Technology

ViviTouch is a kind of 'artificial muscle' that seeks to make video games feel more real. The technology behind it is electroactive polymers, developed by Bayer subsidiary Artificial Muscle of Sunnyvale, right up the road from me. It's basically a new sort of motor that converts electrical energy into movement, to go beyond the  traditional haptic interface people expect by now.  Motor? Well, that is the CEO's terms. It's an actuator made of a thin polymer film but electroactive polymers are cooler than traditional actuators, generators and sensors because a ViviTouch-enabled device…

The Mendeley collaboration company has published the Global Research Report (http://mnd.ly/global-research-report), an analysis of two million scholars' research activity in relation to economic indicators and research productivity.  The report details the extent to which a country's GDP per capita and R&D expenditure per capita limit its researchers' access to academic papers. Developing countries face considerable challenges - to afford an additional 50 research papers for each scientist would require a ten-fold increase in R&D expenditure per capita. The recent trend towards…

OpenStreetMap, an alternative to Google map data, has had a lot of success but can't agree on what direction to go next, say those in the know. An odd problem for people who make maps, right? But at least they are having fun trying.  When I was young, the only sort-of controversy in maps was 'fairness' to third world countries.  We didn't say 'developing nations' back then, we said 'third world', just like people who were trying to foment dissent in a country were called 'fifth columnists' but now we call them 'humanities professors'. Why did maps matter then?  The same reason…

Advanced sensors that monitor extreme pressure and temperature in underground caverns used to store carbon dioxide might be on their way. CO2 emitted from the combustion of fossil fuels has long been an environmental issue, it represents 84 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2010 analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency. Officials see capturing CO2 emitted by industrial producers like power plants as one possible tool in the fight against climate change. The technique, called carbon capture and sequestration, pumps the captured greenhouse gas into cavities…

   Getting on for 50 years ago, I remember reading about growing giant onions for competitions, the five-pound onion being the equivalent of the four-minute mile.  Growers would have their own esoteric recipes for fertilizer, some using Microcosmic salt, a salt found in urine with the formula (NH4)NaHPO4.  It was from inadvertently producing this salt that, around 1669 in Hamburg, the alchemist Hennig Brandt who was attempting to make gold by the distillation of urine, discovered phosphorus instead.   Since then, phosphorus from the rear end of various creatures has…

http://autos.yahoo.com/news/honda-electric-car-gets-118-mpg--but-costs-a... At 118 miles per gallon, the Honda Fit electric vehicle is the most fuel-efficient in the United States. But getting that mileage isn't cheap — and it isn't always good for the environment. Honda announced the eye-popping figure Wednesday, making the small, four-door hatchback more efficient than electric rivals like the Ford Focus, Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV. It goes on the market this summer in Oregon and California.

It's a modern technology world. If you were running for president in 2008, you could just forgo public financing of your campaign and stick your opponent with a hard cap of half as much advertising money as you have - then you could spend as much money yourself as both candidates combined spent in 2004. But in 2012 everyone has unlimited money so outspending the other guy with campaign ads won't work again. Instead, politicians are spending money on data mining, so they know what your hot buttons are. Live near a Whole Foods?  Joe Biden talking about President Obama whacking Osama Bin…

An assembly of thousands of nano-machines has produced a coordinated contraction movement - like that of muscle fibers, and it even extended to around ten micrometers, like the movements of muscular fibers. The work provides an experimental validation of a biomimetic approach that has been conceptualized for years in nanoscience and the researchers believe this broadens applications in robotics, information storage and obviously artificial muscles themselves. Nature manufactures numerous machines that are molecular. Highly complex assemblies of proteins are involved in essential functions of…

And once again I am amazed at the shortsighted, self-righteous moralizing of those who pretend to be all progressive, hip cyber age people. Now Gawker outed an internet troll, with no regard for that such was bound to destroy his professional life, and instead of the internet being aghast with what is nothing but a modern witch-hunt, you see them outing themselves as being no more than the narrow minded bible thumpers they truly were all along, see VICE magazine (I don’t link those foolish pretend-bad-boy Goody Two-shoes no more) and even right here on Science2.0, calling Michael Brutsch a"…

1. Thou shalt not screw thine early adopters. They made thou what thou art, even showing patience with thine inattention to upward compatibility. Yea, though they paid high early prices, thou hast refused them free upgrades. Now as they glance at their boxes of obsolete connectors, power sources, software and disk drives, they plan to make their next purchases from thine upstart competitor. 2. Thou shalt not pitch proprietary platforms. Thy customers are hip to digital convergence. They are aware of platform-independent software, and yea, know moreover that any information product can be a…