The primary mission of the helicopter, with nearly 2 feet long and weighing 90 kg or so, would help military investigators on the task of inspecting an American city after a nuclear attack to detect radiation levels, and photograph and create maps of the devastation. The project leader is Kevin Kochersberg, professor of mechanical engineering at the Technological Institute of Virginia (Virginia Tech). Continue reading...

Part of the expedition's survival depends on an early warning system that can predict the approximate these invisible but deadly storms on Mars and alert when there are no risk. Roger Dube, the Rochester Institute of Technology, has received funding from NASA to develop a monitoring system that allows this level of protection for people on Mars. As a bonus, the technology will also provide early warning of space storms that threaten critical infrastructures on Earth, including electrical grids and communications satellites and GPS. Dube system provides include sensors and small solar observatories in the Martian bases or near the poles of

Scientists at the University of Toronto have invented a material sensitive to infrared radiation which could realize this potential within a short time. Professor Ted Sargent and his team have managed to manipulate matter at the nano scale to create structures capable of collecting infrared rays of the sun, invisible to the naked eye but no less useful than visible light. The researchers created particles smaller than 5 nanometers, from semiconductor crystals. The nanoparticles were so small they remained dispersed in everyday solvents. Then tuned nanocrystals to enable them to catch light with very specific wavelengths. The result: an infrared detector

The staffs of the University of Arizona developed a device which can test the air around a person while it passes through an arc similar to a metal detector. Portable units may inspect the baggage in parallel. The system is not examined samples of material, but that directly tries to find traces of explosives as a person who has manipulated inadvertently released into the air around him. For M. Bonner Denton, the invention is a kind of "tricorder", or multi-detector very popular device in Star Trek. Like the latter, can be designed to fit inside a pocket, while the current analyzers usually

Scientist has developed a technique for making LCDs (liquid crystal displays) without the need for clean rooms (environments under stringent control standards of cleanliness, comparable to operating rooms). The technique is simpler and cheaper than methods used today. The research has further shown that these LCDs can be used to make DNA visible to the naked eye. Hoogboom built a surface capable of aligning liquid crystal molecules. To do this, he designed and produced a special chemical compound. When applied to the surface used to manufacture LCDs, the molecules organize themselves automatically with a regular pattern. These surfaces could then align

In addition to allowing the transfer of real-time video from vehicles submerged, not restrained by cables, to support vessels at the surface, this combination of capabilities makes it possible to govern from them remotely operated vehicle (ROV for its acronym in English) and self-propelled, without requiring a physical connection to the ROV. This not only represents a significant technological breakthrough, but it also promises to reduce costs and simplify operations. The engineer Norman E. Farr led the research team. Compared to communication systems that work with signals propagated by air, viable in the underwater environment are severely limited because the water is

This is revealed by a study, a collaboration among team Baratunde Cola Georgia Institute of Technology, and specialists from USA, Australia, China, India and Philippine. The study represents a major technological leap, and that this innovation will be possible to efficiently generate electricity from sources as unattractive as exhaust from vehicles, or the heat generated as an inevitable consequence of industrial processes. Efficiently collect heat energy currently wasted in the mills could also create local sources of clean energy, which in turn could be used to reduce the energy consumption of a company and its operating costs. New termocélulas nanotube electrodes used to

The development of a device of this kind, a "system on a chip", economically and with a bandwidth of extremely large, can lead to also one day the new receiver to replace the receivers traditional now used in radio astronomy , many of which are now the size of a refrigerator. The first litmus test to which the chip will be submitted in ASKAP of the CSIRO, a set of 36 dishes that act as a single telescope, currently under construction in Western Australia. Continue reading...

The new system, called Skinput, has been developed by Chris Harrison, at the Institute of Human-Computer Interaction (HCA II) from Carnegie Mellon University, along with Desney Tan and Dan Morris of Microsoft Research. Skinput could help people to make better use of large computing power present today in various handheld electronic devices. The diminutive size makes it so easy to carry over to smartphones, MP3 players and other digital devices is also limiting the ease of use and practicality of their keypads, touch screens and other elements typically used to control miniaturized devices such functions. With Skinput no longer depend on these

(NC & T) Under the direction of Jose Contreras Vidal, professor of kinesiology at UW, the team of neuroscientists successfully reconstructed three-dimensional movements of the hand from brain signals recorded non-invasively. In this study, scientists placed a set of 34 sensors on the scalps of five participants to record the electrical activity of their brains, using electroencephalography (EEG). The researchers found that electrical brain activity visible on the surface of the scalp have sufficient information to permit reconstruction of the hand movements, continuously and without spatial restrictions. Continue reading...