3D Printed Cookies

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Happy Birthday to the Transistor

Dylan Leckie ... Celebrating The Transistor and Disruptive Naval Research

On Dec. 16, 1947, while most Americans were preparing for the Christmas holiday, three physicists were locked in their laboratory, hunched over a work bench, constructing a peculiar gadget that would forever change the world. The transistor — the Bell Laboratories invention built by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley — would become ubiquitous in the future world.

Since its invention those many years ago, investments made by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) have extended and improved the transistor technology developed by Bell Labs. This month, which marks the 65th anniversary of the first transistor, ONR officials remember the invention and are reflecting upon the organization’s contributions to the evolution of the transistor — a technology regarded by many as the most significant scientific development of the 20th century.

Photo by Bob Jagendorf - http://flic.kr/p/buiT3W

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Chocolate That Won't Melt

From Leslie Horn … Cadbury Chocolate Will Literally Melt In Your Mouth, Not in Your Hand:

The bright minds in Cadbury's R&D department have done something amazing—they've created chocolate that won't melt.

WiFox - A New Protocol to Boost WiFi Performance

By a whopping 700%! From Matt Brian … The end of slow public WiFi? Researchers develop new protocol that boosts WiFi performance by 700%:

Conferences, airports, cafes – they might offer free WiFi to visitors, but they are often sluggish in their operation because everyone else is hogging the connection.

This issue might become a thing of the past, after a team of engineers at NC State University (NCSU) announced the development of WiFox (via ExtremeTech), a new software protocol that could theoretically be added to existing Internet routers and is capable of boosting WiFi performance by 700 percent.

Traditionally, routers offer a single channel of data to users. When the access point receives an increased number of data requests, it becomes harder for it to send back the data it has requested. The access point could be programmed to give all pieces of data a high priority to clear its backlog, but then users have issues submitting new requests.

Data backs up, and the router has issues dishing out the necessary information to users. You may have experienced this when you turn up early to a conference, enjoy the public WiFi connection, and then get kicked off when the venue starts to fill up and you have to share it with everyone else.

NCSU engineers position WiFox as the software equivalent of a traffic policeman, ensuring that the data traffic moves smoothly in both directions. WiFox works by monitoring the traffic on a WiFi channel, intelligently detecting load issues and granting access to priority data when it detects a backlog of information passing backwards and forwards.

The team says that when they tested the software on a router in their labs capable of handling 45 users, it saw improvements of between 400 and 700 percent when it reached the maximum number of users.

Deploying a 3D Printer in Battle

Interesting idea – just-in-time-printing … US army builds its own 3D printer:

By putting 3D printers behind the front line it hopes to be able to produce spares more cheaply and quickly than it can get them from manufacturers.

The army embarked on the project to produce its own printer as commercial devices were too expensive.

Early versions of the printer cost $695 (£436) compared to $3,000 (£1,880) for a commercial model.

The 3D printer has been developed by the Future Warfare centre at the US Army's Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) in Alabama.

Saving Water One Flush at a Time

Saw one of these today!
From Wikipedia ...

Dual flush toilets handle solid and liquid waste differently from standard American style toilets, giving the user a choice of flushes. It's an interactive toilet design that helps conserve water that has caught on quickly in countries where water is in short supply

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Bookbot – The Automated Library

From Jay Price … Bookbot: Books flowing into new NCSU library's robotic stacks:

One of four automated book delivery system bookBots moves down a 50-foot high, 125-foot long corridor fetching items requested through a virtual browse interface at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library at N.C. State's Centennial Campus in Raleigh on Friday, October 5, 2012. Over 2 million barcoded items are sorted by size and stored in barcoded bins where they can be retrieved through a robotic delivery system.

...

Each of the four robots has two work stations where its human co-workers can pull books from the bins and put others back in for reshelving.

It takes no more than 60 seconds for one of the robots to retrieve a bin from anywhere in the system, and after the library opens, the goal will be to have a book pulled and placed at one of the designated pickup areas within five minutes

The Implications of Microcredentials

Fascinating stuff from Salman Khan … My View: The future of credentials:

Let’s try a simple thought experiment: What if we were to separate the teaching and credentialing roles of universities? What would happen if regardless of where (or whether) you went to college, you could take rigorous, internationally recognized assessments that measured your understanding and proficiency in various fields – anything from art history to software engineering.

With our hypothetical assessments - microcredentials, if you will - people could prove that they know just as much in a specific domain as those with an exclusive diploma. Even more, they wouldn’t have had to go into debt and attend university to prove it. They could prepare through textbooks, the Khan Academy or life experience. Because even name-brand diplomas give employers limited information, it would be a way for elite college graduates to differentiate themselves from their peers, to show that they have retained deep, useful knowledge.

In short, it would make the credential that most students and parents need cheaper (since it is an assessment that is not predicated on seat time in lecture halls) and more powerful - it would tell employers who is best ready to contribute at their organizations based on metrics that they find important. College would become optional even for students pursuing prestigious and selective career tracks.

Think about the implications.

Replacement Ear Grown on an Arm

Wow!

From Cory Doctorow … Replacement ear grown on an arm - Boing Boing:

A woman whose exterior ear was removed during her fight with cancer has grown a replacement ear made from starter-tissue harvested from her rib, which was cultured and scaffolded on her arm. Once the ear was ripe, it was removed from her arm and affixed to the side of her head.

