How to Make Your Own Wi-Fi Antenna

It is not a complicated process at all. You can change your regular antenna into a high gain antenna just like the $30 range extender antennas very cheaply.

Here is a nice how-to video

Blind to 'see' and 'touch' the images soon

A recently completed licensing agreement for two new technologies may help bring affordable graphic reading systems for the blind and visually impaired to market. The two systems bring electronic images to life in the same way that Braille makes words readable.

The Braille system, based on a method of communication originally developed by Charles Barbier for Napoleon's soldiers, was devised by Frenchman Louis Braille in 1821. Braille allows vision impaired people to read and write using characters made up of raised dots. The system has been used for almost two centuries but these new developments in technology could mark a significant change in the way the blind are able to “see” in that they incorporate images, rather than words and numbers.

The two new systems, a tactile graphic display device and fingertip graphic reader, were developed by researchers at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US. The tactile graphic display for localized sensory stimulation, was created using an array of about 100 small, very closely spaced (1/10 of a millimeter apart) actuator points set against a user’s fingertip. To “see” a computer graphic with this technology, a blind or visually impaired person moves the device-tipped finger across a surface like a computer mouse to scan an image in computer memory. The computer sends a signal to the display device and moves the actuators against the skin to “translate” the pattern, replicating the sensation of the finger moving over the pattern being displayed. With further development, the technology could possibly be used to make fingertip tactile graphics practical for virtual reality systems or give a detailed sense of touch to robotic control (teleoperation) and space suit gloves.

The second technology, introduced as a prototype in 2002, conveys scanned illustrations, map outlines or other graphical images to the fingertips, and can translate images displayed on Internet Web pages or in electronic books. It uses refreshable tactile graphic display technology, allowing a person to feel a succession of images on a reusable surface. The machine uses about 3,600 small pins that can be raised in any pattern, and then locked into place to hold the pattern for reading. The actuator points then can be withdrawn and reset in a new pattern, allowing the tactile reading to continue through a variety of images.

If you think the devices look familiar it’s because inspiration came from a “bed of nails” toy found in a novelty store. The toy allows the user to press their hand or face or an object onto the back of the nails and they raise up to create a picture of that object. Watching the pins in the toy depress under fingers and then return to their original state started the researchers thinking about how the principle could be applied to electronic signals. NIST recently signed a non-exclusive license for commercialization of its two tactile graphic display technologies with ELIA Life Technology which may soon see the two products become commercially available.

Source : Gizmag

Lucent technologies-Bell Labs Innovations

This is a video about Lucent technologies describing its achievements in the field of Science and technologies

New Development : Bendable Battery

It's a battery that looks like a piece of paper and can be bent or twisted, trimmed with scissors or molded into any shape needed. While the battery is only a prototype a few inches square right now, the researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who developed it have high hopes for it in electronics and other fields that need smaller, lighter power sources."We would like to scale this up to the point where you can imagine printing batteries like a newspaper. That would be the ultimate," Robert Linhardt a professor at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at RPI said in a telephone interview.The development is reported in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Unlike other batteries, Linhardt explained, it is an integrated device, not a combination of pieces. The battery uses paper infused with an electrolyte and carbon nanotubes that are embedded in the paper. The carbon nanotubes form the electrodes, the paper is the separator and the electrolyte allows the current to flow.Students at the school in Troy, N.Y., were the inspiration for the work, said Linhardt, whose students were working on methods to dissolve paper and cast it into membranes for use in dialysis machines. Meanwhile, students of Pulickel Ajayan in RPI's materials science department were trying to make carbon nanotube composites using polymers. The two groups got together and realized they could use paper instead of polymers and combine the two projects.Then came Omkaram Nalamasu's students, also at RPI, who said the project—a thin sheet black on one side and white on the other—looked like an electrical device. And over about 18 months, the groups developed the projects, into a battery, a capacitor, which stores electricity and a combination of the two. Ajayan sees potential uses in combination with solar cells, perhaps layers of the paper batteries that could store the electricity generated until it is needed, he said in a telephone interview.Perhaps it could be scaled up and shaped into something like a car door, offering moving electrical storage and power when needed. That might be an expensive proposition, however, cautioned Peter Kofinas, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland."The advantage of a flexible device would be that you could roll it in a film or a sheet. However, carbon nanotubes are very expensive," said Kofinas, who was not involved in the research."So from the commercial standpoint, this would be very expensive if you want to make a large sheet out of this material," he said via e- mail. In addition, he said, "It does not look like it performs better than currently available batteries and supercapacitors in the market."Because of its flexibility, however, it does have potential, Kofinas said.The research was funded by the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research and the National Science Foundation.

IBM may build world's fastest computer

The National Science Foundation is planning to award IBM a contract to build the world's fastest supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, according to documents that were accidentally placed on a federal government website for a short time last week.

The decision to build the machine, which will cost $200 million to build and may cost more than $400 million during its five-year lifetime, is already proving to be controversial.

The award has been eagerly pursued by a number of supercomputer centers and state governments. Word of the decision to award the contract to IBM to build a production version of a computer that is now intended for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has created concern among some computer scientists involved in designing and building high-performance computers.

The new computer is to be the first capable of one thousand trillion mathematical operations a second, a computing benchmark known as a petaflop. Placing it in Illinois, however, has led to expressions of concern in California and Pennsylvania, where computing labs bid on the contract.

The machine will become a magnet for the world's most advanced scientific research projects. Unlike many academic research supercomputers in the United States that serve a large community of users, the supercomputer will concentrate on a handful of Grand Challenge science projects, like simulating the impact of global warming.

Several government supercomputing scientists said they were concerned the decision might raise questions about impartiality and political influence. "The process needs to be above all suspicion," said Horst D. Simon, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. "It's in the interest of the national community that there is not even a cloud of suspicion, and there already is one."

For most of the last two decades, the fastest computers have been at either the national laboratories at Los Alamos, N.M., or Livermore, Calif.

Source : Boston Globe

Some office printers emit dangerous particles

A new study suggests that some printers emit dangerous particles that could make office workers sick.

Researchers at Queensland University of Technology in Australia found that 17 of the 62 printers they tested were "high particle emitters" that posed a threat to humans. They say 37 of the printers didn't emit any particles, but one gave off particles at the same rate as a burning cigarette.

"These printer particles are tiny like cigarette smoke particles and, when deep inside the lung, they do the same amount of damage. The health effects from inhaling ultra-fine particles depend on particle composition, but the results can range from respiratory irritation to more severe illness such as cardiovascular problems or cancer," Professor Lidia Morawska, the study's author, tells The Age.

Her research showed that particle levels were five times higher during working hours because of the emissions from printers. She says the printers were more likely to emit dangerous particles when the toner cartridge was new or the machines was being used to print detailed images.

"Printers should operate in environments where there is as much ventilation as possible and as far as possible from where people's desks are located." she tells tells Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

ABC Science has an extensive report on the findings.

Source : USA Today