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Researchers develop new plastics that 'bleed' and heal like human skin
It looks like plastics may not be something for the squeamish in the not-too-distant future. Researchers from the University of Southern Mississippi recently revealed a new type of plastic they've been working on that takes its inspiration from human skin -- it "bleeds" red when it's scratched or cut and then heals itself when it's exposed to light. As Popular Science notes, self-healing plastics aren't something entirely new, but the "bleeding" (achieved using small molecular links or "bridges" that break when the plastic is scratched) is, as is the fact that this plastic can heal itself over and over again in the same spot. What's more, as it's made from water-based copolymers, it's also more environmentally-friendly than other plastics. Of course, it's all a ways from being used in actual products, but the researchers see no shortage of possibilities, including everything from self-healing car fenders to aircraft applications that could warn of problems before they get too severe.
Researchers build world's smallest steam engine that could
Wanna create your very own microscopic steam engine? Just take a colloid particle, put it in water, and add a laser. That's a CliffsNotes version of what a group of German researchers recently did to create the world's smallest steam engine. To pull it off, engineers from the University of Stuttgart and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems tweaked the traditional approach introduced by Robert Stirling nearly 200 years ago. In Stirling's model, gas within a cylindrical tube is alternately heated and cooled, allowing it to expand and push an attached piston. Professor Clemens Bechinger and his team, however, decided to downsize this system by replacing the piston with a laser beam, and the cylinder's working gas with a single colloid bead that floats in water and measures just three thousandths of a millimeter in size. The laser's optical field limits the bead's range of motion, which can be easily observed with a microscope, since the plastic particle is about 10,000 times larger than an atom. Because the beam varies in intensity, it effectively acts upon the particle in the same way that heat compresses and expands gas molecules in Stirling's model. The bead, in turn, does work on the optical field, with its effects balanced by an outside heat source. The system's architects admit that their engine tends to "sputter" at times, but insist that its mere development shows that "there are no thermodynamic obstacles" to production. Read more about the invention and its potential implications in the full press release, after the break.
Scientists make magic auto-origami using ink and light (video)
We've seen nano-origami and robo-origami, but nothing quite as rapid and simple as this. Researchers at North Carolina State University have figured out how to neatly fold plastic using infrared light and an inkjet printer. Deep black lines are printed onto the plastic sheets, which then absorb the light and cause the material to fold without anyone having to touch it. The wider the line, the greater the angle of each fold, so it's possible to set, say, a 90-degree bend for a cube or 120 degrees for a pyramid. What's more, by giving the lines different patterns, folds can be made to work in specific directions, potentially producing the most perfect, most hygienic bento box that's ever contained your lunch. Click past the break to watch the folding unfold.
Additional footage from Plastic's Move game deepens the mystery
We still don't really know what the Move game is that's being made by Plastic and Sony Santa Monica, but we can now see a second video of it at Eurogamer. Like the previous video, the latest release consists of off-screen footage, mostly of a forest environment with a mysterious floating hand. There's an equally mysterious door in the forest, not connected to anything. Other footage shows that floating hand in a car, gripping the steering wheel. We're sure the hand is supposed to be some kind of on-screen avatar representing the Move controls, but the effect of being in a car driven by Thing is terrifying. A double image in the video suggests that whatever this is, it will display in 3D. The video actually consists on two variations of the same scenes, one in which the player-controlled car drives by a pig, and another in which it collides with said pig. "Comparing them will give you all the answers about our upcoming title," Plastic told Eurogamer when it sent the footage. So ... the game is like Quantum Leap, but with a disembodied hand going back in time to save a pig. That's our official guess. Oh boy.
Mystery Move game in development, courtesy of Plastic and Sony Santa Monica
Sony Santa Monica, makers of the God of War series, and Plastic, a Polish demoscene group, are collaborating on a mysterious Move title that features a floating hand getting touchy-feely with statues and trees in a fog-filled forest. The above video shows the hand reverently touching its surroundings, and at the 1:07 mark presents a Move controller in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. NeoGAF's Toppot pointed out the connection to Linger in Shadows developer Plastic, who responded with a teasing affirmative: "We all at Plastic admire the speed and style of NeoGAF member Toppot, who managed to combine the hints and classify us as a developer of next Santa Monica Studio production." The developer hinted that it was "planting the seeds now" for the title, and "encouraged" fans to discover it.