Tear-Off Cardboard USB Flash-Drives

From Cory Doctorow … Tear-off cardboard USB flash-drives - Boing Boing:

Here's a cute concept-design for tear-off, disposable flash-drives from Art Lebedev

The Supercomputer Makes a Comeback

From Adrian Covert … The Supercomputer That Houses an Entire Universe:

Over a span of two weeks in October, the Mira supercomputer will crank away nonstop, processing quadrillions of operations every second—something that few other machines are currently capable of. It will simultaneously track trillions of particles as they move, expand, and react to each other according to the laws of physics. This simulation will have to use everything mankind has learned about the movement of objects. If successful, it will not only confirm what we've suspected, but will also give us a deeper understanding of how the cosmos came to be. Mira, in short, is simulating the history of our universe.

A Jacket That's a Faraday Cage

Very cool geek-wear.

Jamie Condliffe … This Jacket's Faraday Cage Conveniently Silences Your Phone:

Switching your phone off for important meetings or trips to the cinema can be a pain in the ass. Victor Johansson has a solution, though: he's designed the Escape Jacket, which features a Faraday cage in the inside pocket to immediately take your phone off the grid.

GPS Shoes – Never Get Lost Again

I need these to find my car after work! From Eric Limer … You'd Never Get Lost With a Pair of These GPS Shoes:

Commissioned by the Global Footprint project in Northamptonshire, these functional prototypes have a GPS device implanted in the heel with an antenna pointing out the back, and two sets of directional LEDs in the toes. The circular LED display points in the appropriate direction, and the straight one indicates distance. And how do you turn them on? You click your heels, duh.

Before use, all you have to do is upload your destination—stereotypical "home" or otherwise— to the shoes using a map program and you're good to go.

Google and Khan Academy Team Up

From Harrison Weber … Google and Khan Academy Launch YouTube Contest:

Google has just announced that it is teaming up with Khan Academy for a new competition to find the next generation of “educational YouTube stars.” This news comes as interest in new forms of digitally-powered education rises, with services like edX, P2PU, Skillshare, Codecademy and Coursera growing rapidly.

Google and Khan Academy are looking for what they call the Next EDU Gurus: “10 super talented and engaging content creators” which Google and Khan Academy will support through training, promotion and a $1,000 B&H gift card for production equipment. And although the $1k isn’t that hefty a prize, the training and promotion that winners will receive makes it look like it’s definitely worth the effort.

Writing in Real-Time

… and letting the world watch. An interesting experiment. From Jamie Condliffe – Watch an Author Write a Novel Live on Google Docs:

Fantasy author Silvia Hartmann is doing something rather brave: just this morning she started writing her new novel on Google Docs, and is letting the world watch over her shoulder.

She's already roughed out eight chapters ofThe Dragon Lords—which is impressive given she only started at 9am BST. It's perhaps not yet literary gold, but there's something mesmerizing about watching her type in real time.

Jamie Condliffe

The $9 Cardboard Bicycle

Amazing!

From Jason Kottke …The $9 cardboard bicycle:

Izhar Gafni has designed a bike that weighs 20 pounds, costs between $9-12 to build, can hold up to a 485 pound person, and it made out of cardboard.

Flexible Cable Batteries

From Jon Fingas … LG Chem develops very flexible cable batteries, may leave mobile devices tied up in knots:

LG Chem has developed a flexible lithium-ion battery that's not just better-suited to our bigger gadgets but could out-do previous bendable energy packs. Researchers found that coating copper wires with nickel-tin and coiling them briefly around a rod results in a hollow anode that behaves like a very strong spring; mating that anode with a lithium-ion cell leads to a battery that works even when it's twisted up in knots. Join multiple packs together, and devices could have lithium-ion batteries that fit many shapes without compromising on their maximum deliverable power.

App-Controlled Bluetooth Bulb

Sadly, just a prototype right now, but this would be very cool!


From James Trew … Bluetooth Bulb lets you switch on, time, dim and color your lighting from your phone:

The Bluetooth Bulb lets you pair your phone with one or more of the lights in your home, and then control them via an app. Switch them on, off, change brightness, set a timer, and a special RGB bulb even lets you change the color ambiance. If you're worried about the cost and waste when these things burn out, fear not, as apparently every part is replaceable -- and as there's no home automation system involved -- you won't need anything else to get set up.

Advances in Battery Technology

Amazing!


From Sebastian Anthony … Scientists develop lithium-ion battery that charges 120 times faster than normal:

A group of Korean scientists, working at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), have developed a fast-charge lithium-ion battery that can be recharged 30 to 120 times faster than conventional li-ion batteries. The team believes it can build a battery pack for electric vehicles that can be fully charged in less than a minute.

MIT Launches STEM-Based Reality Show

Clever! Who would have thought to use reality TV to promote STEM education.

From Audrey Watters … Online Video Meets STEM Education, with MIT's New Reality TV Series:

MIT is unveiling the trailer today for a new reality TV series (of sorts) – ChemLab Boot Camp – that follows 14 freshmen through its 5.301 Introductory Lab Techniques course. The four-week-long class is offered in January as part of the Chemistry major. The stakes with 5.301 are high – students who pass the class are guaranteed a job in a research lab at the university.

As such, the new show could be seen as an infomercial for the MIT campus experience. And as the project was underwritten by the Dow Chemical Company, it’s certainly good promotional material for that company and, more generally, the MIT chemistry major. But the reality TV show is also a commercial of sorts for hands-on learning and for the joys and frustrations of working in a research lab.