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There are two primary ancient elixirs of the ancients the elixir of life and an authentic aphrodisiac. We have seen the creation of an authentic aphrodisiac in niagra are we on the verge of seeing the other? Alzeimers has been apparently a cured. The trial was a Phase 2 study, which checks the safety and efficacy of the drug, but if a large-scale Phase 3 trial due next year repeats the findings, the drug could be available for prescribing by 2012. This is remarkable. Patients with the brain disorder had no significant decline in their mental function over a 19-month period.
 Very comprehensive review of the capabilities of this Neural Impulse Actuator device.
Review :: OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator Reading through the review it appears that a lot of the control comes from the headband interpreting facial muscle movements. There appears to be more bio-feedback type of signal receptors on the device but the reviewers struggled to make that portion work. The review will be updated over the next month as they have handed the N.I.A. off to one of their testers to get fully immersed in the use of the headband. the nia has now been passed over to our Gaming/Software reviewer - Chris Buer for a full month of testing with weekly updates. These updates will be posted as additional pages in this review, so be sure to check back on a weekly basis or register over on our forums for an automatic update on when new content is added to the review. I'll check back later. Here's the homepage of OCZ: OCZtechnology.com And a brief description of what the device tracks from the site: The biopotentials include electro-myogram, electro-encephalogram and electro-oculogram, that is, electrical signals that are generated by activity patterns in muscles, brain, and eyes, respectively.
All you need is a web cam and you're golden. Here's their blog...not much there.
 Like a grandfather clock. This is brilliant, but not produced yet.
To "turn on" the lamp, the user moves weights from the bottom to the top of the lamp. An hour-glass like mechanism is turned over and the weights are placed in the mass sled near the top of the lamp. The sled begins its gently glide back down and, within a few seconds, the LEDs come on and light the lamp, That is very cool. The LED lightbulb should last a lifetime so you are looking at a family heirloom. Kind of a 21st century candle.
 Mind-Reading Game Headset to Hit Market
Brain computer interface is coming. And it's coming fast. There are several companies set to hit the market with products over the next couple of years: Emotiv and NeuroSky. Both of these products are focusing on the gaming market segment to begin with. There they have a ready customer, willing to spend money on accessories, looking for new gadgets and typically younger, typically male. If done correctly the experience gained from entering that market could lay the groundwork for many other segments: quadraplegics, fighter pilots, surgeons, artists, equipment operators, data/security experts. Eventually how about an everyday person in a wired world...
Eyes on prize: Visionary device gives hope Once again our good friend accelerating change comes around to help us out. This near achievement is only possible because of all the surrounding improvements and miniaturization in computers and silicon chip construction in general. “There has been this explosion of interest in this field because basically the technology in the last 20 years has become miniaturized enough and sophisticated enough so that for the first time we can imagine building something small enough to put in the eye,” said Dr. Joseph Rizzo III, who founded the project in the late 1980s and co-directs the 36-member team. What will be next.
Once again the modern technology available to us today that just simply wasn't 20 years ago...or 10...or heck 18 months ago is remarkable. Cancer researchers believe that further engineering the shape or surface properties of nanoparticles can enable the particles to actively target tumors, and thereby maximize their diagnostic or therapeutic function at the cancer site, while minimizing collateral damage to healthy tissue This is merely the beginning, for this early nanotech being tested is for better, more targeted deployment of current medicines. "We're not trying to re-invent every aspect of the science," said Seth Feuerstein, president of Carigent Therapeutics in New Haven, Conn. "We focus on delivering current drugs better, and we're also working with companies whose drugs haven't yet been approved, to help make them more effective." It may remain primarily a deployment mechanism, but even so this could be a harbinger of the end of chemotherapy. I know two people in chemo right now and for medical science to be creating the technology to avoid that fate is welcome news. My opinion, and it is only that, is nanotech will become one of the most useful tools available when treating cancer.
 So the concept here is good...I guess. Use the alluring aroma of bacon to help you wake up in the morning but I just can't imagine the greasy smell lingering in my bedroom forever after days and days of the Wake n' Bacon alarm clock.
So you have to get a frozen piece of bacon and put it inside the alarm clock every night...hello health department. And what about vegetarians? Kinda reminds me of the "memo" machine from "Risky Business".
 Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShip Two model.
