Peter J Lennartsson | Sighenz

New plastic mimics human skin, can ‘bleed’ and heal itself

Self-healing plastic — New plastics turn red when damaged, then heal themselves when exposed to light.

New research presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society March 26, showed a new genre of plastics that mimic the human skin’s ability to heal itself. Self-healing plastics have been developed for a while, but what makes this new material unique is it’s ability to “bleed” and heal itself over and over again in the same spot. The “bleeding” is achieved by using small molecular links or bridges that break when the plastic is scratched. When damaged the plastics turn red, and then can heal itself when exposed to light.

Professor Marek W. Urban, Ph.D. with the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, foresees a wide range of potential applications for plastic with warn-and-self-repair capabilities. It could be used from everything from scratches in automobile fenders that then potentially could easily be repaired by simply exposing the fender to intense light, to critical structural parts in aircraft that would warn of damage by turning red at affected and damaged areas.

Continue reading “New plastic mimics human skin, can ‘bleed’ and heal itself”

Texas Instruments introduce three new KeyStone DSPs

TI's new C665x series — Texas Instruments new C665x series

Texas Instruments today unveiled three new devices based on its KeyStone multicore architecture, utilizing the TMS320C66x digital signal processors (DSP) generation. The new TMS320C665x DSPs feature combined fixed- and floating-point capabilities, delivering real-time high performance at low power, coupled with smaller form factors.

Based on the KeyStone multicore architecture, TI’s new C665x processors is made to give developers access to devices with high performance, while still being energy and space efficient. With low power consumption, and a small form factor of 21mm x 21mm the processors enables portability, mobility and low power energy sources, such as battery and interface powering to drive new exciting products to be developed.

Continue reading “Texas Instruments introduce three new KeyStone DSPs”

ESA successfully launch a new smart supply ship

ATV-3 on Ariane — ATV-3 Edoardo Amaldi on Ariane 5

Yesterday at 04:34 GMT (05:34 CET, 01:34 local), ESA successively launched their new ATV from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, heading towards the International Space Station. The Automated Transfer Vehicle named Edoardo Amaldi, is the most complex spacecraft ever produced in Europe. It’s mission is to deliver essential supplies, and it will also reboost the orbit of the International Space Station’s while it is attached for about five months.

The 20-tonne payload lifted off with the help of a Ariane 5 launcher, operated by Arianespace. The Ariane 5 have on numerous occasion demonstrated its robustness and reliability, and this time was no exception. It started it’s flight over the Atlantic towards the Azores and Europe, where an initial eight-minute burn of Ariane’s upper stage took ATV-3 into a low orbit inclined at 51.6 degrees to the equator. After coasting for about 42 minutes, the upper stage reignited to circularise the orbit at an altitude of 260 km. About 64 minutes into flight, the supply ship separated from the upper stage, and 25 minutes later ATV-3 started deploying its four solar wings, which when completed marked the end of the launch phase.

Continue reading “ESA successfully launch a new smart supply ship”

Nokia brings DNLA support to their Lumia devices

Nokia PlayTo for Windows Phone — Play To gives DNLA to Lumia devices

When Nokia released their Lumia devices, a feature that now is almost getting standard on other devices, was missing. The ability to share pictures, video and music to other network connected multimedia devices via DNLA. In the beginning of summer last year, Nokia brought DNLA support to some of their Symbian devices like the Nokia N8 via an application called Play To. Recently the Nokia N9 running MeeGo also got DNLA support trough the PR1.2 update.

Now the Play To application is coming for the Lumia devices as well. Still in early Beta for now, but it shows a promising start. With Play To you can share your photos and videos from your Nokia Lumia phone to your DNLA-capable devices over your WLAN network. This could be a DNLA supporting big screen TV,or maybe your Windows 7 laptop and desktop. Currently there is no support for sharing music, but this is something that will be added according to the developers at Nokia Beta Labs.

Continue reading “Nokia brings DNLA support to their Lumia devices”

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has discovered new features on Vesta

NASA‘s Dawn spacecraft has revealed some new and unexpected details on the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. The images and data captured shows the diversity of Vesta‘s surface, and reveal unusual geologic features. Some never previously seen on a asteroid.

Being one of the brightest objects in the solar system, Vesta is the only asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter visible to the naked eye from Earth. Scientists have previously seen brightness variations in previous images of Vesta captures with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, but the new images captured by the Dawn spacecraft found that some areas on Vesta can be nearly twice as bright as others. This could potentially reveal clues about the asteroid’s history.

