Remember the space orbit lift that the Gundam Meisters used to travel around in Gundam 00? Have you ever thought of building such thing, or if such thing is even possible in our universe? Well, you’re not alone, and NASA even had it thought out. But how long will we need to wait until such technology arrives? Well, not in our lifetime apparently. “We try not to be narrow-minded and say it won’t happen for 150 years,” stated one NASA program manager. Well, there goes my dream of piloting a Gundam.

In fact, many of NASA’s dreams actually haven’t materialized yet. NASA’s related Beam Power Challenge ended without a winner for years on end, and the project’s Tether Challenge remains unconquered today. Not to mention that the week-long lift might expose you to deadly levels of radiation.

Lucky for us, attendees of the annual Space Elevator Conference aren’t ready to give up, and set to work last week brainstorming potential solutions. Could we replace the laser power system with solar panels? How strong are modern nanocarbons, and what issues do we need to be aware of to keep the carbon nanotube cables from breaking? Wouldn’t it be cool if the next design featured six cars instead of just three?

Although the outpouring of ideas flowed like water, the response towards many of them seemed to be the same: we really need to look into that. Despite the seemingly insurmountable issues, researchers remain optimistic

SOURCE via IT World

In the future, LCDs could be used to harvest and recycle power to provide electricity for an electronic device. Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) envision LCDs with integrated photovoltaic polarizers, which would allow displays to tap into ambient light, sunlight and their own backlight for additional electricity.

The researchers said they have created “a new type of energy-harvesting polarizer for LCDs called a polarizing organic photovoltaic, which can potentially boost the function of an LCD by working simultaneously as a polarizer, a photovoltaic device and an ambient light or sunlight photovoltaic panel.”

According to the scientists, 80 to 90% of a device’s entire power consumption could be caused by an LCD, while 75% of the light generated is lost without being used as a potential power source. Photovoltaic polarizers could solve this problem.

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In developing countries where deadly diseases such as HIV are common and sophisticated testing centres and laboratories are scarce, this brand new tool is going to revolutionize diagnostics. Columbia researchers have studied the science of microfluidics to create a small, inexpensive but accurate diagnostic tool that can detect all sorts of deadly diseases without the need for complicated or expensive lab equipment.

Dubbed the mChip, this device is only the size of a credit card and requires nothing but a tiny drop of blood in order to detect a lethal disease such as HIV. What’s even better is that the device only costs approximately $1 to produce. Traditional tests for HIV require trained personnel to draw blood and utilize expensive lab equipment, requiring much more time and resources than the mChip’s 15 minute turnaround time.

In a recent study testing the accuracy of the device, researchers found that the mChip detected 100% of HIV and Syphilis cases from the study. With a device such as the mChip, developing country patients don’t have to worry about traveling far distances to hospitals and returning later for results. This advancement in detection technology could prove to be a major step forward in the treatment of deadly diseases in both underdeveloped and developed countries.

SOURCE via Gajitz

Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a sensor that promises to detect common date rape drugs with 100% accuracy. The technology is targeted at woman who may be in danger to sexual assault after being drugged by substances such as GHB and ketamine.

Women simply need to dip the sensor into a liquid and promises to instantly determine the presence of a drug. The sensor needs only an amount of 10 microliters to be able to detect a potentially dangerous substance.

The sensor will be available for purchase within a few years, the researchers said, and will be lightweight and discreet, easily transportable in a pocket or purse. The market for such a device may be substantial as the Department of Justice reported that about 200,000 women were reported to have been raped in 2007 with the aid of a date rape drug. There was no information on the possible price of the device, but the researchers said that it will be made “affordable” for personal use and the range of substances that can be detected will be widened.

The team is currently looking for investors to participate in the project.

SOURCE via AFTAU

Khronos released OpenGL 4.2 as a new version of the cross-platform 2D and 3D graphics API earlier today at Siggraph.

The new version integrates shaders with atomic counters as well as load, store and atomic read-modify-write operations to a single level of a texture. Additionally, there is support for GPU-tessellated geometry, the modification of an arbitrary subset of a compressed texture without having to re-download the whole texture to the GPU for significant performance improvements, and the ability to pack multiple 8 and 16 bit values into a single 32-bit value for efficient shader processing.

“OpenGL 4.2 has integrated feedback from developers that are shipping significant OpenGL-based applications and games, making for a faster, more capable API which will continue to evolve to meet market needs,” said Barthold Lichtenbelt, working group chair of the OpenGL ARB and director of Tegra graphics at Nvidia.

Both AMD and Nvidia said that their products will support OpenGL 4.2 in the immediate future.

Future movies may be using a different type of motion capture technique than we are used to today. Rather using a camera to record the motion of a person or object, actors may be wearing numerous outward-facing cameras on a body suit.

The advantage: Motion capture can be accomplished outside and in large areas that are typically not accessible by traditional motion capture cameras that are used within studio environments today.

