Titanium Foam Builds Wolverine Bones

Eat your heart out, Wolverine. The X-Men superhero won't be the only one with metal fused into his skeleton if a new titanium foam proves suitable for replacing and strengthening damaged bones.

Bone implants are typically made of solid metal – usually titanium. Though well tolerated by the body, such implants are significantly stiffer than bone.

This means that an implant may end up carrying a far higher load than the bone it is placed next to, according to Peter Quadbeck of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials Research in Dresden, Germany. In a worst-case scenario, the decrease in stress placed on the bone means it will deteriorate, while the implant loosens and needs to be replaced.

Spongy inspiration

Now Quadbeck and colleagues have created a titanium implant with a foam-like structure, inspired by the spongy nature of bone. The titanium foam does a better job than solid metal when it comes to matching the mechanical properties of bone, such as flexibility, and this encourages more effective bone regrowth.

What's more, the foam is porous, so the bone can grow around and within it, truly integrating the implant with the skeleton.

The titanium foam is made by saturating polyurethane foam with a solution of titanium powder and binding agents. The titanium clings to the polyurethane matrix, which is then vaporised away along with the binding agents. This results in a titanium lattice which is finally heat-treated to harden it.

Though the foam has yet to be approved for use in humans, Quadbeck and colleagues are now working with physicians to explore its suitability for treating certain injuries.

Peter Lee of the Department of Materials at Imperial College London is impressed. He says there are applications where inserting one of these titanium foams "looks like the most promising solution", such as bridging long gaps between broken bones.

Yuyuan Zhao, a materials engineer at the University of Liverpool, UK, adds that "if human bone isn't good enough, an implant could give your body better performance" than leaving bone to heal naturally or using other types of implant.

The Bra That Doubles as a Gas Mask Is Now For Sale

 It's the lovely brassiere that can save lives. How? When the bra is removed, the cup of the bra can be worn as a gas mask. I'm not joking. It's now available, here's how it works:

See, you take off the bra in event of emergency and then separate the cups from each other. After that, place your mouth and nose into the cup's interior and extend the bra strap over your head. Lastly, breathe normally. The peace of mind of wearing a bra that's ready for gas bombs will cost you $30.

True Acoustic Art Takes 1,400 Man Hours to Make, $320,000 to Buy

Last weekend I visited the Barnes Foundation art gallery in Philadelphia, and among my favorite pieces were the sculptures of Jacques Lipchitz. The Vox Olympian Loudspeaker hangs with them aesthetically, and it can play music, too.

The Vox Olympians, designed for superyachts, are crafted in England by a company called Living Voice. They're made with some materials you know are good, like gold, silver and bronze, and some that sound like they're good, like tellurium, beryllium and alnico. Each pair takes 1,400 man-hours to make.

The cheapest they run is £210,000, about $328,700, which is outrageously expensive, even compared to the run-of-the-mill ultra-rich-person-gear you normally come across. But if I had a boatload of money, buying speakers that were as good for looking at as they were for listening to would probably something I'd consider.

Facebook Fixed Yesterday's Outage By Rebooting Facebook

Facebook's two-hour outage yesterday undoubtedly left thousands of acres of Farmville crops untended and countless high school acquaintances unstalked.

 So how'd they fix it? Just like you fix your own stubborn machine: rebooting the entire system. Works every time!

If Mozilla Ever Made A Cellphone, This Is How It Might Look

Everyone's busy gossiping about a Facebook phone which may or may not exist right now, but let's pause all that and daydream about an incredibly lovely phone that very certainly won't ever become reality: The Mozilla Seabird.

The Seabird is a design created for the Mozilla Labs' Concept Series by a fellow named Billy May. It's basically a community-driven exploration of how an Open Web phone might look. The design involves an Android-based operating system, "an 8 megapixel camera, dual side pico projectors, wireless charging, and an embedded Bluetooth dongle,"

Mozilla makes it clear that this concept is just something dreamed up by its community and not a planned project, but that doesn't stop me from wishing that this potentially impossible piece of tech would find its way onto shelves instead of the FacePhone.

Sony's 6X BDX-S500U External Blu-Ray Drive Burns 25GB in 20 Minutes

Sony Optiarc's new portable Blu-ray drive is fast: it can burn single layer discs at 6x speed and dual layer ones at 4x. That means you could burn 25GB in the time it takes to watch an episode of Fraiser.

In addition to your average DVD and CD media, the BDX-S500u can also playback any 3D Blu-ray discs you throw at it with the included CyberLink Media Suite 8 software. The speedy new drive will be available soon in the ballpark of $200-$240.

Sonos' WD100 iPod Dock Floats Music Wirelessly to Multi-Room Systems

Designed for use with a ZonePlayer multi-room system, the WD100 iPod/iPhone docksends music wirelessly around the house. There's not much of note here, but existing Sonos users can snap up the cheap-as-chips $119 dock from next month.


