First look at Windows 8.1

Windows 8.1

Windows 8.1—a free update to Windows 8—is coming later this year, and a prerelease version is available now for you to try. Windows 8.1 has new ways for you to personalize your PC and includes a wave of awesome new apps and services.



How to install Windows 8.1 Preview from an ISO file 

To install Windows 8.1 Preview from an ISO file, you must first convert the ISO file into installation media stored on a DVD or a USB flash drive.

If you're using Windows 8, follow these steps to install Windows 8.1 Preview from an ISO file:

• Download the ISO (.iso) file.


• Double-tap or double-click the ISO file.


• Double-tap or double-click setup.exe and follow the steps.

Download:-

Product Key: NTTX3-RV7VB-T7X7F-WQYYY-9Y92F

Important: Windows 8.1 Preview isn't currently supported on some tablets and PCs with newer 32-bit Atom processors. Get the details

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Chinese (Traditional) 32-bit (x86)		Download (2.9 GB)		0xF394D21EB655867E455B2DCAAEC37A4160F6F812
French 64-bit (x64)		Download (3.8 GB)		0x77B998037F5117A0339E3C575DC575812186A36B
French 32-bit (x86)		Download (2.8 GB)		0x938EAAF0CED4A4D80A4619945D22AECD8368F360
German 64-bit (x64)		Download (3.8 GB)		0xD36DCEB20A734905D45FCC8A29CAFAEB83D8821F
German 32-bit (x86)		Download (2.8 GB)		0xB59B03B978C9B9C79937E77F4FD86E6D4B3F605B
Japanese 64-bit (x64)		Download (3.8 GB)		0x90550D4CF6084177F4D8B15FF1935F04E02A8C91
Japanese 32-bit (x86)		Download (2.8 GB)		0x39AC35DC262DE7BA1E4FA76D22840A135F98C383
Korean 64-bit (x64)		Download (3.8 GB)		0x42334C1334A3A5F3AF7D7BDBACA328ABA24E4514
Korean 32-bit (x86)		Download (2.8 GB)		0xE15BB0ACD03AF0B034BC9C9C35F20C56D7702F97
Portuguese (Brazil) 64-bit (x64)		Download (3.7 GB)		0xFC163AB555EE347C3D70C608DFBC6860C48F1FCD
Portuguese (Brazil) 32-bit (x86)		Download (2.8 GB)		0x8EE8EE031C656AE547E4076540562CEC132F741C
Russian 64-bit (x64)		Download (3.7 GB)		0xD23B862AE7FA349BBE84FCE4833CAF6EBE524104
Russian 32-bit (x86)		Download (2.8 GB)		0xB2804B267B131C100E030B68EA826CC5328BDAFB
Spanish 64-bit (x64)		Download (3.8 GB)		0x83D93447997167F5DF1C37C1BE5DC897DAC28096
Spanish 32-bit (x86)		Download (2.8 GB)		0xE397E9B50FE449BFB3EBD68793CDE8B8C92E9036
Swedish 64-bit (x64)		Download (3.7 GB)		0xEE699B6D8B1B010E2F7AE56CF8A07683E3E077B2
Swedish 32-bit (x86)		Download (2.7 GB)		0x46830490C8A9D8B92FB5C1EB123915D55AB6C973
Turkish 64-bit (x64)		Download (3.7 GB)		0xF82792BD5629FE04CCD67EDA64E03DB1AFD2B7C7
Turkish 32-bit (x86)		Download (2.7 GB)

How to Fit 1,000 Terabytes Onto a DVD

DVDs and Blu-Rays don’t get a lot of respect from technophiles, because the optical disks aren’t able to store as much data as a typical hard drive. A team at Swinburne University in Australia could change that, by making it possible to store an entire year’s worth of video onto an optical disk. That could be good news for movie buffs but would also appeal to big data centers that who prefer to store the tremendous amounts of information they save in the least amount of space.

