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Agility will never be accused of sticking to tradition for tradition's sake. Freed from the constraints of complicated combustion engines and all the associated tackle, designer Lawrence Marazzi has unveiled a brand new, fully electric British motorcycle that turns the rules of motorcycle design on their head. The Saietta features a hossack-inspired front end, an eye-popping fairing design and a crazy degree of mass centralization that could only be achieved with battery cells. Billed as a guerrilla commuter, it promises to be a very exhilarating ride. See the video after the jump to hear Marazzi talk about the design process, the future of electric motorcycles and the unique properties of the Saietta.  Read More

NASA's Kepler space telescope has succeeded in its mission to identify potentially-habitable exoplanets. Kepler has so far observed 156,000 stars in its field of vision and has identified no less than 1235 candidate planets that sit in the “goldilocks zone” (not too close to the star, and not too far away). Of these, scientists at the NASA's Ames Research Center are excited to announce the discovery of the Kepler-11 system – a rare multiple planetary system similar to our own with five planets in the habitable zone.  Read More

Fiddling with lenses and focal length extenders to get the effects we want is an annoying necessity for photographers – but the latest announcement from Canon has the potential to make all the company's lenses at least twice as useful. The Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM EXTENDER 1.4x is the first lens Canon has made with a built-in focal length extender. At the flick of a switch, it goes from 200-400mm to 280-560mm while maintaining its presumably stellar L series optics through the whole zoom range. That's one less fiddly lens change for wildlife and sports photographers, and one heck of a great idea!  Read More

Studying the bumpy protrusions on the fins of humpback whales has already led to more efficient wind and tidal power turbines and now nature is once again the source of inspiration for a new and more efficient hydroelectric turbine. The latest source of biomimicry is the basking shark, which industrial design student Anthony Reale has borrowed from to create "strait power," a water-powered turbine generator that tests have shown is 40 percent more efficient than current designs.  Read More

The most commonly used form of regenerative braking is where a vehicle’s electric motor is used as an electric generator to capture the vehicle’s kinetic energy, which is otherwise lost as heat when braking. The generator converts the kinetic energy into electricity that is then fed back into the vehicle’s battery pack where it is stored for later use. New research suggests that pneumatic or air hybrids that instead store the energy as compressed air would be much cheaper to produce than the current crop of EVs and battery-electric hybrids and could halve the fuel consumption of ICE powered vehicles.  Read More

Applications developers looking for a low power, small form factor computing solution that won't break the bank will no doubt appreciate the DreamPlug from Globalscale Technologies. Expanding on the company's GuruPlug system, the new low-profile plug computer is powered by a Marvell processor, has half a gigabyte of DDR2 RAM and a generous helping of onboard micro-SD flash memory to store the Linux kernel and root system files. Physical connectivity and expansion options include USB, eSATA, JTAG and UART and the unit also has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless capabilities.  Read More

The U.S. Air Force’s Space Fence program has entered its next phase with the three companies originally awarded US$30 million contracts to develop a Space Fence now cut back to two. Northrop Grumman is now out of the project, leaving Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, which have each been awarded a US$107 million dollar follow-on contract to further develop and prototype their systems in preparation for a final Space Fence production contract next year. As might be easy to misconstrue from its name, the Space Fence isn’t designed as a defense against intergalactic interlopers, but is intended to detect and track the increasing amount of space junk orbiting Earth.  Read More

The Zonda supercar established Pagani in the elite category of supercar manufacturers, so much has been expected of its successor, which we now know as the Huayra. Named appropriately after a South American God of the Wind, the Huayra will be shown to the public for the first time in Geneva a month from now. Only 20 of the gull-winged Huayras will be made per year, each costing one million euro with its main distinguishing features being a very light carbon titanium monocoque, 700 bhp, 1000 Nm twin-turbo mid-engined V12 and movable rear wing and four adjustable flaps constituting the most extensive active aerodynamic package yet to head for production. Though response to the car’s appearance is mixed, a photoshopped mock-up of a Huayra Spyder indicates the 230 mph supercar will be even better looking without a roof.  Read More

At the present moment, much of north-eastern North America is buried under one of the biggest snowfalls to hit in over 50 years. Much to the chagrin of home-owners throughout the region, that means a whole lot of shoveling. While it might not require a huge amount of energy to shovel one’s sidewalk – in fact, sometimes it can be kind of invigorating – it’s the bending and lifting that really makes it unpleasant. Various ergonomic shovels have been invented over the years to address this issue, such as the wheeled Sno Wovel. A simpler product is now available, however, in the form of the SnowBow.  Read More