New hybrid batteries that will have double the life and yet charges within seconds. Sounds like some very egoistic claim from some unknown researchers right? Not really. Ioxus Inc. is a new comer in the energy storage industry and they’ve about to announce a new hybrid energy storage device that they claim will “radically alter batteries used in the auto, medical, and consumer electronics industries”.

They tease that their new product is roughly the size of a typical C-cell battery and combines the fast charge / discharge benefits of ultra-capacitors with the remarkable energy-to-weight ratio of a lithium-ion electrode. As a result, Ioxus says the hybrid devices can store more than double the energy of traditional ultracapacitors and charge in a matter of seconds. The catch is that the hybrids have shorter life spans of 20,000 cycles compared to millions of cycles for typical ultracapacitors. Sounds very fishy right? Let’s wait for the official statement to come. But if this really is true, then the use of compact electrical devices will surely be revolutionized.

SOURCE via CNET

Here’s something odd for those impatient people. GE mentioned that they’ve managed to create a ‘new’ lamp design that fusion ‘instant-on’ with ‘efficiency’. GE is introducing its Hybrid Halogen-CFL bulb. It’s basically a typical CFL unit, but look closely inside those coils and you’ll spot a wee halogen bulb peeking out. It’s like two bulbs in one, the halogen unit powering on almost instantaneously then fading off once the CFL element gets itself all riled up. Not really a hybrid fusion, but more of a design trick. GE said that it’ll be available soon in few months’ time, but I’m not very convinced. I’d prefer an LED bulb, as they start to get common. This ‘hybrid’ from GE doesn’t seem to be cheap too.

SOURCE via Engadget

Guys, please don’t, I repeat, DO NOT show this to the tattoo guys down the street. If you do, then we’re gonna get a revolution on the fashion sense of tattoo and skin embedment. Yes, LED lights are cool, and they look great on your car as the morning running lights. But we humans are cool enough, and we don’t need these LEDs on our skin as daylight running lights please. Someone in their sane mind went to develop this international research project or implantable LEDs.

John Rogers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has headed up a research team with participants from the US, China, Korea, and Singapore, who have together produced and demonstrated a new flexible and implantable LED array. Bettering previous efforts at inserting lights under the human skin, this approach allows for stretching and twisting by as much as 75 percent, while the whole substrate is encased in thin silicon rubber making it waterproof. Basically, it’s a green light to sub-dermal illumination, which could aid such things as monitoring the healing of wounds, activating light-sensitive drug delivery, spectroscopy, and even robotics. Reminds me of the robot project in university, where the robots identify the balls in their colour, and separate them to two categories. Are the robots gonna do that to us like how they does the balls?

SOURCE via physorg

I thought Hyundai only do cars, but they’ve surprised us. Hyundai IT is reportedly showing off this this 70-inch multitouch table at the Korea Electronics Show this week — in concept form, at least. While there’s no specs — apart from the fact that it’s “HD” — Hyundai is apparently saying that you’d be able to use the display either as a Surface-like multitouch table or as a TV, although it’s not clear if that means it actually tilts up.

As you can imagine logically, the table doesn’t function as a phone, though I wouldn’t be surprised that they incorporate that into the final thing some years ago. Once a person told me, that if you want to see what our electronic devices and technology would be like in 5 or 10 years’ time, then you should go to Japan and Korea’s electronic giant’s lab and see what they’re playing around. Look like we’ll have tables like in James Bond’s movie very soon.

SOURCE via Akihabaranews

Our world’s getting more high-tech. Yes, that’s great news, but as you don’t realize, our world’s getting more and more dangerous too. Here’s the world’s smallest gyroscope, powred by lasers and as small as a single grain of sand. It’ll sound very safe and going the road of commercial if it’s announced by Steve Jobs for the next iPhone 5, but it’s not. It’s invented by the Israeli Department of Defence, thus making it sound so dangerous. From what they say, the new gyros are sensitive enough to track your position and movements anywhere—no GPS required. Convincing enough?

The underlying tech is the same that’s found in aircraft and seafaring ships—minute physical changes are compared to each other, calculating a new position without the need for an external reference point. Essentially, the object (be it an aircraft carrier or something smaller) can detect itself moving. But for a gyro to be this tiny changes everything. Think of a smartphone that could pinpoint your movements in a cave—or, probably more realistically (and practically), a museum, or new apartment building. Sadly, we’ll still need GPS a little bit, as the gyroscopes need to be told exactly where they are from above before their own internal detection can kick in. But this breakthrough will mean GPS access could someday be of minimal importance—which is great news (especially for any city dweller, who knows lining up a signal can be a pain at best). Just get one little satellite zap, and the micro-gyros will take it from there, anywhere in the world. Ion cannon ready!

