The third smallest sovereign nation in the world has just made an enormous contribution to relieving the world’s debt to the environment. Singapore researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) have discovered how to turn carbon dioxide into methanol…. Double take: They have found a way to make greenhouse gas green. Triple take: They took the biggest contributor to the world’s carbon footprint and converted it into a source of clean energy for the world. Astounding.
In case you’re not jumping out of your skin yet, the IBN research was immediately sent to Angewandte Chemie, published by the German Chemical Society, and the prestigious journal called it a “hot paper,” and “very important.” In layman’s terms, what IBN researchers discovered is that if they used N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs), an organic catalyst, as opposed to heavy metal catalysts, carbon dioxide is activated, a state which it must be in to transform it into something useful.
Then, hydrosilane, a combination of silica and hydrogen, is added to the NHC-activated carbon dioxide and, by adding water into the solution through hydrolysis, the carbon dioxide transforms into methanol.
IBN principal research scientist, Dr. Yugen Zhang, explained: “Hydrosilane provides hydrogen, which bonds with carbon dioxide in a reduction reaction. This carbon dioxide reduction is efficiently catalyzed by NHCs even at room temperature. Methanol can be easily obtained from the product of the carbon dioxide reaction. Our previous research on NHCs has demonstrated their multiple applications as powerful antioxidants to fight degenerative diseases, and as effective catalysts to transform sugars into an alternative energy source. We have now shown that NHCs can also be applied successfully to the conversion of carbon dioxide into methanol, helping to unleash the potential of this highly abundant gas.”
A BALD, child-like creature dangles its legs from a chair as its shoulders rise and fall with rythmic breathing and its black eyes follow movements across the room. It’s not human – but it is paying attention.
Below the soft silicon skin of one of Japan’s most sophisticated robots, processors record and evaluate information. The 130cm humanoid is designed to learn just like a human infant. The creators of the Child-robot with Biomimetic Body, or CB2, say it is slowly developing social skills by interacting with humans and watching their facial expressions, mimicking a mother-baby relationship.
“Babies and infants have very, very limited programs. But they have room to learn more,” said Osaka University professor Minoru Asada, as his team’s 33kg invention kept its eyes glued to him.
The team is trying to teach the pint-sized android to think like a baby who evaluates its mother’s countless facial expressions and “clusters” them into basic categories, such as happiness and sadness. With 197 film-like pressure sensors under its light grey rubbery skin, CB2 can also recognise human touch, such as stroking of its head. The robot can record emotional expressions using eye-cameras, then memorise and match them with physical sensations, and cluster them on its circuit boards, Prof Asada said.
Since CB2 was first presented to the world in 2007, it has taught itself how to walk with the aid of a human and can now move its body through a room quite smoothly, using 51 “muscles” driven by air pressure, he said. In coming decades, Prof Asada expects science will come up with a “robo species” that has learning abilities somewhere between those of a human and other primate species such as the chimpanzee. And he hopes that his little CB2 may lead the way, with the goal to have the robo-kid speaking in basic sentences within about two years, matching the intelligence of a two-year-old child.
By 2050, Prof Asada wants a robotic team of football players to be able take on the human World Cup champions – and win. Welcome to the cutting edge of robotics and artificial intelligence. More than a decade since automaker Honda stunned the world with a walking humanoid P2, a forerunner to the popular ASIMO, robotics has come a long way. Researchers across Japan have unveiled increasingly sophisticated robots with different functions – including a talking office receptionist, a security guard and even a primary school teacher.
Electronics giant Toshiba is developing a new model of domestic helper, AppriAttenda, which moves on wheels and can fetch containers from a refrigerator with its two arms. Last month also saw the debut of Japan’s first robotic fashion model, cybernetic human HRP-4C, which can strut a catwalk, smile and pout thanks to 42 motion motors programmed to mimic flesh-and-blood models.
A Tokyo subsidiary of Hello Kitty maker Sanrio, Kokoro – which means heart or mind in Japanese – has also produced advanced talking, life-size humanoids. “Robots have hearts,” said Kokoro planning department manager Yuko Yokota.
“They don’t look human unless we put souls in them. When manufacturing a robot, there comes a moment when light flickers in its eyes. That’s when we know our work is done.”
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Add in the inches, select your aspect ratio, pixels wide & pixels high. Walah
Not a flying car, but a roadable aircraft, the Terrafugia Transition took flight for the first time March 5, 2009. Visit http://www.avweb.com and search for “Terrafugia” for more.
Is it just me or is there suddenly more interest in flying cars recently? Here’s yet another example. Unlike the moller skycar the Terrafugia is more like a plane. So you would need an airstrip for take off! (tad inconvenient) Then as I previously posted there is also the crazy brit’s with there Parajet Skycar, who are still currently on the adventure from London to Timbuktu. Best of luck to all the projects out there, it’s always nice when talking about a future with flying cars to actually have examples such as these.
