GOOD VIBRATIONS
Ticklish executives beware. Vibrating studs embedded in car seats will soon be telling luxury car drivers which way to turn next. Their purpose is to reduce the number of dashboard display and audio alerts that can distract drivers, says developer Jan van Erp at the TNO Human Factors lab in Soesterberg, Netherlands.
Under a cover on the driver鈥檚 seat is a collection of studs 鈥� the same kind of that make cellphones vibrate 鈥� which are connected to the car鈥檚 satellite navigation system. 鈥淎 vibration beneath your right leg tells you to steer that way,鈥� says van Erp. The driver can also learn a combination of vibrations that give more complex directions, such as 鈥渕ake a U-turn鈥�. An unnamed luxury car firm is developing a vehicle that will use the idea and will be launched in 2006.
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HERE COMES PLASTIC TV
Cheap, lightweight TV displays made of light-emitting plastic are a step closer thanks to a polymer that gives four times the visible light output of previous offerings.
Today鈥檚 light-emitting plastics still require more electric current than the transistors that drive displays can cope with before they burn out. Current injected into such a polymer makes electrons recombine with vacancies called holes to produce a burst of red, green or blue light. But three-quarters of the recombinations do not produce visible light 鈥� so a high, transistor-damaging current has been necessary to make a bright picture.
Now Philips of the Netherlands has found that extending a branch called a carbazole on the carbon backbone of the polymer multiplies the number of recombinations that produce light from 25 per cent to 100 per cent, allowing low-current, transistor-friendly operation.
CUCUMBER CUNNING
The finest minds in cucumber research have solved a major problem. Until now, cucumber sandwiches have defied all attempts to make them on a production line. This is because the flat, wet slices have a high surface tension that makes them cling hopelessly to robotic tools.
But the Silsoe Research Institute in Bedford, UK, has hit on a low-tech solution. The slices simply fall off the end of a thin conveyor belt which hangs above the sandwiches as they pass beneath. Hazlewood Foods of Nottinghamshire is now filling two sandwiches per second using the idea.
