A 2012 study done by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggests that an average of 38 small children die each year in the US alone, due to heatstroke after being left unattended inside a hot parked car. There are some systems to prevent this problem, but three engineering undergrads from Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University have come out with a unique solution.

Anshul Mehra, Yejin Kim and Jeffrey Kamei (seen in the above image from left to right) have turned the Microsoft Kinect into a safety system. It will utilize the Kinect’s ability to detect even the smallest movements, like those of a sleeping baby.

After more development the final product could be built into a car and would become active once the car is parked. If the temperature inside the vehicle rises above a limit with an occupant in it, the system could make sounds or notify the police or a service such as OnStar. And since the window glass blocks infrared light, the system will not detect movements outside the vehicle.

But, of course, if the parents are a bit more careful, they won’t have to rely on technology to look after their children. Yet, since some people are fond of learning things the very hard way, incorporating such a system into future cars could be the only way to save a lot of lives.

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Thinking about what new things to do with your Raspberry Pi? Why don’t you take up photography? The Pi Foundation recently released a camera board for the credit card-sized computer.

The new add on has a small lens on a chip the size of a postage stamp, and it can be connected into the camera port situated between the Ethernet and HDMI ports on the Pi. But be careful while handling the module as it is very sensitive to static electricity, and that flimsy ribbon should not be folded too much. The video posted below should help you to play with the thing safely.

After connecting, start the Pi and you will need to update the firmware after which boot into the configuration settings to enable the cam. But to use the camera you will have to use some commands such as “raspistill -o image.jpg” for snapping stills and “raspivid -o video.h264 -t 10000″ for ten seconds of soundless video recording. The camera can also stream video over the internet.

The 5MP camera, which can capture 1080p video, can be ordered from RS Components or Premier Farnell/Element14 in the UK for £16.56 plus postage. That’s around $25, the Model A Raspberry Pi’s price tag. Interested US customers might wanna keep an eye on Allied Electronics.

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What you see above is a laser beam striking and tracking a point at the front of a rocket to destroy it mid-flight. The beam is from Lockheed Martin’s newly developed ADAM high energy laser (HEL) system which is taking out that rocket from a range of 1.5 km, as you will see in the video below.

The rocket is completely destroyed as you can see in the image:

ADAM or Area Defense Anti-Munitions is a system capable of nullifying attacks from unmanned aerial vehicles or rocket attacks from the ground. It can track short-range target from a distance of 5 km to destroy it when it’s in a range of up to 2 km. It could be very useful for protecting assets like military bases near the battlefield.

The video shows an ADAM prototype destroying a “Qassam-like” rocket. You will be able to clearly see the laser striking and tracking the rocket to eventually take it out.

It’s, of course, being developed to protect humans and military stuff from missiles, but why should they fire a rocket in the first place. It’s sad to remember that this will deal mostly with war. Why don’t they develop and keep this tech for some good use in the future, like helping NASA and Harry Stamper to take care of an extra-terrestrial threat.

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While Sony has always been known for reasonably high quality smartphones, they have never led the pack, in large part due to customer perception over problems like slow updates to the latest Android versions.

There has a been a lot of hype generated by Sony’s latest Xperia Z though, with many saying that the phone is exactly what the company needs to make a major comeback, both in the mobile world and in electronics in general. Now Sony has posted its year-end results, showing the company’s first profit in five years.

Sony reported revenue of $72.3 billion, with $7.8 billion of that for the mobile side of things. Now a lot of this profit was generated by favorable exchange rates and asset sales, but the big takeaway is that Sony managed to ship 33 million Xperia smartphones, with the company claiming that a vast majority of these were Xperia Z handsets.

Of course that was actually down from their projected 34 million, but a large part of that (according to Sony) is because demand and hype for the Xperia Z kept attention off their other handsets like the Xperia T and Xperia V.

Bottom-line is that 2012 was a good start for Sony. We’ll really see if the company can take the groundwork laid and run with it throughout 2013, though.

What do you think of Sony’s most recent efforts, including the Xperia Z and its upcoming Sony Playstation 4? Is the company on the right track? For more information about their fiscal results, head over to the Xperia Blog.

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Developed by Otherfab, the Othermill is a portable computer-controlled 3-axis mill that will allow you to cut custom circuit boards. And since it’s capable of cutting metal, wood, wax and plastic, you can also start working on your own jewelry, molds and more.

You can make beautiful jewelry from materials such as brass and birch as the Othermill can accommodate any tool with a 1/8” shank.

According to Otherfab:

“The Othermill was designed with PCBs in mind, and they were the very first thing we tested when we had a working machine. The precision and accuracy of the Othermill allows you to reliably cut 10 mil trace and space on FR-1 PCB stock. You can create custom circuits that fit into odd 3D printed parts, seamlessly integrate electronics into your clothing, and free up your Arduinos for other applications”.

The Othermill is a kickstarter project and it seems they have reached their goal of $50,000 within less than 24 hours since it began. Check out the video below to know more about their project.

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In movies like Total Recall or even TV shows like Continuum, we see all sorts of complex wearable computing devices that push the limits of what we think is possible today. These wearable devices open up new doorways, many that we can’t even begin to dream of. But they can close some doors as well, as seen with our own real-world wearable computer, Google Glass.

