Road vehicles may soon be fitted with pop-up bonnets, windscreen airbags and energy absorbing bumpers to improve pedestrian safety, according to researchers in this week’s BMJ.

Collisions between pedestrians and road vehicles are responsible for more than a third of all traffic related fatalities and injuries worldwide, yet research has so far concentrated almost exclusively on increasing the survival of vehicle occupants, argue researchers at the University of Virginia, USA.

Crash

Rollo, the home robot, has been developed by the Laboratories of Automation Technology, Information and Computer Systems in Automation and Control Engineering of the Helsinki University of Technology for seven years and is presently being adapted for home care and independent living at home. Rollo is part of the “Turning Well-Being Technology into a Success Story” – (iWELL) technology programme of the National Technology Agency Tekes.

“The reason why we arrived at a ball-shaped solution was

Walls and curtains could sport liquid-crystal digital displays.

Homes of the future could change their wallpaper from cream to cornflower blue at the touch of a button, says Dirk Broer. His team has developed paint-on liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that offer the technology.

Liquid crystals are peculiar liquids: their molecules spontaneously line up, rather than being randomly orientated as in a normal liquid. Passing a voltage across the molecules switches their alignment, b

Researchers eager to use individual molecules as the components of ultra-small electronic circuits and computers have put a new spin on their ambitious goal.

They take advantage of a hitherto unexploited property of electric currents, called spin, to make molecular devices that operate under new rules. This fledgling form of electronics, called spintronics, could lead to computers that don’t forget anything when their

Positioning systems will become an essential tool for the carrying out of many different tasks in the future. Whether the problem consists of a tree falling on a power line or a car standing in the road with a motor failure, aid services will find a route straight to the right location by using this system.

It has previously been difficult for a person in need of aid to convey exact information about his location in an unfamiliar area. In future, the person can find his exact location with t

Whether it will compete for the title of a girl’s best friend remains to be seen but the element osmium can already challenge diamond in at least one respect: stiffness. According to a report published in the current issue of Physical Review Letters, osmium can withstand compression better than any known material. The results provide a potentially new lead in the search for superhard materials.
Diamond’s ability to resist scratches, dents and chipping–in short, its hardness–makes

Two Basque companies, Enerlim and NECESA, have developed a new wind generator, a wind reservoir to make use of wind energy.

This wind reservoir is much lighter than ordinary three-arm wind generators; hence, it is more economical and easier to install. On the other side, the machine is completely modular, as columns, pulleys and plates can be divided in order to make easier the production, transport and installation. The largest piece to be transported and installed is 12 meters long and 2

There are no in-car methods of detecting that a driver is too drunk to drive – until now. A team at Bristol University, led by physiologist Dr Dilwyn Marple-Horvat, has found a new way of detecting whether a driver has drunk too much to be fit to be at the wheel.

To assess a driver`s fitness to drive, a new device has been created that measures the degree of co-ordination between hand and eye. It uses: an in-car eye-tracker; a system that continuously monitors steering wheel movements; and

Neue Materialien mit nichtlinearen optischen Eigenschaften

Fensterscheiben und Brillengläser, die sich bei zunehmender Helligkeit dunkler färben, sind besonders im Sommer eine feine Sache. Optische Eigenschaften, die sich mit der Lichtstärke verändern, so genannte nichtlineare optische Eigenschaften, sind ihr Geheimnis. Auch als optoelektronische Bauteile sind derartige Materialien von Interesse. Voraussetzung für die besonderen optischen Eigenschaften ist eine sehr regelmäßigen Mikrostruktu

A new spin-out from Oxford University, Spinox, is aiming to devise novel ways to copy spiders` ability to spin silks. The new silks may be used for sutures or woven material for surgical implants, protective clothing and in sports equipment.
Spinox has been set up to fully develop a spinning process to create high performance fibres from natural or artificial proteins based on the principles used by spiders and insects to create natural silk fibres. This approach – biomimetic (mimicking biology)

The power for Hubble’s scientific discoveries comes from solar cells. Designing and constructing Hubble’s first two sets of solar cell arrays constituted a huge technological achievement for the European Space Agency and European industry. After an in-orbit life of more than 8 years, this example of pioneering space technology was this morning (European time) replaced by new, more powerful arrays.

For the last week a dedicated team of engineers, technicians and scientists from the European

European research co-ordinated by TU Delft
Offshore wind technology ready for application

The technology for the construction and operation of offshore windfarms is ready for large-scale application. Companies in the fields of engineering and services are preparing to take part. This can be seen in the conclusions of the project Concerted Action on Offshore Wind Energy in Europe (CA-OWEE) of the European Union, in which seventeen parties from thirteen European countries have brou

Materials scientists at the University of Wales Aberystwyth (UWA) are taking ceramics to new heights in order to determine the structure and stability of the materials which are used to construct aeroplane engines and the tiles for the space shuttle.

Dr Rudi Winter and colleagues from the Department of Physics at UWA are using a unique combination of techniques to study the materials at extreme temperatures which simulate those experienced when aircraft travel at high speed or when they dec

Europe is one step ahead of the US in the development of a new type of semiconductor structure consisting of incredibly thin nano threads. A Swedish team headed by Professor Lars Samuelson at the LTH, the Lund Institute of Technology, Lund University, has taken the lead in this field of research. “In nano threads, we can combine semiconductor materials that no one has previously been able to grow. This results in entirely new electrical properties: a single electron can be monitored and made to run a

The days of fast-fading cellular phone batteries may soon be over. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) recently developed a working prototype for a portable fuel cell energy source that could power a cellular phone 300 percent longer than existing rechargeable batteries do. Indeed, the new technology would be less expensive, smaller and more powerful than any battery currently in use, according to Jeff Morse of LLNL’s Center for Microtechnology Engineering. He predic

France launches in Valenciennes a 6,4 million euro research program on transport safety. It reinforces the international position of Nord-Pas de Calais and the University of Valenciennes.

The scientific council of the New Research Action “Safety in Transport Systems”, which came together at the University of Valenciennes and Hainaut-Cambrésis on the 31st of January 2002, has just validated and launched a program composed of 7 projects stretched out until 2006. 6,4 million euros will b