:45:55 -0700

The Lightbeam projector is a pico projector. While just a few years ago that might have been cool enough these days you need something truly epic to be noticed. And the Lightbeam has it. It includes object tracking for augmented reality. Say you want to use a sheet of paper as a screen to show some info. Just hold it up in front of the projector and the projector will project onto it. As you move the sheet around the projector will keep track of it continuing to project onto it for as long as it is in range of the device which is about 30 degrees from its center. Further the type of information that gets displayed is dependent on what Continue Reading

Ubuntu For Android Brings Full Linux to your Phone

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:22:57 -0700

Smartphones operating systems are great but they lack quite a few of the essential apps that make desktops indispensable. Several companies have come out with nifty docking systems to circumvent this turning your phone into a full fledged computer. But they invariably end up using their own proprietary platform that can do little more than browse the web and check mail. Things that you can already do on your phone. Ubuntu for Android aims to fix this. The project is a replacement to existing “webtops ” something designed to make turning your phone into a computer actually useful. Right now it is still merely a demonstration and Canonical is relying on an Atrix 2 with modified software as their test platform. Canonical has managed to make all the Continue Reading

Single Atom Transistor Demolishes Moore's Law

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:16:39 -0700

In 1965 Gordon E. Moore coined ‘Moore’s Law’ in what proved to be an amazing bout of prognostication. His law stated that the number of components on a semiconducting circuit would double every year. He originally expected his formulation to hold for around 10 years but it has been nearly constant for most of the history of computing since. That however is changing. We’ve been approaching the edges of what it is possible to achieve with our technology for years exploiting more and more clever workarounds to keep boosting speed. But you can only shrink a circuit so small before electrons start jumping from one circuit to the other. Which is why it is expected that we will start lagging behind Moore’s Law starting in 2013. The Continue Reading

Nintendo 3DS Now Fastest Selling Console Ever in Japan

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:07:09 -0700

Despite an uncharacteristically slow start the Nintendo 3DS has taken off like a veritable rocket reaching the 5 million units sold mark in just under a year. Which is 2 months quicker than the Nintendo DS previously the best selling console ever. When the 3DS was first released many questioned whether the device could ever achieve the level of success of its predecessor. With decent specs but an awkwark glasses free 3D display a large build horrible battery life increased competition from phones and a predecessor that shared many of its characteristics it seemed destined to failure. And when the sales figures began to trickle in those fears seemed to be confirmed. But after Nintendo changed strategies with the device employing Continue Reading

By Making Phones 'Sprint', We Could Make Them Run Faster

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:50:51 -0700

Sprinting is a concept pretty familiar to us. For a short period of time a runner can go at extraordinary speeds but only for a few moments. Now some scientists want to apply the same principle to mobile phone processors to give them the muscle to conquer difficult tasks without nuking your battery. The basic idea is that next generation mobile processors would have dozens of cores far more than the 5 in the state of the art Tegra 3. Most of the time the device would use a single core. When you are checking your mail after all you don’t need to be able to crunch complicated numbers. Then when heavy computation is called for all the processors would kick on. Continue Reading

Future Micro-robots Could be made like Pop-up Books

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:55:39 -0700

A clever new building technique inspired by pop up books for children could lead to the mass production of teeny tiny robots with usually are much too hard to build in large quantities. That means that building a robotic dragonfly can now be done cheaply and easily. The technique is functionally similar to how they make plywood. Laser cutters burn away a sheets of plastic metal and paper as needed cutting out different shapes. Then those layers are stacked and laminated together so that they are a single unified whole. The finished product is a hexagonal chunk of plastic an metal and plastic with an assembly scaffold built in to assemble the robot. The scaffold is designed to be able to do origami Continue Reading

Nanotechnology could have one fatal flaw - Explosions

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:42:14 -0700

Nanotechnology promises to make the future much more interesting quite possibly more amazing too. But it seems like there might be one serious flaw to the tech that smaller particles means bigger booms. Dust blows up more than more solid objects do. This is why a fuel air bomb is so effective because they make the gas molecules as small as possible. The reason this works is all down to surface area. If you have a big chunk of explosive material only part of it can combust at any given time. If you break if up you’ve got more more of it exposed at any given time which for explosives means a bigger boom. Nanotechnology is by definition small. Continue Reading

