New hybrid batteries that will have double the life and yet charges within seconds. Sounds like some very egoistic claim from some unknown researchers right? Not really. Ioxus Inc. is a new comer in the energy storage industry and they’ve about to announce a new hybrid energy storage device that they claim will “radically alter batteries used in the auto, medical, and consumer electronics industries”.

They tease that their new product is roughly the size of a typical C-cell battery and combines the fast charge / discharge benefits of ultra-capacitors with the remarkable energy-to-weight ratio of a lithium-ion electrode. As a result, Ioxus says the hybrid devices can store more than double the energy of traditional ultracapacitors and charge in a matter of seconds. The catch is that the hybrids have shorter life spans of 20,000 cycles compared to millions of cycles for typical ultracapacitors. Sounds very fishy right? Let’s wait for the official statement to come. But if this really is true, then the use of compact electrical devices will surely be revolutionized.

SOURCE via CNET

Here’s something odd for those impatient people. GE mentioned that they’ve managed to create a ‘new’ lamp design that fusion ‘instant-on’ with ‘efficiency’. GE is introducing its Hybrid Halogen-CFL bulb. It’s basically a typical CFL unit, but look closely inside those coils and you’ll spot a wee halogen bulb peeking out. It’s like two bulbs in one, the halogen unit powering on almost instantaneously then fading off once the CFL element gets itself all riled up. Not really a hybrid fusion, but more of a design trick. GE said that it’ll be available soon in few months’ time, but I’m not very convinced. I’d prefer an LED bulb, as they start to get common. This ‘hybrid’ from GE doesn’t seem to be cheap too.

SOURCE via Engadget

Guys, please don’t, I repeat, DO NOT show this to the tattoo guys down the street. If you do, then we’re gonna get a revolution on the fashion sense of tattoo and skin embedment. Yes, LED lights are cool, and they look great on your car as the morning running lights. But we humans are cool enough, and we don’t need these LEDs on our skin as daylight running lights please. Someone in their sane mind went to develop this international research project or implantable LEDs. Read more…

I thought Hyundai only do cars, but they’ve surprised us. Hyundai IT is reportedly showing off this this 70-inch multitouch table at the Korea Electronics Show this week — in concept form, at least. While there’s no specs — apart from the fact that it’s “HD” — Hyundai is apparently saying that you’d be able to use the display either as a Surface-like multitouch table or as a TV, although it’s not clear if that means it actually tilts up. Read more…

Our world’s getting more high-tech. Yes, that’s great news, but as you don’t realize, our world’s getting more and more dangerous too. Here’s the world’s smallest gyroscope, powred by lasers and as small as a single grain of sand. It’ll sound very safe and going the road of commercial if it’s announced by Steve Jobs for the next iPhone 5, but it’s not. It’s invented by the Israeli Department of Defence, thus making it sound so dangerous. From what they say, the new gyros are sensitive enough to track your position and movements anywhere—no GPS required. Convincing enough? Read more…

Previously Samsung and LG had shown off their supremacy in OLED technology by demonstrating transparent OLED screens. But now, there’s a new player showing off their own version of transparent OLED screen, and they’re not from the display company. TDK is stepping in with a 2-inch passive matrix screen and a ‘large’ QVGA (320 x 240) resolution. TDK claims a 50 percent transmittance, which somehow pawns the Korean’s version by quite some margin. Read more…

Have you heard of a violin the size of one-tenth of a human hair wide? Students at the University of Twente demonstrated a brand musical instrument that plucks strings, based on a new micrometer-scale system. Six microscopic resonators fit on a microchip, one resonator permusical tone, and series of the chips can be combined into a MIDI interface to play an entire song. However, since it’s so small, you’d expect the sound to be extremely puny too. The micronium needs to be amplified 10,000 times before they’re audible through standard speakers. Read more…

I’m not sure how this will look like, but covering your mouth with a bra sounds like an act a Japanese pervert would do. I’ve got an image of the dude fantasizing, with his eyes drifting away into fantasy. But Dr. Elena Bodnar thinks otherwise. Taking inspiration from the catastrophic Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster in 1986, she’d designed an Emergency Bra, which will be commercially available on September 28, which she hopes that the rest of the world can “get a feel of [sic] the product.” Read more…

No, this thing won’t let you have 1Gbps connection in your body for fast communication among you and your iDevices. More like linking artificial limbs and your real organs. The Department of Defense and Southern Methodist University have teamed up to develop prosthetics that use two-way fiber optic communication between artificial limbs and peripheral nerves to essentially give these devices the ability to feel pressure or temperature. Read more…

Wearable sensors that monitor physical activity are hardly anything new. People use that to make Avatar you know? But some researchers from MSU’s Department of Kinesiology are taking the idea quite a bit farther with their latest project. No they’re not making Avatar 2 with James Cameron. They’ve developed a new system that employs a network of sensors that not only track movement, but can monitor things like tilt, posture and the proximity of limbs to each other. That, the researchers say, allows them to detect different types of activity, and more accurately measure the energy expended on them. Of course, it is still just a protoype, but it’ll apparently soon be put to the test by some graduate students, and there’s plenty of backing behind it — the project is being funded two-year, $411,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health.

SOURCE via physorg