#Amateur radio enthusiast makes contact with the International space station In the century or so since radio technology has been with us,
it's spawned a huge community of amateur enthusiasts and tinkerers alongside the professionals, and those part-time hobbyists are as active as ever in 2015.
Case in point: 52 year-old UK resident Adrian Lane, who recently had a brief but exhilarating conversation with the astronauts on board the International space station (ISS.
Remember that the ISS is orbiting more than 320 km (200 miles) above Earth and travelling at around 29,772 km h (18,500 mph),
whereas ex-lorry driver Lane was busy in his garden shed in Coleford, Gloucestershire. The radio enthusiast had spent several weeks trying to make contact with the space station after learning it was due to pass over his house."
"I was buzzing. It's not every day you get to talk to some guy out in space,
"Lane told The Daily telegraph. Having made the necessary calculations, the father-of-two sent out his unique call sign when he believed the ISS would be in range-to his surprise,
and initiatives-it can be reached through low-power radios, small antennas, and computer laptops if you have the technical know-how.
Most of the time, communications are approved officially by NASA. For example, schoolchildren from the UK are scheduled to talk to Britain's first fully fledged astronaut
Oh, he's in the shed again
#Japanese engineers have created the world's first'car in a bag'Getting around is about to look a lot different.
Kuniako Saito, a Japanese engineer, and his team at Cocoa Motors, have created a laptop-sized personal vehicle that weighs less than seven pounds.
The device, dubbed the'Walkcar, 'is described as a'car in a bag 'because it can easily carried around.
It sort of like a small, four-wheeled electric skateboard meets a Segway. The device is powered by lithium batteries
and comes in both indoor and outdoor models. It only weighs between 2 to 3 kg (4. 4 to 6. 6 pounds) depending on the model
but can carry a person of up to 120 kg (265 pounds), according to a Reuters report.
Riders steer the Walkcar by shifting their weight from side-to-side in the direction they want to go.
Check out video below to see the vehicle in action n
#New device can immediately target and destroy deadly blood clots Australian researchers have developed a nano-sized capsule that can be delivered to a patient intravenously to immediately target
and break down the blot clots that cause heart attacks and strokes. No only does the minuscule device start working within minutes, it portable,
"This can be given in the ambulance straight away so you really save a lot of time and restore the blood flow to the critical organs much faster than currently possible,"one of the team,
Christopher Hagemeyer from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, told Rachael Brown at ABC News. Around 80 percent of all strokes occur
If this formation of blood clots, known as thrombosis, happens to block blood flow to the heart,
a heart attack can follow. The longer the brain or heart are oxygenated without blood the greater the risk that vital tissues will begin to die,
it set to make a huge difference to the many heart attack and stoke patients who don actually respond to current treatments.
According to the University of Melbourne, which was involved also in the development of the device, around half of the 55,000 Australians who experience heart attack
or stroke every year cannot use the clot-busting treatments administered by paramedics due to the severe side effects that can cause excessive internal bleeding."
"They administer drugs which are also very fast-acting, but because it's free in the blood stream everywhere it causes side effects like bleeding
Instead, the new nanocapsule device only releases the medication in areas where a clot is growing exponentially
"The drug-loaded nanocapsule is coated with an antibody that specifically targets activated platelets, the cells that form blood clots,
"Once located at the site of the blood clot, thrombin-a molecule at the centre of the clotting process-breaks open the outer layer of the nanocapsule,
releasing the clot-busting drug. We are effectively hijacking the blood clotting system to initiate the removal of the blockage in the blood vessel."
#New zealand will shut down its last large coal fired power generators in 2018 New zealand electricity company Genesis Energy has announced that it will shut down its last two coal fired power generators by December 2018-a bold step towards the country
the country will no longer be burning coal to generate electricity, and will stop pumping around 1,
600 kilotonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere within three years. ts closure marks the end of coal fired power generation in New zealand,"
"the Energy and Resources Minister Simon Bridges said in a press release. Because the majority of New zealand's energy already comes from geothermal, hydro,
and natural gas, giving up coal isn't as big a deal as it would be for other countries(*cough*Australia, the United states*cough),
*but the move is still a significant step towards a world where burning coal is no longer the cheapest and most reliable way to generate electricity."
