NASA studying solar-electric propulsion for “space tugboat”

What a 'space tugboat' incorporating a high energy solar electric propulsion (SEP) system might look like (Image: Boeing)

Last year, NASA announced it was seeking proposals for mission concept studies of a high-power solar electric propulsion (SEP) system that could be used in a "space tugboat." Such a ship would be used ferry payloads in low Earth orbit (LEO) into higher energy orbits,

Anon ski goggles use magnetic lenses for easy swapping

Anon M1 goggles with Magne-Tech use magnets to make swapping lenses easy

The problem with the interchangeable lens systems commonly used in ski goggles is that they're tedious to work with. You have to slowly tear the frame from the original lens, line the grooves of the replacement lens up just right and then snap it back together section by section. Not only is this the type of thing you might need to get a table in the cafeteria for, it's the type of thing that could haunt you all day if you inadvertently put the lens in cockeyed. The Anon M1 goggles make switchable lenses easier and

Self-guided bullet could hit laser-marked targets from a mile away

The self-guided bullet developed by Sandia National Laboratories has been fitted with an LED, to check if the embedded battery and control electronics can survive the flight

A group of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have built a prototype of a small-caliber bullet capable of steering itself towards a laser-marked target located approximately 2,000 meters (1.2 miles) away. The dart-like design has passed the

World's most powerful X-ray laser recreates conditions at the center of a star

SLAC's LCLS is the world's most powerful X-ray laser (Photo: University of Oxford/Sam Vinko)

To say things are really heating up at the US Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory isn't just a bad pun, it's one hell (sorry) of an understatement. An Oxford-led team used the Stanford-based facility that houses the world's most powerful X-ray laser to create and probe a 2-million-degree Celsius (or about 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit) piece of matter. The experiment allowed the scientists the closest look yet at what conditions might be like in the heart of the Sun, other stars and

Silkworms may help repair damaged hearts

Disks made from cocoons of the tasar silkworm may find use as patches for regrowing cardiac tissue in heart attack victims

Although people do regularly recover from heart attacks, the heart itself never entirely "gets better." This is because cardiac muscle tissue doesn't regenerate - any that dies in the event of a heart attack will only be replaced with inactive scar tissue, and the heart's performance will be permanently compromised as a result. Scientists have responded by trying to develop heart patches made of

Urban Cultivator automatically grows greens indoors

The Urban Cultivator is a computer-controlled hydroponic growing system for herbs and vegetables

There's no question that fresh herbs taste better than their dried counterparts, nor is there any denying that garden-fresh veggies are preferable to ones that have spent the past several days in a truck or on a supermarket shelf. People who are lucky enough to live in warmer climates can keep the fresh greens coming year-round, if they plant a garden. For those of us in colder regions, however, things get a

Is ultrasound the future of male contraception?

Scientists have successfully reduced the sperm counts of male rats to zero using widely-available ultrasound equipment

Using commercially-available ultrasound technology, scientists have successfully reduced sperm count in rats to a level that would cause infertility in men. Researchers managed to reduce motile sperm to 3 million per cauda epididymis (where sperm are stored), which equates to a Sperm Count Index of

Graphene reveals yet another extraordinary property

Dr Nair shows his one micron thick graphene oxide film research sample (Photo: University of Manchester)

Ever since University of Manchester scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov first isolated flakes of graphene in 2004 using that most high-tech pieces of equipment - adhesive tape - the one-atom sheet of carbon has continued to astound researchers with its remarkable properties. Now Professor Sir Andre Geim, (he's now not only a Nobel Prize winner but also a Knight Bachelor), has led a team that has added superpermeability with respect to water to graphene's ever lengthening list of extraordinary characteristics.
Graphene has already proven to be the thinnest known material in the universe, strongest material ever measured, the best-known conductor of heat and electricity, and the stiffest known

