iPhone 6:

  THE iPhone 6, expected to launch later this year, will monitor the temperature, humidity and pressure of its surroundings, according to an Apple analyst based in China.

  Sun Chang Xu, the chief analyst at ESM-China, quoted a contact within Apple who works on MEMS – micro-electromechanical systems – for the company. She said that the new phone would be able to gather information about the weather and relay it to Apple.

  According to technology news website The Register, the iPhone 6 is likely to monitor not only meteorological conditions but also the condition of its owner.

  “The addition of sensors tallies with a recent leak which showed Apple was developing a health monitoring system and an app called Health Book,” the site reports. “The rumoured iWatch would probably work with this app to help [users] monitor their fitness levels and chart day to day exercise.”

  If these sensors do turn up in the iPhone 6, which is expected later this year, Apple would be following the lead of its great rival, Samsung.

  The Samsung Galaxy S4, unveiled a year ago, included humidity and temperatures sensors, and the Galaxy S5 was launched last month alongside a suite of health-monitoring apps.

  Reports published earlier in the year suggested that Apple was planning an app codenamed Healthbook timed to coincide with the launch of the iPhone 6.

  “The software will be capable of monitoring and storing fitness statistics such as steps taken, calories burned, and miles walked,” 9to5Mac.com reported. “Furthermore, the app will have the ability to manage and track weight loss.”

New Robot Fish

  

  Robot fish could one day be enlisted for undercover science missions.

A soft-bodied robot that looks and swims like a fish was unveiled by researchers at MIT this week; they say something like it might be able to infiltrate schools of real fish and gather data about their behavior.

  The autonomous robot swishes side-to-side underwater as different parts of its body are inflated and deflated with a fluid stored as a gas onboard, the creators explained in a video. The result is a flexible robofish can execute escape maneuvers just as quickly as a real fish can — turning its body in a mere 100 milliseconds.

  For years roboticists have been working on durable, flexible bots that mimic other squishy creatures, such as earthwormlike robots that could survive blows from a hammer and octopus-inspired bots that could squeeze into small places for exploration or search-and-rescue operations. 

  The newly revealed robot belongs to a long line of fish-inspired creations, including RoboTuna, an underwater automaton with 2,843 parts controlled by six motors that came out of MIT in 1994.

The Printed Face

  This article was originally published at The Conversation.The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The news that a man in Wales was able to have his face reconstructed after a serious motorbike accident has brought the wonder of 3D printing to the mainstream. It’s the result of changes in regulation and improvements in the technology and is the start of something much, much bigger.

  The use of a combination of CT scanning and 3D printing methods to treat patients who are suffering from injury or defect is incredibly powerful. As has happened in Stephen Power’s case, it allows expert surgeons to manipulate the precise geometry of the patient’s face or other part of the body before the operation. That means the necessary parts can be designed and manufactured in a normal, albeit slightly compressed, design timescale.

Futuristic Vertical-Flight Aircraft

  

  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — the branch of the U.S. Department of Defense tasked with developing new technologies for the military — is looking to make "radical improvements" to futuristic-looking, helicopter-type vehicles that are designed to take off, hover and land vertically.

  The agency has awarded funds to four companies to develop unmanned vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, as part of the first phase of DARPA's VTOL Experimental Plane, or VTOL X-Plane, program. Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation, The Boeing Company, Karem Aircraft, Inc., and Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, received contracts to design vehicles that can achieve a higher top speed without sacrificing range or efficiency, according to DARPA officials.

  "The proposals we've chosen aim to create new technologies and incorporate existing ones that VTOL designs so far have not succeeded in developing," program manager Ashish Bagai said in a statement. "We're eager to see if the performers can integrate their ideas into designs that could potentially achieve the performance goals we've set."

Invisibility

   Cloaking devices, a staple of science fiction (think Harry Potter), are getting closer to reality. Researchers at Duke University have built a structure that would hide anything under it from sonar — at least in air. 

   Made of sheets of perforated plastic, the pyramid-shaped cloak changes the shape and speed of sound waves as they hit it. Those changes make the sound waves appear to reflect off the surface the pyramid is standing on, as though it wasn't there.

   To build the cloak, Lucian Zigoneanu, Bogdan-Ioan Popa and Steven Cummer modeled the way sound waves act on a computer. They tried several simulated shapes, and eventually came up with the pyramid design, made with sheets that have holes in them.

DARPA and Drone Cars:

   The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the arm of the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for advancing military technology, is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the DARPA Grand Challenge, an ambitious, first-of-its-kind race between robotic, self-driving cars.

   The Grand Challenge, which occurred on March 13, 2004, involved 15 self-driving cars trying to navigate a 142-mile (228 kilometers) course between Barstow, Calif., and Primm, Nev. The contest, while seemingly primitive at the time, has since led to vast improvements in robotic technology, and has demonstrated the value of competitions as a way to drive innovation and collaboration among scientists and engineers.

