Oyster, Wave Energy Project

Wave/Tidal energy is something which has a huge amount of energy stored in it but its not been harnessed on a large scale till now. Now a company by the name  Aquamarine Power  has developed a power plant by the name Oyster. Its a pretty simple idea so to say but its very effective.

The device is a pretty simple hydraulic pump which is connected to a wide hinged flap.The hinged flap moves along with the waves in the sea, thus creating a movement in the hydraulic piston; this pumps the water through underground pipes to electric turbine where it is converted into useful electricity.The oyster is attached at the sea  bed and pops 10mts above water.

Diabetes monitoring made easier

Diabetes is one of the most increasing body ailments in the modern world. Reports say that, India will be the Diabetics capital of the world. Now a diabetic patient has to go through a lot of pain for check up and some have to go through it on a daily basis. Well, one thing is for sure, what I believe is the field of medicine has always been supported by Engineering. Doctor can do nothing until they have reports.

So what we have is another ingenious idea from Engineers this time it’s from India. A team from The Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai (IIT-B); The leader of the research is Prof. Rohit Srivastava and a group of students have developed an Implantable glucose Bio sensor using nanotechnology. Once injected the bio sensor would help monitor blood sugar levels for up to six months using an external hand held device. 

Cyborg Insects

This is something very interesting. Ever thought if you could control an insect or an animal with a remote control? Sounds a bit cruel?, maybe it is, but that’s what a team of engineers at the University of California,Berkeley have already made possible. It’s a part of a program funded by the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research project Agency (DARPA). This project is led by Hirotaka Sato and Michel Maharbiz. The basic aim of the project is to create fully remote controlled insects. These insect will be fitted with tiny cameras looking for survivors after disaster or acting as the ultimate spy.


Basically, the team implanted electrodes into the brain and muscles of specific species of Green beetles, one african and an American one. Both respond to the simulations in almost the same way but the African species is larger and it could easily lift the weight of the electronics and the battery. This beetle can grow  as big as the size of the an average human palm.

Google Go

Google is one company that has almost stepped into every online business possible. More over the products it comes up with is always free and good in quality. At a personal level, I love Google for the services it provides and almost everyone in the world does.

Now google has also come up with a new programming language called "GO" the programming language they say will help boost performance of both computing power and programming abilities. The language is still experimental. Its a big news for developers.  
Google says that the language has the best feature and security power like C++ and dynamics and speed like Python.

New Opensource platform from Samsung

Opensource  is slowly gaining ground in the mobile market we have the Google Android which came in around 2007. It was not an instant hit as a lot of people and analyst expected it to be but by now we have a lot of mobile manufacturers jumping on the android for mobile platform.

But now SAMSUNG yes you heard it right the Korean Mobile and other digital hardware manufacturer has also come up with an OPENSOURCE platform which the company clams will be used in all their new upcoming handsets in the year 2010.

For those people who don’t know what opensource is, well most of the platforms have restriction for development of applications but in an opensource platform anyone who wishes to create an application can do it by just downloading a SDK (Software development kit) and registering as a developer online. The application is made available for everyone to download once it is approved.

Minoru 3D

3D technology has been present in the market for a decent amount of time now but it’s not yet used on a large scale and wasn’t available for general public. We only had 3D movies.
 

But now we have the “Minoru 3D” the world’s first consumer webcam. It’s from a Company by the name Nova. Minoru means Real in Japanese .
 

The Minoru is a very good webcam it has a good design and it’s pretty flexible, you can move it easily and adjust it as needed. It actually has 2 cams on it and the distance between them is similar to that of the human eyes to get a perfect 3D view just like a real object in front of your eyes.

I-Driver is here, drive your car via I-phone

Smartphones have come a long way these days. You can almost do any given task through a smartphone  whether its shoothing a video or surfing the internet  etc etc. Smartphone have the same kind of processing power and memory in comparison to the laptop 5yrs back. Now we have smartphone which have a 1ghz+ processor and upto 512MB system memory

We all know the iPhone from Apple is one of the biggest craze in the smartphone market. At a personal note, I m not a big fan of Apple products but the iPhone is a descent gadget.

There seems to be no limit to what our smartphones can do these days . 

Robotics Group of the Institute of Computer Science at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany, have developed an application for the iphone called  I-Driver. Any guesses ? 

Actually they have developed/modified a car which they call the ‘Sprit of Berlin’ this car is equipped with an array of 3D sensors  a dashboard camera GPS, WiFi and other equipment which helps control the car.

Nano technology

What is Nano technology?

Actually just like meters, cm,”nano” is a measurement scale it is 1billionth part of a meter. In practical terms we can say that if we say the earth is 1mt in size then a marble is 1 nano. But what can we do with so small objects which we cant even see with our naked eyes?

How it came? 
The whole business of nano technology or the technology that works at the molecular level came into existence by a speech given by a Nobel prize winning Physicist Richard Feynman, in the year 1959, its not something very new.

The Need for Nano technology

As I said earlier what is the need to go so small? Actually the applications are endless from Medical to Engineering, from military to surveillance

Applications in Medicine

When it comes to medicine we can say its like “swallowing the doctor". In the future we will come across something called nanobots or ultra small robots these will be like man made and controlled micro machines, these bots will be injected inside our body in hundreds or thousands in quantity they will gather data about various things in our body. The doctor will just have a look at the data and give you a necessary treatment for a certain ailment. Doctors will be able to destroy the Cancer tissues as they are created and finally incision surgeries will be history.

Application in Engineering

When we talk about engineering the application are limitless. It can bring a wide variety of changes in all fields of engineering. From computers to production to construction everything will get simpler and cost effective. For example – An Intel 4004 microprocessor integrated circuit was 10 microns or 10,000 nm in width.Today Intel’s processors have I.C. 0.065 microns or 65 nm of line widths. If we compare, the width of a human hair is approximately 100 microns or 1000,000 nm. In the future we will have processors which have a very small size are energy efficient and which are cheap as a result more and more devices will be equipped with microprocessors.

Tactical or military applications 
When it comes to military application weapons and equipment will get smatter. Surveillance will get very simple as Surveillance devices will be small nanobots which will be difficult to detect and hence the bad guys won’t be able to execute their bad missions

Other applications 
In the future the paint on your car or wall will be like skin which would immediately heal itself when it gets damaged. Space travel may get simpler and we would get to know our universe in a better way.this may sound like science fiction but it is very true! 
There are a lot of application of nano technology in the field of paint and material science Nano technology is a topic which is vast and a lot of thing are out of scope to explain in this blog.
Its only a matter of time when we will be taken into the nano age!