Amazon, EA, Microsoft, others win ‘Popular Mechanics’ Breakthrough Awards

Popular Mechanics magazine will unveil on Wednesday its Breakthrough Awards, the publication’s annual celebration of the brightest innovators and innovations.

This year’s winners include tech that lets you read books on a thin, digital device, see all around your car as you park, and explore outer space through your imagination.

Logan Ward, a contributing editor at the magazine, said that he and a team of fellow researchers scour the country looking for 30 to 40 candidates that are then winnowed down to the eventual 10 winners. The magazine also identifies 10 individuals for special innovator, leadership, and future-looking awards.

To identify the potential candidates, Ward and his team contact most of the country’s research institutions, including universities, engineering organizations, robotics labs, government labs.

“The thing that’s most important in looking at all these tech advances,” said Ward, “is what is its impact…So when we evaluate innovations, we really look at how it’s going to change people’s lives for the better.

Of course, given that Ward’s efforts take him through a wide variety of science- and technology-related fields, he has had to develop competencies in an equally wide spectrum of disciplines.

“I think I’m a very good generalist and a pretty good journalist,” Ward said of the challenge of having to understand so many different kinds of science and technology. “I bring my curiosity to the table. I ask a lot of questions…And I’m honest about my limitations. If something comes across my desk and I don’t understand it, I’ll reserve judgment about it until I do.”

All in all, though, Ward’s journey through the best innovations of each year leaves him “with a sense of awe at how technology really can improve our lives.”

Photosynth, from Microsoft, is a software application that creates 3D models by analyzing a series of individual photographs. The resulting model is browsable.

(Credit: Popular Mechanics)

This year’s awards go to these 10 products:

• The M-Spector Digital Inspection Camera, from Milwaukee Tools. This device is designed to give people trying to do home repairs a way to see behind walls without cutting holes first. It features a 17-mm-wide 2x zoom lens and a 2.5-inch LCD. It costs $259.

• Spore, from Electronic Arts. The long-awaited evolution game from famous designer Will Wright tasks players with evolving from single-cell muck to outer space, with stops along the way as individual creatures, small tribes and city-size civilizations.

• The Livescribe Pulse Smartpen. This pen-size device allows its owner to take notes on special paper while simultaneously recording audio. Later, by tapping on a specific section of notes on the paper, users can get a playback of that section of audio. It can also perform simple language translation as well as other functions.

• Potenco’s PCG1 power generator. This user-driven device allows anyone to power up small devices like mobile phones with their hands. Pulling on the unit’s cord for two minutes provides 40 minutes of power-up.

• Intel’s Atom processor. Microprocessor powerhouse Intel has built a low-power chip designed to give high-performance capabilities to mobile devices and light laptop computers.

• The Craftsman Nextec Multi-saw. The well-known toolmaker is giving buyers a combination jigsaw and reciprocating saw. It is powered by a 12-volt lithium-ion battery that can drive the unit to cut in a variety of places difficult to reach by any single tool.

• Microsoft’s Photosyth. This free software from Microsoft allows people to create a browsable 3D model based on a series of related photographs. The software stitches the pictures together, creating the model based on overlapping elements of the images.

• Amazon.com’s Kindle. An e-book reader from the famous online bookseller, the Kindle allows people to read books, newspapers, and other documents on a thin, light digital device. It has been panned by some, while others have written rapturously about it. Either way, it is sparking innovation in e-readers.

• The Around View monitor from Nissan’s Infiniti division is designed to give drivers a 360-degree view around their cars while parking and backing up. The system features a series of ultra-wide-angle high-resolution cameras that produced images that are aggregated to give the driver a top view of the car and the area around it. It is hoped that the monitor will save lives, especially those of children, who are difficult to see from inside a car, especially when they are behind a vehicle while a driver is backing up.

• The Caroma Profile dual flush toilet. This system pipes gray water from a bathroom’s sink into the toilet’s tank, cutting down on water wastage.

In addition to selecting products, Popular Mechanics is honoring people as well.

Amy Smith won the Breakthrough Leadership Award. Smith, a senior lecturer at MIT, was cited by the magazine for research into water purification and both boosting the quality of medical care and reducing daily work burdens of rural women. Popular Mechanics said, “she is leading a movement to tackle complex problems with simple technology.”

