Gizmag News - Porsche hybrid wins first race and three major Professional MotorSport Awards

Welcome to the newsletter for gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine. These are the headlines for November the 18th, 2010. Porsche hybrid wins first race and three major Professional MotorSport Awards Porsche’s 911 GT3 R Hybrid racing project uses Williams Hybrid Power's KERS Flywheel technology (think of it as a mechanical supercapacitor), to capture energy from regenerative braking and then give it back as horsepower under acceleration. After showing lots of promise in its early races, the hybrid has come home with a rush in the closing stages of the season, winning its class and finishing sixth outright in the final round of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup. Last night its true standing as a significant automotive innovation shone through once more when it won Powertrain Innovation of the Year, Vehicle Development of the Year and Design Engineer of the Year at the Professional MotorSport World Expo in Koln, Germany. Read More Dolphins inspire a better kind of sonar By measuring the differences between emitted sound pulses and their echoes sonar is able to detect and identify targets such as reefs, wrecks, submarines and fish shoals. However, standard sonar has limitations in shallow water because bubble clouds, which result from breaking waves or other causes, can scatter sound and clutter the sonar image. Inspired by the exceptional sonar capabilities of dolphins, scientists have now developed a new underwater device that can outperform standard sonar and detect objects through bubble clouds. Read More SmartFit phone app adjusts car seats for optimum fit If you spend a lot of time behind the wheel of your car, then having a properly adjusted seat is of the utmost importance – not only does it maximize safety and driving skills, but it also minimizes back, shoulder and neck strain. With over a dozen adjustments available on some vehicles’ seats, however, it’s sometimes difficult to figure out the optimum combination of settings. Automotive parts designer Faurecia has what it is toting as the solution to this problem, in the form of its new smartphone-based SmartFit system. Read More Cadillac Urban Luxury Concept It's understandable that U.S. auto makers are nervous about the prospect of having to sell luxury cars that are diminutive in size, as public perception has not yet caught up with the reality of urban congestion and the energy crisis. It's even more of a problem when your name is Cadillac, a brand that is synonymous with acres of bonnet, aircraft-sized motors and enough interior room for an entourage. So it's not surprising that Cadillac's Urban Luxury Concept is a technological tour de force, with every creature comfort imaginable, or that the press release reads like an apology. Read More Bioengineers achieve holy trinity of stem cell culture Stem cells, which have the ability to become various other types of cells, are at the heart of the burgeoning field of regenerative medicine – if a patient’s stem cells could be raised outside of their body, and their growth dictated, they could ultimately be used to grow replacement body parts that wouldn’t be rejected. It’s challenging, however, to create sufficient growing conditions in a petri dish. In order for stem cells to grow and differentiate within the body, they rely on chemical, mechanical and electrical cues. Although chemical cues have been combined with mechanical or electrical cues in lab settings, no one has so far been able to combine all three... at least, not until now. Read More Solar-powered air-conditioning for vehicles developed The more environmentally conscious among us still driving gasoline-powered cars often feel a pang of guilt as we turn on the air-conditioning on a hot day, knowing that we’ve just significantly reduced the fuel efficiency of the vehicle and sent more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. While solar-powered AC systems – even portable ones – are nothing new, there’s been a problem getting their size down to a point that would allow them to cool a vehicle. While cars may have to wait a bit longer, truck drivers look like being spoiled for choice with another solar-powered AC system joining the i-Cool Solar system we looked at earlier this month. Read More 'Spacetime Cloak' could conceal events Take some light bending metamaterials, incorporate them into flexible fabric and you have yourself an invisibility cloak. That's the theory anyway, and it doesn't stop at hiding objects. Building on the optical invisibility research of Professor Sir John Pendry, researchers from Imperial College, London, have now proposed that similar metamaterials could be used to conceal entire events – get ready for the "Spacetime cloak". Read More Nissan re-imagines the sedan with its Ellure Concept The sales of traditional sedans have taken a hit in recent years due to the popularity of crossover SUVs, but that hasn’t stopped Nissan coming up with a new sedan concept in the form of the Nissan Ellure Concept hybrid vehicle. The company says the car, which will debut at the 2010 LA Auto Show, isn’t intended as a preview of any upcoming production model, but is rather a confirmation that the sedan still has some life left in it yet and will remain a core part of Nissan’s product portfolio. Read More Rocking realism comes to Rock Band 3 with the Squier Strat guitar controller Imagine the embarrassment of a talented guitarist losing out in a shredding battle with someone who can't play a note. Since the launch of games like Rock Band, such things can and do happen. Now there's a chance to level the playing field somewhat, with the forthcoming release of a game controller that's also a genuine Fender Squier Strat. Of course, as well as introducing a whole new level of gameplay to virtual axe grinders, they can also benefit from learning to play an actual instrument. Rock 'n' roll... Read More Honda's Fit EV Concept and midsize plug-in hybrid platform Honda slipped two more pieces of the Honda Electric Mobility Network into place at the LA Auto Show yesterday, revealing a Fit EV Concept and details of the plug-in hybrid platform, both of which forecast vehicles that will hit showrooms in 2012. The Fit EV and plug-in platform are impressive, but the evolution of Honda's Electric Mobility Network is looking increasingly like a killer proposition for consumers. Read More Jimi Hendrix' favorite guitar for sale Now this is something that won't come along again. It's the favorite guitar of Jimi Hendrix. Voted by everyone from Rolling Stone to Time as the best guitar player ever, Hendrix favorite guitar was this vintage Epiphone FT79 and was “used for almost everything he composed" whilst he was in the United States. Given to a friend just before he died, it was subsequently on numerous recordings and film soundtracks including those by Dusty