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Last October Toyota announced its participation in the 2012 FIA World Endurance Championship with a hybrid prototype race car. Today Toyota revealed some of the details of the TS030 HYBRID with surprises galore. The car uses a normally-aspirated 3400cc V8 petrol engine and a supercapacitor energy storage system developed by Nisshinbo. Remarkably, though the hybrid drive train has already been dubbed THS-R (Toyota Hybrid System – Racing), the team is still evaluating whether it will use a front motor system from Aisin or a rear motor system from DENSO. Read More

Artists often say they can find music in everything, particularly nature. The question they often face is how to get the general public to hear the same tune that they do. One German artist, Bartholomäus Traubeck, seems to have hit on one straightforward method to accomplish this with some clever technology. Using a digital camera and some software, the artist has built a unique record player that spins cross-sections of trees instead of vinyl and translates the rings into piano music. Read More

Matthew Tanner is a Colorado-based air show pilot who also competes in aerobatics competitions and teaches Air Force pilots how to fly. His current stunt aircraft of choice is a Laser Z300. Much as he is able to do with the nimble little airplane, he wants to be able to perform aerial maneuvers that no one has ever seen before. In order to do so, he intends to equip the plane with a pair vertical wings. Read More

While the McGee house may look like any other new designer home in the neighborhood, its walls tell a different story. Designed by husband and wife team Karl Wanaselja and Cate Leger of Leger Wanaselja Architecture, the upper outside walls of the house are made from over 100 salvaged car roofs. In a pursuit to build a house that utilized green technologies and reused materials, the couple sourced car roofs from a selection of gray-colored cars that had been left for parts in local junk yards in Berkeley, California. Their biggest challenge was sourcing car scraps that were in relatively good condition, without dents and with a good paint finish. The scraps were then cut into long tile-like shapes and used to complete the upper outside walls of the house, rendering a similar appearance to slate. Read More

These days, your average tech enthusiast typically has at their disposal a smartphone, a laptop, a tablet, and a digital camera; and that's listing the bare minimum. That's quite a bit of processing power and storage space spread out among different gadgets. What if it were possible to link all those devices together into one convenient package that uses all that computing power at once? That's the idea behind one designer's concept for a Fujitsu Lifebook, which would come with slots for a smartphone, digital camera, and tablet, for them all to all work together as one super device. Read More

A new zero-emissions engine capable of competing commercially with hydrogen fuel cells and battery electric systems appeared on the radar yesterday when respected British engineering consultancy Ricardo validated Dearman engine technology and its commercial potential. The Dearman engine operates by injecting cryogenic (liquid) air into ambient heat inside the engine to produce high pressure gas that drives the engine - the exhaust emits cold air. It's cheaper to build than battery electric or fuel cell technology, with excellent energy density, fast refuelling and no range anxiety. It just might be a third alternative. Read More

Lock up your satellites and batten down your power-lines because a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is headed our way. According to the National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), it is the strongest Solar Radiation Storm since May, 2005. According to NASA, the CME is moving at almost 1,400 miles per second (2,253 km/s) and will reach the Earth's magnetosphere as early as 9 a.m. US EST on Tuesday, January 24 - give or take seven hours. Read More

In February last year, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and transport company Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) announced plans to investigate the effectiveness of a system intended to reduce the frictional resistance between a vessel’s bottom and the seawater using a layer of air bubbles. Now MHI has coupled the Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System (MALS) with a high-efficiency ship hull in the conceptual design for a container ship that the company claims would offer a reduction in CO2 emissions of 35 percent compared to conventional container carrier designs. Read More

Guitarists don't like to be parted from their guitars. Even as a rank amateur, I get a nagging itch in my fingers after a couple of axeless weeks on the road. But guitars take up a lot of space and they are expensive to haul with you on a plane, so I often find myself seeking out music shops just so I can have a noodle. It's exactly this kind of affliction that PocketStrings is designed to address. It's not an instrument and it doesn't make a sound, but this portable mock-up of the first four frets of a guitar could help you satisfy the playing itch as well as giving beginners and more experienced players a take-anywhere tool on which to practice chords and build finger strength while keeping your calluses tough. Read More