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Mobisante is a privately held pioneer in Mobile Health, developing point-of-care diagnostic solutions based on smartphone and web-based cloud services. We have created the world’s first smartphone-based ultrasound imaging system MobiUS™. This award winning system, cleared by the Food & Drug Administration, brings ultrasound imaging within reach of health care professionals everywhere. MobiUS fuses the power and wireless connectivity of a smartphone with the Internet into a game-changing diagnostic solution that is personal and accessible, helping health care professionals practice better medicine and reduce costs.
Mobisante Mobile and Accessible Digital Imaging - [Link]
Homemade Computer Sets Records In The Trillions @ NPR.
Shigeru Kondo is 56 and has already twice set the record for the most digits of pi calculated. His most recent record, 10 trillion digits, took a year to complete on his home-built supercomputer. Host Audi Cornish found out more about the computer, which caused a little family strife because it had to share electricity.
Homemade Computer Sets Records In The Trillions - [Link]
Many consumers are switching to mobile internet service providers that offer 4G. Three different protocols are available to facilitate the delivery of these faster internet speeds. They are LTE, WiMAX and HSPA+. Consumers are promised 4G data speeds that are 10 times faster than 3G, and while this may not consistently be the case, there is something to be said about where these super-high speeds will take us, especially as we enter the mobile age.
What Exactly is 4G?
The International Telecommunication Union (UTI) defines 4G as a network capable of offering 100 Mbps while mobile (in a car) and 1 Gbps while stationary. According to experts at Tech News Daily, no current “4G” networks come anywhere near approximating that speed. This type of superfast data transfer will not be available until WiMax 2 and LTE-Advanced networks are rolled out, as both of these technology would be able to hit these high benchmarks.
For now, consumers must choose between what is currently marketed as “4G” in order to get mobile internet speeds that exceed the current 3G technology.
LTE has been the most reliably fast 4G network, and with LTE-Advanced arriving to consumers in the coming years, several companies are jumping on the LTE bandwagon. Verizon is currently the main provider of LTE and consistently provides average 4G download speeds of 6 Mbps. Verizon’s LTE network also provides up to 5 Mbps upload speeds. In general, Verizon downloads faster than other providers such as AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. These three companies offer download speeds that average around 3 Mbps. Read the rest of this entry »
The largest field test for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication (car-to-X communication) worldwide is about to get under way. Scientists, auto makers and communication companies as well as public-sector institutions have teamed up to develop a system that allows cars to share information on traffic conditions and impending hazards. The aim is to promote a safer, more efficient flow of traffic. Researchers from the Technische Universität München (TUM) are currently involved in devising the test scenarios that 120 vehicles will use to put the system dubbed simTD through its paces on Germany’s roads next spring.
Notice traffic blocks before they are visible. Recognize risky situations before they get out of hand. Reach your destination on time, safe and relaxed. The “Safe and Intelligent Mobility – Test Field Germany (simTD)” research project is pursuing these aims. The idea is to electronically network vehicles and infrastructure by means of car-to-X communication. A fleet of 120 vehicles fitted with the system developed by the simTD consortium is about to demonstrate how this works in practice on the highways, rural and urban roads in and to the north of Frankfurt am Main over several months. [via]
Intelligent cars alert each other to hazards - [Link]
Steve Jobs’s Patents – Interactive Feature @ NYTimes.com – [via]
The 317 Apple patents that list Steven P. Jobs among the group of inventors offer a glimpse at his legendary say over the minute details of the company’s products — from the company’s iconic computer cases to the glass staircases that are featured in many Apple stores.
Steve Jobs’s Patents - [Link]
The same piezoelectric effect that ignites your gas grill with the push of a button could one day power sensors in your body via the respiration in your nose.
Writing in the September issue of the journal Energy and Environmental Science, Materials Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Xudong Wang, postdoctoral Researcher Chengliang Sun and graduate student Jian Shi report creating a plastic microbelt that vibrates when passed by low-speed airflow such as human respiration.
In certain materials, such as the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) used by Wang’s team, an electric charge accumulates in response to applied mechanical stress. This is known as the piezoelectric effect. The researchers engineered PVDF to generate sufficient electrical energy from respiration to operate small electronic devices. [via]
Electricity from the nose - [Link]
India announces $35 tablet computer to help lift villagers out of poverty @ The Washington Post… [via]
NEW DELHI — India introduced a cheap tablet computer Wednesday, saying it would deliver modern technology to the countryside to help lift villagers out of poverty.
The computer, called Aakash, or “sky” in Hindi, is the latest in a series of “world’s cheapest” innovations in India that include a 100,000 rupee ($2,040) compact Nano car, a 750 rupee ($15) water purifier and $2,000 open-heart surgery. Developer Datawind is selling the tablets to the government for about $45 each, and subsidies will reduce that to $35 for students and teachers.
India announces $35 tablet computer to help lift villagers out of poverty - [Link]
BBC News – ‘Flying carpet’ of conductive plastic takes flight. [via]
The 10cm (4in) sheet of smart transparency is driven by “ripple power”; waves of electrical current driving thin pockets of air from front to rear underneath.
The prototype, described in Applied Physics Letters, moves at speeds of about a centimetre per second.
Improvements to the design could raise that to as much as a metre per second.
‘Flying carpet’ of conductive plastic takes flight - [Link]
Researchers at Purdue University (USA) are developing a new type of computer memory that could be faster than the existing memory devices and consume far less power than flash memory. The devices combines silicon nanowires with a ferroelectric polymer, which is a material that switches polarity when an electric field is applied, to make storage cells whose polarity can be read as digital ones and zeros.
The new technology, which according to the researchers is still in a very nascent stage, is called FeTRAM for “ferroelectric transistor random access memory”. FeTRAM devices are nonvolatile, which means that data is retained in the absence of power. They could potentially use only 1% of the power of current flash memory devices, although the current version consume more power because it is not properly scaled. [via]
Radically new memory technology - [Link]
On August 12, electrical/aerospace engineer and helicopter pilot Pascal Chretien took to the air in the world’s first untethered, fully electric manned helicopter flight in a prototype machine that he designed and built almost entirely by himself within a 12 month development period. In his 2 minute, 10 second test flight, Chretien beat aviation giant Sikorsky into the record books — but it was not without significant risk. As the man himself puts it: “in case of crash I stand good chances to end up in kebab form.”
With battery technology advancing steadily and electric vehicles popping up across all sorts of transport modes, electric helicopters have been one of the last dominoes to fall. That’s because the dynamics of helicopter flight tend to consume a lot of energy — and in a way that doesn’t fit in well with the way batteries perform. [via]
World’s first untethered, manned electric helicopter flight - [Link]
