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Futurology #123
Monday, 14 December 2009
New ‘electronic paper’ technology allows a million colour choices: Researchers at Philips have developed a new color ePaper technology that could allow you to change the color of an object as you see fit.
The technology could be applied on walls inside the home or on the exterior of electronic devices, allowing you to change the colour of an object to match an outfit or mood with the touch of a button.
[Comment: Like my view? No? I'll change it ...]
Paper makes great formable, pliable battery base: Paper may seem so last century, but scientists have made batteries and supercapacitors with little more than ordinary office paper and some carbon and silver nanomaterials. The research, published online December 7 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, brings scientists closer to lightweight printable batteries that may one day be molded into computers, cell phones or solar panels.
Performance is largely due to paper’s porous nature: at the nano scale, paper is a tangled matrix of fibres.
This vast surface area helps inks stick. This holds true for carbon nanotube ink as well. When carbon-nanotube ink touches paper, the nanotubes get caught very tightly to the cellulose.
[Comment: It's been a long time since I got a charge from a newspaper.]
The experiments were undertaken on patients who already had electrodes in their brain (pic) to monitor epilepsy. Readings were taken via electrocorticography (ECoG), as the subjects were shown a grid of letters and numbers. As each symbol was illuminated, the patient was told to focus on the letter or number, and data was recorded.
This technique should allow people to communicate and type far more easily when they suffer from Lou Gehrig's disease, MS, or paralysis.
The lead scientist on the project, Dr. Jerry Shih, says the program is able to perform near or at 100% accuracy for the patients.
[Comment: " ... m-y _h-e-a-d_h-u-r-t-s ..."]
Heavy coffee drinkers cutting prostate cancer risk: the possibility of contracting an aggressive form of prostate cancer can be cut by up to 60% in heavy coffee drinkers.
Daily exercise can cut your risk by 35%. Even if you already have prostate cancer, a 15-minute daily workout can improve your odds of beating it.
Kathryn Wilson of Harvard looked at a population study of 50,000 male health professionals, and checked the cases of about 5000 who got cancer against their coffee habits.
She was careful to say only that if you’re a coffee drinker and do get cancer, feel free to have another cup.
[Comment: they just won't sleep much and they'll be irritable]
World's cheapest water purifier: Tata Chemicals has announced what it believes is the cheapest water purifier in the world.
The Indian company which launched the world’s cheapest car, the Nano compact, aims to provide clean drinking water to the 894 million people around the globe who lack access to it.
Called the Swach (Hindi for 'clean') – the purifier costs under $30 and doesn’t require electricity or running water to operate.
[Comment: hoorah! And you can drive to the river in your Nano]
Future Hawaiian cities could be under water: As cities on Hawaiian islands grow larger, they may start developing offshore, building underwater resources for residents. Already a plan is underway to cool Honolulu using ocean water; and offshore farming there could turn oceans into food production areas.
Meanwhile, Inhabitat points to a real-life ocean-industrial setup that's coming online soon in Honolulu. The energy-efficient cooling system for the city uses cool water from the ocean to keep buildings on the land.
[Comment: With global warming, Hawaiian cities may end up under water anyway, and cooling buildings might not be so effective once the sea heats up.]
The Mediterranean Sea may have filled in two years: The sea separated from the world’s oceans 5.6 million years ago and was desiccated by evaporation in 'the Messinian salinity crisis'. But then, the Atlantic broke through. A new model suggests that at the flood’s peak, water poured from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean basin at a rate one thousand times the flow of the Amazon River.
It's calculated that at the height of the flood, water levels rose more than 10 meters and more than 40 centimetres of rock eroded away per day. The model also shows that 100 million cubic meters of water flowed through the channel per second, with water gushing at speeds of 100 kilometres an hour. Rather than a Niagara Falls-esque cascade from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean, the team’s results imply a torrent several kilometers wide at a fairly gradual slope
[Comment: It must have lowered Atlantic sea levels at the same time]
Birth-order stereotypes are valid: Scientists have determined that birth-order stereotypes are valid, and that eldest children really are less cooperative, trusting, and reciprocating than their siblings.
For decades, birth order stereotypes have dictated people’s personalities: firstborn children are overachievers, middleborn children are more social because they get the least amount of attention from their parents, and so forth.
[Comment: Except in my case]
Monkeys using language with grammar: Campbell’s monkeys appear to combine the same calls in different ways, using rules of grammar that turn sound into language.
Whether their rudimentary syntax echoes the speech of humanity’s evolutionary ancestors, or represents an emergence of language unrelated to our own, is unclear. Either way, they’re far more sophisticated than we thought.
Male monkeys called “boom boom” to gather other monkeys to them, while “boom boom krak-oo krak-oo” consistently meant a tree or branch was about to fall.
Now to translate what the other species are saying ...
Male monkeys called “boom boom” to gather other monkeys to them, while “boom boom krak-oo krak-oo” consistently meant a tree or branch was about to fall.
Now to translate what the other species are saying ...
[Comment: If I could talk to the animals ... they'd tell me where the leopards are]
The cost of being sexy: Evolutionary biologists in California have discovered that when males shower attractive females with attention, it actually undermines those females' fitness as mothers. That means fit females don't pass their genes on.
The cost of being sexy: Evolutionary biologists in California have discovered that when males shower attractive females with attention, it actually undermines those females' fitness as mothers. That means fit females don't pass their genes on.
In the end, the males' aggressive mating with the fittest females ends up preventing their species from evolving into a much fitter group.
[Comment: I have no idea what they're talking about. Fortunately. But luckily, the study was with fruit flies.]
[Comment: I have no idea what they're talking about. Fortunately. But luckily, the study was with fruit flies.]
The science behind the 2010 World Cup soccer ball: Adidas’ Teamgeist ball, from the last World Cup, achieved accuracy with a reduction in the number of panels, from 32 to 12, and a process that thermally bonded them together to eliminate the inconsistencies of stitching and offer the ability for form the outer panels in three dimensions (versus bending flat panels into a spherical shape). It turned out to be was favourable for strikers and not so fun for goalkeepers, because the ball’s lack of rotation in the air made its trajectory difficult to judge.
The Jabulani also uses just just eight panels made of EVA and TPU. With fewer seams, Adidas says Jabulani provides a 70 per cent larger striking surface.
But Adidas added “aero grooves,” or indentations in a specific pattern that run along the panels to help give the ball consistent trajectory. Small, raised “microtexture” indentations also help give the player more control.
But Adidas added “aero grooves,” or indentations in a specific pattern that run along the panels to help give the ball consistent trajectory. Small, raised “microtexture” indentations also help give the player more control.
[Comment: Yeeha, I can hardly wait for for four yearly obsession and weeks of no sleep!]
