November 12th, 2009

Top three Star Trek-style holodeck experiences

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 12:24 am

Categories: Computers & Internet, Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Health & Medicine, Nanotechnology, Science & Nature, Space & Aerospace

Tags: User Interaction, 3D, Pixel, StarCAVE, Audio System, Tech Spec, Projectors, Virtual Reality, Hardware, Components

Surround 3D TV is making its way to your living room. To get a sense of what it may look and sound like, look no further than the cutting edge of virtual reality taking shape at academic research centers outfitted with world class data visualization facilities. In this post, we’ll take a look at three (ok, four) of the most remarkable scientific visualization technologies.

Allosphere: University of California, Santa Barbara

The AlloSphere is a spherical space in which immersive, virtual environments allow researchers to convert large data sets into experiences of sight and sound. For example, it allows researchers to “fly” through a hydrogen atom while hearing sonified features of the wavefunction of its single electron to help describe invisible processes of nature.

The facility consists of a 30-foot diameter sphere built inside a 3-story cube that’s nearly echo-free. Inside the chamber are two spherical hemispheres that are constructed of perforated aluminum designed to be optically opaque and acoustically transparent. A 7-foot-wide bridge runs across the center, supporting the users. High-resolution video projectors can project images across the entire inner surface enabling seamless stereo-optic 3D projection.

The Allosphere has more than 500 audio components that hang suspended in rings just outside the aluminum shell and are connected to multiple Gigabit Ethernet LAN fibers that lead to a server farm consisting of seven Hewlett Packard 9400 workstations (as of April 2009).

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November 1st, 2009

Wave disk engines to make hybrid vehicles cheaper, more efficient

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 10:23 pm

Categories: Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation

Tags: Disk, Engine, Backups, Chris Jablonski

Researchers from Michigan State University and the Warsaw Institute of Technology are developing a wave disk engine and electricity generator that promises to be five times more efficient than traditional auto engines in electricity production, 20% lighter, and 30% cheaper to manufacture.

Possible technical realization of the wave-disk engine idea (Credit: Piechna, et al)

The new hyper-efficient engine is about the size of a large cooking pot, and could replace current backup generator technology of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, according to Green Car Congress.

The idea may not be far-fetched as the team, led by Norbert Müller, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, has recently been awarded $2.5 million from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program to begin work on a vehicle-size wave disc engine/generator that could be ready in two years.

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October 13th, 2009

Resilient cockroach-inspired robot survives large falls, dashes off

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 10:12 pm

Categories: Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Nanotechnology, Robotics, Science & Nature

Tags: IEEE Spectrum, Robots, Emerging Technologies, Chris Jablonski

IEEE Spectrum writes of a small resilient robot created by Paul Birkmeyer and Prof. Ronald Fearing at the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab at UC Berkeley.

Aptly called DASH (Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod), the six-legged insect-inspired robot can reach speeds of 1.5 meters per second and is flexible/strong enough to be dropped from a height of 28 meters without breaking. A single DC motor powers the legs and a small servomotor to slightly deform the robot’s body, allowing it to make turns.

DASH was created using a fabrication process called smart composite microstructures, or SCM. Developed by UC Berkeley researchers, the process is quick, inexpensive, and purpose-built for the design challenges of microrobots.

SCM allows for complicated, functional folded structures that move using elastic deformation rather than through the use of traditional mechanical elements like pin joints or bearings. It integrates large flexible joints, created by a laser micro-machining and lamination, with novel actuators. The result is a robot made up of composite materials that can not only withstand a drop from a tall building, but also immediately dash off, undamaged.

DASH is but one of several ongoing projects underway at the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab. For instance, check out the synthetic gecko adhesive which cleans itself during use, as the natural gecko does. Or the Micromechanical Flying Insect (MFI) Project, an effort to develop a 25 mm (wingtip-to-wingtip) device capable of sustained autonomous flight.

Among the goals of the researchers is to; “Harness features of animal manipulation, locomotion, sensing, actuation, mechanics, dynamics, and control strategies to radically improve millirobot capabilities.”

October 10th, 2009

Researchers replicate butterfly wings on a nano-scale

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 10:18 pm

Categories: Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Nanotechnology, Science & Nature

Tags: Technique, Butterfly, Researcher, Replica, Productivity, Chris Jablonski

A cross-national team of researchers have developed a technique to replicate biological structures, such as butterfly wings, on a nano-scale.

The new bio-material could be used to make optical devices, such as optical diffusers for solar panels or coverings that maximize solar cell light absorption.

Researchers from the State University of Pennsylvania and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Spain developed a fabrication technique to develop wings at the nano-scale level that could replicate the optical responses of butterfly wings. The replicas contain light emitting properties similar to those of insects, mimicking the colors, iridescence (the ability to change colors depending on the angle) and the metallic appearance which is visible with a changing viewing angle. Read the rest of this entry »

September 8th, 2009

An electrical circuit that runs entirely off power in trees

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 10:51 pm

Categories: Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Nanotechnology, Science & Nature

Tags: Tree, Team Management, Management, Chris Jablonski

You’ve probably already heard of the idea of harvesting electricity from body heat to power small devices, such as those in the far-flung idea of a body area network. Now, a similar idea has been applied to trees. There’s enough power in trees for University of Washington researchers to run an electronic circuit, according to results to be published in an upcoming issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Transactions on Nanotechnology.  They found that the power is minuscule, but measurable, and enough to power circuits.

