This is far more advanced than simply absorbing the sweat and waiting for it to evaporate, because the fibers in this fabric are threaded with tiny channels that actually send the sweat in a particular direction: from the inside of your shirt to the outside. Then, the sweat can bead up into droplets and simply drain away. This capillary action is really what makes this discovery and invention so unique.

The fabric, developed by Tingrui Pan and his UC Davis Micro-Nano Innovations Laboratory graduate students Siyuan Xing and Jia Jiang, can even continue its effectiveness when the threads reach saturation, because there is the sustained pressure gradient by way of the surface tension of the droplets. And it stays dry and comfortable too.

The microfabrication techniques used are supposed to be simple enough that they can be easily scaled to suit current textile manufacturing processes. Now we just have to wait for Under Armor to come up with a catchy trademarked name for it.

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This is not science fiction. While the “vision” offered by the Alpha IMS probably isn’t as good as regular human sight (yet), it does allow these previously blind patients to see again. The prosthesis, a grid of 1500 electrodes, is implanted underneath the retina, offering higher resolution and taking advantage of the middle layer of the retina that handles motion and contrast. Wires then run to a chip (powered by a battery pack in the patient’s pocket) implanted on the vision-processing part of the brain. And boom, you have vision.

Of course, this kind of vision restoration only works if the vision-processing part of the brain is still intact and the original loss of vision was due to some disease of the retina, like retinitis pigmentosa. Given what we’ve been able to learn from the infrared-seeing rat experiment, it’s not that far-fetched that a future version of the Alpha IMS gains not only higher resolution, but also the ability to see beyond what we consider to the visible spectrum.

If you’re interested in learning more, the original scientific journal article is available via open access on the Royal Society Publishing website.

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First, they trained the rats to respond to a series of LED lights inside of a test chamber. When the light turns on, they learn to scurry toward that light and they are rewarded with a treat. Then, they implanted “an array of tiny stimulating electrodes into the touch-sensing part” of the rat’s brain. These electrodes were then connected to an infrared sensor, which was surgically attached to the rat’s foreheads so that it can react in the direction that the rat is facing.

After replacing the LED lights with infrared lights in the test chamber, they ran through the same kind of trial. Initially, the rats would just scratch their faces, as if something were touching their whiskers. This makes sense, as the “touch-sensing part” of the brain was being activated. Over the course of the next few weeks, though, the rats started to learn how to react to those infrared lights, doing the same thing they did when there were LED lights: they ran toward the “reward port” where the infrared light turned on and got their treat. In effect, the rats gained crude infrared vision.

What’s interesting is that the relevant neurons never lost their initial capabilities; they still responded to touch and the rats could still feel their whiskers. It just so happened that the same part of the brain gained the new function of “seeing” infrared light. Now, you can see how this can be expanded to just about any other stimuli, like “magnetic fields, radio waves or ultrasound,” as described by principal investigator Miguel Nicolelis. And then it’s only a matter of time before us humans get access to these implants and augmented abilities.

This isn’t just about creating people with superpowers. It could be adapted to “restore” vision to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and so much more. Further testing is certainly required, but this is a fascinating new arena for science.

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NASA isn’t exactly getting the same level of funding that it once did, but that does not mean that you can’t perform some exploratory rocket missions of your own. Have you ever wanted to have your own homemade rocket that could then record and collect data about its flight onto an on-board Apple iPhone? With this tutorial, now you can. It starts with a relatively straightforward model rocket, complete with parachute for re-entry, but it has also been equipped with a TI Bluetooth low energy SensorTag and and iPhone 4S. That’s because while the iPhone has an accelerometer and such, but it can only record to +/-2G. That’s not good enough for a rocket, so the TI SensorTag is included in the rocket. Remember that the rocket can pull up to 8Gs during the boost phase of the flight.

There are two options for recording. You can keep your iDevice on the ground and record the data remotely or, if you’re feeling brave, you can actually attach your iPhone 4S (the instructions will have to be modified if you want to use an iPhone 5) to the rocket’s payload. And this works in tandem with the techBASIC app. Get the full tutorial on how to build your rocket, equip it with the Sensor Tag, and get it all working with your on-board iPhone by visiting byteworks.us. Yes, you can be a “scientist” too.