Researchers at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute and Disney Research, Pittsburgh (DRP) are currently developing such a system. “Body-mounted cameras enable capture of motions, such as running outside or swinging on monkey bars, that would be difficult – if not impossible – otherwise,” said Takaaki Shiratori, a post-doctoral associate at DRP.

A wearable camera system makes it possible to reconstruct the relative and global motions of an actor thanks to a process called structure from motion (SfM), Carnegie Mellon said. SfM is already 20 years old, but is now used to estimate the pose of the cameras on the person. In the initial tests, the technology employed 20 lightweight cameras on the limbs, and trunk of each person. Each camera was calibrated against a reference structure. When the actor moved, the system was able to automatically build a digital skeleton and estimate positions of cameras on that skeleton.

DRP said that the technology does not yet match the precision of traditional motion capture and will require higher resolution compact cameras and an enormous amount of computing horsepower. One minute of motion capture will take up to a day of computer processing, DRP said.

SOURCE via Disney Research

Car alarms aren’t perfect systems, but security researchers Don Bailey and Mathew Solnik of iSec Partners have set out to prove how imperfect they really are.

The researchers have uncovered a way to hack a car’s security system to remotely open or even start the engine. This happens by way of hacking a car’s GSM mobile network that connects to a service like OnStar. A Subaru Outback was used as proof of their hack, but similar systems exist in cars from other manufacturers, such as GM, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW.

Through reverse engineering of the protocol, the researchers were able to take control of some of the car’s security systems simply by sending it an SMS.

“When we looked at this car security and control system we determined within the first few hours that it was completely ownable, front to back,” Bailey told Cnet. “This is not just a theoretical attack. This is a practical attack we’ve used on more than one system now.”

While having a car stolen or tampered with via a text message is terrible, there could be even more far-reaching implications in other applications of the now-vulnerable technology.

“We are seeing more GSM [Global System for Mobile Communications]-enabled systems popping up in consumer culture and industrial control systems. They’re not just in Zoombak [Global Positioning System] location devices and personal security control systems, but also in sensors deployed for waste treatment facilities, SCADA [Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition] and call-back systems, physical security systems, industrial control systems,” Bailey said. “These GSM modules open up that world to attacks in a whole new way.”

Then again, it is an old computer… It’s the end of an era now that NASA’s ended the space shuttle program. The sort of technology needed to send man (and woman) into space must be more advanced than anything we use at home, right? Not exactly.

The Xbox 360 that you have set up next to your TV may be nearly six years old, but believe it or not, it’s got more computational power than the computer aboard the space shuttle.

According to some space shuttle facts from the Huntsville Times, the Xbox 360 is more powerful than the flight computer – by a significant magnitude.

The flight computer aboard the space shuttle has less than one percent of the power of an Xbox 360 game console. Astronauts load programs directing the phases of a mission – liftoff, orbit, and landing – into the computer one at a time after removing the program for the previous segment. Why hasn’t NASA upgraded the computer? The agency values its 30-year history of reliability. That said, astronauts don’t go into space with only one computer. Crew laptops and other laptops also make the trip.

SOURCE via NASA

In yet another stunning discovery made by NASA on Mars, there is indication that there may be flowing water during the warmest months on the red planet.

The organization has found “dark, finger-like” features that extend down on Martian slopes that appear during spring and summer months, but fade in winter months. NASA said that those structures have been observed over the seasons in the southern hemisphere of Mars.

“The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water,” said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson, in a prepared statement. Scientists believe that possible salt water on Mars similar to that on Earth could drop its freezing point enough to remain liquid and cause the finger-like structures. Pure water would remain frozen at the observed temperatures, NASA said.

Interestingly enough, the researchers believe that the lines indicate that any possible water could be running dry quickly, or may not even be cause by surface water, but shallow subsurface flows. “The flows are not dark because of being wet,” McEwen said. “They are dark for some other reason.”

“It’s a mystery now, but I think it’s a solvable mystery with further observations and laboratory experiments,” McEwen said.

SOURCE via NASA

Okay, this floating robot designed by Arcángel Constantini isn’t exactly an alien spacecraft, but it sure looks as though it has jumped straight out of a cheesy old science fiction flick. Not to worry though, the Nanodriaz isn’t out to probe our brains and harvest our resources, unless of course aliens consider pollution as a reliable energy source.

The Nanodriaz floats on top of surfaces of water while simultaneously analyzing pollutant contents and pollution levels. After detecting the elements of pollution in the water, Nanodriaz automatically deploys its most suitable solution. In some cases this means releasing bacteria and enzyme into the ecosystem that will help fight off the pollution.

Hoping to clean up the heavily polluted waters of the world, Nanodriaz is also constructed from discarded material, making this the greenest alien-like thing there is. Check out the video to see Nanodriaz in action!

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