Hasta La Gadget!

For as spectacular as hydrogen fuel cells are on paper, they haven’t been able to replace combustion engines in vehicles. Or much of anything else, really. But thanks to Signe Kjelstrup at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo, the tried-and-true fuel cell is getting a serious boost. Kjelstrup’s crew determined that by using less platinum in a cell, a substantial increase in efficiency and a significant decrease in cost could be achieved. The new design relies on an architecture that’s “modeled on the bronchial structure of the lungs to supply hydrogen and oxygen gas to their respective electrodes,” which is said to help “spread the gases more uniformly across the catalyst than current channel designs and provides a greater surface area so less platinum is needed.” It’s still early on in the discovery process, though, and there’s certainly no solid word on when this will reach a point where widespread implementation is feasible. Seventh-generation Prius, perhaps?

Lung-inspired hydrogen fuel cell skimps on platinum, sees efficiency boost originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll be honest: we thought SSDs would suck down most of platter-based storage’s milkshake by now — that magnetic disks would follow tapes into obscurity. Alas, SSDs are still niche items, and Toshiba is doing all it can to keep them that way, demonstrating a successful prototype of a new storage technique called bit-pattern recording that currently generates a storage density of 2.5Tb per square inch. That’s about five times more dense than the company’s current offerings, achieved by placing individual bits onto lithographed “islands” of magnetic material. This protects the charge of the individual bits and allows those sectors to be much smaller. Toshiba suggests we won’t see these until 2013, but now we’re left wondering what’s next… can engineers stuff even more bits onto these things?

Toshiba demonstrates successful BPR HDD, is 2.5Tb per inch a platter’s last stand? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here’s an interesting one. Just years after a researcher in Japan realized that lasers could stimulate nerves, a professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University along with cohorts from Case Western Reserve have found that the same is true with the heart. By using an Infrared laser on an early embryonic heart, tests were able to show that the muscle was “in lockstep with the laser pulse rate.” The crew also found no signs of laser damage after a few hours of experimenting, though obviously more extensive research would be required before any medical agency allowed such a device to be beamed underneath a human chest. The hope here is that this discovery could one day lead to ultra-small, implantable pacemakers, or better still, to “pace an adult heart during surgery.” There’s nary a mention of when this stuff will actually be ready for FDA oversight, but there’s a downright creepy video of it all in the source link. Consider yourself warned.

Infrared laser shown to quicken heart rate, gives hope for ultra-small pacemakers originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Micro electromechanical systems, or MEMS, aren’t anything new. But Purdue University’s Jason Vaughn Clark has ideas that are far grander than those we’ve seen already. Mr. Clark has purportedly developed a new take on an old spin, with electro micro metrology (EMM) enabling engineers to “account for process variations by determining the precise movement and force that’s being applied to, or sensed by, a MEMS device.” These self-calibrating machines are the first to do so without any external references, which would allow nanotechnologists, crime forensics researchers and a whole host of others to determine what actually happens at a microscopic level. In theory, the gurus working on this stuff long to improve the accuracy of atomic force microscopes and to eventually create a diminutive AFM-on-a-chip, which — according to Clark — could “open the door to the nanoworld to a much larger number of groups or individuals.” We’re waiting.

Purdue’s ‘self-calibrating’ MEMS could produce the most accurate sensors yet originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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University of Calgary succeeds in building a neurochip out of silicon, human brain cells originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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