Graphene may brighten the future more literally than we had originally anticipated, besides merely revolutionizing electronics and Silicon Valley. Swedish and American researchers have transformed the one-atom-thick carbon material into a new, inexpensive lighting component that could give organic light diodes (OLEDs) a run for their money.

An OLED simply consists of light-generating layer of plastic sandwiched between two electrodes, one of which is transparent. This provides an ultra-thin, power-sipping technology for everything from smart phones to TVs, but it comes at a relatively high manufacturing cost. The OLED transparent electrode also uses an indium metal alloy, which presents the problems of being rare, expensive and difficult to recycle.

"By using graphene instead of conventional metal electrodes, components of the future will be much easier to recycle and thereby environmentally attractive," said Nathaniel Robinson, a chemical engineer at Linkoping University in Sweden.

Making the new graphene-based light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) can involve just liquid solutions or a printing press-style machine. That paves the way for inexpensive production of plastic-based lighting or displays. The researchers envision flexible LEC sheets that could be rolled up or placed almost anywhere.

Graphene has proven a promising but difficult material to manufacture in the past, because researchers often had to clumsily chip away at graphite in hopes that graphene might flake off. But a recent flurry of developments such as this suggests that the manufacturing problems are rapidly disappearing.

It's still hard to tell whether the graphene LEC replacements can fully surpass OLEDs in terms of display and performance, but we're anticipating good things.

Attention recruits. Those of you landing in Afghanistan in coming months may not have to engage in the sandbag stacking and trench digging usually associated with lowly grunt-dom. An $800,000 investment in an armored wall system known as McCurdy's Armor could have Marines rapidly erecting 6.5-foot-tall mortar-, RPG- and bullet proof fortresses in less than an hour, saving the days it can take to fortify an area by conventional means and making forward-operating units more nimble.

Named for Ryan S. McCurdy-a Marine killed in Iraq in 2006 while hauling a wounded comrade to safety-the system is designed to offer troops increased protection and mobility when setting up outposts in hostile areas. The walls can be ferried into place in panels that are easily stackable in a truck or trailer. Once in position, four Marines can assemble a single panel in less than ten minutes without any special tools or additional equipment. The panels then snap together like bomb-proofed Legos secured with steel pins to form a blast- and bullet-proof shelter.

The armor can be set up in a variety of arrangements (U-shaped, J-shaped, etc.), and in instances where troops are worried about armor piercing rounds a second layer of armor can supplement the structures. But the walls aren't just a protective cocoon for far-flung outposts; ballistic windows offer protection while giving Marines a line of sight and the ability to fire downrange, meaning McCurdy's Armor can be deployed as both a defensive stronghold as well as a tactical firing position.

When it's time to pull up camp, Marines can quickly break down their ersatz stockade, stack it back in their vehicles and move on to fortify the next position without leaving a single thing behind. Just try pulling that off with sandbags.

[DDM via National Defense]

Looking for open parking spaces in the city is one of the more teeth-grinding rituals for drivers, but researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey may have hit upon a relatively low-cost solution. They combined ultrasonic sensors with GPS to create digital maps of available parking spaces for Web-based navigation systems, according to Technology Review.

As much as 45 percent of traffic in Manhattan comes from cars wearily circling the blocks and looking for parking spaces, according to a New York City transportation advocacy group called Transportation Alternatives. That problem has driven cities such as San Francisco to create "smart parking infrastructure" that detects vehicles in parking spots using fixed sensors -- a solution that costs $500 for installing and maintaining each sensor.

The Rutgers researchers took a more mobile, low-cost approach by builing a sensor platform based on a $20 ultrasonic sensor that gauges the distance to nearby obstacles, and a $100 GPS receiver to mark locations. They combined the setup with a PC to transmit the data to a central server via Wi-Fi, and placed the prototype platform on just three cars that commuted through Highland Park, NJ.

Based on data collected from daily commutes of the three cars alone, the team created an ultrasound algorithm to calculate available parking spaces that was 95 percent accurate, and also made digital maps based on the GPS data that were more than 90 percent on target. Such digital maps could then become available to navigation systems on other cars via Wi-Fi connections or the more widely available cellular modems, and perhaps become part of the traditional GPS setup in cars.

A next possible step could involve outfitting taxicabs or other cars that regularly drive around. The engineers say that they could cover the entire downtown San Francisco area using just 300 taxis for $200,000, compared to the $3 million price tag for just one of San Francisco's fixed-sensor parking lots. We'll take that, please, along with our parallel-parking cars.

[via Technology Review]

The body is a resilient biological structure, but there's one thing medical science, an increasing number of Baby Boomers, and the majority of professional athletes will all tell you: Take care of your joints, because once you burn up the cartilage you started with, you're not getting any more. But a breakthrough by Northwestern University scientists will now allow adult joints to naturally grow new cartilage for the very first time.

