Engadget Giveaway: win one of two Bolton Street backpacks, courtesy of ONA!

Engadget Giveaway win one of two Bolton Street backpacks!

This ain’t your kid’s average Dora the Explorer backpack. ONA’s mission is to introduce the world to something much more on the premium side, and its Bolton Street packs do a pretty good job of contributing to that quest. Crafted with a water-resistant canvas and leather accents, this backpack certainly holds its fair share of stuff — and it’d better, for $360. Fortunately, the folks at ONA have a couple for us to give away to our readers, so hurry down to the widget below to enter.

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Alt-week 08.31.13: We’re all Martians, Mega Drive music and reinventing the ruler

Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.

Alt-week 08.31.13: We're all Martians, Mega Drive music and reinventing the ruler

Some things become obsolete, some things rise to live again. Two of our stories over the fold demonstrate new tricks from old dogs. The third? Just, y’know, suggests that we’re all actually from Mars. No biggie. This is alt-week.

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Transparent gel speaker plays music through the magic of ionic conduction (video)

Transparent gel speaker plays music through the magic of ionic conduction video

It may be hard to believe, but that transparent disk in the photo above is actually a fully functioning speaker. A team of researchers at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have pioneered a never before seen application of ionic conductivity by creating a see-through artificial muscle that can produce sounds spanning the entire audible spectrum. While ionic conduction isn’t a novel idea, it’s been considered impractical due to the fact that ionic materials react poorly to high voltage. The team, which included postdoctoral research fellows Jeong-Yun Sun and Christoph Keplinger (pictured above), circumvented that obstacle by placing a layer of rubber between two sheets of transparent conductive gel, allowing the system to work with both high voltage and high actuation, two qualities necessary for sound reproduction. Theoretically, soft machine technology such as this can be used to do much more than play Grieg’s Peer Gynt, particularly in the fields of robotics, mobile computing and adaptive optics. To watch it in action, check out the video after the break.

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Via: The Verge

Source: Science, Harvard

Nine Inch Nails puts Kinect, various other gadgets to use on festival tour

Nine Inch Nails puts Kinect, various other gadgets to use on festival tour

It’s no secret that Nine Inch Nails’ frontman Trent Reznor likes to do things a bit differently. He and long-time art director Rob Sheridan have assembled a crew to make the group’s festival dates this year as visually stunning as the audio promises to be. Along with a slew of other high-tech gadgetry, there’s a Kinect that handles motion tracking with captured movements projected onto a handful of mobile video screens. Alongside thermal and regular ol’ video cameras, live video content is piped on-stage during specific parts of the set — with a hand from the folks at Moment Factory, a multimedia environment studio. Reznor also notes that much of the system is “a bunch of homemade software and hardware effects that they’ve tied together” with the goal of creating a film-like quality to an hour and a half performance. For a 13-minute, behind the scenes look at the prep work, head on past the break.

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Source: Nine Inch Nails (Tumblr)

NASA’s 3D-printed rocket part handles 20,000 pounds of thrust in test (video)

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NASA’s really into 3D printing, but its latest project goes far beyond pizza. The space agency has manufactured its largest rocket part ever, an injector plate, which successfully helped produce around 20,000 pounds of thrust on a test bed. They modified the design of an existing machined injector in order to create a 3D printed version using two parts instead of 115 — which NASA said performed “flawlessly” in tests. Such parts could one day reduce rocket costs while potentially increasing safety, since they’re less-complex and have fewer points of failure. NASA will ramp up the thrust on subsequent tests, but meanwhile, if you don’t want to see a rocket motor firing with 10 tons of thrust, don’t head after the jump.

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Via: Ars Technica

Bristol physicists working to bring quantum cryptology to our phones

DNP Bristol physicists working to bring quantum cryptology to our phones

It’s no secret that our phones are often vulnerable to the occasional malicious hack, no matter how much we believe our passwords to be secure. But what if the encryption methods we used were based on the laws of physics instead of just mathematical formulas? The answer might just lie in quantum cryptology or quantum key distribution, which uses photon modification to encode and transmit data. However, the technology has typically required gear only found in top laboratories. Both sender and recipient need to have a source of those photons, the equipment has to be perfectly aligned and the encryption tends to be highly susceptible to noise.

