‘Senspot’ – Realtime LIVE structural integrity measurement device

University of Maryland electrical engineering researcher Mehdi Kalantari has developed a tiny wireless sensor that monitors and transmits minute-by-minute data on a bridge's structural integrity that he estimates is one-hundredth the cost of a wired network approach. wireless sensors are designed with less than five millimeters in the thickness, and are comprised of four thin, flexible layers. The SenSpot is built using four level of senses, the first detects and measures structural parameter...
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‘Smart structure’ embedded data collector for construction structural integrity measurement

EDC or Embedded Data Collector is at the heart of Smart Structure’s SmartPile® surety and structural integrity measurement system. The ultra-rugged wireless design allows the sensor to be embedded into concrete during the pouring and curing process where is becomes a permanent part of the structure (a unique process to Smart Structures patented in 33 countries). The SmartPile EDC communicates wirelessly to the Smart Structures Work Station where data is collected aggregated and processed o...
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Paypal’s New Hands Free Payment

PayPal is debuting Beacon, a new add-on hardware device for merchants that leverages bluetooth technology to enable consumers to pay at stores completely hands-free. Essentially it is a small hardware device, that runs on its own WiFi, plugs into an outlet and serves as a ‘beacon’ to other connected devices. Any store running compatible point of sale systems, including Erply, Leaf, Leapset, Micros, NCR, ShopKeep and Vend, will simply plug a PayPal Beacon device in a power outlet in their stor...
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Space cloths to help control odor

The International Space Station is a big, climate-controlled environment that houses six people at any given time. As you can probably imagine, these humans produce odors just like the rest of us. So how do NASA and other space agencies make the International Space Station a decent-smelling place to live for those stuck there for months at a time? There is no washer or dryer on board the International Space Station; no cosmic laundromat waiting to take astronauts' quarters each Saturday morni...
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MonBaby – a Breathing Movement Monitor

MonBaby is an award-winning baby monitor that snaps onto any article of a child’s clothing, just like a button. MonBaby’s uniqueness lies in its universal form factor. Use it as your child grows! Any onesie or pajama works. MonBaby takes a different proactive approach to monitoring. Breathing movements, body position (on the back or on the stomach), fall detection, proximity removal. Monitor your baby proactively with MonBaby Breathing and Rollover Baby Monitor in a Smart Button! MonBaby ...
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Wireless Communication Out of Thin Air

As computing devices become smaller and more numerous, powering them becomes more difficult; wires are often not feasible, and batteries add weight, bulk, cost, and require recharging/replacement that is impractical at large scales. Ambient backscatter communication solves this problem by leveraging existing TV and cellular transmissions, rather than generating their own radio waves. This novel technique enables ubiquitous communication where devices can communicate among themselves at unprecede...
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SOCCKET is a soccer ball that harnesses and stores energy

SOCCKET is a soccer ball that harnesses and stores energy from play for later use as portable power source in resource-poor areas. The sOccket is a soccer ball that captures the energy during game play to charge LEDs and small batteries. After playing with the ball, the child can return home and use the ball to connect a LED lamp to read, study, or illuminate the home. The sOccket is a soccer ball that captures the energy during game play to charge LEDs and small batteries. After playing with...
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Microsoft’s ‘smarter cart’ that recognizes what is in the cart and it follows you in the store.

Microsoft has demonstrated an early prototype of a Kinect-powered shopping cart, which is being developed for Whole Foods by Texas-based company Chaotic Moon. The project is called the “Smarter Cart” and it uses a tablet and scanners to read the items you place inside, check whether they’re on your shopping list, cross them off and ring them up. The motorized cart can follow you around the store and has voice recognition and speech so you can give it instructions and it can let you know if th...
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NASA, University Study Shows Rising Seas Slowed by Increasing Water on Land

New measurements from a NASA satellite have allowed researchers to identify and quantify, for the first time, how climate-driven increases of liquid water storage on land have affected the rate of sea level rise. A new study by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, and the University of California, Irvine, shows that while ice sheets and glaciers continue to melt, changes in weather and climate over the past decade have caused Earth’s continents to soak...
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PositiveID Health and Seurity Identification

PositiveID develops biological detection systems for America’s homeland defense industry as well as rapid medical testing. PositiveID is focused on the development of microfluidic systems for the automated preparation of and performance of biological assays in order to detect threats at high-value locations, as well as analyze samples in medical environments. PositiveID’s microfluidic technology alleviates all existing problems by replacing robotics with integrated microfluidics, reducing cos...
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Device allows paralyzed man to swipe credit card, perform other movements.

