Inventors and Remarkable People
The solar system no longer has nine planets
February 8, 2006 Since 1930 when American Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, schoolchildren have been taught that Planet Earth is one of nine planets which orbit the sun, and that Pluto is the outermost planet in the solar system. Then last July 30, an American team found a more distant and quite large object circling the sun some 15 billion kilometers beyond earth. Dubbed UB313, an enormous debate has erupted over whether it should be classified as the tenth planet. More fuel was added to the debate last week when a group lead by Bonn astrophysicists determined that this putative planet is bigger than Pluto. By measuring its thermal emission, the scientists were able to determine a diameter of about 3000 km, which makes it 700 km larger than Pluto and thereby marks it as the largest solar system object found since the discovery of Neptune in 1846. For the last six months, many astronomers have argued that UB313 should be classified as a Kuiper belt object (KBO) but Pluto is also in the Kuiper belt, and the revelations about its size will weigh heavily when the special 19-member panel set up by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) determines exactly what constitutes a planet. Either way, the official planetary count will no longer be nine as a decision against UB313 will demote Pluto to the status of a KBO. (read more...)
Power Plastics to provide electrical power to packaging and intelligent clothing
January 27, 2006 One of the more interesting companies we’ve encountered in the last 12 months has been Konarka. For starters, Konarka was founded by the winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for chemistry, Dr. Alan Heeger, who has since become the company’s chief scientist. We first wrote about Konarka’s light-activated plastic power supply for the battlefield, but in more recent times we’ve seen the company announce a joint development program with Textronics to create prototype garments and fashion accessories with portable, wearable power generation capabilities and more recently comes the news that the Konarka’s Power Plastic materials are being developed to extend and enhance packaging and display applications. Imagine a can or bottle with dynamic content, boxes that light up or containers that serve as power sources for their contents. (read more...)
Heavyweight transparency – Light Transmitting Concrete
January 26, 2006 Thanks to a lot of unimaginative work over the last half century, concrete has a bad name, yet at the same time, some of the world’s most beautiful and innovative works of contemporary architecture derive their character from the material. Interestingly, though concrete might seem a low tech material, it is evolving. We’ve recently written about bendable concrete and now there’s Light Transmitting Concrete (known as LiTraCon), which is created by mixing concrete and glass fibres optical strands to create a solid yet translucent block suitable for floors, pavements and load-bearing walls. The inventor of LiTraCon, Hungarian architect Aron Losonczi, gave a public lecture at the United States National Building Museum earlier this week to present his revolutionary product that brings translucence to a traditionally opaque material. The lecture complements a current exhibition at the Museum entitled Liquid Stone: New Architecture in Concrete, which features a five-foot tall LiTraCon wall. (read more...)
Intel First to Demonstrate Working 45nm Chips
January 26, 2006 Intel Corporation has become the first company to reach an important milestone in the development of 45 nanometer (nm) logic technology. Intel has produced what are believed to be the first fully functional SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) chips using 45nm process technology, its next-generation, high-volume semiconductor manufacturing process. Achieving this milestone means Intel is on track to manufacture chips with this technology in 2007 using 300mm wafers, and continues the company’s focus on pushing the limits of Moore’s Law, by introducing a new process generation every two years. You can listen to a recorded interview with Intel senior fellow Mark Bohr by clicking the Manufacturing channel here. (read more...)
The world’s lightest solid finds myriad other applications
November 29, 2005 When we first wrote about aerogel, we treated it as somewhat of a technological novelty. Aerogel is 99.8% air and 1,000 times less dense than glass yet it can withstand high temperature, delivering 39 times more insulation than the best fibreglass. This exotic substance was invented in the 1930s but has been refined by NASA in recent times for the purpose of catching space-dust. Now it has been recognised that aerogel’s unique properties are in fact very applicable to some of man’s greatest challenges. Its unique nanostructure offers higher electrochemical surface areas, better mass transport, reduced or eliminated ionic contamination and price competitiveness – in short, lower cost and higher performance compared to current membranes on the market, making it ideal as a high performance electro-catalyst for fuel cells, non-electro-catalysts for emissions control, and aerogel materials for energy storage. (read more...)
