Emerging tech

If you think that engineering functional human body parts using a printer and laser is a sign of the end of time, you might want to proceed with caution. If you think such a development portends the saving of lives, read on.

Because researchers from an interdisciplinary group of five Fraunhofer institutes in Germany are announcing their successful creation of completely functional blood vessels using 3D printing and intense laser impulses.

First, advances in 3D printing have enabled researchers to print organs inexpensively and quickly using a modified inkjet printer. As in, very modified.

Using special inks, the researchers were … Read more

It looks like life will get harder for people who live in Faraday cages to escape electromagnetic emissions, because wireless data-transfer technologies are booming in growth, according to a study released today.

Shipments of Bluetooth-equipped devices should double between 2011 and 2015, and Wi-Fi is growing fast as well even if it's not built into as many electronics products today. But the real explosion comes from NFC, or near-field communications, analyst firm IMS Research said today.

"The number of NFC-enabled mobile handset shipments is projected to increase from 40 million in 2011 to over 700 million in 2016,&… Read more

No one wants to stumble upon the radiation warning sign. But its presence at least indicates that hazardous materials have been detected, and that there might be some form of control of those materials.

In high-risk scenarios without up-to-date signage (war zones, abandoned testing sites, and now airport security lines), it could prove quite handy to have a handheld device that can detect hard radiation--including nuclear weapons.

Chemists at Northwestern University report in the journal Advanced Materials that they are one step closer to developing such a device.

"We have designed promising semiconductor materials that, once optimized, could be … Read more

Today, if a woman is considered to be at high risk for ovarian cancer, surgeons tend to want to preemptively remove her ovaries.

That may sound harsh, but of all the gynecological cancers, ovarian has the lowest survival rate--mainly because, without reliable symptoms, it is difficult to detect early on.

Now, researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Connecticut have combined three imaging tools to spot tissue irregularities that signal ovarian cancer at earlier stages of its development.

Describing their hybrid device in the September issue of the Optical Society's Biomedical Optics Express journal, the researchers say they have combined photoacoustic imaging for contrast, optical coherence tomography for hi-res subsurface imaging (called OCT, this is the top image at the right), and pulse-echo ultrasound for deep-tissue imaging (second image) to identify malignant tumors.

The superimposed images (at the bottom of the images) enabled the team to spot malignant tissue (indicated with yellow diamond arrows).

They performed their initial tests on surgically removed pig and human ovarian tissue--but with the device measuring just 5 millimeters across, it could potentially be inserted through a tiny slit to image tissue without having to biopsy it.

The researchers were able to confirm that they'd correctly identified malignant cells by staining the tissue and examining it by microscope. Next step: test the device on live patients using minimally invasive surgery.… Read more

Adapting Firefox for tablets is on Mozilla's mobile-browser priority list, and now the first version has appeared in "nightly" builds for developers to try out.

"It has now reached a functional state that is good enough for getting some early feedback," said developer Lucas Rocha on a blog post today. "Keep in mind that this is very early stage work. There are lots of rough edges and design is continuously evolving."

The design keeps elements of the smaller-screen smartphone version--tab switching that can pull out from the left side and other options that … Read more

Google thinks it's time to look beyond JavaScript, the programming language that gives Web applications their brains. The company's project to do so behind closed doors with a new language called Dart, though, has spurred something of a backlash.

The company piqued Web programmers' interest last weekend with the news that it would offer details about Dart, which it calls "a new programming language for structured Web programming," at a conference in October. But immediately after, a leaked 2010 memo about Dart--at the time called Dash--raised hackles by spotlighting how Google often develops Web technologies … Read more

Once upon a time, you might tell your children, there were buildings called libraries. A resident of a city or town, you would explain, could walk into one and borrow books--for free!

Libraries aren't likely to fade into history just yet, of course, but the possibility is more plausible given Amazon's discussions about offering an annual subscription plan for e-book access described in a Wall Street Journal report yesterday.

Amazon's library option would be part of Amazon Prime, the gradually broadening subscription plan, Larry Dignan at CNET sister site ZDNet expects.

As I see it, the move … Read more

We've written about mirrors that tell us more than whether we have a piece of spinach stuck between our teeth. A year ago, a Harvard-MIT student showed off a mirror that's able to read certain vital signs.

Now The New York Times Research & Development Lab is taking things a step further--bringing body tracking, shopping, news, and of course advertising to one's most intimate of places: the bathroom.

The group's "magic mirror" uses LCD and Kinect technology (it's really more of a computer with a reflective surface) that lets users browse the Web while brushing their teeth.

How is this better than using a smartphone in the bathroom? For one, it's hands-free. In fact, in the group's demo, one of the designers simply places a box of meds on the mirror's small ledge; it uses RFID tagging to recognize the type of meds and pull up information about dosages and where to buy more.… Read more

Way back in the early days of 2011, the world's smallest electric motor was so...big. At 200 nanometers wide, it was a whopping 1/300th the size of a human hair.

Now, chemists at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences have smashed that record, which was set in 2005, with this weekend's unveiling of their single-molecule electric motor, which at 1 nanometer wide could be the first in an entirely new class of devices with potential use in medicine and engineering.

That's right: 1 nanometer. That's been estimated to be about 1/60,… Read more