Business and Technology

When business, technology and innovation meet, the magic happens. A fresh view on startups, entrepreneurship, and business leadership.

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your brain actually makes decisions while you sleep e idea that during sleep our minds shut down from the outside world is ancient and one that is still deeply anchored in our view of sleep today, despite some everyday life experiences and recent scientific discoveries that would tend to prove that our brains don’t completely switch off from our environment. On the contrary, our brains can keep the gate slightly open. For example, we wake up more easily when we hear our own name or a particularly salient sound such as an alarm clock or a fire alarm compared to equally loud but less relevant sounds. In research published in Current Biology, we went one step further to show that complex stimuli can not only be processed while we sleep but that this information can be used to make decisions, similarly as when we’re awake. Our approach was simple: We built on knowledge about how the brain quickly automates complex chores. Driving a car, for example, requires integrating a lot of information at the same time, making rapid decisions and putting them into action through complex motor sequences. And you can drive all the way home without remembering anything, as we do when we say we’re on “automatic pilot.” When we’re asleep, the brain regions critical for paying attention to or implementing instructions are deactivated, of course, which makes it impossible to start performing a task. But we wanted to see whether any processes continued in the brain after sleep onset if participants in an experiment were given an automatized task just before. To do this, we carried out experiments in which we got participants to categorize spoken words that were separated into two categories: words that referred to animals or objects — for example “cat” or “hat,” in a first experiment; then real words like “hammer” vs. pseudo-words (words that can be pronounced but are found nowhere in the dictionary) like “fabu” in a second one. read more

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*This is a Required Field

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*DARPA Robotics Challenge 8 Tasks + Special Walking*

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Fujitsu Develops Technology That Turns Paper Into a Touchscreen We're quickly getting used to the fact that computer, smartphone and tablet screens are meant to be touched — but what about paper? Fujitsu has developed a technology that detects objects your finger is touching in the real world, effectively turning any surface — a piece of paper, for example — into a touchscreen, DigInfo reports. "This system doesn't use any special hardware; it consists of just a device like an ordinary webcam, plus a commercial projector. Its capabilities are achieved by image processing technology," explains Taichi Murase, a researcher at Fujitsu's Media Service System Lab. In a video presentation (above), we see how one can manipulate data on a piece of paper: by using finger gestures, you can copy an image or a text excerpt and store it into memory. Besides flat surfaces, the technology also works on curved or uneven ones, so one can easily manipulate data from a book. Though the technology is still at the "demonstration level," researchers at Fujitsu plan to develop a commercial version of the system by fiscal 2014. Check out the video above and tell us how'd you use this technology in the comments. Via http://mashable.com/2013/04/16/fujitsu-paper-touchscreen/

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DARPA’s tiny implants will hook directly into your nervous system, treat diseases and depression without medication DARPA, on the back of the US government’s BRAIN program, has begun the development of tiny electronic implants that interface directly with your nervous system and can directly control and regulate many different diseases and chronic conditions, such as arthritis, PTSD, inflammatory bowel diseases (Crohn’s disease), and depression. The program, called ElectRx (pronounced ‘electrics’), ultimately aims to replace medication with “closed-loop” neural implants, which constantly assess the state of your health, and then provide the necessary nerve stimulation to keep your various organs and biological systems functioning properly. The work is primarily being carried out with US soldiers and veterans in mind, but the technology will certainly percolate down to civilians as well. The ElectRx program will focus on a fairly new area of medical therapies called neuromodulation. As the name implies, neuromodulation is all about modulating your nervous system, to improve or fix an underlying problem. Notable examples of neuromodulation are cochlear implants, which restore hearing by directly modulating your brain’s auditory nerve system, and deep brain stimulation (DBS), which appears to be capable of curing/regulating various conditions (depression, Parkinson’s) by overriding erroneous neural spikes with regulated, healthy stimulation. So far, these implants have been fairly big things — about the size of a deck of cards — which makes their implantation fairly invasive (and thus quite risky). Most state-of-the-art implants also lack precision — the stimulating electrodes are usually placed in roughly the right area, but it’s currently very hard to target a specific nerve fiber (a bundle of nerves). With ElectRx, DARPA wants to miniaturize these neuromodulation implants so that they’re the same size as a nerve fiber. This way they can be implanted with a minimally invasive procedure (through a needle) and attached to specific nerve fibers, for very precise stimulation. read more

