Posts

Google is teaming up with Johnson & Johnson “on advancing surgical robotics to benefit surgeons.” The companies are together working on an “innovative robotic-assisted surgical platform capable of integrating advanced technologies,” their statement says, but few other details are known for now.There’s a lot of PR speak in there, but the research behind it could be a game-changer for medicine. The Verge hypothesizes that the two companies are working on either an autonomous device or a doctor-piloted surgery assistant able to make more precise incisions....

Driving lights make nighttime driving safer by enhancing forward and peripheral vision, and they add value to your vehicle. Adding an extra set of more powerful lights to the front of your car—wired to come on when the high-beam switch is activated—provides additional lighting and improves overall vision for night driving. Off-road driving lights are typically activated by a separate switch and not linked to your high beams. These are strictly for off-road night driving and not to be used on the street as they would blind any incoming drivers....

Media Platforms Design TeamPortable electronic devices can be subjected to some serious knocks, drops and sticky situations—from tumbles off tables to toilet-bowl splashdowns. In response, an entire subsection of the personal electronics industry has evolved to produce ruggedized tech. These water-resistant, shockproof gadgets are designed to protect delicate circuitry from clumsy spills and from the unforgiving environments of messy jobs (police work, construction) and outdoor recreation. But they often cost more and skimp on features....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Wankel Tyrannosaurus Rex is a dinosaur with many names. The fossil’s namesake is Montana rancher Kathy Wankel, who discovered the specimen on a national wildlife refuge in 1988. The dino’s technical name, MOR 555, refers to the T. rex’s home for more than two decades, the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Mt. But now, the dinosaur is known by a different name: “the Nation’s T. rex”....

Jeffrey W. Keener is a corporate keymaster–one of a rapidly growing number of security professionals who can unlock all your office secrets. Whether you’re on a PC in the next room or a Mac in Madagascar, Keener is just a few keystrokes away from watching the contents of strangers’ hard drives whiz by. It may seem Orwellian, but this constant monitoring is a crucial cog in the well-oiled machine of business investigation–and one more inevitable tick on the countdown to a surveillance society....

Suntory, Japan’s oldest whisky distillery and producer of various other beverages, has announced that it’s going to work with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to study the “development of mellowness in alcoholic beverage through the use of a microgravity environment.” In other words, scientific space booze. According to Suntory, nobody fully understands how it is that alcohol “mellows” with age, but they suggest that “the formation of high-dimensional molecular structure consisting of water, ethanol, and other ingredients in alcoholic beverages contributes to the development of mellowness....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf this Ford Edge Concept looks an awful lot like the current Edge to you–you’re not alone. Though this is technically a “concept” we hear its close to the design next generation Edge. And that means the new Edge will most certainly be largely evolutionary.But what this concept lacks in visual excitement, it perhaps makes up for with technology. The concept debuts a new parking system that allows the crossover to park itself without the driver as well as a new autonomous colission avoidance system....

Media Platforms Design TeamYesterday architects unveiled the designs for three office buildings that will join the Freedom Tower at the former site of the World Trade Center. The buildings, of different heights and designed by different architects, will face a memorial to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks.Lord Norman Foster–who recently made his mark on Manhattan with the city’s premier green building, the Hearst Tower–designed the tallest of the three buildings: A 78-story structure with a roof sliced into four diamond shapes, which will light up at night....

Cost: $50System: Xbox 360Rating: Teen (Blood, Language, Violence)Players: 1–4; up to 16 via system linkOnline gameplay: 1–16 on Xbox LiveReviewer: Erik SofgeThe Details: Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (GRAW) is a realistic first-person shooter, putting you behind the sights of the weaponry and gear of the army of the very near future. Set in the opening days of a civil war in Mexico City, circa 2013, GRAW presents an optimistic vision of the U....

Media Platforms Design TeamUpdate, Thursday morning: Not just one landing, but threeAccording to the ESA, which spent the night trying to make sense of the Philae lander’s strange docking maneuver, the lucky lander bounced off the surface of comet C-G no less than three times before finally settling down.Philae first ricocheted off the comet immediately upon impact at 10:33 a.m. Eastern time. (As we reported yesterday, the lander’s dual harpoons failed to eject and anchor it to the rocky comet) This initial bounce pushed Philae hundreds of feet into the air before the comet’s weak gravity pulled it back in....

