It's always a wonder how the future will look like even if we have centuries of history as reference on how technology moves forward. Some experts say a responsive household is what we'll see a few years from now, and we couldn't agree more. Definitely not after seeing the electroluminescent rug that glows with every footstep. Learn all about it at the full article.

We always see characters in high-tech spy flicks who possess HUD-integrated eyesight, but will that nifty spy gadget be confined to the silver screen only? It looks like it's going to be a reality, thanks to a group of engineers.

Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston have successfully developed and created a prototype for a new energy source called Microbial Fuel Cells (MFC). In essence, these are batteries running on microbes in solid waste.

The idea for the MFC was born from the desire to provide basic electric comforts to people living beyond the reach of power lines in rural areas. Farming communities in developing countries could be the primary beneficiaries of bacteria-powered mobile communications.

Using electricity produced by bacteria feeding on compounds in the solid waste of grass-eating animals, enough power could be generated to be used in mobile phones. This could provide a vital channel between urban facilities and industries to raw material producers in countrysides. Asian and African nations have been considered as the first testers of the technology.

An extension of the idea is the vision of waste treatment facilities running on their own power. This could open the door for self-sustaining plants which don't use up fuel and help rid the environment of agricultural excrement.

One of the possible weaknesses of the project could be costs. Analysts have suggested that the creation of a single cell could take significantly more resources than it would to create a traditional dry cell.

"We're using a non-platinum catalyst, so that allows us to lower the cost," counters MFC team member Gerardo la O' as he justifies that their technology is applicable to real-life implementation and could benefit countless communities globally.

The explanation apparently convinced the judges at the MADMEC contest where the MFC team signed up and entered their MFC prototype called BioVolt. "As a proof of concept, BioVolt is pretty extraordinary," says organizer Michael Tarkanian. "They used a lot of materials science to drive the price down."

Normally, shedding a few pounds - or if you follow the metric system, kilos - spells good news for the average person. But, if you happen to be Physicist Richard Davis of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, Paris, you'd probably feel that this could spell trouble for the scientific community.

Nope, we're not talking about Mr. Davis' waistline here - the loss in weight is being attributed to a 118-year-old cylinder that's the internationally recognized constant for the kilogram.

Davis explained that by comparing this cylinder's weight with other duplicate weights, they discovered that the prototype - made back in 1889 - lost 50 micrograms. That's approximately the weight of a fingerprint, meaning those extra notches on your scale are probably due to your extra serving of pie, not because of this minute fluctuation.

But while normal folks aren't expected to feel the effects of this discovery, Davis did note that organizations like the U.S. customary system might run into problems. "They depend on a mass measurement and it's inconvenient for them to have a definition of the kilogram which is based on some artifact," he said. The scientific community might also experience complications - inconsistent metric constant can have considerable effects on calculation for electric generation.

At this point, it's still unclear if the "original" kilogram did indeed lose weight, or if its later kilogram cylinder copies are simply heavier. This was the point raised by senior researcher Michael Borys of Germany's National Measures Institute in Braunschweig.

The whole matter is scheduled to be discussed this November in Paris by a panel of scientists. Specific topics to be touched on are other possible (and more accurate) calculations for not just the kilogram (for weight), but the Kelvin (for temperature), and the mole (for precise amounts).The kilogram cylinder itself, made of platinum and iridium alloy, might also be replaced with more reliable constants. One proposal calls for a Silicon-28 isotope crystal shaped as a sphere.

 

While it may seem like something out of an old Japanese cartoon about giant robots saving the world, the technology actually does exist, and may be replacing today's conventional prosthetics sooner than you think. Yes, the people hard at work at using robotics to help our differently-abled brothers and sisters to lead more productive lives have discovered an alternative power source for functioning artificial limbs. What's that alternative power source, you ask? Rockets.

Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, the rocket-powered bionic arm uses a miniature rocket the size of a pencil to generate pure steam from hydrogen peroxide - and it's this steam that forces pistons to move up and down, thereby powering the advanced machinery in the arm to function and provide motion. And provide it does - the arm quantified as ten times more powerful than other robotic arms, and can do the same amount of movement three or four times faster.

With the arm using rocket technology and all, shouldn't the thing be as noisy as...well, a rocket? Researcher and roboticist Michael Goldfarb reassures that it isn't. "You can be in a room where people are talking at very low levels and never hear it. You have to be very quiet to hear this thing operate."

What about the steam, though? Apparently, the bionic arm is made so that the steam used to power its motors gets vented out through a porous skin-like cover, evaporating like so much sweat. And even then, it's not going to be that noticeable, as Goldfarb reports that the amount of water involved in the entire process is pretty much the same as what a person would normally sweat from their arms.

So when are we going to see the rocket-powered Bionic Arm on the market? Probably not for a while. The arm itself is still in its prototype stages, and the minds behind it are busy thinking up on how to make the model lighter, sleeker and more affordable. It might not be too long a wait, however, provided that DARPA doesn't pull its fundings on the project - as the agency plans on releasing a commercially-available version in two years' time.

Certainly good news that even with today's advancements in entertainment technology, we're also using what we know to help better the lives of everyone around us.

A fish-shaped submarine. This is the novel new idea that scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are researching.

