T-shirt charges your phone by absorbing ambient sound

T-shirt charges your phone by absorbing ambient sound

  9:39:00 AM    Science Lover

---

First there was tie-dye, then there was hypercolor. Could piezoelectric fabrics that charge your mobile phone while you wear them be the next big T-shirt fad? That's what the French telecom company, Orange, is counting on, reports the Telegraph.

Orange Sound Charge T-Shirt

The shirts utilize ambient sound as a catalyst to produce electric voltage, and were rolled out just in time for the Glastonbury Music Festival in Britain. Developers hoped that the shirts would offer a convenient, eco-friendly way for festival goers to charge their phones while they're rocking out away from the grid.

The material used in the shirts is made from a product called piezoelectric film, which is capable of transforming sound waves into an electric charge via the compression of interlaced quartz crystals. Once that electric charge is generated, it is stored in a reservoir battery which can, in turn, be used to charge your mobile device.

Prototypes for the technology are being called "Sound Charge." They don't quite have the most fashionable of looks just yet, but it's their forward-thinking, eco-friendly design that ultimately makes them wearable. Besides, unlike most fashion trends, these shirts actually serve a purpose.

Check out this short video about the Sound Charge shirt to get a better idea for how it worksT-Shirt

After a weekend of mosh pits and camping out, the shirts will undoubtedly need to be washed. The good news is that Sound Charge's developers already thought of that, too. All of the shirt's key electronic parts can be easily removed so that the shirt can be washed just like any other T-shirt.



The Glastonbury Festival was the ideal venue for testing the prototypes because of all the ambient noise, but people who spend a lot of time away from noisy concert scenes may want to wait for the technology to develop before donning their own Sound Charge T's. According to the technology website The Register, even over the course of a loud weekend at Glastonbury, the shirts would only store about six watt hours. That might "recharge a smartphone once, if you're lucky." Even so, that may be all the charge you'll need over the course of a weekend.

The shirts' charging ability may eventually be boosted by being combined with other wearable piezoelectric items. Last year Orange produced Wellington boots with chargers in the heel that generated electricity with each step. Who knows, before long your entire wardrobe may become a portable, wearable power plant. (c) 2011, Mother Nature Network.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Read More

Revolutionary New Paper Computer Shows Flexible Future for Smartphones and Tablets

Revolutionary New Paper Computer Shows Flexible Future for Smartphones and Tablets

  10:07:00 AM    Science Lover

---

The world's first interactive paper computer is set to revolutionize the world of interactive computing.

Professor Roel Vertegaal's PaperPhone is best described as a flexible iPhone. (Credit: Image courtesy of Queen's University)

"This is the future. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years," says creator Roel Vertegaal, the director of Queen's University Human Media Lab. "This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper. You interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen."

The smartphone prototype, called PaperPhone is best described as a flexible iPhone -- it does everything a smartphone does, like store books, play music or make phone calls. But its display consists of a 9.5 cm diagonal thin film flexible E Ink display. The flexible form of the display makes it much more portable that any current mobile computer: it will shape with your pocket.

Dr. Vertegaal will unveil his paper computer on May 10 at 2 pm at the Association of Computing Machinery's CHI 2011 (Computer Human Interaction) conference in Vancouver -- the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction.

Being able to store and interact with documents on larger versions of these light, flexible computers means offices will no longer require paper or printers.

"The paperless office is here. Everything can be stored digitally and you can place these computers on top of each other just like a stack of paper, or throw them around the desk" says Dr. Vertegaal.

The invention heralds a new generation of computers that are super lightweight, thin-film and flexible. They use no power when nobody is interacting with them. When users are reading, they don't feel like they're holding a sheet of glass or metal.

An article on a study of interactive use of bending with flexible thinfilm computers is to be published at the conference in Vancouver, where the group is also demonstrating a thinfilm wristband computer called Snaplet.

The development team included researchers Byron Lahey and Win Burleson of the Motivational Environments Research Group at Arizona State University (ASU), Audrey Girouard and Aneesh Tarun from the Human Media Lab at Queen's University, Jann Kaminski and Nick Colaneri, director of ASU's Flexible Display Center, and Seth Bishop and Michael McCreary, the VP R&D of E Ink Corporation.

For more information, articles, videos, and high resolution photos, visit http://www.humanmedialab.org/paperphone/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl-qygUEE2c

Read More

Watch 3D films on cellphone!

Watch 3D films on cellphone!