Storing data on conventional DVDs and Blu-Ray disk involves a single laser that burns a mark into the disk’s surfacing, changing its chemistry. The mark represents a 1 or 0, which is the basic binary language of all computer data. But because the marks can’t be smaller than a half the wavelength of the laser beam, there is a limit, to how many marks can be burned into the surface of a disk.

The Swinburne team, led by optoelectronics professor Min Gu, did something different. They used two lasers instead of one.

Each laser beamed a different wavelength of light onto the disk. The first one was in the near-infrared and created a spot of light, just like an ordinary DVD laser. The second laser beam was violet and partially interfered with the near-infrared beam in a way that ultimately shrank the spot burned into the disk. The technique shrank the size of the spot down to nine nanometers, enough to put 1,000 terabytes on a disk. For comparison, a Blu-Ray disk can hold 50 GB of data and a typical DVD holds about 4.7 GB of data.

The lasers are similar to those used in current players, so building a commercial version wouldn’t require any new technologies. Not too far in the future, the behemoth storage capacity of the Blu-Ray disk might seem as quaint as the 1.4 megabyte floppy disk.

Wearable Solar Clothing Fit For Charging

Whether it’s drone-proof hoodies, eye-tracking dresses or pants that let you text from your pocket, these days, clothing is doing a lot more than just making fashion statements and shielding us from the elements.

New to this task-oriented wardrobe is Wearable Solar, a potential clothing line that incorporates solar panels into garments for charging personal electronic devices.

The project led by Christiaan Holland of Dutch creative agency Gelderland Valoriseert, fashion designer Pauline van Dongen, solar panel specialist Gertjan Jongerden and students from theUniversity of Applied Sciences in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Two prototypes were created — a dress and a coat. Van Dongen said she carefully studied the layered structure in human skin cells, then translated that research into her designs. For example, with the coat, flaps embedded with solar cells can be unfolded on the shoulder and waist when the sun is shining. Alternatively, the flaps easily fold away and can be worn invisibly. Just a head’s up: Be prepared to feel like a lost character from the Matrix or Mortal Kombat, as unfolding the solar flaps is tough look, full of sharp, jutting shoulders and sweeping accents at the waist.

“The coat contains fairly rigid solar cells, which is why I used a combination of wool and leather. These materials both provide the strength needed and are aesthetically pleasing,” Van Dongen tolda Dutch design website. “In total some 48 solar cells are incorporated into modular leather panels, allowing a typical smartphone to be 50 percent charged if worn in the full sun for an hour.”

She added: “For the dress I used flexible solar cells. These are less efficient but are easier to integrate and more comfortable to wear. The dress is made from a flowing lightweight wool combined with leather. The cells have been subtly integrated in such a way that it’s hardly noticeable when you wear the dress as a normal piece of clothing.”

Future Buildings Could be Made of Artificial Bone

This photo shows the brick-and-mortar pattern of simulated bone and nacre against the backdrop of real nacre found in the inner shell of many molluscs.

 material in town and its origins may surprise you.

Developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), human bone is the inspiration behind the latest high-tech composite, which can be made in just a few hours using a 3D printer.

The new material, which is lauded for its durability, low density and environmentally sustainable constituents, gets its strength from its bone-like structure. Real bones have a complex hierarchical structure thanks to their two main building blocks, collagen protein and hydroxyapatite minerals.

MIT's new material replicates this hierarchical pattern, which is produced in bones with the help of electrochemical reactions. Such reactions are difficult to reproduce in a lab, but with a 3D printer, the researchers were able to replicate the fracture-resistant structure.

Under a microscope, the synthetic material the researchers created looks like a staggered brick-and-mortar wall. A soft black polymer serves as the mortar, simulating the work of collagen, bone's yielding cushion. A stiff blue polymer forms the bricks, behaving like hydroxyapatite, bone's strong but brittle frame.

And just as collagen and hydroxyapatite help a bone withstand fracturing by dissipating energy and distributing damage over a larger area, so too does the lab-made material. In fact, the material may prove to be even stronger than bone.

