Boeing Patents an Aircraft Engine Run by Lasers and Nuclear Fusion

Boeing Patents for Laser & Nuclear Driven Airplane Engine

Recently, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had approved an application from Robert Budica, James Herzberg and Frank Chandler from Boeing, for a laser and nuclear driven airplane engine.Future aircraft could now be powered by lasers and nuclear explosions if Boeing intends to have its way.

The technology would mean that the spaceships and planes would need only a fraction of power for operating as per the recent patent filed by the company. Airplane makers are continuously on the look-outin finding new and efficient options of powering their products and this laser engine seems to be the latest notion by the engineers at Boeing.

The idea patented was to make air travel an efficient one. Presently we have airplanes like the Solar Impulse 2 which uses only solar energy to travel across Pacific and intends going on a world tour. For a long time now, airlines have been attempting to come up with concepts to decrease carbon emissions and nuclear powered airplanes would be great innovation.

The engineers give some insight on how the nuclear powered tend to work. The radioactive material is vaporized by a targeted Laser on them, leading to a controlled Nuclear Fusion reaction with high energy neutrons discharging out.

Boeing Dreamliner Powered by Several Turbofan Engines

Besides the radioactive material, the engine requires very little with regards to external energy. The high energy matter is absorbed which then propels the aircraft forward.As all the nuclear reactions tend to go, it sustains itself.

The uranium 238 which is coated on the interior of the thruster’s wall undergoes nuclear splitting when struck by high energy neutrons that are generated by the earlier reaction. This tends to generate plenty of heat. Heat that is from the fusion chamber is cooled off and directed to a generator which powers the Laser.

All this seems quite convincing on paper though several queries with regards to controlling the nuclear reactions and its safety tend to come up.Modern airliners like the Boeing Dreamliner are powered by several turbofan engines which organize a series of fans as well as turbines to compress air and ignite fuel in order to provide push.

Power Rockets/Missiles/Spacecraft

The newly patented engine of Boeing provides push in a different and unique way and as per the patent filing, the laser engine could also be utilised in powering rockets, missiles as well a spacecraft. This is one of the ideas which the engineers have proposed to power an airplane. Bio-fuels too have been in testing for a long time.

 According to United Airlines, flights which tend to run on fuel resulting from farm waste would soon begin from San Francisco and Los Angeles. These seem to be the main steps being adopted in helping to protect the environment. Up to now, the engine tends to live only in patent document and the technology is such that it is unclear if anyone would ever intend to build it.

It seems to be one of those patents which in no way indicate that the company that filed it intends working on what the patent is patenting. This is because Boeing does not seem to be actively developing a laser triggered fusion powered jet engine. Speculations are on whether the nuclear powered airplanes would become a reality or not.

Brain Translator lets Paraplegic Man Walk with Own Legs Again

Technique – Re-routing Brain Signals to Paraplegic Patient

A ground breaking technique in re-routing brain signals directly to the knees has aided a paraplegic man to walk once again with his legs for the first time after suffering from a spinal cord injury – SCI.The American patient of 26 years, who had met with an accident, had lost the ability of using his legs five year back.

However researcher at the University of California at Irvine managed to restore the link between his brain and legs, enabling him to walk once again without the need of robotic limbs. The patient could walk a distance of 3.5 meters donning a cap that was fitted with electrodes which could pick up brain signals, sending them wirelessly to a computer.

 The computers interpreted the signals and sent the decision to walk or stand still to a micro controller placed on the man’s belt, thus triggering the nerves on his legs. According to the researchers as reported in the Journal of Neuro-engineering and Rehabilitation, the system is not seemingly a plug and play and the patient requires wide training on the utilisation of it. The patient begins by wearing the cap and moves a character on a screen for the purpose of building up the potential of producing clear signals for the system to understand.

20 Sessions – 19 Weeks of Work

Thereafter the patient is totally put off to learn how to move his legs and refine the movement in order to walk. He would also need support in training his muscles to support his own weight.

According to the team, the procedure tends to take around 20 sessions in order to help the patient to walk, amounting to around 19 weeks of work. In due course, he was capable of holding basic conversation while walking.

