Latest Technology News

I really like the idea of electric cars. However, the current lack of support in the form of charging stations the poor performance in regards to range and recharge time is something that makes me wonder if the electric car is just a pipe dream in terms of usability. That is where Toshiba’s SCiB battery technology comes in to smash any predetermined doubts you had regarding the electric car being unfeasible as a means of transport. Traditionally, it took electric car batteries over thirty minutes to charge (give or take a few minutes). The SCiB battery can recharge to ninety percent capacity in five minutes.

The buck does not stop there. The battery is touted to last ten years. That is not how long a single charge lasts – but how long the battery itself lasts before it will need to be replaced. This is good news for people who are ecologically minded. A battery can contain all manner of nasty materials that can do some serious damage to the environment. This is likely to be the battery that will finally make electronic cars possible and help reduce our need for (overpriced) petrol. It may also help companies finally start investing in electronic charging stations for vehicles.

There is no word on when this is likely to become available to consumers. However, it seems like it is something that it will not take long for companies who manufacture electric vehicles to start using in their production lines. It is something that will ensure that electric cars get the research that then need in order to make the technology feasible for the masses. I had some trouble finding out how far a single charge will carry the vehicle – if it is similar to that of the current electric vehicles that have been released then it may just be a winner.

Researchers at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center may have found a drug that can protect people from radiation poisoning. The drug has been successfully trailed in rodents and looks like it may be able to revolutionize cancer treatment. It may even help protect people who are in jeopardy of developing radiation poisoning that can come from working in an environment where they may be exposed to large doses of radiation. The drug has been labeled as PQ (pharmacological quiescence) and stops enzymes responsible for cell division in their tracks. Although the drug has not been tested on human subjects as yet, the likelihood of it being successful is quite high.

The drug is relatively non-toxic. It is also touted as being effective after the subject has received a dose of radiation. It is fair to suggest that it may help reduce the risks associated with radiotherapy which is often risky due to the potential danger of radiation poisoning. A lot of the time radiotherapy can make the patient exceedingly sick before the patient is able to start recovering from the cancer that radiotherapy is attempting to do battle with. In this regard, PQ can be considered something that will help a lot of people overcome cancer in the long term. Radiotherapy has cost people their lives because the radiation has made them too sick to continue treatment without further risk to the patient’s health.

There is no word on when human trials will begin as yet. It is likely to be soon however in order to get the drug approved for use as soon as possible. It is a relatively cheap drug to produce and will help countless people overcome cancer despite the fact that it is not attacking the cancer. It will enable treatment to continue for those most susceptible to radiation poisoning.

With almost every country in the world trying to reduce its impact on the environment, the adoption of LED (light emitting diode) lighting has started to become apparent. Programmable traffic signs make use of LED lighting to transfer the work of three or four specific traffic lights into a single programmable display. For example, an intersection (depending on where you live) that makes use of traffic lights has a green, orange and red light for each direction. On top of this they will also have a light to say when you can walk across the crossing and a light that says you can’t. In total that is twenty separate lights. You can quite easily cut that down to eight.

How this works is by having a single light per direction that depicts the color to direct traffic and a single light for each direction that depicts whether or not it is safe to cross for pedestrians. The lights do not have to rely on tinged glass because they are LED lights that can display a color based upon how they are coded. They can also draw symbols and are a lot cheaper to run than a standard light. For a large city that may have thousands of sets of traffic lights this can potentially save millions of dollars in the long term and will dramatically decrease their carbon foot print.

Programmable traffic signs can also be reprogrammed in the event the system needs to be altered. If they decide to suddenly change the color of a stop sign to purple, there is no need to remove the light and replace it; it is just a matter of replacing a few lines of code to depict the color they wish to show. This is essentially a time and cost cutting measure that can be utilized for the long term.

These are essentially devices that you can carry with you to give any other devices you have that are able to be charged via a USB connection some extra power while you are on the go. The device itself is recharged via USB as well. This is excellent for long trips where you may not be able to get to a power supply easily. For instance, think of a long journey on an aircraft where your device only has around four hours worth of charge when using it full time. The journey itself may be a twelve hour flight. It is unlikely that you will be able to recharge that iPod while on the plane so having a device such as this can help ensure you don’t end up having to speak to the person next to you.