"The geometric patterns we used in the synthetic materials are based on those seen in natural materials like bone or nacre, but also include new designs that do not exist in nature," said Markus Buehler, lead researcher in the study.

"As engineers, we are no longer limited to the natural patterns. We can design our own, which may perform even better than the ones that already exist."

The 3D-printed bone material is 22 times more fracture-resistant than any of its constituent parts, an impressive ratio for a lab-made composite.

Researchers suggest that the process of 3D printing super-strong metamaterials is both entirely possible and more cost-effective than traditional methods of manufacturing. Buehler hopes that one day, optimized materials like the one created in MIT's lab will form the basis of entire buildings.

"The possibilities seem endless," he said, "As we are just beginning to push the limits of the kind of geometric features and material combinations we can print."

Shape-Shifting Dresses Respond To Stares

A great dress can easily move people into long fits of staring. Conversely, now those long fits of staring can actually move a dress.

It’s not polite to stare. But you might not be able to help yourself if you see someone wearing either of these two dresses made by fashion designer Ying Gao. Each one contorts and lights up whenever it detects a fixed gaze.

“We use an eye-tracking system so the dresses move when a spectator is staring,” Gao toldDezeen. “(The system) can also turn off the lights, then the dresses illuminate.”

The dresses are embedded with eye-tracking technology that reacts to an observer’s gaze by activating tiny motors that move parts of the dress in captivating patterns. Both gaze-activated dresses use glow-in-the-dark thread, creating a psychedelic effect when under black lights. One dress boasts an experimental design with luminescent tendrils, while the other has a more traditional cut.

“A photograph is said to be ‘spoiled’ by blinking eyes — here however, the concept of presence and of disappearance are questioned, as the experience of chiaroscuro (clarity/obscurity) is achieved through an unfixed gaze,” writes Gao.

Wearable Computers Make a Fashion Statement

A wearable computing trend is at the heart of the "quantified self" movement in which people track anything from how many calories they burn to how well they sleep or their moods at any given moment.

The notion of being fashionably smart is getting a makeover as internet-linked computers get woven into formerly brainless attire such as glasses, bracelets and shoes. A wearable computing trend is at the heart of the "quantified self" movement in which people track anything from how many calories they burn to how well they sleep or their moods at any given moment.

"We are heading for the wearable computing era," Gartner analyst Van Baker told AFP. "People are going to be walking around with personal area networks on their bodies and have multiple devices that talk to each other and the Web."

Google Glass and other augmented reality projects are about to break onto the scene. But what does an augmented reality look like and how can it enhance our lives.

Understandably, the trend has found traction in fitness with devices such as the Jawbone UP, Nike's FuelBand, and Fitbit keeping tabs on whether people are leading active, healthy lifestyles. The devices use sensors to detect micro movements and then feed information to smartphones or tablets, where applications tap into processing power to analyze data and provide feedback to users.

San Francisco-based Jawbone jumped into wearable computing years ago, building electronic brains into stylish wireless earpieces and speakers for smartphones. Jawbone recently added muscle to its lineup of fitness lifestyle devices with a deal to buy BodyMedia.

BodyMedia makes armbands used to track caloric burn of fat-shedding competitors on US reality television show "The Biggest Loser." "There's an enormous appetite for personal data and self-discovery among consumers that will only continue to grow," said Jawbone chief executive and founder Hosain Rahman.

A Forrester Research survey conducted early this year found that six percent of US adults wore a gadget to track performance in a sport, while five percent used a gadget like UP or Fitbit to track daily activity or how well they sleep. Worldwide shipments of wearable computing devices could climb as high as 30 million units this year, according to Forrester.

Tiny 3D-Printed Microbattery Offers Big Power

 PLAY VIDEO

CHARGE YOUR CELL PHONE IN 5 SECONDS

An interlaced stack of electrodes was printed layer-by-layer to create the working anode and cathode of a microbattery.

Good new, techies: 3-D printers can now do more than make dust-collecting doodads. Researchers have developed a method of producing powerful microbatteries using these trendy contraptions.