SONOS INTRODUCES THE SONOS WIRELESS DOCK

New Sonos iPod accessory will be available by the end of October

SANTA BARBARA, CA - September 23, 2010 - Sonos, the leading developer of wireless multi-room music systems for the home, today introduced the Sonos Wireless Dock (WD100), an accessory to the award-winning Sonos Multi-Room Music System. With the Sonos Wireless Dock you can now play all of the music from an iPod or iPhone in every room of the house. The Sonos Wireless Dock will be available for $119 beginning by the end of October.

"The Sonos Wireless Dock is the perfect accessory for our music loving customers who own an iPod or iPhone and want to enjoy the music stored on them in any or every room of the home," said Phil Abram, President, Sonos, Inc. "This new dock reinforces our mission to provide our customers with access to all of the music on the planet, including everything available on an iPod and iPhone in the home."

The Sonos Wireless Dock accesses all of the music stored or playing on an iPhone or iPod and sends it wirelessly to Sonos ZonePlayers all throughout your home – before converting the music to analog – guaranteeing the best possible audio quality.

The Sonos Wireless Dock is compatible with the following devices: iPod touch (1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation), iPod classic, iPod nano (3rd, 4th, and 5th generation), iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G and iPhone, and has been certified by the developer to meet Apple performance standards.

For more information about Sonos or to locate an authorized Sonos dealer in your area, please visit www.sonos.com.

Why iPads Increase Wine Sales at Restaurants?

Some restaurants across the world are now using iPads to show their wine lists. Stupid and overkill, you say? Not if you sell a lot more wine because of it.

In just two weeks, Bone's—which is Atlanta's most famed steakhouse and has 1,350 labels in their catalog—sold 11 percent more wine than in the three weeks previous to the iPad introduction. Like Bone's, many restaurants around the world are having the same experience. Everyone using iPad wine lists seem to be having big sales jumps.

It's not the novelty factor, the Bone's owners and clients say. The reason is simple and logical: Reviews.

Most people don't know most vinos in a restaurant wine list. They may know that certain region and certain winery and certain grape and certain year are considered to be good or bad or just nice enough. But with so many references, most mortals don't have a single clue. Then people look at the prices and don't know what to do. It goes like this: "It's my birthday, but it's a $500 bottle of Pingus worth the expense or not?"

Now, if you had instant access to a short review for each wine from a credible source, then you can make a decision on the spot. So when Robert Parker says that a 1995 Pingus is "one of the greatest and most exciting wines I have ever tasted", then you may decide that it's well worth the price tag.

But then again, why not just print the reviews on paper? Because it's way easier to keep the iPad always updated, as entries get out of stock and new ones come in.

Charge Gadgets From Your Backpack Without the Sun's Help

I much prefer the look of Quirky's Trek Support backpack to Voltaic's solar-powered backpack from years ago, and if enough people agree with me and pre-order it (for $130), they'll even put it into production.

Just like the rest of Quirky's products, the backpack design has been crowdsourced, but it just needs enough people to pre-order it before putting it on the factory line. It's about half the price of a solar-powered backpack, and doesn't have the obvious panels on the front—choosing, instead, a subtle grey and blue color-scheme.

Various pockets have been stitched in, with the main compartment large enough for a 15-inch laptop. The rechargeable battery, housed in a lower compartment, can charge up the gadgets via USB. It might not be as planet-friendly as the solar backpacks, but at least you can ensure your iPod won't run out of juice on a winter's day.

Michael Jackson, The Online Game

Planet Michael is a massively multiplayer online game devoted to the music and life of the late Michael Jackson. No, this is not a joke.

"We put a focus on something that will truly allow fans to immerse themselves in a Michael Jackson-like universe or music-video-like world and interact with each other and then go on adventures and do gameplay stuff and socialize," Josh Gordon of developer SEE Virtual Worlds tells USA Today.

The game will feature areas based on songs like Beat It and Smooth Criminal. Players won't use violence on quests, but dancing.

Planet Michael is a free-download that claims to be "The Ultimate Michael Jackson Online Game." (Isn't it the only Michael Jackson online game?) Planet Michael is aimed at players 13 years-old and up. That is not a joke, either.

'Planet Michael' will let players build virtual Jackson worlds.

British Intelligence Agency Used Semen as Invisible Ink

A new book reveals that a member of MI6, the British spy agency, discovered during WWI that semen makes excellent invisible ink, and often deployed it in the field. The name of the man who discovered this?Mansfield Cumming.

The First 1.5TB Portable External Hard Drive Is USB 3.0 and From Seagate

SSDs might be the storage du jour for their speed, but there's still no beating regular-asshard drives for their price to capacity ratio. And now, the first 1.5TB portable hard drive, from Seagate.

