New laptop battery lasts for a month

Samsung has developed a new fuel cell based laptop battery that can power a laptop for a month before a recharge is required. This is a giant step from 2-4 hours of battery-operation-time in current technology. It's just what we need in this time of mobile computing :)

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Image-based Search

A start-up, Polar Rose says it can search images on the Web to find pictures of people, delivering better results than today's text-based search engines. Polar Rose claims they can make photos searchable by analyzing their content and recognizing the people in them.

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Do-it-yourself Web

Teqlo, Inc., a Silicon Valley company at the forefront of user assembled application technology that makes it possible for the non-developers in small through large enterprises to assemble and publish their own applications, then invite others to use them. Jeff Nolan, the CEO Teqlo Inc., previously led the Apollo Strategy Group for SAP. Teqlo the company is committed to the vision that users should be able to assemble functional web applications without having to know how to program.

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Hakia.com

Hakia.com is a semantic (meaning-based) search engine that promises better search results. The company's motto is "You should never search after searching." Here's a message from the CEO of Hakia.com; Dr. Riza Beran. The message has good points and venture capitals thinks same way because Hakia.com could raise $5 million recently. The New York and Istanbul based company will kick-off at New Year's Eve at Times Square, New York.

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Direct brain control of humanoid robot

Researchers have demonstrated a proof-of-concept EEG based BCI that allows control of a humanoid robot. The BCI allows a human subject to command the robot, via brain activity, to pick up a desired object and bring it to a desired location. BCI uses 32 electrodoes and preliminary results show 94% accuracy.

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Google Patent Search

Google has announced a patent search engine. All patents available through Google Patent Search come from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

http://www.google.com/patents

Belief in placebos can release natural painkillers in patients

Using brain scans, acupuncture and the nasty stuff that puts the sting in pepper spray, researchers are learning how placebos play out in our brains.These innocuous medications - long used as decoys in clinical drug trials - aren't supposed to have real chemical effect on the body.

But experience over the years has taught doctors that some patients who take placebos experience real relief.Now brain scans show that when test subjects think a placebo is a real medication or treatment, the expectation of relief can release natural painkillers. That, in turn, can ease the discomfort of ailments from overworked muscles to a stinging hand.

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Conscious Machine

Can we ever build such a device? This was discussed at the debate and a lecture that followed MIT's celebration of the 70th anniversary of Alan Turing's paper "On Computable Numbers" which was published in 1936...

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