3D-printed plane takes to the skies, sounds like a Black & Decker (video)
You know what's pleasing about this plastic drone, aside from the fact it flies? It took just a week to design and build from scratch, thanks to the labor-saving wonders of 3D printing. Each component was formed in ultra-thin layers by a laser beam trained on a bed of raw material -- either plastic, steel or titanium powder depending on the required part. If designers at the University of Southampton wanted to experiment with elliptical wings, they simply printed them out. If they thought a particular brand of WWII nose cone might reduce drag, they pressed Ctrl-P. And if they reckoned they could invent a wingless flying steamroller... Er, too late. Anyway, as the video after the break reveals, there's never been a better time for the work-shy to become aeronautical engineers.
Card.io SDK takes swipe at competition with camera-enabled mobile payments (video)
In an attempt to edge its way into the crowded mobile payments market, a new credit card scanning system is saying "ah, hell no!" to typing and swiping. Card.io is billed as an SDK that takes advantage of smartphone cameras to let devs accept credit, because, as its creators point out, "typing on mobile phones is slow, and most consumers don't have a separate hardware attachment." When it's time to pull out the plastic, Card.io gets your phone's camera going, and up pops a little green rectangle, in which you frame your card and snap a pic. Your credit card info is then processed by a third-party merchant, and the details are subsequently deleted from your phone. Can you hear that? That's the sound of our chubby thumbs breathing a sigh of relief. The Card.io SDK for iOS is now available at the source link below, and an Android version should be close behind. For now, hop on past the break for a video demo.
NetSecure Kudos Payments announced for Canada, is the half-circle to Square
Canada may be moving to polymer-based currency, but mobile payment services like Square -- which cater to classic plastic -- haven't yet taken time to trek to the Great White North. NetSecure is looking to offer similar convenience to the region with its new Kudos Payments service, which just so happens to ship with a shockingly curvy swiping dongle. Similar to Square, it creates a secure 'point of sale' without a hard-wired transaction terminal, and charges a slightly higher 2.9-percent fee to users' accounts for each exchange. Kudos has iOS, Android, and Blackberry apps to tap into the functionality and, even a version for Mac and PC -- in other words, you and yours should be suitably covered. Any roving entrepreneurs who are interested in the service will be able to snag the $49.99 kit free of charge from the company's website for a "limited time," which may or may not expire before Google decides to open its own Wallet a few miles kilometers north.
HipstaCase iPhone case perfect for Hipstamatic hipsters
The folks behind the Hipstamatic iPhone app are ready to let you take the old-school camera vibe all the way. They've introduced a Hipstamatic iPhone case called (what else?) the HipstaCase, and while it isn't quite as functional as that concept Leica iPhone case we posted the other day (it's purely cosmetic), it will still give your iPhone the feel of an old camera. All right, so it's not quite purely cosmetic -- there is a tripod mount that attaches on the bottom, and there's a nylon wrist lanyard as well. But essentially, it's a piece of plastic that makes the back of your iPhone look like one of those cameras you carried around however many years ago. The Hipstacase is available right now for US $39.95. [via Gizmodo]
Paper alloy takes shape for biodegradable consumer electronics (write your own origami joke)
So you're anxiously awaiting your biodegradable car and your biodegradable 3D glasses, waiting for the day when everything you own can return to the loam from which it sprang. But, what about the computer you're using this very moment? It's probably made of non-green materials like injection-molded plastic, and slapping some bamboo on it isn't fooling anyone. Design and engineering firm PEGA comes to your rescue with a new composite material made of recycled paper and polypropylene alloy. Lightweight, durable, and inexpensive to produce, it acts just like typical ABS plastic -- and it even comes in the classic soul-killing beige. Maybe this is what Apple's been waiting for.
Canada to introduce recyclable, polymer-based 'plastic cash,' dragons and PC users rejoice
See that guy right there? His world is ending. Dragons are swallowing his neighbors, snatching his peoples up. Rather than make an effort to hide his kids, hide his wife or hide his husband (too), he's celebrating uncontrollably. Why? Because his homeland is preparing to make the shift to plastic cash. You heard right -- Canada is scheduled to introduce a polymer-based $100 bill in November, and in March of 2012, a recyclable $50 bill will follow. From there, smaller notes will be phased in over the next dozen months or so, providing citizens with legal tender that holds up better to Yellowknife's winters. Sure, Australia has been doing something similar for over a decade, but have you ever seen a DinoPark Tycoon rise up and use only non-digestible money? Exactly.