"Historically, coal has played an important role in ensuring the security of New zealand electricity supply, particularly in dry years where our hydro-lake levels are said low
Bridges.""But significant market investment in other forms of renewable energy in recent years, particularly in geothermal, means that a coal backstop is becoming less of a requirement."
"What's really cool is that the decision was made by Genesis Energy solely on the basis of profits,
and not as a result of new government legislation. Although it would be nice to see governments force coal fired power stations out of business,
it actually feels more exciting that coal fired systems no longer make financial sense. In fact, Genesis Energy Chief executive Albert Brantley estimated in a press release that the company will save around NZ$20 to 25 million (US$13 to 16.5 million) each year by not running the coal fired generators.
The two remaining coal-burning generators are located at Genesis Energy's Huntly Power station in Waikato on the country's North Island.
The power station itself will continue to run on natural gas for the foreseeable future. Over the past year and a half, New zealand has increased significantly the amount of electricity it produces from renewable energy,
with nearly 80 percent of its electricity coming from renewable sources in 2014 thanks to huge expansion in geothermal.
In comparison, the average OECD country only gets 22 percent of its electricity from renewables."
"Geothermal generation has doubled more than over the past decade, and for the first time in 40 years, geothermal electricity generation contributed more electricity than natural gas during 2014,
"Bridges announced to the press.""New zealand share of renewable electricity generation is already the fourth largest in the world
and the shift from coal will help us to achieve our ambitious goal of having 90 percent of New zealand electricity supply generated by renewables by 2025."
"Obviously the country's significant geothermal activity and small population gives it a unique advantage
when it comes to renewable energy. But if recent research has shown us anything, it's that there are plenty of renewable energy sources out there to be exploited,
and every country On earth has more than enough to go around. We just need to follow New zealand's lead,
and start investing in renewables now -because even if you don give a damn about the environment, it still a smart business move n
#Flexible skin sensors turn your body into a digital touch panel The rise of wearable technology is inevitably leading towards our clothes becoming the next touch-enabled smart accessories,
but why stop there? An international team of researchers has come up with a way of attaching flexible touch controls directly onto the surface of our skin.
Dubbed iskin, the system does away with one of the fundamental problems of current wearables:
iskin developers think theye discovered the perfect natural touch surface. urrent electronics are mostly using rigid components
co-developer Martin Weigel of Saarland University in Germany told Matthew Stock at Reuters. ut our sensor is a flexible and stretchable sensor,
we have a much larger input space than current electronics allow for. The researchers say that iskin could be used as a remote control mechanism for other sorts of digital devices,
such as answering incoming calls on a smartphone, controlling playback on a music player, or even typing
and sending whole messages using printed QWERTY-style keyboard interfaces. Depending on what level of control the user requires,
the developers say customisable iskin patches could be created and printed for different sorts of personalised applications. he stickers allow us to enlarge the input space accessible to the user as they can be attached practically anywhere on the body,
said Weigel in a press release. hey are also skin-friendly, as they are attached to the skin with a biocompatible, medical-grade adhesive.
The current prototype, which won an award for best paper at this year SIGCHI conference,
features a sensor created by sandwiching a conductive carbon black powder between two sheets of silicone.
In addition to giving the skin overlays a distinctive tattoo-like appearance, the sensor is able to distinguish between two different pressures,
with resistive (firm) and capacative (light touches potentially enabling different sorts of user control. At this stage, the researchers aren planning a commercial release for iskin
but suggest that future versions of this kind of electric skin technology might even be able to source their power directly from the human wearer.
#Whoa, researchers have levitated liquid droplets on glowing plasma French researchers have found a new way to levitate liquid droplets by using a stream of electricity to create a tiny cushion of plasma.
But researchers from The french Alternative energies and Atomic energy commission have devised now a new method managing to float liquid droplets using plasma.
More than just a cool party trick, the new technique provides some important insight into the production of plasma.
It works in a very similar way to something called the Leidenfrost effect, where liquid droplets sitting on an incredibly hot surface begin to levitate on a hot cushion of vapour.