The VirtuSphere: full body immersion Virtual reality at last
The VirtuSphere is a new platform that is a breakthrough in the science of Virtual Reality and one we are convinced will take VR into the broader community. It is that significant and more because it is the solution for a million problems offering more compelling, convincing and relevant VR experiences than any device yet conceived, and with VR advancing rapidly in its other constituent areas (graphics, sound, touch, and to a lesser extent, smell and taste), we believe the VirtuSphere will be the device to make VR relevant to the world – this is a killer app. Inside the VirtuSphere, the virtual explorer can physically navigate the virtual world with genuine human movement, - the headset is wireless, and senses 360 degree movement, but unlike any existing virtual reality or gaming peripheral, the floor moves and each virtual step is accompanied by a real one of the same dimensions. It promises to be the ultimate computer games peripheral, the ultimate treadmill at the gymnasium, the ultimate educational resource with remarkable flexibility and offer the most realistic virtual experience of almost any kind - enabling you to walk through the house you’re hiring across the world for your holidays or explore the Daintree Rainforest. It also has major occupational training implications as it offers experiential learning for everyone from athletes to fire fighters and is already being developed by the military for training crack troops and saving lives on the battlefield. Like we said, this is significant! (read more...)
Auto Skins - digital clothing for your car
Auto Skins is a product that has been on the Australian market for several years. Developed by the aptly named promotional company Decently Exposed, the AutoSkin is a digitally coloured skin for automobiles. You can have high resolution artwork emblazoned on the skin which is then bonded to the car and indestinguishable from normal paint other than by its photographic reproduction. The AutoSkin has the double advantage of forming a protective coating which can be stripped off to reveal the original, as-new unblemished duco the car came with. Over 2500 cars have been reskinned to date with corporate branders the logical first-movers, but an increasing number of innovative marketers and consumers keen to individualise their most public personal expression. The skins sells for between US$1500 and US$3000 depending on the amount of real estate needed to be covered and the complexity of the design. They’ll work from your artwork and when you start making more than one, the price drops quickly. For US$3000, a luxury-sized car can be completely reskinned with digital imagery of your choice – that price includes the creative design, manufacture and fitting of the skin to create a new vehicle with a completely different look. (read more...)
Breakthroughs In Cross Lingual Communication and Speech-to-Speech Translation
November 4, 2005 Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Karlsruhe's joint International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies (InterACT) held a landmark videoconference last week to demonstrate new breakthroughs in cross-lingual communication. InterACT director, computer science professor Alex Waibel, who is a faculty member at both institutions, demonstrateed domain-independent, speech-to-speech translation in a lecture, which was simultaneously translated from English to Spanish to German. Current speech-to-speech translation systems allow translation of spontaneous speech in very limited situations, like making hotel reservations or tourist shopping, but they cannot enable translation of large, open domains like lectures, television broadcasts, meetings or telephone conversations. The new technology developed by InterACT researchers fills that gap and makes it possible to extend such systems to other languages and lecture types. (read more...)
Eddie Paul - If it doesn't work, it just isn't finished yet
Serial inventor Eddie Paul has created working prototypes of dozens of inventions. If you can conceive it, he can probably build it. Beginning as a self-taught welder, painter, metal fabricator and machinist he along the way turned from a customiser to a creator, designer and inventor. Initially, he did it to enable a change of circumstance – to move away from homelessness and violence and street gangs but he found that he learned quickly and had that uncanny ability to look at the machinery he was working on and make it better. For the last 20 years he’s been doing it for fun at the same time as earning a handsome living as his engenuity, easy going nature and delivery on time and on budget has become recognised far and wide. That's Eddie with his Circlescan camera for capturing 360 degree images at a Victoria's Secret shoot. (read more...)
MIT unveils the $100 computer designed to educate the children of the Third World
October 1, 2005 The MIT Media Lab has launched a new research initiative to develop a US$100 laptop designed to revolutionize how we educate the world's children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created. The initiative was first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, Lab chairman and co-founder, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005 and earlier this week, Negroponte showed the first prototype images and concept drawings to the world’s press. (read more...)
The world’s biggest and fastest newspaper press
September 7, 2005 The Mitsubishi DIAMONDSTAR is the world's fastest double width newspaper offset press – it is as tall as a four story building with a printing speed of 90,000 full colour, 96-page broadsheet copies per hour. And who could possibly use a press that produced so many newspapers? Well, newspapers like the Yomiuri Shimbun which is the only newspaper in the world with a daily audited circulation greater than 10 million copies, a feat it first achieved in 1994 – its current audited circulation is 10,075,479 and a full page advert costs JPY47,910,000 yen, (US$437, 770) which is very reasonable when you consider the cost per thousand figure calcs to just US$42.34. The Yomiuri Shimbun bought four DIAMONDSTAR presses and can produce 100 full colour newspapers a second at full capacity. And Mitsubishi sold eight of the machines last year, so at least four others are lurking elsewhere, probably in Asia given this list of the world’s 100 largest newspapers. (read more...)
