Make:

A Sound Way to Turn Heat into Electricity

New devices that can turn heat into sound and then into electricity @ ScienceDaily!

University of Utah physicist Orest Symko demonstrates how heat can be converted into sound by using a blowtorch to heat a metallic screen inside a plastic tube, which then produces a loud tone, similar to when air is blown into a flute. Symko and his students are developing much smaller devices that not only convert heat to sound, but then use the sound to generate electricity. The devices may be used to cool electronics, harness solar energy in a new way, and conserve energy by changing waste heat into electric power.

ScienceDaily: A Sound Way To Turn Heat Into Electricity - Link.

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Big Ball of Connectivity

Here's Paul Gierow's "big ball of connectivity" - satellite communications anywhere, anytime, via a blow-up antenna -

No, it's not a giant beach ball. It's an ultralight, ultraportable antenna tucked inside an inflatable shell that can pull down a superfast broadband satellite connection at any location. The GATR-Com is designed for disaster-relief responders, far-flung video producers and front-line troops--anyone whose job (or life) depends on getting digital information--video, Internet, calls--in and out of remote places.

INVENTION AWARDS A Big Ball of Connectivity - Popular Science Link.

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The Desktop Factory - Fab@Home

Pop Sci on the Fab@Home project -

Roboticist Hod Lipson wants you to stop shopping and use his portable 3-D printer to make your own stuff. As a child, Hod Lipson lost Lego pieces constantly. Now the 39-year-old director of Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Lab can build replacement parts on the spot. Completed last year, Lipson's fabrication machine, called a "fabber," can print thousands of three-dimensional objects, everything from toy parts to artificial muscles, using dozens of materials, including PlayDoh, peanut butter and silicone, by following simple directions sent to it by a PC. About the size of a microwave, the fabber costs $2,300 to assemble--roughly one tenth the cost of commercial 3-D printers. Lipson and his graduate student Evan Malone recently launched a Web site called Fab@Home (fabathome.org) to teach people how to build their own fabbers and encourage them to share their blueprints online.

The Desktop Factory - Popular Science - Link.

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Contex 3D Printers (video)

I really like the Contex 3D printers, here's a sales video from their site (the Z printer 450 does color 3D models)... - Link.

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Microsoft Surface: Multi-touch Table

Microsoft is showing off their multi-touch table "Surface" complete with RFID, wireless, sensors and a whole lot of other things (watch the Popular Mechanics video on how it works)... You can't buy one, but they will be appearing in a couple casinos and some stores to demo... Link. More:

• Surface computing - Link.
• Surface @ on10 - Link.

Related:

• Multitouch table experiment - Link.
• Multi-Touch Interaction Research (video) - Link.
• The Future of Interfaces Is Multi-Touch - Link.
• LED Touch sensor - Link.

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3D Mouse Through Hand Waving

MagicMouse, a three-dimensional computer mouse was designed by a team of five WPI undergraduates -

...the mouse uses an array of receivers to track the motion of a tiny ultrasonic transmitter worn on the index finger like a ring. The unique design, the first radical change in the computer mouse in more than 40 years, makes it possible to control and manipulate items on a computer screen just by pointing at the monitor.

CADwire.net - News > 3D Mouse Through Hand Waving - [via] Link.

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Boy or girl? A DNA test sold over the web can tell you...

DNA worldwide can print your genetic code on your shirt, help figure out who's related to who and they claim they can tell a new Mother if their kid is a boy or a girl 6 weeks in...

Once a woman has taken the test, she sends her sample directly to the company's laboratory for analysis and will receive the result in the post or can access it online using a protected password. The test looks for DNA from the baby in the mother's blood. If it picks up a Y-chromosome, that means a baby boy can be "confidently" predicted. If there is no Y-chromosome DNA, the company can state "with equal confidence" that the baby will be a girl, the company says.

BBC article - Link & DNA Worldwide (kits).

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Power Station Harnesses Sun's Rays

This will be a Maker tourist attraction, it looks stunning... BBC's David Shukman on a solar station in Spain -

There is a scene in one of the Austin Powers films where Dr Evil unleashes a giant "tractor beam" of energy at Earth in order to extract a massive payment. Well, the memory of it kept me chuckling as I toured the extraordinary scene of the new solar thermal power plant outside Seville in southern Spain. From a distance, as we rounded a bend and first caught sight of it, I couldn't believe the strange structure ahead of me was actually real.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Power station harnesses Sun's rays - Link.

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