Inventors and Remarkable People
The VirtuSphere: full body immersion Virtual reality at last
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The VirtuSphere is a new platform that is a breakthrough in the science of Virtual Reality and one we are convinced will take VR into the broader community. It is that significant and more because it is the solution for a million problems offering more compelling, convincing and relevant VR experiences than any device yet conceived, and with VR advancing rapidly in its other constituent areas (graphics, sound, touch, and to a lesser extent, smell and taste), we believe the VirtuSphere will be the device to make VR relevant to the world – this is a killer app. Inside the VirtuSphere, the virtual explorer can physically navigate the virtual world with genuine human movement, - the headset is wireless, and senses 360 degree movement, but unlike any existing virtual reality or gaming peripheral, the floor moves and each virtual step is accompanied by a real one of the same dimensions. It promises to be the ultimate computer games peripheral, the ultimate treadmill at the gymnasium, the ultimate educational resource with remarkable flexibility and offer the most realistic virtual experience of almost any kind - enabling you to walk through the house you’re hiring across the world for your holidays or explore the Daintree Rainforest. It also has major occupational training implications as it offers experiential learning for everyone from athletes to fire fighters and is already being developed by the military for training crack troops and saving lives on the battlefield. Like we said, this is significant! Read More
Auto Skins - digital clothing for your car
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Auto Skins is a product that has been on the Australian market for several years. Developed by the aptly named promotional company Decently Exposed, the AutoSkin is a digitally coloured skin for automobiles. You can have high resolution artwork emblazoned on the skin which is then bonded to the car and indestinguishable from normal paint other than by its photographic reproduction. The AutoSkin has the double advantage of forming a protective coating which can be stripped off to reveal the original, as-new unblemished duco the car came with. Over 2500 cars have been reskinned to date with corporate branders the logical first-movers, but an increasing number of innovative marketers and consumers keen to individualise their most public personal expression. The skins sells for between US$1500 and US$3000 depending on the amount of real estate needed to be covered and the complexity of the design. They’ll work from your artwork and when you start making more than one, the price drops quickly. For US$3000, a luxury-sized car can be completely reskinned with digital imagery of your choice – that price includes the creative design, manufacture and fitting of the skin to create a new vehicle with a completely different look. Read More
Breakthroughs In Cross Lingual Communication and Speech-to-Speech Translation
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November 4, 2005 Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Karlsruhe's joint International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies (InterACT) held a landmark videoconference last week to demonstrate new breakthroughs in cross-lingual communication. InterACT director, computer science professor Alex Waibel, who is a faculty member at both institutions, demonstrateed domain-independent, speech-to-speech translation in a lecture, which was simultaneously translated from English to Spanish to German. Current speech-to-speech translation systems allow translation of spontaneous speech in very limited situations, like making hotel reservations or tourist shopping, but they cannot enable translation of large, open domains like lectures, television broadcasts, meetings or telephone conversations. The new technology developed by InterACT researchers fills that gap and makes it possible to extend such systems to other languages and lecture types. Read More
Eddie Paul - If it doesn't work, it just isn't finished yet
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Serial inventor Eddie Paul has created working prototypes of dozens of inventions. If you can conceive it, he can probably build it. Beginning as a self-taught welder, painter, metal fabricator and machinist he along the way turned from a customiser to a creator, designer and inventor. Initially, he did it to enable a change of circumstance – to move away from homelessness and violence and street gangs but he found that he learned quickly and had that uncanny ability to look at the machinery he was working on and make it better. For the last 20 years he’s been doing it for fun at the same time as earning a handsome living as his engenuity, easy going nature and delivery on time and on budget has become recognised far and wide. That's Eddie with his Circlescan camera for capturing 360 degree images at a Victoria's Secret shoot. Read More
MIT unveils the $100 computer designed to educate the children of the Third World
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October 1, 2005 The MIT Media Lab has launched a new research initiative to develop a US$100 laptop designed to revolutionize how we educate the world's children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created. The initiative was first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, Lab chairman and co-founder, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005 and earlier this week, Negroponte showed the first prototype images and concept drawings to the world’s press. Read More
The world’s biggest and fastest newspaper press
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September 7, 2005 The Mitsubishi DIAMONDSTAR is the world's fastest double width newspaper offset press – it is as tall as a four story building with a printing speed of 90,000 full colour, 96-page broadsheet copies per hour. And who could possibly use a press that produced so many newspapers? Well, newspapers like the Yomiuri Shimbun which is the only newspaper in the world with a daily audited circulation greater than 10 million copies, a feat it first achieved in 1994 – its current audited circulation is 10,075,479 and a full page advert costs JPY47,910,000 yen, (US$437, 770) which is very reasonable when you consider the cost per thousand figure calcs to just US$42.34. The Yomiuri Shimbun bought four DIAMONDSTAR presses and can produce 100 full colour newspapers a second at full capacity. And Mitsubishi sold eight of the machines last year, so at least four others are lurking elsewhere, probably in Asia given this list of the world’s 100 largest newspapers. Read More
One of history’s most prolific inventions
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August 29, 2005 Okay – hands up all those who know what this invention is? Though this invention has been around in very similar form for thousands of years, a major breakthrough in technology enable a new more convenient version to be produced in post-war Europe, first going on sale in 1950. Since that time, 100 billion have been sold – in every country, at the rate of 57 per second for 55 years. It’s one of history’s greatest business success stories and it is ...
