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Small, cheap smart-tag devices that are printed as digital circuits in rolls like newspapers could help kickstart the wireless payment industry. The devices, known as rectennas, combine a rectifier - which converts current from AC to DC - with an antenna, and can harness power directly from radio waves given off by a mobile phone. Developed by a team at Sunchon National University and Paru Printed Electronics Research Institute in South Korea, the rectenna is based on Near Frequency Communication (NFC) technology, an update to the more familiar RFID standard found in London Underground's Oyster ticketing system, for example. NFC chips can be used to tag many of the same things RFID chips can, from pets to luggage to boxes in a warehouse. The killer app is likely to be contactless payment, where payments are made by waving a reader in a phone over an NFC price tag. Though this technology has been touted for a few years now - and worldwide payments by NFC-enabled phones are predicte...

In the future, everything glows, and that includes the fingerprints left behind at the scene of future crimes. Despite the fact that fingerprints are just about everywhere, they are notoriously hard to see. Tranditional methods of picking them out usually involve some sort of dust or powder, and can sometimes destroy the precious prints in the process of pointing them out. With a process called Electrochemiluminescence, researchers have been able to come up with a new way to see prints: coating them in chemicals and electrifying them until they glow. The process, as explained over at PhysOrg, works by transferring a print to a sheet of stainless steel which serves as an electrode and coating it with a combination of a ruthenium complex and tripropylamine. Then, when you turn on the juice, the solution will begin to glow. The fatty, greasy matter that makes up the fingerprint blocks the solution from the electrode, so the result is a high-resolution, glowing negative of the fingerprin...

Aug 2, 2012 1:20 PM   Samsung has just announced some superfast new chips and they might one day power an iPhone. The company claims the Pro Class 1500 line is the Usain Bolt of flash memory cards—four times speedier than predecessors, and possibly the fastest chips around. They can read data at 140 MB per second and write it at 50 MB per second and process at 1,500 IOPS (inputs/outputs per second) for writing and 3,500 for reading. They come in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB configurations. Despite their very public squabbling, Samsung still provides Apple with some very important components, including flash memory. And the latest chips could be the innards that supercharge not your next iPhone, but your next next iPhone. [Samsung Tomorrow via Engadget] Image credit: Samsung Tomorrow View the original article here This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Simply put, LEDs are the future. As the technology matures, it's now being embraced in a way unlike ever before. The diodes last longer and draw less power than other light sources. And, technical benefits aside, LEDs can also be implemented into unconventional forms much more easily than incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. Get ready for some crazy lighting designs. Jake Dyson's LED lamp design is built around the concept of maximizing the lifespan of the LED light. Spanning the length of the horizontal bar, a copper heat pipe takes heat away from the LED components, the most common life shortener of the diodes. The lamps also have some wonderful industrial features, such as the way the parts can moves along the X and Y axes. [PHOTO] When you have a newish technology, why not revisit an old form? Switch lighting's beautiful bulb is all about easing us into the future. It fits in a standard socket and emits a light comparable to incandescent bulbs. The form is something fam...

Remember how in sci-fi tomorrowland we were promised that doctors would be followed around by robots who knew your medical history by rote and could make sure that nothing gets missed? Well, we've woken up in the future because shit just got real. Meet the RP-VITA, or Remote Presence Virtual + Independent Telemedicine Assistant, a collaboration between iRobot and InTouch Health. iRobot got bored of cleaning your floors and keeping our Navy EOD units safe, so they've decided to focus on making your hospital visit a hopefully less horrible one. The robots will be capable of autonomously navigating the hospital hallways, avoiding obstacles and people (once the FDA approves this functionality). They will be cloud-connected and linked to your full medical record, and they will have ports for directly connecting to medical diagnostic devices. All this and it's controlled by an iPad. The RP-VITA is designed to get the doctor to where he or she is needed and to make sure they know...

Everyone knows they have unique fingerprints, but what about a unique footprint? Research has shown everyone has a personalized way of walking — pressure of step, length of stride — and a new lab is working to turn those individual foot features into a security measure. The lab is developing biometric shoe insoles to monitor the characteristics of a person’s feet. Sensors will record the patterns and a computer will compare the measurements to a person’s master file. If it’s a match, it will grant the person access to secured areas and the insoles will turn off. If not, it sounds an alarm. “Within the third step, it knows it’s you, and it goes back to sleep,” Todd Gray, the company’s president, said to The Washington Post . “If I put on yours, it would know almost instantly that I’m not you.” Gray says his inspiration for the revolutionary security gear came from seeing his daughter in maternity ward decorated with baby feet. SEE ALSO: Department of Homeland Security Testing Molecular...