News items and other various tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share with his friends.
It’s been known for some time now that using capacitors to store electricity would do away with a couple shortcomings of rechargeable batteries—the long charge time and limited battery lifespan. The problem is that current capacitor technology isn’t able to store enough charge. This may soon be coming to an end, as a company named EEstor appears to have developed a capacitor suitable for electric cars.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
Previously only in the domain of science fiction, IBM is doing some fundamental research into saving a data bit in a single atom and also into making an electronic switch out of a single molecule (thus replacing transistors). Right now it’s at the research level, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it out in the wild within the next decade or two.
For some time now I have been wondering why we can’t just directly create the stuff that we currently rely on nature to provide: oil, food, etc. These items are basically made from four very plentiful elements—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen—and I see no reason why we can’t just combine the elements in the right manner to create what we need. A company named LS9 has made a step in the right direction. They have developed bacteria that take corn-based sugars and convert them to oil. (They hope to eventually use switchgrass instead of corn.) One neat thing is that gasoline created from this oil is free of contaminants, such as sulfur, that exist in natural oil.
Link: http://www.technologyreview.com/…
(via Slashdot)
This system reads vinyl records with a laser instead of a needle. It can handle fragile and even broken records. Developed for the Library of Congress to help preserve old recordings, I can see a modified version becoming popular with audiophiles.
Link: http://www.npr.org/…
(via Slashdot)
Scientists have created a computer program that cannot be beaten at checkers, once the number of pieces gets down to 10. (I guess you could win if you still had 10 or more pieces left.) The way they worked this out is neat. For every possible combination of 10 checkers or less, the researchers have pre-computed the next move to take—a move that has a certainty of not losing. If the opponent also plays a perfect game, it will result in a draw, but the scientists have proven that the computer cannot lose.
Link#1: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…
Link #2: http://www.nature.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Link #3: http://www.foxnews.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
US and Australian scientists have successfully tested a scramjet, attaining a speed of Mach 10. This technology has the potential to revolutionize international travel, should it ever make it to commercial use. I’ve read about suborbital flights in a variety of science fiction novels, and it would be neat to see it become a reality.
RFID chips keep getting tinier and tinier. These latest ones from Hitachi are thinner than a strand of hair, yet are able to transmit a 38-digit identification number. I believe RFID tracking technology will become ubiquitous in the next few decades, to the point where future generations take it for granted.
Thanks to Josh for this topic.
Link: http://www.popsci.com/…
Chad’s News has previously mentioned flash-based, solid state hard drives, but it’s worth noting that they’re continuing to decrease in price and rise in capacity. For now, they appear to be targeted only at laptops.
3-dimensional “printers” are getting down in price to the point where they may become ubiquitous. They don’t print to paper like traditional printers; rather, they create a 3-D object out of nylon, plastic, or polymers by “writing” successive layers until the object is finished. There are some drawbacks (gray color, graininess), but expect this technology to quickly improve.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/…
Last week Comcast demonstrated a working cable internet system with 150Mbps download speeds. Dubbed DOCSIS 3.0 (current cable systems use DOCSIS 1.1), it’s about 25 time faster than existing cable technology. Large-scale deployment may begin as early as next year. One downside, however is that the 150Mbps is shared amongst households connected to a node, so it’s possible to get much slower speeds.
Link #1: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Link #2: http://arstechnica.com/…
A company named NeuroSky has developed brainwave reading technology that can detect when a person is focusing on a fixed image. They created a prototype toy lightsaber that lights up when the user concentrates on it. When his/her attention wanders, it turns off. Apparently this is just the beginning of what they can determine from reading brainwaves. The initial market will be toys and games, but I think it could be used in a wide range of applications.
Link: http://www.businessweek.com/…
(via TheForce.Net)
A company named Zink has developed a photo printer that uses no ink. The secret is in the paper.
Link: http://crave.cnet.com/…
Chad Cloman
Denver, CO USA
