The star of MTV’s “Jersey Shore”, Nicole Polizzi (nicknamed Snooki), has been rejected by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. She attempted to trademark her nickname, but according to the Trademark Office, the name was already taken, sort of. The Trademark Office stated that there is a likelihood of confusion to Snooky, a character from a children’s book written by Karen Monaghan-Arnone and Maureen Monaghan-Faber. The 2004 trademark is held by the publisher, Brian J. Publishing. Ms. Polizza filed the request in early February for “entertainment in the nature of personal appearances by a television personality”. She may appeal the decision if she feels it would be a worthy fight, but as of this writing, she has not done so.
A new non-invasive way to stimulate your visual memory is being developed by Richard Chi from the Centre for the Mind, University of Sydney. It uses transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS), where electrical currents from electrodes are placed onto the scalp, and it can temporarily increase or decrease activity in specific brain regions. A study using 36 volunteers resulted in a 110% improvement over the control group for visual memory. In the future, Chi hopes that this method may be make it possible to use TDCS to develop a process to enhance learning.
A Japanese inventor has revisited the old idea of combining a vehicle’s gas and brake pedal. Masuyuki Naruse claims that having two pedals side-by-side, inches apart, is a dangerous design flaw. His new design, the Naruse Pedal, is a hopeful solution that puts the accelerator and brake onto the same pedal. The single pedal is larger, and the accelerator is a side lever that is nudged by the foot to activate. Now the natural human instinct of slamming your foot down will cause only one result, stopping. Naruse hopes this will prevent thousands of accidents each year caused by drivers stomping the wrong pedal, and accelerating when they mean to brake.
Swedish regulators are testing his single pedal design, and his device has been declared legal in Japan, and has already been fitted on over 130 vehicles. A Japanese research group estimated that roughly 6,700 accidents per year are caused by mistakenly hitting the gas, in Japan alone. The biggest hurdle that Naruse will need to overcome is that drivers the world over will have to relearn the muscle memory that has been developed over a lifetime of driving with 2 separate pedals. Perhaps time is all that is needed to implement the change.
Here are 3 featured items from many new creations, displayed at the recent SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics and Animation Conference, in Los Angeles in July.
1. Simulated Taste. Not long from now, you may be able to take a cookie, and choose the flavor before you take the first bite. There is not a lot being developed to make computers simulate human taste, and a big reason is that taste is created from many factors working together, including vision, smell, and memories. Tajuki Narumi is the head of a team from Univ of Tokyo in Japan, and they created a device worn on the head that transform a plain cookie into seven different flavors, using augmented reality and smells from an air pump to trick the senses.
2. Interactive Tabletop. A lamp that can turn your desk surface into an interactive map. Li-Wei Chan from the National Taiwan University in Taipei created the device that will allow several people to look at the same image, and get further information about the areas that each is interested in. Viewers can zoom in to specific areas by positioning the lamp device over them. It combines an infrared projector and a standard color projector to simultaneously project both visible content and invisible markers onto a table surface. The lamp has infrared cameras and uses hidden markers to locate its position in three dimensions, then uses this information to control the projection of high-res images onto the correct place.
3. Furry Computer. Yuichi Itoh of Osaka University in Japan has made a device using optical fibers to create a surface that feels furry. Itoh is project manager of Fusa2, a display with it’s surface covered in optical fibers. Humans naturally want to stroke furry objects, so when you stroke the Fusa2 display, it changes colors, creating “stroke marks.” The fiber optics have many infrared LEDs, and underneath the display, half the fiber are connected to a camera, while the other half are connected to a projector. When you stroke the fibers, the infrared radiation is reflected, and then travels down the fibers to the camera, which is then sent to a computer, which then tells the projector to shine colored light up through the other fibers to create colored stroke marks. Itoh hopes to use his device for everything from digital signage, to soccer stadium turfs. The possibilities are endless.
The problem with super-powerful magnetic fields, is that they are so strong that they likely cause explosions. Latest research confirms that graphene can mimic the effects of such a magnetic field, which enables a new way to control the materials electronic properties. Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms, positioned in a pattern similar to hexagonal chicken-wire. The results were first confirmed in 2004, and during the past 6 years additional research has been conducted, confirming that graphene is a strong choice to replace silicon-based semiconductors in new electronics.
