Darren Quick

The phrase “the phones are running hot” has the potential for a double meaning in the smartphone age, with increasingly processor-intensive apps being used on mobile devices. Desktop computers make use of water cooling to keep their CPUs from overheating, so why can’t smartphones? Why not, indeed. NEC has done just that with the Medias X N-06E, the world’s first water-cooled smartphone.  Read More

Despite numerous attempts throughout the years, smell-o-vision has failed to take off on the big or small screens. Japanese company Chaku Perfume Co. Ltd. is hoping to have better luck on the even smaller screen with its Chat Perf attachment for iPhone that allows messages or email notifications to be accompanied by a signature smell.  Read More

According to a joint World Health Organization/UNICEF report issued this week, an estimated 768 million people relied on unimproved drinking-water sources in 2011, with 185 million of these relying on surface water to meet their daily drinking-water needs. WHO and UNICEF have set a 2030 target for everyone to have access to a safe drinking-water supply and new water-purifying “nanoscavengers” developed by researchers at Stanford University could help achieve this goal.  Read More

When Nvidia unveiled its Tegra 4 mobile processor at CES in January, it also unveiled Project Shield, a handheld gaming console that would be powered by said chip. The “Project” has now been dropped and Nvidia has announced Shield will be available in June for US$349.  Read More

Back in February at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi, Abdo “Dado” Feghali set a new Guinness World Record by getting sideways in a stock Chevrolet Camaro SS fitted with an EasyDrift system for over 10 minutes, covering a distance of 6.95 miles (11.18 km). Pretty impressive, right? Well, it’s not looking quite so impressive after BMW Performance Center Instructor Johan Schwartz spent a large slab of his Saturday in a continuous drift that covered an insane 51.28 miles (82.52 km).  Read More

Due to their relative faintness compared to their parent stars, most known exoplanets have been discovered using indirect detection methods – that is, detecting the effects they have rather than observing them directly. There are numerous indirect methods that have proven useful in the detection of exoplanets and now yet another, which relies on Einstein’s special theory of relativity, has joined the list with the discovery of an exoplanet known as Kepler-76b.  Read More

Tastes in music are such a subjective thing that it’s practically impossible to keep everyone in a crowded environment like a pub or coffee shop happy with the tune selection. Developed by the Mobile Radicals group at the UK’s Lancaster University, the CheckinDJ digital jukebox aims to keep the majority of people happy by using near field communication (NFC) and social networking to poll everyone’s musical tastes.  Read More

Millions of years of evolution has resulted in plants being the most efficient harvesters of solar energy on the planet. Much research is underway into ways to artificially mimic photosynthesis in devices like artificial leaves, but researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA) are working on a different approach that gives new meaning to the term “power plant.” Their technology harvests energy generated through photosynthesis before the plants can make use of it, allowing the energy to instead be used to run low-powered electrical devices.  Read More

Kicking off with the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), which was launched in March 2009, the European Space Agency’s Earth Explorer missions are intended to provide a greater understanding of the Earth and the interactions between various natural Earth processes. “Biomass” is the seventh Earth Explorer satellite to get the nod and will provide and accurate picture of the amount of biomass and carbon stored in the world’s forests.  Read More