Gizmag News - Electric vehicle survey reveals consumer preferences

Welcome to the newsletter for gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine. These are the headlines for January the 3rd, 2011. Electric vehicle survey reveals consumer preferences Almost every day, we hear about advances in the development of practical electric cars. Those advances won’t mean much, however, if no one is buying the things. With that in mind, ZPryme Research and Consulting recently conducted a web-based survey of 1,046 men and women across the U.S., asking how they felt about various aspects of buying an EV (electric vehicle). Read More TabGrip holds on to your iPad Apple's iPad gets top marks for aesthetics, but when it comes to ergonomics, most would agree there's room for improvement. The result is a bevy of products devoted to protecting, propping-up and generally enhancing the experience of living with an iPad. This example – the TabGrip – is a versatile stand that also protects the device when placed on flat surfaces, but its primary aim is to ensure the iPad stays firmly in your mitts as you play games or show off your latest holiday snaps. Read More New spectrometer developed for faster cleanup of nuclear-contaminated sites The cleanup of sites contaminated by radioactivity, primarily from the historic production of nuclear weapons during and after World War II, continues to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Researchers have now invented a new type of radiation detection and measurement device that they say will be particularly useful for such cleanup efforts by making the process faster, more accurate and less expensive. Read More Making a splash with the world's smallest waterproof MP3 player There are several options out there when it comes to taking a portable music player in the pool or to the beach. You could opt for a waterproofed iPod or a dedicated player like Speedo's Aquabeat, but if you really want to downsize then Fitness Technologies diminutive UWaterG2 might be worth a look – it's billed as the smallest fully waterproof MP3 player around. Read More Liquid foam makes for smarter greenhouses While greenhouses allow certain crops to be grown throughout the year, excess temperature, solar radiation and high vapor pressure deficit can cause problems during the summer months. With conventional solutions, such as shade screens, often being labor intensive and reducing the quality of light within the growing space, Canadian company Sunarc has a developed a new liquid foam shading system that mimics cloud cover to automatically shade greenhouses. As the liquid foam filters the sunlight, it reduces solar radiation and controls temperature, but doesn’t deprive the plants of vital light spectra they require for photosynthesis. Read More New yeast strain produces ethanol more efficiently The biofuel industry stands to benefit from the development of a new variety of yeast which produces ethanol from plant products more efficiently. Engineered by combining two existing yeast species, the new strain can simultaneously consume two types of sugar commonly found in plants to produce ethanol. Read More Latest Skype release supports video calls for iPhone and iPad It has been a pretty hectic holiday season for the folks at Skype with a new iteration of their iPhone app launching this week, finally providing support for two-way video calls over 3G and Wi-Fi connections. After the Skype outage the previous week plus a recent crackdown on VOIP apps in China, some good news for the company ends the year on a much-needed high note. Read More Blinput concept connects the visually impaired Smartphones have already proven their worth as navigation devices for sighted people but a new concept aims to go even further for the vision impaired. Dubbed blinput, the system would allow visually impaired people to not only find their way around, but also interact with the connected world using the smartphone’s camera to gather context relevant information that would then be relayed to the user through a pair of headphones. Read More Agricultural discovery could mean more biomass from the same sized field Biofuel derived from crops such as switchgrass certainly holds promise, although some critics maintain that such crops use up too much agricultural land – land that could otherwise be used for growing food crops. A genetic discovery announced this Tuesday, however, reportedly allows individual plants to produce more biomass. This means that biofuel crops could have higher yields, without increasing their agricultural footprint. Read More Closing the gap with the Doubleneck guitar Probably the most famous example of a twin neck guitar is the Siamese SG used by the likes of Jimmy Page and Don Felder – the Gibson EDS-1275. With its new Doubleneck guitar, Veillette Guitars has managed to narrow the gap between the two necks in a lightweight package to offer a more comfortable experience for the player. Angular bridges also mean that the guitarist can pick hard or strum wildly on the upper 12-string section without fear of accidentally encroaching on the 6-string's domain. Read More If you would like to refer this newsletter to a friend or colleague, please point them at our free subscription page. Please don't try to forward this email, as the formatting is unlikely to remain intact. And don't worry, we don't share email addresses. Please read our privacy policy if you are concerned. 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