For everything from family to computers…
Delphi says its diesel-like engine runs cleanly on gasoline.
Delphi, a major parts supplier to automakers, is developing an engine technology that could improve the fuel economy of gas-powered cars by 50 percent, potentially rivaling the performance of hybrid vehicles while costing less. A test engine based on the technology is similar in some ways to a highly efficient diesel engine, but runs on gasoline.
A perpetual weakness of MAVs (micro air vehicles) is their frequent need for hand-holding in anything other than a wide-open or very controlled space. If they’re not using GPS or motion sensors to find their locations, they can’t turn on a dime the way a human pilot would. Adam Bry, Abraham Bachrash and Nicholas Roy from MIT’s CSAIL group haven’t overcome every problem just yet, but they may have taken combat drones and other pilotless aircraft a big step forward by giving them the tools needed to fly quickly when positioning isn’t an option. Uniting a laser rangefinder with an existing 3D map of the environment — still ‘cheating,’ but less dependent — lets the prototype flyer find the distance to nearby obstacles and steer clear even at speeds that would scare any mere mortal MAV. Ideally, future designs that can create their own maps will be completely independent of humans, making us think that MIT’s references to “aggressive” autonomous flight are really cues to start hiding under the bed.
from Engadget
That was quick. Just two weeks after Valve posted a new Steam beta that allows remote game downloads, it now has a truly polished release for everyone. Both Mac and Windows gamers can now queue up demos and full games, whether it’s from a browser at work or from the Steam mobile app. Appropriately, Valve will let you reinstall games as well as start downloading a purchase as soon as the credit card clears. Either way, it’ll guaranteed that your new copy of Bastion or that attempt to relive your Quake nostalgia will be ready when you get home.
from Engadget
A team of researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have transmitted data on the terahertz range of spectrum using a wireless radio no bigger than a 10-yen coin (roughly the size of a penny). The tiny contraption can access spectrum between 300GHz and 3THz (otherwise known as T-Rays for terahertz), and was able to transfer data at a speed of 3Gbps. But this was only a test run—researchers suspect that using terahertz spectrum could get data transfer up to rates of 100 Gbps.
The newest WiFi standard available to consumers (but not yet ratified by the IEEE), 802.11 ac, transmits on a 5GHz band and can theoretically achieve 1.3Gbps. There’s an even-further-out standard in the works as well; 802.11ad (otherwise known as WiGig) will transmit on the 60 GHz rage for a theoretical 10 Gbps—although this will generally only be within a line-of-sight range.
A T-ray based WiFi is certainly far off, and the greatly increased frequency of the transmission will undoubtedly require devices using terahertz spectrum to be quite close to each other. As Extreme Tech points out, the short distance of transmission for this technology would be better for server farms than anything else, permitting servers to share data between each other wirelessly rather than through a web of wiring.
from Ars Technica