 The system, instead of reading `walk left’ and `walk right’, relied on differentiating between `walk/don’t walk’ signals, which meant that the movement achieved by him was restricted. Beside the team also mentioned that the proof of concept study was dynamic in portraying that the brain could yet develop signals useful for walking, years after the ability had been lost.

Braingate and its successors, the future systems that are capable of more accurate collection and interpreting brain signals, could utilise the similar concept, possibly, to restore movement in a more broad sense.

Provided Proof-of-Concept for Direct Brain Control

The paper reported that the consequences provided a proof-of-concept for direct brain control of lower extremity prosthesis in order to restore basic ground walking after suffering from paraplegia due to spinal cord injury.

The system reported here represented an important step towards the development of technologies which could restore or progress walking in case of paraplegia patients due to SCI. Dr An Do, who co-led the study had informed the Guardian, that the system seemed to be an advance over those who use robotic exoskeletons.

She stated that they have showed that one can restore intuitive, brain controlled walking after complete spinal cord injury and the non-invasive system for leg muscle stimulation seems to be a promising method. It is an advance on present brain controlled system that utilises virtual reality or a robotic exoskeleton.

The next stage seems to be to ensure that the computer does not tend to mix up signals for balance and precision with walking and to find out other options for various and more natural kinds of movement which can be translated by the system.

Battery-Free Video Cam Grabs Picture and Power—from Same Light

The researchers at the Columbia University have created a futuristic and quite unbelievable self sufficient camera. A simple video was shown first by the researchers wherein a person was seen changing his facial expression each time, he moves his head either upside and down followed by side to side movement. This video appeared to shot centuries ago but the concept and design is relatively new and refreshing in every essence.

The video here is not in the question but the device with which this video is recorded is turning heads. This particular camera has used a cutting edge, futuristic technology which uses light both as source of creating video and harnessing power for the device. This can certainly bring in a new age of battery less camera, which will keep recording videos as long as there is light.

How this concept works? 

The researcher states that they had combined the two different concepts in the mechanism of this camera. One concept center around the camera’s image senor capability of collecting and measuring light along with another concept which uses the photovoltaic cells to convert some of the captured by camera into harnessing energy for the device. It is still an earlier stage of development wherein the researchers at Columbia University were able to develop a self-sufficient camera.

How this new camera works? 

This new self-sufficient camera works directly on the lines of the concept put forward by the researchers. This camera during each of the image capture cycle first works towards records the lights into pixels for producing images, later on it harvest energy and in return works towards charging the sensor’s sensor supply. It is a brilliantly devised concept, which helps in killing two birds with one stone. Capturing of images and powering of the device is done simultaneously in this process.

Future prospects of this self-sufficient camera? 

As said earlier this camera happens to be in crude development stage but it shows a greater promise for wide applications in future. It can easily become a critical part of the networks, prominent feature in consumer electronics along with wearable gadget and other Internet of Things devices. The creator of this camera Shree Naya, Columbia computer science professor, was upbeat about this self-powered camera. He states that very soon companies will be willing put this kind of powerful camera device in their products, which can return high quality images at minimal energy requirements.

This research will be presented as a team’s research at the upcoming IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography in Houston. This self-powered camera not only will provide high quality images but it can keep working tireless to almost forever, as it is self sufficient in harvesting energy. It can see a mainstay use in the popular consumer electronics like smartphone, tablets and other devices. In the security industry, it can work like a charm for providing unlimited supply of surveillance without the need of any external power source.

Canon 250-Megapixel Sensor can Read the Side of a Plane from 11 Miles Away

Canon’s 250 Megapixel APS-H CMOS Sensor

Everything tends to get under surveillance more than ever now as drones tend to get cheaper and the cameras far more advanced. Canon has now come up with a 250 megapixel APS-H CMOS sensor which could be used in a DSLR.

It is an APS-H size sensor which is about 80% of the length and width of full frame sensor. It seems to be a bit larger than the popular APS-C setup. This has the capabilities of distinguishing letters on the side of flying airplane at a distance of 12 miles. This sensor could be utilised in spy cameras sometimes in the near future.