NeuroLife, was invented at Battelle, which teamed with physicians and neuroscientists from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center to develop the research approach and perform the clinical study. Ohio State doctors identified the study participant and implanted a tiny computer chip into his brain. Device allows paralyzed man to swipe credit card, perform other movements. That pioneering participant, Ian Burkhart, is a 24-year-old quadriplegic from Dublin, Ohio, and the first person...
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Personalized Health Coach

Vida provides expert, personalized, on-demand health coaching and programs from a network of experienced health care providers and leading medical health care providers and leading medical institutions. Vida assigns you a health coach that is an expert in nutrition, fitness, and motivational psychology. These coaches are available 24/7 through text messages and weekly video check ins as well. They help make sure you are adhering to your physician’s recommendations and compliant with your trea...
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Eye protection from electronic devices

Most of us spend a great amount of time daily looking at device screens. Computers, tablets, and smartphones are marvelous for all the access to information, communication, entertainment, and creative opportunities they present. What’s not so great is we are exposed to much more blue spectrum light from computer, tablet, and smartphone screens with LED (light emitting diode) backlights than we do from other common forms of lighting. The two most immediate concerns with too much blue light exp...
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SAMSUNG building all new products with connected technology

By 2020, every single product that Samsung sells will be connected to the Internet of Things. It's plan is to make all of the new IOT products as an open platform so that developers around the world can develop new and innovative usages. SAMSUNG WANTS THE INTERNET OF THINGS TO BE TOTALLY OPEN In essence, Samsung's idea is that just about every device you have — and even products like chairs, that you don't normally expect to see technology in — will be connected and talking to each other. ...
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NASA’s research on animals in space

Animals in space originally only served to test the survivability of spaceflight, before manned space missions were attempted. Later, animals were also flown to investigate various biological processes and the effects microgravity and space flight might have on them. To date, seven national space programs have flown animals into space: the Soviet Union, the United States, France, Argentina, China, Japan and Iran. Can fish swim in microgravity? Do bees make honey in space? Can ant farms exist ...
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Singapore – Telepresence Robot

EDGAR is a tele-presence robot optimised to project the gestures of its human user. By standing in front of a specialised webcam, a user can control EDGAR remotely from anywhere in the world. The user’s face and expressions will be displayed on the robot’s face in real time, while the robot mimics the person’s upper body movements. EDGAR can also deliver speeches by autonomously acting out a script. With an integrated webcam, he automatically tracks the people he meets to engage them in conve...
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Virtual Reality Rollercoaster

Alton Towers has opened its 'world first' virtual reality rollercoaster 'Galactica'. The theme park says it is the first fully-dedicated virtual reality. Galactica uses motion sensors next to every seat to link the physical twists and turns to computer graphics played on headsets worn by the riders. The video takes thrill seekers on a 189-second flight from a space station through an asteroid belt to the canyons of an alien world. Simon Reveley from Figment Productions, which created th...
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Electronic sensors that monitor temperature and pressure within the skull

Researchers have developed a new class of small, thin electronic sensors that monitor temperature and pressure within the skull – crucial health parameters after a brain injury or surgery – then melt away when no longer needed. This eliminates the need for additional surgery to remove the monitors and reduces the risk of infection and haemorrhage. Similar sensors can be adapted for postoperative monitoring in other body systems as well, the researchers say. Led by John A. Rogers, a professor ...
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MIT – Scientists discover potentially habitable planets Just 40 light years from Earth

For the first time, an international team of astronomers from MIT, the University of Liège in Belgium, and elsewhere have detected three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star, just 40 light years from Earth. The sizes and temperatures of these worlds are comparable to those of Earth and Venus, and are the best targets found so far for the search for life outside the solar system. The results are published today in the journal Nature. The scientists discovered the planets using TRAPPIST (TRAn...
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Nanomaterials entering food chain

