Pocket-Size Device Lets You Print from Anywhere

A new mobile robotic printer that is only a little bigger than three stacked hockey pucks will enable people to print anywhere and on any size page of paper.

Smartphones, tablets and laptops make it easy for people to work on the go, but traditionally, printers have been cumbersome to lug out of the office.

Zuta Labs, based in Jerusalem, reasoned that printers nowadays are essentially a printhead running back and forth on a moving piece of paper. The company's approach involves placing a printhead on a set of small wheels and letting it run across a sheet of paper, thus allowing printers to become smaller.

"The name 'Zuta' in ancient Aramaic means 'small,'" said Tuvia Elbaum, CEO and founder of Zuta Labs.

The new Zuta Pocket Printer is about 4 inches (10.2 centimeters) wide and long and 3 inches (7.5 cm) high, and weighs about 12 ounces (350 grams). It can connect wirelessly to smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs via Wi-Fi, and is supported by Android, iOS, OS X and Windows. A free app from the company lets you use the printer via a mobile device; a laptop or PC can also select the printer for use just like any other wirelessly connected printer.

To print, a person switches on the device, aligns it with the corner of a sheet of paper and sends the document to it. The printer can print one average A4 page, measuring 8.27 by 11.7 inches (21 by 29.7 cm), every 50 to 60 seconds with a resolution of 300 dpi. Zuta Labs noted that its printer can print on any standard size piece of paper, and that, in principle, it could print on any surface, Elbaum told Live Science.

The printer's "omni-wheels" help it turn and move in any direction on a surface. Laser sensors help control the movement, speed and location of the device, according to the company.

If a person sends several pages to the device, the printer will stop when it gets to the bottom of the first page and wait until it is placed at the top of the next page. Users can then tap on the mobile app, and the printer will continue to print.

Zuta Labs said the printer's rechargeable lithium-polymer battery can last about 1 hour, on average — long enough to print about 60 pages. The device charges via a micro-USB port, and takes about 3 hours to charge fully.

One ink cartridge can print more than 100 pages, according to the company. Currently, the device prints only in black, although Zuta Labs said it plans to have a full-color printer in the future. Cartridges are replaced via a hatch on the bottom of the printer.

The founders of Zuta Labs, which was established in 2014, said the idea for their printer came in 2013, when they were students at the Jerusalem College of Technology. A 2014 Kickstarter campaign to fund Zuta Labs raised $511,662 from 3,081 backers, exceeding its original goal of raising $400,000. The company plans to ship its printers to customers in the beginning of 2017.

Source: livescience

Tiny Sensors Use Perspiration to Track Health

Imagine if taking a snapshot of your health were as easy as slapping a sticker on your skin. A new study finds that a tiny adhesive sensor can read what's going on in your body based on your sweat, and relay information about your well-being wirelessly to a smartphone. This type of wearable sensor could work as an alternative to blood tests to assess people's health one day, according to the researchers.

In the new study, scientists embedded chemical sensors and other devices into a soft, flexible silicone rubber disc, about the size and thickness of a quarter, that can easily stick to skin. The device is designed to collect and analyze sweat for key biomarkers, or markers of health. For instance, the sensor can show how people are responding to exercise, including whether someone needs to make adjustments, such as drinking more water or replenishing electrolytes.

Source: livescience

Google launches Tango AR smartphone system

After more than two years of tinkering and finessing, today Google finally officially launched its Tango smartphone augmented reality system to the masses.

Right now, it’s only available on Lenovo’s $499 Phab2 Pro, which arrives in stores in the US today, but you can expect to see this in a bunch of Android phones in the next year or so.

About 35 applications are launching with Tango support at launch. Developers are really still figuring out what these cameras are good for and some might be trying a bit too hard to capitalize on the depth-sensing feature. There are certainly some ground-breaking apps in early infancy.

For gamers, Tango certainly offers a chance to have a more intense gaming session. Titles like Crayola Color Blaster show the ability of games to capitalize on larger playing spaces while utilizing the technology’s tracking abilities.

