THE next generation of plug-in hybrid cars could recharge in minutes, thanks to a new type of battery.

Lithium ion cells are used in portable gadgets and the latest hybrid cars as they are light and can be repeatedly charged and discharged with little degradation. But as with all batteries, charging takes some time. That's because it involves detaching lithium ions from the cathode at one end of the battery and absorbing them at the anode; pulling the ions from the cathode is normally a slow process.

Now Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have revealed an experimental battery that charges about 100 times as fast as normal lithium ion batteries. Their battery contains a cathode made up of tiny balls of lithium iron phosphate, each just 50 nanometres across. The balls quickly release lithium ions as the battery charges, which travel across an electrolyte towards the anode. As the battery discharges, the lithium ions move back across the cell to be re-absorbed by the nanoballs.

Using magnetic fields to remotely power and control microscopic machines.

TellMe for Windows Mobile 6.5 isn't just an app, it's a one-button hub for voice commands of all kinds, including text messaging, making calls, and also jumping to Microsoft Live Search with natural language queries like "weather in San Francisco, California," "pizza in Kansas City" or "mother's day gift ideas."

There have been a variety of robots that emulate emotional expression through their facial features. Tmsuk has now created a humanoid robot that puts its whole body into the act, emoting like a silent film actor. KOBIAN is a descendant of the WABIAN-2R research humanoid and the WE-4R robot head, developed at the Takanishi Laboratory. The video above shows KOBIAN cycling through a variety of stock emotional expressions. Tmsuk claims the robot's postural emoting will make it better able to interact with humans.

The company PittPatt has face mined the TV series Star Trek. Specifically, they applied algorithms in face detection, face tracking and face recognition to 67 Star Trek episodes over three seasons. This process automatically extracts all visible face tracks, and clusters these into a small number of same-person groupings. Currently, PittPatt recognize frontal or near-frontal tracks. In the near future, we will extend our results to non-frontal tracks as well.

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This patent for automatically sending an audio or video reply to an iChat call is only useful for computer to computer calling, but also for iPhone to computer calling, or computer to iPhone calling.

The server could additionally be set to store video responses, such that when a person comes back online, they could view one or more clips recorded by their peers. To facilitate this, Apple proposes creating a generic video mailbox which could be accessed from iPhones or a website.

Fleshbot discovered that Jess of UndressJess just started recording her Camgirl videos in 3D, allowing her viewers to get the sense that she's actually sticking out of their monitors a slightly bit. Using a fancy little Minoru webcam, she's started recording some of her videos.

Google Voice, is an alternative call apllication to run on smart phones or other devices. Google Voice is now about to hit iPhones by way of an app. This app for the iPhone has immediately access to your contacts.

Here is how it works: you don't press you regular 'Phone' application, but you select your Google Voice button. You just dial a number or select it from your contacts, as you would do in your regular phone application. The App diales out to Google and you' be a called back to connect both sides and you press the Green button. In this way, you do not only skip the standard fees charged to you by your operator, it will also allow you to maintain your calls from any other smartphone or devices. It actually disconnects your telephone number from your device. Additionally, you can also SMS people the same way.

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The DaVince Si Surgical system is world’s only robotic surgical system with 3D HD vision. It has two separate HD optical channels that merge for highly accurate depth perception and a lightweight camera head features buttons for focus control, automated scope setup and illuminator control directly form the camera head.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This simply shows us the future of virtual worlds in our living room: we won’t be able to understand what the real world impact is of our behaviour in the virtual world. That will be a challenge for the next decade.

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Wave is a new communication platform by Google. It's a Frothy Collaborative Mix of Chat, Instant Messaging, Twitter and Google Docs in Real-Time: A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more..

Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

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