Stretchy Solar Cells Power "Super Skin" The "super skin" developed by Stanford University researcher Zhenan Bao is self-powering, using polymer solar cells to generate electricity. The solar cells are not just flexible, but stretchable — they can be stretched up to 30 percent beyond their original length and snap back without any damage or loss of power. "With artificial skin, we can basically incorporate any function we desire," says Bao, a professor of chemical engineering, who presented her work on Feb. 20 at the AAAS annual meeting in Washington, D.C. "That is why I call our skin 'super skin.' The foundation for the artificial skin is a flexible organic transistor, made with flexible polymers and carbon-based materials. To sense a particular biological molecule, the surface of the transistor has to be coated with another molecule to which the first one will bind when it comes into contact. Bao's team has successfully demonstrated the concept by detecting a certain kind of DNA. [Image by L.A.
Webcam Hacker Luis Mijangos: Newsmakers "Do you want to see something scary?" It was a Saturday night, not much happening in her Long Beach, California, neighborhood, so high school senior Melissa Young was home messing around on her computer. Her little sister, Suzy, was doing the same thing down the hall. The house was quiet, save the keyboard tapping in the girls' rooms, when the odd little instant message popped up on Melissa's screen—an IM from Suzy. Melissa wondered why her goof-off sister was IM'ing from the next room instead of just padding over—she wasn't usually that lazy—so she walked over to see what was up. That night, Suzy's 20-year-old friend Nila Westwood got the same note, the same attachment. A month passed. The more ubiquitous cameras become, the less we're aware they're even there. It's a question that James Kelly and his girlfriend, Amy Wright, never thought they'd have to entertain. Mistah X wasn't done. They were powerless. The campus police were in no position to handle a case like this. "Oh, really?"
Microsoft's 3D Transparent Interface Makes Us Feel Like We're Living in the Future Windows 8 may seem like a radical change from what came before it, but some of the stuff Microsoft has cooking in its research labs makes Windows 8 look boring by comparison. Researchers at Microsoft's Applied Sciences Grop developed a 3D-looking computer interface displayed on a transparent screen. Microsoft's 3D computing combines Samsung's new transparent OLED screen, as well Microsoft's own Kinect sensors. Combining the two allowed the research team to create a virtual 3D desktop that you can manipulate with hand gestures. The Kinect sensors track the hand gestures, as well as your eye and head movements, adjusting the perspective of the screen accordingly. In what may be a strange, backwards setup to most, the screen is actually positioned in front of the keyboard. This technology is purely experimental for now. [Next at Microsoft via Geek.com] Like this?
BloomReach Crunches Big Data To Deliver The Future Of SEO and SEM Are you ready for a revolution? Today, after 3 years of machine learning development in stealth, BloomReach reveals its big data solution for website relevance optimization. BloomReach is capable of boosting organic search traffic by a whopping 80%, and will flip the search engine optimization and marketing industries upside down. With a huge problem, a team of industry rockstars backed by $16 million from Bain Capital Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, and the patented technology capable of executing, BloomReach could become the first $10 billion enterprise marketing company, joining other core solutions like Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce. BloomReach’s cloud marketing platform attacks the lack of search result presence that plagues the content and products filling up the subpages of most big websites. Here’s how BloomReach’s core product BloomSearch fixes this. The other two products BloomReach launches today maximize conversions from search advertising and social curation.
Scientists revolutionize electron microscope: New method could create highest resolution images ever Researchers at the University of Sheffield have revolutionised the electron microscope by developing a new method which could create the highest resolution images ever seen. For over 70 years, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which `looks through´ an object to see atomic features within it, has been constrained by the relatively poor lenses which are used to form the image. The new method, called electron ptychography, dispenses with the lens and instead forms the image by reconstructing the scattered electron-waves after they have passed through the sample using computers. Scientists involved in the scheme consider their findings to be a `first step´ in a `completely new epoch of electron imaging´. Project leader Professor John Rodenburg, of the University of Sheffield´s Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, said: "To understand how material behaves, we need to know exactly where the atoms are.
