FLOWER POWER: One way to generate energy from sunshine is to concentrate the rays reflected from a bank of mirrors onto a central point. AORA tulip-shaped towers in Southern Spain don't need cooling, mineral salts or oil, but instead just use the air that's all around us. The air inside the tower heats up to around 1,000 C, then it's channelled into a combustion chamber which powers a turbine generator to produce electricity. An external power supply switches on when there's no sun, so the Tulip can provide continuous power to the community. Tulips in the desert sound a lot more pleasant than plain old towers. Reuters has more.
HEALING TOUCH: A group of Chinese and Australian scientists has created a handheld plasma torch that can kill bacteria on the skin. The device could be useful for ambulance crew, military personnel and in natural disasters. The low-cost torch uses a 12 volt battery and doesn't require an external gas feed. In experiments plasma at 23 C (around room temperature) successfully inactivated a biofilm created from 17 different layers of bacteria. There's a new bit of gear for the survival kit. More details at CSIRO.
HEALING FILM: Toray's Self-cure Coat Film is a protective film for laptops, smartphones, touchscreens and other devices. The special film puts a self-repairing layer on top of a PET base. The self-repairing layer has high viscosity and elasticity so if it's scratched it repairs itself in 10 seconds or less. The Japanese company have been supplying small amounts of the film for a while, but are about to move into mass-production. Sounds good for those who like to drop their
phone into a pocket or bag. Tech On has details.
SHOOT FROM THE TONGUE: The Kinect is pretty good at recognising whole body movements, but researchers in Japan aim to refine its ability to determine how a person's tongue is moving. Some people have oral motor function disorders that affect their ability to speak or swallow. To help with therapy they need to exercise their tongue. First the Kinect recognises the facial area and eyes. Then it estimates the position of the nose, and from that, the mouth area. The researchers created some video games that use tongue position for actions such as shooting. Now they just need to improve recognition accuracy. Imagine a world where sticking your tongue out could fire real bullets. Scary. DigInfo has more, and there's video here.
LOST A PROTON?: Scientists at the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology in Barcelona have created a scale so sensitive it can weigh a mass as tiny as 1 yoctogram. That's less than the mass of a proton. That might not mean much to your diet, but it could help doctors distinguish between markers of disease that differ by only a proton. The scales involve short nanotubes, low temperatures and a vacuum. Oh, 1 yoctogram = 1 septillionth of a gram. It's impossible to imagine even
1 millionth of a gram, let alone 1 septillionth! New Scientist has more.
