Electric Planes Usher in the Second Great Age of Aviation

Since the beginning of the year 2015, a rapid advancement has been made in the field of aviation through electric planes. The new breed of electric plane pilots is much more focused inspired and determined to stretch the boundaries in every manner possible with new electric propulsion system.

In July this year one such pilot name Hugues Duval successfully landed his tiny electric plane cleverly christened Cri-Cri in Calais France. This tiny electric plane flew over the English Channel and came back again which demonstrates the potential of new era electric plane in an astounding manner. This feat even reminds the greatest moment in the aviation history when the very first plane successfully crossed the English Channel way back in 1909.

Electric flights growing in number over the years

The flying of electric planes intent towards breaking into avenues and creating records isn’t new in itself. Electric planes flying in the sky is rather an unregulated corner of the aviation sector where a large number of ambitious plane builders and extremely brave pilots are making their foray. These determined individuals whom some term as skyward dreamers had certainly invented a new age of aviation, which seeks to provide a healthy way commuting in future without further damaging our dear planet Earth.

The earliest example of electric plane and today’s advancement

The earliest flight of an electric plane can be traced back to 1973 West Germany where plane builders worked towards flying planes with the help of batteries. The energy density and outburst of potential energy for flying the planes is still short of the gasoline based planes today. Even the most advanced electric plane at the moment can get easily outperformed by the fuel-powered planes in terms of power capacity as well as speed.

But electric planes offer a great room for further growth and advancement which is a good sign. The essential component for developing an electric plane such as batteries and others are becoming more affordable with technological advancement. This means that in upcoming days we will be able to see more exciting electric plane with more power and capabilities.

Some of Smart and Efficient Electric Planes

Elektra One Solar has produced a remarkable flight capability by flying from Germany to two Austrian airports and coming back on June 25. It is a single seater solar powered electric plane, which has shown that with solar power one can easily span a couple of hundred miles by staying at an altitude of over 10,000 feet.
Another solar powered electric plane named Solar Impulse made a sensational flight of 118 hours wherein it covered 4,500 miles from Japan and landed successfully in Hawaii on July 3. Incidentally this flight’s epic ocean crossing caused damage to its batteries which has resulted in keeping its round the world journey on hold.

However, the most thrilling moment of this year’s remarkable electric plane flight is the one carried on in Cri-Cri plane. In this flight, the pilot Duval has put his trust upon a plane to cross over thousands of miles of frigid water.

NASA Wi-Fi Chip Reflects Wi-Fi and Save Your Smartphone Battery

In the modern world consumers usually rely on the wireless communications for various reasons. The nexus between the phones, computers and the wearable devices with the Wi-Fi devices results in the creation of a wireless network. NASA has developed a Wi-Fi, which can be used in the mobile electronics to enhance their potential in receiving signal without losing out anything at the power front.

The problems faced during this chip invention

The major challenge faced by the researchers while developing this wearable device is the reflecting of signals by other components as physical things such as walls, ceiling, floors and others. This chip has to be given the ability to distinguish between the real Wi-Fi signal and the continuous refection coming from the background.

In order to overcome these background reflections has developed a core wireless silicon chip, which can constantly sense and suppress the background reflection in a more advanced fashion. It can keep the Wi-Fi signal transmitting without any kind of interference coming from the surrounding objects.

The researchers had successfully tested this enhanced system at distances measuring up to 20 feet (6 feet). By reaching at 8 feet this system possesses a data transfer rate of astonishing 330 megabits per second. This data transfer rate happened to be three time much more than the current Wi-Fi rate and this system used astonishing thousand times lesser than the power, which a regular Wi-Fi link uses in general.

A technologist had heaped praise on this system and had claimed that one can send a video in just a matter of seconds without consuming any energy from the wearable device. It should be noted that it is the transmitter, which expends the energy in the environment not the watch or any other wearable.