Amazon Has Tried Everything to Make Shopping Easier. Except This. Doug Strickland/Chattanooga Times Free Press, via Associated PressSanjay Shah, left, general manager of Amazon’s new warehouse in Chattanooga, Tenn., at an opening ceremony on Thursday with the Tennessee governor, Bill Haslam. Much of the discussion about Amazon is focused on its digital side, yet the company is relentlessly expanding into the physical. It has announced five new United States warehouses since late December, all with more than a million square feet. It is testing out delivery lockers in New York and Seattle for those who cannot receive their goods at home. It has been experimenting with a grocery delivery service in Seattle for several years. It has expanded its Prime $79 annual shipping fee program, hoping members will order more of everything.
New Video Shows Japanese Speech-Jamming Gun in Action | Underwire Two Japanese researchers recently introduced a prototype for a device they call a SpeechJammer that can literally “jam” someone’s voice — effectively stopping them from talking. Now they’ve released a video of the device in action. “We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking,” write Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada in their article on the SpeechJammer (PDF). “However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately disrupt other people when it is their turn … rather than achieve more fruitful discussions.” The researchers released the video after their paper went viral Thursday, to the authors’ apparent surprise. The design of the SpeechJammer is deceptively simple. Sonic devices have popped up in pop culture in the past. But instead of sci-fi, the Japanese researchers behind the SpeechJammer looked to medical devices used to help people with speech problems.
Web Companies Agree to Support 'Do Not Track' System All-carbon-nanotube transistor can be crumpled like a piece of paper (PhysOrg.com) -- Thanks to the flexible yet robust properties of carbon nanotubes, researchers have previously fabricated transistors that can be rolled, folded, and stretched. Now a team from Japan has made an all-carbon-nanotube transistor that can be crumpled like a piece of paper without degradation of its electrical properties. The new transistor is the most bendable reported to date that doesn’t experience a loss in performance. The researchers, Shinya Aikawa and coauthors from the University of Tokyo and the Tokyo University of Science, have published their study in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters. “The most important thing is that electronics might now be usable in places or situations that were previously not possible,” coauthor Shigeo Maruyama, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Tokyo, told PhysOrg.com. “Ongoing topics are to control device properties and to integrate them,” Maruyama said. More information: Shinya Aikawa, et al.
Mobile's Coming Costs Put CFOs on the Spot CIO CFOworld — The iPad/iPhone-driven BYOD trend means demand for mobile bandwidth is expanding exponentially. That's interesting as a reflection of the boom in mobile devices across consumer and enterprise markets, but means problems for carriers. And CFOs need to think today about how the movement to bring-your-own-device may impact their bottom line tomorrow. Pros and Cons of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) The most recent Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast draws a picture of growing demand for bandwidth in the post-PC era, setting the scene for carriers to develop new pricing tiers and new demand-based services as they attempt to monetize this demand while attempting to be as frugal as they are able when it comes to infrastructure investment. Carriers Are Businesses Sure, you can look at booming data as an excuse to spend, spend, spend on infrastructure. New Data Charges Ahead Continue Reading
What makes a robot fish attractive? Robot fish moves to the head of the school Probing the largely unexplored question of what characteristics make a leader among schooling fish, researchers have discovered that by mimicking nature, a robotic fish can transform into a leader of live ones. Through a series of experiments, researchers from Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) aimed to increase understanding of collective animal behavior, including learning how robots might someday steer fish away from environmental disasters. Nature is a growing source of inspiration for engineers, and the researchers were intrigued to find that their biomimetic robotic fish could not only infiltrate and be accepted by the swimmers, but actually assume a leadership role. The researchers designed their bio-inspired robotic fish to mimic the tail propulsion of a swimming fish, and conducted experiments at varying tail beat frequencies and flow speeds. Marras and Porfiri conducted their experiments with support from the National Science Foundation.
Google’s Mobile Sales Head: US Smartphone Ownership Grew 7% Last Year — Plus, Predictions Jason Spero, Google’s head of mobile sales and strategy, will be taking the stage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later today, where he’ll be revealing new research about smartphone growth and making some predictions about what we’ll be seeing in the mobile world over the next year. In advance of Spero’s talk, Google is publishing a blog post that previews some of his comments. It offers a few highlights from new research conducted in January with Ipsos, which will be part of a future update to Our Mobile Planet, Google’s free analysis and data tool. Smartphone ownership grew 7 percent in the United States, to 38 percent of the total population. Here are Spero’s 12 predictions for 2012: More than 1 billion people will use mobile devices as their primary internet access point.10 days where mobile searches represent >;50% of trending search terms.Mobile’s role in driving people into stores will be proven and it will blow us away.