Although you may not have heard of it before, you've probably used it without realising when you sprinkle water on your pan to see
But after further research, they found that by using electricity to make the vapour cushion instead of heat,
they'd actually managed to ionise the gas into plasma.""This method is probably an easy and original way to make a plasma,
"lead researcher and physicist Cedric Poulain said in a press release. But he admits that this was far from the original reason for the experiment,
"Although they weren't expecting to generate plasma at all, what surprised the team most of all was the blue light emission,
which gave rise to the very high electric field necessary to generate a long-term and dense plasma with little energy.
The next step is for the team to analyse the composition of the plasma cushion, which appears to be a superposition of two types of plasma-something that scientists known very little about."
"It's very exciting, "said Poulain of the research's unexpected turn. Even though it wasn't
their results could could provide some fascinating insight into the physics of plasma and potentially lead to new,
And if that fails, they could always just put a grape in a microwave e
#The UK is trialling a new road surface that charges your electric car as you drive One of the problems with being on the cutting edge of electric car technology is you're not as sure of being able to find a filling station as all the petrol-burning drivers around you.
that sort of'range anxiety'could be gone for good-the roads actually charge your car as you drive.
A select number of cars will be fitted with the requisite wireless charging technology and a test road will be built to show how smaller substations, AC/AC converters,
The exact details of the technology and how it works won't be confirmed until a contractor is appointed to set up the test route,
but it would certainly increase the amount of time cars could last between full charges at home or a designated charging station."
"Vehicle technologies are advancing at an ever increasing pace and wee committed to supporting the growth of ultra-low emissions vehicles on England motorways and major A roads,"Highways England chief highways engineer,
Mike Wilson, said in a press statement.""The off-road trials of wireless power technology will help to create a more sustainable road network for England
Electric car charging points won't be dismissed completely, however, and Highways England has said it's committed to installing plug-in facilities every 48 km along the motorway network.
The tests come after a feasibility study looking into how dynamic battery charging could solve the problem of electric vehicles running out of juice,
encouraging electric cars onto the road would make a lot of financial sense for the UK government. A similar idea is already in use in South korea,
where specially modified electric buses use Shaped Magnetic field In Resonance technology built into the road surface to receive a charge as they move along o
and now a record-breaking solar device made by Australian scientists could mean a whole new category of clean energy production is just around the corner.
Researchers at Monash University in Melbourne have developed successfully the world most energy-efficient rtificial photosynthesistechnique, which effectively mimics plant-based photosynthesis by using solar energy to convert water into hydrogen.
and oxygen by running an electric current through water, could be used to inexpensively power our homes
and cars in just a few years, say the researchers. lectrochemical splitting of water could provide a cheap,
Success in the field of artificial photosynthesis normally means achieving an energy efficiency of above 10 percent.
This is significant because previous methods required using precious metals, whereas nickel is inexpensive, abundant, and offers great stability. here are many catalysts that are sophisticated considerably more than nickel
and often involving obscure and expensive precious metals, said Doug Macfarlane, co-author of the research, in an interview with Ashley Hall at the ABC. o nickel is a rather ordinary catalyst in many respects expect for one thing,
which is that it cheap. It an inexpensive metal and it produces a very, very stable action in its water electrolysis cell.
So it an ideal choice purely and simply because of the cost. Another innovation is that the Monash system can run on river water,
which the researchers say will allow it to be implemented easily in a number of geographic locations.
with hydrogen suitable for powering all kinds of technologies. ydrogen can be used to generate electricity directly in fuel cells,
said Macfarlane. ars driven by fuel cell electric engines are becoming available from a number of car manufacturers.
Hydrogen could even be used as an inexpensive energy storage technology at the household level to store energy from rooftop solar cells.
Thomas Faunce, an expert on artificial photosynthesis from the Australian National University in Canberra, was involved not in the Monash study
every road and house and bridge into a structure that does photosynthesis better than plants,
he told Hall at the ABC
#Fewer Americans are smoking and theye quitting faster than ever, survey shows New figures released by the US Centres for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) show that fewer Americans are smoking than ever before, with the percentage of adult smokers aged 18 and over dropping to just 15.2 percent, a significant decrease from the 2014 figure of 16.8 percent.
