Gizmag News - Xtrac shows seamless gearchange alternative to dual clutch transmission

Welcome to the newsletter for gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine. These are the headlines for December the 2nd, 2010. Xtrac shows seamless gearchange alternative to dual clutch transmission After two years secret development in motorsport competition, Xtrac unveiled an important new driveline technology this week in the form of an Instantaneous Gearchange System (IGS). It does exactly the same thing a dual clutch transmission achieves with less weight, cost, and complexity. The secret to Xtrac IGS is the integration of a ratchet and pawl mechanism between each gear hub and the main shaft so that two consecutive gear ratios can be selected and engaged simultaneously, but with only one set of gears driving. Read More 3D-printed sand Microclimates to cool public places The lack of cooling in large open areas inevitably sends people scurrying for air-conditioned buildings on hot days. Taking a leaf from traditional Islamic architecture that dealt with the harsh desert climate with Mashrabiyas – a projecting latticework window that provides shade from the hot sun while allowing cool air from the street to flow through – London-based design firm PostlerFeruson has designed a kind of three dimensional Mashrabiya that can cool the immediate area in an energy-free way. Read More iPhone dock turns your mobile into conventional phone Years of progress in making phones smaller and more portable have all been dismissed in one stroke by Japanese gadget and novelty company Hashy-Topin. Phone x Phone is a clever iPhone dock/charger unit designed to transform your iPhone into a plain ol' regular fixed-line telephone. Because you didn't really want to be that mobile anyway, did you? Read More Rinspeed goes retro with beach-friendly BamBoo There’s no doubt the folk at Rinspeed like to think outside the box when it comes to its concept cars – you need look no further than the sQuba diving concept car for confirmation of that. The latest design from Rinspeed founder Frank M. Rinderknecht, however, looks to step back inside the box with a design that harks back to the 1970s. The BamBoo, which won’t be officially revealed until the 2011 Geneva Motor Show in March, is a stripped-back vehicle that Rinspeed itself describes as resembling a “grown-up golf cart”. Read More Grass-based fireplace logs allow for green winter coziness As winter tightens its icy, gloomy grip on the Northern Hemisphere, many of us are turning to our fireplaces or wood-burning stoves for physical and psychological warmth. Unfortunately, however, burning wood releases carbon into the atmosphere – a conundrum for people who want to minimize their CO2 footprint but still stay warm. U.S. company VIASPACE Green Energy, however, has just started selling a product that it claims will provide customers with fire fodder, while being almost carbon-neutral: fireplace logs made from compressed Giant King Grass. Read More New IBM chip technology integrates electrical and optical devices on the same piece of silicon IBM has announced another breakthrough in its long term research goal to harness the low power consumption and incredible speed promised by optical computing. Following on from the Germanium Avalanche Photodetector – a component able to receive optical information signals at 40 Gb/sec and multiply them tenfold using a mere 1.5V supply – the company has now unveiled a new chip technology that integrates electrical and optical devices on the same piece of silicon. So how far can this technology take us? Eventually, IBM hopes, all way to the Exascale – that's one million trillion calculations per second. Read More Zoom Q3HD Handy Video Recorder released We first looked at Zoom's Q3HD Handy Video Recorder when it was announced in October. The point-and-shoot unit combines HD audio recording with 1080p video at 30 frames per second, a 2.4-inch LCD screen for immediate playback and ... you can now get your hands on one. Read More First Chevy Volt up for auction After a build-up that's lasted for almost four years, you now finally have the chance to buy the first-ever Chevrolet Volt “extended range electric vehicle” available for retail sale. The catch: General Motors has decided to auction the car off to the highest bidder. Proceeds will go to the Detroit Public Schools Foundation, to support science, technology, engineering and mathematics initiatives. Online bidding started at US$50,000, and at the time of publication is already up to $180,000. The car’s MSRP is $41,000. Read More Lufthansa launches world's first regular passenger biofuel flights Starting next April, a Lufthansa Airbus A321 aircraft making the daily flight between Hamburg and Frankfurt will be running partially on biofuel. The airline will trial the biofuel blend, made of a 50/50 mixture of kerosene and hydrotreated vegetable oil, in one of the plane’s engines for six months. It’s part of the Lufthansa-led burnFAIR project, which is studying the long term effects of sustainable biofuels on aircraft performance. Although the Brazilian airline TAM performed a test flight of a biofuel-powered Airbus A320 last month, Lufthansa claims to be the first airline to conduct a long-term trial using biofuel during flight operations. Read More Sectra launches multi-touch, high resolution Visualization Table Swedish medical technology company Sectra has announced that a version of the Autopsy Table is now being offered to medical personnel. The Sectra Visualization Table will allow physicians to view virtual representations of real bodies in microscopic detail to help with decisions on treatment and care. Read More Xi3 modular computer to make global debut at CES 2011 There seems to be a different computer solution for every desktop and network problem – from home systems to home built machines to those that serve the business community. The Xi3 Corporation claims that its scalable, modular system offers a somewhat different approach to the rest of the field. Each palm-sized cube features interchangeable and adjustable boards for maximum adaptability, Dual Core processing power and low power consumption. Read More SanDisk, Nikon and Sony propose 500 MB per sec memory cards with over 2 TB capacity Hot on the heels of the latest CompactFlash specification being released, SanDisk, Nikon and Sony have joined forces to propose a new specification to better cope with the high definition demands of today and tomorrow. The new proposal will give users more than three times the data transfer speeds of the current specification, and take storage capacity into the domain of the multi-terabyte. 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. You are receiving this email because you signed up for our daily newsletter at http://www.gizmag.com. If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter please click here to unsubscribe. COPYRIGHT GIZMAG (C) 2010