Here’s what Tao Deng, a GE scientist, says:

Hello everyone, I have some exciting videos that I want to share with you! Using a high-speed camera setup in the lab, we can finally capture the details of the water dancing on these amazing superhydrophobic surfaces. We discovered that even when the surfaces had the same contact angle for stationary water droplets, their ability to resist the wetting of impacting droplets could be totally different. In the following three videos, the contact angles of a stationary droplet on all three surfaces are ~150 degree. When an impacting droplet (with the same impact speed) hits on the surfaces, the droplet can either stay on the surface.
Look at the way the water droplet spreads, recoils, breaks into satellite droplets, and completely lifts off… that’s what we really want for an impacting-droplet resistant surface! You might wonder what we can do with a cool thing like this? Imagine applications that involve high speed water droplets, such as wind turbine blade, airplane wing, or even just your car in motion. These are just a couple of the exciting possibilities that we are looking at.

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The study has been made by Bram Van den Bergh, Luk Warlop and Siegfried DeWitte, who found that men who touched bras, watch video clips or young women in bikinis, or looked at pictures of beautiful women have increased desire for immediate rewards.

“It seems that sexual appetite causes a greater urgency to consume anything rewarding. After they touched a bra, men are more likely to be content with a smaller immediate monetary reward.” Prior exposure to sexy stimuli may influence the choice between chocolate cake or fruit for dessert,” said the authors.

The study shows that men’s minds are stimulated so their actions planned for the future are brought to the present. “The study demonstrates that bikinis cause a shift in time preference: Men live in the here and now when they glance at pictures featuring women in lingerie. That is, men will choose the immediately available rewards and seek immediate gratification after sex cue exposure.”

After reading this, you need to be aware of your actions if stimulated in this way, because your accounts might be affected. Fortunately, the study shown that not all people are affected, but a high percent and the more impacient the man is, the more is affected.

Like women wouldn’t spend all our money, now they’ll absolutely get us in debt.

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Annual Japanese winter light show features uses 4.5 million LEDs that create an amazing view and create a new form of art. This year’s theme is flowers and the whole show is able to produce about 64 billion colors, which change rapidly.

It’s hard to explain this by using words, so you better take a look at those astonishing pictures.

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360BrandVision is a company which offers 3D holograms for the first time in their history. It’s very important as this technology could bring limitless applications, and advertisers will be very pleased to know that they will have the possibility to present their products in 3D suspended holograms at live events.

The world of entertainment will be changed forever thanks tot his technology as it will be a pleasure to watch such applications. 3D holograms will grab the attention no matter what, and people actually experienced something very similar on CNN election night.

“What people saw was the illusion of a life-size, video hologram that was created using post-production special effects. HD cameras and video software can be used to convincingly create a hologram that can be seen on television monitors, but not in real life. 360BrandVision’s revolutionary Cheoptics360 display systems actually let you create the illusion of 3D holographic video images suspended in midair,” said Aaron Adjemian, VP of marketing at 360BrandVision.

Not being able to create a hologram in real-life is a problem, but Nick Vilardell, VP of business development and co-founder of 360BrandVision, says that “it’s just a matter of time before we are able to project true 3D holograms and it’s going to change our world.”

“The applications are so wide-ranging that we know we are just at the tip of the iceberg with this technology,” he added.

Like aforementioned, the 360BrandVision consists of Cheoptics360 display systems which can measure 2×2 ft but they can be as big as 15×15 ft. On these displays, viewers will see computer-generated holograms from 360 degree angles.

3D holograms were first introduced in Europe by viZoo (360Brandvision is a licensed reseller of viZoo) and their technology attracted many customers like Lexus, Vodafone, MTV, Adidas, Microsoft, and Sprint, and the company says that it was welcomed by the public. ViZoo is looking now to use this technology in education or medical science. Hopefully, we’ll see 3D holograms used in various applications as soon as possible.

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iPhone and iPod users, and everybody who uses the iTunes store to download MP3 files get ready! For what? Well, it seems like SonyBMG, one of the four major music labels will come to the iTunes store to join EMI and offer DRM-free MP3 files. Although it’s not signed, sealed and delivered, and it’s only a rumor, a deal between Apple and Sony could be announced soon and probably there will be many users who will enjoy higher-quality audio files.

via TechDigest

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No matter what you say concept cars are cool. I am aware that many of them never see the sunlight, but you can’t say that they are ugly excepting a few of them. However, here is the Opel Siderium Concept which surprised me a lot because I’m not exactly a fan of the German car manufacturer. This concept was created with style in mind and this is why it was awarded the Best Conceptual Interior at Interior Motives Design Awards 2008.

It was designed by Vinicius Barbosa Crepaldi and Tiago Aiello Tomé De Souza, and their primary goal was to come up with a great interior. The thing is that you cannot have a great interior with an ugly exterior therefore the two designers had to come up with this stylish and futuristic-looking exterior.

