Japan Radioactive Melt-Down: Robot to theRescue

As we have heard of Japan catastrophic earthquake and tsunami few weeks ago, the similar tragedy seems not yet stop. The calamity is still continued and now it happen around northern part of the country. Around the world is covered by a lot of sadness and sorrow as it occurred to the country that we are always love most. Recent Fukushima nuclear crisis is now being handle by autonomous vehicles and robots, majorly supplied by US government and companies. How can we ever imagine? Its happen just like in the movies and it is happening. This make us remind words from Einstein, imagination is more than knowledge, or at least appreciate it...

Robots supplies by iRobot, US (see more here)

Can I charge my car here?

It's has been more than 20 years, we have been exposed with a lot of science fiction movies. One of the most popular is Back to The Future. The movie (and its sequels) told us a time-traveling adventure of a high school student portrayed by Michael J. Fox, who befriend with an eccentric, Enstein-like scientist played by Christopher Lloyd, who invented a time machine from a DeLorean car. In the first movie, the car is powered with plutonium but its second movie showed that the car is improved which only used garbage as its main fuel. This movie is very inspiring, especially for the futuristic time-traveling car, even though many of its fans did not satisfied with its ending, where the car is totally crashed by a mere train. Today, the long memory of futuristic cars, such in the movie, has brought back to life in reality. It's not about cars that can bring us to the past, but cars that not need petroleum as their fuel. Yes, we're going to have cars that powered by electricity and this technology may be widely used by us. Electric cars are commonly run by on-board battery packs and already known by their good performance in speed. Despite of this advantage, the main problem of this technology, the low energy capacity of these batteries making them to have relatively poor range between charge and also need a significantly long time to be recharge. However, a group of Japan Electric Vehicle Club managed to shed a light of new opportunity of this technology using their modified Daihatsu Mira, in an attempt to create a new world record of longest distance electric car traveling without recharging. The car, equipped with a Sanyo lithium ion power system containing more than 8,320 batteries, recorded a distance of 1,003.184 kilometers on a single charge (see the full news here). Therefore, this proves that the challenge of power capacity in electric car can be possibly overcome. On the other hand, many vehicle manufacturers have announced a number of projects in order to commercialize the electric cars. People around the world are now seeking for new alternatives for fossil fuel due to the environment sustainability issues. In fact, U.S. government recently planned to implement and encouraging its citizen to use electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2015 (read the report here). A leading car manufacturing project, Megacity Project, announced that the company is planned to launch a new sub-brand, a sub-specification for all future electric BMW car (read the report here).

Dude, I've Got Transistor in my Body!

Transistor has play a major role in our life, especially in modern electronic applications. This tiny (mostly) semiconductor device is used to amplify and switch electronic signal by changing the current or voltage flowing of a terminal to another terminals. Today, this unit is implemented beyond of our thought - embedded in our body for screening diseases. Scientists from University of California has discovered a new way to extend the use of everyday transistor for observing human health. According to Aleksandr Noy, one of the scientists, this new finding exploits the real biological machinery, protein, by working as a part of microelectronic circuit. In this technology, silicon, which the common material used in ordinary transistors, is replaced with new rod-shape material known as carbon nanotube. This material is basically constructed from a single curved layer of arranged carbon atoms. This material is covered with a mixture of lipid and protein, forming a lipid bilayer similarly to the outer membrane of actual cells. Then, the scientists supplied a solution of potassium ions, sodium ions and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) over the constructed transistor in order to power up the device with voltage. Since ATP is crucial element to energize the biological cells, the actual process in ordinary transistors is applied by powering the embedded proteins in the bilayer. Consequently, the ion pump charged the electric charge within the cell, which the charge that going through the transistor. Therefore, scientists can measure and observe the electrical changes. Currently, the scientists believe that this technology can be implemented to monitor and even treat specific diseases; assisted to study poisons and toxins; and even started the development of more futuristic applications such as controlling electronic devices through brain wave. source: Discovery News and MSNBC. Thank you to my friend, Muhammad Faiz Misman, for alerting me with this news.