A research laboratory at Japan’s Ritsumeikan University has developed a monitoring system for wet diapers that consists of a self-powered sensor/transmitter and a receiver and is supposed to assist staff in hospitals and nursing homes in performing diaper checks with elderly patients. The sensor kit has to be placed inside the diaper and sends signals to the receiver unit, which was co-developed in collaboration with Seiko Epson.
The vaccine is injected and works by creating anti-bodies
Smokers could soon have access to an injectable vaccine to help them break the habit following a deal between GlaxoSmithKline and Nabi Pharmaceuticals, the company that developed the drug. The NicVAX vaccine works by preventing nicotine in tobacco entering the brain, where it creates an addictive sensation of pleasure. Trials have shown it can halve the number of people who return to smoking after trying to give up.
A vending machine that dispenses gold.
While some buy water others invest in precious metals during times of possible apocalyptic turmoil. The TG-Gold-Super-Markt is the first gold, yes gold vending machine. In order to take it for a spin, though, you’ll have to travel to Germany’s Frankfurt Airport. So if you happen to be in Terminal 1 sometime soon, drop in $49 and you’ll have yourself a 1g wafer of gold, or for $400 you can pick up a 10g bar or coins.
Audi Autonomous TTS
Audi is working hard on a car that doesn’t require the driver to anything except sit there and watch the scenery go by. It’s called the “Autonomous Audi TTS,” not the catchiest of names, and it’s “intended to explore the best capabilities of current and future driver assistance technologies.” (Pics and video)
The new TKTS booth in Times Square supports glass benches atop two-inch-thick windows
The largest load-bearing glass structure in the world, the new TKTS booth in Times Square, supports glass benches atop two-inch-thick windows. Sounds delicate, but it regularly holds 500 foot-stomping Jumbotron watchers. For reinforcement, engineers at Dewhurst Macfarlane used a plastic film called SentryGlas Plus. (Pics)
Professor Guillermo Bazan and a team of postgraduate researchers at UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Polymers and Organic Solids (CPOS) have announced a major advance in the synthesis of organic polymers for plastic solar cells.
First, it was the soccer-ball-shaped molecules dubbed buckyballs. Then it was the cylindrically shaped nanotubes. Now, the hottest new material in physics and nanotechnology is graphene: a remarkably flat molecule made of carbon atoms arranged in hexagonal rings much like molecular chicken wire.
A study by researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London has found that depression is as much of a risk factor for mortality as smoking.
Hardening of the arteries has been detected in Egyptian mummies, some as old as 3,500 years, suggesting that the factors causing heart attack and stroke are not only modern ones; they afflicted ancient people, too.
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles, found in everything from cosmetics to sunscreen to paint to vitamins, caused systemic genetic damage in mice, according to a comprehensive study conducted by researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Think prayer is all you can do to keep your home safe in the middle of a warzone? With the X-Flex bomb-surviving wallpaper, you just might have another line of defense. It’s not exactly salvation, but it could help keep your fortress intact for just a little while longer.
Invented by Berry Plastics in conjunction with the US Army Corps of Engineers, the life-saving wallpaper can help keep your walls intact even after being hit by blasts. A video on the PopSci website (link below) even shows it tested against a wrecking ball swinging its weight onto a wall at maximum velocity. The wall survived, albeit with obvious signs of damage…
Blast Your Ashes Into Space…
As cremations have become more and more popular in recent years, people have devised a number of unusual ways to commemorate the dearly departed. If you’re looking for a unique way to be remembered, here are 12 strange things you can do with your cremated remains.
Behold the helmet of head health
Stressed from all the pretending that you do at the office? Forget medicating, all you need is some liberating pressure on your skull. At least, that’s what Kinatech is thinking with the new Headtime Scalp Massager, a huge, head-crowning bowl that looks like it’s raring to fry your brains.
Looking like a mad scientist’s torture device, the stress-busting contraption doesn’t do any of those scary things you’re probably thinking. Steal your memory? Nah. Implant evil designs in your brain? Don’t sweat it. Short-circuit and electrocute you? Mmm…that’s actually a possibility.
In three separate trials, the drug flibanserin did wonders for women’s flagging sex drive despite doing nothing to lift mood.
The accidental discovery is akin to Viagra’s – it was originally designed as a heart medicine but failed. The US work was presented at a sexual medicine meeting in Lyon, France.
ROAMS Robot uses off-the-shelf components to build 3D maps of an area
At a robotics conference, a vehicle called ROAMS demonstrated a cheap approach to mobile map-making.
ROAMS (Remotely Operated and Autonomous Mapping System) was created by researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, with funding from the U.S. Army. It uses several existing mapping technologies to build 3D color maps of its surroundings, and it was demonstrated at the 2009 IEEE conference on Technologies for Practical Robot Applications in Woburn, MA last week.
A first search with Google Swirl turns up stacks of image thumbnails that users can click on to explore
Look for images of “Washington” online, and Google’s search engine may turn up a random sea of pictures showing the Washington monument, the White House, George Washington, and actor Denzel Washington. Now Google’s new “Image Swirl” feature could eliminate that hit-or-miss frustration by organizing images in neat, expandable thumbnail stacks for users to explore.
A sensing surface developed by Microsoft researchers offers new ways to use computers.
Computer users have been typing on keyboards and clicking on mice for more than 20 years. An experimental new interface under development at Microsoft could give them a completely new way to use their system.
Anybots “QA” at Work
Having one of those days where even a hearty bowl of Fruit Loops and Jack Daniels can’t get you out of bed? A telepresence robot can come into the office for you, elevating telecommuting to a decidedly new level. The somewhat humanoid ‘bots, produced by Mountain View, California-based Anybots, are controlled via video-game-like controls from your laptop, allowing you to be “present” without actually being in the office. (Videos)
UBS has admitted that it schemed to defraud the U.S. government by helping Americans hide money in secret Swiss accounts
If your secret Swiss bank account was small enough, you can breathe easier: A landmark deal between the United States and Switzerland to expose American tax dodgers does not call for the Swiss to blow your cover.
The constellation of Orion is a hotbed of massive star formation, most prominently in the Great Nebula that sits in Orion’s sword. The glowing gas of the Nebula is powered by a group of young massive stars, but behind it is a cluster of younger stars and clumps of gas. Still gathering together under gravity’s pull, these gas clumps will eventually ignite into stars.
Most of the linguistic functions in humans are controlled by the left cerebral hemisphere. A study of captive chimpanzees at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center (Atlanta, Georgia), reported in the January 2010 issue of Elsevier’s Cortex, suggests that this “hemispheric lateralization” for language may have its evolutionary roots in the gestural communication of our common ancestors. A large majority of the chimpanzees in the study showed a significant bias towards right-handed gestures when communicating, which may reflect a similar dominance of the left hemisphere for communication in chimpanzees as that seen for language functions in humans.
In the quest to make hydrogen as a clean alternative fuel source, researchers have been stymied about how to create usable hydrogen that is clean and sustainable without relying on an intensive, high-energy process that outweighs the benefits of not using petroleum to power vehicles.
Staff at the University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) have been excited by the results from a recently excavated major Prehistoric site at Asfordby, near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. The Mesolithic site may date from as early as 9000 BC, by which time hunter-gatherers had reoccupied the region after the last ice age. These hunters crossed the land bridge from the continental mainland — ‘Britain’ was only to become an island several thousand years later.
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