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The Rawlemon Glass Sphere To Change The Way We Use Solar Energy From solar roadways to revolutionary new power generating solar globes, its clear that the push towards solar generating units and facilities has become all the more prominent in the last few years than ever before. As fossil fuels become a thing of the past, we are looking for cleaner, unlimited, renewable, inexpensive sources of generating energy for cars, houses, boats and just about anything else that will require it. But what makes it so different? Well to answer that question, it would be best to give you an example that everyone can relate to. The glass sphere works like a magnifying glass, so if you at all recall children with magnifying glasses using the sunlight to focus the heat on one small spot, then you have a general idea of how this works and sometimes if the sun was bright and hot enough it could potentially cause fires. As if stands, most (PhotoVoltaic) solar panels currently don’t operate as efficiently as they otherwise could have had they been designed differently, they have limitations, with an average performance of about 15% and without the ability to get the most from the sunlight, mostly due to the inability to track the sun in the sky regardless of which position in the skies it may be in. This bad boy does exactly that, able to capture sunlight from any point in the sky using its own unique little tracking mechanism and a glass sphere to magnify / concentrate that sunlight onto a small solar panel. The sphere sits on a robotic steel frame enabling it to follow the sun and harvest its light from any and all directions. This essentially ups its capabilities by a huge 35% , basically meaning that any ants you decide to maliciously fry with it would turn to dust before long…we think, we wouldn’t recommend trying. Reducing the cell surface to 1% using sophisticated geometry principles and the dual axis tracking system makes this solar harvester tremendously ideal and efficient for getting the most of the sunlight. What’s better is that this Rawlemon innovation is impervious to the nasty effects of those moody weather conditions due to its weather tracking system. Read More

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Rotating Solar Panels to Gain More of the Sun's Rays Solar thermal collector augmented by flat plate booster reflector. Watch video Read more

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NASA’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL) is the space agency's hub for an experiment to assess the potential of quantum computers to perform calculations that are difficult or impossible using conventional supercomputers. NASA’s QuAIL team aims to demonstrate that quantum computing and quantum algorithms may someday dramatically improve the agency’s ability to solve difficult optimization problems for missions in aeronautics, Earth and space sciences, and space exploration. The hope is that quantum computing will vastly improve a wide range of tasks that can lead to new discoveries and technologies, and which may significantly change the way we solve real-world problems. Beginning with the D-Wave Two™ quantum computer, NASA’s QuAIL team is evaluating various quantum computing approaches to help address NASA challenges. Initial work focuses on theoretical and empirical analysis of quantum annealing approaches to difficult optimization problems. Watch video Read more

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MDS Robot with Human Expressions Abilities We are developing a team of 4 small mobile humanoid robots that possess a novel combination of mobility, moderate dexterity, and human-centric communication and interaction abilities. Our collaborators include Xitome Design and UMASS Amherst. We refer to this class of robots as "MDS" for Mobile/Dexterous/Social. Completion is targeted for fall 2007. The purpose of this platform is to support research and education goals in human-robot interaction, teaming, and social learning. In particular, the small footprint of the robot (roughly the size of a 3 year old child) allows multiple robots to operate safely within a typical laboratory floor space. MIT is responsible for the overall design, the mobile manipulator is developed by UMASS Amherst, and system integration is handled by Xitome Design. read more

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Cesium in Water Don't try this at home...

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mosquitoes

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Scientists achieve reliable quantum teleportation for first time Einstein is wrong? That's the potential outcome of a quantum mechanics study as scientists race to disprove his views on entanglement. Albert Einstein once told a friend that quantum mechanics doesn't hold water in his scientific world view because "physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance." That spooky action at a distance is entanglement, a quantum phenomenon in which two particles, separated by any amount of distance, can instantaneously affect one another as if part of a unified system. Now, scientists have successfully hijacked that quantum weirdness -- doing so reliably for the first time -- to produce what many sci-fi fans have long dreamt up: teleportation. No, not beaming humans aboard the USS Enterprise, but the teleportation of data. Physicists at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, part of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, report that they sent quantum data concerning the spin state of an electron to another electron about 10 feet away. Quantum teleportation has been recorded in the past, but the results in this study have an unprecedented replication rate of 100 percent at the current distance, the team said. Thanks to the strange properties of entanglement, this allows for that data -- only quantum data, not classical information like messages or even simple bits -- to be teleported seemingly faster than the speed of light. The news was reported first by The New York Times on Thursday, following the publication of a paper in the journal Science. read more

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The ultimate 1,000 mph jet and rocket powered car BLOODHOUND SSC is a unique, high-technology project to design and build a car that will break the 1,000mph barrier and set a new world land speed record. Designed and constructed in the UK, BLOODHOUND SSC includes components and sponsorship from international companies and will make its record attempt in South Africa.

