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Bluetrek Carbon headset hits the FCC, proves hard to damage but easy to disassemble
We've seen Bluetrek's Bluetooth headsets be twistable, touchable, skinny, and smart. Now they're going light -- and fancy. The Bluetrek Carbon has hit the FCC, showing off a carbon fiber boom (pictured again after the break) and construction said to create an exceedingly light result. Looking at the FCC's teardown photos it's clear to see that the stalk there is actual carbon, not some lame appliquè and, with the body of the thing being barely wider than a micro-USB port, it shouldn't look too gaudy hanging out of your head. There's no mention of price or availability (the FCC doesn't trouble itself with such matters) but we're guessing you don't have much time left to get your ear ready for this kind of piercing sophistication.
Carbon nanotubes used to more easily detect cancer cells, HIV
Cancer's not slowing its march to ruining as many lives as it possibly can, so it's always pleasing to hear of any new developments that act as hurdles. The latest in the world of disease-prevention comes from Harvard University, where researches have created a dime-sized carbon nanotube forest (read: lots of nanotubes, like those shown above) that can be used to trap cancer cells when blood passes through. A few years back, Mehmet Toner, a biomedical engineering professor at Harvard, created a device similar to the nano-forest that was less effective because silicon was used instead of carbon tubes. Today, Toner has teamed up with Brian Wardle, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, who together have redesigned the original microfluid device to work eight times more efficiently than its predecessor. The carbon nanotubes make diagnosis a fair bit simpler, largely because of the antibodies attached to them that help trap cancer cells as they pass through -- something that's being tailored to work with HIV as well. Things are starting to look moderately promising for cancer-stricken individuals, as hospitals have already began using the original device to detect malignant cells and ultimately prevent them from spreading -- here's hoping it's qualified for mass adoption sooner rather than later.
EVE Online Fanfest 2011 roundup: Day 3
The third and final day of festivities at the massive EVE Online Fanfest has come to an end, and it was definitely worth waiting for. There were several round-table discussions and events going on today, but the event everyone was looking forward to was definitely the "CCP Presents" talk in the afternoon. With yesterday's keynote speech wrapping up all the awesome plans CCP has for EVE this year, it wasn't certain exactly what had been saved for today's show. Yesterday we heard details of the Incarna captain's quarters, server upgrades, new turret effects, new nebulae and more. Highlights of today included a round-table discussion on how CCP would be linking EVE with DUST 514, the hilarious finals of the Fanfest PvP tournament and the CCP Presents feature. This was followed by the CCP panel, in which developers answered questions from the audience. Having spent three days watching developers talk about the future of EVE, I get the distinct impression that many of them have as much passion for EVE as even the most fanatical EVE players. Read on for a roundup of what happened today at the EVE Fanfest, along with detailed explanations of a few personal highlights from today and the Fanfest in general.
New phase-change memory gets boost from carbon nanotubes, puts PRAM claims to shame
We've been hearing about the potential flash killer for years, and now a team of University of Illinois engineers is claiming that its new phase-change technology could make the PRAM of our dreams look quaint by comparison. Like so many groundbreaking discoveries of late, carbon nanotubes are at the heart of the this new mode of memory, which uses 100x less power than its phase-change predecessors. So, how does it work? Basically, the team replaced metal wires with carbon nanotubes to pump electricity through phase-change bits, reducing the size of the conductor and the amount of energy consumed. Still too much technobabble? How 'bout this -- they're using tiny tubes to give your cellphone juice for days. Get it? Good. [Thanks, Jeff]
Diamond shaped supercapacitors could result in faster-charging, higher capacity batteries
Superconductors pass electricity with zero resistance and make stuff float. Superfluids have zero viscosity and can climb vertical walls to escape containers. Supercapacitors? Well, they don't do anything quite so dramatic, but they could result in batteries that charge faster and hold more charge than ever. Capacitors in general have to run a balance between capacity and fast charging, but these fancy ones with diamond-shaped nanopores in zeolite-templated carbon, developed at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, are said to offer the best of both worlds. How good? Cellphones that charge in minutes, electric cars with longer lasting batteries, and free Superman Underoos for all. Naturally there's no word on when these things might actually escape the lab and show up in real batteries, but you already knew that, didn't you.
