Discovery News: Material World

Atom-Fusing Laser, Robotic Jellyfish, Invisibility Carpet, A Pregnancy Gene and More

These are the coolest tech stories I discovered this past week.

July 12 / The New York Times
Can’t Find a Parking Spot? Check Smartphone
If you live a big city, then you know what it's like to drive around and around looking for that elusive parking spot. But starting this fall, San Franciscans will be in for a treat. The city is testing the use of wireless sensors that will communicate to street signs or a smartphone the availability of free spaces. Now just don't run anyone over trying to get the spot first.

July 13 / Guardian
Doctors Rage At Being Rated Online
As a big fan of AngiesList and Yelp, I'm all for a Web site that will allow patients to rate their doctors online. Isn't it all about referrals anyway? And health care is a service for which we pay big bucks. So suck it up, GPs, and get with the times.

July 15 / Discovery News
Giant Laser in the Works to Achieve Fusion
Wouldn't Dr. Evil love this "laser?" It can't blow up the planet, but at 10 stories tall and 400 feet long, it will create enough heat and pressure to fuse atoms and create helium. The reaction will release massive amounts of environmentally friendly energy and enough helium to keep us all talking about it with high squeaky voices.

July 15 / New Scientist
Dirt-Repelling Tube Promises Cheap, Pure Water
Man, we've really messed up the world's water supply. Most of it can't be consumed without being purified first, and that's not good for people living in developing worlds. But a a new way of purifying water could offer a simple solution. The technique uses a material that naturally attracts water while at the same time repelling impurities.

July 15 / BBC
The Importance of Being There
You have to really not like your surroundings (or yourself?) to prefer a virtual world over reality. But even still, VR environments have a long way to go before they will supplant this world, says regular columnist Bill Thompson.

July 16 / Wired
Obama Wages Cyberwar
Even though the Bush administration has initiated a $30 billion effort to beef up cyber security, Obama says its too little too late.

July 16 / Popular Science
Robotic Jellyfish Just Like the Real Thing, But Without the Sting
Sure, it's great that the AquaJelly has sensors, a short-range radio system, LEDs for illumination and communication and is coated with conductive metal paint that helps it connect with a nearby charging station, but I think they're dern pretty and I sure wish I had one. Hint hint.

July 16 / Wired
Army Wants 'Psychologically Inspired' Robot Vision
Robots score a big "duh" when it comes to vision. They just can't see the world we do. That's why the Army has put out an APB for a "psychologically inspired object recognition system." But do we really want robots seeing the world through our eyes? What if they notice what a bunch of doofuses we are?

July 17 / Discovery News
Invisible Carpet Idea Close to Actual Invisibility
Invisibility cloaks are great for hiding giant spaceships, but an invisibility carpet is just way more practical. Scientists have created a material that can hide objects in visible light. My question: If we can't see it, how will we know it's working? (See what I mean about being a doofus.)

July 17 / Popular Science
A Gene for Baby Makin’
This could put an end to birth control pills, foams and devices and eliminate the need for testicle snipping. Scientists have located the gene that both regulates and blocks ovulation.

July 17 / Wired
Why China's Olympian Efforts to Clean Up Beijing's Air Won't Work.
China is doing a bunch of stuff to clean up the air in time for the Olympics. Smoking bans, traffic bans and turning off power plants to name of few. But it might not make any difference.

Photo: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Week (According to Me)

Starting today and every Friday hence, I'm going to post a summary of the coolest tech stories and blogs I came across over the past week. The post will be here and also on my website, Discovery Tech. This week: Engineered cells, shape-shifting cars, wirelessly networked cows, bacteria that eat plastic, and gold nanoparticles that block HIV caught my attention, among others. Enjoy

06 June 2008 / Wired
ITP: The Ultimate Sweet-Talking Jacket for Geeks
The CyranoSuit, uses a series of sensors embedded in the arms and chest to detect physical interaction with a woman and then a hacked receipt printer delivers romantic lines straight to the breast pocket.

07 June 2008 / Powrtalk
Un
The Man wants us to write about technology. Energy and technology. But sometimes we want to write about un-technology. About not doing things. Avoidance strategies. Nega-watts. Nega-barrels. Things that are related to energy but that are distinctly un-tech.