  1:55:00 AM    Science Lover

---

Watching 3D films on your cellphone would now be possible thanks to researchers who have combined the new mobile radio standard LTE-advanced with a video coding technique.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, HHI in Berlin, Germany, have come up with a special compression technique for films in especially good high-resolution HD quality.

Watching 3-D films on your cell 
phone would now be possible.

 

It computes the films down to low data rates while maintaining quality: H.264/AVC. What the H.246/AVC video format is to high-definition films, the Multiview Video Coding (MVC) is to 3D films.

Thomas Schierl explained that "MVC is used to pack together the two images needed for the stereoscopic 3D effect to measurably reduce the film's bit rate," and this technique can be used to reduce the size of 3D films as much as 40 per cent.

That means that you can quickly receive excellent quality 3-D films in connection with the new 3G-LTE mobile radio standard. Key is the radio resource management integrated into the LTE system that allows flexible data transmission while including various quality of service classes.

Thomas Wirth, another scientist at the HHI, added, "The 2D and 3D bit streams divided up by MVC can be prioritized for each user at the air interface to support different services, thus opening up a completely new field for business models."

The new technology would be shown at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

Read More

The End of Cell Phone Chargers Is Near

The End of Cell Phone Chargers Is Near

  8:24:00 AM    Science Lover

---

When your cell phone is running out of juice, you usually have two options: pray your charger is handy, or pray that someone with your exact phone model has his or her charger on hand.

Fortunately, a wave of common sense and innovation promises to eliminate the aggravating paradigm of one-size-fits-one cell phone charging.

With universal chargers, wireless charging pads and, eventually, the reaping of energy straight from the air via ambient radio waves, chargers could go the way of the rotary phone.

The end of chargers as we know them will be "one of those things that make you say, 'What took so long for the industry to do this?'" said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at the Altimeter Group.

Charge! (Wastefully)

Beyond being a nuisance to consumers, the proliferation of phone-specific chargers is bad for the environment. According to the London-based GSM Association (GSMA), a mobile phone industry group, over 56,000 tons (51,000 tonnes) of duplicate chargers are sold to customers every year, generating pointless e-waste for landfills.

Cutting in half the number of chargers being made could reduce greenhouse gases related to manufacturing and transportation by 15 million to 24 million tons (13.6 million to 21.8 million tonnes) a year, GSMA said.

An available, though clunky, stab at this goal is the so-called universal cell phone charging kit.

The kit, which can sell for as little as a few dollars, includes a multitude of adapters that, like drill bits, fit over the coupling at the phone end of a power cord. The chargers from most cell phones can then function as that crucial umbilical that keeps a phone alive even without its native charger.

But as with your regular charger, if you forget the kit while traveling, your phone battery's life is likely doomed.

One charger to rule them all

Fortunately, a one-size-fits-all approach to chargers is afoot. GSMA is pushing a worldwide effort to adopt a universal charging solution by 2012. Last year, the organization announced that 17 major mobile operators and manufacturers were on board.

Europe is already ahead of the game. Starting next year, most cell phones sold there will use the same, interchangeable charger called a micro-USB connector, as advocated by the GSMA.

Some smartphones sold in the United States, including the Nexus One, Incredible, EVO and some BlackBerrys, also have opted for micro-USB, so some degree of harmonization has already taken root.

Though Apple signed the agreement in Europe calling for a universal charger, there is some speculation that the company will be a bit of a holdout. Apple has historically relied on a proprietary 30-pin charging device for its line of "i" products, something that Apple acolytes appreciate, Gartenberg noted.

Without wires

Just as the cordless phone did away with the wire from handset to base station, a wireless charging solution might eliminate a wired charging connector.

"Inductive charging" technology allows a gadget to passively absorb energy from an electromagnetic field over short distances. Electric toothbrushes have gotten their energy from inductive charging for decades.

Using this technology, powering up a properly outfitted phone could be as simple as placing it on a charging mat or dock.

Although Palm did roll out an inductive charging dock called the Touchstone a year ago, phone manufacturers in general have not taken a shine to the idea.

For other phones, inductive chargers made by third-party vendors such as Powermat require the placement of a sleeve around the handset.

Gartenberg sees this as a key reason why wireless charging is unlikely to catch on. "Unless the charger is directly integrated into the device" – as with Palm – "it's hard to see how third-party stuff is going to be successful," he said.

He also pointed out that charging this way is not really any easier than manually connecting a charger as we do now.

And in the end, one still must remember a charging mat or dock when going on a trip, and the wireless charging rig still needs an outlet or a USB port to plug into to draw power.

