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 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 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 ]

wired.com: By Noah Shachtman

The Army has given a team of University of California researchers a $4 million grant to study the foundations of “synthetic telepathy.” But unlike old-school mind-melds, this seemingly psychic communication would be computer-mediated. The University of California, Irvine explains:

The brain-computer interface would use a noninvasive brain imaging technology like electroencephalography to let people communicate thoughts to each other. For example, a soldier would “think” a message to be transmitted and a computer-based speech recognition system would decode the EEG signals. The decoded thoughts, in essence translated brain waves, are transmitted using a system that points in the direction of the intended target. [ read more ]

wired.com: By Charlie Sorrel

This could be the 2008 sartorial equivalent of that 1980s classic, the Piano Tie, but it is certainly a lot more useful. Researchers at Iowa State University have glued solar panels onto the symbol of male corporate oppression and hooked it up to a Nokia phone, which sits in a handy pocket at the back of the tie. [ read more ]

wired.com: By Chuck Squatriglia

All new cars will have some degree of hybridization by 2020, by which point battery technology will be ubiquitous and vehicles will communicate with one another and the road to make driving safer and easier.

That vision of the future is laid out in “Automotive 2020: Clarity Beyond the Chaos,” (.pdf) by the IBM Institute for Business Value. The report, based on interviews with 125 auto industry executives in 15 countries, says the industry is on the cusp of revolutionary changes that will see environmental sustainability and technological innovation become top priorities as automakers respond to consumer demands for more efficient cars that don’t sacrifice performance, comfort or reliability. [ read more ]

seedmagazine.com: by Jonah Lehrer

New research is linking dopamine to complex social phenomena and changing neuroscience in the process.

Read Montague is getting frustrated. He’s trying to show me his newest brain scanner, a gleaming white fMRI machine that looks like a gargantuan tanning bed. The door, however, can be unlocked only by a fingerprint scan, which isn’t recognizing Montague’s fingers. Again and again, he inserts his palm under the infrared light, only to get the same beep of rejection. Montague is clearly growing frustrated — “ I can’t get into my own scanning room!” he yells, at no one in particular — but he also appreciates the irony. A pioneer of brain imaging, he oversees one of the premier fMRI setups in the world, and yet he can’t even scan his own hand. “I can image the mind,” he says. “But apparently my thumb is beyond the limits of science.” [ read more ]

dailygalaxy.com: by Casey Kazan.

“I certainly think that humans are not the limit of evolutionary complexity. There may indeed be post–human entities, either organic or silicon–based, which can in some respects surpass what a human can do. I think it would be rather surprising if our mental capacities were matched to understanding all the levels of reality. The chimpanzees certainly aren’t, so why should ours be either? So there may be levels that will have to await some post-human emergence.” [ read more ]

physorg.com

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have for the first time engineered 3-D materials that can reverse the natural direction of visible and near-infrared light, a development that could help form the basis for higher resolution optical imaging, nanocircuits for high-powered computers, and, to the delight of science-fiction and fantasy buffs, cloaking devices that could render objects invisible to the human eye.
Two breakthroughs in the development of metamaterials - composite materials with extraordinary capabilities to bend electromagnetic waves - are reported separately this week in the Aug. 13 advanced online issue of Nature, and in the Aug. 15 issue of Science. [ read more ]

cnet.com: by Leslie Katz

From the plains of southern New Mexico, we bring you a story of headset-wearing cows. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are teaming up to remotely corral cattle using a wireless device that sends sound straight into the bovines’ ears. HDTV-watching pigs can’t be far behind.

The solar-powered “Ear-A-Round” is a naugahyde “helmet” held in place by the cow’s ears. Atop the holster sits an electronics device hooked to sound-transmitting stereo earphones and containing a GPS unit that could let farmers monitor the animals’ whereabouts from afar. [ read more ]