ANBARASUASOKAN

Renesas Electronics has announced its new SuperSpeed Universal Serial Bus (USB 3.0) to Serial ATA (SATA) Revision 3 [Note] bridge SoC (system on chip, part number µPD720231) that enables the reduction of the total BOM significantly. The µPD720231 enables effective multi-gigabit per second (Gbps) data transfer between a USB 3.0 host system and a SATA device used in widely adopted external USB hard drives and solid state drives (SSD). USB 3.0 technology delivers more than 10 times the data transfer performance of the commonly used USB 2.0 peripheral interface. As the demand for media storage capacities and data transfer speed increases, the µPD720231 offers a fundamental building block to create an improved user experience for external USB storage. The new µPD720231 device was developed to respond to the need to reduce the number of components and to simplify printed circuit board (PCB) controller design. It can control BD/DVD drives by supporting ATAPI command. It facilitates design ...

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created a device known as a PoNS, that shows promise for the treatment of traumatic brain injuries, strokes, or the effects of diseases such as Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. Researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command are now conducting a study on the device, which works by stimulating the patient’s tongue. The battery-operated PoNS consists of a control/power box, and a flat electrode-covered oral portion that the patient holds in their mouth, against their tongue. In a typical 20 to 30-minute PoNS session, the patient performs a set of physical, occupational, and cognitive exercises, tailored toward their disability. Each of those exercises are paired with specific patterns of electrodes being activated on the PoNS, which in turn stimulate individual nerve endings on the tongue – the stimulation process is referred to as cranial nerve non-invasive neuromodulation, or CN-NiNM. By learning to ...

If you spend much time outdoors in the summer, then you doubtless know how important it is to wear sunscreen. That said, you probably also know that just applying it once before you first go outside isn’t good enough – for sufficient protection from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, periodic  re applications are also necessary. The UVeBand is a new wearable device, that’s designed to let you know when it’s time for those reapplications. First of all, you might be thinking that you could just use the timer on your watch or phone as a reminder. Well, you could, although many people probably just wouldn’t bother. Additionally, the UVeBand isn’t simply a timer – it actually keeps track of the intensity of UVA and UVB rays, so its alert time will be recalculated if the sun goes behind the clouds, or if you move to a shadier area. The device itself is a silicone-coated water-resistant band, that the user simply slaps onto their wrist. The band’s capacitive switching technology turns the de...

An image has been released of what looks set to become Google's new California HQ. Named Bay View, the nine-building campus is designed to maximize the likelihood of innovation-friendly chance encounters between the workforce. "You can't schedule innovation," Google's David Radcliffe tells  Vanity Fair . "We want to create opportunities for people to have ideas and be able to turn to others right there and say, 'What do you think of this?'" This philosophy has fostered the design's angular office blocks, arranged back to back like nodding clergy. Despite the 1.1 million sq ft (102,000 sq m), employees will be a maximum of a 2.5-minute walk away from one another, Vanity Fair  reports. Perhaps most remarkable is that this is Google's first build. In its 15-year history, Google has only ever occupied buildings previously used by others. "We've been the world's best hermit crabs: we've found other people's shell...

As one of the most densely populated cities in China,  Shenzhen  has been dealing with a sudden population boom for years now, leaving urban planners scrambling for  innovative building designs  that manage resources and space more efficiently. There have been a few unusual proposals, but the latest design from French architectural firm, Vincent Callebaut Architects, probably takes the cake. The group recently revealed its concept for "Asian Cairns," a series of six sustainable buildings that resemble a stack of pebbles and produce their own food.VCA is no stranger to unconventional structures, having previously designed a  floating city modeled after a lilypad , and the architectural group's latest project is just as unusual. Tasked with creating an urban structure that addresses the growing population of Shenzhen while producing more energy than it consumes, VCA decided to model a set of six buildings after cairns – man-made stacks of small rocks typically...

The idea of living life on the road in an RV can be appealing. Unfortunately, most RV’s aren’t very environmentally friendly, nor are they self-sufficient. However, the Tricycle House isn’t like most RV’s, as it relies on pedal power to move between destinations, and boasts several pieces of clever folding furniture to provide those much-needed home comforts. Conceived by architectural firm People’s Industrial Design Office (PIDO) for 2012’s “Get It Louder” Exhibition in Beijing, the Tricycle House addresses the fact that private ownership of land is not permitted in China. The pedal-powered RV envisions a future in which individual Chinese people are able to more fully connect with their land, while living simply and sustainably, on their own terms. The Tardis-like house structure is affixed to a tricycle and constructed from polypropylene (a thermoplastic polymer). The polypropylene is cut with a CNC router, before being folded and welded into shape, retaining its strength but ga...