Rudy Roy, Ben Sexon, Daniel Oliver, and Charles Pyott are the co-winners of the Next Generation award. Recent graduates of Caltech and the Art Center College of Design, the four have made names for themselves with a technique that makes wheelchairs for residents of developing countries out of inexpensive bicycles. One major benefit of their innovation is that the wheelchairs can be repaired in any bike shop, unlike normal chairs.

The Livescribe Pulse Smartpen records audio as a user takes notes on special paper. This allows the user to later tap on a particular point in his or her notes and hear an instant playback of that section of the recording.

(Credit: Popular Mechanics)

And for Ward, what is the most rewarding part of the annual project?

“A combination of talking to all of these really incredible people,” he said. “People who are at the top of their game, but people who also care about others, people who are trying to solve some of these problems we read about in the headlines. So I always get a sense of hope at the end of this project. You know, there are people out there making a difference.”

Source: Cnet

The Big Picture gets up close and personal with the Sun

What geek doesn’t enjoy some great high-res astronomy pics? One of the best photography blogs out there, The Big Picture, has 21 stunning Sun photos up for your enjoyment. Dial-up users be warned; click the link and run to the store ’cause these massive pics are going to take some time to load. Here’s the High-Resolution Picture

Study Links Personal Music Players To Hearing Loss!!!!

by CmdrTaco

A recent NY Times article discusses links between personal music players and hearing loss. This is not anything new, as personally I had received hearing loss from listening to my Sony Walkman cassette player many years ago. However given the widespread use of the personal music players, I see people with earbuds in everywhere, is there a technical solution to the potential danger?”

Nokia confirms N-series touchscreen phone

Nokia has sprung something of a, well, obvious statement by announcing that it will be bringing an N-series branded touchscreen phone in the coming months.

Devinder Kishore, director marketing, Nokia India, said: “We will have lot of touchscreen phones coming up,including an N-series device very soon.”

Speculation about what the device might be has led to the inevitable belief the new phone will be the N97, with an 8MP camera truly making it the flagship device to bring Nokia into the touchscreen fight.

Losing appeal

But it’s more likely that Nokia will look around the N85 mark, not wanting to cannibalise the N96 handset’s appeal after releasing it so recently.

Word is the new handset will be launched in the latter part of Q4 2008, but given the delay on the 5800 XpressMusic until 2009 in developed markets, don’t be surprised if nobody has heard anything by February.

Source: Techradar

Helium leak forces LHC to shut down for two months

Geneva (Switzerland) – CERN reported the second major hiccup in getting its Large Hadron Collider(LHC) up to speed. A “large” helium leak, likely caused by a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, was detected on Friday. The repairs require the LHC to warm up, which means that the entire system will be offline for at least two months.

The startup of the LHC isn’t going as smoothly as initially predicted. CERN said that and “incident” occurred in LHC’s final sector (34) at mid-day on Friday, causing helium to leak into the tunnel. The organizations aid that the leak was likely caused by “a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, which probably melted at high current leading to mechanical failure.”

To repair the connection, the magnets will have to warmed up from their superconducting temperature of -450 degrees Fahrenheit (-268.5 degrees Celsius or 4.5 Kelvin). Warming up, repairing the error and cooling the system back down will take at least two months, CERN said. In a normally conducting system, the error could be repaired within a few days, according to CERN officials.

Liquid helium is used as a primary layer of cooling to create superconducting magnets. A failing cooling mechanism, which includes helium leaks, will result in magnets losing their superconducting ability and will result in an off-track particle beam that is likely to hit the beam pipe. Such an event, described as “quench”, can cause substantial damage: A particle beam travelling at just below the speed of light and carrying an energy level of 5 tera-electron-volt would be strong enough to burn through several feet of steel in a matter of a few nanoseconds.

Last Thursday, a 30-ton transformer used to power cooling stations for portions of the Large Hadron Collider’s (LHC) gigantic superconducting magnets failed. On Friday, CERN said that the transformer had been replaced and testing resumed on Friday. Several hundred extremely large transformers are used to convert some of the incoming 45 Megawatts of power down to voltages that can be used by the LHC equipment.

Source: Cnet

Virginia Supreme Court: Spam is fine!

