Transonic Combustion Revitalizes Engine Output

Teaching an old dog new tricks seems to be the way we are approaching energy consumption; the Transonic Combustion engine is a new trick for a nearly dead dog. The new combustion style uses supercritical fluids that ignite when in contact with air, exactly timed to the piston's most efficient position. This way, no energy is wasted in combustion that is not used in the piston movement. Experts say that the expected out put on the engine will be somewhere around 98 mpg Highway, twice that of the best hybrids on the road today. Transonic says that the technology will be hitting the pavement somewhere between 2013-2014.

Via Inhabitat.

Google's New Public Data Explorer

As great as WolframAlpha is for data search, I have to say that as a designer, I am partial to visual representations and graphs. Google recently released its visual data representation labs that track the rates of everything from birth rate to retail sales rates on an interactive graph. Of course it's Google, and of course it's free.

Check some of them out here:

International Fertility Rates vs. Death Rates

Link to explore

Unemployment Rate By State

Link to explore

Reported STD Cases in the US by State

Link to explore

Mosquito Lasers

If played in real time, these pests would be getting gunned down in less than a tenth of a second. Just like most anything, though, its much cooler in slow motion. For anyone squeamish about smacking a pest on their arm when its biting you, you might want to skip to the next post. The device has been developed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help fight malaria. As PhysOrg notes,

"The new version could cost as little as $50 to manufacture, depending on volume. During his demonstration, Myhrvold released hundreds of mosquitoes into a glass tank. A laser tracked their movements and shot them down one by one, leaving their carcasses on the bottom of the tank. Myhrvold said that the lasers could shoot between 50 and 100 mosquitoes per second."

My Dad is going to want one of these for the ditch in front of our house in VA.

Goodbye power cord; You will not be missed.

A group of researchers at MIT have made yet another breakthrough in wireless power. By imbedding a large copper coil in a wall or ceiling and using electromagnetic resonance to transfer power between multiple devices, physicists André Kurs, Robert Moffatt, and Marin Soljačić have managed to generate fairly high efficiency by strategically coupling multiple devices as opposed to a single device. When the devices resonate at the same frequency, power is transferred with little interference by other objects resonating out of that frequency. Efficiency decreases with distance, but the system works from more than 2 meters away.

Click the read link for the goodies.

Shoot 1080p For Less than $1000

As Moore's Law suggests, the power of a technology and its cost to produce that same power are exponentially related. Every 18 months to 2 years, a technology will be half as expensive to produce the same capabilities. Canon's new Rebel T2i is no different.

One can now, for the relatively modest price of $800, shoot 30 frame per second- 1080p movies from a digital SLR. On top of that, the camera takes beautiful resolution images at 18 megapixels, ISO between 100 and 6400, and a continuous shooting function that takes 3.7 pictures per second. The camera will be released in March.

Google Smartphones To Translate Live

Franz Och, head of Google's Translation Services and Chair of the Hilarious Names Committee, said recently that Google is working on improving speech recognition software so that live translation can occur language to language. Imagine calling a friend who only speaks Swedish and being able to communicate with them as if they were speaking to you in perfect English. Important to note, as PhysOrg says, "Google's system would analyze speech in the same way as a human interpreter, listening to a package of speech to gather the full meaning before it attempts to translate. It will improve in accuracy the more it is used." Google expects to release this function after a few more years of research.

The implications of this are huge. Economic dominance has forced certain languages to become more prevalent on a global scale. This type of technology would preserve languages as they are, allowing families and regions to have their own dialects and colloquialisms. For right now, I think, as posted below, it is direly important that Americans join the bi- and trilingual groups that are populating the world, and learn a few languages.

How It's Made: Google Nexus One

Alright Google, you got me. I love this kind of thing.

Google has been putting together a series of short films collectively called Nexus One: The Story. Now in case you missed it, the Nexus One is the Google phone. Yeah, there are a lot of Android phones (DROID, G1, etc.), but the Nexus One is the first phone that Google has directly collaborated on the actual hardware and design. The company manufacturing the device, HTC, worked closely with Google to fabricate the perfect Android phone in Google's image.

