Stronger-than-steel palladium glass paves way for dental implants of the future

Stronger-than-steel palladium glass paves way for dental implants of the future: "A team of researchers at Caltech and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have created a new type of glass that's stronger than steel, but it might not make it out of your oral surgeon's office. The material is a combination of glass' simplest form, called marginal glass, the metal palladium, and small fractions of phosphorus, silicon, germanium, and silver, making it resistant to massive amounts of pressure and strain. A glass this strong has endless potential in the way of structural application -- think cars, planes, and bridges. Thing is, though, palladium is super expensive, and researchers involved in the project say the best applications are in products like dental implants, which are currently made of soft, stiff noble metals, more likely to cause complications like bone atrophy. Chances are we won't see super strong glass bridges anytime soon, but the new glass dental implants could be in your mouth as early as 2016.

Filed under: Science

Stronger-than-steel palladium glass paves way for dental implants of the future originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Satarii Star camera base follows your every move, might exist if the money's raised

Satarii Star camera base follows your every move, might exist if the money's raised: "

Looking a bit like a universal Sony Party-shot, the Satarii Star is up on fundraising site IndieGoGo right now with a simple goal: finding enough people who are willing to pay for an action-tracking base for their camera to get the thing produced. The concept is simple enough -- use the included iPhone and standard tripod mounts to insert the camera of your choice, grab the remote sensor and attach it to the object, animal, or human you want to track, and let 'er rip -- as long as you stay within 8 meters (roughly 26 feet), the base station with camera attached will rotate up to 180 degrees to keep the action in the frame. As of this writing they're about halfway to their goal to $20 grand -- and they've already slapped together a functional prototype, so you know you're not funding pure vaporware. Follow the break for a demo, and while you're at it, go ahead and tell off all your friends -- you won't need 'em to hold your camera while you film magic tricks for YouTube anymore. Score!

Continue reading Satarii Star camera base follows your every move, might exist if the money's raised

Satarii Star camera base follows your every move, might exist if the money's raised originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Study shows love for music relates to brain chemical, not to My Chemical Romance

Study shows love for music relates to brain chemical, not to My Chemical Romance: "

It would make sense that people listen to music for the sheer pleasure of it, right? That's what we thought, but apparently there's a scientific reason for this. Scientists have discovered that when Earthlings listen to pleasurable music, one particular chemical is loosed in the gord. The study, conducted by Robert Zatorre and Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University in Montreal, concluded that when the participants tuned into instrumental pieces they were familiar with, their brains released dopamine into the striatum -- an area of the noggin linked with anticipation and predictions. According to PET scans, the members of the study unleashed the chemical 15 seconds before a climaxical moment in a song, signaling the possibility that humans may actually release it in anticipation and not as a reaction to a wailing solo. Bonus point? Chopped and screwed tracks unleashed forty times more dopamine. Just kidding, but it's probably true.

Study shows love for music relates to brain chemical, not to My Chemical Romance originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Jan 2011 01:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cockroach Legs Could Mean Robots Won't Have Butter Fingers

Cockroach Legs Could Mean Robots Won't Have Butter Fingers: "

Robot appendages are increasingly hot-topic research as our androids and prosthetic limbs get better. Now roboticists from Harvard and Yale have invented a better robot finger based on one heck of an unusual source: cockroach legs.

The traditional route to giving a robot a dextrous human-like grip is to replicate a human hand with a slew of complex joints, finger parts, sensors, and motors--or to forgo any kind of human-like shape and go with some form of pincer. The former solution requires a lot of engineering to make and computer power to run, which befits the real human appendage that requires a disproportionately enormous share of your brain's processing power to manage (check out the famous homunculus images to understand this better).

Robert Howe and Aaron Dollar took a totally different approach to the problem: They looked at how cockroaches use their legs to move in complex and speedy ways, devoting just a tiny clutch of neurons to the business of locomotion. They used data from Berkeley researcher Robert Full, who discovered that a lot of the way cockroaches move is automatic--but not driven by clever brain functions, instead relying on the mechanical adaptation in real time of their legs. This means they can deal with errors in movement, like slipping claws or uneven surfaces.