Ambient energy

Even that hurdle may be overcome in the future with technology that charges batteries with energy in the air. This ambient energy comes in the form of the radio waves our wired world zaps all over in order to transmit cell phone, Internet, television and radio station signals.

It is already possible to harness this energy to fuel tiny sensors. But a cell phone demands more power – some 20 milliwatts just for standby mode, and 50 milliwatts to slowly recharge its battery, according to statements from Nokia.

For now, power on the order of only several tens of microwatts has been credibly harvested from the ether, said Joshua Smith, a University of Washington professor who works with ambient charging as a principal engineer at Intel Labs Seattle.

Since the invention of cell phones, however, their power requirements have fallen exponentially, Smith said, and someday "might drop enough to have a phone in standby forever."

Perhaps even more useful would be an always-on-and-available emergency beaconing feature, Smith said.

RCA plans to launch a product late this year called AirPower (previously dubbed Airnergy) that will glean wi-fi signals to charge cell phones, though the company would not release concrete details.

Smith is skeptical that AirPower or other full-fledged charging solutions from ambient energy for cell phones will work anytime soon.

Altimeter Group's Gartenberg agreed. "For the foreseeable future," he said, "most of us are still going to be plugging that cable into the wall."

Read More

4G Wireless: It's Not Just for Phones Anymore

4G Wireless: It's Not Just for Phones Anymore

  3:33:00 PM    Science Lover

---

Verizon says its next wireless network technology could link up cars, home appliances, and more.

Credit: Technology Review

Verizon is gearing up to launch its next wireless network technology, called Long Term Evolution (LTE), by the end of this year. While Verizon will, of course, still sell phones for this fourth generation (4G) network, it is also pushing to have it built into many other types of devices.

LTE will run on the spectrum formerly used to send television signals, which Verizon licensed from the U.S. government in 2008. The company expects to be able to support about 100 million users by the end of the year. But the saturation of the cell-phone market means that Verizon is also hoping to see the wireless technology used for many other kinds of devices. "We want to get to 500 to 600 percent penetration," says executive vice president and CTO Richard Lynch. This would mean an average of five or six wireless devices per person.

LTE promises better speed and lower latency than existing networks. Lynch says that users can expect uniform, reliable performance at five to 12 megabits per second--significantly faster than many wired connections today. He expects data to travel round-trip in 25 to 30 milliseconds, a fifth of the latency on the current network.

Lynch envisions people using Verizon's 4G wireless network for cars, computers, TVs, and other home appliances, as well as regular cell phones. Among other devices, the company has tested wall sockets and power strips that include 4G wireless capabilities. This could enable new forms of home-monitoring and energy management.

One potential problem is that not all of these devices will be under Verizon's control. When the company purchased the 700-megahertz spectrum, it had to agree to open its network to devices made by other companies. These devices must still be tested and certified to ensure they run safely on the network, but third-party developers will have much more latitude.

Last week, the company broke ground on a new lab in Waltham, MA, where it plans to let third-party developers develop and test devices for the LTE network under simulated real-world conditions.

Another key difference of LTE is that it runs the Internet Protocol (IP). Lynch says that voice will be treated as an application over the new network. (Verizon will use VoIP to deliver voice calls.) An all-IP system will also allow for the use of secure protocols. And getting rid of non-IP components should also make device compatibility easier.

Jeff Kagan, an independent wireless and telecom industry analyst, expects users to embrace new 4G wireless devices. Since Apple created a market for mobile data devices with the iPhone, he says, users have come to expect mobile data connections. The growing success of 3G-enabled e-readers is just one example, he says. When users can get data faster and more reliably, Kagan believes, they'll want ever-broader classes of devices to be connected to the Internet.

Arogyaswami Paulraj, a Stanford professor who has worked on LTE and a competing 4G technology called WiMax, says it makes sense to focus on data applications, since revenue from wireless data exceeds that for voice in many parts of the world. However, Paulraj thinks that Verizon shouldn't be too cavalier about its bandwidth needs. A big hit like the iPhone could leave Verizon scrambling, he says, adding that "LTE is a good technology, but challenged by the lack of spectrum."

Lynch acknowledges that a plethora of new wireless devices could eat up whatever bandwidth is gained by going to 4G. "There will never be enough bandwidth for my vision of what wireless can do," he says. But he believes that much of the new wireless traffic will come from simple IP-based devices sending relatively small amounts of data over the network--they'll need to be connected, but they won't be bandwidth hogs.