Developed by a team of researchers at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, these lithium-ion microbatteries are no bigger than a grain of sand but hold as much energy as their much larger counterparts.

"The electrochemical performance is comparable to commercial batteries in terms of charge and discharge rate, cycle life and energy density," said Shen Dillon, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "We're just able to achieve this on a much smaller scale."

To create the microbatteries, researchers used a custom-built 3-D printer to stack electrodes -- each one less than the width of a human hair -- along the teeth of two tiny gold combs. The electrodes were contained within a special ink, extruded from the printer's narrow nozzles and applied to the combs like toothpaste being squeezed onto a toothbrush.

The electrode inks, one serving as a cathode, the other as an anode, hardened immediately into narrow layers, one atop the other. Once the electrodes were stacked, researchers packaged them inside tiny containers and added an electrolyte solution to complete the battery pack.

This novel process created a battery that could one day help power tiny medical implants as well as more novel electronics, like flying,insect-like robots. Such devices have been in development for some time, patiently awaiting an appropriately sized power source.

"[The researchers'] innovative microbattery ink designs dramatically expand the practical uses of 3-D printing, and simultaneously open up entirely new possibilities for miniaturization of all types of devices, both medical and non-medical," said Donald Ingber, the founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.

Jennifer Lewis, a professor of engineering at Harvard University and lead author of the microbattery research study, said her team is looking at using their novel 3-D printing process to create other precise structures with diverse electronic, optical, mechanical or biologically relevant properties.

living computer created with slime mold

The future of computing might just come from slime molds! Turns out these uber smart, super weird molds can do things that even our most advanced computers can't handle. Anthony explains why they're so cool, and what it might mean for next-gen tech.

 

 

 

Soft Exoskeleton Flexes Its Artificial Muscles

Tech-enhanced humans of the future — be they soldiers, officers of the law, paraplegics or the elderly — all stand to get a boost from motorized exoskeletons. But many current exoskeleton prototypes adhere to similar designs with rigid metal frames. However, a new design concept out of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University appears to be stepping in a more flexible direction.

As its name suggests, the Soft Exosuit does away with stiff leg scaffolding and instead uses super-elastic actuators located on the wearer’s ankles, knees and hips to help propel a person forward. Each of the suit’s “motors” are controlled by an air compressor that’s connected to a backpack on the user. The 7.5 kilogram suit is covered in flexible membrane that appear and function similar to artificial muscles.

Eventually, researchers want to integrate the system into clothing, so the Soft Exosuit can be easily worn and quickly deployed by soldiers and law enforcement officers. “You can imagine something like a spider web that’s integrated into tightly fitting pants,” Conor Walsh, a project leader from Harvard University, told NBC news.

Walsh was one of five members of the Wyss Lab to test the suit and says that getting used to the push-and-pull of the “muscles” is a bit awkward at first. But once a person gets their timing down, a noticeable boost can be felt.

Though production is still years in the making, Walsh says development of the suit will assist in three main areas: helping soldiers to walk farther and carry heavier loads, as athletic performance enhancers and in rehabilitation treatment for patients with weak or damaged muscles.

Tiny Channels Take Salt From Seawater

Drinking water is a vital need in many parts of the world, and one method of getting it is desalination, which is just taking the salt out of seawater. But the plants require either lots of energy or special filters — and both of those things are costly.

Now there’s a possible workaround: a system of tiny channels, built into a chip, that pulls the salt out of the water with little energy and no need for filter technologies that are difficult to make and maintain.

That would be a huge boon to areas where water is scarce, but seawater isn’t. The largest desalination plant is in Saudi Arabia, and some Caribbean islands depend on it. Both locales need a lot of energy to run the plants, though. The world Health Organization says about a billion people around the world have no access to safe water. Many of those people live in arid coastal regions in Africa and the Middle East.

Richard M. Crooks at the University of Texas at Austin and Ulrich Tallarek at the University of Marburg, Germany, developed the idea. They forced salty water down a channel that splits into two branches. Each of the smaller channels was about 22 microns wide. The two small channels were connected to an electrode that juts into the point where they branch.