The SIM cards that fit into those tiny slots in your cell phone and tell your cellular network to whom your calls are to be charged come in four different sizes. With the only real difference between them the amount of excess plastic on which the circuitry is housed, MicroSIMcutter's new SIM card cutter can cut either mini- or micro-SIM cards into the nano-SIM form factor, allowing a user switching phones to recycle their existing card. All SIM cards have basically the same circuitry – a microcontroller and small amounts of permanent, rewritable, and random access memory. They come in four sizes, ranging from the credit card sized original SIM card to the nano-SIM card, which measures 12.3 mm x 8.8 mm (0.48 in x 0.35 in). Despite the different sizes, they have the same size and pattern of electrodes, and the electronics are buried under the electrodes. The only difference is how much excess plastic is attached to the active part of the card. The SIM cards are designed to b...

3D printing pioneer  MakerBot  is on a mission to make it easier and more affordable to create all sorts of objects, one extruded layer at a time. But being able to print in three dimensions isn't worth too much right now if you don't have some pretty serious CAD skills or access to the printable data you need to render the object you want. MakerBot founder Bre Pettis kicked off the first day of the South By Southwest Interactive festival (SXSW) running from March 8-17 in Austin, Texas, by introducing one possible solution to this chicken or the egg dilemma – a desktop 3D scanner dubbed the MakerBot Digitizer. “It’s a natural progression for us to create a product that makes 3D printing even easier. With the MakerBot Digitizer Desktop 3D Scanner, now everyone will be able to scan a physical item, digitize it, and print it in 3D – with little or no design experience," said Pettis. At this point the Digitizer is just a prototype that uses lasers and cameras to scan ...

  Bringing the concept of an "artificial leaf" closer to reality, a team of researchers at MIT has published a detailed analysis of all the factors that could limit the efficiency of such a system. The new analysis lays out a roadmap for a research program to improve the efficiency of these systems, and could quickly lead to the production of a practical, inexpensive and commercially viable prototype. Such a system would use sunlight to produce a storable fuel, such as hydrogen, instead of electricity for immediate use. This fuel could then be used on demand to generate electricity through a fuel cell or other device. This process would liberate solar energy for use when the sun isn't shining, and open up a host of potential new applications. The new work is described in a paper this week in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  by associate professor of mechanical engineering Tonio Buonassisi, former MIT professor Daniel Nocera (now at Harvard Un...

While Japan is gearing up to send  a miniature humanoid robot  to the International Space Station, the DFKI Robotics Innovation Center and the ZARM (Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity) are working on a pair of robots that may one day help explore craters on the Moon in search of water ice. The RIMRES (Reconfigurable Integrated Multi Robot Exploration System) project combines a six-legged robot that can be picked up and moved with a faster wheeled transporter. View all The SHERPA rover, a 2.4-meter (7.8-foot) long, 200-kg (440-pound) transporter moves using a hybrid wheel-leg system with adaptive suspension. It is therefore able to quickly move over bumpy terrain on its wheels, but can lift each of its four legs independently to climb over boulders or free itself should it become stuck. Its primary duty is to transport a scout robot to and from lunar craters, which it can lift and carry under its belly or with a 1.8-meter (5.9-foot) long arm. T...

Over the last five years, the touchscreen has supplanted the mouse and keyboard as the primary way that many of us interact with computers. But will multitouch enjoy a 30-year reign like its predecessor? Or will a newcomer swoop in and steal its crown? One up-and-comer, Thalmic Labs, hopes that the next ruler will be 3D gesture control. Like  Microsoft Kinect  and the upcoming  Leap Motion , MYO lets you control a computer with  Minority Report -like gestures. But unlike those devices, which rely on optical sensors, MYO employs a combination of motion sensing and muscular activity. The actual MYO device is an armband. When worn, it senses gestures, and sends the corresponding signal (via Bluetooth 4.0) to a paired device. The company claims that the muscular detection (via proprietary sensors) “can sense changes in gesture down to the individual finger.” Uses In the company’s promo video (which you can watch below) we see people controlling iTunes track...