$200k per trip. What will be the rate of failure? What are you chances of getting blowed up? There are more than 200 people that have already signed up to fly on the SpaceShip Two. I wonder if Branson will fly on one of the early flights. I suppose owing to his nature that he will. I mean I'm all for space travel and all that, but this is the FIRST commercial spacecraft. I'm not sure I'd be all fired up to be part of the early adopter crowd in this space. I think I would prefer to hang back with the pragmatists. Wait until the statistics get boring and the price comes down a bit...juuuust a bit.
What a perfect platform for an electric conversion. The Porsche 914. Russ Cunniff is the creator. A home inventor and engineering manager at nVidia. Here is his blog detailing the entire process. volt914 - Electric Porsche 914. Most excellent Russ. We here at techRivet salute you!
Pretty cool. Here's the project website: Autonomous Foosball Table They were hindered by some hardware limitations. Still like I said pretty cool.
 Beautiful.
While there are plenty of pie in the sky nano-technology dreams out there: space elevator ribbon, artery cleansing robots, oxygen increasing blood. But in reality those are still far off. What we will end up seeing in our day to day lives will be more mundane applications that appear to have marginal impact on change, but over the long term may have as much impact as the grandiose ideas. For example here: Nano-layered plastic sheet is strong as steel This stuff could be used in a lot of applications ranging from grocery bags to space vehicle linings. It will all depend on how efficient the process can become. It sounds like the process uses simple materials and that there is potential for big automation. It will be very interesting to see what other "mundane" nano-technology innovations come out over the next several years.
Paralyzed man's mind is 'read' Eric Ramsay can only "speak" by moving his eyes. Now scientists and doctors are on the verge of being able to interpret his brain signals as speach... "We have been moving towards decoding primitive vocabulary for a while now. But this is certainly an interesting development, although invasive techniques, where something is out in someone's brain, such as these will of course carry risks." This is remarkable. The forefront of Brain Computer Interface. This is not a completed interface but the doctors and scientists involved believe they are getting close.
Man it's cool. Could we make fully functional mechanical beasts? I mean think about it. We just need to design a way for it to search for a power source to get energy. A way to syphon said electricity. The procreation thing is the hard part. Air Ray PDF Air_ray is a remote-controlled hybrid construction comprising
a helium-filled ballonett and a flapping-wing drive mechanism. The
ballonett is a gastight bladder of aluminium-vaporised “PET foil”
with a specific mass of 22 g/qm; it can be filled with up to 1.6 cbm
of helium. Since 1 cbm of helium generates approx.1 kg weight of
buoyant force, Air_ray’s overall mass must not exceed 1.6 kg. Air has a density of 0.0012 kg/m3 at 20° Celsius at sea level;
by comparison, the density of water is about 1 kg/dcm3. In the
design of Air_ray, the difference in density between these two
media necessitates an extremely light construction. This enables
Air_ray to almost hover in the air by means of the buoyant force
of the helium ballonet, floating through a sea of air just as the
Manta_ray does in water.
The propulsion is effected by a flapping-wing mechanism. The
wing module, which can be moved up and down by a servo drive
unit, has a structure like that of the tail fins of many fish. This
structure consists of two alternating pressure and tension flanks
flexibly connected by ribs.
Cool I'm not sure why they made it...except it's cool.
This is quite cool: Fab at Home, Open-Source 3D Printer, Lets Users Make Anything A Fab at Home kit costs around $2400. Lipson compares it to early kit computers such as the MITS Altair 8800, which democratized computer technology in the 1970s. At-home fabrication, Lipson says, “is a revolution waiting to happen.” As for that robot? Wait a year, he says, and it really will walk out of the machine. Here is their homepage: Fab@Home So, while we may not be making our chicken soup in a fabber anytime soon, how about a replacement flashlight...or a toaster [my toaster just gave up the ghost this morning]. Download the plans, pour in the raw material, switch the machine on, snap the finished parts together, plug in the wall and toast bread. We've got a ways to go.
 This is brilliant.
Eye-Fi. Here's how it works. - You get the Eye-Fi card.
- You plug the Eye-Fi SD card into your machine.
- Onboard software initializes the SD card.
- You put that card in your camera and you're done.
When you use it. - Take pictures.
- The Eye-Fi card uploads the picture automatically to your computer.
- You don't have to connect any wires
- you don't have to tell it
- no buttons
- it just does it
- You can also tell it to automatically upload those photos to an online photo account of your choosing.
