Discovery News: Material World

New York Calling

From the same folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that brought us CityMotion and an Internet-enabled bus stop comes a new project that uses anonymous cell phone and Internet communications to help visualize human migration. The New York Talk Exchange has three maps that show where the communications come from and where they go as well as how they change over time.

What's great about this project is that you can immediately see the diversity that makes New York unique, both ethnically and socio-economically. For example, the team found the the richest and poorest people are making the most international communication, while the middle group talks locally and nationally.

The researchers also used British Telecom data and found that while New Yorkers reach more frequently  into Asia and South America, Londoners more often communicate with Europe and the United States.

The visualizations are part of an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art called "Design and the Elastic Mind" that is open through May. If you can't get to the exhibit, you can see a video here.

Blood Powers Electronic Tattoo

I know some folks feel lost and confused without their mobile phone, but this might be going too far. Someone has invented an implantable touch screen that works as a cell phone display. And what's more, the electronic tattoo gets its power from blood.

The 2x4-inch interface is made from flexible silicon and silicone. It's rolled into a tube and then inserted into the skin through a small incision. Once there, it unrolls to lie flat just below the skin. Two tubes on the device are connected to an artery and a vein, allowing blood to circulate to a fuel cell. As glucose and
oxygen pass through the fuel cell, they produce electricity.

Because blood is passing through, the device could work as a biological sensor to monitor a person's health. Ok, but that still gives me the willies.

Gravity Lamp Lasts 200 Years

It doesn't need to be plugged in. Instead, this lamp is powered by gravity. It's a design concept that won second prize at the Greener Gadgets Design Competition held early this month in New York. The lamp, called Gravia, is an acrylic column about four feet high that has a long, tall screw running up the middle. A weighted brass weight spirals down the screw in a slow-motion drop, and in the process, turns a rotor that powers a generator that creates electricity. The power illuminates LEDs, which glow bluish at about 600 to 800 lumens, or about the amount of a 40 watt bulb.

Gravia's inventor, Clay Moulton—a student at Virginia Tech—estimates that the if the lamp were used eight hours a day, 365 days a year, it would last 200 years.

A patent is pending. For more info, contact Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties, or see here, which provides information about the lamp and the designer’s philosophy.

Robotic Rat Feels With Whiskers

If you've ever passed the time waiting for a train in the New York subway by watching the rats scurrying around on the track, then you know how good those whiskered critters are at sensing their dimly lit environment. Now a team of robotics and brain researchers from Europe, the US, and Israel are banding together to develop a whiskered robot.

While not as fat and fuzzy as the real thing, such a machine could work well to explore dank, dark, disaster areas or industrial nooks and crannies like pipes and sewers (where rats frequent anyway).

It turns out that whiskers are an excellent sensor, much better than fingertips, when it comes to touch. It's partly because the base of the whisker contains a neuron that quickly fires signals off to the brain in a feedback loop that allows the rodent to change its response accordingly.

Whiskers are also able to sense in three dimensions, while at the same time actively sweeping back and forth over an object.

Read more here.

Vote For Your Favorite (Engineering) Candidate

'Tis the season for voting. And while you may have already cast a ballot in a recent primary, you have another opportunity to vote again. The U.S. National Academy of Engineering recently identified 14 engineering challenges that face researchers (and, ultimately you) in the 21st century in order to help people and the planet thrive.

The challenges fall into four categories: sustainability, health, reducing vulnerability, and joy of living. Originally, the committee that uncovered the challenges was asked to rank them. But they decided against it. Instead, they are asking the public to cast their vote and provide comments. You can do this on the project's web site.

It's easy. You just click on the challenge that you think needs the most attention. After you click, the page refreshes to show you how many votes have been cast in each category.

THE CHALLENGES

• Make solar energy affordable
• Provide energy from fusion
• Develop carbon sequestration methods
• Manage the nitrogen cycle
• Provide access to clean water
• Restore and improve urban infrastructure
• Advance health informatics
• Engineer better medicines
• Reverse-engineer the brain
• Prevent nuclear terror
• Secure cyberspace
• Enhance virtual reality
• Advance personalized learning
• Engineer the tools for scientific discovery

Fabric Friction Could Power Suit

That "swish-swish-swish" from your corduroys could mean your thighs are thick with electricity.