In recent years, the use of nanomaterials for water treatment, food packaging, pesticides, cosmetics and other industries has increased. Such particles, like silver nanoparticles deployed as a pesticide, are used to suppress the growth of harmful microorganisms. The increased use has led to concerns that these toxic particles could end up in food designed for human consumption. One study showed that artificial silver nanoparticles from polyethylene films destined for package of such foods as ...
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New light-activated nanoparticles kill over 90% of antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Nanoparticle treatment developed by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder could provide an effective means of fighting antibiotic-resistant bacteria including Salmonella, E. Coli, and Staphylococcus, based on results in a laboratory environment. In testing with a lab-grown culture, the nanoparticles killed 92 percent of drug-resistant bacterial cells while leaving the other cells intact. The treatment consists of light-activated therapeutic nanoparticles called "'quantum dots". Th...
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University of Washington has developed a new handheld, pen-sized microscope

Handheld, miniature microscope being developed by University of Washington mechanical engineers could allow surgeons to “see” at a cellular level in the operating room and determine where to stop cutting. The new technology, developed in collaboration with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford University and the Barrow Neurological Institute, is outlined in a paper published in January in the journal Biomedical Optics Express. The handheld microscope, roughly the size of a pen, ...
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Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore has designed a low power chip that works with existing neural implants.

Paralyzed people and Parkinson’s disease patients can regain some control of their limbs and symptoms with neural implants. The problem is that with traditional implant hookups, wires from the implant run through the skull and connect with an external computer. Not only are the wires cumbersome but there is a high risk of infection with the open entry holes in the skull. Scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have designed a low power chip that works with existing n...
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NASA Develops Portable Wireless Signal Booster. It is now available for commercial license

Portable Wireless Signal Booster Innovators at NASA Johnson Space Center have invented a portable communications signal booster that is currently available for licensing. Originally designed to improve communications for lunar missions, this lightweight, portable device can boost incoming signals to improve local reception for cell phones, laptops, satellite and Wi-Fi internet receivers without the need for power plugs, cables or batteries. This portable signal booster can be configured as an...
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Singapore’s ‘toilet to tap’ concept

Singapore is one of Asia’s most powerful economies, but it lacks a reliable water supply. Wastewater-reuse plants could change that by soon recycling enough sewage to meet 50 percent of the nation’s water needs. The concept of recycling wastewater certainly isn’t new, with long-running initiatives already well underway in Israel, Spain, Scandinavian countries and the US. But with NEWater, Singapore has quickly gained an international reputation for efficient recycling of wastewater. The initi...
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International Baccalaureate® (IB) – international education that develop the intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills

Founded in 1968, the International Baccalaureate® (IB) is a non-profit educational foundation offering four highly respected programmes of international education that develop the intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills needed to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world. Schools must be authorized, by the IB organization, to offer any of the programmes. The International Baccalaureate® aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a...
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EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION VERY IMPORTANT

Brains are built over time, from the bottom up. The basic architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth and continues into adulthood. Early experiences affect the quality of that architecture by establishing either a sturdy or a fragile foundation for all of the learning, health and behavior that follow. In the first few years of life, 700 new neural connections are formed every second. After this period of rapid proliferation, connections are...
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NASA’s Research On Quantum Teleportation

The world at the quantum level, at the scale of particles too small for the eye to see, is very strange. It's possible, for instance, to have two particles that are "entangled" -- that is, they function as if they were connected, even if they are many miles away from each other. New research co-authored by Francesco Marsili, microdevices engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, makes use of this phenomenon in a technological advancement published in the journal ...
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SKULLY smart helmet

Skully AR-1 is a technologically advanced motorcycle helmet with integrated 180degree camera. It's sharp, stealthy-looking black helmet read like specs off the navigation system of a fighter plane: heads-up display, rearview camera, and GPS navigation, all tied together by a high-speed microprocessor. And this helmet isn't all work and no play; it also connects to wireless devices via Bluetooth, streams music, makes hands-free calls, and can even connect to the internet via Wi-Fi. It even has a ...
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Smart Nutrition Bottle revolutionizing personal wellness

LifeFuels is a health technology company devoted to bringing responsive intelligence to nutrition and hydration management. We need to fuel our bodies properly in order to live life well. But nutrition is complicated, and nutritional regimens are difficult to adhere to. The LifeFuels Smart Nutrition Bottle simplifies nutrition and hydration management by dispensing the products that you need to help you live a happier, healthier life while you're on the go. FuelPods are inserted in the top...
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