The home of Mac info for New Zealanders, mac-nz serves daily Mac, iPhone and related news from the world of Apple Inc.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Europe looks at ‘road trains’: Part of the EU’s Safe Road Trains for the Environment initiative entails groups of cars with similar destinations being made into road trains over long stretches of highway.The lead vehicle will be driven by an experienced motorist – maybe even a bus that regularly travels the route – with the functions of each following vehicle automatically controlled and tethered to the actions of the lead car so that individual drivers can hammer out emails or eat breakfast. Cars can exit at any time, writes Wired.
[Comment: they might be very slow on Sundays.]
Solar curtains could answer power needs: Solar cell company Konarka Technologies has partnered with Arch Aluminum & Glass to test out ‘solar curtains’ on buildings.
The entire side of a building could be covered in solar panels. The huge panels are made from Konarka’s plastic solar film, encased in glass, writes Smart Planet.
[Comment: Efficiency is still low, though, and it needs a lot of wiring.]
Hot blooded dinosaurs: new evidence suggests the Tyrannosaurus Rex probably had warm blood. Paleontologists have debated the issue of dinosaur metabolism for decades. Now, using a biomechanical model that predicts the energy cost of walking and running based on the size of an animal’s leg bones, researchers have shown that the biggest dinosaurs couldn’t have gotten around without warm-blooded metabolisms, reports Wired.
[Comment: Even a slow walk needed more power than a cold-blooded system can provide, with most dinosaurs]
Chatterin’ chimp genes: Researchers have identified an entire network of genes involved in the linguistic powers of Homo sapiens.
The findings don’t explain how language functions at the biological level, or exactly what changes were needed to put an otherwise unremarkable monkey on its chattering, Earth-dominating trajectory. But they do a research foundation for investigating the questions.
[Comment: language involves hundreds, and probably thousands, of genes, interconnected and ever-shifting in their activity]
Haydron Collider almost back on line: Plagued by everything from liquid helium leaks to wayward baguettes and even speculative attacks from time travelling terrorists, the mega-physics experiment known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is finally ready to start crashing protons into each other.
Particle collisions could begin in two weeks.
[Comment: Smashing.]
Growing new breasts: Phillip Marzella from the Bernard O'Brien Institute of Microsurgery is part of the team that developed Neopec, a new stem cell technique for regrowing breast tissue. The researchers implant a chamber containing some of the individual's own fat tissue under the skin. The chamber is connected to the individual's blood vessels, and fat then grows to fill the chamber, creating a new breast. The chamber itself degrades naturally over time.
[Comment: Success in pig trials means human trials soon.]
New brain cells may knock out old ones: A new rodent study shows that newborn neurons destabilise established connections among existing brain cells in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory.
[Comment: Clearing old memories from the hippocampus makes way for new learning, Japanese researchers suggest, presenting an entirely new framework to study.]
Robotise from fly eyes: By turning the brain cell activity underlying fly eyesight into mathematical equations, researchers have found an ultra-efficient method for pulling motion patterns from raw visual data.
Mysterious as the equations are, they could still be used to program the vision systems of miniaturised battlefield drones, search-and-rescue robots, automobile navigation systems and other systems where computational power is at a premium.
[Image fromFlickr/Tambako the Jaguar]
[Comment: Though they built the system, the researchers don’t quite understand how it works yet.]
Vancouver’s green future planned now: Vancouver's ultra-green Olympic Village will hold 16,000 people by 2020, and they'll eat food grown on the roofs and drink reclaimed rainwater. Fascinating – see the concepts at IO9.