The upshot of this thinking was a robot hand that is much simpler than some that have been produced (thinking of examples like Dean Kamen's 'Luke' prosthetic limb, or even that of Honda's Asimo android) because it relies on cleverly shaped springing structures on the fingers instead of more sophisticated servos. The fingers glide around objects they're supposed to be picking up, with errors in positioning or inaccurate understanding of the shape of the object automatically compensated for by the springiness of the finger's design. The result is a hand that can easily grip many different types of object, aided by touch sensors, and with a design where each finger is much lighter than other more sophisticated artificial hands, making them ideal for the imminent wave of household 'butler 'bots' and prosthetic limbs.

Awesome stuff, but of course this isn't the first marriage of robot technology and cockroaches: Check out this video for a different piece of thinking where a cockroach controls a trackball that controls a roving 'bot. It's not as useful as a clever gripping hand, but much more fun:

[youtube gwZD59Ic9T8]

To read more news on this, and similar stuff, keep up with my updates by following me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

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PixelOptics emPower! electronic eyeglasses hands-on

PixelOptics emPower! electronic eyeglasses hands-on: "

PixelOptics is demoing what it claims is the most significant development in prescription eyewear in 50 years: emPower! PixelOptics' glasses offer up better field of view and less distortion than traditional lenses by sandwiching an LCD-like layer in the glass that can be focused with an electrical charge. The set's inbuilt micro-machine accelerometer detects when you tip your head down -- when you read, for example -- and triggers the glasses' focal area for presbyopia. The emPower! lens can also be set to manual and is then activated by a swipe of your finger on the frame. The kit includes the glasses and the inductive charger that will keep the eyewear powered up and running for a couple days. We were able to get some video of the lens in action focusing on a tie -- it is impressive to say the least -- the change happens as quickly as your eye blinks and is not noticeable when not activated. We'd say PixelOptics is on to something here, and if you're the type to plonk down $1,200 for a pair of glasses, these are definitely worth a peek. The only thing missing is a micro speaker that blasts out Bionic Man sounds each time you fire them up -- but we've great hope somebody will hack that in.

Gallery: PixelOptics emPower! electronic eyeglasses hands-on

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PixelOptics emPower! electronic eyeglasses hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 19:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Vyne lets you wear your iPhone or iPod touch, whether you want to is still up for debate

The Vyne lets you wear your iPhone or iPod touch, whether you want to is still up for debate: "

It seems like wearing your gadgets is all the rage these days, and the Vyne is no exception. A belt-like flexible strip of plastic with a clip on the end for your iPod touch or iPhone (though we suppose it should work with any gadget that has the right dimensions), this product isn't wholly unlike the Gorillapod. There's no word on price or release date just yet, but just think of all the attention you'll get while using this in public. Then again, your hands will be free to do tons of other things -- like checking the time on your iPod nano wristwatch.

The Vyne lets you wear your iPhone or iPod touch, whether you want to is still up for debate originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Smartfish Engage keyboard automates ergonomics, is finally available

Smartfish Engage keyboard automates ergonomics, is finally available: "

It's been two years in the making, but Smartfish has finally released its opus into the world: the Engage keyboard. It's been known as the Pro:Motion and ErgoMotion over the years, but now it's got a new moniker, a classy all-black look, and a $150 pricetag. Outside of the tilted design and large palm rests, the keyboard has an internal motor that moves the position of the two halves of the keyboard based on your typing frequency. The periodic position adjustments help fight off fatigue, an approach developed in conjunction with The Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. We'll try to play around with the keyboard at CES -- last year's prototype wasn't terribly impressive -- but if it's anything as good as the Smartfish Whirl Mini Notebook Laser Mouse, we might have a new carpal tunnel warrior in our arsenal.

Gallery: Smartfish Engage keyboard automates ergonomics

Continue reading Smartfish Engage keyboard automates ergonomics, is finally available

Smartfish Engage keyboard automates ergonomics, is finally available originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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