Head Blaze

European researchers have taken the world a step closer to fictional wizard Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak after they made an object disappear, a study published Thursday in the journal Science showed.

Scientists from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and Imperial College London used their cloak, made using photonic crystals with a structure resembling piles of wood, to conceal a small bump on a gold surface, they wrote in Science.

“It’s kind of like hiding a small object underneath a carpet — except this time the carpet also disappears,” they said.

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Tags: invisibility cloak

Miniaturized television aerials made from gold nanorods could provide a way to control light on a chip — opening up the channels of quantum communication.

If quantum computing networks are ever to become a reality, physicists must find a way to direct and harness the light emitted in quantum experiments. “We must know where and when photons are emitted if we want to collect them efficiently and perform advanced tasks,” says Jason Smith, an expert on quantum nanostructures at the University of Oxford, UK.

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Tags: quantum communications

And, in a major breakthrough, the “ice-ball” created around a tumour by the injections not only kills it off but ensures the cancer does not return.

Fine needles are used to inject the freezing gas around the tumour in a technique known as cryotherapy, which means the patient does not need invasive surgery and suffers no major discomfort.

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Tags: cancer, cancer cure

Can the dream become reality?

In an unassuming corner of Burnaby, a lush, green suburb of Vancouver, BC, I’ve arrived at the doorway of a company that could potentially change the world. But you’d never know it from the nondescript office park it’s situated in, or the bare bones furniture and office equipment I see once I open the door and announce my presence. It’s almost as if I’ve stepped back into the office of an insurance actuary circa 1973, right down to spartan wall decoration and all-male staff. Only the “General Fusion” sign on the door indicates anything out of the ordinary.
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Tags: fusion

Like I always say, keep looking at nature because your problem may have already been solved.  You just have to look a little closer.

Video cameras on your cellphone could soon be good enough to record a jazz concert, a nighttime street scene, or a candlelit dinner. A Swedish start-up has created an algorithm, inspired by dung beetles, that can be integrated into camera modules to offer high-quality video in extremely low light situations.

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Not really ice up the nose, but the idea is something I’ve seen before. You’ve read stories where someone who has “drowned” in icy cold water but is revived later due to having a low enough body temperature to keep brain damage to minimum.   This is a great new tool for EMT’s to give those in need an edge.

After cardiac arrest, lowering someone’s body temperature can prevent life-threatening brain damage. It’s so critical that New York City requires ambulances to take some patients up to 20 minutes out of the way to hospitals with cooling equipment. EMTs could improve patients’ chances further using RhinoChill, a new portable nose spray that cools the brain on the scene.

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Synthetic crystal insulation that reflects heat!  Wow this is a good one!

Deep-space probes and scientific devices in Antarctica could soon get a new form of insulation based on synthetic crystals that stop and reflect heat. Such material could eventually lead to the best insulation ever created, even at room temperatures.

The crystals work by manipulating phonons, or vibrational waves that can carry either sound or heat depending on the frequency. Each crystal structure consists of alternating layers of silicon dioxide and a polymer material, so that the spacing between similar layers matches the wavelength of phonons. That allows the material to block and reflect back the phonons in the form of heat.

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How would you solve a problem, especially one where you need water and normal resources are too far away? How about if you went fishing for water?

Catching fog with nets is the solution to water scarcity for people who live beyond the reach of utility lines in this sandy hillside shantytown overlooking Peru’s capital, Lima.

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Good vibrations yea!  Power generated from random vibrations which could mean that as you move you can make your own energy.  Never again without a power source for your mobile devices?

Tiny generators developed at the University of Michigan could produce enough electricity from random, ambient vibrations to power a wristwatch, pacemaker or wireless sensor.

The energy-harvesting devices, created at U-M’s Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems, are highly efficient at providing renewable electrical power from arbitrary, non-periodic vibrations. This type of vibration is a byproduct of traffic driving on bridges, machinery operating in factories and humans moving their limbs, for example.

The Parametric Frequency Increased Generators (PFIGs) were created by Khalil Najafi, chair of electrical and computer engineering, and Tzeno Galchev, a doctoral student in the same department.

Most similar devices have more limited abilities because they rely on regular, predictable energy sources, said Najafi, who is the Schlumberger Professor of Engineering and also a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

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I love simple and I love this invention!  Come on people lets start following this example and make something happen.

No one really knows why, but for an open wound, simply applying suction dramatically speeds healing times. (The theory is that the negative pressure draws bacteria out, and encourages circulation.) But for almost everyone, that treatment is out of reach–simply because the systems are expensive–rentals cost at least $100 a day and need to be recharged every six hours.

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