The Japanese giant camera claims that the 19,580 x 12,600 pixel sensor has set a world record in its size for resolution. This means that each pixel is around 1.5 microns, almost similar as an iPhone 6. One can imagine what the new sensor as an array of 30 perfectly aligned and high speed smartphone sensors could do. The CMOS sensors tend to increase pixel counts.

The consequence can increase signal volume which could result in problems as signal delays.However the APS-H tends to have a fast signal readout speed of around 1.25 billion a second. It is said to produce crisp images.

Videos Can be Cropped & Magnified

Besides taking photos from far-fetched distance, the sensor portrays its high speed by being capable of writing out over 1 billion pixels per second, permitting to capture 250MP video at 5fpsThe footage is shot sharper at 30 times than 4K or 125 times that of a Full HD video.

The videos could also be cropped and magnified without the need of losing image resolution and clarity.Canon has informed that the sensor could be utilised one day in specialised surveillance and crime prevention tools, ultra-high resolution measuring instruments as well as other industrial equipment.

This would mean that when spies may get their hands on technology, it would not appear in a standard DSLR camera in the years to come. As Cannon is looking forward in marketing its new sensor to specific audiences comprising of surveillance, industrial equipment and much more, it could be helpful to make way for practical light-field camera as well.

Future of Imaging

However the big issue with light-field products like the ones from Lytro is the amount of resolution they give up to gain their ability in capturing dimensionality and change focus in post-production. Ren Ng, the founder of Lytro had made it transparent that the company had been built on the premise which sensor resolution would tend to continue on improvement, making the compromise more reasonable.

Based on how much of the light-field that a camera may be designed to capture, it could lessen the native sensor resolution from about 10% to 90%. With a native resolution of 250MP, even a 90% resolution would probably produce a respectable 25MP image.

As Canon continues to make headway with its recent announcement of ultra-high definition megapixel sensors, there seems to be some interesting ideas for the future of imaging. Application for ultra-high definition sensor tend to differ, however, they would be utilised in government surveillance, astrophotography or space exploration and geological surveillance.

How Facebook Plans to Make Money on Messenger

Facebook Messenger has already become a new revolutionizing way for the companies to communicate their business through its private messages. Just take a scenario a person buys a bag of chips and happens to find all broken and he just uses the Facebook Messenger private chat service to express his displeasure. Within six months of Messenger business features launch a large number of businesses had started utilizing this platform to engage with their customers and provide them with quick and active customer services.

Facebook’s head of ads and Pages executive, Andrew Bosworth has revealed the company’s intention to monetize the private chats for better returns. It was expected that sooner or later Messenger will help the Facebook in generating some valuable income and it has some incredible ideas to test out.

Facebook is trying some new ideas

Facebook for long had tried kept it away from any revenue generation model and focused on providing an exciting and commendable platform for social networking. But at last it has to monetize its platform in order to generate some revenue no for its own benefit but also for the investors. Now it is planning to make some money on the Messenger, which is tricky, but Facebook has some ideas to try out. Bosworth has hinted about few ideas, which can help business in driving by bringing in repeat customers, or offering them discounts over the Messenger.

Facebook to integrate M in Messenger
 
Earlier this month Facebook has unveiled its M, which is essentially an artificial intelligence assistant for the users. A number of companies are using Facebook to communicate with their customers and offer fast and quick resolution to their problems in a more interactive fashion. M can help a lot in automating the process of dealing with numerous customers on the social media platform. It should be noted that M happens to be more refined and robust artificial digital assistant who helps people in performing wide number minor to tasks like making restaurant reservation to ordering flowers.

More features can be integrated into Messenger

The digital assistant M makes it possible to add more core features to the Messenger, which will help in businesses in a productive manner. Click-to-message ad features are being testing out by the companies on the Message to assess its potential. It works in a simplistic manner whenever a user clicks on any one of these ads then it helps in launching a private Messenger conversation with that particular business. More hardcore features like payments and customer care services via Messenger are also possible. It is worth noting that Messenger service is utilized by more than 700 million worldwide each month.


Bosworth even said there is possibility of virtual reality integrating in future, as Facebook own the Occulis Rift, which is now making come riveting VR headsets for the consumers. Virtual Reality experience is also a great avenue to bring ads as human life does include ads. Having ads in the virtual sphere will be an exciting and remarkable in itself.