The chargers are quite small and do not weigh much so if you are required to stay under a weight limit then there is a good chance that the device will not impact on the limitations. They also work with a fairly wide variety of devices. If you can draw power and recharge the item you want to charge via your computer, then it will most likely work with the portable charger. The price charged for these devices is not exuberant either. If it can save you a few hours of boredom on a long trip it is well worth the price.

The technology to charge devices through the power drawn from a USB connection is something that is potentially game changing. No longer have we had to rely on purchasing batteries to supply our walkmans with power. MP3 players now offer us a massive range of music through high capacity storage that we never have to travel with a back pack full of CDs.

Finding somewhere to charge a device when you are on the go can be a nightmare. This is particularly true if you are camping and you don’t have the correct connection to hook up a USB connection to the cigarette lighter in your vehicle. There are a few devices out there that offer the portability of a charger in the form of a solar powered unit. There is no need to actually put charge into the device in order to pass the charge to another device – the whole thing is run off the sun. This is useful for anyone who is in the middle of a forest and finds their cell phone running out of charge.

It can also be a matter of life and death in certain situations. If you are in the middle of nowhere and break your leg and try to call for help and notice you have no cell phone battery left – then you probably are going to wish you had a portable solar charger. The portable solar chargers come with a fairly wide variety of connectors, so you are not reliant on a USB connection. However, it is worth investing in a USB connector for your devices in order to fully utilize the device. It will also help you reduce the amount of connectors you need to carry around.

There are other chargers out there that rely on being charged prior to connecting another device to it for charging. Having a solar powered charger eliminates a lot of the middle man requirements of the device. However, many of these solar chargers have the option to pre-charge via a USB or wall socket connection in the event you are unable to get the device into the sun to charge up the connected device. It is a clever investment for anyone who travels a lot.

While the concept may sound confusing if you consider just the title alone; it actually makes a lot of sense when you realize how the idea works. In order to promote an easy way to recycle, the machine takes empty recyclable containers from the user and then gives them money. It is an initiative developed in Australia that attempts to reduce littering and promote recycling at the same time. The idea has a lot of merit. The machine takes the container from the user and scans it using an imaging camera that can tell what type of material the container is. It then gives the user a receipt that they can then scan in adjacent cash machine in order to collect their funds.

The amount it gives back the user is approximately ten cents per container. This is actually a pretty good rate of return for the user. The machine is likely to become commonplace in many Australian cities if it works well. It has the potential to really make a difference. Australia has already got a system of garbage collection that designates specific bins for specific wastes. If a user can get cash back from their recyclables instead of just inserting them directly into their trash bins then they are probably going to accumulate the recyclable containers and drop them in the machine for some extra money when they go shopping.

Even though the machine is only just been deployed for use in the field, it has garnered the interest of other countries and looks like it may take off overseas as well. If it can reduce the amount of landfill and thus reduce the carbon output that a country accumulates then it can only be considered a good thing. The bonus is that it actually pays users for doing the right thing.

Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System)

Pan-STARRS is a project involving huge automated telescopes. The first has recently been commissioned and is able to scan one sixth of the sky each month in order to locate and track moving objects in space. It may seem like a useless endeavor to the uninitiated. However, consider the ‘Rapid Response’ part of the acronym that makes up its name. If you haven’t guessed already, it is designed to locate objects that may be on a collision course with Earth. In this regard – it can hardly be considered a useless endeavor because it has the capacity to warn us if a massive asteroid is threatening to wipe us all out.

The telescope itself has a 1,400 mega pixel capability. Considering an average digital camera has around four to eight mega pixel capability; you can imagine how powerful the lens is in this telescope. As stated in the previous paragraph, it is able to scan one sixth of the sky each month. This equates to the whole sky in six months. In this regard, it is a pretty powerful tool that can give us plenty of warning in the event a rogue asteroid is threatening to kill us all. The first telescope developed for the Pan-STARRS project is named PS1. If you were to print out one image it has captured at an average resolution it would be the size of a basketball court.

