Beams of light > Spectrum of lights > Inventions
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Volkswagen in China today announced the winner of its year-long The People's Car Project contest: a student named Wang Jia who turned in the design for an hypothetical auto that uses magnets to "hover" above the ground.
Scientific American walks us through how it works: The imaginary car stays aloft with the aid of magnetic levitation, much the way some maglev trains travel along special rails using electromagnetic suspension. (Other maglev trains use electromagnetic forces for propulsion without actually lifting the train off the ground.) The Shanghai Maglev Train has been ferrying passengers since 2004 on a 30-kilometer line between Pudong International Airport and the city's outskirts at speeds of up to 430 kilometers per hour.
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Scientists for years have been researching methods to help paralyzed people use their brains to make up for physical loss. Now it seems they have made quite the breakthrough by developing technology that helps disabled people control computers and robotics with their minds. Using only her thoughts, Cathy Hutchinson (pictured below), who has been paralyzed for 15 years directed a robotic arm to pick up a bottle of coffee and bring it to her lips.
The latest report inthe advance of harnessing brain waves to help disabled people was published in the journal "Nature" in May 2012. The reserach findings and results come from scientists at Brown University, the Providence VA Medical Center in Rhode Island, Harvard Medical School and elsewhere.
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Researchers have developed a new form of plastic that "bruises," rather than breaks, when dropped and subsequently heals itself when exposed to sunlight.
According to New Scientist, GADGETS of the future could bruise when dropped or scratched to highlight damaged areas. Don't worry though, as a few minutes in the sun will be enough to fade the bruise and repair the damage. Marek Urban and colleagues at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg were inspired to create their self-healing plastic by signs of healing in nature such as newly formed tree bark. Earlier self-healing materialsMovie Camera do not change colour and require focused laser light for repairs. This new material turns red when damaged and repairs itself when exposed to visible light or changes in temperature or pH. It can also fix itself multiple times, unlike previous materials.
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The America Invents Act, which reforms patent law, will help bring more inventions to market and make the United States more competitive, President Obama said: "The country has always succeeded because we have been the most dynamic, innovative economy in the world. That has to be encouraged."
Patent applications have nearly tripled in the last decade, but 700,000 applications haven't even been opened yet. Obama said: "Somewhere in that stack could be the next miracle drug, the next technological breakthrough, the next idea that will launch the next Fortune 500 company."
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Two professors from the University of Illinois; one specializing in materials science, the other in electrical engineering, have combined their talents to take the idea of printing circuits onto non-standard materials one step further by developing a conductive ink that can be used in a traditional roller-ball ink pen to draw circuits by hand onto paper and other porous materials. In their paper published in Advanced Materials, team leads Jennifer Lewis, Jennifer Bernhard and colleagues describe how they were able to make a type of ink from silver nano-particles that would remain a liquid while in the pen, but would dry like regular ink once applied. The pen could then be used to draw a functioning LCD display and a transmitting antenna.
We've long marveled at the wondrous creations enabled by 3-D printing. Well, now comes 3-D handwriting. A plain roller-ball pen filled with a conductive ink can draw circuits on a sheet of paper, where they can provide power to an LED display, among other potential uses. See amazing video of 3-D printing.