New carbon nanotube aerogel is now the world's lightest solid material
Frozen smoke (read: aerogel) -- not to be confused with the stuff your Grandma uses to flavor her turkey -- is the world's lightest solid material, and it just keeps getting lighter. Researchers at the University of Central Florida have created a new form of the super material, known as multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) aerogel, that has a density of just four milligrams per cubic centimeter and can be used in sensors to detect pollutants and toxic substances, chemical reactors, and electronic components. Aerogels, which are known as the world's most effective insulators, have been around since the early 20th century, but most of these are fabricated from silicon dioxide. In order to produce the new aerogel, researchers removed the liquid from a "wet gel of well-dispersed pristine MWCNTs," creating a honeycomb structure with walls just 100-nanometers thick. The resulting material is an impressive and resilient electrical conductor that looks and acts less like frozen smoke and more like a burnt marshmallow. And now, you know. Check out the coverage link below for video.
Carbon nanotubes run into magical polymer, become 'tougher than Kevlar'
Much like graphene, carbon nanotubes seem to be hitting on all cylinders in the lab. Of course, we can count on one hand finger how many instances we've seen them making a difference in "the real world," but we aren't giving up hope just yet. Researchers from a cadre of universities have come together to solve one of the most nagging issues when dealing with carbon nanotubes -- in prior studies, the bundling of these tubes resulted in a marked decrease in strength, which in turn led to a profuse outpouring of tears. But thanks to a new approach, which mixes in a nondescript polymer, they've managed to conjure up a "a high performance fiber that is remarkably tough, strong, and resistant to failure." More specifically, the resulting material is said to be "tougher than Kevlar, meaning it has a higher ability to absorb energy without breaking." Notably, this material isn't stronger than Kevlar, as it's resistance to failure isn't quite up to snuff, but you can bet the gurus working on this won't stop until it is. And then, friends, we will have officially arrived in The Future.
Graphene electrodes promise 5x energy storage boost for ultracapacitors
Graphene. We hear of your achievements so often, but feel your benefits in our everyday lives so infrequently. We'd be remiss if we didn't point out how unhealthy of a relationship this is, but hopefully Bor Jang and co. have a mind to mend it all. Bor, along with a number of colleagues at Nanotek Instruments, have just uncovered a graphene advancement that could put conventional Li-ion cells in a world of hurt. Of course, we've been hearing about so-called "battery breakthroughs" for the better part of our lives, but few have involved progress with ultracapacitors. For those unaware, ultracapacitors are energy storage devices that can "absorb and release charge in minutes," and they're pegged as cheaper / safer alternatives to batteries for electric vehicles. The only problem? Mainstream versions today hold just five percent of the energy held by Li-ion batteries. Nanotek's crew has figured out that the use of graphene electrodes "could lead to ultracapacitors with more than five times the energy density of commercial devices," but as these things always go, no one's coming close to producing a hard release date. We'll just assume it's undergoing lab tests for now, and in 2022 we can all weep at what could've been. Prove us wrong, whiz kids.
Strained graphene leads to pseudo-magnetic fields, bends physics even further
Man, if only this had been discovered before Ariadne was tasked with building impossible dreams. A team of scientists caught high-fiving over at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have a new and riveting announcement to share, and it revolves around our old and trusted friend, graphene. This go 'round, the self-proclaimed "extraordinary form of carbon" is being stressed to its max, but not without good reason. Thanks to inquisitive minds and a "stroke of serendipity," a research team was able to create magnetic fields in excess of 300 tesla by simply straining graphene in a certain way. For physicists, the discovery is a dream come true, particularly when you realize that magnetic fields in excess of 85 tesla were practically impossible to come across in a laboratory setting. The benefits here? It's honestly too early to tell, but gurus in the field are already suggesting that the "opportunities for basic science with strain engineering [are] huge." Something tells us Magneto would concur.
Silicon chips get speed boost with a lead start
In tennis, the materials of the tennis court affect the performance of the ball. Such is the case, on a much, much smaller scale, for electron movement across circuitry. Silicon chips give resistance that lowers the speed limit, while atom-thick sheets of carbon (a.k.a. graphene) have a special property whereby free electrons are almost weightless and can travel up to 0.003 times the speed of light -- sounds great, but it's hard to produce in bulk. Cut to Han Woong Yeom and Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea. His team has added a thin layer lead on a silicon chip, lowering the electron mass (and thus proportionally raising its speed) to 1/20th compared to standard silicon. Still a ways to go for graphene speeds -- by a factor of three, according to Yeom -- but it's also more likely to mass production.
Physicist fight: how heavy is a kilogram?
