cnn.com: By Mike Steere

Would you still watch your favorite television program if you had to cycle for an hour before you could view it?

Couch potatoes will be horrified, but fresh advances in human-powered technology — where users power appliances through their own motion — could one day see a ‘workout-to-watch’ scenario become reality.

Human power is rapidly gaining in popularity worldwide as businesses seek ‘greener’ methods of operating. [ read more ]

cnn.com: By Stephanie Busari

From sensors in workout gear that monitor sweating while you run at the gym, to underwear that aims to detect cancer cells, the contents of our wardrobes have been quietly undergoing a revolution. Over the past decade, there has been a rise in the number of ways that technology is being incorporated into items of our clothing.

Trials of smart clothes that can repel insects and mask nasty odours such as cigarette smoke have proved successful and are already being marketed.
[ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Emily Singer

Compounds boost endurance and allow mice to run for substantially longer.

The elusive exercise pill just took a step closer to becoming a reality. Scientists have found that two compounds can boost endurance in mice by changing the metabolic properties of the animals’ muscle. One of the drugs appears to mimic some of the benefits of exercise even in sedentary mice. But the most dramatic benefit comes from combining one of the drugs with exercise, enabling mice to run 60 to 75 percent longer. [ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Brittany Sauser

A large-scale tidal-power unit has started up in Northern Ireland.

The world’s first commercial tidal-power system has been connected to the National Grid in Northern Ireland. Built by the British tidal-energy company Marine Current Technologies (MCT), the 1.2-megawatt system consists of two submerged turbines that are harvesting energy from Strangford Lough’s tidal currents. The company expects that once the system, called SeaGen, is fully operational, it will be able to provide electricity to approximately one thousand homes.

The system is currently being tested and has briefly generated 150 kilowatts of power into the grid. But it has also damaged one of its rotors due to a failure in the control system when the rotor began turning too fast. Although the problem was a minor setback, the unit is not expected to start running continuously and at full capacity until November, says Peter Fraenkel, the technical director at MCT. [ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Prachi Patel-Predd

Materials that change temperature in response to electric fields could keep computers–and kitchen fridges–cool.

Thin films of a new polymer developed at Penn State change temperature in response to changing electric fields. The Penn State researchers, who reported the new material in Science last week, say that it could lead to new technologies for cooling computer chips and to environmentally friendly refrigerators.

Changing the electric field rearranges the polymer’s atoms, changing its temperature; this is called the electrocaloric effect. In a cooling device, a voltage would be applied to the material, which would then be brought in contact with whatever it’s intended to cool. The material would heat up, passing its energy to a heat sink or releasing it into the atmosphere. Reducing the electric field would bring the polymer back to a low temperature so that it could be reused. [ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Alexandra M. Goho

Frances Arnold is designing better enzymes for making biofuels from cellulose.

In December, President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which calls for U.S. production of renewable fuels to reach 36 billion gallons a year–nearly five times current levels–by 2022. Of that total, cellulosic biofuels derived from sources such as agricultural waste, wood chips, and prairie grasses are supposed to account for 16 billion gallons. If the mandates are met, gasoline consumption should decline significantly, reducing both greenhouse-gas emissions and imports of foreign oil. [ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Jennifer Chu

Physicist Marin Soljacic is working toward a world of wireless electricity.

In the late 19th century, the realization that electricity could be coaxed to light up a bulb prompted a mad dash to determine the best way to distribute it. At the head of the pack was inventor Nikola Tesla, who had a grand scheme to beam elec­tricity around the world. Having difficulty imagining a vast infrastructure of wires extending into every city, building, and room, Tesla figured that wireless was the way to go. He drew up plans for a tower, about 57 meters tall, that he claimed would transmit power to points kilometers away, and even started to build one on Long Island. Though his team did some tests, funding ran out before the tower was completed. The promise of airborne power faded rapidly as the industrial world proved willing to wire up. [ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Emily Singer

Jeff Lichtman hopes to elucidate brain development and disease with new technologies that illuminate the web of neural circuits.

Displayed on Jeff Lichtman’s computer screen in his office at Harvard University is what appears to be an elegant drawing of a tree. Thin multicolored lines snake upward in parallel, then branch out in twos and threes, their tips capped by tiny leaves. Lichtman is a neuroscientist, and the image is the first comprehensive wiring diagram of part of the mammalian nervous system. The lines denote axons, the long, hairlike extensions of nerve cells that transmit signals from one neuron to the next; the leaves are synapses, the connections that the axons make with other neurons or muscle cells. [ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Robert F. Service

Alex Zettl’s tiny radios, built from nanotubes, could improve everything from cell phones to medical diagnostics.

If you own a sleek iPod Nano, you’ve got nothing on Alex Zettl. The physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues have come up with a nanoscale radio, in which the key circuitry consists of a single carbon nanotube.

Any wireless device, from cell phones to environmental sensors, could benefit from nanoradios. Smaller electronic component­s, such as tuners, would reduce power consumption and extend battery life. Nanoradios could also steer wireless communications into entirely new realms, including tiny devices that navigate the bloodstream to release drugs on command. [ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Emily Singer

Probing the salamander genome reveals clues to its remarkable ability to regrow damaged limbs and organs.

In its own way, the axolotl salamander is a mighty beast. Chop off its leg, and the gilled creature will grow a new one. Freeze part of its heart, and the organ will form anew. Carve out half of its brain, and six months later, another half will have sprouted in its place. “You can do anything to it except kill it, and it will regenerate,” says Gerald Pao, a postdoctoral researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, in La Jolla, CA.

That extraordinary power of regeneration inspired Pao to probe the axolotl salamander’s DNA. Despite decades of research on the salamander, little is known about its genome. That began to change last year, when Pao and his collaborators won one billion bases’ worth of free sequencing from Roche Applied Science, based in Indianapolis. Now that the data is in, scientists can finally begin the hunt for the genetic program that endows the animal with its unique capabilities. [ read more ]