The Technology Flow

Robot skin senses warm bodies like a snake locating nearby prey Westworld -style ‘skin dips’ could apply the film By Edd Gent A heat-sensing film could let robots detect when humans are around, like pit vipers hunting out warm-blooded prey. The flexible, transparent coating is made of pectin, a low-cost plant material used to set jam. Unlike conventional electronics, it relies on currents of ions rather than electrons to detect temperature variations – just like natural membranes used by the snakes. The film can sense temperature changes as small as 10 millikelvin, which is twice as sensitive as human skin. It can detect a warm body the size of a rabbit from a metre away, something the researchers tested by microwaving a teddy bear and setting it at different distances from the film. Changes in temperature cause the film’s resistance to vary, which is picked up by electrodes along the edges and transmitted to a computer. . Applying it over a robot’s entire

Article 1: Ultrafast camera captures sonic booms of light for first time. By  Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor Just as aircraft flying at supersonic speeds create cone-shaped sonic booms, pulses of light can leave behind cone-shaped wakes of light. Now, a superfast camera has captured the first-ever video of these events. The new technology used to make this discovery could one day allow scientists  to help watch neurons fire  and image live activity in the brain, researchers say. [ Spooky! Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena ]  Science behind the tech When an object moves through air, it propels the air in front of it away, creating pressure waves that move at  the speed of sound  in all directions. If the object is moving at speeds equal to or greater than sound, it outruns those pressure waves. As a result, the pressure waves from these speeding objects pile up on top of each other to create shock waves known as  sonic booms , which are akin to claps of thunder.

Article n°1: China aims to build world’s first exascale supercomputer prototype by end of 2017 Call it a super-supercomputer by James Vincent Building supercomputers is a digital arms race, and China is moving quickly to solidify its lead. Last year, the country unveiled the world’s fastest supercomputer, the Sunway TaihuLight (above). This year, according to state news agency Xinhua, the government has set its sights on completing the world’s first prototype exascale computer; a machine capable of making a billion billion calculations per second. WHAT’S A FLOP? The power of supercomputers is commonly measured in FLOPS or “floating point operations per second.” The greater the number of FLOPS a computer can calculate, the more powerful it is. Right now, the fastest supercomputers in the world can make quadrillions — or thousands of trillions — calculations each second. Using the standard system of metric measurement, a quadrillion is referred to using the pr

Article 1 :  US Army Wants Biodegradable Bullets That Sprout Plants Not only are bullets a physical hazard, but they're an environmental hazard, too. At US Army training facilities around the world, hundreds of thousands of spent shells litter proving grounds. Because there is no efficient way to clean up the shells, they're left where they fall. But that's a problem. The shells, which contain metal and other chemicals, can rust and pollute soils and groundwater. The DoD wants to do something about it, though. They're soliciting proposals for biodegradable bullets "loaded with specialized seeds to grow environmentally beneficial plants that eliminate ammunition debris and contaminants." Such materials best suited for these bullets could include the same biodegradable plastics used to make water bottles or plastic containers. Or it could be some other material altogether. According to the request for proposal, the US Army Corps of Engineers'