- Sweet.
The only hitch is you need a wireless network. I have Cat-5 all through my house so I would need to turn on my wireless router, but most people are wireless now I expect. This is a brilliant implementation because it does not require you as a user to buy a new camera to get this automatic functionality. All you need is to replace you SD card and you are good to go. Great product design.
Very interesting article over at TCS: [A Modern Day Erie Canal]  The premise being that a functioning space elevator would have a similar impact on space exploration, commerce, migration, and general usage that the Erie Canal had on New York City, New York State, the United states as a whole and in the end the world.
The one point that the author of the piece doesn't hammer home enough is the impact that the Canal had on NY City. Prior to completion of the canal NYC was the smaller, less important city when compared to Boston. Soon after its completion, NYC became the hub of the entire eastern seaboard and never looked back. The Erie Canal alone was what drove NYC to prominence. A completed Space Elevator at the disposal of the US will only solidify the US preeminence in the world economy for the rest of the 21st Century.
I was wrong...I know, I know what you're thinking, it is crazy isn't it. But when I said back here: [Accelerating Change and MP3 Players] that a 2 Gigabyte MP3 player would look like this: I was wrong. this: in 2011, will likely be a terabyte mp3 player. Researchers have developed a low-cost, low-power computer memory that could put terabyte-sized thumb drives in consumers' pockets within a few years. Unbelievable. But only in a totally believable way. This is a result of accelerating change in its purest form. Here we have Michael Kozicki, director of ASU's Center for Applied Nanoionics, a field that probably didn't even exist 5 years ago and certainly 10 years ago, taking the breakthroughs in one avenue of research and applying it to another. The beauty of it is, this doesn't need to be a whole new form of technology, this new memory can be made with much of the same technologies as what is currently in use in the industry. Kozicki says the technology can be built from materials commonly used in the memory industry, which should help keep manufacturing costs down. Remarkable.
Connectivity: The bandwidth available to people is increasing at a rate of 50% per year. Not quite as fast as Moore's law for silicon, but still extraordinary. 
Here is a more up to date estimate that takes into account the number of websites and requests. 
Faster and faster it goes. How long have you been watching videos online? Two years? Three? Not longer surely. Do you watch any actual TV shows on your internet connection? You will soon. Bioengineering: The human genome is mapped and I have heard some people say, "So what, they haven't done anything with it." Mapping something and understanding something are two different things. Give the processor speed increase time to be applied against the genome and there will be plenty that comes from it. It cost approximately $13 Billion to decode the human genome over the course of 13 years. ...the price of sequencing DNA has fallen rapidly with the advent of these machines. Today, the price tag on a human genome decoded with sequencers of the type used in the Human Genome Project would be $25 million to $50 million. It drops to around $1 million with next-generation machines available today and could be as low as $100,000 by 2008. Now THAT is an improvement in cost. "The last year has been the most exciting period in genomics since the days of the Human Genome Project," says Eric Lander, first author on the project's first published draft of the human genome and now head of the Broad Institute for genomic medicine in Cambridge, MA. "Sequencing is becoming cheap enough and powerful enough that it can be applied to about any problem. It's standing the field on its head." Francis Collins, Remarkable, faster and cheaper by factors of a thousand or more. And I wouldn't expect it to stop there. Someday Kinko's will be able to give you your DNA sequence in 10 minutes for $42.95. Space Technology:  Lotsa cool stuff going on. It finally appears that the private sector is getting involved. We have a variety of Billionaires interested in spending their money here.