Unlike bone, muscle and other tissues in the body, cartilage that is damaged or worn away over time does not regenerate itself. The cartilage you have when you reach adulthood has to last you for life; if it doesn't, you can suffer debilitating joint pain or even osteoarthiritis, which is neither pleasant nor effectively treatable.

To stimulate the growth of type II collagen -- the main protein in the clean, smooth cartilage that caps bones where they make contact in joints -- the NU researchers created a bioactive nanogel that can be injected into the joint in a minimally invasive manner. The gel self-assmebles into a fibrous, solid extracellular matrix similar to what joint cells see in natural cartilage production. The gel also binds to one of the key growth factors for cartilage regeneration and keeps it localized in the damaged area. This stimulates the stem cells present in bone marrow that in turn activate type II collagen production naturally. The matrix slowly breaks down into nutrients as the natural cartilage builds up, eventually being replaced altogether by locally grown cartilage tissue.

The process has undergone successful animal testing, but its likely got a few more years of testing ahead of it before it could become commonplace. But the timing couldn't be better; an aging population means an increase in achy old joints. A fresh round of cartilage production could keep many of the more senior members of society in the workforce, on the golf course and out of orthopedic surgeon's office.

[Science Daily]

An interesting report from CNN over the weekend: a tabletop hydrogen fuel cell recharging station could bring hydrogen power to the individual home, allowing portable devices and eventually automobiles to charge up on the universe's most abundant element cleanly from the comfort of home.

Horizon Fuel Cell Technology's HydroFILL device -- which admittedly has an ultra-futuristic look about it -- runs on regular old H₂O, stripping the oxygen from the hydrogen and packing the latter into removable cartridges at high pressure. However, though the hydrogen is packed in at high pressure, the individual cartridges store it in solid state at lower pressures, making it much safer to carry around and sidestepping a major concern with fuel cell technologies.

If powered from a renewable source, the device essentially enables a carbon free process of powering numerous devices. A UK concern is already developing a Smart Car-like automobile powered by Horizon's technology. Whether or not the energy concentrations will be enough to propel the concept to success in the near-term remains to be seen, but the idea of creating home-based hydrogen power stations is enticing, as it means we wouldn't necessarily have to retool our energy infrastructures to enable a clean, efficient hydrogen economy.

[CNN]

Google's vision for a better world involves removing those pesky language barriers that keep people apart, and so the Internet search giant has begun development on a voice recognition and automatic translation system for cell phones. Such technology could either herald a new era of fruitful international collaboration or usher in new grievances and conflicts, depending on your viewpoint. The Times makes the obligatory reference to the Babel Fish of Hitchhiker's Guide that spawned bloody interstellar conflicts.

Experts remain divided over whether Google can accomplish its goal within several years, but the company may stand the best chance of doing so. So far, smart phone voice translators for English speakers have only come out for specific languages such as Japanese and Arabic.

Google already has a separate system for translating text on computers that covers 52 languages, and uses the company's special algorithms to continually scan millions of websites and documents as a form of improvement. It would presumably try to integrate the translation system with its more basic voice recognition system for smart phone commands.

This is just the latest of many Google projects that have surfaced over the past few months, including speeding up drug discovery, launching an energy subsidiary, and teaming up with the National Security Agency on cybersecurity efforts.

Considering Google's recent troubles in China, the company probably wouldn't mind a world with fewer international barriers to entry for businesses. But crossing the language barrier alone would only be a first step toward bridging cultural differences and realizing that Firefly future where we all speak Anglo-Mandarin.

[via The Times]

Wireless TV just got a whole new meaning. Sony has just announced a new short-range, intra-gadget technology that clocks a 11Gbps transfer speed. The tech, known as millimeter-wave, allows electronics innards to communicate wirelessly with one another, which could allow for slimmer designs and fewer wires--that means fewer connections to sever, and potentially more reliable gadgets.

Devices like HDTVs require a lot of data to be moved across internal circuitry quickly, and, Sony claims, even wires need a little help to get the job done. The data loads are so large that more connections are needed to keep pace, which currently means adding more wired connections--and bulk. A wireless connection, in this case, is a perfect assist.

The new technology sends electromagnetic waves (between 1 and 10 millimeters in length) from source to destination on frequencies between 30 and 300 gigahertz. Such high frequencies lend themselves well to working in small electronics, since their antennas can be as small as one millimeter. The receiving component cam be up to 14 millimeters from the source.

Within these millimeter-wave circuits, the source and receiver sync up with one another to make sure they're on the same frequency--a task that, in the past, sipped a lot of extra power. In this case, however, Sony has revamped the way the circuits communicate with each other. Thanks to the short range, the receiver can essentially "hear" the frequency of the source, and thus oscillates at the same frequency.