New USB Stick Sequences DNA in Moments

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:31:25 -0700

The human genome was first mapped in 2003 for the low low sum of 3 billion. It took 15 years to complete. Now 9 years later we’re able to stick the technology into a USB stick. Granted sequencing a human genome would take many hours but the device is more than capable of handling simple genomes. And it is a harbinger of the future to come. Built by UK firm Nanopore the small device called the minION can sequence the genomes of viruses and bacteria in seconds. The data is relayed directly to your computer since it is after all a USB stick. The tech might be a bit simple but it is more than capable of testing a biopsy for cancer in Continue Reading

China Launching Astronauts to Space Laboratory in March

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:06:21 -0700

China is on a space warpath having managed to go from not having any space faring capability to having a space station in mere years. Now the nation has announced that it will launching 3 astronauts to their newly minted space laboratory by August. China has dreams of conquering space and they haven’t been shy about it. They’ve been throwing money at the problem for years but recently things have really been picking up. In the span of a year China has demonstrated space docking and long term atmospheric stability. They are moving at the pace we did during the space race only they are racing uncontested. The mission to the space laboratory will be only China’s 4th manned space flight. The mission will Continue Reading

DARPA wants Avatar-esque Robot Surrogates

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:54:25 -0700

Who says Avatar wasn’t good scifi DARPA of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency the government group dedicated to strange far fetched science ideas that have a spooky record of becoming realized wants robotic surrogates. Proposed in DARPA’s 2013 budget is 7 million for what they refer to as the “Avatar” project a program that would aim to develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi autonomous bi pedal machine and allow it to act as the soldier’s surrogate. Basically think terminator robots controlled by humans. Scared yet As out there as this may seem this dream might actually be within reach. If you ignore walking which is really really hard for Continue Reading

Google Builds Dart Programming Language, into Chrome

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:38:49 -0700

Google’s undying desire is to make the web easier to build. The more site and services are out there after all the more useful Google is. Its to this end that Google released the Dart programming language last year. Meant to simplify web coding into something slightly easier to deal with Dart had one fundamental flaw in order to use it you had to compile your code back into Javascript. Until now. Google has decided to make the move of embedding a Dart virtual machine running natively instead of through Javascript into its Chrome browser. This is a big move for the fledgling language and it could meant that Dart get adopted much much more quickly. Right now the virtual machine is Continue Reading

Xombie Rocket Lander Proves Capable of Landing on Mars

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:25:12 -0700

Good news for the space buffs in the audience the human race is continuing its march toward the stars. Now a small private company has successfully demonstrated a rocket powered lander in Earth’s gravity field meaning that the craft would be more than capable of handling the gravity on Mars or the moon. Built by Masten Aerospace Systems the rocket demonstrated during a test for NASA that it is capable of launching off the ground and navigating. It successfully managed to take off fly up 164 feet move just about as far horizontally before settling back down after a 67 second flight. The secret to the rocket’s success lies in its navigational system call the Guidance Embedded Navigator Integration Environment or GENIE. Continue Reading

Learn to Code with 'Code Hero,' a new Kickstarter Project

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:10:49 -0700

The best thing about Kickstarter is all the cool and novel projects that it helps reach to fruition. Case in point Code Hero a new game being developed expressly to teach people how to code. Code Hero is a hybrid coding and First Person Shooter FPS game under development by Alex Peake and Primer Labs. You play it a bit like an adventure game running around a 3D world and interacting with things through a ‘Code Gun.’ This gun lets you write Javascript code which you shoot at bad guys and obstacles. This code lets you alter the environment based on what you wrote. The end goal of the game is to be able to write a complete game. Code Hero is Continue Reading

Nevada Approves Driverless Car Legislation

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:00:34 -0700

Score one for the future. Nevada has successfully managed to get some legislation in place to regulate driverless cars making them the first state to do so. This is big big news as this could be the opening that Google needs to prove its vehicles are safe and reliable. As this is the first time that driverless car legislation has ever been handled Nevada had to figure out the specifics for how driverless cars would be regulated. What they have settled on is a bit conservative but not bad for a first draft though it does keep driverless vehicles for the rich at the moment. Driverless cars will still be considered to have a driver even though a human may not be at the wheel. Continue Reading

