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Tuesday, April 06, 2010
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Never Get A Scratch On The LCD or Lens
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/yankodesign/~3/zNdbpfDt-4s/
The agony of getting a scratch on a digital camera LCD screen is too close to home! One time I broke the screen while riding a coaster at Genting Highlands Park! And the other time, desert sand of Dubai ruined the lens. Only if my present Kodak had a 360 degree display protector as seen on this Zero Angle Digital Camera, I wouldn’t worry so much. The LCD screen is like a hard cover over the lens, that you flip 360 degrees to open up and use. When shut it's like a sleek metallic blub, when its open…it's a neat-o screen with all the camera navigation intact!
Designers: Sun ho Sin & Jeong eun Park
Physicist Creates Most Magnetic Material on Earth, Might Overturn Laws of Physics
The new compound is about 18 percent more magnetic than former magnet king iron cobalt
A more powerful magnetic material may have emerged to topple previous record-holder iron cobalt, until now the most magnetic material on Earth. The new iron and nitrogen compound might also force physicists to revise their understanding of magnetism, according to the Minnesota Daily.
The iron and nitrogen compound proved 18 percent more magnetic than iron cobalt in tests done by Jianping Wang, a physicist at the University of Minnesota. There also appears to be a "new physics" at work in the substance, but physicists at other labs must replicate the experiment and verify the work.
Wang reportedly found localized electrons in his iron and nitrogen compound, which have never shown up before in magnetic materials. Localized electrons are electron-pair bonds shared by nonmetals, as opposed to the free-flowing electrons typically related to magnetism and electric current.
Some physicists suspect that localized electrons, rather than free-flowing electrons, are more responsible for magnetism in materials. The discovery also appears to overturn traditional theories that set limits on the strength of magnetism in substances.
Japanese researchers at the Central Research Laboratory of Hitachi also created a magnetic iron and nitrogen compound in 1996, but no other scientists were able to get the same results. Wang has taken special care to allow other scientists to duplicate his experimental setup.
If the findings hold up, they could lead to a significant boost in magnetic materials that allow for more efficient power generation and transmission.
[via Minnesota Daily]
MIT Researcher Develops iPhone App to Easily Control Swarms of Aerial Drones
Source: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/video-using-smartphones-control-aerial-drones
Flying UAVs might someday become as easy as fiddling with your phone
Fleets of unmanned drones have become a common weapon in the U.S. military's arsenal, but clunky controls and interfaces that distract human operators can lead to costly mistakes and crashes. Such problems prompted a former U.S. Navy pilot to develop an iPhone app that allows any smartphone user to learn how to fly an unmanned aerial system in just three minutes.
Easier control interfaces could drastically cut down on training time and costs, not to mention mistakes. Consider that current military pilots undergo thousands of hours of training to learn how to fly drones.
"This is all about the mission -- you just need more information from an image, and you shouldn't have to spend $1 million to train someone to get that picture," said Mary "Missy" Cummings, an MIT aerospace and systems engineer.
Cummings once flew F-18 Hornets for the U.S. Navy, and saw fellow fighter pilots die in aircraft carrier landing mishaps. Since then, she has devoted her research at MIT's Humans and Automation Laboratory (HAL) toward making it easier to fly drones and interact with technology.
That means less time spent fiddling with menus or trying to zoom a camera, and more time focused on the task at hand -- whether that involves trying to I.D. a sniper or search for victims after a natural disaster.
The HAL group recently ran experiments where participants controlled a drone via smartphone so that they could read an eye chart and find a photo within a building. Cummings and her students hope to eventually test the app in the real world and fly the drone up to 500 feet.
[MIT]
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