Check out all of the videos after the break.

The Future of Personal Computing: Closing the gap between smartphones and laptops

Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm the NPD Group gives an interesting view of the past several years of personal computing in his article Switched On column on engadget.

Laptops are getting smaller, faster, and cheaper while phones are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Much of the smartphone's usability lends itself to rather new technologies such as multi-touch, which weren't around just a few years ago. I'm counting the days until a keyboard and mouse are completely optional accessories.

Read the article here.

Fascinating Improvements in TIssue Reconstruction

Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine shows the work of "seven hundred researchers over a period of twenty years," and where that has gotten the institute and the state of tissue regeneration. This video is incredible. My favorite part:

"(As you watch an inkjet printer shoot back and forth) This is actually one of our strategies. We use a printer. And instead of using ink -- you just saw an inkjet cartridge --we just use cells. This is actually your typical desktop printer... it's actually printing a two chamber heart one layer at a time."

Real Time Webcams Enrich Google Earth

I almost cannot remember a time when I couldn't go to my computer and get turn my turn directions to anywhere I wanted to go, down to the feet on the block. Google Earth and Google Maps have changed the way humans use both navigational systems and maps themselves. Below, PhD candidate Austin Abrams has developed a system that utilizes live webcam feeds to inform the facades of buildings in Google Earth. The system is connected to nearly 1000 webcams, some of which need to be calibrated by locals (if you get a few minutes, public help is requested). The NewScientist article quotes Georgia Tech researcher Kiwhan Kim as saying he is impressed with the new technology, but sees that full real-time Google Earth is still years away.

A quick video after the jump.

Levitating Magnets may be key to Fusion's Future

Recently, I saw an article on TED about the longevity of fusion power; that we have enough Lithium ions in the ocean to serve our energy needs for thousands of years. A new type of fusion reactor was tested at MIT to see if a levitating magnet used to contain the plasma particles needed to cause the fusion worked better than one supported by beams from below. The study shows that the plasma was much easier to contain and caused much more random interaction that spurs fusion than the old model.

Read the full article here.

Via PhysOrg.

Apple Releases iPad: Impressive (kind of)

(Engadget hands-on iPad)

A couple of days ago I threw together a little analysis of the up and coming Apple Tablet (released today as iPad). My pricing prediction (starting at $499) was spot on, as well as the concept image I chose to display in the article, and the overall goal Apple had in mind when designing this product. I'm quite satisfied with the shear power they've managed to pack into this thin device, but I have quite a few qualms with Apple's decisions. Check out my thoughts after the break.

The Third & The Seventh, by Alex Roman

Watch this beautiful video (watch the whole thing, too, trust me), then read the secret after the jump.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

New York Rethinks the Sidewalk Shed

Mayor Bloomberg came out with an announcement this week that:

"This new design is great for building owners because less of your building will be hidden, and it's great for pedestrians because there's more space to walk, run, or shop than ever before."

If you cannot tell what exactly they are replacing, then they've done a good job.

More details after the jump.

Will Apple beat Amazon at their own game?: iPad vs. Kindle 3

(GIZMODO)

What is the Apple iPad (or maybe its iSlate?) you ask? Well, its an unannounced unleaked apple tablet that rumor speculates will be released in 2 days time, at Apple’s Media Event. With pricing speculated as high as $1000 (although in my worthless opinion it will be a subsidized $499 with data plan from VZW or ATT), it might seem insane to argue it will overtake amazon’s best-selling device this holiday season.

Had to happen sometime

Of course this would happen in Korea first. A while ago, a friend and I had a semi-Kindle type of machine for a project, and the major criticism was that to have a successful replacement for a magazine or a book, the device would need to be flexible, say like rolling a magazine up into a beach bag. The technology has plenty of different applications, too.