Hasta La Gadget!

While hybrid cars are an improvement over traditional gas guzzles, they still produce harmful emissions. But what if those emissions could be harnessed and used as an energy source? That’s exactly what a team of researchers at Purdue University are trying to do.

The research, which is being funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, is aiming to turn the heat from an vehicle’s exhaust into energy. In conjunction with General Motors, the team is developing a thermoelectric generator that will be able to harness the harmful gases that come out of a vehicle’s exhaust–gases that can reach temperatures of 700 degrees Celsius–and use that heat as a way to charge up the vehicle’s electrical systems.

The first prototype is set to be developed starting next year, with the goal of reducing fuel consumption by five percent. However, the researchers say that in the future that number could be increased by up to 10 percent.

Via Inhabitat

It’s only been a week since we heard about age reversal in mice, yet already we’ve got another big advancement in rodent medical care: a solution for ameliorating the devastating effects of spinal cord injuries. A UCLA research team has shown off a new system that can restore walking motion to a mouse’s hind legs, but not only that, it also grants control to the little fella by responding to its front legs’ actions. Electromyography sensors detect when a mouse starts to walk up front, triggering electronic signals to be sent to the functional lower portion of its spine, which in turn starts up the rear muscles for a steady walking gait. It’s only been tested on a treadmill so far, but the result seems to be a seamless restoration of walking capacity in rodents that doesn’t require any outside assistance. The same will be pretty hard to replicate in humans, bipeds that they are, but that’s why it’s called research and not reobvious.

Electronic neural bridge helps paralyzed mice walk again, human application might prove tricky originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Dec 2010 07:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The world at large owes a good bit to Maxwell Smart, you know. Granted, it’s hard to directly link the faux shoe phone to the GPS-equipped kicks that are around today, but the lineage is certainly apparent. The only issue with GPS in your feet is how they react when you waltz indoors, which is to say, not at all. In the past, most routing apparatuses have used inertial measurement units (IMUs) to track motion, movement and distance once GPS reception is lost indoors, but those have proven poor at spotting the difference between a slow gait and an outright halt. Enter NC State and Carnegie Mellon University, who have worked in tandem in order to develop a prototype shoe radar that’s specifically designed to sense velocity. Within the shoe, a radar is attached to a diminutive navigational computer that “tracks the distance between your heel and the ground; if that distance doesn’t change within a given period of time, the navigation computer knows that your foot is stationary.” Hard to say when Nike will start testing these out in the cleats worn by football players, but after last week’s abomination of a spot (and subsequent botching of a review by one Ron Cherry) during the NC State – Maryland matchup, we’re hoping it’s sooner rather than later.

NC State and CMU develop velocity-sensing shoe radar, aim to improve indoor GPS routing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Dec 2010 17:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seems like LG really has a thing for those quantum dot LEDs. After hooking up with Nanosys earlier this year, the Korean giant is now stretching out another of its tentacles — LG Display, to be specific — for a partnership with a competing QLED designer in QD Vision. What’s being promised by this joint venture falls right in line with your generic pipe dream — better color accuracy than OLEDs, up to twice the power efficiency at a given color purity, and a cheap and straightforward manufacturing process. In fact, because QLEDs do not require the same glass substrate as most current display technologies, they offer unmatched flexibility (olé!) in terms of how and where they may be used. The only downer, and you had to know there would be one, is that QD Vision describes its tech as still in the “development stage,” but hey, at least we have another cool acronym to add to our library.

Continue reading LG and QD Vision unite for QLEDs: the quantum dot displays of our power-efficient future

LG and QD Vision unite for QLEDs: the quantum dot displays of our power-efficient future originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Dec 2010 05:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Because not every smartphone has a full 1080p resolution (yet), KDDI‘s R&D Labs have come up with a new method for massaging the most out of HD movie streams while on the move. You’ll still be able to pummel your poor mobile device and connection with the full-res stream, should you wish it, but KDDI’s innovation is in developing a system whereby you can zoom in on particular parts of the feed, have the stream cropped to your requirements on far-off servers somewhere, and then receive only the stuff you want to see onto your device. And because of your phone’s aforementioned pixel deficiency, the employment of this technique will most often result in negligible picture fidelity loss, if any. The biggest benefit, however, might be to carriers like KDDI who end up having to carry less data back and forth, even if it does come at a slight server-side cost. Video after the break.

Continue reading KDDI develops a zoom-enhance system for HD movie streaming on smartphones (video)

KDDI develops a zoom-enhance system for HD movie streaming on smartphones (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 03:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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