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta have made nanosized textile fibers that produce a charge when they are rubbed together. Those fibers could be sewn into fabrics and used to create wearable computers or power electronic devices.

The fibers are made from Kevlar that has been coated in tetraethoxysilane, which is used for, among other things, weatherproofing cement. Onto these coated fibers, the scientist put down a layer of zinc oxide. The zinc crystallizes into spikey structures. The fibers end up resembling round hair brushes (see photo). Because zinc oxide is piezoelectric, it produces a voltage when mechanically stressed. (I just wrote a story last week about using piezoelectric materials to harvest energy from rain.) That means as the fibers are crushed, squeezed, or bent, they produce a charge that can be captured for power.

The work is described in this week's issue of Nature.

Lab Laser Fires up Black Hole

Typically, black holes are resigned to deep space. But scientists have used laboratory lasers to simulate an event horizon, the point-of-no-return boundary that surrounds the edge of a black hole.

The results could allows physicists to peer into the mouth of the beast, so to speak, and examine what happens to light unable to escape from the hole's great gravitational pull.

Ulf Leonhardt, of the University of St Andrews, UK, and his team performed the experiment by sending a pulse of slow-moving laser light down an optical fiber and then following it up with a faster pulse.

A news story about the research appears in this week's issue of New Scientist. The articles describes what happens:

The first pulse distorts the optical properties of the fibre simply by traveling through it. This distortion forces the speedy probe wave to slow down dramatically when it catches up with the slower pulse and tries to move through it. In fact, the probe wave becomes trapped and can never overtake the pulse’s leading edge, which effectively becomes a black hole event horizon, beyond which light cannot escape.

Leonhardt and his team recently reported their work at the Cosmology Meets Condensed Matter meeting in London.

To learn more, see this week's video on Discovery New's "Why Tell Me Why," which explains why black holes exist.

 

50 Green Ones

You might be greener than you think. Popular Science has an article listing the top 50 most environmentally friendly cities in the United States. (They say "America," but they didn't look north to our neighbors in Canada or south to South America.) The editors compiled the rankings using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Geographic Society’s Green Guide. Portland, OR, comes in first, Greensboro, NC, last, and some surprises in between. Like, hey, my home town of Milwaukee ranks 22. Go cheeseheads.

Although the article is a feel-good read for us Americans, I do wish it would have given us some global perspective by ranking a few international cities for comparison. Because my intuition tells me that, although we're probably making some progress here and there, we have a way to go.

Etch-a-Sketch Holograms

For the first time, scientists have created a 3D holographic display that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.

The team of researchers from the University of Arizona, described the display in this week's issue of Nature.

You'll need special eye wear to view the displays, but the images are heads and shoulders above those little holograms on your credit cards. These are dynamic images written into a light-sensitive plastic and erased using laser beams.

The advance is a breakthrough in 3D displays and could bring the promise of virtual immersion (think gaming, medical, military) a giant step closer to reality. For more info see the University of Arizona press  release, read the article on Discovery's News site, or watch the video below.

Cube Radio Not for Squares

Normally I don't blog about gadgets, but this little do-hickey takes full advantage of technology for a simple,knock-yourself-in-the-forehead-cuz-why-didn't-someone-think-of-this-before elegance.

The Iona Cube internet radio from Cambridge Consultants has no buttons, dials, or levers. The user changes stations by turning the cube to one of four sides. According to the research, Internet radio listeners favor about four stations. (Is this true, MM?) And I wonder if the cube couldn't be designed into a hexagonal prism.

The fifth side of the cube is for the speaker; the sixth for on or off. To make the music louder or softer, just rotate the cube right or left. It's like you're pretending to turn up the volume, but then you really are!

Thanks to the Engineer Online for their article.