One of history’s most prolific inventions
August 29, 2005 Okay – hands up all those who know what this invention is? Though this invention has been around in very similar form for thousands of years, a major breakthrough in technology enable a new more convenient version to be produced in post-war Europe, first going on sale in 1950. Since that time, 100 billion have been sold – in every country, at the rate of 57 per second for 55 years. It’s one of history’s greatest business success stories and it is ... (read more...)
Electronic Music Pioneer Bob Moog Dies
August 23, 2005 Electronic music pioneer Dr. Robert Moog (71) passed away at his home in Asheville, N.C. earlier this week and will be mourned by a generation of music fans whom he introduced to electronic music via his world famous “Moog synthesizer”. Moog's instruments have influenced many styles of music from jazz to rock, R & B to classical. Moog keyboards can be heard in the music of artists as diverse as funk masters Parliament and Funkadelic; rock icons Yes, the Beatles, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer; and jazz greats Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. (read more...)
First human robotic arm implant
July 15, 2005 The first implantation of robotic arms into a human being is to be performed at the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In a statement issued by the hospital, an agreement was signed during June that will see a team of neuroscientists from Duke University, in the United States, led by Brazilian doctor Miguel Nicolelis, perform the implant in approximately three years time. A microchip implanted into the patient's brain will make it possible to control the prosthetics. Nicolelis has long been regarded as the most-likely to develop the technologies for such a procedure, having recently been named one of the 50 top scientists in the world by Scientific American. (read more...)
Tiret New York's 26.5 carat diamond "Second Chance" wristwatch
July 14, 2005 It must be the right month for outrageous diamond watches. A fortnight ago TAG Heuer trotted out Uma Therman wearing the red satin EU100,000 euro Diamond Fiction watch bracelet dripping with 879 Top Wesselton diamonds and now luxury watchmaker Tiret New York has designed its newest watch with 26.5ct of EXIRE diamonds from Belgian diamond manufacturer Inter Gems-Claes. New to the luxury watch scene, Tiret was launched in 2003 by Damon Dash and Daniel Lazar and has wasted little time in making itself very visible on the wrists of celebrities and sportspeople in the New York scene. Dash, Jay-Z and Biggs Burke formed Roc-A-Fella Records in 1996, and have created a juggernaut in rap music, clothing, liquor, publishing, film, and the hip-hop community in general since then. Thirty-two-year-old Dash is the business brains behind the Roc-A-Fella empire and has the connections and Midas Touch to seemingly make any brand successful right now. He appears to be doing just that with the Tiret name and the completely over-the-top “Second Chance” collection. With five times the carats of TAG Heuer’s Diamond Fiction, we weren’t game to ask the price. (read more...)
Vale Jack Kilby: the inventor of the microchip dies
June 24, 2005 Jack Kilby, the man who invented the Integrated Circuit – also known as the microchip – died on Monday at age 81. It’s not every day that a man of Kilby’s importance passes away. In terms of the magnitude of his invention, Jack Kilby ranks with just a handful of people in history whose inventions have comprehensively changed the world – names such as Johannes Gutenberg, James Watt, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford come to mind, and even then the universal application of the microchip ranks it above all of those inventions. In times yet to come, Kilby’s invention will be even more significant as the microchip seems destined to become a part of nearly every manufactured object. (read more...)
Research provides clues to space weather mystery
May 25, 2005 The most intense burst of solar radiation in five decades accompanied a large solar flare on January 20. It shook space weather theory and highlighted the need for new forecasting techniques, according to several presentations at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting this week in New Orleans. Dr. Richard Nightingale of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL) in Palo Alto, called upon his research into rotating sunspots to provide a piece of the puzzle. The solar flare, which occurred at 2 a.m. EST, tripped radiation monitors all over the planet and scrambled detectors on spacecraft. The shower of energetic protons came minutes after the first sign of the flare. This flare was an extreme example of the type of radiation storm that arrives too quickly to warn interplanetary astronauts. (read more...)
Bendable concrete
May 7, 2005 A new type of fibre-reinforced bendable concrete will be used for the first time in Michigan this summer. Developed by University of Michigan scientists, the new concrete looks like regular concrete, but is 500 times more resistant to cracking and 40 percent lighter in weight. Tiny fibres that comprise about 2 percent of the mixture's volume partly account for its performance. Also, the materials in the concrete itself are designed for maximum flexibility. Because of its long life, the Engineered Cement Composites (ECC) are expected to cost less in the long run, as well. (read more...)