Plastic Logic receives massive $700 million Russian investment
Who can forget the Plastic Logic Que proReader -- a textbook study on the vaporous gadget. Start with an incredible (but truthful) claim to have developed plastic semiconductors that could be used to fabricate flexible e-reader displays. Then follow up the breakthrough with the all-important consumer tease: an amazing (for the time) 8.5 x 11-inch e-reader with a gesture-based UI that would launch in the first half of 2009. Unfortunately, the Que never shipped and was ultimately canceled, partly because of reliability issues associated with manufacturing those early Que displays and partly because of the launch of a rather disruptive Apple tablet you might have read about. Fast forward to today and we've got the state-owned Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies (Rusnano) announcing a $700 million investment in the US-based Plastic Logic Inc. Why? Are you listening? Plastics. Here's how this "unprecedented" investment was described by Georgy Kolpachev, Rusnano's managing director: "Flexible plastic electronic displays will provide another major milestone in how people process information. Entering this new disruptive segment at the stage of its inception gives Russia a chance to win a leading position in global market of future electronics." The investment will be used to pay off Plastic Logic's debt including a $50 million loan the company took out after approaching financial collapse. The rest will be used for a second plastic electronics factory in Russia (a sister to the Dresden Germany plant) which is expected to start production in 2013 or 2014. Update: Press release added after the break offering more details on the "world's largest commercial plastic electronics factory" that will be capable of producing hundreds of thousands of "next-generation plastic electronics displays" per month.
Bluelounge's Nest iPad stand on display at CES 2011
One of the first things we did on the show floor here at CES today was stop by the Bluelounge booth. The company was showing off its latest product, called the Nest, an iPad stand due to sell for US$14.95 when it arrives in stores later on this year. There are plenty of iPad stands here at CES (and you'll hear about more of them this week), but the Nest's difference is that it doesn't even look like an iPad stand -- it looks more like a little dish with a rubber grip around the outside lip. If you lay your iPad across the top, it will hold in place either horizontally or vertically, or there's also a little tray that pulled out of the back that will hold up the device at a sharper angle. Since it's just a molded piece of plastic, there's not a lot of customization -- you can't really adjust the angle of the display even if you want to. But the tray still looks good even when your iPad is away, and you can keep keys, coins or anything else in there, so it provides a little functionality rather than just taking up space when you're not using the stand. The price is right, too -- you can buy nicer stands for more money, but for $15, the Nest seems like a good option. I asked Bluelounge what the reasoning was behind releasing an iPad stand, and they said that they'd seen "a noticeable increase" in sales of their Cool Feet laptop stand as the iPad came out last year, not to mention that everyone around their design offices was using iPads anyway. The Nest does a fine job of holding the iPad up with a clean and simple design.
Flickr Find: Juno's Hamburger iPhone
It's been a couple of years now, but remember the hit movie Juno, and the main character's hamburger-styled telephone? That phone made a splash with fans of kitschy art, and Flickr user Karen apparently decided to take the idea and run with it on her 3G iPhone. She's posted a nice gallery of pictures on how to give her iPhone a hamburger-style case, building out foam and plastic molds around a DVD flipcase. In the end, the prop looks pretty excellent, even if it doesn't quite work exactly the same as the phone in the movie does. But it's a cool project nonetheless. And the graphic on the iPhone is pretty funny, too.
iPhone 4 case turns your iPhone into an audio tape
I just went through the case program for my brand new iPhone 4, but I'm still poking around to see if there's one worth buying that I might also pick up in addition to the free one. Like, for example, this awesome audio cassette case from a company called Fred and Friends. It looks like an old plastic audiocassette, but it's actually made of silicone, and it even comes with a little tape box (oh man, I had so many of those back in the day) that flips around into a video stand. Very, very cool. It's not available yet, but the case is supposed to ship in October for US$20. Yes, if you have an iPhone 4, you've already got a free case from Apple, but man, something this cool might just be worth the extra money anyway. [via Unpluggd]
NEC builds a better bioplastic from plant stems and cashew nut shells
We've already seen cellphones made from corn and bioplastics used in other products, but NEC has now come up with what it says is an even better solution: a first-of-its-kind bioplastic that's based on non-edible plant resources. That's as opposed to bioplastics based on things like corn, which are better for the environment than traditional plastics but don't necessarily represent the best use of food. What's more, NEC's new bioplastic also boasts a high plant component ratio of more than 70% -- derived from plant stems and cashew nut shells -- and it's said to boast a high durability that makes it especially well suited to electronics. As you might expect, however, it's not quite ready to be used for electronics just yet, but it's not all that far off either -- NEC says it expects to put it into production for use in a "wide range of electronic equipment" within the 2013 fiscal year. Full press release is after the break.
