The Airbag's New Angle

It's got your side.

DAVID ZAX

The airbag, which recently turned 30, is estimated to have saved something on the order of 30,000 lives in the U.S. alone. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. The traditional, steering-wheel-embedded airbag does wonders in preventing fatalities in head-on collisions. But there's no rule of the highway that says accidents have to be head-on.

GM recently announced "the industry's first front center airbag"--upon collision, it shoots out from the side of one of the front seats. The idea is to protect the driver in case of a "far-side crash," that is, a collision in which someone else's vehicle strikes your car on the opposite side from where the driver is sitting. The statistics on far-side crashes are grim: GM says that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Fatality Analysis Reporting System database reveals that such crashes account for 11% "of the belted front occupant fatalities in non-rollover impacts between 2004 and 2009 involving 1999 model year or newer vehicles."

"The front center airbag has real potential to save lives in side crashes," Adrian Lund, theInsurance Institute for Highway Safety's president, said.

GM developed the new airbag together with Takata over a period of three years. A video from GM shows the difference the new airbag can make in the life of a test dummy in the event of a far-side crash.

Airbag technology has had a way of proliferating lately. According to the IIHS's site, "[a]irbag technology is continuously developing." Ford has even developed "an inflatable safety belt," whose torso portion inflates in the event of a crash, thereby "distributing crash forces across the torso and chest."

The Toyota iQ microcar, called Scion in the U.S., has a "rear window curtain airbag" that deploys right in front of the rear windshield if someone strikes the microcar from behind. (Autoblog Green has a picture of the device, which looks something like a monstrous neck pillow.) Toyota has also made rear center airbags to prevent rear passengers from smashing into each other in the event of a crash, and the IIHS even reports that engineers have developed airbags for the exteriors of cars--to protect pedestrians.

Read up enough on airbag technology, and you begin to view cars in a different light. That tough aluminum exterior is just a façade--inside, the modern car has gone all soft.

Low-Cost Tablet Runs on Three Watts of Power

Tablet power: Krishna Palem holds a prototype I-slate.
Rice University

COMPUTING

Designed to teach math to students in poor countries, the device will be the first to use a new energy-efficient computing strategy.

• BY KATHERINE BOURZAC

Audio »

After a year of testing in a remote village in India, researchers are ready to scale up production of an ultra-low-power $35 tablet called the I-slate.

The I-slate is designed to teach math and other subjects to students whose schools lack electricity or to students who don't have access to teachers at all. The device will enter full-scale production next year, and will be the first device to apply a low-power technology calledprobabilistic CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) to achieve a longer battery life.

The probabilistic CMOS approach is simple: run an ordinary microchip less stringently, sacrifice a small amount of precision, and get huge gains in energy efficiency in return. Probabilistic CMOS (CMOS refers to the technology behind most of today's chip technologies) works particularly well in graphics and sound processing, since human vision and hearing aren't perfect, and small errors are therefore undetectable.

Krishna Palem, a professor at Rice University and director of the Institute for Sustainable Nanoelectronics at Nanyang Technological University, first demonstrated probabilistic CMOS in 2006. Palem is now working on getting the technology into applications including a low-power hearing aid. In the educational tablet device, Palem says, probabilistic chips will enable huge power savings: the educational tablet will require just three watts of power, meaning it can be powered entirely by small solar cells like those on a pocket calculator.

The I-slate looks similar to an iPad, with a seven-inch liquid-crystal touch screen display. But it's not a full tablet computer—in fact, unlike other hardware supplied to disadvantaged children through efforts such as One Laptop Per Child, it's not a computer at all, and does not have an operating system. "It's an elaborate, single-function device," says Palem. Kids can read from a preloaded textbook or take notes and work out math problems using a stylus on a "scratch pad" to one side of the screen. The device can store a few pages of notes.

Palem's group at Nanyang Technological University is developing the I-slate in collaboration with the Indian nonprofit organization Villages for Development and Learning Foundation and the Los Angeles design firm Seso. Last year, the group tested prototype I-slates loaded up with a math textbook and exercises at a school in Mohd Hussainpalli, a village about 70 miles southwest of Hyderabad. In this region, electricity is unreliable, and some villages don't have teachers.