Then they applied just 3 volts to the electrode. The voltage changes some of the chloride ions, which have negative charges, into neutral chlorine. This has the effect of increasing the electric field strength and making a gradient across the two channels. That gradient forces ions into one channel, while the fresh water flows down the other.

The whole system is cheaper than filters because it won’t get clogged, and it uses a lot less energy than current desalination systems.

The two scientists are developing the technology with a startup, Okeanos Technologies, and presented their work in the journal Angewandte Chemie

Stem Cell Discovery Could Help Regrow Fingers

Fingernail stem cells could be used to develop new treatments for amputees.

Mammals can regenerate the very tips of their fingers and toes after amputation, and now new research shows how stem cells in the nail play a role in that process.

A study in mice, detailed online today (June 12) in the journal Nature, reveals the chemical signal that triggers stem cells to develop into new nail tissue, and also attracts nerves that promote nail and bone regeneration.

Stem cells have produced another scientific "miracle" -- this time allowing a blind man to see with nearly perfect vision.

The findings suggest nail stem cells could be used to develop new treatments for amputees, the researchers said. [Inside Life Science: Once Upon a Stem Cell]

In mice and people, regenerating an amputated finger or toe involves regrowing the nail. But whether the amputated portion of the digit can regrow depends on exactly where the amputation occurs: If the stem cells beneath the nail are amputated along with the digit, no regrowth occurs, but if the stem cells remain, regrowth is possible.

To understand why these stem cells are crucial to regeneration, researchers turned to mice. The scientists conducted toe amputations in two groups of mice: one group of normal mice, and one group that was treated with a drug that made them unable to make the signals for new nail cells to develop.

They found that the signals that guided the stem cells' development into nail cells were vital to regenerating amputated digits. By five weeks after amputation, the normal mice had regenerated their toe and toenail. But the mice that lacked the nail signal failed to regrow either their nails or the toe bone itself, because the stem cells lacked the signals that promote nail-cell development. When the researchers replenished these signals, the toes regenerated successfully.

In another experiment, the researchers surgically removed nerves from the mice toes before amputating them. This significantly impaired nail-cell regeneration, similar to what happened to the mice that lacked the signals to produce new nails. Moreover, the nerve removal decreased the levels of certain proteins that promote tissue growth.

Together, the results show that nail stem cells are critical for regrowing a lost digit in mice. If the same turns out to be true in humans, the findings could lead to better treatments for amputees.

Other animals, including amphibians, can also regenerate lost limbs. For example, aquatic salamanders can regrow complete limbs or even parts of their heart — a process that involves cells in their immune system. By studying these phenomena in other animals, it may be possible to enhance regenerative potential in people, the researchers said.

Cameras Could Take Night Photos Without a Flash

A team of scientists led by Andras Kis at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have found a material that could make cameras five times more sensitive to light, reducing or even eliminating the need for a flash or a long exposure. The material — made from a mix of molybdenum and sulfur — was used to make a single-pixel prototype sensor that only needed 1/25th of a second to expose a nighttime streetscape that other cameras would require 1/5th of a second. The sensitivity of the new sensor is fast enough that moving people didn’t get blurred.

It works because molybdenite is much more sensitive to light than silicon, the other material other digital sensors in cameras are made from.

Besides sensitivity, there’s another plus to molybdenite: it’s cheap. Unlike other exotic technologies or semiconducting materials, there’s lots of it around and factories making image sensors out of it won’t need re-tooling.

Raise Edible Insects With Kitchen Terrarium

As the 17-year-cicada cycles nears and the insects get ready to descend upon the East Coast, some people are excited to saute them with lemon and butter. Even the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is on board, having recently released a report suggesting we should all be eating more insects.

Mansour Ourasanah agrees. That’s why he, in collaboration with KitchenAid, has designed Lepsis, a small, decorative pod for the kitchen that’s used to grow insects for food. The sleek terrarium consists of four individual sections developed to breed, grow and harvest protein-rich grasshoppers.

