Darren Quick

In more news to come out of the Society for Information Display’s (SID’s) 2008 International Symposium, Seminar, and Exhibition, Sharp announced the availability of two new rugged TFT LCD panels. The 5.7-inch and 8.4-inch TFT-LCDs are VGA panel displays designed to suit a variety of applications, including point-of-purchase screens, VoIP products, medical equipment, test and measurement equipment.  Read More

While improvements in engine technology have led to a marked improvement in fuel efficiency and carbon emissions in vehicles running on internal combustion engines in recent years, even greater cuts in emissions need to be made to tackle the global environmental problems associated with them. We’ve seen commercial airlines turning to biofuels, trucks running on liquefied natural gas and buses using ethanol engines. One of the most promising solutions for the humble car of the future could is hydrogen fuel cell systems, with a number of car manufacturers investing heavily in development.  Read More

US researchers have genetically engineered the bacterium E. coli to coax its DNA into computing a classic mathematical puzzle. Molecules of DNA have the natural ability to store and process information, in fact DNA represents the highest storage density of anything on Earth - French cytogeneticist Jerome LeJeune showed that the amount of information in one strand of human DNA is the same as that in 1,000 books of small print, each around 500 pages thick. Scientists have been performing computations with bare DNA molecules in lab dishes since the mid-1990s, but the new research, reported online in the Journal of Biological Engineering, is the first to do DNA computation in living cells.  Read More

Samsung has showcased an ultra-high definition, (3,840 x 2,160 pixels), 82-inch LCD panel for 120Hz television sets at the Society for Information Display (SID) 2008 International Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition which is running from May 18 to 23 in Las Vegas. The world’s largest LCD panel supplier said the panel uses a red/green/blue LED backlight, which has been added to raise true color saturation to 150 percent, based on the NISC standard of 100 percent. It displays ultra-definition (UD) resolution at 120 frames per second, minimizing the blurring that is sometimes experienced at 60Hz.  Read More

Designers Eoin McNally and Ian Walton have come up with the concept of a ‘Glo Pillow’ that uses an LED fabric substrate below the surface of the pillow to wake the user with light. Forty five minutes before the alarm is due to activate, the pillow begins to glow. The light intensity increases gradually from 0 lux to 250 lux, simulating a natural sunrise and helping to calibrate the body clock by waking the body naturally. The LED fabric substrate also functions as a display, showing the time on the pillows surface using a grid of LEDs inside the pillow.  Read More

There’s at least one reason to look forward to the InfoComm 2008 conference in Las Vegas this June with next-generation large-screen display manufacturer Shinoda Plasma announcing plans to exhibit a flexible, 1-millimeter thick, 125-inch film-type prototype display that can be used as a curved or wrap-around screen. At a low-key unveiling on May 15, Shinoda Plasma announced plans to exhibit the 3 x 1 meter, (9 feet 10-inches x 3 feet 3-inches) plasma tube array (PTA) display, which consists of 3 seamlessly integrated 1 x 1 meter square sub-modules and offers a resolution of 960 x 360 and weighs in at 3.6 kilograms (8 lbs), or about 10 times less than a conventional plasma display. At the unveiling Shinodo Plasma also confirmed their intent to begin small-scale production of a 150-inch (3 x 2 meter) version this autumn. While digital signage and advertising applications are sure to be the main uses for the ultrathin displays, there are sure to be plenty of people wanting a display or two for the walls at home to avoid painting.  Read More

IBM has expanded its High Performance Computing (HPC) capabilities for businesses with the introduction their new BladeCenter QS22 - a new, economical supercomputing technology inspired by advanced scientific research facilities. The heart of the QS22 is the multi-core IBM PowerXCell 8i processor, a new generation processor based on the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) Architecture, which is compliant with the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) Architecture, originally developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba to provide the computing power for cutting-edge gaming applications. For challenging arithmetic operations the IBM PowerXCell 8i offers five-times the speed of the original Cell/B.E. processor and, coupled with additions like 16-times more memory (up to 32GB) than its predecessors, the QS22 can handle workloads that previously required dozens of servers.  Read More

The miniaturization of technology has brought unprecedented portability to increasingly powerful mobile devices such as PDAs and mobile phones, but the trade off has been the corresponding reduction in screen sizes to an often impractical level. One solution is miniature projectors which let users carry the equivalent of a big screen TV in their pocket. High power semiconductor laser designer and manufacturer QPC Lasers, Inc. is hosting private demonstrations of their high power miniature prototype BrightLase Red-Green-Blue “RGB” laser, which is designed for high resolution miniature projectors in the 100 lumens output region for portable handheld consumer electronics.  Read More

Peter Richardson from Scottish architecture firm ZM Architecture has proposed using Solar Lily Pads on Glasgow’s River Clyde to harness the sun’s rays and send electricity to the city's grid. The concept has taken first place in the International Design Awards, (IDA), ‘Land and Sea’ competition. The lilypads are designed to be moved and dismantled easily as they are simply tethered to the river bed, with integrated motors used to rotate the discs for maximum exposure to sunlight throughout the day.  Read More