Imagine if you could treat pain the same way you treat a cut: throw a bandage on it and let it heal. Thimble Bioelectronics is working on a patch based on Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) that's designed to provide this type of portable pain relief. TENS is a type of treatment that uses low voltage electrical stimulation to alleviate certain types of pain. The treatment is typically performed via a small machine, but Thimble Bioelectronics is busy designing a wearable application of the technology designed to adhere to the problem area and provide TENS treatment for the pain. Details of the exact form the TENS patch will take haven't yet been revealed, but the company says it will include integrated Bluetooth connectivity that works with an accompanying smartphone app for pain tracking and management. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Thimble Bioelelectrics CEO and primary founder Shaun Rahimi began work on the device when dealing...

Once upon a time, the analog cassette tape was king. And for those that remember the time, chances are you might also recall having made a mixtape or two as well. Australian-based start-up venture Sharetapes is looking to recapture a little of that old-school magic, albeit with a modern twist, by launching a line of physical cards that you can load-up with playlists from websites like YouTube, Spotify and 8tracks. Users can then share their saved lists with other people’s smartphones using near-field communication (NFC) technology or quick response (QR) scanning codes. View all Near-field communication on mobile devices is becoming ever more commonplace, and the potential for it to become an essential part of everyday life is huge. We are already tapping our bank cards against a screen at the supermarket checkout, and new examples of NFC-enabled products for use with smartphones, such as  business cards  and  door locks are highlighting the innovative pote...

YouTube, whether intentionally or not, is the new MTV. Not long after the network once known as Music Television stopped playing music, Google’s video streaming service took its place as the preferred music video source for teenagers. According to a new report, Google is now ready to take the next step and sell subscriptions for its service. According to  Fortune , Google is preparing to launch a YouTube subscription service later this year. Rather than creating a paywall around existing YouTube content, though, the paid tier would simply let viewers enjoy copyrighted musical content ad-free. Spotify for music videos? The YouTube subscription service would be separate from – but overlap with – an (also-rumored) Google Play subscription streaming service. The Android version is expected to more closely resemble Spotify’s (and Rdio’s, Deezer’s, Rhapsody’s, etc.) on-demand audio model, while an ad-free YouTube would be more akin to a Spotify for music videos. In its early y...

Looking for a more effective solution to the all-too-common wobbly table dilemma than a folded up bit of cardboard or piece of rubber under the leg, University of Virginia physicist Lou Bloomfield created a new type of silicone rubber called Vistik – it's malleable enough to take on any shape when pressed, but is still resilient enough to offer support, as it  gradually starts to return to its original shape as the pressure is released. The material could have many applications ... beyond just steadying up wobbly tables. Vistik is a viscoelastic material, meaning that it exhibits both viscous and elastic properties. As a result, when compared to something such as conventional silicone rubber, there’s a considerable time lag in its response to continuous pressure. “It seems elastic in response to sudden forces or impacts, denting in proportion to the sudden, brief stress and then returning almost instantly to its earlier shape when that stress is removed,” Prof. Bloomfield ex...

While some people may wonder about the possible side-effects of antidepressants on the people who are taking them, here’s another thing to consider ... what happens when the residue from those drugs passes through the user’s urine and into the sewage system? As it turns out, it can enter local waterways and affect the fish. Now, researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm have developed technology to keep that from happening. In a study recently conducted at Sweden’s Umeå University, perch were exposed to the anxiety-moderating drug Oxazepam, in concentrations similar to those found downstream from sewage treatment plants. It was observed that the normally-shy fish became bolder, venturing away from their protective schools to hunt for food – a behavior that makes them more likely to be eaten by predators. It was additionally noted that they ate more quickly. This could allow them to eat a greater amount overall, potentially throwing ecosystems out of balance,...

When we first covered the   SOCCKET power-generating soccer ball   back in 2010, the concept was in the prototype stages of development. Since then, the ex-Harvard University team responsible for the design has launched the for-profit social enterprise company Uncharted Play, filed patents for the SOCCKET’s kinetic energy-capturing technology and, more recently, has launched a SOCCKET Kickstarter campaign. The SOCCKET is one of those simple-yet-effective ideas that takes something as basic and commonplace as a soccer ball and “bends it like Beckham” to the task of improving energy usage and the living conditions of those who really need it. Designed and assembled in the U.S., the finalized product is made from water-resistant ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) foam that the makers say is soft and durable. Uncharted Play also says it doesn't need inflating, making it virtually deflation-proof, and weighs in at 17 oz (482 g) – only one ounce heavier than a regular size-five soc...