Electronic Music Pioneer Bob Moog Dies
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August 23, 2005 Electronic music pioneer Dr. Robert Moog (71) passed away at his home in Asheville, N.C. earlier this week and will be mourned by a generation of music fans whom he introduced to electronic music via his world famous “Moog synthesizer”. Moog's instruments have influenced many styles of music from jazz to rock, R & B to classical. Moog keyboards can be heard in the music of artists as diverse as funk masters Parliament and Funkadelic; rock icons Yes, the Beatles, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer; and jazz greats Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. Read More
First human robotic arm implant
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July 15, 2005 The first implantation of robotic arms into a human being is to be performed at the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In a statement issued by the hospital, an agreement was signed during June that will see a team of neuroscientists from Duke University, in the United States, led by Brazilian doctor Miguel Nicolelis, perform the implant in approximately three years time. A microchip implanted into the patient's brain will make it possible to control the prosthetics. Nicolelis has long been regarded as the most-likely to develop the technologies for such a procedure, having recently been named one of the 50 top scientists in the world by Scientific American. Read More
Tiret New York's 26.5 carat diamond "Second Chance" wristwatch
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July 14, 2005 It must be the right month for outrageous diamond watches. A fortnight ago TAG Heuer trotted out Uma Therman wearing the red satin EU100,000 euro Diamond Fiction watch bracelet dripping with 879 Top Wesselton diamonds and now luxury watchmaker Tiret New York has designed its newest watch with 26.5ct of EXIRE diamonds from Belgian diamond manufacturer Inter Gems-Claes. New to the luxury watch scene, Tiret was launched in 2003 by Damon Dash and Daniel Lazar and has wasted little time in making itself very visible on the wrists of celebrities and sportspeople in the New York scene. Dash, Jay-Z and Biggs Burke formed Roc-A-Fella Records in 1996, and have created a juggernaut in rap music, clothing, liquor, publishing, film, and the hip-hop community in general since then. Thirty-two-year-old Dash is the business brains behind the Roc-A-Fella empire and has the connections and Midas Touch to seemingly make any brand successful right now. He appears to be doing just that with the Tiret name and the completely over-the-top “Second Chance” collection. With five times the carats of TAG Heuer’s Diamond Fiction, we weren’t game to ask the price. Read More
Vale Jack Kilby: the inventor of the microchip dies
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June 24, 2005 Jack Kilby, the man who invented the Integrated Circuit – also known as the microchip – died on Monday at age 81. It’s not every day that a man of Kilby’s importance passes away. In terms of the magnitude of his invention, Jack Kilby ranks with just a handful of people in history whose inventions have comprehensively changed the world – names such as Johannes Gutenberg, James Watt, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford come to mind, and even then the universal application of the microchip ranks it above all of those inventions. In times yet to come, Kilby’s invention will be even more significant as the microchip seems destined to become a part of nearly every manufactured object. Read More
Research provides clues to space weather mystery
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May 25, 2005 The most intense burst of solar radiation in five decades accompanied a large solar flare on January 20. It shook space weather theory and highlighted the need for new forecasting techniques, according to several presentations at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting this week in New Orleans. Dr. Richard Nightingale of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL) in Palo Alto, called upon his research into rotating sunspots to provide a piece of the puzzle. The solar flare, which occurred at 2 a.m. EST, tripped radiation monitors all over the planet and scrambled detectors on spacecraft. The shower of energetic protons came minutes after the first sign of the flare. This flare was an extreme example of the type of radiation storm that arrives too quickly to warn interplanetary astronauts. Read More
Bendable concrete
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May 7, 2005 A new type of fibre-reinforced bendable concrete will be used for the first time in Michigan this summer. Developed by University of Michigan scientists, the new concrete looks like regular concrete, but is 500 times more resistant to cracking and 40 percent lighter in weight. Tiny fibres that comprise about 2 percent of the mixture's volume partly account for its performance. Also, the materials in the concrete itself are designed for maximum flexibility. Because of its long life, the Engineered Cement Composites (ECC) are expected to cost less in the long run, as well. Read More
