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‘technology’ Stories

Scientists develop stainless steel with antibacterial properties

Shane McGlaun, Jul 20th 2011 Discuss [0]

Stainless steel is a ubiquitous material that you can find in kitchens in homes and restaurants all around the world. The metal is easy to sanitize so it tends to be used in food preparation areas where things like raw meat and fish are placed on bare surfaces. Raw meats tend to carry a lot of bacteria and that bacteria can be easily transferred if the surface isn't cleaned and possibly lead to illness. Read The Full Story

Willow Garage explores ways to allow paralyzed man to use PR2 robot as a surrogate

Shane McGlaun, Jul 15th 2011 Discuss [1]

Of all the robots that are on the market today, one of the most useful and expensive is the PR2 from Willow Garage. We have talked about the PR2 a few times and the bot is capable of all sorts of things. Generally, the bots are used for research in colleges and elsewhere, but they have more capability than that. Willow Garage has teamed up with a man named Henry Evans that had a stroke at 40 and is now a mute quadriplegic. Generally, a quadriplegic can't move any of his limbs, but after extensive therapy, Evans regained the use of a single finger and the ability to move his head. Read The Full Story

Researchers develop soft memory with the consistency of Jell-O

Shane McGlaun, Jul 15th 2011 Discuss [3]

As technology progresses there are a number of ways that tech will be able to help people recover from illness and accidents that compromise the function of a part of the body. Often the sort of tech that can help repair damaged body systems has to be implanted. The problem with implanting electronic in the body today is that most of the gear is ridged and the body tends to reject anything it sees as foreign leading to the need for all sorts of drugs to prevent rejection in many instances. Read The Full Story

MIT engineer Rosalind Picard has developed glasses that read facial expressions

Shane McGlaun, Jul 12th 2011 Discuss [0]

If you have ever watched the show Lie to Me, you know that their main character is a human lie detector that reads facial cues to tell if the person is lying or not. An electrical engineer at MIT has developed a new pair of reading glasses that uses a LED inside the frames to alert the wearer what the person they are talking is thinking based on facial expression. Read The Full Story

CERN Launches Open Source Hardware Project

Chris Burns, Jul 8th 2011 Discuss [0]

The folks who brought you the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the experiments therein are now working to bring you an OHR, aka an Open Hardware Repository for all the collaborative electronics design you could possibly handle. For those of you that don’t know, CERN also has their very own Linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux known as Scientific Linux CERN. It was the productivity of this project that inspired this newest effort, the group hoping now to bring this open source software development model to the hardware world.

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Haptic belts steer soldiers in the right direction

Shane McGlaun, Jun 30th 2011 Discuss [0]

All I know of communication on the battlefield when you can't talk is what I see in the movies. It apparently involves many hand signals from what I can tell. A new system that uses belts loaded with sensors and feedback from vibrating motors may replace those hand gestures in the future. It sounds like some of the tech that is in video games today. The solider would wear the haptic feedback belt and it could guide them along a route without the fighter having to look down to follow a GPS or map. Read The Full Story

Aerospace consulting firm creates tsunami escape capsule

Shane McGlaun, Jun 30th 2011 Discuss [0]

I've never really thought much about tsunamis until the last few years. The horrific tsunami that hit Japan after the earthquakes this year has many people all around the world scrambling to figure out a better way to protect people that live in areas where a tsunami is possible and to predict when the massive waves might occur. In some instances, even knowing that the tsunami is coming might not give people time to get to safety. Read The Full Story

US House of Representatives allows Members of Congress to use Skype

Shane McGlaun, Jun 29th 2011 Discuss [0]

Skype was one of the early VoIP services and remains one of the more popular ways for people to stay connected and see the people they are talking to if video calls are used rather than just hearing the person. Skype is easy to access for just about anyone with a web connection and a computer, smartphone, or tablet today. The US House of Representatives has announced that the Committee on Administration has revealed that Congressional leaders can now use Skype for communications. Read The Full Story

Are soldiers testing night vision contact lenses?

Shane McGlaun, Jun 29th 2011 Discuss [13]

This is a cool thing to me. If you watch any movies with a military theme or any of the discovery type programming centering on military themes you have, seen night vision goggles before. The things clip on to the helmet of the solider and they flip them up or down to control when they need to see in the dark and when normal vision will do. The goggles look to be very bulky and uncomfortable and cut down on peripheral vision too. Read The Full Story

Raytheon microwave warhead would fry enemy defenses, not blow them up

Shane McGlaun, Jun 21st 2011 Discuss [2]

Today in any military conflict there is a bunch of missiles and other exploding ordinance that is used against hard targets like air defenses to prevent them from being used on the opposing force and on civilians in the conflict. The way these missiles destroy the enemy equipment is by blowing it up. The high explosive warheads have the sad drawback of at times causing damage beyond what the military intends with civilian casualties always a risk, especially in heavily populated areas where defenses might be placed. Read The Full Story

Today is World IPv6 Day

Shane McGlaun, Jun 8th 2011 Discuss [0]

Today is a special day in the geek world, it's World IPv6 Day. Don't worry people; you don’t need to by a gift for your significant other or anything. Today marks the first 24-hour test of the IPv6 system around the world by major websites. The goal of the test day is to motivate organizations across the industry to prepare their services for IPv6 so the transition goes smoothly since IPv4 addresses ran out and IPv6 addresses are going to be handed out moving forward. The target industries for the day are ISPs, hardware makers, OS vendors, and web firms. Read The Full Story

Intel conducting investigation after explosion at Chandler Fab 22

Shane McGlaun, Jun 8th 2011 Discuss [0]

Something went wrong at one of the Intel fabs where computer chips are produced yesterday and an explosion occurred. Luckily, no one was killed in the explosion, but there were four people inside the room when the explosion happened and six more workers were right outside the room. The explosion happened in one of the fabs Intel operates in Chandler, Arizona called Fab 22. The photo below is of Chandler Fab 32, which is adjacent to Fab 22. Read The Full Story