"Linger A Little Longer" Thermochromic Furnishings

“A deceptively understated design with a dynamic twist,” as described by its creator, the thermal-sensitive surfaces of this pair of furniture pieces turns temporary interactions into lingering visual memories.

"Linger A Little Longer" Thermochromic Furnishings

Coasters, of course, leave a watermark – as they might, by accident, on an ordinary hardwood furnishing … but so do your arms and legs, leaving its creator (Jay Watson) to ask in its tile that you Linger a Little Longer. Bonus: touching the surfaces with something hot reveals the wood grain below.

"Linger A Little Longer" Thermochromic Furnishings

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"Linger A Little Longer" Thermochromic Furnishings

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Newly developed metallic micro-lattice material

Researchers have created a new metallic material that they claim is the world’s lightest solid material. With a density of just 0.9 mg/cm3 the material is around 100 times lighter than Styrofoam and lighter than the “multiwalled carbon nanotube (MCNT) aerogel” – also dubbed “frozen smoke” – with a density of 4 mg/cm3 that we looked at earlier this year. Despite being 99.99 percent open volume, the new material boasts impressive strength and energy absorption, making it potentially useful for a range of applications.

The 0.01 percent of the material that isn’t air consists of a micro-lattice of interconnected hollow nickel-phosphorous tubes with a wall thickness of 100 nanometers – or 1,000 times thinner than a human hair. These tubes are angled to connect at nodes to form repeating, three-dimensional asterisk-like cells.

The new material draws parallels with large structures, such as the Eiffel Tower, which is incredibly light and weight-efficient thanks to its hierarchical lattice design. As an illustration of just how efficient such a design is, if the 7,300 tonnes of metal used in the Eiffel Tower were melted down it would fill just six centimeters (2.4 in) of the structure’s 125 m2 (1,345 square ft) base.

The ultralight micro-lattice material shows the same concept can also reap benefits on a much smaller scale. The wall thickness of the hollow tubes can be measured in nanometers, the diameter of each tube in microns, each tube length in millimeters, and the entire micro-lattice in centimeters – or even one day, meters, claim the researchers.

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The GBU-57A/B Penetrator

Military technology has created some fearsome weapons, such as the 5,000 lb GBU-28 Deep Throat bunker buster, 15,000 lb BLU-82 Daisycutter, 15,650 lb Russian ATBIP (Aviation Thermobaric Bomb of Increased Power), 22,000 lb Grand Slam earthquake bomb, and the 22,600 lb GBU-43 MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast), but if you were hiding under 50 meters of hardened concrete, none of them were going to bother you.

The GBU-57A/B Penetrator

Not any more!
The U.S. Air Force has just taken delivery of the first GBU-57A/B (Massive Ordnance Penetrator). It weighs 30,000 lb and will penetrate 200 ft of hardened concrete BEFORE it goes off. If you are reading this from an underground nuclear facility in Iran or North Korea, might we suggest some extended sick leave is (or soon will be) in order.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator is that it is a relatively simple weapon.

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The GBU-57A/B Penetrator

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Volkswagen's eT!

A thinktank headed by Volkswagen Group Research has re-conceptualized the delivery vehicle and come up with a thought-provoking commercial EV concept vehicle named the eT! The eT! drives semi-autonomously on voice commands such as “follow me” and “come to me” and the driver can also steer from the passenger side using a joystick.

Volkswagen's eT!

The product of a Thinktank on future transport and mobility issues involving Volkswagen Group Research, Deutsche Post AG (German Post Office), and the University of Art at Braunschweig, the eT! was conceptualized as a what a lightweight commercial vehicle might look like in the “second half of this decade”.

Volkswagen's eT!

Though the eT! being shown at the Design Centre of Potsdam is a mail delivery vehicle, the lightweight transporter was conceived as being relevant to numerous commercial vehicle applications, which are being explored in ongoing research studies.

Volkswagen's eT!

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ASUS Transformer Prime

Alongside NVIDIA‘s last remaining architecture disclosures about Tegra 3, ASUS is revealing more information about the world’s first Tegra 3 tablet. The Prime is much thinner than its predecessor, even thinner than the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and iPad 2 at 8.3mm. It’s also the second lightest 10-inch Android tablet we’ve seen at 586 grams, a tad heavier than Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 (565g).

Unlike the original Eee Pad, the Transformer Prime is all aluminum. The Eee Pad Transformer Prime will be available in two colors: champagne gold (pictured above) and amethyst grey (in the gallery below). ASUS is using the higher quality chassis as a justification for driving prices up by $100. The Transformer Prime is now priced identically to the iPad 2, although you get twice the NAND (32GB/64GB instead of 16GB/32GB). The original Transformer will remain on the market at $399, the Prime simply occupies the space above it.

More on anandtech…

ASUS Transformer Prime

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OVO-4 full-motion flight simulator

Chances are, you will never get to try out the new 3D MiG flight simulator. If you have almost US$60,000 that has nothing better to do, however, you can now buy something almost as impressive – the OVO-4 Home Flight Simulator. The egg-shaped capsule contains a full simulated light aircraft cockpit, with three linked 24-inch monitors displaying the output of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X. Best of all, however, the capsule pitches and rolls according to what’s happening in the simulation – users presumably have to supply their own barf bags.

OVO-4 full-motion flight simulator

The 1,000-kilogram (2,205-lb.) OVO-4 runs off of regular mains power, and is installed in one’s home by an engineer who will arrive with it (presumably not in the same crate). He will even stick around for an extra couple of days, to teach the owner how to use the device.