Inflatable composite structures enable lightweight transportable buildings
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May 7, 2005 Inflatable structures (aka airbeams) have developed rapidly in recent times, finding application in a variety of new engineering projects ranging from military tents in Iraq and Afghanistan to antennas in outer space. With necessity as the driving force, a team of engineers at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick forms the backbone of research into the technology. And the results have been spectacular - the technology has reduced the transportable weight of a tent by 66%, the transportable volume by 75% and the setup time by 50%. Read More
This waiting room chair can transform into a hospital bed
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UPDATED (NEW IMAGES) April 26, 2005 This Intelligent Waiting Room Chair is a seat for hospital, school and nursing home waiting rooms that folds down into a fully functional hospital bed when required - ideal for emergency situations and for areas where disaster may strike, the bed is, according to the judges of the Australian Design Awards who gave it a silver medal, "clever, simple, commercially viable, and integrates well into current systems." Most importantly, it was designed by a recent graduate who is now seeking to take the product to market. Read More
Yolk ski and snowboard helmet
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Yolk is a soft helmet designed to overcome the unfashionable image that helmets seem to have with the young-at-heart on the ski slopes of the world. ‘Yolk’ under regular use is flexible and conformable to the user’s head but when subjected to an impact it instantaneously forms a rigid shell dispersing and absorbing the energy . This is achieved utilising a semi- rigid liner and a Kevlar skin which is impregnated with a shear thickening fluid. ‘Yolk’ allows the user to plug in a two way radio, music player, or mobile phone to the integrated headphones and controls thereby creating a convenient and seamless transition.
‘Yolk’ can be fitted with of a choice of skins which can be stretched over the liner to match the user’s personal style. With similar safety standards across bike riding, inline skating, skateboarding, there are vast opportunities to develop different skins for these sports using the same liner. Read More
The Umbrella reinvented: the fully retractable umbrella
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UPDATED April 26, 2005 (NEW IMAGES) Young designer Andy Wana has won the GOLD 2005 Australian Design Award-Dyson Student Award, by reengineering the humble umbrella, creating a significantly different take on the umbrella than anything seen before. Wana’s design overcomes several of the design weaknesses of the traditional umbrella. ‘Lotus 23’ is a fully retractable umbrella, folding into a low profile handle. Built with flexible ribs that flow with the wind, it is more durable than conventional designs allowing it to withstand severe storms, provide increased shade and self clean meaning that it squeezes the water off before you enter a building. It’s also cheaper to manufacture. Read More
Moore's Law: 40 and still going strong
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On April 19, 1965 Electronics Magazine published a paper by Gordon Moore in which he made a prediction about the semiconductor industry that has become the stuff of legend. Known as Moore’s Law, his prediction has enabled widespread proliferation of technology worldwide, and today has become shorthand for rapid technological change. That was forty years ago - Bill Gates was nine years old, Desktop PCs were still a long way off, and notebooks, PDAs and the internet had not been thought of. Moore predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would continue to double every year for the next decade. Although it was an observation rather than any attempt to formulate a scientific law, "Moore's Law" has proved remarkably accurate over the last 40 years. Read More
Happy Birthday to the newspaper - 400 and going strong
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March 9, 2005 Mass media will celebrate its 400th birthday later this year when the newspaper, the first mass medium begins its fifth century of publication. The exact date of the first newspaper is not known, and was thought to have been during 1609 but recent evidence accepted by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) pinpoints the year in which Strasbourg's Johann Carolus began printing his handwritten newsletters as 1605. Though radio, television, and the internet have long threatened to usurp print's status as the primary mass medium, the fact remains that print still garners more than half of the world's advertising expenditure. Read More
Mixaerator sterilises water without chemicals