08 June 2008 / Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends
Wirelessly Networking Cows
U.S. researchers have developed a Walkman-like headset for cows. This device enables them to 'whisper wireless commands to cows to control their movements

09 June 2008 / New Scientist
Bacteria Make Major Evolutionary Shift in the Lab
A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

10 June / Super Duper Sustainable Stuff
Los Angeles Has Got Some Balls. No, Really.
The the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power unloaded 400,000 black plastic "shade balls" into the 58-million-gallon reservoir to protect it--nearly one for every customer.

10 June 2008 / Wired
BMW Builds a Shape-Shifting Car Out of Cloth
Instead of steel, aluminum or even carbon fiber, the GINA Light Visionary Model has a body of seamless fabric stretched over a movable metal frame that allows the driver to change its shape at will.

10 June 2008 / Scientific American
The Midas Touch: Using Gold Nanoparticles to Block HIV
Researchers find that attaching 12 molecules of a drug compound to one gold nanoparticle restores the drug's ability to prevent HIV infection.

10 June 2008 / Scientific American
Scientists Close to Reconstructing First Living Cell
Harvard Medical School researchers report in Nature that they have built a model of what they believe the very first living cell may have looked like, which contains a strip of genetic material surrounded by a fatty membrane.

11 June 2008 / The Guardian
Can Mobile Phones Really Be Ssed to Cook Popcorn?
If four separate homemade videos on YouTube are to be believed, it's now possible to cook popcorn using the energy emitted from ordinary ringing mobiles.

11 June 2008 / Discovery News
Experiment Mimics Earth’s Spinning Core
By spinning a 26-ton steel sphere filled with boiling metal at about 90 miles an hour, Dan Lathrop, a scientist at the University of Maryland, hopes to unlock Earth's spinning magnetic heart.

11 June 2008 / New Scientist
Human Egg Makes Accidental Debut on Camera
These are the clearest pictures ever taken of what is the starting point of every human life: ovulation occurring inside a woman's body.

11 June 2008 / The Engineer
Towering Fuel Cell
The New York Power Authority (NYPA) has inked a $10.6m deal with UTC Power that will make the redeveloped World Trade Center the site of one of the largest fuel cell installations in the world.

12 June 2008 / Technovelgy.com
Bacteria Eats Plastic; What Could Go Wrong?
Microorganisms dine on polythene bags

12 June 2008 / Science Daily
U.S. Still Leads the World in Science and Technology
Despite perceptions that the nation is losing its competitive edge, the United States remains the dominant leader in science and technology worldwide, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

12 June 2008 / BBC
Thinking Up Beautiful Music
Musicians may soon be able to play instruments using just the power of the mind.

Photo: BMW

Eyes Free Access to Your Mobile Phone

First there were headsets that offered a hands-free mode on mobile phones. Now there's an audio program that allows a person to access calendar or contact information without looking at the screen or the buttons. Hence, eyes free.

The prototype version, called Blindsight, comes from the folks at Microsoft Research. You can see a video here. It works on flat mobile phones (not the clamshells). The speaker holds the phone backward and upside down, using the keypad button to access information. An audio voice provides the necessary information without disrupting the conversation. That's because the listener on the other end can only hear the person speaking and not the audio calendar or contact information.

It's an interesting concept, but how would something like this work with clamshell phones, which are so popular in the States? Also, if you're using a headset, you wouldn't need the function at all.

Six Degrees of IM'ing Kevin Bacon

IM your buddy and you are about six random hops away from IM'ing everyone in the world—statistically speaking.

Researchers Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research and Jure Leskovec of Carnegie Mellon University analyzed 255 billion Microsoft Messenger messages sent in June 2006. They report that the average shortest number of jumps it would take one random user to get to another was 6.6.

That number is very close to a statistic uncovered in the 1960s by Stanley Milgram of Harvard University. His small world experiment showed that random strangers in the United States are separated by about six people on average.

And in the trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, players try to show that any actor can be connected through their roles to Kevin Bacon in six movies or less. Which really begs the question...if you IM a friend, aren't you less than six messages away from IM'ing Kevin?

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.