Archive for the 'Technology' Category
Japan’s Daihatsu Motor touts new fuel cell technology
© 2007 AFPÂ
Daihatsu Motor Co., a unit of the Japanese auto giant Toyota Motor, said Friday it has developed a new fuel cell technology that eliminates the need for platinum.
Until now, the precious metal has been an essential material in the electrode catalyst in conventional fuel cells for automobiles, said the company, which specialises in manufacturing small vehicles.
“This proprietary fuel cell technology provides numerous benefits, including resource conservation, low cost, high output, and safe and easy fuel handling,” the company said in a statement.
“With the goal of helping to preserve the global environment, Daihatsu will accelerate further research and development of this technology,” it said.
Japanese electronics and automakers have been active in development of fuel cell technology, which uses chemical agents, such as hydrogen and oxygen, to generate electricity with little impact on the environment.
© 2007 AFP
No commentsCompany Presents a Boyish Robot
By MATT SLAGLE, AP Technology Writer
(AP) – David Hanson has two little Zenos to care for these days. There’s his 18-month-old son Zeno, who prattles and smiles as he bounds through his father’s cramped office.
Then there’s the robotic Zeno. It can’t speak or walk yet, but has blinking eyes that can track people and a face that captivates with a range of expressions.
No commentsSpider-Like Boat Tours U.S
By Richard Pyle, The Associated Press
posted: 07 September 2007 09:50 am ET
NEW YORK (AP) — Pity the fisherman or sailor who staggers on deck in the morning and through bleary eyes sees a 100-foot-long water spider coming at him, buzzing ominously.
No cause for alarm, however. It’s just Proteus, a so-called Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel designed for everything from military uses to biological studies, ocean exploration and sea rescue. Read more
No commentsUltraLight Project: Moving Huge Amounts of Data
By Christina LaRose, University of Michigan
posted: 24 August 2007 01:56 pm ET
In January 2007, scientists and engineers completed the largest particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an underground ring 27 kilometers around located at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.
Straddling both sides of the Swiss-France border, the LHC sends subatomic particles careening into each other at near-light speeds, creating high-energy collisions similar to those that arose soon after the Big Bang.
The first particle beams could come online as early as this spring and the data streams will be enormous: as many as 10 petabytes of data (1 petabyte = 10^15) for some experiments, far surpassing almost anything that has come before.
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Pimp My Blimp: New Luxury Airship Planned
By Lamont Wood, Special to LiveScience
posted: 14 August 2007 10:29 am ET
It’s a blimp. It’s a plane. No, it’s an airship with 5,000 square feet of living and/or cargo space, according to plans announced by a company that makes surveillance and advertising dirigibles.
The planned Aeroscraft ML866 is much more than an advertising blimp or one of those huge passenger dirigibles of the 1930s, said Edward Pevzner, business development manager at blimp-maker Worldwide Aeros Corp. It can be finished as a personal yacht, a business commuter craft or cargo carrier, he said.
But either way, it’s basically a low-maintenance, non-buoyant airship that could operate from any airport, carrying anywhere from two to maybe 20 people.
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The Adventures of ASTRO and NextSat
Author: Dauna Coulter | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
 These robots, named ASTRO and NextSat, are real and they are in Earth orbit now.
On March 8, 2007, an Atlas V rocket boosted the pair into space. Their mission: to demonstrate autonomous on-orbit satellite servicing, a technology crucial to future space exploration. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) manages the project, which is called Orbital Express.
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‘Space hotel’ test craft launched
Friday, 29 June 2007, 10:28 GMT 11:28 UK 
An experimental spacecraft designed to test the viability of a hotel in space has been successfully sent into orbit.
Genesis II is an inflatable module designed and launched by Bigelow Aerospace, a private company founded by an American hotel tycoon.
No commentsArianespace orders 35 Ariane 5 ECA rockets
Published:Â 13:49 EST, June 23, 2007
The European satellite launcher Arianespace signed an order for 35 top-range Ariane 5 ECA rockets from EADS Astrium Saturday at the Paris Air Show, for an undisclosed sum.
The order was signed by Arianespace chief Jean-Yves Le Gall and Francois Auque, head of Astrium, the space arm of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space company, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy attending.
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No commentsMars Rover Laser Tool Ready for Testing
Published:Â 14:12 EST, June 22, 2007
Mars mission Job One: Get there. Job Two: Find rocks and zap them with your laser tool. Now learn the nature of the debris by spectrographically analyzing the ensuing dust and fragments. It’s every kid’s dream, vaporizing pebbles on other planets, and thanks to a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, it’s going to happen.
When the JPL-NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover launches in 2009, it will carry this combination laser-telescope unit and enable the gadget-packed rover to know a great deal about rocks in its general vicinity. The ChemCam package includes a mast unit, projecting above the rover with a laser and telescope, and a body unit, the brains of the beast, with three spectrographs and the instrument controls.Â
No commentsHitachi Creates Brain ‘Remote Control’
By Hiroko Tabuchi, Associated Press
posted: 22 June 2007 10:40 am ET
HATOYAMA, Japan (AP) — Forget the clicker: A new technology in Japan could let you control electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity.
The “brain-machine interface” developed by Hitachi Inc. analyzes slight changes in the brain’s blood flow and translates brain motion into electric signals. Read more
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