Please don't really turn your TV into an iPad
We've posted a lot of wacky Apple-related products here on the site, but I think this is the wackiest I've ever seen. A Russian firm is reportedly selling a series of plastic decals that will make any flatscreen television of a certain size into something that looks like an iPad. Oh, you say, that's cute. What does it do -- maybe adds a little bit of chrome around the edges? No, this goes further -- it literally makes your television look like an iPad, complete with a Home button & black bar around the outside, and iTunes controls in the middle of the screen. That's right, the same controls that actually fade out of sight on the iPad because they're in the way can be on your TV screen for a small price. We don't know what that price is, but honestly just the fact that these exist is strange enough. I like the iPad and all, but the screen size and onscreen controls are limits of the device, not features that you want to artificially impose on other screens. Update: According to text on the website, this was an April Fool's joke done by Russian design group DarkDesignGroup. Consider us fooled. At least our faith in Russian designers is restored! [via Gearfuse]
Plastic Logic up for sale even though its QUE proReader isn't? (Updated: Investor confirms neither are for sale)
While you can't buy a QUE proReader until summer it seems that you can buy the company. Well, maybe not you but someone with a few hundred million in the bank. At least that's the way the Financial Times is framing a piece focused on UK investor Hermann Hauser, whose venture capital firm has a stake in Plastic Logic. According to Hauser, "We're in very interesting negotiations with ... well, that would be a separate interview, you will hopefully hear [more] about this in the autumn." Why would anybody want to buy this offshoot from the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory? After all, dedicated monochrome E-Ink devices are on their last legs, right? Chips made from plastic, not silicon, that's why -- intellectual property that could revolutionize integrated circuits and the entire computing industry. For the moment, however, Plastic Logic is only manufacturing the simple plastic transistors found inside its QUE proReader display that switch each pixel on or off -- a far cry from PCBs loaded with plastic integrated circuits. And as the FT acknowledges, any potential buyer might end up with an e-reader company and nothing more. Not exactly where you want to be at the dawn of the second coming of tablet computers. Updated: We heard from Plastic Logic investor Hermann Hauser who firmly says the company is not for sale. Apparently his comments were taken out of context. That still doesn't answer our question of when we will be able to get our hands on a QUE proReader. [Thanks, Charlie]
Wii Fit push up bars make sense, but this one isn't worth dollars
Push-up bars for the Wii Balance Board? Now that sounds like a fantastic idea -- just the thing broad-shouldered individuals need to play Wii Fit without backstrain. Too bad this particular set of bars isn't worth the plastic it's printed from. The latest and greatest from the minds in the chintzy plastic peripheral industry, the $25 CTA Digital Wii Push Up Bar is held in place by only your weight and a few foam strips without reinforcement of any kind, meaning it could detach itself with any significant exertion. The only good that comes out of all this is an embarrassing video demonstration after the break, which features a pair of smiling humans pretending to have fun with the contraption. QVC, eat your heart out.
Caltech gurus whip up highly efficient, low cost flexible solar cell
Solar cells are cute and all, but let's be real -- these things are far too inefficient for mainstream use. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology are working hard to remedy that very issue, and they've recently concocted a "new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons." The solution relies on arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded onto a polymer substrate, which uses just a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials required by conventional solar cells. According to professor Harry Atwater, these cells have "surpassed the conventional light-trapping limit for absorbing materials" for the first time, and we're told that the arrays can convert between 90 and 100 percent of the photons they absorb into electrons, and yes, that does mean that they have a near-perfect internal quantum efficiency. Hit the source link for all the technobabble, and cross your fingers for this stuff to get the honored approval of the Governator.