Recon Instruments brings action camera viewing into your goggles

The Contour app is the latest Recon Instruments function

Skiers and snowboarders of the future are going to be pretty close to cyborgs. Over the years, we've seen such wearable electronics as heated clothing, cell phone-compatible ski gloves and camera-equipped goggles. We've also seen the Recon Instruments goggles, which use a

Perfectly secure cloud computing possible thanks to quantum physics

Researchers have demonstrated a process relying on quantum physics they claim enables perfectly secure cloud computing (Image: Shutterstock)

As numerous companies continue their push to get us to entrust our data to the cloud, there are many still justifiably concerned about the security of cloud computing-based services. Now an international team of scientists have demonstrated that perfectly secure cloud computing is possible by combining the power of quantum computing with the security of quantum cryptography. They carried out what they claim is the first demonstration of "blind quantum computing," in which a quantum computation was carried out with the input, computation, and output all remaining unknown to the

Virtual Projection emulates laws of physics for screen sharing between devices

A team of researchers have come up with a novel take on screen sharing inspired by traditional projectors

Researchers are investigating a means of virtually projecting images from handheld devices onto computer screens. Beyond simply being a means of screen sharing across devices, the research looks at traditional projection - physically shining a still or moving image onto a flat service - as a metaphor for multi-device interaction. In a video demo, researchers

Secret agents can create a Wi-Fi network and hide important files with these cufflinks

The end of one of the cufflinks pops out, and when plugged into the USB port on your computer creates a hotspot that can be used by other devices

Life as a secret agent means you need to have access to the internet when you need it, as well as have the ability to carry around important files in locations where your adversaries won't think to look. These secret agent-worthy Wi-Fi cufflinks let you wear your mobile hotspot on one

HyperSolar harnesses sunlight to produce cleaner-than-clean hydrogen fuel

If HyperSolar has its way, solar hydrogen farms like that imagined here may not be so very far away (Image: HyperSolar)

HyperSolar claims it is developing a zero carbon method of producing hydrogen gas from wastewater by harnessing solar energy. Hydrogen gas is a clean source of fuel in that, theoretically at least, the only waste product is water. But hydrogen gas does not occur naturally on Earth, and requires energy to create. Typically that energy comes from traditional, carbon dioxide-emitting sources, rendering hydrogen fuel rather less environmentally friendly than it has the potential to be. HyperSolar's work may mean truly clean, renewable hydrogen fuel could be a commercial reality sooner than

Wear-resistant surfaces inspired by scorpions

Scientists have unlocked the secret to scorpions' ability to withstand sand-blasting, and applied it to man-made materials (Photo: Quartl)

As any graffiti-removal specialist will tell you, sand-blasting is definitely an effective method of removing substances that have bonded onto hard surfaces. Unfortunately, sand or other abrasive particles suspended in air or liquid also have a way of eroding not just spray paint, but pretty much anything they encounter. As a result, items such as helicopter rotor blades, airplane propellers, rocket motor nozzles and

Novatiq enters robotics market with SCORP throwable robot

The SCORP Micro Unmanned Ground Vehicle (MUGV) is the first offering from Novatiq

After 15 months of development, privately-owned Swiss company Novatiq is set to enter the robotics market with its first offering, SCORP. Designed for scouting and surveillance applications, SCORP is a

Quick 3D motion-capture system developed for imaging muscles

New technology is able to capture 3D images of muscle contractions in less time and more detail than was previously possible (Muscle Man image via Shutterstock)

Current medical imaging technology misses important data regarding muscle contraction, including the ways in which a muscle's shape changes when it contracts, how the muscle bulges, and how its internal fibers become more curved ... or at least, so Simon Fraser University (SFU)'s associate professor James Wakeling tells us. In order to remedy that situation, he has developed a new method of imaging contracting muscles, that he claims should allow researchers to observe never-before-seen details of