Springfield, Walker Brothers, Blue Mink, Paul McCartney and on David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs. It's coming up for auction, and is estimated to fetch GBP80,000-120,000, which seems incredibly cheap for such a piece of musical history. Read More Microsoft Windows turns 25 Twenty-five years ago this month, Microsoft released an extension to its Disk Operating System (DOS) that gave users a graphical, mouse controlled environment with which to interface with their computers. Bundled with the new setup were a few applications like a drawing program, a simple word processor, an appointment calendar and a clock. Each program could be launched in its own box - or window - and tiled around the display screen. It wasn't a noted success but marked the start of a technology snowball that sees Windows currently being used on nearly 90 per cent of the world's computers. Read More Oshkosh diesel-electric hybrid concept for Baja 1000 desert race It has been an exciting year for hybrid power train development in major racing series, with the teams deciding that KERS will return to Formula One in 2011, the growing success of the Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid in the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup and now the news that Oshkosh Corporation will be fielding a 400 bhp hybrid diesel-electric Light Concept Vehicle in the Baja 1000 desert race which begins later this week in Mexico. Perhaps even more interesting than the hybrid powertrain is its TAK-4 suspension which offers 20 inches of independent wheel travel. Read More Mobile Broadcast Message Center can text all cell users in a given geo-location With two thirds of the world population now carrying a mobile phone, we are in the position for the first time to enable a new form of broadcasting. Alcatel-Lucent has announced a new Broadcast Message Center (BMC) which enables targeted government text alerts to be sent to mobile users based on their location – from a city block to nationwide. The flexibility and scalability of the BMC will save lives in the event of a gas leak, chemical spillage or natural disaster, as it leverages cell broadcast technology to bypass the network congestion that invariably hampers emergencies. The BMC will also be deployed as a commercial broadcast solution, enabling enterprises to communicate with a mobile workforce, or service providers to offer opt-in subscriber services that generate new sources of revenue. Read More 'Glue' producing bacteria used to fill gaps in cracking concrete Earlier this year we took a look at the development of self-healing concrete that repairs its own cracks using a built-in healing agent. While this kind of technology holds promise for construction in the future, it’s not so useful for the vast amounts of existing concrete in need of replacement or repair. UK researchers have come up with a solution to this problem that uses bacteria to produce a special "glue" to knit together cracks in existing concrete structures. Read More 500 Hz remote eye tracker watches what you watch SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) of Germany has launched its latest gaze and eye tracking system called the RED500. Eye tracking is a key research technique for many types of scientific, marketing, and design studies. Billed as the world’s first high-performance and high-speed remote eye tracker, the RED500 features a “scientific grade” 500 Hz sampling rate, binocular tracking, and a portable all-in-one design. Read More Pulse Phone app has its finger on the pulse Instead of relying on the iPhone’s microphone or extra hardware to measure a user’s heart rate like most other heart rate apps, Antimodular Inc.’s Pulse Phone does so by using the iPhone’s built-in camera. When the user places their finger over the iPhone camera, the app detects the changes in the intensity of light passing through the finger, which changes as blood pulses through the veins. Read More New lighting technology fights hospital superbugs MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) is one of the most prevalent and difficult to eradicate superbugs in hospitals, having become resistant to multiple antibiotics. A less well known bacterium Clostridium difficile (C diff), is also antibiotic resistant and on the increase. Infection prevention procedures used to address one superbug will not work for others, and traditional decontamination methods can be harmful to staff and patients. This new lighting system that kills bacterial pathogens but is harmless to humans may help beat this potentially deadly threat in our hospitals. The technology decontaminates the air and exposed surfaces by bathing them in a narrow spectrum of visible-light wavelengths, known as HINS-light. Read More Britain's Nemesis electric supercar Dale Vince, founder of British green power company Ecotricity, decided two years ago that he wanted to create a flashy, fun, fast automobile, that ran on nothing but electricity created by his company's own wind turbines. Vince and his team proceeded to buy and gut a used Lotus Exige, outfitted it with two electric motors, and after 18 months ended up with the Nemesis – a one-of-a-kind 170 mph green machine that reportedly eats V12 Ferraris for breakfast. Read More China’s first home-grown large passenger jet unveiled The large commercial jet market dominated by Boeing and Airbus is set to get some more competition with the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) unveiling China’s first home-grown large passenger jet. The C919 made its debut at the Zhuhai air show in the southern province of Guandong in the form of a 1:1 display prototype of the aircraft’s cockpit and cabin front. Read More Source London gives access to 1,300 EV charging stations for £100 per year London mayor Boris Johnson has announced the Spring (Q2) 2011 launch of the Source London electric vehicle program. For a GBP100 (US$159) annual membership fee, participants will have access to over 1,300 public EV charging points located across the city. Once all those stations are up and running, which should be by 2013, London will have twice as many charging points as petrol stations. It’s a big step forward in an even larger scheme, which would see a network of Source charging points in cities across the UK. Read More All-optical transistor created Researchers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) and the Swiss Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) have created a microresonator that produces vibrations from laser light. The device also uses one laser beam to control the intensity of another, thus making it essentially an optical transistor. The technology could have big implications in fields such as telecommunications. 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. Watch for more of the best new innovations, ideas and practical technologies in your inbox. 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