The home of Mac info for New Zealanders, mac-nz serves daily Mac, iPhone and related news from the world of Apple Inc.
Monday, 08 February 2010
Prosthetics giving modern amputees bionic advantages: Prostheses are being built with materials found in sports cars and jet planes, or because designers are giving their creations stylish sparkle, or even because nerve reintegration and myoelectrics are offering some amputees the joy of normal function.As Fast Company writes, the biggest reason for amputees' unlikely rise into a new, socially advantaged class comes from something much more mundane: profit. The prosthetics business is set to explode, and its products will make amputees stronger, faster, and, to some, more desirable than the rest of us. (The picture is a detail from that by Jesse Frohman, reproduced from the Fast Company page linked above)
Comment — business is set to boom because of the rise of obesity-related diabetes in the US. Charming, huh?
Robotic Big Dog to go into military production: Boston Dynamics has 30 months to turn its research prototype machines into genuine load-toting, four-legged, semi-intelligent war robot "first walk-out" of the newly-designated LS3 is scheduled in 2012.
LS3 stands for Legged Squad Support System, a semi-autonomous walking assistant designed to follow soldiers and Marines across the battlefield, carrying up to 181 kgs of gear and enough fuel to keep it going for 24 hours over a march of 20 miles. Fast Company has more, plus video.
Comment — looks more like a pushmepullyou crab to me.
Water to blame for global warming? A new study suggests water vapour is to blame for up to a third of the global warming throughout the 1990s.
The discovery is the result of research carried out by a team from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, led by Susan Solomon, who argues that it doesn't lessen the responsibility humanity has for global warming, but may explain why global warming has slowed in the past decade, reports IO9.
Comment — as long as it's not my fault, I don't mind what you blame.
Third World faces even more challenges with the global environmental crisis: Senegal's plan to halt the spread of the Sahara typifies the grand eco-schemes that face Third World countries, which already have enough of a struggle.
President Abdoulaye Wade wants to plant a trans-African strip of forest 15 kilometers wide and 7000 kilometers long.
He calls it "a new 'green lung" to hold back the dunes. It's among the more sweeping, yet least intrusive, geo-engineering proposals in the developing world.
As a temporary jobs program (half of Senegal's populace is out of work) it has some potential for immediate impact. But such megalithic projects in Africa have a history of failure, reports Fast Company, which criticises the top-down nature of projects like this as doomed to fail.
Comment — the world has a chance to set Haiti on its feet; could this become a development model? Or just another Gold Rush for the 'redevelopers'?
Air-filled aerogel insulation blankets to make existing buildings more energy efficient: Aerogels are porous nanomaterials that are made by removing the liquid from silica gels under high temperature and pressure, leaving a material that’s more than 90 per cent air.
They were invented in 1931 by Samuel Stephens Kistler at the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California.
An aerogel’s structure makes it a good, lightweight insulation material, making it difficult for heat to pass through, but it's expensive to manufacture. Aspen Aerogels says it has begun selling air-filled aerogel insulation blankets to make existing buildings more energy efficient, reports Smart Planet.
Comment — expensive? not much good for those sun-baked Third World homes, then.
Portuguese company can make a touch-screen out of anything: Displax promises to turn any surface – flat or curved – into a touch-sensitive display. The company has created a thinner-than-paper polymer film that can be stuck on glass, plastic or even wood to turn it into an interactive input device.
Human-computer touch interaction that has become a hot area of emerging technology since the iPhone, writes Wired.
Comment — how about clothes, Displax, so you can tell when you're wearing them?
Schizophrenia may not just be in the brain, but in the blood: Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered that the effects of schizophrenia appear to extend beyond the brain. There's talk of a blood test to diagnose schizophrenia being rolled out within a year.
As a psychiatric disorder, it was previously believed that the signs of the illness would be contained only within the brain. However, the team at the Cambridge Institute for Psychiatric Research, led by Sabine Bahn, has identified genetic markers of the disorder in cell division, the immune system, and glucose metabolism. They have found that one of the best peripheral indicators of schizophrenia is a systemic problem in protein expression in the skin cells of the patient's arms, reports IO9.
New drug could get injured soldiers through till treatment: Scientists have developed a new drug that prevents “shut down” biological mechanisms in the injured.
If successful, the drug could vastly improve survival from horrific injuries by allowing victims to live long enough to make it to hospital, according to New Scientist. So far, the drug has only been tested in animals.
Comment — 'Sergeant, stack ’em over there, we'll look at ’em later.'