How this technology will work in real world environment

This technology requires a base station and a Wi-Fi service for efficient working. In order to compensate the lower power drainage on the wearable devices, it is essential that the computer or any other technology working with it possess rather a longer battery life. The best resort will be to keep it plugged it for once and all. This will mean that the router will use more power outages than before. At the moment researchers are working aggressively to find a perfect solution for this problem.

The potential of this remarkable technology

This technology shows enough potential to be used not just in the consumer products sectors but also in other sectors such as robotics and aircraft as well as aerospace engineering.

Aerospace will be benefitted with this technology as it will much better ways to transmit the images at a lower costs than the present devices at disposal. Even sending more than one images at a given time will become feasible with this technology.

Currently NASA and UCLA are in talks with the commercial partner with an aim of bringing this remarkable technology to the common users and even bring in a new revolution in the field of communication.

The Turing Phone is Built to be Unhackable and Unbreakable

 

 

Turing Phone – Unique Smartphone, Unhackable/Unbreakable

Smartphones are being utilised for several private tasks like transferring money to sending private photos as well as documents. A company has now developed what it claims is an unhackable as well as unbreakable handset called the `Turing Phone’ and the Android handset provides protected communications network `keeping private information private’ and supports cryptocurrency which hopefully could someday rival Bitcoin.
Engineers have created the unique smartphone which is unhackable and has been built from a special type of metal which tends to be much stronger than titanium and steel thus making it unbreakable. The Turning Phone as it is called is a smartphone with end to end encryption that is built in most of the core apps on the phone. Developed by San Francisco based Turing Robotic Industries, users can activate the Turning phone through a fingerprint reader on the side of the device, according to Wired.com reports.

The smartphone which is a 5.5 inch phone has no USB port as well as no headphone jack and is made of a material known as liquid morphium and is probably the next big thing with regards to phones. Apple has already been using the material in small quantity in its iPhone 6 models and the phone is said to be unusually waterproof due to its nano coating on the internals. Rubber is not used and everything is accessible as well as open. If the Turing Phone is placed in water, it is not designed to be sealed and water could get in. However, you can pull it out, shake it off and it is ready to be used without much problem.

Protected Communication Network

The San Francisco based company states that its end to end authentication system enables a `protected communication network which is completely insulated from cyber threats as well as privacy intrusions, which means that individuals would be capable of sharing documents as well as data without any cause to worry that it could be hacked. CEO of Turing Robotic Industries, Steve Chao, informed that the focus is on three features namely, nano-coating, liquid metal and privacy keys.

He further explained that these features in the initial days were like the GPS, Wi-Fi and the camera of the early days of smartphones where people were a bit apprehensive towards these features, though they got standardized later on. He states that if one does not have nano-coating privacy key and liquid metal, one could get phased out right way in the near future. Beginning July 31, the phone will be available at $610 for a 16GB model according to Chao and runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop with Turing Aemaeth UI, with three colour variants namely, Pharaoh, Cardinal and Beowulf.

Besides this, the other specifications include a 5.5 inch full HD – 1080x1920 pixel, display, 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 SoC, 3GB RAM :16/32/64GB storage models, with a 13 megapixel rear camera together with dual-LED flash, 8 megapixel front facing camera, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0 LE:NFC, GPS/Glonass as well as a non-removable 3000mAh battery. Sensors comprise of accelerometer, fingerprint, gyroscope, magnetometer, proximity, temperature, humidity and ambient light.

Activated Via Fingerprint Reader

The phone is designed with security in mind with end to end encryption which is built in most of the core apps on phone and also has a `Turing coin’ within, a crypotcurrency which Chao speculates would catch on. It’s activated via a fingerprint reader towards the side of the phone and is prepared to keep servers as well as third parties out as much as possible.