This custom circuit can store up enough voltage from trees to run a low-power sensor. Credit: University of Washington

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August 26th, 2009

LEGO toys and Shrinky Dinks aid in development of microfluidics

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 11:21 pm

Categories: Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Health & Medicine, Nanotechnology, Science & Nature

Tags: LEGO Co., Engineer, Shrinky, Chris Jablonski

Electronic circuits are not the only objects that engineers are scaling down to ever smaller sizes these days. They’re also creating devices to work with fluid samples of just a few nanoliters (a nanoliter corresponds to a billionth of a liter).

The field is called microfluidics, and it combines biology, physics, and other disciplines to study the behavior, precise control and manipulation of minute amounts of fluids for a variety of applications. It’s used in the development of inkjet printheads, DNA chips, lab-on-a-chip technology, and beyond.

However, this new science poses challenges to research labs, such as funding for expensive equipment to develop microfluidic devices, to understanding how the minuscule forces within them work. Those challenges are being met with a rash of ingenuity among engineers that involve, of all things, everyday toys. Here are two such cases: Read the rest of this entry »

July 30th, 2009

Scientists create 'transparent aluminum,' call it a new state of matter

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 10:18 pm

Categories: Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Science & Nature

Tags: Laser, University Of Oxford, Aluminum, Chris Jablonski

Oxford scientists claim to have created a transparent form of aluminum by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. The substance is nearly transparent to extreme ultraviolet radiation and is the latest addition to a growing list of exotic states of matter.

Crossing over from science fiction to fact,  ‘transparent aluminum’ was an idea featured in the movie Star Trek IV.  The creation of the real material, however, has implications for areas as diverse as planetary science, astrophysics, and nuclear fusion.

Credit: University of Oxford

To create the exotic matter, an international team of researchers led by Oxford University scientists used a short pulse from the FLASH laser to ‘knock out’ a core electron from every aluminum atom in a sample without disrupting the metal’s crystalline structure.  They report that this turned the aluminum nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation. Pictured left is an experimental set-up at the FLASH laser facility used to discover the exotic material.

”What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of a paper detailing the findings in this week’s Nature Physics.

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July 28th, 2009

HP's newest supercomputer geared for energy and environment

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 11:29 pm

Categories: Computers & Internet, Energy & Environment

Tags: Researcher, Hewlett-Packard Co., Supercomputer, Environment, Chemistry, Chinook, Chris Jablonski

The newest supercomputer in town isn’t for simulating nuclear explosions or the human brain, but rather take on arguably more pressing problems in areas such as climate science, hydrogen storage and molecular chemistry.

Built by HP, the $21.4 million Chinook is a custom-made machine specifically designed for the demands of computational chemistry. It was commissioned for use by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Department of Energy, and is housed at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL).

The Chinook (named after the king salmon via a user contest) can perform more than 160 trillion calculations per second, ranking it among the top 40 fastest computers in the world. It’s almost 15 times faster than its predecessor, the EMSL MPP2, which could run 11.2 trillion calculations per second.

Chinook is a high performance computer that has been tailored to meet the current and future operational needs of Department of Energy (Photo: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

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July 20th, 2009

'Invisibility cloak' could protect buildings against earthquakes

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 10:54 pm

Categories: Energy & Environment, Science & Nature

Tags: Wave, Cloak, Team Management, Strategy, Security, Management, Chris Jablonski

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have shown that it’s possible to develop an ‘invisibility cloak’ to protect buildings from surface waves that are generated during earthquakes. These types of seismic waves travel across the earth’s surface causing much of the destruction which follows earthquakes, unlike body waves which travel through the earth and are less destructive.

Recent earthquake damage in Pakistan (Credit: haseebjamal_stn via Flickr)

The cloaking technology involves the use of concentric rings of plastic which could be fitted to the Earth’s surface to divert surface waves. For buildings, that means installing the rings into foundations. The researchers say that by controlling the stiffness and elasticity of the rings, waves traveling through the ‘cloak’ pass smoothly into the material and are compressed into small fluctuations in pressure and density. They add that the path of the surface waves can be made into an arc that directs the waves outside the protective cloak.

“We are able to ‘tune’ the cloak to the differing frequencies of incoming waves which means we can divert waves of a variety of frequencies. For each small frequency range, there is a pair of rings which does most of the work and these move about a lot – bending up and down – when they are hit by a wave at their frequency,” said Sebastien Guenneau, from the University’s Department of Mathematics, who developed the technology with Stefan Enoch and Mohamed Farhat from the Fresnel Institute (CNRS) in Marseilles, France.

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July 17th, 2009

Printable batteries

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 2:10 pm

Categories: Computers & Internet, Energy & Environment

Tags: Battery, Printing, Engineering, Document Management, Enterprise Software, Software, Finance, Managerial Accounting, Chris Jablonski

Printable electronics have taken off in recent years, and there are now industrial-scale printing machines that can efficiently deposit a variety of flexible electronic components onto flexible substrates to create wearable sensors, displays, smart packaging labels, and other printable products. However, developing printable, flexible energy-storage devices, such as supercapacitors and batteries has lagged behind.

Now, researchers announced a paper-thin battery that can be produced cost-effectively on large scale. Scientists from the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems (ENAS) in Chemnitz, Germany, together with colleagues from TU Chemnitz and Menippos GmbH say the batteries are printed using a silk-screen printing method similar to that used for t-shirts and signs. Read the rest of this entry »