Inventor does it again

[yunowu]

Local man creates engine powered by magnets
Randy Mitchell Staff Writer Ada Evening News

Allen OK — A local inventor whose creation was recently featured in Popular Science magazine unveiled his latest invention Saturday.

People in Allen were treated to food and soft drinks and a chance to see perhaps the future of electricity.

Ada area resident Jeff Baird’s newest invention is an engine that uses a technology that really isn’t new at all.

“It’s electromagnets,” Baird said. “They’ve been around a long time. It’s probably 60 or 70-year-old technology.”

An official open house to display the creation is set in June at Conner State College in Warner but Baird wanted local residents to get a look at it while it was at his company, Plumb New Ideas Ltd. in Allen.

“We’ve had a lot of support from folks here in Allen,” Baird said.

Many have tried and failed to get these engines to run efficiently and Baird said he has fixed what others couldn’t.

“All we’re doing is pulling on the pistons which has been done before, there are several patents out there,” Baird said.

“They’ve run into problems with how to fire the magnets and we just got around all those and filed our own patents.”

The current prototype can generate enough electricity to power lights, televisions and computers. It is a work in progress and bigger and better engines are on the way, Baird said.

“We’re just simply converting very little wattage into a lot of energy,” Baird said.

Large batteries fire the magnets and the motor acts as an alternator that keeps the batteries charged continuously. Because it does not use fossil fuels, Baird said it is environmentally friendly.

The technology works like windmills except it uses magnets instead of wind.

Baird recently made the news when his invention — the PermaFLOW — was featured in the December issue of Popular Mechanics.

Baird said he wants kids to see his creations and get excited about inventing things that help people. He said it is all about helping others. He’s helped many people from young inventors to the disabled.

“I just want to make things easier for people to live,” he said.
http://www.adaeveningnews.com/local/local_story_110130106.html

[Sinned]

Yunowu, I really appreciate all the great articles that you post. Thank you.

[TerryTate]

Cool.

:yes:

Yeah yunownu, thanks for the tech articles.

[yunowu]

I'll keep them coming !!:sun::sun::sun:

[yunowu]

Innovation is our new column that highlights the latest emerging technological ideas and where they may lead.
This week, engineer Adam Wilson made global headlines by updating Twitter using his brainwaves (http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/04/tweet-with-your-brain-for-a-ch.html). "USING EEG TO SEND TWEET" he explained.
Wilson's achievement was actually pretty trivial. He used a system called BCI2000 (http://www.bci2000.org/), found in hundreds of laboratories across the globe, that can do the job of a keyboard for any software program. But it was significant precisely because it was trivial: mind-reading tech is going to have a massive impact this year.
In the coming months, cheap headsets that let you control technology with the electrical signals generated by your firing neurons will go on sale to the general public. Our relationship with technology – and our brains – will never be the same again.
Escaping the lab

Researchers have developed systems that read brainwaves – in the form of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals – in order to help people suffering from disabilities or paralysis control wheelchairs (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3967-wheelchair-moves-at-the-speed-of-thought.html), play games (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12136-virtual-world-sharpens-mindcontrol.html)http://www.newscientist.com/img/icon/artx_video.gif, or type on a computer (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8826-mental-typewriter-controlled-by-thought-alone.html). Now, two companies are preparing to market similar devices to mainstream consumers.
Australian outfit Emotiv (http://emotiv.com/) will release a headset whose 16 sensors make it possible to direct 12 different movements in a computer game. Emotiv says the helmet can also detect emotions.
Compatible with any PC running Windows, it will ship later this year for $299 (see image). They have shown off a game where the player moves stones to rebuild Stonehenge using mind power alone (see video).
Californian company NeuroSky (http://www.neurosky.com/) has also built a device that can detect emotions: the firm says it can tell whether you are focused, relaxed, afraid or anxious, for example.
Rather than selling it directly to the public, NeuroSky is licensing its set-up to other companies, including Mattel, Nokia and Sega. Mattel, for example, will soon sell a game which involves players levitating a ball using thought alone (see video).
Mind hacks

These devices are remarkably cheap, especially when compared to the price tags on research-grade EEGs, which can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Emotiv's headset will retail for $299, while Mattel's game will cost just $80. At such low prices, these dirt-cheap brain interfaces will likely be popular – and not just with people who want to play with them.
Consider what happened when the most revolutionary interface of recent years appeared – the wireless controller of Nintendo's Wii (http://www.nintendo.com/wii) games console. Legions of hackers started experimenting; and millions of people have now seen how the interface can be repurposed to make an industrial robot play tennis (with video) (http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/01/sword-wielding-wii-bot.html), track a person's head movements and make a normal TV display 3D images (video).
You can expect some similarly mind-blowing hacks to result once Emotiv and NeuroSky release their devices. That'll certainly help make for some compelling viewing on YouTube and accelerate the development of brain controllers.
But the most interesting consequence of the coming flood of brainware isn't technological at all. Parents, and anyone else whose schooldays are fading into memory, will be acutely aware that today's youngsters have a facility with interactive technology that can be acutely disorienting.
There's already speculation about how the internet, gaming and other interactive technology is changing the brains of the next generation (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126986.200-why-facebook-is-good-for-you.html) – albeit not necessarily well-founded. But for the generation after that, it will be normal to control machines using thought alone. Given the awesome adaptability and plasticity of the human brain (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926645.700-how-we-can-learn-from-children-with-half-a-brain.html), how will our biological hardware and software will adapt?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17009-innovation-mindreading-headsets-will-change-your-brain.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

[yunowu]

