General Electric’s Global Research division has taken its latest technologies and applied them to Santa’s sleigh. GE researchers have taken out the old sled/reindeer/magic-based system and added OLEDs, carbon-fiber composites and ceramic materials, RFID, medical sensors, sodium batteries, and a 500 GB holographic CD.
Seems like a big investment considering he’s been getting it done without it. Click the interactive feature above to check out the upgrades.
Popular Science has chosen “10 Young Geniuses Shaking Up Science Today,” and not surprisingly, four of them come from New England. Take that, Rest of the Country.
Among the 10:
PopSci also helpfully notes that, John Cusack notwithstanding, the planet Nibiru will not collide with Earth, wiping out all life, in two years.
Saint Gobain, the world’s largest manufacturer of building materials, cut the ribbon on a research and development lab in Northborough, the company’s largest R&D site worldwide.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick was on hand for the event, which offered a glimpse of the company’s energy-efficiency innovations. Patrick told the MetroWest Daily News the site offered a “glimmer of good news” in a tough economy.
The 60,000-square-foot building houses laboratories, offices and meeting space for 200 Saint Gobain scientists and engineers, officials said. Construction crews broke ground on the $15 million expansion just a year ago, according to the MetroWest newspaper.
Saint Gobain is headquartered in Paris and employs more than 300 people in Northborough. NECN.com offered a video clip here.
Saint-Gobain employs 340 people in Northborough and has had a strong central Massachusetts presence since 1990, when it acquired abrasives manufacturer Norton Co. of Worcester, according to the MetroWest newspaper.
Saint-Gobain has other locations at the former Norton site in the city of Worcester and in Taunton, among other Massachusetts sites.
Hao Jiang and Stella X. Yu, computer science researchers at Boston College, used the human eye as a model to improve computer vision.
Last month MHT covered another BC research project that, in conjunction with UMass Medical School in Worcester used nanoscale retinal implants to treat macular degeneration.
More video after the jump. (more…)
Working with MIT researchers, Microsoft’s NERD facility in Cambridge has developed a computer model for self-assembling structures of nanoscale particles, according to Technology Review.
“Theory there is sorely lacking,” says Mila Boncheva, a senior scientist at Firmenich, in Geneva, who played an important role in early research on this kind of self-assembly at Harvard University. “What people are currently doing in design is mostly trial and error based on common sense.” The theoretical model is aimed at helping materials scientists figure out much more quickly what the right materials and conditions are for self-assembly of a given structure.
As if MBTA drivers didn’t have enough to worry about, now MIT researcher Yoel Fink has developed a sheet of fiber with light sensors built in, making a flexible camera.
Fink tells Technology Review the fabric could have applications in defense and in making large, flexible telescopes, though it hasn’t all been worked out yet.
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