Marc Mertens, the CEO of Seso, designed the I-slate interface. The challenge, he says, has been to figure out "what is the ideal way to work with students, while making sure the device does as little as it can." That approach keeps hardware costs and power consumption low. Animations and other complex, media-rich tools are just not possible. The math program is based on the standard textbook used in the region and allows students to move at their own pace. They can skip problems if they get stuck. Teachers can download information from each student's device to monitor their progress.

The field tests, which showed that the students' math skills improved when they used the I-slate, were done using prototypes based on conventional chips. Next year, the researchers will begin producing the three-watt, solar-powered model.

"We keep chewing the hardware down, then evaluating the effectiveness of the interface and the lessons on it," says Palem. "Once we are comfortable with the user interface, we will switch in the [probabilistic] chip."

As Palem's team works on upgrading the hardware, Mertens is working on broadening the curriculum that can be put on the I-slate. It's much easier to design a program to grade math tests than written work, he says. "We're exploring how this device could go beyond math and support more creative curricula," he says.

உடலில் முதுமைச்சுருக்கமின்றி இளமையழகுடன் மிளிர வேண்டுமா?

முதுமைச்சுருக்கமின்றி இளமையழகுடன் திகழ உண்ணவேண்டிய அழகான உணவுகள்..!

1.வைட்டமின் ஈ சத்து நிறைந்த பாதாம்,  பிஸ்தா,  முந்திரிப்பருப்பு போன்ற விதை வகைகள்,  வேர்க்கடலை மொச்சைப் பயறு வகைகளை அழகிய உணவு வகைகளாக உங்கள் அன்றாட உணவில் அளவோடு சேர்த்துக் கொள்ளுங்கள். அதன் மூலம் உங்கள் மேனி முதுமைச் சுருக்கமின்றி இளமையுடன் திகழும்!

2.உங்கள் உடம்பின் கொலஸ்ட்ரால் அளவை கட்டுப்படுத்தும் ஹை டென்ஸிட்டி லைபோபுரோட்டீன் (ஹெச்.டி.எல்) சத்து நிறைந்த ஆலிவ் எண்ணெய் உங்கள் மேனியை உலர விடாமல் ஈரப்பசையுடன் மின்னிப்பிரகாசிக்கச் செய்யும்!

3.ஒமேகா 3 கொழுப்பு அமிலச்சத்து,  வைட்டமின் பி 12,  புரோட்டீன் மற்றும் இரும்புச்சத்து நிறைந்த மீன் மற்றும் மீன் எண்ணெய் அழகிய உணவு வகைகளில் முதன்மை உணவாகத் திகழ்கிறது.

ஒமேகா 3 கொழுப்பு அமிலச்சத்து உங்கள் தலையின் மேற்பகுதியை என்றென்றும் ஈரப்பசையுடன் வளமாகத்திகழச்செய்து தலைமுடி செழிப்பாக வளர உதவுகிறது.

4.நாள் முழுக்க வேலை செய்தால் கண்கள் சோர்ந்து போகும்.அப்போது வைட்டமின் ஏ சத்து நிறைந்த கரட்டினை உட்கொள்ளுங்கள். சோர்வு நீங்கி கண்கள் புத்தொளி பெறும். சுறுசுறுப்படைவீர்கள்!

5.கந்தகம் மற்றும் சிலிகான் சத்து நிறைந்த பிராக்கோலி இலைகள் நக வளர்ச்சிக்கு மட்டுமன்றி மன அமைதிக்கும் உகந்தது. பிராக்கோலி மர இலைகள் கிடைக்காவிடில் அதற்கு இணையான காலிபிளவர் மற்றும் பீட்ரூட் இலைகள் நக வளர்ச்சிக்கு பேருதவி புரிகின்றன.

6.வைட்டமின் டி சத்து நிறைந்த பால்,  கால்சியம் சத்து நிறைந்த பச்சை கீரை வகைகள்,  பாஸ்பரஸ் சத்து நிறைந்த பூசணி விதை போன்றவைகளும் அழகிய உணவுப் பட்டியலில் இடம் பெறுகிறது.

அவை எலும்பு வளர்ச்சிக்குத் துணைபுரிந்து,  ஆஸ்ட்டியோபீனியா என்ற எலும்புத்தளர்ச்சி மற்றும் வலுவின்மை என்கிற நோயிலிருந்து காப்பாற்றுகிறது. இந்த உணவு வகைகளை நம் அன்றாட உணவில் அளவோடு உட்கொண்டால் அழகாக வாழலாம்!