The FreeAgent GoFlex looks like this, and gives you USB 3.0 connectivity (or FireWire 800, if you get the FireWire adapter instead) for an MSRP of $250. Naturally these are more expensive than the desktop, large boy versions, but you're getting a lot of space for your digital media. And if you're a photographer or just a person who has a lot of movies and TV shows digitized and want to keep it with you, it's a nice option.

Leaf's 80MP Camera Backs Are the Highest Resolution Yet

Things are getting freaky over at Photokina, where Leaf's showing off their new Aptus-II 12 and Aptus-II12R digital camera backs. The price: $32,000. The pixels: 80 million, the most of any camera back to date. Good stocking stuffers.

Google Earth For iOS Goes Underwater

Google Earth for iOS just got an update that adds a host of underwater and ocean surface content, as well as spiffing things up for the Retina Display. I consider it the only safe way to explore the ocean.

PlayStation Move Controller is a Cheap Cellphone, Minus Calling Capabilities

On one hand, the Move controller is a very pricey gaming controller. On the other paw, a tear-down revealed "it's quite the bang for the buck," with a processor, accelerometer, gyroscope, Bluetooth, vibrating motor and MEMS compass tucked inside.

iFixit's rip-apart didn't reveal much that we didn't already know about the spec, but apparently it was dead easy to open it up—good news for home-tinkerers. While the vibrating motor can be peeled off somewhat, it's still fastened down to the motherboard, along with the LED, charge contacts and EXT cables. The 1320mAh lithium-ion battery, however, can be disconnected.

Human Fiber Optics Could Give Senses to Artificial Limbs

DARPA, working with the Southern Methodist University Neurophotonics Research Center, is currently developing a system of wild new fiber optics that could give a sense of pressure and feeling to artificial limbs.

Aside from the obvious benefits that a future amputee victim might experience, the implants could also curb tremors, manage pain or treat spinal cord injuries—just to name a few.

Beyond that, DARPA (and SMU) has once again has found a way to blend the present with what was once science fiction:

"Science fiction writers have long imagined the day when the understanding and intuition of the human brain could be enhanced by the lightning speed of computing technologies. With this remarkable research initiative, we are truly beginning a journey into the future that will provide immeasurable benefits to humanity." - Dean Osark, SMU Lyle School of Engineering.

A Facebook Phone?

According to TechCrunch's Michael Arrington's sources, Facebook is creating its own cellphone. As the story goes, they're building the OS, and have tasked a hardware manufacturer to build everything else. Anyone else think this sounds like a Facebook-flavored Peek?

Scared by Google's impending Nexus One (which was announced back in January of this year), Facebook supposedly began planning their phone. Something that would integrate Facebook contacts more deeply than anything Android or any other platforms had done before.

Arrington scribed on a blog post this morning that two Facebook employees, Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos are leading the charge on the OS, using their previous careers as Firefox browser creator and Chrome OS builder (respectively) to launch something Facebook can be proud of. Whether the rest of the world would be proud carrying a Facebook phone is another matter entirely—though I don't have any doubts that this would be a very affordable phone aimed at the young 'uns, if it does amount to something other than speculation.

How to Protect All Your Precious Stuff

From your latest gadgets to your expensive big TV and even your car, here's a complete guide about how to protect all your precious material things from thieves:

Will We Discover An Earth-like Planet By May 2011?

Using math way more complicated than I fully understand, a scientific paper predicts that we will find a potentially habitable Earth-like planet by early May 2011. Oh.

Sam Arbesman and Greg Laughlin, the authors of the scientific paper, used the history and dates of previously discovered exoplanets to develop their system. What they did was:

Using the properties of previously discovered exoplanets, we developed a simple metric of habitability for each planet that uses its mass and temperature to rate it on a scale of 0 to 1, where 1 is Earth-like, and 0 is so very not Earth-like. Plotting these values over time and taking the upper envelope yields a nice march towards habitability.

Using a simple bootstrap sampling analysis, we calculated when a logistic curve fit to such an upper envelope would get to a habitability of approximately 1. And the likeliest time is early to mid-2011, or more precisely, early May 2011.
And if not then, their data shows that there is a 75% chance that the discovery will happen by the end of 2013 (many astronomers predict this timeframe as well). In February 2011, NASA's Kepler mission will release a boatload of data that I'm assuming will help in find this Earthy planet. The universe is so big I'm surprised I didn't realize discovering another Earth-like planet was inevitable. There goes thinking that I'm a unique snowflake.

The Most Powerful Colors on the Web

These are the top 100 web brands—from computer companies to search engines to social web sites to porn sites—ordered by color. Apparently, the "top brands within categories tend to use similar color palettes."

I don't see the tendency myself, but I don't care. Rainbows are pretty!