CUTE UTE: We've all seen the cute little Smart cars tootling around town, but soon the Smart range may include a cute ute. The For-US pickup truck is an electric powered two-seater with a 90 cm cargo tray in the back for a couple of electric bikes and an integrated docking station for them. I guess at a tad under a metre there'd be room for shopping bags or luggage, but I'm not sure about hauling your home
handy building supplies. SMH has more, and there's video here.
MUSCLING IN ON WIRELESS: The US Federal Communications Commission has now set aside some of its radio spectrum for use by medical devices.
Medical Micropower Networks are ultra-low power wideband networks of multiple transmitters implanted in the body. The transmitters use electric currents to help take the place of damaged nerves and muscles. With access to this chunk of the spectrum they can be further tested and developed. Every body wants in on the spectrum these days. More information at the Federal Communications Commission.
CHIPS AND DIP: Different liquids have different surface tensions — some bead up while others flatten when they contact a surface. Physicists at Harvard University have figured out how to exploit that property to create materials that can name an unknown hazardous substance. A special lab-grown opal is applied to a metal chip and then crystals are grown on the chip to create an even surface. But when a specific concentration of water and ethanol is applied the water beads in such a way as to create words. This Watermark Ink could be used to coat a chip for dipping into unknown hazardous substances, for example if they were spilled on the road. The name of the substance would then appear on the chip. Hmm, guacamole, I believe. Details at io9.
STRETCHING BOUNDARIES: If you put a single molecule in a junction between a pair of gold electrodes to form a simple circuit and stretch it, conductance goes down. But if you stretch it enough conductance rockets up, making it 10 times more conductive than if not stretched at all. It's all to do with quantum mechanics and reduced barriers to electrons tunneling through the molecule. This finding could allow new types of electronic devices. I wish my money had those kind of stretching properties. Arizona State University has more.
DON'T DROWSE DRIVERS: Falling asleep at the wheel is a sure precursor to an accident. A prototype system from Denso Corp uses a camera on the steering column to take pictures of a driver's face. The system extracts multiple feature points from the facial image and checks muscular activities to determine how drowsy the driver is. Because the system uses more than just the eyes to reflect drowsiness it can
detect problems early on. I could use this at my desk. More here.