This project has been started utilizing funds supplied by the U.S. Air Force. As more of these super telescopes are required it is fair to assume that other countries may get involved with the project for research purposes as it can also be an excellent tool to track the activity of specific planets and stars. The massive power of this telescope can maybe help unravel many of the mysteries we still find ourselves contemplating about what is actually out there in the great beyond

Have you ever been sweaty and hot in the summer time and need a nice cool breeze blown your way?  Or have a room that you just can’t keep cool enough for your liking? Sounds like it’s time to pull out that old blade-driven fan sitting in your dusty closet or basement. As you switch the sucker on you hear that familiar low annoying flutter sound and poof; a cloud of dust comes racing your way covering you and your room in filth.  Just the way to get your evening or weekend off started.

Let’s try this again using the new Dyson Air Multiplier.  It keeps you as cool (if not cooler) than your conventional fan but will only speak with a whisper in comparison.  With its bladeless technology it draws air in through a vent around the base and combines that with air being sucked in through the cylinder at the top.  This produces an amplified and  much more even wave of air than a conventional fan and also keeps it from producing the noise that fluttering blades would. It has the same options of speed and direction control but consumes less than half the wattage as a conventional box fan.

The Dyson is much easier to clean as well.  Without dealing with fan blades trapped inside a cage that only a feather duster might reach.  Just a quick swipe around the ring with a towel and the job’s done.  The only downside is paying for this technology.  The Dyson Air Amplifiers are not cheap by any means, but the monetary cost may just be a small bump in the road compared to the annoyance it will save you and the convenience it will provide.  So, if you are tired of the mess and noise that your old rotating blade fan brings in the spring and summer, try the Dyson Air Multiplier instead.

A portable hotspot is a portable wireless hub. It is a device that allows multiple users to connect to the internet through it. It is battery operated and (depending on the model) can run for approximately four hours. It utilizes an in built 3G router and from there it works like a regular router that you may have at home to share internet access to multiple users on a network. The main advantage of a portable hotspot is that it allows you to create a cloud network where ever you go. This could be ideal for businesses you have multiple employees that are constantly traveling together and all rely on a single 3G connection each to maintain connection to the internet.

Carriers that support this technology offer fairly competitive rates. For the capacity to connect five users to the internet at once it is very reasonably priced. You can use a prepaid form of payment plan in the event you are unlikely to need it full time – that is after you have bought the portable hotspot device. It is relatively easy to set up because it will automatically detect DNS and IP address settings and it supports UPnP technologies to ensure that your network is able to correctly route signals.

Portable hotspots are a blessing to the industry. You no longer have to rely on another Wi-Fi service like that you might find in a restaurant or cafe in order to remain connected to the internet as a group. You can set up your own network while you are in the field – or traveling in the event you are an internet savvy family. It also reduces the need for everyone to have their own connection when traveling as a group. It can be a great cost saver for businesses and families alike.

Sometimes the biggest improvement in mechanical engineering comes from something that seems miniscule. The Minix Wing Tip is one of those engineering enhancements that seem so simple that it is hard to tell what sort of difference it is likely to make. The Minix Wing Tip promises a six percent saving on a Boeing 747’s energy cost. While this may not seem substantial, it is worth noting that a Boeing 747 uses as much as a gallon of fuel per second. The savings that the Minix Wing Tip can provide is around six hundred thousand gallons per year (per 747).  That is potential saving of around half a million dollars per year for each Boeing 747 in the airlines inventory.

The Minix Wing Tip works by reducing the aircraft’s wing drag. If you consider the size of a 747, even a slight reduction in wind drag can lead to a massive change in aircraft speed and fuel consumption. If you consider how much drag a vehicle traveling at hundreds of kilometers an hour is likely to produce it can really tell you how much turbulence that extra streamlining of the aircraft is likely to reduce as well. While it hasn’t been picked up by any major airlines as yet and it is still being tested by the developers of the product, the six percent reduction in energy costs may end up closer to eight or even as high as ten percent as research continues.

Airlines cop a lot of flak over how much fuel they burn and how much damage they can do to the environment. Because of this, airlines (and Boeing) have a fairly open ear in regards to hearing professional opinion in how to improve fuel consumption and aircraft power. Anything that can save such a large amount of money is likely to be picked up soon enough.