Read More

A cheaper, lighter and longer-lasting alternative to modern batteries

A cheaper, lighter and longer-lasting alternative to modern batteries

  9:56:00 PM    Science Lover

---

MOBILE phones looked like bricks in the 1980s. Indeed, they were so cumbersome that most were installed in cars. That was because the batteries required to power them were so hefty. When lithium-ion batteries were invented, mobile phones became small enough to be carried in a pocket or slipped into a handbag. Now a new design of battery that uses oxygen from ambient air to power devices could provide even smaller and lighter sources of power. Not only that, such batteries would be cheaper and last for longer between charges.

Lithium-ion batteries have two electrodes immersed in an electrically conductive solution, called an electrolyte. One of the electrodes, the cathode, is made of lithium cobalt oxide; the other, the anode, is composed of carbon. When the battery is being charged, positively charged lithium ions break away from the cathode and travel in the electrolyte to the anode, where they meet electrons brought there by a charging device. When electricity is needed, the anode releases the lithium ions, which rapidly move back to the cathode. As they do so, the electrons that were paired with them in the anode during the charging process are released. These electrons travel around an external circuit to which the battery is attached and power it.

Peter Bruce and his colleagues at the University of St Andrews in Scotland came up with the idea of replacing the lithium cobalt oxide electrode with a cheaper and lighter alternative. They designed an electrode made from porous carbon and lithium oxide. They knew that lithium oxide forms naturally from lithium ions, electrons and oxygen, but, to their surprise, they found that it could also be made to separate easily when an electric current passed through it. They exposed one side of their porous carbon electrode to an electrolyte rich in lithium ions and put a mesh window on the other side of the electrode through which air could be drawn. Oxygen from the air took the place of the cobalt oxide.

When they charged their battery, the lithium ions migrated to the anode where they combined with electrons from the charging device. When they discharged it, lithium ions and electrons were released from the anode. The ions crossed the electrolyte and the electrons travelled round the external circuit. The ions and electrons then met at the cathode, where they combined with the oxygen to form lithium oxide that filled the pores in the carbon.

Because the oxygen being used by the battery comes from the surrounding air rather than having to be carried around inside the battery, the device that Dr Bruce’s team has designed can be a mere one-eighth to one-tenth the size and weight of modern batteries, while still carrying the same charge. Alternatively, batteries using the new technology would last eight to ten times longer than modern batteries of the same size.

Performance and size are not the only expected improvements. Although they are not yet commercially available, making such a battery is expected to be cheaper. Lithium cobalt oxide accounts for 30% of the cost of a lithium-ion battery. Air, however, is free.

If you like this post, buy me a beer at $3!

Read More

Air-fueled Battery Could Last Up To 10 Times Longer: Ground-breaking Technology For Electric Cars

Air-fueled Battery Could Last Up To 10 Times Longer: Ground-breaking Technology For Electric Cars

  9:55:00 AM    Science Lover

---

A new type of air-fuelled battery could give up to ten times the energy storage of designs currently available.

Diagram of the STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell. Oxygen drawn from the air reacts within the porous carbon to release the electrical charge in this lithium-air battery. (Credit: Image courtesy of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC))

This step-change in capacity could pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.

The research work, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is being led by researchers at the University of St Andrews with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle.

The new design has the potential to improve the performance of portable electronic products and give a major boost to the renewable energy industry. The batteries will enable a constant electrical output from sources such as wind or solar, which stop generating when the weather changes or night falls.

Improved capacity is thanks to the addition of a component that uses oxygen drawn from the air during discharge, replacing one chemical constituent used in rechargeable batteries today. Not having to carry the chemicals around in the battery offers more energy for the same size battery. Reducing the size and weight of batteries with the necessary charge capacity has been a long-running battle for developers of electric cars.

The STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell should be cheaper than today’s rechargeables, too. The new component is made of porous carbon, which is far less expensive than the lithium cobalt oxide it replaces.

This four-year research project, which reaches its halfway mark in July, builds on the discovery at the university that the carbon component’s interaction with air can be repeated, creating a cycle of charge and discharge. Subsequent work has more than tripled the capacity to store charge in the STAIR cell.

Principal investigator on the project, Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews, says: “Our target is to get a five to ten fold increase in storage capacity, which is beyond the horizon of current lithium batteries. Our results so far are very encouraging and have far exceeded our expectations.”

“The key is to use oxygen in the air as a re-agent, rather than carry the necessary chemicals around inside the battery,” says Bruce.

The oxygen, which will be drawn in through a surface of the battery exposed to air, reacts within the pores of the carbon to discharge the battery. “Not only is this part of the process free, the carbon component is much cheaper than current technology,” says Bruce. He estimates that it will be at least five years before the STAIR cell is commercially available.