Is it a car? Is it a plane? Actually it’s both. The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month.
If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months’ time.
Its manufacturer says it is easy to keep and run since it uses normal unleaded fuel and will fit into a garage.
Carl Dietrich, who runs the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, said: “This is the first really integrated design where the wings fold up automatically and all the parts are in one vehicle.” read more..
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A team of adventurers has launched an expedition to travel from London to Timbuktu by flying car. The group, led by Neil Laughton, will make the 6,000km (3,600-mile) journey by land and air in the Parajet Skycar, effectively a dune buggy with a fan motor and paragliding wing attached.
I am definitely building one of these… That’s just 2 cool. Maybe slightly more aerodynamic however!!
2009 is getting off to a flying start with the launch of the SkyCar Expedition from London to Tombouctou on the 14th January. The SkyCar is the brain child of Giles Cardozo, the Managing Director of Parajet. It is the first two seater, high performance, road legal, bio-fuelled flying car; capable of providing rally car performance on and off road and light aircraft performance after just a few minutes of wing preparation. For further information on this exciting expedition visit: www.skycarexpedition.com
This isn’t a very practical way of transport but I love the way Theo Jansen has engineered this beast and I look forward to seeing what he does next with his creations.
Meet Animaris Rhinoceros, a new species created by Dutch scientist turned artist Theo Jansen. This amazing-looking being is a wind-powered walking sculpture, one of several that the artist/engineer has brought to life.
Jansen is dedicated to creating wind-powered artificial life, and believes there is a very fine line between art and engineering. Usually he can be found on the beaches of the Netherlands with huge skeletal plastic creatures called strandbeests, but the Rhinoceros is a 2-ton transporter intended for crossing the tundra. Someone has to pull it to set it in motion, then it’s up to the wind to carry it along. There’s also room inside it to sleep.
The strandbeests that Jansen is more famous for have an unsettlingly spider-like quality, but they’re also delicately beautiful. He talks about them as if they are alive, and perhaps in the future they will be.
The artist wants to leave these an assortment of these creatures on the beach to fend for themselves. Since they live on wind, they don’t need any food, and could in theory live forever.
It’s been about 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web on the back of the internet. For more than a billion people on the planet, the web today is an alternate, digital universe that is gradually overtaking the analog, physical world as a source of information and connections. Earlier this month, the Pew Research centre for the People & the Press conducted a survey that rendered two obvious conclusions: The internet has overtaken newspapers as a source of national and international news, and television, led by CNN, continues to serve as the main source.
According to the Pew survey, 40 per cent of respondents (versus 24 per cent in 2007) said the internet is their primary source for national and international news. That compares with 35 per cent (versus 34 per cent 2007) who rely on newspapers and 70 per cent (versus 74 per cent in 2007) who use television as their main source. Given the historic presidential campaign and economic woes this year, the large percentage increase year-over-year for the internet is not surprising.
Among Americans under 30, 59 per cent (versus 34 per cent in 2007) said they get most of their national and international news from the internet. Television tied with the internet at 59 per cent for that group, but that was a decline from 68 per cent in 2007 (the figures add up to more 100 percent, by the way, because people could offer multiple answers).
Television and printed newspapers are clearly stressed by financial pressures, which have been amplified by the ailing economy. While some of the newspapers have leading web sites, their financial staple – classifieds and job and real estate listings – has been dominated by independent internet services such as Craigslist, Monster.com, and Redfin. Mainstream television is competing with the likes of YouTube for eyeballs and is still trying to figure out how to swim with the internet fishes and generate revenue, which at this point is a rounding error.
Most newspapers have figured out that you create content for the web first and that the print edition is a byproduct of that output. Television programming can be viewed on a TV, PC, smartphone, or digital billboard. But as NBC’s Jeff Zucker said recently, “People had been counting on digital exposure. I had been trying to talk about the fact that even as it grew, it was not necessarily the big growth engine for legacy media companies that were trading those analog dollars for digital dimes. We’re now up to dimes. That’s an improvement. It’s still not a dollar for a dime kind of business that I would like to be in.”
While the internet is growing as the place where people go for news, the revenue simply isn’t catching up fast enough. The less obvious part of the internet overtaking newspapers as the main source for national and international news is that much of the seed content – the original reporting that breaks national and international news and is subsequently refactored by legions of bloggers – comes from the reporters and editors working at the financially strapped newspapers and national and local television outlets.
New publishing entities, such as Politico, the nonprofit ProPublica, the Huffington Post, and numerous blogs are making original contributions to national and international news, and some are trying to make money while they’re at it.
As the financial pressures mount – the outlook for 2009 is dismal – and the cost cutting continues, we can only hope that the original news reporting by top-flight journalists is not a major casualty.
