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ASUS is about to let loose a stylish new powerhouse laptop which boasts a 10 hour battery life, ditches the ultra-low-power processors in favor of 35 W varieties and features Nvidia graphics with Optimus technology. The new addition to the company's U series manages to keep its impressive internals cool with dual heatpipe technology that also keeps the palm rest area nice and chilled too.  Read More

Currently, the world’s largest capacity wind turbine is the Enercon E-126, which has a rated capacity of 7.58 MW. It has held that honor since its introduction in 2007, but is under threat of losing the title with a number of 10 MW turbines currently in development – including what was destined to be the world’s biggest wind turbine to be built in Norway. Now a Spanish project has upped the ante with its aim of building an offshore wind turbine with a capacity of 15 MW.  Read More

As we demand more and more of our smartphones, the up time between charges suffers. Case in point – the iPhone. Chargers come in all shapes and sizes but few offer to power up the batteries using air, or more precisely – wind. Dutch designer Tjeerd Veenhoven has crafted just such a charger where his favored Apple device slides into the soft rubber outer skin and fan blades capture energy from the wind, which tops up the battery.  Read More

In a press conference held today, scientists working with NASA announced the discovery of a new microorganism right here on Earth that employs a survival strategy never seen before in any other life form. Found in Northern California’s highly-saline Mono Lake, the GFAJ-1 bacteria exists in an environment that has very little phosphorous, an element that had previously been considered essential for all living things in order to build DNA. To cope with this problem, the bacteria is able to substitute highly-toxic arsenic for phosphorous, in its cell components. The fact that a microbe is able to survive in such a fashion opens up the possibilities for where life could exist on other planets, and will require a rethink on NASA’s part regarding its search for extraterrestrial life forms.  Read More

We see grandiose press releases every day here at Gizmag - but few of them use language which tickles us as much as Confederate's recent missive promoting its new C3 X132 Hellcat. How's this passage for an example: "This C3 Hellcat has the highest rear wheel torque to weight ratio, compared anywhere throughout the operating RPM range, in all of motordom, by far." Dig into 'em, those words are bold, aggressive and unmistakably American - much like the cyber-brute bikes that come out of the Confederate factory. So let's take a quick look at the Hellcat, which is at once the fastest, toughest, lightest and cheapest bike this bunch of Alabama madmen have ever produced.  Read More

For the past few years OLED has stolen most of the spotlight as the next generation technology set to outperform current plasma and LCD displays in terms of both energy efficiency and picture quality. Although OLED is barely out of the blocks, QD Vision and LG Display have just announced a joint development agreement focusing on electroluminescent quantum dot LED (QLED) nanotechnology, which promises to sweep all display technologies before it, including OLED. QLED promises energy efficient displays that offer brighter, richer colors, can be printed on ultra-thin, transparent or flexible substrates and manufactured cheaply.  Read More

Research company Juniper has drawn up a list of predictions for the mobile and wireless industry for 2011 and they portray humanity hurtling headlong towards a mobile-centric lifestyle. Juniper sees 2011 as a year where we'll see increasing use of Augmented Reality, the first Cloud-Based Operating Systems, Mobile Banking becomes a must, the beginning of the demise of the credit card, the rise of Mobile Lottery Tickets, biometrics coming to mobile and Social Purchasing moving to a whole new level. A must read!  Read More

Researchers from Aachen University's Media Computing Group have created a computer workstation where the desk and screen are transformed into one multi-touch display. The display is curved at the middle and uses infrared emitters and cameras to track user movement over the whole of the surface, which has its graphical user interface beamed onto it by a couple of short throw projectors hidden within its wooden frame.  Read More

After two years secret development in motorsport competition, Xtrac unveiled an important new driveline technology this week in the form of an Instantaneous Gearchange System (IGS). It does exactly the same thing a dual clutch transmission achieves with less weight, cost, and complexity. The secret to Xtrac IGS is the integration of a ratchet and pawl mechanism between each gear hub and the main shaft so that two consecutive gear ratios can be selected and engaged simultaneously, but with only one set of gears driving.  Read More