Hasta La Gadget!

Hearing that fuel cells aren’t the most efficient thing in the world shouldn’t take you by surprise, but a determination by one Alfred Anderson just might. The chemistry professor from Case Western Reserve University is now making a case for using something other than platinum as the “catalyst most commonly used to convert chemical energy to electricity.” According to him: “Using platinum is like putting a resistor in the system.” To be fair, Anderson still isn’t sure which material should replace it, but he’s adamant that wizards in the field should be spending their time looking for substitutes instead of tweaking platinum further. Currently, he’s working with other researchers in order to find something that’ll one-up what we’re using today, and if you’re into oodles of technobabble, you can dig into the ins and outs of his claims in the source link below.

Filed under: Science

Researcher calls platinum wrong for fuel cell development, looks elsewhere for efficiency originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Jul 2012 14:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Science Daily, Physorg  | Email this | Comments

Spintronics? Not exactly a new term ’round these parts, but University of Utah physicists are applying it in a unique way that may eventually make TVs look even sharper than they do today. The entity is trumpeting a new “spintronic” organic light-emitting diode (that’s OLED, for short) that’s said to be “cheaper and more environmentally friendly than the kinds of LEDs now used in television and computer displays, lighting, traffic lights and numerous electronic devices.” Z. Valy Vardeny is even going so far as to call it a “completely different technology,” and better still, a prototype has already been made. The professor expects that the newfangled tech — which produces an orange glow today — will be able to product red, blue and white spin OLEDs within a few years. It’s a lot to wade through, but here’s our question: will these things make the Galaxy S XI impeccably visible in outdoor sunlight? (Please say “yes.”)

Filed under: Displays, Science

Utah researchers create ‘Spintronic’ LED, claim it’s ‘brighter, cheaper’ and eco-friendly originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Jul 2012 18:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink ArsTechnica  |  University of Utah  | Email this | Comments

The U.S department of Energy has given NVIDIA $12M to conduct research on exascale supercomputing. Exascale computing describes a computer system capable of reaching one exaflop. For comparison, current supercomputing is still using petaflops as a performance unit(1 petaflop = or one quadrillion floating point operations per second). Today, the fastest super-computer clocks at 16 petaflops today and Exascale is 1000 times larger than petascale.

The $12M basically pays NVIDIA for 2 years of research in critical areas that would lead to building an exascale compute architecture that is more power-efficient than anything we have today. Bill Dally, NVIDIA’s Chief Scientist suggests that if one was to build an exascale computer based on Intel’s X86 architecture today, the energy required would reach 2 Gigawatt or “the entire output of the Hoover Dam” he adds.

(more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: NVIDIA forums hacked, Scientists create molecule to keep teeth cavityproof,

There’s a lot of research to help the spinal cord or stroke-injured become more self-sufficient, but it often takes some exotic paraphernalia. To buck that trend, scientists from Imperial College London showed that subjects could perform relatively hard tasks like writing messages and playing Pong using eye movement — with a mere $35-worth of parts. They even showed how well the system worked, with subjects scoring within 20 percent of an able-bodied person after a scant 10 minutes of practice. The tracker works with two video console cameras and a pair of eyeglasses that, after calibration, can precisely track the pupils — allowing them to control a cursor or move a paddle. The researchers also figured out how to “click” the eye-mouse by winking, and can even use more precise adjustments to calculate gaze depth — meaning subjects will be able to perform more complex tasks in the future, like guide a motorized wheelchair. While by no means the first eye-tracking system we’ve seen, it’s by far the most economical. Check the video after the break to see how it works.

Continue reading Researchers use off-the-shelf parts to let you write emails with your eyes (video)

Filed under: Science

Researchers use off-the-shelf parts to let you write emails with your eyes (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Jul 2012 08:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  PhysOrg  | Email this | Comments

You might pride yourself on your poker face, but there would be no way to hide from a skull-probing EEG helmet being developed by Veritas Scientific. The device takes advantage of a well-known medical response called P300, which causes your brain‘s voltage to drop a split-second after you put a name to a face or object. Simply by showing you a slideshow of different images, interrogators could tell whether or not you recognize a particular individual — or maybe that LTE-connected railgun hidden in your trunk. The company is pursuing military contracts and hopes to have a prototype ready in time for this year’s war game exercises, but meanwhile you might want to start thinking of a way to install that tinfoil hat inside your skull.

Filed under: Science

EEG headware probes your neurons, shows interrogators your cranial contact list originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Jul 2012 07:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink io9  |  IEEE Spectrum  | Email this | Comments