Ourasanah cites environmental and nutritional problems bolstered by dependence on meat and population growth as reasons to grow your own insects. Beleaguered by inhumane conditions and genetically modified animals pumped full of antibiotics, factory farms require vast swaths of land, where flatulent bovines and other ruminant livestock annually produce about 80 million metric tons of methane gas. According to the EPA, this accounts for about 28 percent of global methane emissions from human-related activities.

“With much of the damage being done in the industrialized world, the objective of this project was to find a sustainably viable alternative to current food production through a meticulous analysis of modern nutritional challenges and expectations,” Ourasanah writes.

Ourasanah adds: “Eighty percent of the world population already eats insects. Unfortunately, the remaining 20 percent have the most impact on the ecological fate of the planet.”

Therefore, Ourasanah says, the challenge moving forward was to find a practical way to introduce this unconventional nutritional experience to a rapidly expanding urban environment. He believes the Lepsis could win over some skeptics, especially for those who find eating insects repulsive.

“In order to move toward a sustainable future, we must do away with our culinary hangups and redefine the paradigm of food,” Ourasanah writes.

Although the Lepsis is still in the prototype phase, it is a finalist for an INDEX award, one of the biggest design awards in the world and one that champions designs that improve life.

Cyborg Cockroach Controlled By Phone

Next time you happen across an enormous cockroach, check to see whether it’s got a backpack on. Then look for the person controlling its movements with a phone. The RoboRoach has arrived.

The RoboRoach is a system created by University of Michigan grads who have backgrounds in neuroscience, Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo. They came up with the cyborg roach idea as part of an effort to show students what real brain spiking activity looks like using off-the-shelf electronics.

Essentially the RoboRoach involves taking a real live cockroach, putting it under anesthesia and placing wires in its antenna. Then the cockroach is outfitted with a special lightweight little backpack Gage and Marzullo developed that sends pulses to the antenna, causing the neurons to fire and the roach to think there’s a wall on one side. So it turns. The backpack connects to a phone via Bluetooth, enabling a human user to steer the cockroach through an app.

Why? Why would anyone do this? ”We want to create neural interfaces that the general public can use,” the scientists say in a video. “Typically, to understand how these hardware devices and biological interfaces work, you’d have to go to graduate school in a neuro-engineering lab.” They added that the product is a learning tool, not a toy, and through it they hope to start a neuro-revolution.

Currently the duo’s Backyard Brains startup is raising money through a Kickstarter campaign to develop more fine-tuned prototypes, make them more affordable, and extend battery life. The startup says it will make the RoboRoach hardware by hand in an Ann Arbor hacker space.

This week the RoboRoach project was presented at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, and stirred up a bit of controversy. Although the RoboRoach creators say the stimulation doesn’t shock or harm the cockroach, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals told the BBC it has concerns about the technology. The neuroscientists’ opinion that the process doesn’t impose pain isn’t enough for the group.

Living in New York City, I battled plenty of cockroach invaders, including the large kind required for RoboRoach. So I can’t really be impartial in this particular ethical debate. But if teachers want to use cockroaches to show kids how the brain works, that sounds OK by me. It’s only when the insects become cyborgs on their own that we’d really have to worry.

Transparent Solar-Cell Screen Charges Phone

Transparent solar cells use materials that only absorb infrared and ultraviolet light and let visible light pass through.

Today’s mobile devices are constantly in use—so constantly that battery life is a huge problem. I recently hosted an afternoon barbecue at a community pool; over in one corner, folks jockeyed for a turn to charge their mobile devices at the one available outlet. Meanwhile, the sun shone down brightly on mobile phones scattered across the picnic tables, as the batteries on those idle devices quietly drained.

The SunPartner Group, a 30-employee startup in Aix-en-Provence, France, thinks that’s a real waste. Folks sitting in restaurants, in outdoor cafes, or at their desks typically pull out their phones and put them face up in front of them; put solar cells on the phones and there’d be a lot less scrambling to find a wall outlet. And they’ve built a low-cost transparent panel that does just that. They’re now testing it with a number of manufacturers and expect to see it built into mobile devices early next year.

