Spinnaker
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Edifier's Spinnaker Bluetooth speaker system promises not to hurt you, sells for $350
Despite what you might be thinking, what you're seeing above isn't a pair of sleek and very polished viking horns -- instead, you're gawking at an eccentric set of Bluetooth speakers. Adequately dubbed "Spinnaker," the rig measures in at a whopping 16.5 inches in height, and Edifier says the uncommon figure is specifically designed to "project sound toward the listener with front facing tweeters and mid-range drivers." The Spinnaker's compatible with nearly every Bluetooth-equipped (2.1+ EDR) device you may have laying around, but you'll have to shell out a mighty $350 if you're planning on adding these beasts to your sound setup. In any case, Edifier's got 'em up for grabs now on its website, where you'll also find the rest of the audio spec sheet along with some additional press shots.
British researchers design a million-chip neural network 1/100 as complex as your brain
If you want some idea of the complexity of the human brain, consider this: a group of British universities plans to link as many as a million ARM processors in order to simulate just a small fraction of it. The resulting model, called SpiNNaker (Spiking Neural Network architecture), will represent less than one percent of a human's gray matter, which contains 100 billion neurons. (Take that, mice brains!) Yet even this small scale representation, researchers believe, will yield insight into how the brain functions, perhaps enabling new treatments for cognitive disorders, similar to previous models that increased our understanding of schizophrenia. As these neural networks increase in complexity, they come closer to mimicking human brains -- perhaps even developing the ability to make their own Skynet references.
UK scientists testing air-conditioned vests for military use
Air-conditioned vests have certainly graced the bodies of armed men and women before, but an elusive new breed is being tested in the multi-million dollar Spinnaker Building at the University of Portsmouth to ensure that it'll keep soldiers cool from the brutal conditions in Iraq. Scientists at the school weren't at will to disclose all the nitty gritty details about the classified gear, but we do know that these bad boys utilize "a combination of air, liquid, and new applications of old technologies such as converting paraffin wax into liquid in chambers within the vests to absorb heat from the body." The gist of the testing is to create a suit that actually improves one's ability to make sound judgments while in the field and under extreme conditions, and it was also mentioned that a mysterious US defense contractor is hoping to tweak these and have 'em out "within one to two years." Now, if only these things were available en masse for our poor laps, we'd really be in business.[Via Gizmag]