The new figures are based on January to March data from the 2015 National Health Interview Survey,
Owing to the January to March window the figures may contain one red herring as far as smoking goes.
the data may be skewed slightly by the impact of new year resolutions. According to the statistics, 17.4 percent of adult men are current smokers,
More good news is that a study published in June by researchers at the University of California,
so that a magnetic field can travel'invisibly'between them. Before you get too excited, this isn't the same as the gravitational wormholes that allows humans to travel rapidly across space in science fiction TV SHOWS and films such as Stargate, Star trek,
But the physicists managed to create a tunnel that allows a magnetic field to disappear at one point
A wormhole is effectively just a tunnel that connects two places in the Universe. So far scientists have simulated this process,
as it would require us to create huge amounts of gravitational energy-something we don't yet know how to do.
and manipulating electromagnetic energy, and so the team from the Autonomous University of Barcelona decided to see
if they could build a magnetic wormhole in the lab instead. Last year they managed to create tunnels that directed magnetic fields from one place to another
but these weren't true wormholes because they didn't keep the magnetic field undetectable or magnetically'invisible'while it was travelling inside the tunnel.
This is something they've now finally managed to overcome, by using metamaterial and metasurfaces to build their tunnel.
That meant that they could make the magnetic field from a source, such as a magnet or an electromagnet, appear at the other end of the wormhole with no trace of it in between.
This created the illusion that the magnetic field must be travelling through some kind of extra dimension. Oddly enough
it also meant that an isolated magnetic monopole-a magnet with only one pole, North or South-appeared randomly at the end of the tunnel."
"This result is strange enough in itself, as magnetic monopoles do not exist in nature, "a press release explains."
"The overall effect is that of a magnetic field that appears to travel from one point to another through a dimension that lies outside the conventional three dimensions."
"To be clear, the wormhole in this experiment isn't really invisible to the human eye-it's a sphere made up of an outer ferromagnetic surface, an inner superconducting layer,
and then a ferromagnetic sheet rolled into a cylinder internally -but the way that it's been designed means that it,
and its contents, is totally undetectable magnetically. And while the tunnel isn't anywhere near to the kind of wormhole that would take us across space,
it does have a lot of features in common.""It changes the topology of space, as if the inner region has been erased magnetically from space,
"lead researcher Àlvar Sánchez explains. The research will have practical applications in areas that use magnetic fields-for example,
it could lead to the creation of MRI machines that don't require people to lie inside the claustrophobic machine,
or more targeted MRI scans. But importantly, it also teaches us more about ways we can tunnel our way through space-an endeavour that holds countless exciting possibilities i
#Forget Bluetooth, new wireless technology uses your body to transmit data Bluetooth redefines ubiquitous. It seemingly everywhere,
and nowhere more so than in personal wearable devices such as fitness trackers, smart watches, audio headsets, earphonesyou name it.
But what if it not the best technology for the job? Researchers at the University of California, San diego in the US have developed a prototype to show off a new wireless communication technique which they say massively outperforms existing wireless tech by using the human body itself to help send data between devices.
The researchers call their new method agnetic field human body communication The technique uses the body as a vehicle to deliver magnetic energy between wearable electronic gadgets.
For the system to function and propagate magnetic fields through the body, the wearable device needs to be circular in nature (like the coil shown in the image above),
meaning it could work for things like fitness bands, smart watches, headbands, or belts. Why would we do this?
The primary benefit is lower power consumption. Whereas Bluetooth devices worn on the body transmit data via radio signals,
the electromagnetic radiation that makes up these signals is blocked by something you. Yep, our bodies get in the way of the data transmissions,
creating obstructions and resulting in ath loss which can only be circumvented by boosting the device power.
The end result is that Bluetooth devices aren very power efficient when we wear them something youe more than likely to have had personal experience with
and it a problem that only compounded by the fact that most wearable Bluetooth gadgets are small and light,
meaning they only have very small batteries in the first place. By sending data via magnetic fields directly through our bodies,
however, path loss can be cut down by a huge amount. The researchers say path loss using magnetic field human body communication is more than 10 million times lower than that of Bluetooth radios. his technique,
to our knowledge, achieves the lowest path losses out of any wireless human body communication system that been demonstrated so far,
said Patrick Mercier, lead author of the study, in a statement. his technique will allow us to build much lower power wearable devices.
If youe concerned about whether sending magnetic energy through your body is a good idea, the researchers say you have nothing to worry about.
They say that ultra-low-power communication systems in wearable devices will transmit signals of much less power than things like MRI SCANNERS and wireless implant devices, with magnetic fields passing freely and harmlessly through biological tissue.