Sony is no stranger to speedy wireless transfers. At CES last month, the company unveiled the first products employing their TransferJet technology, which moves photos between devices. The close-proximity transfer works when two chips are within 3 centimeters of one another and clocks speeds as high as 560Mbps (or one high-res photo per second).

Getting TransferJet into a real-life product, however, was not quite as speedy. Sony first unveiled the standard at CES 2008, two years before any product was ready for market. So it may be a while before your TV's guts go wireless.

It's a sight captured by many a late-night stargazer: a shuttle streaking through the dark sky on its way to orbit. Last night, a gorgeous predawn launch of the space shuttle Endeavour marked the last scheduled night launch ever for the retiring NASA vehicle, even as NASA looks forward to a new age of commercial spaceflight. All four of the remaining shuttle flights are slated for the daytime, SPACE.com reports.

The 13-day mission's highlight involves bringing a huge new window to the International Space Station, so that residents of the orbital outpost can better direct the robotic arm and maybe even snap some prettier Twitpics. The window's addition in the new node would bring the space station to about 90 percent completion.

It's just one bittersweet part of the long goodbye for the shuttle. The vehicle's retirement will not only have ripple effects on NASA employees and Florida's economy, but also marks the beginning of a transition toward relying more upon private vehicles to launch cargo and crew into low Earth orbit. The Obama administration's recent budget for NASA killed plans for the Ares rockets to replace the space shuttle, and instead refocused the U.S. space agency on more deep space exploration.

Readers curious about how the new space age might look can consult PopSci's January issue that covers the impending commercial space rush.

[via SPACE.com]

A 2007 hacker attack on an Internet café in Hubei Province in China has led to the discovery and dismantling of an online hacker training camp accused of providing malicious software and lessons in hacker technique to tens of thousands of Chinese users. The site, called Black Hawk Safety Net, has been shut down and three people have been arrested, but as with many stories coming out of the People's Republic these days, it's difficult to tell exactly what's what.

Chinese state media reports that Black Hawk collected some $1 million from 12,000 paying subscribers in exchange for lessons in hacking techniques and Trojan software that can be used to illegally hijack computers over the Web. Another 170,000 people had signed up for free memberships to the site at the time of its brush with the law, during which several servers and computers as well as $250,000 in assets were seized.

The seizure comes on the heels of a high-profile dust-up between China and Google, in which Google and the U.S. government accused Chinese hackers -- possibly working in conjunction with state organs -- of executing very sophisticated cyber attacks on U.S. and European companies. Those attacks were specifically aimed at high-value targets like banks, defense contractors and tech companies as well as at the private email accounts of known human rights advocates critical of Chinese policies.

On its face, it appears that China is taking cyber-threats seriously, cracking down on hacker breeding grounds and those who traffic in malicious software. However, the sophisticated nature and scale of those recent cyberattacks suggests a level of technical competency that smells of state sponsorship, some security experts say. That is to say, those attacks likely weren't carried out by amateur hackers buying lessons off the Web.

So were the users over at Black Hawk Safety Net a threat to cybersecurity? Or did the Chinese state use recent headlines to make a point to a tech-savvy portion of the populace that increasingly flouts rigid censorship rules and sidesteps the Great Firewall? That's not to say this crackdown is not legitimate; the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology claims some 42,000 Web sites were targeted by hackers of varying competency last year, and it's common knowledge that China is a breeding ground for malicious software and a launch pad for cyber attacks. But whether this as a serious Chinese effort to curb international cyber crime or simply window dressing designed to assuage the West in light of recent events is unclear.

[Yahoo News]

Humanity's search for the secrets to immortality has inspired Ray Kurzweil's Singularity vision and DARPA's hunt for ageless synthetic beings. Now scientists have discovered a single gene that appears to control how quickly individuals will biologically age, The Telegraph reports. The discovery could not only encourage people to adopt healthier lifestyles earlier, but may eventually help people live longer if scientists can figure out how to manipulate the gene.

Each person has a genetically-programmed lifespan that depends upon telomeres, or the ends of chromosomes that serve as protective caps for the main genetic material. Biological aging is determined by how quickly the telomeres shorten each time the genetic material is copied during cell division -- a process that parallels human aging.

A newly-identified variant of the TERC gene seems to determine both the starting length of a person's telomeres and how quickly the telomeres shorten. The full findings appear in the journal Nature Genetics.

The scientists have yet to try and manipulate the gene to possibly delay biological aging, but they suggest that people could get tested for the gene early on in life. People could then take appropriate steps to avoid proven "bad" influences on those precious telomeres, such as smoking, obesity and lack of exercise.

[via The Telegraph]