The company is at work on an API in order to enable user in accessing all these features. The Turing Phone in short is meant to be totally and absolutely unhackable. It also tends to be unbreakable since it is made from material like liquidmorphium, being much stronger than steel or aluminium as well as efficient for use in manufacturing. Chao commented that Apple tends to use it a bit though only in the SIM card slot on the iPhone but says that the iPhone 7 could make much more usage of the material.

Software Totally & Entirely Customized

Chao together with his team have been working on battery technology which according to him would be ready to show up in eight months and would be going to `change the world’. The final plan is to develop a robot butler that `would serve your day-to-day needs’ and to do so, he states that they are `working on their own artificial consciousness machine though not artificial intelligence, artificial consciousness’.The software is totally and entirely customized and Chao had shown a few home screens in a demo though he is confident that it will be a masterpiece.

He also promises a total overhaul of Android which would be a great enhancement on Google’s vision across the board. Chao, who is an architect both by training and disposition, envisages the phone is for designers as well as for anyone preferring something a little diverse from the black rectangles which blanket the world’s carrier stores. The company’s CEO informed Wired, that the software of the phone would be a `masterpiece’ and huge improvement on Android screens which users are presently familiar with.

Eddystone: Cross-Platform Beacon Format Gets Google Launch

Google is all set to introduce its upcoming Eddystone beacon format, which will work along with other API to offer hardcore connectivity solution. Eddystone beacon is expected to make it easier for variety of devices to communicate with each other in close proximity. Google had caused frenzy among the developers with its update where it talked about beacon with headline: “Lightning the way with BLE beacons.”

How Eddystone Beacon Will Work? 

Fundamentally, beacon is not a new concept rather it works on the age-old technique wherein it acts as a transmitter. Beacon will acts as a transmitter, and it will send out the information about a certain point and that particular information is later is picked up by a smartphone or tablet within its range. In this connectivity becomes fast paced and much more synchronized and streamlined than before.

In the earlier times, we used to have a lighthouse, which helped the sailors in navigating through the treacherous ocean. On the same idea, modern electronic beacons are designed and developed which helps in navigating to the precise location and contextual cues already fed in apps.

A beacon can work on different levels to provide much more comfort and swift operational capability such as it can label a bus stop so phone knows to keep the tick ready in advance. Similarly, museum app will be able to provide background on the work of the artist a person is viewing at that particular moment.

Eddystone Is Google Open Beacon Format

Google is known to develop and launch such services, which are free and provide wholesome user experience without spending a single dime. Similarly Eddystone is open beacon format from Google. Its specification shows that it includes a large number of broadcast frame type most importantly Eddystone-URL which acts as backbone of Physical Web.

Very soon, Google will begin its rolling out of features in different sets for the developers to build new apps based on this technology. Google will also roll out a new open format for Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons in order to communicate with people’s devices. Google had ensured that its Eddystone remains an open source project by getting an Apache v2.0 license.

Developers Can Develop Apps As Much They Love To

This license makes sure that this new revolutionary beacon is free for any who wishes to use and improve its functionality further. The manufactures of the physical beacons can also access this remarkable technology as well as utilize it in their beacons. Even embed in their existing beacons making it Eddystone compliant through a firmware update.

Eddystone beacon possesses some amazing feature, which includes extensibility which means new functionalities can be added with ease. Highly scalable and having the capability to communicate with a variety of devices running either iOS, Android with perfection.

Google believes that beacon will provide an important way of delivering better experience to the users of different apps by embedding Eddystone in the products and services.

Beacon technology is being praised by all but now it is required to get business and transit authorities as well as other private enterprise to invest in compliant hardware to make it a success.

This Biotech Discovery Means You’ll Never Need a Painful Flu Shot Again

Dissolving Needle Technology - MicroHyala

Diseases are infectious and are the major cause of death all over the world and hence the need of safe and effective vaccines is of great importance. Though the vaccinations are given with subcutaneous or intramuscular injection that has been administered by medical personnel having technical skills, it is also accompanied with the risk of needle related disease as well as injuries.