Continue reading “NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has discovered new features on Vesta”

HYQUATOR might bring safe drinking water everywhere

A new Kickstarter project called HYQUATOR aims to bring safe drinking to anyone, at anytime. The HYQUATOR is portable solar-powered electronic device and the first project for a New York City based tech start-up iTRONYC. The device is said to work without filters or UV light and does not need any additional chemical components. It is powered by a built in solar panel, but can also be powered by a battery.

So far only $1,711 has been raised, and the goal is set to $60,000. With only 8 days to go please contribute if you feel this concept is interesting. The money will be used to produce 500 pieces of HYQUATOR and to get the production costs down to an affordable price. Some of it will also go to cover start-up expenses for the electrode design and case tooling for the injection mold fabrication, and to cover development costs of a pre-production device. The funds are also needed to get FCC/CE and US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approvals, that HYQUATOR works in respect with its regulations and in respect with the US Safe Drinking Water Act.

Continue reading “HYQUATOR might bring safe drinking water everywhere”

NEC develops an ultra thin organic and flexible battery

NEC Corporation announced on March 5 the development of a new ultra-thin, 0.3mm thick, organic radical battery (ORB) that is compatible with standard IC cards of 0.76mm thickness. These new, 0.3mm batteries are less than half the thickness of existing units.

The size reduction is accomplished by using printing technologies to integrate circuit boards with batteries. As a result, IC cards embedded with these batteries can be used for a wide range of functions, including displays, transmission and advanced encryption processing. Conventional ORB‘s have a thickness of 0.7mm which makes them difficult to combine with IC cards of standard 0.76mm thickness.

Continue reading “NEC develops an ultra thin organic and flexible battery”

Toshiba’s supermarket object scanner might replace barcodes

Toshiba Object Scanner — Toshiba Tec, Object Recognition Scanner

A new supermarket scanner developed by Toshiba Tec may make conventional barcodes in supermarkets obsolete. Using object recognition the scanner instantly recognizes the merchandise no matter if it’s fresh produce or packaged goods, by identifying it directly via a camera. The technology behind it, is being developed by Toshiba and it utilizes pattern recognition that let’s the Object Recognition Scanner differentiate the difference between merchandise and other objects and discarding the latter as noise. This allows the scanner to operate at high speeds, and also identify the object if even if it’s not being held completely still during the process.

At most supermarkets a laser scanner is commonly used to recognize barcodes, but with fresh produce like vegetables and fruit this can sometimes lead to holdups as the cashier tries to identify item. This issue is becoming more common as it’s currently a popular trend to stock the supermarket with more exotic fruits and vegetables. Even in the cases where if the cashier knows what the item is, they still needs to type in the price manually, or scan a barcode from a predefined list since fresh produce commonly are not marked with a barcode. Adding to the hassle this only works if the fresh produce is added to the system correctly.

Continue reading “Toshiba’s supermarket object scanner might replace barcodes”

Malta considering the world’s largest floating wind farm

Malta Hexicon Wind farm — Malta purposed wind farm. (Image by hexicon.eu)

The European island nation of Malta is aiming to increase the amount of energy created by renewable sources. Like the others members of the European Union they are evaluating different options to meet the goal set by a mandate recently to get 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. To achieve this goal, Malta is considering a proposal by the Swedish company Hexicon, to build a large floating wind farm.

The plant is intended to produce 54MW, which amounts to 9% of the energy currently generated by the two existing power stations. The solution Hexicon proposes in tales a massive offshore hexagon-shaped, 460-metre-wide, floating platform, hosting 36 wind turbines that is anchored to the seafloor by cables.

Continue reading “Malta considering the world’s largest floating wind farm”

Apple just announced “The New iPad”

Today Apple just announced the “The new iPad”. On the surface it looks just like the iPad 2, including the classic home button, but the internal hardware has been upgraded quite a bit. First thing you will notice is the new retina display giving a 2,048 x 1,536 resolution, and the CPU have also been upgraded to a dual-core Apple A5X. (The speed of this is not yet clear however).

Apple also announced it will sell the iPad 2 alongside the new iPad, and the price for the iPad 2 will drop to $399. At this price level it can better compete with a lot of new mid-range tablets that has come out at a lower price point, including the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus and Amazons Kindle Fire. The strategy to sell the new iPad along side the iPad 2 can be a bit risky in the current financial climate, and could possible effect the sale figures for the new device in a negative way. If have been thinking about buying an iPad 2, but felt it was to expensive, you now just might buy this instead of the “new iPad”. It also depends on what you intend to use your new tablet for, do you need a dual core processor to browse the web?

Continue reading “Apple just announced “The New iPad””