IF YOU shine a laser on the floor, where does the light go? With the right preparation, some of it might pop out at the other side of the world - an effect that could be exploited to transmit secret messages through the ground.
That is the conclusion of Andreas Ringwald (http://www.desy.de/ñringwald/) at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, and colleagues, who have explored the possibility of hypothetical particles called "hidden photons" (www.arxiv.org/abs/0903.5300 (http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5300)). "If such particles exist, then we can use them to communicate," says Ringwald. "It's very simple."
Hidden photons are a class of particles predicted by so-called supersymmetric extensions (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17022894.200-doppelganger.html) to the standard model of particle physics. Unlike normal photons, hidden photons could have a tiny mass and would be invisible because they would not interact with the charged particles in conventional matter. This means hidden photons would flit through even the densest materials unaffected.
The only place to spot them is in a vacuum, where they should sometimes "oscillate" into normal photons. There are already experiments searching for this effect: the idea is to shine a laser at a wall in a vacuum and see if any of the photons make it through to the other side by transforming into their hidden counterparts and back again. According to Ringwald's group, if these experiments succeed it should be possible to scale up the apparatus so that the hidden photons become signal carriers and the "wall" becomes any stretch of ground or water.
Hypothetical 'hidden photons' could beam messages through any stretch of ground or water



The benefit of such a communication method is that, unless someone were in the exact line of sight with appropriate equipment, it would be impossible to eavesdrop. For example, submarines could employ the system to avoid communicating via sound, which is easily intercepted. Hidden photons could even take messages where radio signals cannot reach, such as the far side of the moon.
Physicist Doug Shaw at Queen Mary, University of London, thinks it would be a "technical challenge" to line up transmitters and receivers over large distances, but he agrees a system is feasible in principle. "It's a nice idea," he says. "Unlike most hypothetical particles that are only accessible at high energies, these particles, if they exist, would have potentially useful real-world applications."
However, Malcolm Fairbairn, a physicist at King's College London, points out that over the 12,700-kilometre diameter of the Earth, the signal capacity would be just 1 bit per second: "At that speed it would take about a year to download an mp3 file, so I'm not sure who would use it."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227054.800-hidden-photons-to-send-secret-emails-through-earth.html

[Seaview]

I don't understand them, but thanks for posting them. :sun: :rock: :rock:

[TerryTate]

Innovation is our new column that highlights the latest emerging technological ideas and where they may lead.
This week, engineer Adam Wilson made global headlines by updating Twitter using his brainwaves (http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/04/tweet-with-your-brain-for-a-ch.html). "USING EEG TO SEND TWEET" he explained.
Wilson's achievement was actually pretty trivial. He used a system called BCI2000 (http://www.bci2000.org/), found in hundreds of laboratories across the globe, that can do the job of a keyboard for any software program. But it was significant precisely because it was trivial: mind-reading tech is going to have a massive impact this year.
In the coming months, cheap headsets that let you control technology with the electrical signals generated by your firing neurons will go on sale to the general public. Our relationship with technology – and our brains – will never be the same again.
Escaping the lab

Researchers have developed systems that read brainwaves – in the form of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals – in order to help people suffering from disabilities or paralysis control wheelchairs (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3967-wheelchair-moves-at-the-speed-of-thought.html), play games (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12136-virtual-world-sharpens-mindcontrol.html)http://www.newscientist.com/img/icon/artx_video.gif, or type on a computer (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8826-mental-typewriter-controlled-by-thought-alone.html). Now, two companies are preparing to market similar devices to mainstream consumers.
Australian outfit Emotiv (http://emotiv.com/) will release a headset whose 16 sensors make it possible to direct 12 different movements in a computer game. Emotiv says the helmet can also detect emotions.
Compatible with any PC running Windows, it will ship later this year for $299 (see image). They have shown off a game where the player moves stones to rebuild Stonehenge using mind power alone (see video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxMux4uEkLI)).
Californian company NeuroSky (http://www.neurosky.com/) has also built a device that can detect emotions: the firm says it can tell whether you are focused, relaxed, afraid or anxious, for example.
Rather than selling it directly to the public, NeuroSky is licensing its set-up to other companies, including Mattel, Nokia and Sega. Mattel, for example, will soon sell a game which involves players levitating a ball using thought alone (see video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8STHiP7HZY)).
Mind hacks

These devices are remarkably cheap, especially when compared to the price tags on research-grade EEGs, which can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Emotiv's headset will retail for $299, while Mattel's game will cost just $80. At such low prices, these dirt-cheap brain interfaces will likely be popular – and not just with people who want to play with them.
Consider what happened when the most revolutionary interface of recent years appeared – the wireless controller of Nintendo's Wii (http://www.nintendo.com/wii) games console. Legions of hackers started experimenting; and millions of people have now seen how the interface can be repurposed to make an industrial robot play tennis (with video) (http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/01/sword-wielding-wii-bot.html), track a person's head movements and make a normal TV display 3D images (video) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw).
You can expect some similarly mind-blowing hacks to result once Emotiv and NeuroSky release their devices. That'll certainly help make for some compelling viewing on YouTube and accelerate the development of brain controllers.
But the most interesting consequence of the coming flood of brainware isn't technological at all. Parents, and anyone else whose schooldays are fading into memory, will be acutely aware that today's youngsters have a facility with interactive technology that can be acutely disorienting.
There's already speculation about how the internet, gaming and other interactive technology is changing the brains of the next generation (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126986.200-why-facebook-is-good-for-you.html) – albeit not necessarily well-founded. But for the generation after that, it will be normal to control machines using thought alone. Given the awesome adaptability and plasticity of the human brain (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926645.700-how-we-can-learn-from-children-with-half-a-brain.html), how will our biological hardware and software will adapt?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17009-innovation-mindreading-headsets-will-change-your-brain.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news


Heh, heh, so I see you've found Johnny Chung. I saw his whiteboard Wii video awhile ago, and I'll probably try it at some point. Very clever.