LA Design Challenge 2012 puts out APB for patrol vehicles of 2025

Welcome to the newsletter for Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine. These are the headlines for November the 20th, 2012. LA Design Challenge 2012 puts out APB for patrol vehicles of 2025 The California Highway Patrol could expect an influx in the number of hopeful applicants in the future if any of the entries in this year's LA Design Challenge were to enter service. This year's challenge asked automotive design studios from around the world to create "a highway patrol vehicle that meets the challenges of a specific region's transportation and societal conditions in 2025." Having already taken a look at the Ener-G-Force concept from Mercedes-Benz, we assemble a line up of the other entries. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile IBM supercomputer used to simulate a typical human brain Using the world's fastest supercomputer and a new scalable, ultra-low power computer architecture, IBM has simulated 530 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses – matching the numbers of the human brain – in an important step toward creating a true artificial brain. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile The world's most high-tech (and expensive) Scrabble board With its basic game board and lettered tiles, Scrabble is about as low-tech of a game as you can get. But that hasn't stopped Mind Sports International from giving the game's iconic board a 21st century upgrade. For the company's upcoming festival in Prague, a new Scrabble board was built that uses RFID chips in each tile to detect where each letter is placed and transmit the data online almost instantly. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Third-gen Solidoodle 3D printer pumps up the volume Over the past couple of years, the number of consumer 3D printers hitting the market has multiplied like … well, like plastic chess pieces churned out by a 3D printer. For its latest unit, Solidoodle has upped the build area to 8 x 8 x 8 inches, more than doubling the build volume of its previous offering. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Kindle Fire HD 8.9" vs. Nexus 7 The budget tablet market is getting crowded. Ruled last year by Amazon, it now hosts products from Apple, Asus, Barnes & Noble, and Samsung. Amazon alone released three Kindle tablets this year, and they all start at under US$300. How does the best of those - the Kindle Fire HD 8.9" - compare to the Nexus 7? Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile U.S. study quantifies the effects of exercise on life expectancy The benefits of regular exercise are well known, but what exactly are you getting in return for your efforts? A research a collaboration between the U.S.-based Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital and the National Cancer Institute has attempted to answer this question by quantifying how much longer people live depending on the levels of exercise they engage in. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Nissan to auction one-of-a-kind Bolt Gold GT-R for charity Nissan is dropping a special edition, one of a kind GT-R themed after Olympic superstar Usain Bolt. This limited edition Nissan GT-R is going up for a special charity auction starting on November 22. All the proceeds from the auction go to Usain Bolt's charity, aptly named the Usain Bolt Foundation, which helps children in Bolt's native Jamaica. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Solitaire.exe brings Windows 98 playing cards to life In the days before the Internet was what it is now, and before there was a smartphone app for every occasion, there was Solitaire on Windows 98. It was a common procrastination tool for office workers over several years, which means this simple game has a healthy dose of nostalgia attached to it. Nostalgia that Evan Roth has evoked with Solitaire.exe Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Nanoparticle shows promise in treatment of multiple sclerosis Good news may be on the way for sufferers of multiple sclerosis – a team of scientists from Illinois-based Northwestern University, the University of Sydney, and the Myelin Repair Foundation in California have succeeded in halting the effects of the disease in lab mice. It all comes down to using nanoparticles to trick the immune system. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile iRobot's new hand can take a beating from a baseball bat Not even a baseball bat can damage the fingers of a new robotic hand developed by iRobot for the DARPA Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program. The four-year program, which began in 2010, seeks to build and program a robot capable of handling all kinds of things on the battlefield with minimal human input. Most robot hands have rigid components which tend to be quite fragile, but this hand has rubbery fingers, which are better able to absorb impacts. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile McLaren confirms limited run for 12C GT Can-Am Edition When McLaren GT unveiled its 12C GT Can-Am Edition concept at the at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance earlier this summer, it was supposed to be a one-off. Its purpose was basically to show what McLaren's designers could do if they chucked the racing regulations in the bin and let themselves go. However, that one-off sparked a lot of interest – so much so that at the 2012 United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas, McLaren announced that the track car would go into production. The bad news is that it's for a run of only 30 cars. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile U-Boat Worx launches its C-Explorer 5 submarine in Monaco Dutch submarine manufacturer U-Boat Worx has been developing it over the past two years, but this September at the 22nd Monaco Yacht Show, it was finally launched – the C-Explorer 5, which the company describes as "the world's first subsea limousine." Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile ProDot makes your camera's shutter button more tactile Can a little silicone dot which attaches over your camera's shutter button really help you take better photos? That's the claim from the makers of the ProDot, a tactile shutter release button which is currently doing the rounds on Kickstarter, and it appears many photographers think it could live up to the promise … because it sailed past its funding target in a matter of days. