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Last time we saw the SMILE Plug cloud computer, it was nothing more than a render — an alabaster box with dual external antennas and a glowing green (or red) visage to let you know when it’s functioning properly. We were told that it would be a dev kit that creates an ad-hoc network within a classroom that serves up to 60 devices at once using Arch Linux, and can run off a wall outlet or a battery pack. Well, that bit of vaporware has coalesced into what you see above, and it seems that Marvell has delivered everything it promised. The final SMILE Plug packs 512MB of RAM, a 2Ghz single-core Armada 370 SoC and an enterprise-class 802.11 a/b/g/n Avastar WiFi chip to ensure high connectivity and power efficiency at a low monetary cost. It also has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, dual USB 2.0 plugs and a microSD slot for folks needing more than the 512MB of onboard storage. As currently configured, the SMILE Plug will cost around $30, and it’ll start shipping to Stanford’s SMILE (Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment) pilot programs next month.

Marvell doesn’t plan to be the only one building these cloud computers, however, which is where the SMILE Consortium comes in. You see, the SMILE Plug is but a reference design, and Marvell and Stanford are trying to get OEMs building their own SMILE Plugs. The consortium is dedicated to “developing innovative education solutions on an open platform” and is seeking both hardware manufacturers and software developers to meet its goal of changing educational environments around the world. What kind of classroom do Stanford and Marvell envision, and how does the SMILE Plug fit into it? Join us after the break to find out.

Continue reading Marvell and Stanford create SMILE Plug cloud computer, SMILE Consortium to get companies and devs to build a better education system

Filed under: Wireless

Marvell and Stanford create SMILE Plug cloud computer, SMILE Consortium to get companies and devs to build a better education system originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Batteries used to be the only way to power implantable gadgets, but additional surgeries are needed to replace the power packs once their juice runs out — a less-than-ideal solution for patients. Recent discoveries, however, have such medgadgets being powered by photons, hip hop and now high-frequency radio waves. Electrical engineers at Stanford built a cardiac device that uses a combination of inductive and radiative transmission of power, at about 1.7 billion cycles per second, to its coiled receiving antenna.

Previous prevailing opinion held that the high frequencies needed for wireless power delivery couldn’t penetrate the human body deep enough, and the lower frequencies that would do the trick require antennas too large to work as implants. That conundrum was solved by getting the high-frequency signals to penetrate deeper using alternating waves of electric and magnetic fields. That allowed a 10x increase in power delivery — up to 50 microwatts to a millimeter radius antenna coil — to an implant five centimeters below the skin. That antenna also was also designed to pull power regardless of its orientation, making it ideal for applications inside always-moving human bodies. Of course, the implant’s really just a proof-of-concept at this stage, but hopefully it won’t be long before battery powered implants go the way of the dodo TouchPad.

Filed under: Science

Stanford researchers make heart implant powered by radio waves, put batteries out of a job originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Sep 2012 23:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Everyone, meet Mycoplasma genitalium, the subject of many scientific papers, even more vists to the clinic and now the first organism to be entirely recreated in binary. Computer models are often used for simplicity, or when studying the real thing just ain’t viable, but most look at an isolated process. Stanford researchers wanted to break with tradition and selected one of the simplest organisms around, M. genitalium, to be their test subject. They collated data from over 900 publications to account for everything going on inside the bacterial cell. But it wasn’t just a case of running a model of each cellular process. They had to account for all the interactions that go on — basically, a hell of a lot of math. The team managed to recreate cell division using the model, although a single pass took almost 10 hours with MATLAB software running on a 128-core Linux cluster. The representation was so accurate it predicted what M. genitalium looks like, just from the genetic data. And, despite the raft of research already conducted on the bacterium, the model revealed previously undiscovered inconsistencies in individual cell cycles. Such simulations could be used in the future to better understand the complicated biology of diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. Looks like we’re going to need more cores in that cluster. If you’d like to hear Stanford researcher Markus Covert’s view on the work, we’ve embedded some footage beyond the fold.

Continue reading Scientists create first computer simulation of a complete organism

Filed under: Science

Scientists create first computer simulation of a complete organism originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 09:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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