Philips soundbar streams content via Android

Philips Soundbar CSS5123

There's something to be said about streaming content from your PC on the TV. The question is how do you get that content from the PC - and now tablets and phones - to your TV. The latest option from Philips is the Soundbar CSS5123, an Android-powered surround sound speaker that lets you stream content from any DLNA-enabled device.
The soundbar is a single speaker, with companion wireless subwoofer, that provides virtual surround sound for a room. This is designed to replace the need for a 5.1 system, meaning

Play harmonica on your iPhone with the iMonica app

The iMonica app digitally recreates a diatonic harmonica on an iPhone screen, which can be played using a combination of mouth position and raising or lowering the smartphone

There's no denying the popularity of music creation apps for the iPhone. Just about every instrument you want to play is available as a digital simulation - from guitars to pianos to drums, and even DJ decks - but what about wind instruments? The iMonica app for iPhone from DigitarWorld most definitely fits into this category and turns your iPhone into a digital diatonic harmonica. So, do

How Will Google's New Privacy Policy Affect You?

If you were hanging around the internet yesterday afternoon, you probably noticed some hubbub around Google's new, unified Terms of Service Agreement. But what's it actually going to mean for you? Well, this:

How Will Sharing My Data Google-Wide Affect Me?

One of the chief gripes about the change is that Google will "track" you across all of its services. Just to clarify: Google has always stored user data. Have you noticed how in Google Maps sometimes an address you searched for a year ago will auto-fill in? Well, now one Google application can see what you searched for in another, so if you searched for "Furbies" on Google's homepage (for some freaky reason) and then later went to YouTube, you might see Furbies videos pop up. That's new. Previously data was compartmentalized between applications.
That could be a bad thing if Google were changing its policies on the data it shares with third parties, after all Google+ knows your real name, right? Fortunately, that isn't the

Leaping lizards inspire new robot design

An African Agama lizard, and Tailbot

For some time now, scientists have assumed that dinosaurs' tails didn't simply drag on the group behind them, but were instead held out to serve as a counterweight for the giant reptiles' heavy front ends when running. More recently, however, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered that modern-day lizards also use their tails to control the orientation of their bodies when leaping through the air. It's a discovery that could be applied to devices such as search-and-rescue robots, and in fact already has been. Based on their observations, the UC Berkeley team created a small, tailed robot known as Tailbot.
The initial experiments, carried out by staff and students of the university's biology and engineering departments, involved getting red-headed African Agama lizards to run along a short track, launch themselves off of a platform, then land on a vertical surface. They then climbed to the top of that surface, where a shelter awaited.
In some cases, the platform had a surface that the lizard's claws could grip on, whereas in other instances the surface was slick, causing the lizard to slip as it jumped. By viewing slow-motion video of both types of jumps, it was observed that the lizard was able to adjust its body position in mid-air, by throwing up its tail to varying degrees. This allowed it to always land on the vertical surface feet-first, instead of nosing into it on the slip-jumps.

Using the lizard footage, the researchers came up with a mathematical model that determined how much tail swing would be necessary to compensate for a given amount of angular momentum of the body. They also created Tailbot - a small radio-controlled car equipped with a motor-controlled tail, and a gyroscopic sensor.
At first, they had the car/robot make several jumps using a small ramp, with its tail extended but the sensor not running. The result was a series of nose-dives into the floor. Once the sensor was turned on, however, it was able to sense the car's "body" position in mid-jump. It then used the lizard-tail model to adjust the angle of its own tail, resulting in proper wheels-down landings. Even when held in the air and dropped nose first, Tailbot was still able to right itself within a drop space of less than one foot (30.5 cm).
The technology could end up finding use in practical robots. "Inspiration from lizard tails will likely lead to far more agile search-and-rescue robots, as well as ones having greater capability to more rapidly detect chemical, biological or nuclear hazards" said team leader Robert J. Full, professor of integrative biology.
A paper on the UC Berkeley research was recently published in the journal Nature.
The video below illustrates how both the lizards and the robot were able to control their body orientation using their tails.