OVO-4 full-motion flight simulator

Depending on the buyer’s preference, the controls will be modeled after those of a Cessna 172, Piper Seneca, Mooney Bravo, or a generic layout can be specified. Along with the first-person landscape display on the three monitors, the OVO-4 also features a “chest-thumping” multi-speaker sound system, along with a vibration system for simulating air turbulence, runway irregularities, engine vibration and jolting. The big movements are used to provide the sensations of twisting, pitching, slipping, acceleration and braking.

More on gizmag…

OVO-4 full-motion flight simulator

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Packard Bell PB oneTwo all-in-one desktop computer

Looking to build on the success of its original PB oneTwo all-in-one desktop computer solutions, Packard Bell has announced two new slimmed-down revamps in the shape of the 21.5-inch PB oneTwo M and the 23-inch PB oneTwo L. Both space-saving, touchscreen models will feature second generation Intel Core i processor options, a choice of NVIDIA or AMD discrete graphics, a high definition webcam and the option of a Blu-ray optical drive, when they go on sale later this month in Europe.

Packard Bell PB oneTwo all-in-one desktop computer

Packard Bell says that its new PB oneTwo models represent the slimmest ever all-in-one that the company has so far produced. With dimensions of 21.6 x 19.5 x 5-inches (549 x 496 x 129 mm), however, the PB oneTwo L (with 23-inch screen) doesn’t quite match up to the slim profile of HP’s TouchSmart 610, which we spent some time with earlier in the year. Likewise, the PB oneTwo M (with a 21.5-inch screen and 20.4 x 18.7 x 4.72-inch/520 x 476 x 120 mm dimensions) doesn’t come anywhere near Lenovo’s ThinkCentre Edge 91z. However, the profile diet that Packard Bell has forced its new computers to endure is said to have resulted in a slimming down of 65 percent compared to previous models.

Both of the new all-in-ones have touch-enabled displays thanks to the company’s own TouchPortal suite, but – as we concluded in our review of the HP 610 – whether such functionality is important to you is very much down to personal usage patterns. In the end, though, it’s probably better to have it available than not.

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Packard Bell PB oneTwo all-in-one desktop computer

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PRIMEHPC FX10 Supercomputer

It’s only been just a few short years since the Roadrunner supercomputer broke the petaflop processing performance barrier – that’s a quadrillion floating-point operations per second. Shorter still since Fujitsu ‘s K computer secured the world’s top ranking with an incredible performance of 8.162 petaflops. Now, the company has announced global availability for its PRIMEHPC FX10 supercomputer, which can be scaled up to a 1,024 rack configuration for 23.2 petaflops of theoretical processing power.

PRIMEHPC FX10 Supercomputer

Petascale computing systems consist of thousands of computing nodes connected via high speed interconnect. Fujitsu’s newest system will be made up of 98,304 nodes running on the new SPARC64 IXfx 1.848GHz processor, and will contain 6 petabytes (6,291TB) of high bandwidth memory at its largest potential configuration. Each processor has 16 cores and is capable of standalone performance levels of 236.5 gigaflops, and performance per watt of over 2 gigaflops.

The PRIMEHPC FX10 uses the Tofu interconnect (which stands for Torus Fusion and not the popular bean curd made from soya) – a highly-flexible 6-dimensional Mesh/Torus architecture that has 10 links at each node and is capable of low latency 5GBps bandwidth performance in both directions.

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Honda AC-X plug-in hybrid concept car

Any fan of Formula One racing will tell you that very small changes to the underside of an automobile can deliver major changes to the speed, handling and road-holding of said automobile. Due to the extreme costs associated with wind-tunnel development, varying the shape of racing cars is largely banned, and hence very few road-going cars have seen variable aerodynamics beyond the raising of rear spoilers for added down-force at speed, as used in the Bugatti Veyron and a small number of other very expensive exotic sports cars. One of Honda’s latest batch of concept cars looks set to break with tradition though, by exploring this theme with front and rear bumpers which raise and lower to offer better aerodynamics depending on the speed.

Honda AC-X plug-in hybrid concept car aerodynamics

Honda’s line-up of concept automobiles, motorcycles, power and mobility products at the Tokyo Motor Show this year is very impressive, and the most interesting is the AC-X, a next-generation plug-in hybrid vehicle that at first glance appears to be relatively conservative for a vehicle designed to gauge public opinion on new technologies and designs.

Honda AC-X plug-in hybrid concept car

Indeed, the entire release devoted to the AC-X in the lead up to its debut at the 43rd International Tokyo Motor Show next month reads as follows: “A next-generation plug-in hybrid vehicle which offers a more comfortable and enjoyable time in the vehicle during all driving situations, from urban to long-distance driving. With the choices of an “engine drive mode” for more aggressive driving or an “automatic drive mode” for more relaxed driving, the vehicle broadens the joy of mobility.”

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Honda AC-X plug-in hybrid concept car

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Honda RC-E electric supersports motorcycle

At long last, the world’s largest and most influential motorcycle manufacturer appears to be getting serious about electric motorcycles, announcing it will be showing a supersports motorcycle concept at the Tokyo Motor Show next month.

Named the RC-E, the images released by Honda indicate a a super sports motorcycle designed solely for the “the joy of riding.“

More on gizmag…

Honda RC-E electric supersports motorcycle

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