Always knowing where is north

This little unit makes you able to know where is north all the time:

There is something (especially in male humans) called senso dell'orientamento (in Italian), which does exactly that. Knowing where is north.

However, it's quite easy to follow the directions, if you enter a square building. But there are situations (more than you can imagine!) where your 'direction-sense' will betray you.

Normally you don't even need that sense, so you'll just ignore the failure, or wouldn't even notice it.

But if you drive a few miles on a serpentine road on a shady day, or you enter the underground, and travel a few stations, you'll be surprised.. With this machine you could be more aware of the direction.

However, a few years back I've already read about a similar experiment, and the result was the same: the experimenter was surprised. (So this team just reinvented the compass.)

I'm sure that these kind of augmented reality (or augmented perception) devices wont be mainstream soon, but there are some fields, where it could be useful.

(For instance: navy, rescue teams, pilots, hikers, and maybe geographers.)

http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/enhanced/my-new-sense-organ

Nanoplasmonics

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24093/

Lasers Generate Underwater Sound

"Efficient conversion of light into sound can be achieved by concentrating the light sufficiently to ionize a small amount of water, which then absorbs laser energy and superheats. The result is a small explosion of steam, which can generate a 220 decibel pulse of sound. Optical properties of water can be manipulated with very intense laser light to act like a focusing lens, allowing nonlinear self-focusing (NSF) to take place. In addition, the slightly different colors of the laser, which travel at different speeds in water due to group velocity dispersion (GVD), can be arranged so that the pulse also compresses in time as it travels through water, further concentrating the light. By using a combination of GVD and NSF, controlled underwater compression of optical pulses can be attained."

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/pressRelease.php?Y=2009&R=63-09r

Gigantic jets

Not really our business, but this is just super-cool: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17664-gigantic-jets-blast-electricity-into-upper-atmosphere.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

Gigantic jets shoot upwards from thunderclouds and can reach altitudes above 80 kilometres. Now some people managed to measure the electrical discharge from a single gigantic jet, and it turns out: they are as strong as a lightning hitting the ground.

So... a lot of charge is going to heaven... the sky.. the void.

Okay, this is not 'into the void' at all, but still interesting, even after you've been told that the material there is ionised.

You should read the article: there is a hidden world behind the clouds.

Geobacter, the electricity producing microbe

Geobacter is here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090729210821.htm