Cornell Creates Awesome Robotic Hand Unlike Any Other

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:04:25 -0700

The human hand is a complex and intricate piece of machinery. Which has meant that practically all attempts to duplicate it have been complex fragile and expensive. Since most grippers designed to do complex tasks have been based on it that means most precision grippers are enormously expensive. Not so with Cornell’s new gripper however thanks to one clear fact it’s not based on the human hand. Cornell’s new hand is cheap. Like really cheap. But then the prototype is literally just a rubber balloon filled with sand. Which begs the question how does it grip See sand acts a lot like a fluid much of the time. If flows around things. So to get the Continue Reading

Facebook Will Ask Permission Before Sharing Address Book

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:50:09 -0700

Yesterday we detailed the frightening sharing of pretty much your phone’s entire address book with any app that asked for it. Today Apple has done the right thing and announced that it will make it so that apps will ask your permission before they download your entire address book. Which you know is only right. This move might break many apps. There are a surprising number of apps that transfer your address book to third parties. And every single one will need to update to bring themselves into compliance with Apple’s new rules. The whole debacle started with Path a small social networking startup. It had successfully generated some buzz and was growing in popularity when people found out that their address books were being copied. Continue Reading

Apple Reveals Mountain Lion, its Next Operating System

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:42:42 -0700

You might think that because you know Lion was released only half a year ago Apple might not be ready to reveal its successor. And you would be wrong. The company has released a sneak peak of its newest platform to developers and it brings with it some pretty massive changes. But first a nomenclature change. Apple is dropping the Mac name retroactively making Lion the first post Mac operating system. From now on it is simply known as OS X which points to Apple’s cut and run philosophy with the past. Most of the new features in OS X Mountain Lion seem to be aimed at making the platform more like iOS. Growls for example are being replaced Continue Reading

NASA Building Platform for Testing Space Communications

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:49:37 -0700

You know as many satellites as we have in orbit you would think that keeping in touch with space stations in orbit would be simple. Turns out however that it’s not And if we want future space inhabitants to be able to reliably keep in contact with the ground we need a whole suite of new tech. Which is exactly what NASA’s Glenn Research Center built over the course of the last three years. Now it is ready to be launched into orbit. The new platform is known as SCaN or the Space Communications and Navigation testbed. It provides the hardware needed to develop new protocols for space based communications mostly falling under Software Defined Radio or SDR. SDR is much like Continue Reading

Mojang & Humble Indie Bundle to Make a Game for Charity

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:00:40 -0700

If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at game design this is your chance. Mojang the company behind the insanely popular Minecraft and the Humble Indie Bundle an ethical retailer of indie games who offers limited time bundles for however much you choose to pay have decided to get together and make a game for charity. And Mojang will build the game based on the ideas you as the buyer of the game provide. The appropriately named Mojam Bundle lets you pick from a bunch of different themes for your preferred genre and style. But it won’t be straight from the list rather Mojang will be taking the most picked and the lowest picked from each type and combinging them together so you Continue Reading

Apple Lets Compaies Take your Phone's Address Book

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:40:37 -0700

Apple has without your permission been giving apps access to your address book. So all those amazing free services you know and love Probably not as free as you think. The news came out when it was revealed that Path a small social networking startup was uploading your address book without permission. The tech world understandably exploded with some defending the company but more heaping hate on it. Then came the reveal that Path was hardly alone Instagram Twitter FoodSpotting and Yelp Facebook all also upload entries from your address book. The rationale is that these services are seeing which of your friends are also on the service to make the social networking services on the Continue Reading

Scientists use Quantum Dots to Control Brain Cells

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:30:30 -0700

Scientists have managed to do the impossible controlling brain cells with small nanoparticles that could be delivered to nerve cells sans surgery. Which means that they can be used to treat debilitating conditions like Alzheimer’s depression and epilepsy all with a simple injection. And further in the future these things could be used as part of brain computer interfaces. We are able to stimulate the brain right now but our techniques are crude. The most effective way is with an electrode but getting the electrode into position requires the skull to be opened up. Another way that has seen some fairly intensive research lately is transcranial magnetic stimulation but it is highly inaccurate. Magnetic fields aren’t exactly precise and the field needs to Continue Reading