It's not exactly fish-shaped yet, but the general ideal is to make a submarine that isn't propelled by, well, propellers. Instead they want to be able to move the submarine through the use of fins. The fins will allow the vehicle to navigate underwater with more agility, speed and control.

This works by a cupping motion of the fins that they modeled after the bluegill sunfish. The fins create little backward thrust and induce little water resistance. The fins thrust the fish forward by "curl[ing] at its lower and upper edges to create a cup-like shape."

The robofin prototype (the latest of several,) is made of a flexible polymer to mimic the fish's own fins. It can also conduct electricity so that signals are spread through the polymer itself instead of being directed into the motor.

So far, their experiments have only focused on the bluegill's pectoral fins but they now intend to study its dorsal and tail fins and other movements of how the fish swims. The goal is to make a highly efficient fishbot to roam the seas.

Next they could build a roboKraken and a roboLeviathan and make them fight each other. Robocop can referee.

Rafi Yoeli, founder of Urban Aeronautics and had once worked for Boeing and Israeli Aerospace Industries, is currently building a new type of battlefield ambulance able to rescue wounded soldiers where land vehicles and bulky helicopters can't get to.

Dubbed the "Mule," the vehicle Yoeli has designed is sort of what you'll get if you cross a sled with a hovercraft. Light and fast, these little critters land and take off vertically, making it ideal and strategic for its purpose: search and rescue amidst the chaos and danger of a full on battle.

Each Mule can carry two persons at a time and is controlled by air flow instead of being entirely dependent on surfaces. It requires no driver and can speed up to 100 mph without passengers. It has been raised that a patient being transported with proper medical care while on the vehicle would be dangerous, but it was pointed out that there might be no other alternative, especially if the patient is in critical condition.

Janina Frankel-Yoeli, Rafi Yoeli's wife and marketing director, says that there might be some psychological factors that might affect the Mule's task. "The problem is overcoming the natural fear of entering a vehicle without a pilot," he added, but both civilian and military outfits in the US and other countries have already shown interest.

Image by Peter Bollinger.

South  Korea could be at the forefront of the alternative energy race as scientists and engineers led by Professor Lee Kwang-hee have announced that they have successfully developed a cell prototype that yields more power, lasts longer, and is much cheaper.

The project was established in cooperation with the University of California, Santa Barbara. A team led by Professor Alan Heeger provided research support functions and the results came out nicely.

To demonstrate the quantum leap in this breakthrough, the old silicon semiconductor solar technology uses some US$ 2.30 to generate a watt of electricity. It just takes ten cents with the Korean technology which uses plastic solar cells.

"The efficiency of converting solar power to electricity should be at least seven percent for commercialization," says Professor Lee as he points out the levels that solar cells must attain in order to be truly called efficient.

Solar energy is considered to be the cleanest energy source which can replace fossil fuels because it uses natural light which is in abundance and leaves no waste materials. Expenses and efficiency issues have plagued it in the past but plastic cells are ushering in new hope.

A new device thought up by Soo-in Yang and David Benjamin, two people who pooled in US$ 1,000 and a three-month deadline, has become more than an environmental flash research project as it was originally intended. River Glow is a cross between a water pollution monitor and an urban art structure making it a perfect combination for provoking pro-environmental views.

But what does it do, you ask? Well, it detects the condition of the water through a low-cost pH sensor, which in turn is connected to a network of easily installable, non-mechanical pods. When the water quality changes, the LED - which in turn is connected to uncoated optical fiber strands - lights green if the condition is good and red if the condition is bad.

The result is an eye-catching "ethereal" cloud that seems to be floating just beneath the water, emanating a soft colored green to indicate that the water is safe for swimming or a deep, strong red to serve as a warning that the water conditions are not optimal for anything.

 

It wasn't much of anything when the first fully-functional prototype was created, however. But as soon as it snagged a runner up position in Metropolis' 2006 Next Generation Design Competition, it was starting to catch attention. And after a few presentations of their architectural project, The Living - as they are called - was able to test their prototype, shown by the images above.

If you claim to have developed a camera designed to see through walls, you're either going to get a cool US$ 14 million, or have the entire world laugh you out of the building. For Israeli-based tech firm Camero, the first option was the result after they showed off a prototype of its Xaver800 "see-through" camera.

Camero claims it doesn't work like a camera would, which is to capture light reflected off a subject and imprint it onto a negative. Rather, as reported by CNET, it issues ultrawideband signals, and the data harvested (from reflecting the signal off, well, a wall and everything behind it, we guess) is processed to create a 3D image of everything it bounced off. "The trick is that the camera can capture the signals in cluttered environments or through solid objects. Researchers at U.S. universities are working on similar projects."

Is it possible? Theoretically - if a certain signal (God knows what it is in the entire frequency spectrum - unless it's ultrasonic or something...) is capable of being transmitted through an offending wall, but be reflected by what's behind the wall... Radar techniques meant to defeat the passive stealth of planes like the F-22 raptor work the same way, by sending a spread-spectrum of radar signals, and collating and analyzing the received signals together to unmask the stealth. Of course, no F-22 Raptor had to worry about a concrete wall up in the air...

Suddenly, the idea of an invisibility cloak feels like a warm blanket on a cold day right now... Yes, a blanket worth as much as US$ 14 million, too.