The Virginia Supreme Court has decided that the state’s anti-spam law is unconstitutional and freed a man once considered one of the world’s most prolific spammers. The court unanimously agreed that the law violates free speech because it does not just restrict commercial e-mails it blocks all unsolicited messages too. Other states have anti-spam laws but those laws apply only to commercial e-mail. Justice G. Steven Agee said that the Virginia law was silly because prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails, including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment.

He pointed out that the famous Federalist Papers urging ratification of the Constitution would be labelled Spam under this law if they had been sent as email. The writers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay would have gone to jail as spammers, rather than the French-backed terrorists against the lawful government, that they were. The move means that Jeremy Jaynes, the first person in the U.S. to be convicted of sending spam, will be freed from the charge. He sent up to 10 million e-mails a day from his home in Raleigh. In 2004, Jaynes was sentenced to nine years in the Clink. Fortunately for those who don’t like spam he remains inside jail because he is also serving time in federal prison for a securities fraud conviction. This has nothing to do with spam, where he was just expressing free speech, apparently.

Source: Inquirer

Geneticists Discover a Way to Extend Lifespans to 800 Years

There is now a way to extend the lifespan of organisms so that humans could conceivably live to be 800 years old. In an amazing development, scientists at the University of Southern California have announced that they’ve extended the lifespan of yeast bacteria tenfold — and the recipe they used to do it might easily translate into humans. It involves tinkering with two genes, and cutting down your calorie intake. Tests have already started on people in Ecuador.

According to an announcement from PLoS Genetics:

Researchers have created baker’s yeast capable of living to 800 in yeast years without apparent side effects. The basic but important discovery, achieved through a combination of dietary and genetic changes, brings scientists closer to controlling the survival and health of the unit of all living systems: the cell. “We’re setting the foundation for reprogramming healthy life,” says study leader Valter Longo of the University of Southern California.

Longo’s group put baker’s yeast on a calorie-restricted diet and knocked out two genes – RAS2 and SCH9 – that promote aging in yeast and cancer in humans.

“We got a 10-fold life span extension that is, I think, the longest one that has ever been achieved in any organism,” Longo says. Normal yeast organisms live about a week.

“I would say 10-fold is pretty significant,” says Anna McCormick, chief of the genetics and cell biology branch at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and Longo’s program officer. The NIA funds such research in the hope of extending healthy life span in humans through the development of drugs that mimic the life-prolonging techniques used by Longo and others, McCormick adds.

Baker’s yeast is one of the most studied and best understood organisms at the molecular and genetic level. Remarkably, in light of its simplicity, yeast has led to the discovery of some of the most important genes and pathways regulating aging and disease in mice and other mammals.

Longo’s group next plans to further investigate life span extension in mice. The group is already studying a human population in Ecuador with mutations analogous to those described in yeast.

“People with two copies of the mutations have very small stature and other defects,” Longo says. “We are now identifying the relatives with only one copy of the mutation, who are apparently normal. We hope that they will show a reduced incidence of diseases and an extended life span.”

Longo cautions that, as in the Ecuador case, longevity mutations tend to come with severe growth deficits and other health problems. Finding drugs to extend the human life span without side effects will not be easy.

Source: Google

Big Bang: Scientists finished new atom smasher

Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) started up a huge particle-smashing machine on Wednesday, aiming to re-enact the conditions of the “Big Bang” that created the universe. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest and most complex machine ever made and the platform for what experts say is the largest scientific experiment in human history. Tests conducted inside the tightly-sealed chamber, buried under the Swiss-French border, could unlock the remaining secrets of modern physics and answer questions about the universe and its origins.

The 10 billion Swiss franc ($9 billion) machine’s debut came as a blip on a screen in CERN’s control room, with a particle beam the size of a human hair appearing in the tightly-sealed 27-km (17-mile) circular tunnel. “We’ve got a beam on the LHC,” project leader Lyn Evans told his colleagues, who burst into applause at the news. The several hundred physicists and technicians huddled in the control room later celebrated loudly again when a particle beam completed a trajectory of the accelerator in one direction, a key step a CERN spokeswoman described as “fantastic.” Scientists will next send a beam around the LHC in the other direction to test that the path is clear. Once that is established, it will be possible to send beams in both directions simultaneously to create high-energy collisions at close to the speed of light.

Source: Reuters