The exterior is dominated by incredibly soft curves, and the customizable interior will probably make anyone feel like home. The doors of the Siderium Concept are made of glass, but you can always give the external layer any color that you want. Well, we are waiting for more concept cars with great interiors and exteriors, and no matter what we will always hope that we will see them on the roads of the future.

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We could call this day a sad day as Circuit City has filed for bankruptcy even if a week ago they said that 155 stores will be closed and 17% of the employees will be dismissed. However, they couldn’t manage to overcome this crisis, so the no.2 US consumer electronics retailer and 17 of their affiliates decided to file for bankruptcy under Chapter 11.

Although the Virginia-based retailer could have “escaped” from bankruptcy as the holiday shopping season will begin in a few weeks, Circuit City decided that it’s better to file for Chapter 11 protection from creditors.

“In large part, a Chapter 11 filing is due to three factors, all of which contributed to a liquidity crisis that prevented the company from completing its turnaround goals outside of formal proceedings: erosion of vendor confidence, decreased liquidity and a global economic crisis,” said Bruce Besanko, Chief Financial Office at Circuit City.

The retailer lost a big part of the market share in favor of Best Buy, Wal-Mart and many other rivals, however, Circuit City hopes that the Chapter 11 will help them to turn things in their favor. Let us know what do you think about Circuit City and if you would like to have them back on the market!

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The WinHEC held this week in Los Angeles, Microsoft considered that it’s the perfect occasion to talk about the USB 3.0 and what we should expect from it. We are already tired about these delays of the next-gen USB, however, according to Microsoft a finalized product should be expected by the end of this month. The delays of the USB 3.0 were explained by Microsoft’s program manager for USB driver stack in Windows, Lars Giusti.

“Because the current USB 3.0 spec is currently not signed off, we’re challenged and we won’t have support for USB 3.0 in Windows 7 at RTM (release to manufacturing). Our goal is to have the USB 3.0 specs signed off by the promoter’s group sometime later this month. Hopefully,” said Giusti.

Everybody expects the USB 3.0 to be 10 times faster than the USB 2.0, and these delays point to the fact that the developers are really trying to accomplish this goal. However, these hamperings are holding back the USB 3.0 as Giusti continued:

“That makes it challenging for several reasons. Since the spec isn’t signed off we don’t see any USB 3.0 hardware in the market or even prototypes available yet. With those two disadvantages we cannot develop, create, and design support yet for USB 3.0. But we are staffing up. We are making plans.”

It’s very important that the spec to be released as soon as possible because the USB 3.0 has to be adopted by device manufacturers, and the Microsoft USB team has to evaluate which OS will support the next-gen USB.

“If you look at the USB 3.0 industry timelines and checkpoints, it really has been a very long, difficult and challenging three-year effort. In 2009, the signed-off spec will be handed over to the implementers and those adopters that plan to productize USB 3.0. Our prediction tells us that in 2010 finally we’ll see broad-scale product deployment of host controllers, devices, and systems that are USB 3.0 and SuperSpeed capable,” said Giusti.

“The Microsoft USB core team is currently evaluating which operating systems we should support USB 3.0 on. It’s a difficult decision and a difficult choice ’cause there’s all these moving parts. Our early indications tell us that most partners think that we should support USB 3.0 on at least Windows Vista,” he continued.

According to Jeff Ravencraft of Intel, the USB 3.0 spec will be announced in San Jose, California on November 17th. In conclusion we have to mention a performance comparison of a 25GB HD movie. The transfer via USB 1.0 took 9.3 hours, USB 2.0 managed 13.9 minutes, while via the USB 3.0 it took 70 seconds. Well, we can only wait for the USB 3.0 to be out as the transfer speed is really impressing, and everybody wants more speed!

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Going green could be cheaper than previously thought thanks to Faroun, an Instructable user, who has posted a DIY vertical axis wind turbine. Many people complain that you have to be rich to be green, and I have to say that this economical crisis is making it even harder, but if you have a total of $182.08 then you can build a wind turbine which could generate 100 watts at 35 km/h wind.

The wind turbine is called the V8-4″ and it consists of PVC pipes, permanent caps, a bike axle, a tricycle wheel, and an Ametek DC motor among other small parts. We don’t really know how safe this wind turbine is, but Faroun seems pretty happy with his work as he feels that the turbine is very efficient. Well, if the wind blows hard in your area then you should give it a try, it’s simple and you could lose only $200. Earth is worth more than this amount!

via Instructables

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Last night, the NFL match between Cleveland Browns and Denver Broncos was broadcast on Sprint cellphones thanks to the company’s partnership with the NFL. Sprint will broadcast live eight matches every week on a five-year deal worth about $500 million. This deal is supposed to “revive” NFL broadcasting as the NFL Network is available only for 40 percent of the Americans.

“Live compelling content is a game changer in the mobile industry,” said Steve Gaffney, director of sports sponsorships at Sprint Nextel Corp.

Now, if only we could connect our cellphones to a 52-inch plasma TV.

via NFL Sprint

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