There is still the challenge of controlling how the electrons move within the material. A recent experiment has proved that graphene, when put under a special type of strain, will create a strange quantum effect called a Pseudomagnetic Field, which can be used to control it conductivity. The electrons trapped in this field move in very small circles, similar to if they were exposed to a real magnetic field of higher power. These circles are so small that they cause the electrons to segregate into discrete energy levels, instead of moving in the normal broad energy bands. The Pseudomagnetic Field experiment, directed by Michael Crommie from the University of California, Berkeley, peaked above 300 Tesla, which is much higher than the average 100 tesla achieved in normal lab experiments. Even then, these peaks usually last only fractions of a second, any longer may cause a large explosion.
The graphene grows on the surface of crystalline platinum sheets at high temperatures. Platinum has a triangular arrangement of atoms, and it shrinks more than graphene when it cools. When cooled down, little bubbles form in the graphene, and the platinum pulls the graphene together from 3 different directions, which causes the graphene to wrinkle and form the small tetrahedral bubbles, which are only 4-10 nanometres across. Electrons become trapped inside these bubbles, and begin moving in small circles, similar to when exposed to a powerful magnetic field. The researchers are hopeful that in the future they may be able to control the way the electrons group in the graphene, which would enable them to alter the graphene’s conductivity, which would allow it to be used in a wider market.
The Library of Congress has changed a law from 1998 that banned phone owners from bypassing technical locks that are provided with the phones. With the change, jail-breaking to add unauthorized applications or to use alternative providers to an Apple iPhone is no longer considered a government offense. “Jail-breaking” is a term used to describe hacking into your own cell phone in order to add features that are not intended, and to especially used by iPhone owners in order to get around AT&T Inc.’s exclusivity as the cell carrier. Apple urged the rules to be kept intact, but the ruling says that owners who work around the phones should “not be subject to the statutory prohibition against circumvention.”
It actually is a fairly common occurrence anyways. T-Mobile provides service to so many iPhones that they added tech support for them. But even though hacking through the manufacturers’ security measures is now legal, it still breaks the warranties set by the companies. If such is the case, don’t expect Apple to repair it, or even provide technical support. It is estimated that roughly 4 million iPhone and iPod Touch devices have been jail-broken as of August 2009. The law also encompasses video games, DVDs, computers, and e-books.
Israeli scientists conducted tests with more than a dozen quadriplegics, and found they were all able to control computers and wheelchairs by sniffing. This new technology is based on the fact that most disabled can still retain control of their soft palates, which regulates breathing through the nose. But even people who cannot breathe on their own can still control the device by blocking and releasing the flow of air through their nose by using a pump.
This technology may provide many new solutions for the growing group of severely disabled. It will give people who cannot control their environment a new way to do just that. It would be especially helpful to people who have locked-in syndrome, a condition where they can do little more than flutter an eyelid. Other alternatives are also available, such as controlling devices by using a breathing tube, or with the tongue. This technology is simple in design, tubes in the nose monitor sniffs and exhalations, which let the user control a computer. Different patterns of sniffs and exhales enable a wheelchair to move forward or backward, turn right or left, stop, or can even be used to type on a computer. The device was first tested on 96 healthy people to insure it would operate correctly, and then was tested on the actual patients. Roughly 25% were unable to operate the device properly.
Michael Gratzel, a chemist from Switzerland, has invented solar cells that can mimic photosynthesis. These low cost solar cells can be used to create electricity-generating windows or mobile solar panels. The cells use nanocrystal films that will produce power from sunlight. The cells are so small that they don’t disperse light, and can collect energy from all sides.
Gratzel suggests using the cells to make windows, “You could think that the glass of all high-rises in New York would be electricity-generating panels”. His work has won him the million dollar Millennium Technology Prize awarded every other year by the Finland Technology Academy. Michael is planning on investing the winnings towards further research in this field.
The latest and greatest in terms of vision restoration has been approved by the FDA. VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies has been developing the implantable miniature telescope for over a year, and it is intended for patients suffering from end-stage macular degeneration, and who are over 75.
However, as with all surgeries, there are risks. Due to the size of the device, the patient will need a corneal transplant before inserting the implant. According to CBC News, during clinical testing, 75% of over 200 patients had “their vision improve from severe or profound impairment to moderate impairment”. New upcoming studies will follow up with existing patients, and also will follow 770 new upcoming patients. Current cost for the procedure is $15,000.