- Elon Musk (PayPal): SpaceX
- Paul Allen
- Google guys: XPrize sponsorship for a unmanned moon landing
- Richard Branson: Virgin Galactic
Of these the most interesting to me is Elon Musk's attempt to develop an entire space program on his own. He is focused on a less expensive, modular rocket system. He is positioning himself to be the only US based rocket launch provider for the ISS after the space shuttle is decommissioned. Not a bad place to be. This is actually the technology that fits the least in the singularity paradigm, but it is finally vibrant and growing after years of stagnation. Nanotechnology: One of the holy grails from this technology is fab-labs. Basically a "replicator" from Star Trek. Well there's nothing like that on the horizon, but what is being developed is the cross pollination of silicon wafer technologies being leveraged across to make nano-machines. Still conjecture and wishful thinking. Virtual Reality: From online games like World of Warcraft and Elfquest before it we now have the virtual world of Second Life and dotSoul virtual reality is here to stay. Get you avatar and enter the multiverse. You can set up your own virtual reality server for free: Worldforge.com Check out these goggles: [http://www.sensics.com/products/pisight.php] This video is extraordinary: This has only just begun and lends itself very well for the tinkerer / inventor. Computer Power: We are still increasing at Moore's law. And Moore's law only applies to the silicon chip, the phenomenon can be traced back further across previous technology and the doubling time holds back to vacuum tubes._thumb.png) And there is plausibility that as we exhaust the capabilities of silicon that other technologies will enter and the speed increases will continue. Conclusion: Now you can see why the singularity is considered the point beyond which we can't predict what will happen. All of these groups of technologies is increasing in performance and coming down in cost. Some by extraordinary amounts, some by more modest amounts. There is feedback loops intertwined amongst some of these technologies. The only thing we can do is keep our eyes open and watch. Predicting is likely to be wrong, whatever it happens to be about.
 Quantum chip rides on superconducting bus
The connection of two Qubits on a chip for the first time. This is a crucial first step, a proof of concept, that will lead to true quantum computers. In effect, says Johannes Majer, a member of the Yale team, the researchers have created "a quantum bus". A bus is used in conventional computers as a conduit for information among the various components – but its quantum chip equivalent has never been made before. With the predictions for the end of Moore's law I refer you back to Ray Kurzweil's great essay on accelerating change that stipulated the doubling of computing power was not bound to the integrated chip. The phenomena both preceded the integrated chip and will in all likelihood continue after the silicon chip is no longer viable. The creation of a working quantum computer might be as momentous an event as the creation of the transistor. History will of course judge.
Make a foxhole radio. I like how he tries a couple of easy ways to wind the wire but ends up doing it by hand anyways.
http://www.matthewmassey.com/Testing.htm This is just plain cool. I wanna build one. Not that my wife would enjoy having a military level piece of high voltage death created in my garage...but a man can dream can't he. The simple high voltage railgun was tested in May 2005. Previous to firing a current limiting resistor was placed on the railgun and the voltage across the barrel was raised to determine at what voltage flash over occurred. The pulse power supply is capable of operation at 10,000 Volts. er...that's a lot.
Not sure about the net balance of energy in this reaction but he is igniting saltwater with radio waves. The question is how much energy doe sit take to create the radio waves to begin with?
I wonder if this is a modern solution...by that I don't mean modern as in tools but modern as in thought. This is an ingenious technique but I just wonder how ingenious pre-historic man was. I mean I think it far more likely that brutish multi-man methods were used rather than this elegant technique.
It's still cool though.
You tell me...This is WAY cooler than suicide doors, butterfly doors, canvas doors and any other car door I've seen. But don't you take one look at it and think: Man there's a lot of things that could break with that.
Then I start thinking about safety.
Then about the side window, I bet you'd break a few of those.
But it is dang cool.
This? The French record setting TGV
or this...When he was just 14 years old, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts.
1. Cool blog
 If you haven't read RoughType by NIcholas Carr well...you should...Always insightful. He writes about the topics that I wish I had thought of first. Sometimes I do think of them first but usually not.
Definitely a daily reader
2. Cool Web Thing: Fractal World Gallery
 Are you tired of the average wallpaper? do you want something different? Then go over here. These are incredible. Fractal World Gallery
I read a book series by Tad Williams a couple of years ago called: Otherland. I don't know why exactly but these fractal pictures remind me of those books.
3. Cool Real World Thing
So to jump back to a post from a few days ago [linky - SR71] I went and found a couple of videos of the SR-71 Blackbird. video. It looks like something out of Star Wars.
4. Cool Science
Ruben's Tube: real live sound visualation with flame.
Jeff Han and his company, Perceptive Pixel, are ground breakers in the development of new interfaces. techRivet has documented the multi-touch display before: here and here and here
Here is a website that is keeping track of the multi-touch technologies and Perceptive Pixel in particular: The Multi touch screen
I'm gonna keep track of that one - like many things there is no new information there really. The only nugget is that Jeff Han was NOT hired by Apple to work on the iPhone.
There are a lot of people doing a lot of experimenting with new interfaces. Here is an example of a photo manipulation table that looks pretty intriguing.
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