Tango has tellingly undergone some organizational changes within Google since it was first introduced. The program is now operated directly alongside Google Daydream, the company’s central smartphone virtual reality effort. It’s clear that there’s very little intention to keep these programs separate for too long. The opportunities offered by Tango in terms of inside-out positional tracking would offer VR a major boon if a smartphone is launched that is Tango and Daydream compatible.

For all its notoriety and specialty, Tango is a feature bound for mass consumption. Depth sensing cameras are a feature that will inevitably land on smartphones with the clear use cases becoming most apparent after we all readily have access to them. Tango is starting with a rather tepid launch on a single Lenovo phablet, but the quality experience is certainly there.

Source: techcrunch.com

A New Clothing That Could Help People Reduce Body Heat

A new type of fabric could keep people cool in hot climates and reduce the need for expensive and energy-consuming air conditioning, a new study finds.

A team of researchers has developed a low-cost, plastic-based textile that allows the body to release heat in a new way. Just as sweating is one way the body cools off, the new clothing could help people reduce body heat. This cooling clothing could allow for air-conditioning to be set to a lower output than usual while still ensuring people stay cool, the researchers noted.

Heating and cooling spaces contribute to 12.3 percent of total energy consumption in the U.S., according to the researchers. Efforts to reduce energy use have focused on improving building insulation and enabling "smart" temperature control. However, engineers studying "personal thermal management" found that providing heating or cooling only to one person — rather than the power needed to cool an entire building — would result in far higher energy efficiency.

 "If you can cool the person rather than the building where they work or live, that will save energy," Yi Cui, one of the study authors and an associate professor of materials science and engineering, and of photon science at Stanford University, said in a statement.

As with ordinary fabrics, the new material allows perspiration to evaporate. However, its other, new cooling mechanism works by allowing the heat the body emits as infrared radiation to pass through the textile, the researchers explained.

"Forty to 60 percent of our body heat is dissipated as infrared radiation when we are sitting in an office," said study co-author Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University who specializes in photonics, the study of visible and invisible light. "But until now, there has been little or no research on designing the thermal radiation characteristics of textiles."

The researchers used a commercially available plastic material — nanoporous polyethylene (nanoPE), which has interconnected pores 50 to 1,000 nanometers in diameter and is used in batteries as a separator to prevent electrical shorting. NanoPE's pores allow for infrared waves to be released. In lab tests, the researchers found that nanoPE allowed 96 percent of the infrared radiation to pass through. By contrast, cotton permitted only 1.5 percent of the infrared radiation to pass through.

If woven into clothing, the nanoPE material could make the wearer feel nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than if they were wearing cotton clothing, the researchers said.

As the scientists continue their research, they are adding more colors, textures and other characteristics to the nanoPE material to make it more cloth-like.

The findings were published online Sept. 1 in the journal Science.

Source: http://www.livescience.com/56620-plastic-based-textile-keeps-you-cool.html

Time Relaunches Life in Virtual Reality

Time Inc., the publisher of the iconic Life magazine that closed in 1972, is relaunching the title — in virtual reality.

The new Life VR features immersive storytelling, the company said in its announcement last week, and is available as a free download in the Life VR app for iOS and Android mobile-based virtual reality headset users.

Three virtual reality experiences — Defying the Nazis , Fast Ride and Lumen — are already available in the application.

More virtual experiences will be coming soon.

“We have an aggressive editorial road map and live experiences planned for Life VR, which will represent the best traditions of this iconic brand,” said Mia Tramz, managing editor for Life VR, in the announcement.

Source: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/author/nuela-ada/

'Cards Against Humanity' STEM scholarship for women

Last year, the wildly popular potty-mouthed card game Cards Against Humanity channeled the profits from its $10 Science Pack into a full-ride college scholarship for women studying science, technology, engineering or math. With Science Pack sales still going strong, and gender equality in STEM fields still sorely lacking, Cards is ready to accept another round of applications for the scholarship's second year. 