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November 3, 2004 Queensland inventor Mike Lewis has developed an impellor that uses the same principles as salmon, bath water and tornadoes, however his ground-breaking technology is revolutionising water sterilising and providing environmentally-friendly methods to clean up toxic damage. Mike's invention- Mixaerator- with the Twin Vortex Advantage (TVA) works using dual vortices, like the ones that occur when you pull the plug from the bath, or those found in the air currents of tornadoes. "Salmon use similar vortices to my machine. That's how they leap up water falls, their fins send out mini whirlpools that create immense force to push them up," Mike said. Read More
Photonics set to revolutionise the revolution
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Just as the transistor and microelectronics transformed communications and human society in the 20th century, "light" transistors and microphotonics are about to revolutionise the way we communicate in the 21st century. We are on the verge of a new revolution in computing and communications thanks to the breakthrough advances by a Sydney based research team led by Professor Benjamin Eggleton.
A Federation Fellow and Research Director of the CUDOS Centre for Ultra-high bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems, Professor Eggleton recently received the prestigious 2004 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year for his pioneering work in the field of optical physics and photonics.
Optical fibres carry gigabytes of data across oceans and to our streets, hospitals, schools and businesses. Read More
Buckminster Fuller honoured on stamp
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A commemorative postage stamp honoring the legendary inventor, architect, engineer, designer, geometrician, cartographer and philosopher R. Buckminster Fuller has been issued by the US Postal Service. The stamp artwork is a painting which originally appeared on the cover of Time magazine on 1964, depicting Fuller's head in the pattern of a geodesic dome. Geodesic domes and a number of his other inventions surround Fuller, including the Dymaxion Car, the 4D Apartment House and several objects and models that reflect the geometric and structural principles he discovered. The stamp artwork is a painting of Fuller by Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965). The painting, which originally appeared on the cover of Time magazine on Jan. 10, 1964, depicts Fuller's head in the pattern of a geodesic dome. Read More
Stephen Hawking chooses a new voice
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Celebrated Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has selected and is using NeoSpeech's Text-to-Speech engine, VoiceText, as his new voice. VoiceText is integrated into Dr. Hawking's communicator, E Z Keys, enabling him to clearly communicate with the outside world. Dr. Hawking has a computer screen mounted on the arm of his wheel chair, which runs communicator software. The software enables him to press a switch in his hand to create words and sentences easily and intuitively. Once he has built up a sentence, he sends it to NeoSpeech's VoiceText speech synthesizer, which turns it into speech. The technology enables Dr. Hawking to communicate, including writing scientific books and papers, and giving lectures. Read More
Australian Student wins International Award
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Australian Saul Griffith, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctoral candidate, has won the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventing a machine which quickly tests vision and a desktop machine which manufactures low-cost eyeglass lenses. These machines could dramatically improve life for billions of people in developing countries who cannot access, nor afford, prescription glasses.” Merton Flemings, director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, which sponsors the annual award for inventiveness, cited Griffith’s innovative device eyeglass manufacturing and his work creating comic strips that inspire children to learn about science and engineering as important reasons he was chosen this year. Read More
Man vs Machine World Chess Championship a draw
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Thursday November 20, 2003 After treading a delicate path in game four, Garry Kasparov has drawn both the final game and the match against X3D Fritz in the latest Man vs Machine World Chess Championship. The first and last games of the match were drawn with X3D Fritz winning game two and Kasparov winning game three. The result still earns Kasparov $175,000 and the golden trophy - although X3D Fritz is storing a copy of the trophy in virtual reality given that it was a draw according to reports from x3DChess. Game four was the shortest game of the match. Kapsarov said after the game that despite outplaying the machine overall, a critical mistake in game two had cost him the match. Read More
Garry Kasparov takes game three against X3D Fritz
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Garry Kasparov has bounced back from his loss on Friday to win game three against the awesome processing power of X3D Fritz. Kasparov played a "picture-perfect" game forcing the computer - which can see almost four million positions per second - to submit after five hours of play. The result ties the match with one decisive game to go, on Tuesday 11/18 at 1PM. Read More