Compared to the global positioning systems deployed in the 1960s and 1970s, today’s GPS are quite robust. But a new report finds radiation from the sun can blindside even the most complex navigation systems—leaving your car on the right path to the beach but maybe not your plane on its way through the clouds.Working with a GPS receiver in Puerto Rico last year, Cornell University graduate student Alessandro Cerruti accidentally discovered the solar flare—or “burp”—as a new enemy for GPS....

You don’t always need a sky crane to get to the surface Mars. Sometimes you need to just spread your wings and glide. The MARSDROP program would involve sending two probes to the surface of Mars by sailing them down from above. Because of this technique, and because of their small size, they can go to rougher terrain where other probes can’t. The MARSDROP concept was developed by Rebecca Williams of the Planetary Science Institute....

VR is a bit like an inside joke. You have to be there to get it. YouTube videos and poetic descriptions can do their best to describe what it’s like slipping on the googles, but until you’ve had your brain straight-up bamboozled by two tiny screens attached to your face, it’s hard to really understand why Facebook bought Oculus Rift for $2 billion, or why HTC is putting millions of its own money into the HTC Vive....

Media Platforms Design Team The Trouble with Compact FluorescentsThe lighting revolution that is now underway is seeing the incandescent bulb slowly go the way of candles and oil lamps. Incandescents’ acclaimed heir apparent, the compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), now accounts for about 25 percent of household bulbs in the United States, according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. And there is plenty of reason for its popularity: the bulbs use as little as a fifth of the energy of an incandescent to generate equivalent lighting and have longer lives than incandescents–many CFLs promise up to seven or even nine years of service (assuming 3 hours or so of use per day), adding up to many thousands of hours of lighting....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: SeptemberBase Price: $17,619 to 19,810Competitors: Chevy Cruze, Honda Civic, Ford Focus, Hyundai Elantra, Nissan Sentra, Volkswagen JettaPowertrain: 1.8-liter I-4, 132 hp, 126 lb-ft; 1.8-liter I-4, 140 hp, 128 lb-ft; four-speed automatic, six-speed manual, CVT, FWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 27/36 (four-speed L); 29/38 (CVT LE); 30/42 (LE Eco with 15-inch wheels)What’s New: The Toyota Corolla is the elder statesman in the compact car class. It’s been in production for an astonishing 47 years, and Toyota has sold 40 million of them....

Media Platforms Design TeamGurus of appropriate tech, such as inventor Jock Brandis, try to come up with simple solutions that make a huge difference, usually for people in developing countries. But, he says, he’s coming to find out that some of these devices can change lives right here in the United States.As co-founder and director of research and development at the Full Belly Project, a North Carolina–based nonprofit engineering group dedicated to helping people in rural communities, Brandis has been designing sustainable, efficient, and easy-to-use agricultural tools for communities in developing countries like Uganda, Haiti, and the Philippines for more than a decade....

Media Platforms Design Team NEW YORK — You don’t see this many cameraphones pulled out in this town short of a Britney Spears sighting. We sure as heck haven’t seen as many wide-eyed onlookers for a car here before. “Does it fly?” asked one of the dozens of New Yorkers crammed outside the Hearst Tower as the Aptera Typ-1e electric vehicle pulled up to accept its Breakthrough Award. No, the Aptera doesn’t fly, but it can hit 120 miles per gallon right now, and it’s headed for production this fall....

When we talk about chainsaw, we often talk about horsepower, or cutting speed. But when you’re looking at buying a chainsaw, the most powerful statistic of them all might be the power-to-weight ratio. That’s important for professionals who spend all day behind a saw, but in some respects it’s even more so for amateur wood cutters who can be quickly tired from the work. They’ll be safer and more productive with a light, compact, and powerful saw....

Media Platforms Design TeamCornell’s Solar Decathlon entry looks less like a cutting-edge, high-tech home than like a cluster of rusted grain silos. In reality, it’s both–an unusual combination that somehow comes across as a compelling and indulgent place to live. “One of our main goals was to take a new look at what a Solar Decathlon house could be,” says student leader Chris Werner, a graduate student in architecture. “We’re a land grant school, and there are grain silos all across upstate New York....

Media Platforms Design TeamAcura’s First Turbo … An SUV You would think a performance luxury brand like Acura would have had at least one turbocharged vehicle in its 20-year history building sporty cars. Nope. The all-new RDX (shown here in prototype form) will be the first. The 240-hp 2.3-liter turbocharged Four will be paired to a five-speed sequential sport-shift automatic and Acura’s SH-AWD system when it launches here this summer. The i-VTEC turbo technology uses a variable-flow turbocharger, which, Acura says, provides improved fuel economy....