Category Archives: Datelines

Copenhagen, IEEE Spectrum, News

Copenhagen Pioneers Smart Electric-Bike Sharing

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Copenhagen, the city that popularized bike sharing in the 1990s, is replacing its coin-operated clunkers with electric motor–assisted bicycles with their own touch-screen instrument panels. The bikes, which the city beta-tested this past September and October, house motors that can provide up to 450 watts of power from a battery pack that’s rechargeable at dozens of docking stations around the city. But all that power may be too much of a good thing.

Beta testers last month “got very good at keeping [their] momentum to where the engine does most of the work,” reports Niklas Marschall, CEO of Cykel DK, the program’s operator. That was the first lesson Cykel DK learned: Riders will go to great lengths to avoid exerting themselves. Continue reading Copenhagen Pioneers Smart Electric-Bike Sharing →

IEEE Spectrum, News, Zurich

Human Brain Project Needs Artificial Brains to Understand Real Ones

mail_image_preview-1-1383232402792If neuroscientist Henry Markram had a dollar for every neuron he wants to map, he still wouldn’t have enough money.

As it happens, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) researcher has a billion euros, or $1.38 billion, from the European Union to spend over the next ten years, but the normal means of determining a neuron’s activity can cost $1 million and take a year. By the time he got through the 3000-odd pathways shown in the photograph of a pinhead-sized slice of brain behind him in a conference room last month, he’d be flat broke, decades older, and he’d still have to map countless more pinheads’ worth of neurons to understand the brain. Continue reading Human Brain Project Needs Artificial Brains to Understand Real Ones →

Frankfurt, IEEE Spectrum, News

Electrifying Formula One

Formula One drivers have always needed physical stamina to endure crushing turns and long races. Now they’ll need to be good sprinters, too. That’s because in lieu of a tire-change pit stop, drivers of the new all-electric Formula E series will sprint from one car to another midrace—twice.

The car swap will allow pit crews to recharge the batteries. The relay-race aspect of Formula E harks back to the Pony Express, but the car itself, unveiled in September at the Frankfurt Motor Show, in Germany, looks ahead to the possible future of electric cars.

Continue reading Electrifying Formula One →

IEEE Spectrum, News, Photos, Zurich

Hospital To Use Microfluid Prototype For Diagnosing Tumors

10.22.13.research.Lucas.16-10-2013-14-28-Chemist Emmanuel Delamarche held a thin slice of human thyroid tissue on a glass slide between his fingers. The tissue poses a mystery: does it contain a tumor or not? Delamarche, who works at IBM Research in Zurich, Switzerland, turned the slide around in his hand as he explained that the normal method of diagnosing a tumor involves splashing a chemical reagent, some of which are expensive, onto the uneven surface of the tissue and watching for it to react with disease markers. A pathologist “looks at them under a microscope, and he’s using his expertise, his judgment, and looks at what chemical he used, what type of color he can see and what part and he has to come up with a diagnosis,” Delamarche says, “he has a very, very hard job, OK?”

IBM is already good at precise application of materials to flat surfaces such as computer chips. Human tissue, sliced thin enough, turns out to receptive to the company’s bag of tricks too. Delamarche, turning to one of three machines on lab benches, explained that a few years ago his team began trying to deliver reagents with more precision. University Hospital Zurich will be testing the results over the next few months.

Read the rest of this post at IEEE Spectrum’s Tech Talk blog: [html] [pdf]