Wearable computing brings up some very real privacy concerns that you just don’t see addressed in movies and television. We’ve already heard about bars and other establishments banning the use of Google Glass in their establishments due to concerns over video recording, and now Caesars Palace in Las Vegas has officially confirmed that Google Glass will not be permitted, at least for those that are gambling.

For Caesars Palace it was less about paranoia over the device, and more about keeping up with Nevada state law. According to a Caesars palace representative, “Nevada gaming regulations (and those in other states, as well) prohibit the use of computers or recording devices when gambling. As a result, we cannot allow guests who are gambling to wear Google Glass.” We can’t say we are surprised to hear this one, and at least when it comes to things like gambling, we can fully understand the concern. We imagine that more casinos will follow suit, if they haven’t already.

While requiring you to take off Google Glass while gambling makes sense, let’s just hope that Casinos don’t attempt to completely ban you from wearing them anywhere on Casino grounds. At the moment, it seems that you are only required to take them off while gambling, which isn’t that big of a deal.

The bigger picture is that wearable computing does in fact create new concerns that will need to be addressed with time. As Google Glass and other wearable computers start to surface, we imagine that they will remain under at least some degree of scrutiny,but like anything, the concerns will probably fade in time as such devices become more commonplace.

What do you think of Google Glass or even the general idea of wearable computing?

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Remember the Wii Balance Board craze? Back during the height of the Nintendo Wii’s popularity, quite a few folks went out a snagged one of these boards. After a few game sessions, interest waned for many of these users, leaving hundreds of poor Balance Boards with no purpose in live. Luckily, they are getting a second lease on life via a new open-source Android app!

The new app is called FitScales, and is designed to connect to your existing Wii Fit Balance Board, allowing you to use it as an Internet connected scale that makes it easy to get your weight information and sync it to apps like Runkeeper or FitBit.

Since the developer made this app open-source, it is also possible that other fitness apps on Android might eventually see integration for the Wii Fitness Board. The app is said to work with both smartphones and tablets.

What do you think, would this get you using that old Wii Board again? Or perhaps you still use yours?

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DARPA’s Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program, which was announced back in 2010, aims to build a robot that can do a variety of manipulation tasks with minimum operator input. One of the toughest tasks for the hardware team is developing a reliable and low-cost hand for the robot. iRobot and researchers at Harvard and Yale appear to have come up with a solution.

Their hand that you see above has fingers capable of surviving hits from a baseball bat and that can lift 50 pounds as you will see in the video. From a basketball to a pin, its three fingers can pick up a variety of objects. And it costs just $3,000. In comparison, the average cost of a military-grade robot hand in 2010 was around US$50,000.

But a lot of research and development is still left in the ARM program. While the hardware team will focus on building a complete robot, many others will be working on AI software which will require some serious work.

The software system must enable the GFE (Government Furnished Equipment; i.e. the robot) to perform the Challenge Tasks following a high-level script with no operator intervention. For example, the operator would issue a command such as “Throw Ball.” That command would in turn decompose into a sequence of lower-level tasks, such as “find ball,” “grasp ball,” “re-grasp ball, cock arm, and throw”.

Check out the video below to see the hand in action. It’s not creepy like an earlier DARPA product.

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According to LG Vice President Yoon Bu-hyun, flexible screens are coming our way by the year’s end. While no official product or specs have been released, LG has been working hard to beat Samsung to the market with their own flexible technology.

Of course just because LG ships a flexible display doesn’t mean the whole phone will be flexible, as they would also require flexible plastics, batteries and other components. More than likely, the first phone from LG to use the technology will simply have a curved display.

The idea of a commercial smartphone with a curved display is an interesting one, but being first comes at a price, namely the first smartphone running the tech will likely suffer from low yield issues with the display. These issues could mean higher pricing on the phone and a low number of devices at launch.

In a way, Samsung actually benefits from being second to market as they can see the strengths and weaknesses of LG’s first attempt and perhaps advance the technology enough to prevent the same mistakes when it is their turn.

What do you think of flexible display technology and the idea of smartphones with curved displays?

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Our astronauts would love to get themselves into a more flexible suit while floating through space. Takahiko Hariyama and his team at Japan’s Hamamatsu University School of Medicine appear to have found a solution. Their so called nano-suit is currently just for insects but it could be developed for use in space.

If we try to take a nanometer-level resolution image of an insect using a scanning electron microscope, that creature won’t survive the process since it is required that the subject is kept in a vacuum.

But Hariyama and his colleagues noticed that when electrons were fired at a fruit fly larva polymerization caused its skin molecules to link together to form a barrier, and they named this barrier as the nano-suit. The nano-suit helped the larva to survive in a vacuum by preventing the escape of moisture from its body.

But the formation of a natural nano-suit did not happen with other larvae. So they developed a suit using a chemical called Tween 20 and water. This artificial nano-suit ensured the survival of the insects. And since it remains flexible without breaking, scientists can now try to capture nanometer-level videos of insects while they are in motion.

Hariyama is currently trying to develop an artificial nano-suit that can also protect an insect from electron radiation.

This certainly could find applications in spacesuit development for astronauts. You can imagine a very thin and flexible space shield capable of protecting humans from radiation and other issues.

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