   The DARPA Grand Challenge was designed to foster and accelerate the development of autonomous vehicles that could one day be used to transport cargo and other military supplies into combat zones without endangering the lives of human drivers, according agency officials. The contest was also DARPA's first major attempt to use prize money as an incentive for innovation within the research community. [Photos: The Robotic Evolution of Self-Driving Cars]

New Tattoo Makes Sweet Music

  

  Tattoos are all about self-expression, and now one artist has taken that body modification to an extra sensory dimension: A new project allows the musically inclined to make music from their bicep body art.

  The project, called "Reading my Body" was created by Russian visual artist Dmitry Morozov. The project uses rail-mounted sensors that crawl across the skin to read a tattoo that resembles a chunky barcode. The "notes" and instructions for the sensors are inked into flesh.

Luckily, the sensors can move on their own or be controlled manually, meaning each tattoo isn't limited to just one score, Ubergizmo reported. So even though the tattoo may be forever, anyone getting inked won't be forced to listen to the same song for the rest of their life.

tificial Intelligence Company

     
       The founders of Facebook and SpaceX and actor Ashton Kutcher are investing $40 million in a company working to create an artificial brain.

The company Vicarious FPC has the ambitious goal of recreating the neocortex — the part of the brain that controls movement, vision, language and other complex processes — on a computer. The result would be a computer that thinks like a person, "Except it doesn’t have to eat or sleep," Vicarious co-founder Scott Phoenix told the Wall Street Journal. But achieving that goal could be decades away.

        In the meantime, Facebook could use artificial intelligence (AI) to convert huge amounts of data into a knowledge database, and the social networking company is already using AI for facial recognition in photos. The WSJ asked Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, and Kutcher about their investment, but both refused to comment.

Phoenix said that Vicarious aims to create a computer that could recognize not only shapes and objects, but textures.

       The company has been very tight-lipped about how its technology works, and won't disclose its location for fear of corporate espionage or hacking, the WSJ reported.

Wind Industry

   The wind industry has gone to great lengths over the years to snap up the best properties for its farms, often looking to remote swaths of prairie or distant mountain ridges to maximize energy production and minimize community opposition.

  Now, it is reaching for the sky.

  With new technology allowing developers to build taller machines spinning longer blades, the industry has been able to produce more power at lower cost by capturing the faster winds that blow at higher elevations. This has opened up new territories, in places like Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, where the price of power from turbines built 300 feet to 400 feet above the ground can now compete with conventional sources like coal.

  And efforts to capture the wind could go even higher. In perhaps the most extreme example, a start-up called Altaeros Energies is preparing to introduce its first commercial pilot of an airborne wind turbine in Alaska.

  Known as the BAT — or Buoyant Airborne Turbine — the enormous, white helium-filled doughnut surrounding a rotor will float about 1,000 feet in the air and feed enough electricity to power more than a dozen homes through one of the cables tethering it to the ground.

The magnetic MacBook power cord fix

  Apple’s MagSafe connector, first introduced in 2006, was sheer brilliance: a magnetically attached laptop power cord. If someone trips on the cord, it snaps out harmlessly instead of dragging your $1,000 laptop to the floor.

  And then came the MagSafe 2. This “improved” connector, born in 2012 and now standard on all Apple laptops, features a thinner, weaker magnet. Much weaker. It falls out all the time. Uncross your legs — it falls out. Turn to reach for a beverage — it falls out. Yell at the TV — it falls out.

  Desperate Mac fans have tried to Frankenstein together all manner of kludgy solutions, from clothespins to duct tape. But that dark era is behind us now, thanks to the Snuglet ($20 for two).

  The Snuglet is a tiny metal liner for the laptop’s power jack, with all the weight and bulk of a staple. Somehow, this thin band of additional metal amplifies the force of the MagSafe 2’s magnet. Without adding anything visible at all, the Snuglet gives you a cord that doesn’t fall out.

Thief-proof iPhones

Apple's new operating system comes with the best theft-deterring software on a smartphone yet.

  Not sure if you’ve heard: iPhone theft is a booming business in big cities. In New York City, for example, Apple picking (as it’s called) represents 14 percent of all crimes, producing the city’s first crime increase in 20 years.

  Both iPhones and Android phones offer a “Find My Phone” feature, which lets you track down a stolen phone. Trouble is, all the bad guy has to do is erase the phone — and boom. You can’t find it anymore. It’s clean and ready to sell into the black market.

  Well, not anymore. In iOS 7, Apple slipped in a mind-bogglingly brilliant new feature called Activation Lock. It’s very, very simple: Nobody can erase an iPhone — or turn off Find My iPhone — without entering the owner’s Apple password. Which the mugger almost certainly won't know.

  A phone that can’t be used, erased or resold is as useful to a thief as a brick. Once word gets out that stealing an iPhone is useless, thieves will have to find some other way to make a living. Home construction or church work, maybe.