Man-Machine World Champion chess match in VR
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Friday November 14, 2003: The world's number one chess player Garry Kasparov is locked in another Man-Machine World Champion chess match against a computer known as X3D Fritz. The games are being played in X3D virtual reality - the board floats in the air in front of Kasparov who executes his moves using voice recognition. Read More
The ultimate voyage to Antarctica with the ultimate guide
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Friday September 19, 2003: It's not strictly a gizmo, but we thought this Antarctic tour conducted by New Scientist with multi award winning (and very funny) author Bill Bryson as the escort for the voyage might warrant our readers attention. Read More
The AcceleGlove - Capturing Hand Gestures in Virtual Reality
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A glove that translates the hand movements of sign language into written text or speech is just one on the incredible benefits that will flow from developments in VR technology like the AcceleGlove.In constant development since the summer of 2000 the prototype uses a glove system that enables 'Whole Hand Input' using accelerometers attached to a leather glove.
The latest design incorporates a two-link arm section to accommodate the recognition of a wider range of gestures.The system captures the four distinctive components of hand gestures -handshape, hand orientation, location, and movement - all measured relative to the position of the users' body. Read More
David Warren - Inventor of the Black Box Flight Recorder
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September 7, 2003 Behind many great inventions there is a tale of stubborn perseverance, clear foresight, lateral thinking and sometimes sheer coincidence that in the end brings benefit to many people. The story of "Black Box" flight recorder and its Australian inventor, Dr David Warren, is no exception. The "Black Box" is a device that records in-flight conversations and data. The term did not yet exist more than 50 years ago when Dr Warren first conceived the idea of recording the flight crew's conversation on a device that could be protected to increase its chances of surviving the crash. Read More
Spray on stockings released in Japan
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July 19, 2003 Japanese company Nissin Medico has released "spray on Stockings" that provide a run-proof, water-proof covering for the legs. One can of stocking spray provides enough coverage for 10-15 "stockings" and the ultra-fine silk particles that make up the spray are easily removed with soap.Two types are available, the "Air Stocking (50g)" and "Powder Stocking (90g)", both of which breathe well, wont wash off because of sweat or rain and have passed allergy tests according to the manufacturer. Once applied the spray dries so that it wont stick to your (or anyone else's) clothes.The Spray on Stockings are available in Japan at a cost of around US$20. Read More
Rotational dining table
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One of the problems with sitting at a table full of interesting people is that you can only ever sit next to two of them at a time. It takes a disciplined and insistent host to make sure people keep moving "rotational dinner" style and in these times of fast dating and networking, it seems it's either finger food or wait until after dinner to meet all those people. Now there's a high-tech alternative designed with the vision of actively engaging fresh communication and alleviating all the physical and emotional barriers commonly associated through introductions. This revolutionary dining table from Contab moves you, your seat, and your food slowly around the its perimeter... so you get to meet everybody at the table several times during a two hour period. Watch the time-lapse video to see how this ingenious device works. Read More
Australian Invention of the Year Award Winners Announced
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Joint winners of the Australian Design Awards' Invention of the Year Award 2003 were announced last week in Melbourne. Tim Straatmans received the honour for his Coconut Net in conjunction with Ron Kukler, whose invention of an environmentally friendly diesel engine injector Read More
Creating the clean diesel engine
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Ron Kukler has spent 30 years as a combustion engineer, before he had a specific need - he wanted a lightweight diesel engine for a high-speedboating application and available motors were too heavy, too noisy, too expensive, or vibrated too much... so he decided to create his own Read More
Enviromission Solar Project
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An Australian plan to construct the world's first large-scale solar thermal power station is taking shape at Barooga, 23km northeast of Mildura. The first 200MW power station in the 'Solar Mission' project will produce enough electricity to power 200,000 households... Read More