Another advantage of the technology could be security. Compared to something like Bluetooth, which transmits data in a wide radius of several metres,
magnetic field human body communication prevents any kind of digital eavesdropping, as the signals are contained largely to your body.
The researchers say information is radiated neither off your body nor can it be transmitted from one person to another.
While this means the method won be suitable for sending data from wearable devices to remote gadgets (such as audio speakers or a computer), for personalised applications,
some people may find the limitation is actually a positive. ncreased privacy is desirable when youe using your wearable devices to transmit information about your health,
said Jiwoong Park, first author of the study J
#Your fingerprints are about to reveal so much more about you Using fingerprints to identify individuals is a technique that's been around for longer than you might think-it was used first in a crime-solving capacity in the middle of the 19th century.
and fingerprint databases have become much more sophisticated, and now a new method is being tested that can tease out much more information from a single print.
and whether or not the person has recently been in contact with guns and explosives.
Each little bit of extra data investigators can get from a print can make a huge difference in an investigation-imagine being able to discount all women from your enquiries right at the start of a murder case, thanks to just one print,
but it's not just police work where the benefits might be seen-airport security guards could use a fingerprint test to check for recent contact with explosives, for example,
"We've increased very significantly the amount of data that can be taken from a crime scene to help support law enforcement's hypothesis about how a crime occurred
#This transparent lithium-ion battery charges itself with sunlight Researchers in Japan have invented a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that can charge itself using sunlight-no solar cell required.
and the team behind it hopes to see the technology integrated into a mart windowthat can act as both a large rechargeable battery and a photovoltaic cell all at once.
professor at the Department of Applied Physics at Kogakuin University in Japan, announced the development of this device back in 2013.
Theye since been working towards a battery-integrated window that can store energy from sunlight while also changing its structure automatically to provide a tint during the day.
when the battery is exposed to sunlight, it becomes tinted to about 30 percent light transmittance,
and this allows the energy to be captured more efficiently.""The trick in getting them to be nearly transparent is in making them really thin-the electrodes are just 80 nm
and 90 nm,"says Yirka.""After discharge, the team reports that light transmittance rises to approximately 60 percent."
"How did they make the electrodes so thin? Back in 2013, the main component of the electrolyte for the battery's positive electrode was lithium iron phosphate,
and for the electrolyte used for the negative electrode, they used lithium titanate and lithium hexafluorophosphate-both
of which are used commonly in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. For the prototype that was put on display in Tokyo last month,
they altered the transparent oxides used for the negative electrode to achieve incredibly thin, transparent electrodes.
While theye yet to publish details on what these changes were, they were able to facilitate charging via sunlight or other bright sources of illumination.
In testing the team reports an output from the battery of 3. 6 volts, and say they managed to successfully complete 20 charge/discharge cycles.
While the prospect of smart windows is what's got Sato and his team excited,
another possibility for the technology is self-charging smartphone screens made from transparent lithium-ion batteries.
They'll just have to compete with these guys from Michigan State university in the US,
who are working on something very similar
#US government develops mind-controlled prosthetic arm with the sense of touch The US defence force announced last week that it has given a paralysed man the ability to'feel'physical sensations through a prosthetic robotic hand that been connected directly to his brain.
Having been paralysed for more than a decade due to a spinal cord injury, the man was able to identify
when and which of his prosthetic fingers was being touched gently by an object-and all while blindfolded.
this work shows the potential for seamless biotechnological restoration of near-natural function.""The DEKA Arm System-affectionately dubbed'Luke'(as in Luke Skywalker)- was showcased first back in February,
when a US ARMY vet used the battery-powered prosthetic to scale a rock-climbing wall, using nothing but his brain power.
Now the team behind the technology has demonstrated how the battery-powered device can impart the feeling of touch on top of grip, movement,
They did this by placing electrode arrays onto a paralysed volunteer sensory cortex-a region in the brain that responsible for identifying
and pressure sensors in the arm that connect back into the sensory cortex give the wearer the sensation that they are touching something,
"Mike Murphy explains at Quartz. Loaded with highly sensitive torque sensors, the device could detect changes in pressure as they are applied to the fingers,
and this was converted into electrical signals that were fed into the volunteer brain. When testing the arm in the lab,
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