Archive for March 19th, 2010

Irreverent Reverence, Day 79: Spontaneous Love

If you’ve ever seen the Graduate, then you know how it ends with Dustin Hoffman wondering “what’s next” in his love for Barbara Robinson.

Is there any reason why we can’t give our love to God and forget the consequences? Go ahead and read Deuteronomy 5-6 and Romans 2 and the entry.

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Posted by Techno_Mark on March 19th, 2010 No Comments

Tech News for the Day, Friday, March 19, 2010

The Xbox 360 is getting USB Storage, finally.

Here is the Talk Writer, Translator for the iPhone by Eagle Inc.

Here’s a Lego robot powered by Nokia N900.

Here is some shots of Word, Excel, and OneNote for Windows Phone 7.

Welcome to the Kameraman. Yeah, it’s weird.

Cablevision wants to host the first 3D sports at home.

Taga’s baby stroller can transform into a baby-toting bike, in just 20 seconds.

Check out this Sikker baby monitor.

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Posted by Techno_Mark on March 19th, 2010 No Comments

A New Robot Makes Solo Batting Practice Possible

jet_hitter

For the athlete in any sport, regular practice is extremely important for developing skill, building physical stamina and keeping the body in shape. Of course, machines play a key role in this aspect of an athlete’s life. Ball launchers and other automated devices were built to help players in their practice sessions. Now a new mechanical device has been developed in Japan to help the baseball player.

In Japan, the Meiji University and the Yokohama-based metal recycling company MRC have teamed up to create the Jet Hitter. This device is a batting tee robot that allows a player to practice his swings with the bat when he is alone. Its creators say that the Jet Hitter is the only one of its kind in player practice technology. An athlete will use the device by pushing a button at the robot’s base, causing a baseball to pop up into teeing position. Then the ball is kept suspended 10-20cm above a nozzle on a jet of air, waiting for the user to strike it with a swing. The Jet Hitter can hold up to seventy balls while in use and the player has the option of using hard or soft balls in a practice session.

According to the Meiji University and the MRC company, several pro-baseball teams in Japan are already using this batting device. However, for any consumer willing and able to pay, the robot is available for $7,700.

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Posted by Ikester on March 19th, 2010 No Comments

Fact: The Cloak Of Invisibility Is No Longer Fiction

SCIENCE-US-INVISIBILITY-CLOAKTake a moment to imagine the possibilities of having your own cloak of invisibility. What would you do with it? Would you sneak into a room or house, spy on or scare a friend or relative, do something that is forbidden or take revenge on someone who wronged you? Alas, usually thoughts of fairy tales and fantasy stories such as Grimm’s fairy tales and the Harry Potter series come to mind when thinking of an invisibility cloak. It’s considered a thing of fiction. Well, science now comes forward to say that it can really exist.

Some researchers of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany have developed an technique that makes the concept of an invisibility cloak possible. They have figured out how to cloak a tiny bump in a layer of gold, preventing its detection at nearly visible infrared frequencies. They have been able to use their cloaking technique in two and three dimensions. Their cloak is a structure of crystals with air spaces in between, similar to the structure of a woodpile and it bends light to hide the bump in the gold that lies beneath the cloak. In their trial run of the development, the actual bump was a mere 0.00004 inch high and 0.0005 inch across in size, so small only a magnifying lens would allow you to see it. But lead researcher Tolga Ergin reports that the cloak design can be modified to fit any size in principle, though larger sizes would require much more time to achieve.

Ergin goes on to explain that the cloaking technique helped researchers learn more about the field of transformation optics and they are now a step closer to creating 3-D structures in that field. Earlier discoveries about cloaking techniques were made by a research team led by David Schurig from Duke University. Schurig’s team discovered that microwaves can be used for cloaking in two dimensions. Similar to light and radar waves, microwaves tend to bounce off objects, allowing them to be seen by instruments, thus creating a shadow that can be detected. However, Ergin’s team used infrared waves, which are closer to the spectrum of light.

The cloaking technique works by deflecting radar, light and other waves around an object like fluid having to move around a solid barrier. The German Research Council, the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, the European Commission and the German Ministry for Education and Research have supported the research of Ergin and his team. So, invisibility cloaks can exist after all.

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Posted by Ikester on March 19th, 2010 2 Comments

 

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