Hasta La Gadget!

Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.

This week we swing by some superhero news, look at how solar panels might shape up in the future, explore a Lego forest and see how to grab dark matter just using some household gold and strands of DNA. Not only that, we discover how the sun likes to celebrate the fourth of July with its own firework display. This is alt / week

Continue reading Alt-week 7.8.2012: Solar flares, trapping dark matter, and life-sized Lego trees

Alt-week 7.8.2012: Solar flares, trapping dark matter, and life-sized Lego trees originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Jul 2012 16:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The decision to invest in an electric vehicle would be much easier to justify if the car in question offered unlimited range. That appears to be the concept behind a Toyohashi University research group’s wireless power prototype, which can successfully transmit electricity through a 10 centimeter-thick concrete block. During a demonstration in Yokohama, Japan, the team sent between 50 and 60 watts of power through a pair of concrete blocks to two tires, which then juiced up a light bulb (you can see the rig just above). The project is called EVER (Electric Vehicle on Electrified Roadway), and could someday be used to keep cars moving along a highway without any need to pull over for a recharge, thanks to a constant stream of electricity coming from below the road. There are some serious obstacles to overcome before EVER can get some wheels turning — namely, a need to pump nearly 100 times the current maximum load through concrete that’s twice as thick as what they’ve managed today, not to mention improving undisclosed efficiency levels — but the group reportedly said that it’s up to the task, making us fairly optimistic that such a solution could one day get us from A to B without petrol. Until then, you’ll probably want to plan out a pit stop or two before you leave the garage.

Japanese group transmits electricity through 4-inch concrete block, could power cars on roads originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 Jul 2012 00:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android may have been wrongly maligned for its role in a malware botnet, security researchers have admitted, with findings that devices running Google’s software could be responsible for spam potentially fooled by a fake email signature. Despite claims from Sophos and Microsoft earlier this week that email header information pinned down Android devices as the guilty carriers, each has since backtracked having conceded that Android’s involvement is in no way certain.

“It’s entirely possible that bot on a compromised PC connected to Yahoo Mail, inserted the the message-ID thus overriding Yahoo’s own Message-IDs and added the “Yahoo Mail for Android” tagline at the bottom of the message all in an elaborate deception to make it look like the spam was coming from Android devices” Microsoft  engineer Terry Zink wrote in a follow-up to his earlier comments on the botnet. However, the security researcher still isn’t willing to let Android off the hook.

“On the other hand, the other possibility is that Android malware has become much more prevalent and because of its ubiquity, there is sufficient motivation for spammers to abuse the platform. The reason these messages appear to come from Android devices is because they did come from Android devices” Zink theorized. “Before writing my previous post, I considered both options but selected the latter.”

As for Sophos, senior security adviser Chester Wisniewski has confirmed he is rechecking the company’s own findings to see if a fake signature could be responsible for mistaken identity. “We don’t know for sure that it’s coming from Android devices” Wisniewski said on Thursday, though went on to maintain that in his belief it is a botnet running on Android phones rather than something else.

“We either have a new PC botnet that is exploiting Yahoo!’s Android APIs or we have mobile phones with some sort of malware that uses the Yahoo! APIs for sending spam messages” the researcher wrote. “One of the interesting data points supporting the argument that this is new Android malware is the unusually large number of the originating IPs on cellular networks.”

Google, meanwhile, continues to protest Android’s innocence. “The evidence we’ve examined does not support the Android botnet claim” a company spokesperson said. “Our analysis so far suggests that spammers are using infected computers and a fake mobile signature to try to bypass anti-spam mechanisms in the email platform they’re using. We’re continuing to investigate the details.”

[via WSJ]

Malware Botnet may have framed Android is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A lot of laboratory work involves repetitive tasks like creating cultures or dispensing precise amounts of chemicals. So not only does this Mahoro robot researcher deal with those boring tasks with absolute precision, it can also handle biohazards too dangerous for humans to interact with. More »

Apple‘s engineers are experimenting with wearable displays that could one day present an iOS rival to Google’s Project Glass, a newly assigned patent suggests, bouncing projected light through specially created lenses. The patent, ”Peripheral treatment for head-mounted displays“, was filed back in 2006 and granted this week, and tackles what’s perhaps the most difficult element of wearables, making displays in close-proximity to the wearer’s eyes look suitably distant without causing eye-strain.

The technology Apple describes is similar to total internal reflection, where light is bounced within a lens from an origin point – such as a micro-projector, or LCD/OLED panel – through to the user’s eyes. For instance, one length of lens spanning both eyes could be supplied with different images for the left and right eye from a single miniature display:

“One advantage is that the treatment of the peripheral area of the field of view leads to increased viewing comfort compared to conventional HMDs, and may also lead to a smaller likelihood of the user experiencing “motion sickness” phenomena during extended viewing. Another advantage is that users can make individual adjustments of their HMDs to fit the distance between their eyes. Further advantages include a greater immersive experience, larger virtual field of view, and increased overall image brightness” Apple patent

Apple argues that traditional wearable displays lead users to suffer from eventual discomfort because the virtual image falls short of the field of vision (FOV) of the human eye, leading to a shortfall in peripheral vision. It’s an issue that Google has attempted to tackle with Glass, offsetting the transparent mono-display up above the eye, so that the wearer must deliberately glance up to access projected data.

Of course, as with any patent, there’s not necessarily a production project at the end of it, though we’d be very surprised if Apple’s engineers hadn’t at least played with wearable prototypes. A previous patent application from the company suggested a wearable iPhone dock for augmented reality use, though this new system could access content from a remote device, such as streamed using AirPlay Video from the iPad in your bag.

[via AppleInsider]

Forget the iPad Mini, we want Apple’s Google Glass is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.