Besides this antigen solution need cold chain storage as well as transportation system and hence the development of vaccine which could be easy to use and administered, together with superior in stability of formulations is essentially important.Getting vaccinated is now no longer a painful ordeal since a group of researchers in Japan have tested a new `dissolving needle’ which seems to be a painless patch that one can stick to the arm and which tends to work well.

The dissolving needle technology is known as MicroHyala. Scientists have created a new micro needle patch that is made of dissolvable substance which makes flu vaccination safer, easier and painless by eliminating needle connected risks of injuries and diseases. Flu vaccination are delivered utilising micro needles which dissolve in the skin and protects a person against infection much better than the standard needle delivered vaccine according to researchers.

Readily Adaptable for General Practical Use

Transcutaneous microneedle delivery device that meets the requirements of the only application’ vaccination system, has been developed. The technique is readily adaptable for general practical use especially in developing countries with inadequate public health resources.

However microneedles which are made of metal, stainless steel or silicon tend to pose risks of fractures, with fragments left in the skin. Hence the development of a dissolving microneedle patch has been fabricated from hyaluronic acid a component of skin tissue. Researcher from Osaka University in Japan state that their dissolvable patch which is the only vaccination system of its kind tends to make vaccination less painful. Microneedles on MicroHyala tend to penetrate the stratum corneum that acts as a physical barrier on the outer layer of the skin and are dissolved by water in the skin.

The MicroHyala efficiently delivers the various substances which can be loaded in the microneedles to ample immune-competent cells like Langerhans cells, dermal dendritic cells and keratinocytes in the epidermis as well as dermis beneath the stratum corneum. They found that when they used the MicroHyala in delivering the flu vaccination, it was quite effective as the standard needles.

The New Microneedle Patch

Most of the vaccinations are administered under the skin or into the muscle with the use of needles. Though this is an effective method in delivering a vaccination, it needs medical personnel with technical skills, bringing about the risk of needle related diseases and injuries.The new microneedle patch is made of dissolvable material which eliminates the needle connected risks.

It is easy to use without the requirement of trained medical professionals and makes it appropriate for use in developing countries, especially where healthcare means tends to be limited. Professor Shinsaku Nakagawa, one of the authors of the study from Osaka University states the `their novel transcutaneous vaccination using a dissolving microneedle patch is the only application vaccination system which is readily adaptable for widespread practical use’.

He further added that since the new patch is easy to use, they believe that it will be particularly effective in supporting vaccination in the developing countries.MicroHyala, the new micronneedle patch is dissolvable in water and the miniature needles are made of hyaluronic acid which is a naturally occurring material which cushions the joints. When a patch is applied like a plaster, the needles tend to pierce the top layer of the skin and dissolve into the body taking the vaccine with them.

Designed to Dissolve in the Skin

The new system was compared by the researchers with the traditional needle delivery by vaccinating two groups of people against three strains of influenza namely A/HINI, A/H3N2 and B. There was no sign of any bad reaction to the vaccine to any of the subjects, indicating that it is safe to be used in humans. The patch also seemed effective wherein the people, who were given the vaccine using the micro needles, had an immune reaction which was equal or stronger than those that were injected with the vaccine. Nakagawa said that they were excited to see that their new micro needle patch was effective as the needle delivered flu vaccine and in some cases it was even more effective.

 The earlier research had assessed the use of micro needles made of silicon or metal though they were not considered to be safe. The materials used for micro needles also tend to run the risk of breaking off in the skin and could leave tiny fragments behind. With the new dissolvable patch this risk is eradicated since the microneedles have been designed to dissolve in the skin.

Nakagawa states that they have shown that the patch tends to be safe and works well. Besides this, it is also painless as well as easy for non-trained individuals to use it and that it could bring about a major change in the way vaccine is administered globally. The research had been published in the journal Biomaterials – SAR AKJ SAR.