Like last year, the scholarship offers full, four-year tuition to any woman seeking an undergraduate degree in any STEM field and applications will be reviewed by a board of over 60 women working in places like NASA JPL, Harvard Medical School and the National Science Foundation. Ideal candidates will be "an ambassador for their field" and are asked to submit a three-minute video lecture on a science topic they are passionate about. Applicants must be enrolled or planning to attend college in United States during the 2017 academic year, but any STEM field is fair game. (Sorry, no graduate students, however.) The deadline for submissions is December 11th at midnight and ten finalists will be asked to submit additional materials.

To date, the scholarship has raised over $975,000 on the profits of that aforementioned Science Pack. More details about the application process can be found at the Science Ambassador Scholarship website, and for prospective applicants who need a little inspiration.

Source: https://www.engadget.com

Ada Lovelace: First Computer Programmer

Ada Lovelace (nee Bryon) has been called the world's first computer programmer. What she did was write the world’s first machine algorithm for an early computing machine that existed only on paper. Of course, someone had to be the first, but Lovelace was a woman, and this was in the 1840s. Lovelace was a brilliant mathematician, thanks in part to opportunities that were denied most women of the time.

Ada Byron was a teenager when she met Cambridge mathematics professor Charles Babbage, who had invented the Difference Engine, a mechanical computer designed to produce mathematical tables automatically and error-free. Babbage never built the actual machine due to personal setbacks and financing difficulty. By 1834 he had moved on to design his Analytical Engine, the first general purpose computer, which used punch cards for input and output. This machine also lacked financing and was never built. (Babbage's Difference Engine was finally constructed in 1985–2002, and it worked.)

Babbage was impressed with the brilliant young woman, and they corresponded for years, discussing math and computing as he developed the Analytical Engine. In 1842, Babbage gave a lecture on the engine at the University of Turin. Luigi Menabrea, a mathematician (and future Italian prime minister), transcribed the lecture in French. Ada, now in her late 20s and known as Countess of Lovelace, was commissioned to translate the transcript into English. Lovelace added her own notes to the lecture, which ended up being three times as long as the actual transcript. It was published in 1843. 

Lovelace's notes made it clear that she understood the Analytical Engine as well as Babbage himself, and furthermore, she understood how to make it do the things computers do. She suggested the data input that would program the machine to calculate Bernoulli numbers, which is now considered the first computer program. But more than that, Lovelace was a visionary: she understood that numbers could be used to represent more than just quantities, and a machine that could manipulate numbers could be made to manipulate any data represented by numbers. She predicted that machines like the Analytical Engine could be used to compose music, produce graphics, and be useful to science. Of course, all that came true—in another 100 years. 

Babbage was so impressed with Lovelace's contributions, he dubbed her "The Enchantress of Numbers."

How did a young woman get the opportunity to show the world her talents in the 19th century? Mathematical intelligence was not the only thing Ada Lovelace had going for her. Her potential for intelligence probably came genetically, as she was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron and his first wife Anne Isabella Noel Byron. Both were privileged members of the aristocracy, and both were gifted and well educated. The marriage broke up shortly after Ada was born.

Lady Byron, who studied literature, science, philosophy, and, most unusual for a woman, mathematics, was determined that Ada not follow in her father's footsteps. Instead of art and literature, Ada was tutored in mathematics and science. Ada excelled in all her studies, and her interests were wide ranging. Ada became a baroness in 1835 when she married William King, 8th Baron King; the two had three children. In 1838, she became Countess of Lovelace when her husband was elevated to Earl of Lovelace. Her pedigree and peerage alone would have landed Lovelace in the history books, but her accomplishments in mathematics made her a pioneer of not only computing, but of women in science.

Lovelace died of cancer in 1852, when she was only 36. More than 150 years later, we remember her contributions to science and engineering in the celebration of Ada Lovelace Day on October 13. First celebrated in 2009 (in March), it is a day set aside to learn about women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. 

Source: mentalfloss