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How to Make a Solar Usb Charger from Old garden Lights With that charger you can charge every device that uses the usb port to charge like : (mp3 player, iphone,psp's etc.) my solar charger i put some led's to be able to use it as a torch). Step 1: What you will neeed 1) two solar panels from garden lights 2) 4AA rechargable baterys 3) 4AA baterry holder 4) one female usb connector 5) a small button 6) a case 7) some wires 8) three 3.6v led's 9) two 1n5817 blocking diodes 10) one dpdy 6 pin push switch 11) one 150 ohm resistor Step 2: Taking the solar garden lights apart Open the solar light and take the solar panel out of the light. there is a small circuit where you can take the two diodes and also some leds battery that come with the light will be about 800mha. we don'd need that low capacity.The capacity that we need from each baterry has to be about 2000mha). Read more

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Energy Production in Space Whether they're producing voltage directly from solar rays or focusing them to melt salt like Ivanpah, even Earth's biggest and baddest solar power plants are hamstrung by all this damnable atmosphere getting in the way. But a new kind of off-world solar energy plant could soon provide the whole planet with plenty of power—we just have to finish figuring out how to build and operate it. What It Will Take to Farm Sunlight from Space With the advent of silicon-based photovoltaic solar panels—the kind that directly convert solar energy to electrical current—some 60 years ago, researchers immediately looked to the skies as the ideal place to collect solar energy. Up there, you don't have miles and miles of atmosphere and clouds absorbing, scattering, or blocking out the sun's incoming rays. That means photovoltaic panels should, conceivably, be able to operate at (or very near) their theoretical efficiency limits. Plus, if you position a solar power satellite (SPS) properly over the equator, it will only reside in the Earth's shadow for a few hours every year and thereby provide nearly non-stop energy. The idea of space-based solar power (SBSP) was formalized in the seminal 1968 report, Power from the Sun: Its Future, by American aerospace engineer Peter Glaser. The paper set forth a conceptual system for collecting unhampered solar energy from massive extra-atmospheric arrays of photovoltaic cells set in geosynchronous orbit above the equator, and transmitting it wirelessly back to Earth where it would be used by terrestrial power grids. In theory, with enough orbiting "solar farms," the energy needs of not just the U.S. but the entire world could be met. In his paper, Glaser argued that while building, launching, and operating such a power plant was currently beyond the reach of scientific knowledge at the time, those technological advances would be within our grasp in the coming years and decades. So, are we any closer to freeing the entire world from its energy woes with orbiting solar farms than we were at the start of the Space Age? Sure, but we've still got some work to do before that actually happens. Specifically, there are a number aspects that we need to iron out before something like this actually comes to fruition. read more

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GABRIELE DIAMANTI HOPES TO SEE LOCAL CRAFTSMEN ALL OVER THE WORLD ADAPT HIS DESIGN. “Projects ‘for the 90%’ mostly fall somewhere between two extremes: charity and business,” designer Gabriele Diamanti tells Co.Design. “Neither was my inspiration!” Instead, spurred on by his own extensive travel and friends’ involvement in NGOs, he developed a fascination with global water scarcity as a graduate student at Milan Polytechnic in 2005; he recently decided to pursue his interest again and the result is Eliodomestico, an open-source variation on a solar still. It functions by filling the black boiler with salty sea water in the morning, then tightening the cap. As the temperature and pressure grows, steam is forced downwards through a connection pipe and collects in the lid, which acts as a condenser, turning the steam into fresh water. Once Diamanti established the fundamentals were sound, he experimented with a series of concepts for the aesthetic of the object. “My goal was to design something friendly and recognizable for the users,” he explains. “The process developed quite naturally to determine the current shape; every detail is there for a reason, so the form, as well as production techniques, represent a compromise between technical and traditional.” Primary field studies in sub-Saharan Africa revealed the habit of carrying goods on the head--also a common practice in other areas around the world--and this was integrated into Eliodomestico’s plan. And while solar stills aren’t a totally new concept, Diamanti says it’s rare to find them in a domestic context rather than in missions or hospitals, or as large plants overseen by qualified personnel that serve entire communities. “I tried to make something for a real household that could be operated directly by the families,” he says. The project recently won a Core77 Design Award for Social Impact; already, Diamanti has received international feedback, and hopes to see locals adapt and modify the design to take advantage of their own readily available materials and native environments. “The idea is that instructions for the project can be delivered to craftsmen” with the help of NGOs, he says, then a micro-credit program could be established to finance small-scale start-ups specializing in production. “So the NGO is the spark, micro-credit is the fuse, the local craftsmen are the bomb!”