The project is focused on understanding more about how the chemical reaction of the battery works and investigating how to improve it. The research team is also working towards making a STAIR cell prototype suited, in the first instance, for small applications, such as mobile phones or MP3 players.

If you like this post, buy me a beer at $3!

Read More

Gizmost wanted

Gizmost wanted

  10:08:00 AM    Science Lover

---

Intelligent champagne bottles, ‘green’ USB sticks made of corn, an understanding alarm clock, and a robot on wheels led the parade of fun, futuristic gadgets at the world’s biggest technology fair, CeBIT, in Germany

As the high-tech sector tries to buck the global economic slump, inventors from Asia, the US and Europe vied to capture imaginations at CeBIT - the world’s biggest annual hi-tech fair – with ideas to ignite the market in the coming months and years.

The expo runs until Sunday.

---

SMART LIVING

Researchers at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence, which works closely with several industries, was showing off a range of everyday objects rendered “smart”.

Its cutting-edge champagne bottles sound a bell when the bubbly has hit the perfect quaffing temperature, while an intelligent medicine cabinet lets you know when you last took your medication or need to get a prescription filled.

A so-called gentle alarm clock from Germany’s Simple Feature monitors sleep rhythms via a soft wristband fitted with sensors (pictured).

It then chooses a shallow sleep phase within 30 minutes of the desired wake-up time and goes off with a range of alarm tones including bird songs – encouraging what the firm says is a smoother start to a more productive day.

---

EASY NAVIGATION

A new navigator developed by GPS device manufacturer Garmin can calculate not only the most direct route, or the one with the least traffic, but also the one that would use the least fuel. What’s more, it even adds up the money you will save on your journey!

“The EcoChallenge feature analyses the driver’s heavy or light-food pedal technique and braking as well as the car speed, and shows how well the driver is doing in the fuel-saving stakes,” the company said.

---

LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU

Innovations in the world of entertainment also drew the crowds.

Taiwan’s Aiptek is offering movies-to-go to with its Pocketcinema portable projector, complete with 2GB of memory to store films.

Dutch firm Adapt Mobile, on the other hand, has a pocket projector that lets you share life-size photos.

Billed as the first Skype video telephone, the Eee by Germany’s Asus is a home phone that allows cheap international video calls in better quality than on a standard computer.

German premium sound specialist firm Blaupunkt unveiled prototypes of what they called the world’s first Internet car radio, promising access to “thousands of stations” via cellular phone networks.

And fashionistas needing a little more bling must look no further than the Asus EEE S121 notebook, wrapped in supple dark leather and studded with Swarovski crystals.

The company also showed off its EEE keyboard PC, which can wirelessly connect to any TV.

---

GOING GREEN

In keeping with a “green” theme at this year’s event, USB sticks and photo cards by California-based ITP now come in biodegradable plastics made of corn.

And some of the proceeds will go to tree-planting projects.


Meanwhile, people plagued by the question “Did I leave the iron on?” can relax. Swiss firm digitalSTROM.org has developed a chip that can be installed in ordinary light switches. An “everything off” button switches every device hooked up to the system to “standby”, averting fires and cutting energy bills.

The fair is also showcasing a range of new ultra-thin, ultra-efficient netbooks that are easier on the wallet, including the first “zero-watt” laptop from Fujitsu-Siemens that uses no electricity when idle.

And then there was Japanese giant Toshiba, showing off televisions that use half the power of normal sets.

---

MED-TECH

The CeBIT is spotlighting eHealth this year, featuring products that allow patients to receive better care from home, thanks to the Internet.

Bodytel of Germany has developed a blood sugar monitor for diabetics whose results can be beamed straight to the patient’s file at his doctor’s office via his mobile phone.

Similar devices keep watch on one’s blood pressure and heart rates.

---

ROLLIN' ROBOT

In the Future Parc hall of CeBIT, all eyes have been on the Rollin’ Justin robot, developed by the German Aerospace Centre.

The robot has a humanoid upper body; but instead of legs, there’s a four-wheel omni-directional base that helps it “roll” around.

Justin is also capable of detecting and squeezing through tight areas such as doors, using smart technology to bring its “legs” together, or by lifting them using a spring mechanism, its inventors said.


Its appendages are robotic arms known as DLR-III, which have sensors that can calculate the weight and impact of any object they come in contact with.

This allows Justin to perform complex, delicate tasks such as preparing tea and “shaking a person’s hand without breaking it”, said one of its developers, Thomas Wimboeck.

Read More