Yet, Jeremy O’Brien and his physicist cohorts from the University of Bristol might have come upon a mobile-friendly solution. Their proposed method only requires the transmitting party to have the appropriate photon-sending equipment while the recipient needs just a simple device — say, a phone — to change them and send the information back. Called “reference frame independent quantum key distribution” or rfiQKD, the technique is robust enough to not rely on proper alignment and is apparently able to withstand a high level of noise as well. In a recent paper submitted to arXiv.org, O’Brien and his co-authors state that “the results significantly broaden the operating potential for QKD outside the laboratory and pave the way for quantum enhanced security for the general public with handheld mobile devices.” While we’re not sure if the method will solve all our security woes, it’s certainly a start. If you feel you’re able to grok the science, head on over to the source for more details on the team’s findings.

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Via: MIT Technology Review

Source: arXiv

Tiny human brain models grown in lab with tiny cortex, tiny hippocampus (video)

Tiny human 'brains' grown in lab

Mouse brains were the first to be grown, but when it comes to discovering the inner workings of the human brain, as Juergen Knoblich of the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Austria put it: “mouse models don’t cut it.” The institute has managed to grow some adorable-sounding tiny human brain models that include parts of the cortex, hippocampus and retinas through stem cells. The lab-grown tissue will allow researchers to peer into the early stages of human brain development in far higher detail than ever before. Growing the little gray matter samples involved adult cells reprogrammed to behave like embryonic stem cells and giving them a cocktail of vital brain development nutrients.

In under a month, they had grown to between 3 and 4mm across, with several structures that are found in the fully-formed versions. Through imaging techniques, the scientists were even able to pick up neural activity — we’ve added the video after the break. The models are already providing insights and new ideas on brain development. According to the New Scientist, if the researchers were able to adjust their techniques to include stem cells that develop into blood vessels, future models could offer more detailed knowledge on conditions like schizophrenia and autism.

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Source: New Scientist

Nine Inch Nails masters new album a second time for high-end audio gear

Nine Inch Nails masters new album a second time for highend audio devices

Many audiophiles will tell you that modern albums are too “loud” — that the mastering process emphasizes bass and volume over subtlety. Nine Inch Nails will soon cater to these more demanding listeners with a special Audiophile Mastering Edition of its upcoming Hesitation Marks album. The additional mix will be truer to what Trent Reznor and crew heard in the studio, and should sound best on high-end audio equipment that can reproduce a wide audio range. The band warns that most fans won’t notice the difference with this new version. However, there’s no penalty for giving it a try — anyone who buys Hesitation Marks from NIN’s site will get to download the Audiophile cut for free when the album launches on September 3rd.

[Image credit: Nine Inch Nails, Flickr]

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Source: Nine Inch Nails (Tumblr)

Mini classic Macintosh created with Raspberry Pi, runs System 6 (video)

Mini classic Macintosh created with Raspberry Pi, runs System 6 (video)

Apple may please fans of diminutive hardware with the Mac Mini, but John Leake of the RetroMacCast has created something that can satisfy fans of miniature and classic hardware: a tiny replica of the original Macintosh. The aptly-dubbed Mini Mac sits at 1/3 the size of the original, is crafted from a PVC board and crams a Raspberry Pi inside. In order for the board to fit however, Leake had to solder wires instead of relying on connectors, trim the SD card and snip part of the USB cable. When it comes to visuals, the box packs a 3.5-inch display, which receives 512 x 384 output from the Pi. As for connectivity, the package supports a wireless keyboards and mice via Bluetooth, plus it exposes two USB ports, an HDMI slot and an ethernet jack. Not only does this slice of the 1980s have the looks to match the era, but it also features some of the old-fashioned functionality. Sure, floppies won’t fit into its faux drive slot, but it runs System 6 via the open source Mini vMac emulator. Head past the break to catch a video of the model or visit the source for build shots.

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Via: Mashable

Source: RetroMacCast

Researchers link brains, control each other’s actions via the internet (video)

Researchers link brains, control each other's actions via the internet (video)

Human brain-to-brain interfacing seems like the stuff of fiction (Pacific Rim, anyone?), but researchers at the University of Washington have made it a reality. A team led by faculty members Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco claim to have pioneered the world’s first human-to-human experiment of the sort. Rao and Stocco were placed in different buildings and hooked up to two devices to record, interpret and send their brain signals via the internet. The sender (Rao) wore an EEG machine while the receiver (Stocco) was connected to a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil. The experiment was performed with a simple arcade-style video game, the objective of which was to shoot baddies out of the sky. Rao watched the screen and visualized lifting his hand to press the space bar to fire, but Stocco was the trigger man. Clear across campus, Stocco’s finger tapped the space bar at the appropriate time, eliminating the target, despite being unable to hear or see the game’s display. To learn more, check out the video after the break or the source link below.

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Via: GeekWire

Source: University of Washington