And you thought it stopped at solar panels? Trace Dominguez has the lowdown on some strange new ways to harness the sun's rays.

iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Sunpartner isn’t the first to think mobile phones should use solar power to charge themselves. A few years ago, several cell phone manufacturers tried putting solar cells on the back of phones—like the Samsung Crest and the Sharp Solar Hybrid. Turns out, though, that people weren’t inclined to put phones face down on the table—they missed alerts, and were worried about scratching the screen. And solar cells on the back of cell phones never caught on widely.

Putting solar cells on the front of a mobile phone is harder, because today phone fronts are virtually all display. Startup Ubiquitous Energy, a spin off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is developing a technology that makes the solar cells themselves transparent by using materials that only absorb infrared and ultraviolet light and let visible light pass through. Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) are taking a similar approach, while researchers at the University of Cambridge are weaving solar cells into organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, where they can capture light leaked from the edges of the OLED elements as well as from outside the phone.

These technologies still appear to have a ways to go. SunPartner is taking a lower tech approach it believes will get to the mass market much sooner. The company is using stripes of standard thin-film solar cells alternating with transparent film. It then adds a layer of tiny lenses that spread the image coming from the screen to make the opaque stripes disappear as well as to concentrate the rays coming in from the sun. (See illustration, below.)

SunPartner’s Matthieu De Broca, visiting Silicon Valley as part of the French Tech Tour, says that the company’s current prototypes are 82 percent transparent; future versions should hit 90 percent transparency. The company has 30 patents on its technology so far. Putting the panel and related electronics needed to convert the voltage from the display costs adds about US $2.30 to the cost of each phone, De Broca said.

The technology doesn’t replace the wall charger; mobile device users can still count on plugging their phone in at night. It does, De Broca said, extend the battery life about 20 percent in normal use. And it can infinitely keep up with the phone’s modest power drain when it is idling in normal daylight. The SunPartner Group, founded by optician Joel Gilbert and businessman Ludovic Deblois, is currently working with three mobile device manufacturers to develop prototypes and expects the first models integrating the technology to be on the market in early 2014. Nokia is reportedly one of those companies.

High-Tech Wristband Keeps You Cheerful

Deadline pileups, bad customer service, environmental catastrophes, crazed drivers. The next time something raises your hackles or brings you down, a high-tech wristband could get your mental state back in balance.

The W/Me wristband was created by the Mountain View startup Phyode, headed by self-described gadget junkies and medical researchers. Instead of simply monitoring behavior like sleep, steps taken or calories burned, the wristband makers say they aim to pick up the wearer’s mood and offer an interactive guide for quickly getting on track.

Each band contains a medical-grade sensor the startup developed called the life spectrum analyzer. Phyode says the components include instrumentation amplifiers, a filter chain, a precision analog-to-digital converter, a patent-pending dry conduction electrode, and a digital signal processor. This allows the device to capture and analyze electrical impulses from special cells in the right atrium, an indicator for your body’s autonomic nervous system.

Measurements are taking by touching and holding the wristband. Then the results are transmitted to an app on the user’s phone. Your mental state gets mapped out showing where you are on the passive, excitable, pessimistic and anxious spectrum. When things are really off, the app’s virtual coach, a “fitness” whale named Attu, guides you through breathing rhythms.

A few weeks ago, the company took its campaign to Kickstarter. And, as GOOD’s Meghan Neal pointed out, the W/Me got fully funded, even though there are 21 days of the $100,000 campaign still left.

Man, I could really use some technology like this for those times when it feels hard to breathe. Bad driving in particular tends to cause my jaw to clench. Those Phyode guys better prepare for lots of orders from the West because Colorado has a blinker fluid shortage.

Transparent Phone Screen Prevents Collisions

Multi-tasking on a smartphone can be dangerous, especially if it involves trying to read the screen while walking. A new application on the Android market should be a requirement for any smart device user taking to busy streets.