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Honda's HEARBO robot has excellent hearing A team led by Kazuhiro Nakadai at Honda Research Institute-Japan (HRI-JP) is improving how robots process and understand sound. The robot, aptly called HEARBO (HEARing roBOt), can parse four sounds (including voices) at once, and can tell where the sounds are coming from. The system, called HARK, could allow future robot servants to better understand verbal commands from several meters away. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Zaha Hadid design selected for Japan national stadium It may have been likened to a bicycle helmet, but that hasn't stopped the Japan Sport Council from selecting Zaha Hadid Architect's design for a new Japanese national stadium to be built by 2019. It's hoped that the design for the 80,000-seat stadium will boost Tokyo's chances of hosting the 2020 Summer Olympics. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Researchers promise doubled wireless spectrum efficiency Wireless carriers love to talk about a Spectrum Crunch. Like oil, wireless spectrum is a finite resource. Companies like AT&T warn that smartphone proliferation is eventually going to leave those "wells" dry. Carriers' answers to the problem usually involve government (less regulations, and more federally-owned spectrum released). However, researchers at U.C. Riverside have another solution: make those networks more efficient. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile MIT produces new metamaterial that acts as a lens for radio waves We expect the world to be predictable. Water flows downhill, fire burns and lenses bend light in a particular way. That worldview took a jolt as Isaac Ehrenberg, an MIT graduate student in mechanical engineering, developed a three-dimensional, lightweight metamaterial lens that focuses radio waves with extreme precision. That may not seem too disturbing, but the lens is concave and works in exactly the opposite manner of how such a lens should. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Purrfect Air system uses a plant to eliminate kitty litter odors Indoor green walls, for those who don't know, are essentially flat vertical surfaces that are completely covered in plants. Not only do they look nice, but they also help remove toxins from the air. Now, gardening entrepreneur Mark Prescott has taken that same idea and applied it to a cat litter box deodorizer, known as the Purrfect Air Litter Box System. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Transforming house turns inside out for summer, has 8 configurations Architectural outfit The D*Haus Company has unveiled a design for a remarkable transforming house, the D*Dynamic, which, taking cues from a mathematical problem posed at the turn of the 20th century, can fold itself into eight different configurations. The design's adaptability makes it ideally suited to extreme climates, D*Haus claims. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Guinness World Record for longest video game marathon broken Next time your hands are feeling sore following a particularly grueling gaming session, spare a thought for the digits of Okan Kaya, who just broken the Guinness World Record for longest gaming session with Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, reaching over 121 hours of solid gameplay and counting. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Internet of Things table lamp illuminates comings and goings of distant loved ones This is a charming idea. The Good Night Lamp is actually a set of table lamps that you distribute among friends or family. The lamps communicate remotely so that as a lamp is turned on or off by its owner, that action is replicated in the others, giving illuminating little insights into the comings and goings of loved ones – even those on the other side of the world. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile iPhone-charging desk lamps declare war on cable clutter Unfortunately, as our collection of consumer gadgetry increases, so does the number of different power charging cables piled up at the edge of the desk. Hong Kong's M&C Lighting t'Light desk lamps promise to help reduce the tangled mound by incorporating charging ports in the base. Each of the company's four models packs a USB charging port and comes supplied with multi-tip cables compatible with various brand mobile phones and notebooks. Two of them also have an integrated iPod/iPhone dock and a power outlet for notebooks, and there's one with built-in stereo speakers. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Wax-infused "nanoyarn" used to create artificial muscles An international team of scientists based at the University of Texas, Dallas (UTD), has developed a new type of artificial muscle created from carbon "nanotubes" – tiny hollow cylinders constructed from the same graphite layers found in the core of a standard pencil. Despite measuring 10,000 times less than the diameter of a human hair, the new muscles can lift more than 100,000 times their own weight, which amounts to approximately 85 times the power of a natural muscle of equivalent size. Read on Desktop or Read on Mobile Special promotion for Gizmag readers Take Your Coding Skills to the Next Level Welcome to coding bootcamp! This is the crown jewel of coding courses jam-packed with everything a serious programmer should know inside and out. Learn to code training includes 47 hours of online training that will teach you HTML5, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, AJAX, Python, Ruby, Responsive Web Design and more. After finishing the training, you will have all the necessary skills to build your own websites or to land your dream job. Find more about this training here. Read More You are receiving this email because you signed up for our daily newsletter at http://www.gizmag.com. If you would like to switch to our weekly newsletter, click here If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter please click here to unsubscribe. COPYRIGHT GIZMAG (C) 2012