Inflatable composite structures enable lightweight transportable buildings
May 7, 2005 Inflatable structures (aka airbeams) have developed rapidly in recent times, finding application in a variety of new engineering projects ranging from military tents in Iraq and Afghanistan to antennas in outer space. With necessity as the driving force, a team of engineers at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick forms the backbone of research into the technology. And the results have been spectacular - the technology has reduced the transportable weight of a tent by 66%, the transportable volume by 75% and the setup time by 50%. (read more...)
This waiting room chair can transform into a hospital bed
UPDATED (NEW IMAGES) April 26, 2005 This Intelligent Waiting Room Chair is a seat for hospital, school and nursing home waiting rooms that folds down into a fully functional hospital bed when required - ideal for emergency situations and for areas where disaster may strike, the bed is, according to the judges of the Australian Design Awards who gave it a silver medal, "clever, simple, commercially viable, and integrates well into current systems." Most importantly, it was designed by a recent graduate who is now seeking to take the product to market. (read more...)
Yolk ski and snowboard helmet
Yolk is a soft helmet designed to overcome the unfashionable image that helmets seem to have with the young-at-heart on the ski slopes of the world. ‘Yolk’ under regular use is flexible and conformable to the user’s head but when subjected to an impact it instantaneously forms a rigid shell dispersing and absorbing the energy . This is achieved utilising a semi- rigid liner and a Kevlar skin which is impregnated with a shear thickening fluid. ‘Yolk’ allows the user to plug in a two way radio, music player, or mobile phone to the integrated headphones and controls thereby creating a convenient and seamless transition. ‘Yolk’ can be fitted with of a choice of skins which can be stretched over the liner to match the user’s personal style. With similar safety standards across bike riding, inline skating, skateboarding, there are vast opportunities to develop different skins for these sports using the same liner. (read more...)
The Umbrella reinvented: the fully retractable umbrella
UPDATED April 26, 2005 (NEW IMAGES) Young designer Andy Wana has won the GOLD 2005 Australian Design Award-Dyson Student Award, by reengineering the humble umbrella, creating a significantly different take on the umbrella than anything seen before. Wana’s design overcomes several of the design weaknesses of the traditional umbrella. ‘Lotus 23’ is a fully retractable umbrella, folding into a low profile handle. Built with flexible ribs that flow with the wind, it is more durable than conventional designs allowing it to withstand severe storms, provide increased shade and self clean meaning that it squeezes the water off before you enter a building. It’s also cheaper to manufacture. (read more...)
Moore's Law: 40 and still going strong
On April 19, 1965 Electronics Magazine published a paper by Gordon Moore in which he made a prediction about the semiconductor industry that has become the stuff of legend. Known as Moore’s Law, his prediction has enabled widespread proliferation of technology worldwide, and today has become shorthand for rapid technological change. That was forty years ago - Bill Gates was nine years old, Desktop PCs were still a long way off, and notebooks, PDAs and the internet had not been thought of. Moore predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would continue to double every year for the next decade. Although it was an observation rather than any attempt to formulate a scientific law, "Moore's Law" has proved remarkably accurate over the last 40 years. (read more...)
Happy Birthday to the newspaper - 400 and going strong
March 9, 2005 Mass media will celebrate its 400th birthday later this year when the newspaper, the first mass medium begins its fifth century of publication. The exact date of the first newspaper is not known, and was thought to have been during 1609 but recent evidence accepted by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) pinpoints the year in which Strasbourg's Johann Carolus began printing his handwritten newsletters as 1605. Though radio, television, and the internet have long threatened to usurp print's status as the primary mass medium, the fact remains that print still garners more than half of the world's advertising expenditure. (read more...)
Mixaerator sterilises water without chemicals
November 3, 2004 Queensland inventor Mike Lewis has developed an impellor that uses the same principles as salmon, bath water and tornadoes, however his ground-breaking technology is revolutionising water sterilising and providing environmentally-friendly methods to clean up toxic damage. Mike's invention- Mixaerator- with the Twin Vortex Advantage (TVA) works using dual vortices, like the ones that occur when you pull the plug from the bath, or those found in the air currents of tornadoes. "Salmon use similar vortices to my machine. That's how they leap up water falls, their fins send out mini whirlpools that create immense force to push them up," Mike said. (read more...)