SOURCE via Pop Sci

Previously Samsung and LG had shown off their supremacy in OLED technology by demonstrating transparent OLED screens. But now, there’s a new player showing off their own version of transparent OLED screen, and they’re not from the display company. TDK is stepping in with a 2-inch passive matrix screen and a ‘large’ QVGA (320 x 240) resolution. TDK claims a 50 percent transmittance, which somehow pawns the Korean’s version by quite some margin.

Another prototype being shown off by the company is a 3.5-inch flexible OLED panel that redefines thinness with a slinky 0.3mm profile. It’s made using a resin substrate and covers unimpressive 256 x 54 pixels at the moment, but then again, this is just the beginning, of a new chapter.

SOURCE via Nikkeibp

Have you heard of a violin the size of one-tenth of a human hair wide? Students at the University of Twente demonstrated a brand musical instrument that plucks strings, based on a new micrometer-scale system. Six microscopic resonators fit on a microchip, one resonator permusical tone, and series of the chips can be combined into a MIDI interface to play an entire song. However, since it’s so small, you’d expect the sound to be extremely puny too. The micronium needs to be amplified 10,000 times before they’re audible through standard speakers.

SOURCE via Switched

I’m not sure how this will look like, but covering your mouth with a bra sounds like an act a Japanese pervert would do. I’ve got an image of the dude fantasizing, with his eyes drifting away into fantasy. But Dr. Elena Bodnar thinks otherwise. Taking inspiration from the catastrophic Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in 1986, she’d designed an Emergency Bra, which will be commercially available on September 28, which she hopes that the rest of the world can “get a feel of [sic] the product.”

The bra, which is a real wearable bra for all females, is meant to be taken off during disaster. Once removed, it separates into two masks which, when placed over the nose and mouth, filter out particles that were found to be as harmful as radiation in Chernobyl. Yes guys, protecting you yourself are more important than the chest. Surely taking off the bra during disaster won’t be a problem, as most adults should be well equipped with this elite experience. The men would gladly do it for you if it’s troublesome to do it instantly during a disaster. And you can share it with that fine man since there’s two parts. Be kinds, ladies!

There is also some noise of a “counterpart device for men” in the works, though the precise shape it will take has yet to be revealed. Hopefully it won’t be too long in shape. But I can imagine that guys would need longer time to take off their pants, since guys don’t wear bra. If Dr. Elena Bodnar is thinking of the same thing as I do. Hopefully not. Taking off a shirt is still faster and more efficient during ‘emergency’, but I’m sure many also have polished skills to take off pants in split seconds.

I really love what Dr. Bodnar said when receiving the IG Nobel Public Health Price award in 2009. Her Ukrainian accent makes it even more appealing.

“Ladies and gentlemen, isn’t that wonderful that women have two breasts, not just one? We can save not only our own life, but also the life of a man of our choice next to us.”

After a year unveiling her award winning concept, and perhaps some fine-tuning, the bizarre idea is now on sale as an actual bra, readily available yours for only $29.99. Think of the life that you can save with only $29.99. There’s also a wide range of sizes available, from 32B to 40C. Sadly the size range doesn’t seem wide enough to cover the lovely ladies featured in Playboy magazine.  But don’t worry, as the size of cup does not matter in the event of an emergency.

SOURCE via CNET

No, this thing won’t let you have 1Gbps connection in your body for fast communication among you and your iDevices. More like linking artificial limbs and your real organs. The Department of Defense and Southern Methodist University have teamed up to develop prosthetics that use two-way fiber optic communication between artificial limbs and peripheral nerves to essentially give these devices the ability to feel pressure or temperature.

The technology is called neurophotonics, and it will someday allow hi-speed communication between the brain and artificial limbs. But that’s just the beginning – the work being done at SMU’s Neurophotonics Research Center might someday lead to brain implants that control tremors, neuro-modulators for chronic pain management, implants for treating spinal cord injuries, and more.

“Science fiction writers have long imagined the day when the understanding and intuition of the human brain could be enhanced by the lightning speed of computing technologies. With this remarkable research initiative, we are truly beginning a journey into the future that will provide immeasurable benefits to humanity,” – says Dean Orsak of the SMU Lyle School of Engineering.  Well I hope he doesn’t work for Skynet.

SOURCE via SMU edu

Wearable sensors that monitor physical activity are hardly anything new. People use that to make Avatar you know? But some researchers from MSU’s Department of Kinesiology are taking the idea quite a bit farther with their latest project. No they’re not making Avatar 2 with James Cameron. They’ve developed a new system that employs a network of sensors that not only track movement, but can monitor things like tilt, posture and the proximity of limbs to each other. That, the researchers say, allows them to detect different types of activity, and more accurately measure the energy expended on them. Of course, it is still just a protoype, but it’ll apparently soon be put to the test by some graduate students, and there’s plenty of backing behind it — the project is being funded two-year, $411,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health.

SOURCE via physorg