Apple Announces Launch Event for Sept 10

Apple send out a colourful invitationl last Tuesday to a September 10 launch event at which it is widely expected to announce a new version of its iPhone. The invitation, which featured a palette of brightly coloured dots above the tag line “this should brighten everyone’s day,” followed numerous media reports that the company would be introducing a line of low-cost iPhones in a variety of playful colours. 

 

Artificial Heart to Alert Heart Attacks

Scientists have long searched for a durable artificial heart that can work as efficiently as the one supplied by nature. Now Carmat, a Paris based company, has designed an artificial heart fashioned in part from cow tissue. The device, soon to be tested in patients with heart failure, is regulated by sensors, software and microelectronics. And its power will come from two external, wearable lithium-ion batteries. 

 

Yahoo Rolls Out its New Logo

After an extensive amount of build-up, Yahoo has finally unveiled its brand new logo. Overall the look is cleaner and thinner, and it is a new sans-serif typeface created by Yahoo. The logo is still purple, though a shade darker, and features all the usual uppercase letters in the same order finished off by the signature enthusiastic exclamation point, which dances around in some versions.  

 

Now, 3D Model to Pinpoint Earthquakes 

Scientists have developed a new 3D model of the Earth to allow them to pinpoint the sources of earthquakes and explosions around the world more accurately than ever.  Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory partnered to develop a 3-D model of the Earth’s mantle and crust called SALSA3D, or Sandia-Los Alamos 3D.  The model uses a scalable triangular tessellation and seismic tomography to map the Earth’s “compressional wave seismic velocity,” a property of the rocks and other materials inside the Earth that indicates how quickly compressional waves travel through them and is one way to accurately locate seismic events, Sandia geophysicist Sandy Ballard said. 

 

Twitter to Solve Traffic Woes

A new method may put an end to traffic woes by collecting information on transportation problems following mass events, like football matches, using tweets made by citizens on Twitter, researchers say. “The ability of social networks to produce information on heavy traffic, road hazards, quality of service of public transportation and more is valuable to decision makers,” said Dr Tsvi Kuflik, the Head of the Information Systems Department at the University of Haifa.