The free app, called Transparent Screen, is pretty self explanatory. Created by German Android application developer Sascha Affolter, the widget uses your camera to display an image of what’s going on behind your phone underneath your regular phone functions.

I took Transparent Screen for a spin on my phone around downtown Boulder, Colo. The app let me adjust the transparency level, showing more or less of the camera’s image depending on my preference.

On a sunny and cold day like today, even just seeing the regular phone screen through the glare and operating the phone with my icy fingertips was a challenge. Boulder’s sidewalks feel luxuriously giant compared to New York City, so there was plenty of time to see and avoid walking into dogs and snow banks.

In a major city, this app would certainly come in handy. You’d still need to either adjust the direction your phone is facing or glance up to avoid peripheral hazards like traffic and cyclists. However, Transparent Screen could save you from walking into posts, signs, walls, people and stepping in gross stuff like dog doo.

Using the camera does drain the battery somewhat and I found there was a slight delay in the image tracking, although that could have very well been the cold. On busy sidewalks, those tradeoffs might be well worth it for safety.

Today I noticed other people walking around Boulder with laser-like focuses on their smartphone screens. But nobody stayed like that for long. When the sun is shining and the Flatirons are dusted with snow, it’s easier to pocket the phone and enjoy the view.

Self-Assembling 4D-Printed Materials Take Shape

While the 3-D printing industry remains in a holding pattern of quasi-illegality and bombastic overexposure, some people are moving right along to the next dimension.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing a so-called “4D-printing technology” that will enable macro-sized 3D-printed materials to be programmed to self-assemble into predetermined structures and shapes. The technology could potentially change the construction and manufacturing industries, making it easier to build in environments, like outer space, where extreme conditions would cause construction to be expensive and dangerous.

Led by Skylar Tibbits, director of the MIT Self-Assembly Lab, the 4D-printing process involves using materials that shift shapes in response to movement or when brought into contact with water, air, gravity, magnets and/or temperature change. The fourth dimension stands for the materials’ ability to self-assemble.

In a recent TED Talk, Tibbits unveiled a new project in collaboration with 3D-printing company Stratasys.

“The idea behind 4-D printing is that you take multimaterial 3-D printing…and you add a new capability, which is transformation,” he said. “This is like robotics without wires or motors.”

Tibbits demonstrated this process by showing how a strand of 3D-printed “smart” material could fold into the letters M-I-T when placed in water. Tibbits said he believed that this was the first time a program of transformation has been directly embedded into a material itself. Researchers used Autodesk software called Project Cyborg to simulate and optimize how and when the material would fold.

“We can use the same software for the design of nano-scale self-assembly systems and human-scale self-assembly systems,” he said.

Tibbits also said the Self-Assembly Lab is working with a Boston company called Geosyntec to develop a new paradigm for infrastructure piping.

“Imagine if water pipes could expand or contract to change capacity or change flow rate; or maybe undulate like peristaltics to move the water themselves,” he said. “This isn’t  expensive pumps or valves, this is a completely programmable and adaptive pipe on its own.”

Like its three-dimensional cousin, 4-D printing is not guaranteed to take shape, but those at the Self-Assembly Lab believe the technology has capacity to revolutionize “biology, material science, software, robotics, manufacturing, transportation, infrastructure, construction, the arts, and even space exploration.”

Wi-Fi Enables Whole House Gesture Control

If you have Microsoft’s Xbox 360 with Kinect game console (above) in your home, then you’re familiar with gesture control. Your body becomes the joystick because the device translates your movements into on-screen motion. Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone also works using gestures — just swipe your hand over the screen (without touching it) to answer an incoming call. Both of these devices use a camera or some other kind of motion-tracking sensor to capture movements and convert them into a computer command.

But now computer scientists at University of Washington have shown that it’s possible to attain gesture control with a Wi-Fi signal. According to the researchers, the “WiSee” concept is simpler and cheaper than devices such as Kinect and because Wi-Fi travels through walls, doesn’t require that the person is standing directly in front of the device that they want to control.

The team presented their technology at the 19th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking.