Ben Coxworth
Researchers use rocket science for sustainable waste treatment process
Rocket engines are generally not thought of as being environmentally-friendly, but thanks to a newly-developed process, we may someday see them neutralizing the emissions from wastewater treatment plants. The same process would also see those plants generating their own power, thus meaning they would be both energy-neutral and emissions-free. Developed by two engineers at Stanford University, the system starts with the formation of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane gas - something that treatment plants traditionally try to avoid. Read More
It’s rather ironic that in order to fully appreciate the value of an archeological artefact, part of that object must first be destroyed. That’s the way it has worked, at least, since the only way of determining the chemical composition of such items has been by breaking down a physical sample from them. As more and more institutions have decided to disallow sampling of their artefacts, however, it has become increasingly important to develop non-destructive methods of analysis. Recently, an archeologist from Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations developed just such a method - Professor Yuval Goren has adapted an off-the-shelf portable x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer to reveal the soil and clay composition of objects, simply by touching their surface. Read More
Software removes pedestrians from Google Street View
Google Street View, while very useful, fascinating, and full of wonderful bloopers, does rub some privacy advocates the wrong way. Should people on public streets have a reasonable expectation of not ending up with their photo on the Internet? There’s a whole other article in that, but in any case... for all the folks who do have a problem with it, a computer science graduate student is working on a solution: software that digitally removes pedestrians from Street View images. One of the byproducts of the current version of the system is somewhat unsettling, however – areas where people were in images are sometimes marked by ghost-like shapes, or even by disembodied shoes and feet. Read More
The verse “Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are” could, in fact, refer to the frustration felt by astronomers trying to view celestial objects obscured by turbulence in the earth’s atmosphere. It’s that turbulence that causes stars and other heavenly bodies to twinkle, and it’s one of the reasons that space-based telescopes like the Hubble can see those objects more clearly than telescopes down here on the ground. Recently, however, a team of astronomers from the University of Arizona developed a technique that allows them to effectively turn off the twinkling over a large field of view, allowing them to get Hubble-quality images in a fraction of the usual time. Read More
It seems like just yesterday Oregon Scientific was offering up its ATC2K actioncam, and now it’s all the way up to the 9K? They grow up so fast! Like its immediate predecessor, the ATC5K, the ATC9K features a built-in color LCD screen. Unlike it, however, the 9K shoots full 1080p HD, is waterproof down to 20 meters/60 feet (the 5K only goes down to 3 meters/10 feet), has a 130-degree field of view, includes a remote, and it can embed G-force data on your footage. Read More
Day after day, honeybees are able to travel back and forth between a food source and their hive, even in a constantly-changing environment. Given that the insects have relatively small brains, scientists have determined that they rely chiefly on vision and hard-wired visual processing abilities to achieve such a feat. To better understand that process, scientists from the Cognitive Interaction Technology Center of Excellence at Bielefeld University, Germany, have created an artificial honeybee’s eye. Using the device, they hope to unlock the secrets of the insects’ sensing, processing and navigational skills, and apply them to human technology such as micro air vehicles (MAVs). Read More
The World Health Organization estimates that 1.3 million people worldwide died from tuberculosis in 2008. It’s definitely a disease to be taken seriously, so when people in remote locations are being tested for it, it’s best if they don’t have to wait for their samples to be processed at a distant lab. That’s why medical device designer Andrew Miller, when he was still an undergraduate at Houston’s Rice University, developed the portable, battery-operated Global Focus fluorescence microscope. In a paper published this Wednesday, Miller and his co-authors described how the $US240 Global Focus is able to detect TB-positive sputum smears just as well as laboratory microscopes worth over $40,000. Read More
Perhaps you haven’t given this problem a lot of thought, but it is a problem nonetheless... most spray bottles can’t be used upside down, or even at much of angle once they’re half-empty. Not only that, but there’s always that last little bit of liquid in the bottom that gets wasted. That's because most of them have rigid-tubed sprayers that just have a single hole at the bottom, so they only suck up liquid from the bottom middle of the bottle. Well, British inventor Michael Pritchard has come up with something he calls the ANYWAY Spray, a tube that allows you to hold your spray bottles any way you darn well please, and keep spraying until they’re as dry as Keith Richards’ bourbon glass. Read More
In two just-released studies, scientists have announced new ways of making solar cells less expensive and more efficient. In one of the projects, researchers from the University of Toronto demonstrated that nickel can work just as well as gold for electrical contacts in colloidal quantum dot solar cells. In the other, a team from California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory added selenium to zinc oxide, dramatically increasing the oxide’s efficiency in absorbing solar light. Both developments could result in more practical, affordable solar technology. Read More
Graffiti murals can be truly amazing pieces of artwork, but when it comes to indoor graffiti-making events... well, those spray paints aren’t exactly fume-free, nor are they particularly forgiving to people trying their hand at the art form for the first time. That’s where the YrWall Digital Graffiti Wall comes in. Designed by startup British tech company Lumacoustics, YrWall consists of a video wall that users "paint" on using a modified spray paint can - it “sprays” infrared light, and is tracked by a computer. Much like Microsoft Paint, users can select different colors and effects from a palette, fill in areas with a given color, insert pre-made graphics, and delete their mistakes. When they’re done, they can save their projects, share them online using an onscreen keyboard, or even get them printed on T-shirts. Read More
