Important pedestrian safety issues have emerged with the advent of hybrid and electric vehicles. These vehicles are relatively quiet—they do not emit the sounds pedestrians and bicyclists are accustomed to hearing as a vehicle approaches them on the street or at an intersection. In a recent study, human factors/ergonomics researchers examined participants’ preferences for sounds that could be added to quiet vehicles to make them easier to detect.

Though the safety of quiet vehicles has become an issue for pedestrians in general, it is also of concern to the National Federation for the Blind, which has called for quiet vehicles to emit a continuous sound and for additional research on the subject. The authors suggest that older individuals with diminished sensory and motor skills should also be considered as solutions are developed.

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A photograph of the process of coating a substrate with AlMgB14 by pulsed laser deposition. The bright plume in the center of the photograph is an AlMgB14 plasma. The solid target is just to the right of the plume.

Friction is the bane of any machine.  When moving parts are subject to friction, it takes more energy to move them, the machine doesn’t operate as efficiently, and the parts have a tendency to wear out over time.

But if you could manufacture parts that had tough, “slippery” surfaces, there’d be less friction, requiring less input energy and the parts would last longer.  Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory are collaborating with other research labs, universities, and industrial partners to develop just such a coating.

“If you consider a pump, like a water pump or a hydraulic pump, it has a turbine that moves the fluid,” said Bruce Cook, an Ames Laboratory scientist and co-principal investigator on the four-year, $3 million project. “When the rotor spins, there’s friction generated at the contacting surface between the vanes and the housing, or stator.

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The Searaser uses the motion of the sea to generate power

A device that uses the power of the sea to push water uphill has been developed to provide cheap renewable electricity.

The Searaser, developed by engineer Alvin Smith, is designed to pump water hundreds of feet above sea level from where it can gush downhill to drive hydroelectric generators.

The wave pump consists of two floats, one above the other, fitted to a double-acting piston. Water is pumped as the floats are forced together and apart by the motion of the waves.

Chains and weights fix the device to the sea floor and the pump is able to operate in water as shallow as 30ft (9m) as well as in extreme weather conditions.

Each of the pumps has a capacity of just 0.25mw, but they are expected to be used together in their dozens, or even hundreds, side by side along the coast or further out at sea.

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A team from BAE Systems has developed a compact mortar-based launcher for small Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs).

UAVs provide front line units with vital real-time intelligence without the need for conventional air support. Until now, the ability to rapidly deploy these platforms by individual Platoons has been limited to very small systems (typically weighing 3-5kg) which have limited capability.  More capable UAVs have not been suitable as they require large catapult or rocket-based launchers.

The new device, developed under a programme code-named ‘Project Artful’, allows UAVs of up to 25kg in weight to be paired with a mortar-based launch mechanism, which has European and world-wide patents pending, making it possible for individual front line units to rapidly deploy such systems.

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The transplanted trachea

Surgeons in Spain have carried out the world’s first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant, using a windpipe made from the recipient patients own stem cells.

Scientists from Bristol helped grow the cells for the transplant and the European team believes such tailor-made organs could become the norm.

The recipient patient needed the transplant to save a lung after contracting tuberculosis. The disease had damaged the airways.

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Multiple high-definition videos and other data-rich services may soon stream through homes, offices, ships and planes via new hybrid optical/ultra-wideband-radio systems developed by European researchers.

Moshe Ran, Coordinator of the EU-funded project, UROOF (Photonic components for Ultra-wideband Radio Over Optical Fiber), has a vision. He wants to see streams of high-definition video and other high-bandwidth services flowing through homes, office buildings, and even ships and planes, through a happy marriage of optical and ultra-wideband radio technologies.

“It’s a natural combination that can bring a lot of advantages to the world,” says Ran.

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They’ve made electronics that can bend. They’ve made electronics that can stretch. And now, they’ve reached the ultimate goal - electronics that can be subjected to any complex deformation, including twisting.

Yonggang Huang at the Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and John Rogers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have improved their so-called “pop-up” technology to create circuits that can be twisted. Such electronics could be used in places where flat, unbending electronics would fail, like on the human body.

Electronic components historically have been flat and unbendable because silicon, the principal component of all electronics, is brittle and inflexible. Any significant bending or stretching renders an electronic device useless.

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A series of genetic clues led a team of Boston University biomedical engineers to uncover exactly how certain antibiotics kill bacteria. The findings could help rejuvenate the efficacy of older antibiotics and reveal new antibiotic targets within bacterial cells.

