Fluffy "Fe"

Uniform bubbles enhancing metal strength: Metal Foam

When you think of a metal, you probably aren't going to think of something that can be squished.

That was then, this is Metal Foam. The material that could replace modern steel in nearly every aspect.

The concept of air pockets in metal materials has been around for a while, making use of the voids within the material to make the metal more elastic. But just last month, a new discovery was made that can make this already useful material even better.

Bridgette Meinhold of Inhabitat said that the discovery was made at North Carolina State University. Dr. Afsaneh Rabiei, head of the project, has devised what is being called "the strongest metal foam ever.". The trick, as she put it, is to keep a uniform distance between the air pockets to create a greater overall strength.

Able to withstand up to 80% compression while retaining its original shape as well as its lightweight qualities, the possibilities for this new material are numerous. John Farrier of Neatorama noted from Dr. Rabiei a potential use of her metal foam. If used as the bumper for a car, a vehicle collision at 28mph would feel like a bump at 5mph.

This lightweight and flexible metal has other important uses that extend beyond car parts. Its maleable quality would make for a welcomed material for use in surgical replacement surgeries. Also, Steve Tarlow of Personal Money Store thinks that if the buildings in Haiti were built using metal foam, destruction and death tolls would have been drastically reduced.

Live Science has a video that covers Dr. Rabiei and her metal foam.

Bionic Arm Research for Soldiers

Since WWII, prosthetic arm designs have functioned around a hook in place of a hand. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has begun a project to redesign prosthetic arms to replicate a natural human hand.

Soldiers who have served and are serving overseas are returning home maimed from the scars of war, Ker Than of livescience.com said. Medical technology has managed to keep them alive, but now is turning to the chances of returning to a normal life. The traditional design of a hook on the end of a plastic arm analog, while allowing for limited continual interaction, has drawbacks. There is no way to control the grip and a very limited way to even angle the hook itself.

DARPA is working with a large grant from the Pentagon to craft a revolution in the prosthetic inudstry called the DEKA. As of late, a new advancement has allowed for legs to think on their own and auto correct much like the gyroscopic powered Segway, Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes said in his broadcast. Within the team of researchers is Dean Kamen, the mind behind the Segway, who at first had adverse thoughts to the idea of artificially recreating a human construct. Regardless, Kamen has worked with teams of engineers and managed to solve a few of the logistical problems. Like bearing with the weight of the analog. By using a system of small inflatable pouches spread over the shoulder and chest, the nine pound device can be carried with relative ease.

Current programming attempts have been using a series of switches in the base of the shoe to control the grip of the DEKA arm. Future tests are going into setting the controls directly into the body of the user. Dr. Geoffrey Ling, a leading neurologist and army colonel said that it would be taking the ball of nerves in the shoulder and hooking a program to read the electronic impulses that are still sent by the brain. Such impulses are the cause of what is known as "phantom limb." When an amputee feels the limb that is no longer there.

Apart from a great sense of motor control, another aspect of the new technology is the ability to receive impulses from the object through the prosthetic. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University are working on designs on prosthetic limbs that use a more invasive procedure that includes injecting electrode sensors into the user's body, Erik Sofge of popularmechanics.com said.

Using these new devices wont be difficult for those who have lost their limbs through accidents. Jonathan Kuniholm, one of the 300 engineers on the project also faces the difficulties of having lost an arm and is working on tapping into the nerve centers for better control of the DEKA arm. He relates that the use of the arm wont be difficult to get used to. Instead of the programmer having to work with the computer, it is the computer that is working for the programmer. By sending the signals as he would if he had his hand, he only needs to tell the computer to recognize those impulses as certain movements.

"I'm not really learning, so much as the computer is."

The pricetag on this effort is in the hundreds of millions, but the success of this project would mean more than just a success for the American Armed Forces. As said by Pelley, "...this is another gift of the American taxpayer to the entire world."

Quantum Power on your Desktop?

With technological demand in full swing, engineers are tasked with keeping up the progressive pace.

One of the powerful steps into the world of tomorrow is the quantum computer. The derives from its baffling power to calculate quantum mechanics as they would be observed in nature, as opposed to how they would work under assumptions. Cause you know what they say about assumptions. Makes an "ass" out of "u" and "umptions".

Experts from Harvard and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia have begun the design of a computer that can use highly complex algorithms to compute the quantum mechanics, according to Charles Petit of Science News. The head of the Harvard group, Alán Aspuru-Guzik, had been working on algorithms of this power, but never had the kind of technology to test his theories. Collaborating with the University of Queensland allowed him to work with actual hardware to program and test. On principle, the quantum computer would be, "about the size of a fingernail," according to a physicist at University of Queensland, Andrew G. White. For the sake of ease, they spread it out over a square meter of the lab. Smaller isn't all better, sometime you just need to be able to twist and crank with your bare hands.

The revolutionary breakthrough that this team has accomplished is the alteration of the binary system. A classical computer will use a "1" or a "0" for its codes. The new quantum system will incorporate both "1" and "0" as well as numerous combination of the two, such as: 1+0, 01, or 0-1. According to Science Daily, these quantum computing factors, or qubits, will expand the processing power far beyond that of conventional computers. With this computer in use, physicists are able to record the data of the entangled photons of a hydrogen atom at 20 quantum measurements for highly precise data.

Using the Schrödinger's cat theory, University of Washington professor Boris Blinov states that quantum systems will be able to create a parallel example of molecular nature. With two correlating cats in separate boxes given the same situation, you need only observe one of them to know what would be happening to the other. These types of algorithms would allow physicists to create mock-ups of natural occurrences and compute their respective outcomes.

This kind of power has other "real world" uses outside of the science community. We could use this processing power to quickly eliminate passwords that would otherwise need years of brute computing, says Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo. He goes on to explain that companies that run search engines, like Google or Yahoo, would benefit from the boost in processing power.

Unfortunately, the quantum computer is still but a dot on the horizon. There are still issues regarding the capabilities of this computer and just how reliable they can be. When computers first switched from tubes to transistors, there was a backlash of failures from the relatively new hardware. Following that trend, it will be a long time until anyone will sit down with a quantum laptop.

~Sept