Physicists are currently hotly debating a topic some of us never think about -- or if we did -- surely we'd think 'there's an answer for that, even if I don't know what it is.' The question? The question at hand is 'how heavy is a kilogram?' The currently accepted answer is the mass of a cylinder of platinum and iridium called the International Prototype Kilogram. The problem with that definition, of course, is that not just anybody can measure it -- since most of us don't have an International Prototype Kilogram laying around, especially since every time the thing is picked up a few atoms rub off of it making it a little bit lighter. Because of this, the actual International Prototype Kilogram (yes, there does only seem to be one in existence) is stored in a vault in Sevres, France, limiting the lay person's ability to determine the actual weight of a kilogram. There are other options on the table, of course, including one involving a two-stories high piece of equipment that costs around $1.5 million -- which isn't much better, when you think of it. Enter Ronald Fox and friends over at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. They're suggesting a rather shocking solution: make the kilogram equal to the mass of a certain number of carbon-12 atoms (2250× 28148963^3 of them), also known as a cube of carbon measuring 8.11 centimeters on each side. This would mean, of course, that pretty much anybody could determine the weight of a kilogram at home. But we wouldn't want that, now, would we?
Defective graphene sheets look poised to succeed silicon
As circuitry gets smaller and approaches the effective limitation of silicon's computing power, and Moore's Law begins to look like it has an expiration date, we get closer and closer to needing an alternative. Graphene is held to be the answer; sheets of carbon a single atom thick that could be stacked and composited to create processors. Two professors at the University of South Florida, Matthias Batzill and Ivan Oleynik, have found a new way to turn those sheets into circuits by creating nanoscale defects. These strips of broken atomic rings wind up having metallic properties, thus making them act like microscopic wires. IBM is already teasing us with the possibilities of graphene and now, with a more practical way to make graphene-based electronics, we'd say Moore's Law still has at least another couple decades left. [Photo credit: Y. Lin]
Rice University nanodragster rolls on carbon buckeyball wheels, lives life .0005 inch at a time
Drag racing and nanotech seemingly go together like peanut butter and... very small rocks, but that hasn't stopped a team of researchers at Rice University from creating a microscopic car dubbed a "nanodragster." Its wheels are buckeyballs, the rear composed of 60 carbon atoms each, while its front wheels are made of p-carborane. This gives the car more grip at the back, meaning it'll pop wheelies just like a real dragster -- though only when running on a road paved with gold. Even then it doesn't go very fast, just .0005 inches per hour, meaning for those 1,327,000 days it takes to cover a quarter-mile its driver is free.
TUAW Tip: Get an instant definition of any word in a pop up window
Gee, I love stuff like this, and I wish I would have known about it a long time ago. The tip comes from OSXhelp.com and it's a great one. Need a quick definition of a word in Safari or an email? Yes, you probably already knew you could right-click on a highlighted word and bring up the OS X dictionary, but how about this? Press Command+Control+D while hovering over any word, and up pops the definition almost immediately. If you continue to hold down those keys you can slide your mouse over any other word and get a definition as well. Let go of the keys, and click somewhere else and the dictionary vanishes. This little feature doesn't work everywhere. It requires you be in a Cocoa application, like Safari or Mail. It works in Pages, but not in MS Word because it was based on Carbon. Sadly, it doesn't work in Firefox. In fact, you can't right-click in Firefox and get a definition in the 'normal' Apple way. If you want even more information than the little definition, click on the word 'more' at the lower right of the pop-up, and you'll get a lot more stuff from the Apple dictionary app, including usage suggestions and the origins of the word. A couple of notes: If you are using a macro program like QuicKeys, make sure you aren't mapping the key combination you need to activate this feature, or re-map it to something else. If you click on the word 'dictionary' you can bring up the thesaurus, and if you launch the Apple dictionary application you can get into preferences and change the order of display, so you get the thesaurus as a default. You can also change your right-click behavior to open the concise panel instead of the larger definition page. Once I memorized the command key sequence I find myself using this all the time. It's quick and dirty. Let us know if you like it. Thanks to OS X Help for all the little tips they regularly come up with, and to my fellow blogger Erica Sadun for testing this feature with QuicKeys. Sharp eyed readers will note we've covered this tip before here and here but I think it bears repeating.
Stanford wants to roll its own paper batteries
It was only a couple of months ago that MIT was wooing us with the energy-preserving properties of carbon nanotubes, and in a classic act of oneupmanship Stanford has now come out and demonstrated paper batteries, which work thanks to a carbon nanotube and silver nanowire "ink." We've seen this idea before, but the ability to just douse a sheet of paper in the proper magical goo and make a battery out of it is as new as it is mindblowing. Battery weight can, as a result, be reduced by 20 percent, and the fast energy discharge of this technology lends itself to utilization in electric vehicles. The video after the break should enlighten and thrill you in equal measures.