“The research speaks to new insights into how current antibiotics work and how those insights can point toward development of more effective antibiotics,” said James Collins, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University.

Collins and his colleagues used systems biology approaches to identify clusters of genes that became more active in the bacteria treated with antibiotics. The researchers then reconstructed the series of events leading to antibiotic-mediated bacterial death, using the changes in these genes as clues.
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The honeycomb design allows bullets and shrapnel to move through the tyre without disabling it. The non-pneumatic tyre (NPT) will continue to run even if a substantial portion of the honeycomb cells have been disabled

Cooper Tire and Rubber Company has developed a non-pneumatic (airless) prototype tyre in collaboration with Resilient Technologies, designed to reduce the number of military personnel stranded in war-zones due to flat tyrpes caused by gunfire and shrapnel.

The airless tyre abandons the traditional tyre and rim design for a structure comprised of a unique rim, honeycomb and tread package, thereby eliminating the need for the cavity that typically retains air for a traditional tyre. The honeycomb design allows bullets and shrapnel to move through the tyre without disabling it. The non-pneumatic tyre (NPT) will continue to run even if a substantial portion of the honeycomb cells have been disabled.

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Wraparound video image of a vehicle

New driver assistance technology developed by Fujitsu Laboratories, provides a complete wrap-around view of a vehicle’s perimeter in real-time, enhancing the driver’s field of view and improving driving safety by assisting the driver in a variety of situations, such as parking, passing on a narrow street, and seeing around corners at intersections with poor sightlines.

The new technology comprises a MB86R01 SoC graphics chip for automobiles from Fujitsu Microelectronics, which supports the OpenGL ES, a general purpose embeddable image-processing platform; and a video-processing chip that combines video images from four camera installed around the vehicle’s perimeter. As a vehicle view assistance system, this achieves real-time operation, with 30 millisecond video processing time.

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Extremely small nanoscale particles are released by common kitchen appliances in abundant amounts, greatly outnumbering the previously detected, larger-size nanoparticles emitted by these appliances, according to new findings* by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

So-called “ultrafine particles” (UFP) range in size from 2 to 10 nanometers. They are emitted by motor vehicles and a variety of indoor sources and have attracted attention because of increasing evidence that they can cause respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses.

NIST researchers conducted a series of 150 experiments using gas and electric stoves and electric toaster ovens to determine their impacts on indoor levels of nano-sized particles. Previous studies have been limited to measuring particles with diameters greater than 10 nm, but new technology used in these experiments allowed researchers to measure down to 2 nm particles—approximately 10 times the size of a large atom.

This previously unexplored range of 2 to 10 nm contributed more than 90 percent of all the particles produced by the electric and gas stovetop burners/coils. The gas and electric ovens and the toaster oven produced most of their UFP in the 10 nm to 30 nm range.

The results of this test should affect future studies of human exposure to particulates and associated health effects, particularly since personal exposure to these indoor UFP sources can often exceed exposure to the outdoor UFP.

Researchers will continue to explore the production of UFP by indoor sources. Many common small appliances such as hair dryers, steam irons and electric power tools include heating elements or motors that may produce UFP. People often use these small appliances at close range for relatively long times, so exposure could be large even if the emissions are low.

The experiments were conducted in a three-bedroom test house at NIST that is equipped to measure ventilation rates, environmental conditions and contaminant concentrations.

Keiko is helping med students with their training in Japan

The Graduate School of Medicine at Japan’s Gifu University, has developed Keiko, a ‘sick’ robot, to help train medical students.

Keiko, which means ‘practice’ in Japanese, is able to answer questions such as ‘How are you doing?’ asked by medical students, helping them to practice conversations with patients.

Designed specifically for training in neurological disorders, the interactive humanoid robot can also be used for physical examinations, helping students become familiar with the ways brain and nervous system illnesses can be identified.

Read more at CrunchGear

The small energy modules were originally designed by Otis “Pete” Peterson and other scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Now, the technology is being commercially developed by Hyperion Power Generation, which recently announced that it has taken its first orders and plans to start mass production within five years.

“Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,” said John Deal, CEO of Hyperion. “[The nuclear plants] will cost approximately $25 million each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $2,500 per home.”

Because of their small size, the mini power plants can be assembled relatively quickly and transported by truck, rail or ship to remote locations, even places that currently do not have electricity. The power plants provide an alternative to current nuclear plants, which are large, expensive, and take about 10 years to build. Also, large-scale power plants don´t fit the needs of small populations or areas without available land. Hyperion´s modules can be connected together to provide energy for larger populations, as well.

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