A group of computer designers at MIT’s International Development Design Summit are trying to develop a $12 computer. Derek Lomas is basing the computer on a device he saw people using in Bangalore, India, in which a cheap keyboard was combined with a Nintendo-like device and connected to a home TV. Lomas and others at [...]
University of Alberta scientists are creating wireless sensor networks for use in remote locations. One of the first projects, called ECOnet, will place small sensors in rainforests in Brazil and Panama this fall. The sensors will form a network that will create a 3D image of what is happening in the atmosphere, says Alberta professor [...]
Gartner has identified seven technologies that will “completely transform” the business world over the next 25 years. The technologies include parallel programming, wireless power sources for mobile devices, automated speech translation, and computing interfaces that detect human gestures. “Many of the emerging technologies that will be entering the market in 2033 are already known in [...]
Intel and Microsoft yesterday announced that they will provide $20 million over five years to two groups of university researchers that will work to design a new generation of computing systems. The goal is to prevent the industry from coming to a dead end that would halt decades of performance increases in computers. The researchers’ [...]
Graphene sheets are not entirely flat, © A Geim, U. Manchester
Graphene transistors will be one of the top emerging technologies of 2008, according to researchers at MIT. Microchips built with graphene have the potential to work faster than silicon-based circuits, produce less heat, and conduct it away more rapidly. The MIT researchers are high on [...]
MIT researchers, working with researchers at Texas Instruments, have developed a chip that uses 70 percent less voltage than current chip technologies, which could lead to an order-of-magnitude increase in energy efficiency for electronics in the next five years. “It will extend the battery lifetime of portable devices in areas like medical electronics,” says MIT [...]
Physically disabled people can compose and send emails and operate a television by thought thanks to advances in brain-machine interface (BMI) technology, and further breakthroughs may even make the mental operation of prosthetic limbs a reality in time. “By permitting the subject to adaptively recode the generated neural activity, the overall performance of the [BMI] [...]
Wireless monitoring of civil engineering structures such as bridges and overpasses has gained a lot of interest in the recent years. Bridge collapses happen suddenly and unpredictably and often lead to tragic loss of human lives. Many will remain in service for many years, they need monitoring and rehabilitation.
Wireless battery-powered sensors that monitor bridges and report [...]
Virginia Tech professors Tom Martin and Mark Jones have spent the past six years developing electronic textiles and clothing with embedded wires and sensors. One such piece of clothing is a suit that can monitor the movement of the person wearing it, including whether the person is walking, running, standing, or sitting. “One student could [...]
LiveScience (10/12/07) Choi, Charles Q.
In David Levy’s recently completed Ph.D. thesis at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands on human-robot relationships, “Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,” he predicts that robots will become so human-like that by 2050 humans and robots will have intimate relationships and even marry each other. “There’s a trend of [...]