NEC turns your home into a carbon-tracking game controller
Are you bored with keeping tabs of your carbon emissions? NEC and BIGLOBE have developed a system that not only performs this odious task, but makes it "fun" to do so -- if you're generous as to what constitutes "fun." A WiFi-enabled device is attached to your circuit breaker, where it keeps track of your power consumption and later transmits it to your home computer via ZigBee. The data is then sent to a website, where you can use it to play games against other green households in such thrilling arenas as Carbon Diet (users score "eco-points" with which they can purchase virtual soil, water, flowers and grass) and Carbon Ball, in which Dung Beetles compete to see who can travel the farthest, with distance being determined by -- you guessed it -- how well the user reduces power consumption. But that ain't all -- the system also keeps tabs on daily and hourly energy consumption, your rank in comparison with other households, and more. A three-month trial service is underway in the homes of 100 NEC employees, after which the companies will analyze the data and develop a business model for unloading this bad boy on local governments and the private sector. One more pic after the break.[Via Pink Tentacle]
Carbon fiber door boasts biometric scanner, $15,000 sticker
Being the home cinema fanatics that we are, we'd much rather spend around two large to snag one of QuietHome's THX-certified doors, but our love for all things biometric still manages to make this one tug on our delicate heartstrings. Masterfully crafted by the carbon fiber gurus at Brazil's own Chaote Carbon, this 99-pound, 7.5- x 4.9-foot door was carefully wrapped in carbon fiber and equipped with a biometric scanner to keep unwelcome guests waiting in the rain. We can't say we totally see the value proposition considering the $15,000 price tag, but we get the idea the buyer here probably has more money than he can figure out how to spend.[Via Unplggd]
AI: 'Snow Leopard' to include rewritten Finder
AppleInsider claims that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will feature (among other things) a Finder re-written entirely in Cocoa. The Finder has remained Carbon-based for the entire history of Mac OS X so far, but the long journey from those frameworks towards Cocoa seems to be reaching its end for Apple's homegrown apps. Test versions of the new Finder are being seeded to select developers in revisions of Snow Leopard with build numbers beginning with 10A. AppleInsider notes that seeds could be more broadly available to the developer community as early as tomorrow. As Ars Technica noted in June, Apple apps will also apparently come "wrapped" in Cocoa. Further deprecation of some Carbon APIs seems likely as well, but it's unclear yet as to how Snow Leopard's support for Carbon apps will differ from plain-ol' Leopard's. In addition to the Finder, improvements to support for Microsoft Exchange are expected for Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Also included is a new option for booting a Mac called ImageBoot. ImageBoot takes NetBoot a step further, allowing administrators to boot a workstation into Mac OS X directly from an image on a local disk.
Apple products announced today: It's easier being green
Apple made a concerted effort today to highlight the reduced impact its new products have on the environment. This effort all started with Steve Jobs' open letter in 2007, A Greener Apple, announcing a long-term plan to "protect the environment and make our business more sustainable." The letter was released partly in response to a Greenpeace campaign, encouraging Apple to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals in its products and improve its recycling programs. Today, the star of the show was Apple's new "unibody," a single, complex chassis for new MacBook and MacBook Pro units fabricated from a single brick of aluminum. In a video posted on its website, Apple noted that as a result of the new fabrication process, fewer parts in the laptop means a reduction in weight, size, and the amount of other material necessary to hold the device together.
HP to put Eco Highlights label on products, guilt comes on the side
HP is doing its part to help you feel good -- or bad -- about your carbon footprint with its new Eco Highlights label. The sticker will list a product's enviro-friendly "ingredients", much like those FDA labels you see at the grocery store that tell you how much fat and sugar you're consuming. The program's launch products will include printers such as the Deskjet D2545 ink-jet printer, LaserJet P4015x, LaserJet P4515x and LaserJet P4515xm which are made mostly of recycled parts. Other Eco Highlights label attributes will include recycled cartridges, recyclable packaging, and auto-on/auto-off with deep-sleep modes. Finally, a new HP Carbon Footprint Calculator for Printing and HP LaserJet Power Calculator will most likely make you feel really bad about the printer you're currently using, send you into a shame spiral, and ultimately force you to buy an HP Eco Highlight printer.[Via News.com]
