Feb 11
Using artificial muscles, hyper-elastic materials that expand when a charge is applied, the New Zealand team has made a prototype for a self-commutating artificial muscle motor that does not require external electronics or hard metal parts. The researchers describe the device in a paper accepted to the American Institute of Physics’ journal Applied Physics Letters.
The team’s proof-of-concept motor is controlled with carbon-based switches whose resistances change when they are compressed, which activates artificial muscles that rotate a shaft. The artificial muscles, in turn, are able to activate the switches by their movements.
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Tags: Artificial Muscles, Muscles
Jan 22
Apple’s new iBooks Author application enables users to make interactive iBooks on their Mac. Apple says the software allows authors to make “stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad.” Richard Stevens, author of the Diesel Sweeties webcomic, has expanded that list of possibilities to include comic strips. 
Diesel Sweeties author Robert Stevens writes of the project:
I had a few insomniac hours this weekend and did a little experiment: Waking Up With the Diesel Sweeties is a tiny little free ebook for the iPad.
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Tags: Author, Ibooks Author
Jan 13
CES is finally over and we thought we’d do one more round-up, which will contain the best of the rest; from new TV technologies to rival OLED, mobile phones and tablets that you may have missed during giant the tech scrum.
Acer dropped a ‘one more thing moment’ at the end of their CES keynote and it came in the form of their Iconia Tab A700 their new flagship tablet, which has Ice Cream Sandwich and a whopping quad-core processor.
It hasn’t been officially unveiled, so details about its final specs remain scant, but it was on the show floor for consumers and journalists to have a quick play.
The first thing we noticed is the amazing new screen, it boasts an impressive resolution of 19251200, which is just a shade above 1080p. It’s br
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Tags: Rest
Jan 08
The findings, led by Horacio Espinosa, James N. and Nancy J. Farley Professor in Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, were published online Dec. 22 in Nano Letters.
Gallium nitride (GaN) is among the most technologically relevant semiconducting materials and is ubiquitous today in optoelectronic elements such as blue lasers (hence the blue-ray disc) and light-emitting-diodes (LEDs). More recently, nanogenerators based on GaN nanowires were demonstrated capable of converting mechanical energy (such as biomechanical motion) to electrical energy.
“Although nanowires are one-dimensional nanostructures, some properties — such as piezoelectricity, the linear form of electro-mechanical coupling — are three-dimensional in nature,” Espinosa said.
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Jan 02
Laptops are definitely a perfect replacement for desktop PC. At the very beginning of the launch of laptop it was only dream for many of us, considering the price but not any more. Nowadays even teenagers carry one to their college which shows the ease of getting it. But what actually is the condition of laptop sales after the introduction of tablet PC? Tablet PCs unlike the laptop at the introduction were offered at low prices with almost the same features included. Now the biggest confusion in gadget enthusiasts is to whether go for a laptop or the tablet PC. Once you consider the following points, you will be clear with which one to go.
Why should you ditch your laptop dreams and go for a tablet?
- First and foremost point I would like to mention is the portability of tablet PCs.
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Tags: Laptop, Replace Laptop