The post Video: iPhone Used to Measure Test Rocket Flight Data appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

What this means is that they don’t need an additional layer of polymer to hold the nanotubes together. Since the cells only use small amounts of purified carbon, the end product is lighter and presumably more efficient. The new cell also uses what is known as C60 or Buckminsterfullerene, another type of carbon.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, even though the new all-carbon solar cells are able to capture near-infrared light energy, they still suffer from the same lack of efficiency as their predecessors. The proof of concept devices have only achieved 0.1 percent efficiency thus far, but scientists have already identified some areas for improvement. For instance, they’ve noticed that homogenous mixtures of carbon nanotubes are more efficient than heterogeneous mixtures.

This is “fundamentally a new kind of photovoltaic cell,” says MIT professor Michael Strano. I wonder if they could start pasting these onto the roofs of electric or hybrid cars.

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Modern advances in science have helped many people overcome their disabilities. If your sense of hearing is going, a hearing aid can help. If you’re near-sighted, you can get glasses, contact lenses, or laser eye surgery. But what if you are completely blind? Is there a solution for that? Designer Xu Guang-suo sure thinks so and that’s how he came up with the Navigation Glasses for the Blind.

In a sense, it allows people who are blind to “literally visualize their surroundings.” This doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to see in the conventional sense, however. Instead, the Navigation Glasses are outfitted with sensors that pick up elements in the environment and then this information is fed back in the form of auditory cues to the user.

You could say that it is like a form of sonar, allowing the user to interpret the world around them in the form of reflected sound. The range appears to be beyond 180-degrees, offering a good sense of peripheral “vision.” The problem is that Xu Guang-suo hasn’t indicated at all how this would really work and how the person would be able to understand the auditory signals. One day, perhaps. One day.

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Yes, the prototype looks very crude with all the exposed circuitry and wires, but this is quite the remarkable little contraption by three engineering students from Cornell University. It’s a power glove that can effectively be used as a sign language translator.

Before you get too excited about the prospects, right now the glove is only able to “translate” the different letters of the alphabet, so it’s not able to translate the signs for specific words just yet. There is also only one glove, so any sign that would involve both hands wouldn’t be possible either. That said, as a working prototype, it’s still quite impressive.

The glove contains a series of contact sensors, flex sensors, and accelerometers to determine the hand and finger position of the user. The glove can then communicate wirelessly through the transceiver back to a computer that can display or audibly read out the signed letters. The students have even created a basic game where you sign the letters as they fall from the top of the screen.

Some work could be done with advancing into more complex signs, speeding up performance, and cleaning up the appearance, but as you can see in the video below, the ASL translator glove definitely works.

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Right now, the rolling part isn’t quite as precise or uniform as it could be, because the top six sections aren’t identical to the bottom six. Inventor Kare Halvorsen hopes to address that with the next iteration of MorpHex, but in the meantime, this looks pretty sweet, even if it can’t jump 30 feet in the air.

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The post MorpHex, the Walking Rolling Robot appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

He’s a cognitive science researcher and this has been a hobby interest of his for several years. Jansen first began work on the project in 2007, sparked by curiosity and looking to spark curiosity in others. With the second-generation model, he has loaded up a couple of OLED resistive touchscreens and plenty of sensors.

The new Tricorder can measure temperature, humidity, magnetic fields, atmospheric pressure, color, ambient light level, GPS location, and distance to an object. It’s actually pretty advanced and it all runs on Debian Linux. Power comes by way of six AAA batteries. Even better, Jansen is offering up the whole project for free for others to attempt. The schematcs are available through a TAPR non-commercial hardware license and the source code is available under GPL.

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It’s one thing to film a fictionalized tale about the Titanic, but it’s another thing altogether to film a documentary about the deepest known part of the ocean. And that’s exactly what James Cameron has been able to do.

He went in a one-man submarine called the Deepsea Challenger (he refers to it as a “vertical torpedo”) to the Mariana Trench. This is located an incredible seven miles below sea level and it’s the same place that Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard and Navy Lt. Don Walsh went for twenty minutes back in 1960. The difference is that Cameron is spending six hours there, capturing footage that will then be converted into a documentary. He’s also collecting samples for scientific study.

The Deepsea Challenger, as you can imagine, has been specially designed to withstand the immense pressure of being that deep under the sea. Imagine seven miles worth of ocean crushing down on you from pretty well all sides.

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