dv-depot.com » Table Of The Elements

Livescribe’s Pulse smartpen gets an app store

othertech — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:07:42 +0000

In the end, everything will have an app store. Take the Pulse smartpen from Livescribe, for example. The company, whose pen is quite cool (it records what you write and can “remember” things on page, allowing for paper-based calculators and control panels), has just launched an app store for its 2- and 4GB Pulse pens.

The store offers multiple games, tools, and study aids for prices that range from free to about $2. You can download apps here and then upload to your pen.

Take Video Poker, for example. To play, you select it on your pen and then draw Deal, Bet, and card shapes. You then select the cards you want to keep and tap deal. The pen will tell you if you’ve won. My favorite app, however, is the periodic table of the elements in Braille, demoed below:

The amazing thing is that this application replaces a $1,000 physical device used by the blind to learn chemistry. By printing a Braille-embedded sheet at home, you can essentially learn everything there is to know about the elements using the pen and a piece of paper. Other cool apps include a classical music learning system and a clever piano.

Does a smart pen need an app store? I don’t know. However, the fact that something so small and so cool can have a rich developer community is quite impressive.

Funky Unique And Cool Shower Curtains

othertech — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:28:16 +0000

You can show a little bit of your personality by using a special shower curtain, and put away the old boring one. This would cheer up the bathroom, and will give it a fresh, cool look. You can pick any of the hundreds of shower curtains models available, and make a change in your house. If you change it, it will be more fun to start the day. The shower will be a little more interesting and fun part of the day!
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You can bring the most famous movie scene directly into your bathroom. If you have some guests which are staying too long, you can use it to make them change their mind, and leave sooner. You can place the ” Mad Person Psychoshower Curtain” on the shower tube, or you can use it just a decorative piece, away from it. When the “victims” come out of the shower, and sees the decoration, he or she will have a pretty frightening surprise.

If you are a chemistry geek who likes to start the day not with a hot shower, but with some splashes of H2O, then “The Periodic Table of the Elements” is the right shower curtain for you. You can memorize the atomic weight of Zirconium while you take a shower, or you can learn a lot of new things about the elements in the periodic table.

The Top 500 SAT Words shower curtain in specially created for those who are studying for exams like SAT, GRE or LSAT, and contains, as its name says too, 500 of the most used words in the SAT exercises. It is perfect also for people who love crossword puzzles, because this way you can be sure that your vocabulary won’t be washed out, even if you are in the shower. In the same style, you can buy a “teacher” shower curtain, which contains words from another language, and you can easily start learning that language.

If you like subliminal messages, or you are following a psychoteraphy in which you must repeat yourself some phrases, “I Love Myself” shower curtain is perfect for you. It displays self-confident messages like: “I love me”, “I’m so clean”, “aren’t I gorgeous” , which can make a better start for your days.

There are a lot of models for shower curtains: for travellers, for cat lovers, retro, hot ones (with flames on them, graphics of course), with exotic animal prints, and many many other models. I think it’s impossible not to find what you like, in this huge variety of curtains available.

Magnetic “superatom” may lead to molecular electronic devices

othertech — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:20:45 +0000

Scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University have revealed in the journal Nature Chemistry that they’ve created a “magnetic superatom”, or “a stable cluster of atoms that can mimic different elements of the periodic table”. The poor Periodic Table of the Elements barely gets any respect as it is from the kids today (quick: do you know your Noble Gases, or the atomic weight of Nobilium?), now it has to compete with fancypants super atoms!

This new superatom is made of one vanadium and eight cesium atoms, and it “acts like a tiny magnet that can mimic a single manganese atom in magnetic strength while preferentially allowing electrons of specific spin orientation to flow through the surrounding shell of cesium atoms”. What good is this new superatom? According to Shiv N. Khanna, Ph.D., professor in the VCU Department of Physics:

A combination such as the one we have created here can lead to significant developments in the area of “molecular electronics,” a field where researchers study electric currents through small molecules. These molecular devices are expected to help make non-volatile data storage, denser integrated devices, higher data processing and other benefits.

The researchers are also exploring non-conductive magnetic superatoms by combining gold and manganese.

Via Spintronics Info.