A MAN lies comatose on an operating table. The enormous spider that hangs above him has plunged four appendages into his belly. The spider, made of white steel, probes around inside the man’s abdomen then withdraws one of its arms. Held in the machine’s claw is a neatly sealed bag containing a scrap of bloody tissue.

This is a da Vinci robot. It has allowed a surgeon, sitting at a control desk, to remove the patient’s prostate gland in a manner that has several advantages over conventional methods. Yet the future of robotic surgery may lie not only with these hulking beasts but also with devices at the other end of the size spectrum. The surgeons of tomorrow will include tiny robots that enter our bodies and do their work from the inside, with no need to open patients up or knock them out. While nanobots that swim through the blood are still in the realm of fantasy, several groups are developing devices a few millimetres in size. The first generation of “mini-medibots” may infiltrate our bodies through our ears, eyes and lungs, to deliver drugs, take tissue samples or install medical devices.

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How would you like to have your very own shape-shifter? Perhaps a liquid metal T-1000 Terminator to help around the house. Or a universal tool kit that could reshape itself into any implement at the press of a button. For an astronaut in orbit, an army mechanic in remote terrain or even a homeowner trying to fix a furnace on a cold winter night, it could be just the thing.

Well, one day maybe. The traditional approach to building shape-shifting devices has been to use materials based on shape memory alloys, polymer sheets or nanoparticles. But these have proved difficult to control and have other limitations, so researchers have begun taking a different and less exotic tack.

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That gray-and-black Kindle screen not fancy enough for you? Futurist and inventor extraordinaire Ray Kurzweil dreamed up an elegant alternative, and he’s calling it Blio. He’s aiming this prettified user interface at the iPhone, iPod Touch, computer screens, and we presume, the rumored Apple iSlate.

Kurzweil’s idea includes his specialty, text-to-speech support, building on his decades-long expertise that continues today with the eminently useful Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software. Add that to Blio’s enhanced color support, precise text formatting, and its appealing front screen with drop-shadowed books, and you might join us in thinking Kurzweil is onto something.

Blio will be rolled out officially at CES 2010 next week, and we’ll be there to assess how adept is at displaying colorful magazines, picture books, and anything else that would benefit from a magazine-like presentation. Will there be an Amazon Kindle that can measure up to this and all the other upcoming tablets? Are e-readers not versatile enough?

Via Gizmodo

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Finally, we’ve reached the pinnacle of our toaster fetish: the Magimix Le Toaster Vision, letting you see those slices gradually turning just the shade of golden brown that meets your preference. Its double-pane insulated glass walls make all the proceedings self-evident, aided by four heating elements situated above and below.

Our only concern is that perhaps those heating elements won’t be able to evenly heat the toast. Will they scorch the bottom and top while leaving the middle untouched? Most other toasters seem to have a problem evenly browning bread, too, so might as well watch as the Maillard reaction does its magic.

It’s a real product, but pricing isn’t available just yet. Behold la vidéo sexy:

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While we constantly stuff our faces with leftover Christmas cakes and pies, we’ve been looking for ways to make the process more efficient. Here’s our answer, the Magisso Cake Server, a design concept by Finnish student Maria Kivijärvi.

Slice this undulating stainless steel utensil into that object of your desire, and with a light squeeze you can lift it out, hefting it into the vicinity of your piehole with very little effort. The result is a subtly rounded slice, ready for immediate consumption.

With a little luck, this design concept will be manufactured in time for next year’s Yuletide bacchanal of gluttony and overconsumption.

Via Design Milk

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Sure, a motorcycle should be fast, I guess. But it should also be intimidating as hell, scaring people out of your way so you can blow on by them. And motorcycles don’t get much more intimidating than the RK Racer.

This custom cycle is built on the body of a Buell 1200. It’s got two 23-inch wheels that look ready to tear on down the highway. It’s a one of a kind job, so you won’t be able to buy this at your local shop, but if you ask nicely and pony up enough cash, I bet RK Concepts will make one just for you.

RK Concepts via BornRich

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Most Subway shops are pretty accessible to the normal lunchtime crowd. But the new one being introduced to the workers at the new tower at Ground Zero in NYC, well, it’s a little harder to access: it’s in a shipping container being held up by a crane.

Yes, it’s a full-blown Subway with a full menu and fresh baked bread every day. It’s location allows workers on the skyscraper to eat without going all the way down to the ground, which saves precious time. As the building goes up, so will the Subway, jumping up floor to floor with its crane.

AP via Gizmodo via Neatorama

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If it’s high time you had some sweetness in your life, then this could be the girl for you! Sweetie is a gorgeous little lady who will make a great companion for her new family

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Dictionaries are great, but then you’ve got to search through them for the word you’re looking to define. Too much work, I say! That’s why I’m excited about the Unichal Dixau DX3 Digital Dictionary.

The DX3 is a small device with a camera that you point at whatever word you want defined. It then looks it up and displays the definition on its screen. Sure, this could be easily replicated on a smartphone with a decent app, but, well. Uh, OK, so I guess it’s not worth creating an entire device around. But until that app is made, it’s the only option you’ve got, lazybones.

Aving via Oh Gizmo! via Gizmodo

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Last December world leaders met in Copenhagen to add more hot air to the climate debate. That is because although the impacts humanity would like to avoid–fire, flood and drought, for starters–are pretty clear, the right strategy to halt global warming is not. Despite decades of effort, scientists do not know what “number”–in terms of temperature or concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere–constitutes a danger.

When it comes to defining the climate’s sensitivity to forcings such as rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, “we don’t know much more than we did in 1975,” says climatologist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, who first defined the term “climate sensitivity” in the 1970s. “What we know is if you add watts per square meter to the system, it’s going to warm up.”

[More]

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Under President Obama’s Executive Order demanding 30% Federal fossil fuel cuts, many Federal Agencies are now beating the rest of us to extraordinary heights of tree-huggery.

The Military has been signing contracts for dazzlingly climate-friendly items like the largest solar plant in America (Fort Irwin just signed up for a whopping 1 GW of solar) or million-dollar tests of advanced jet fuels that have practically no carbon footprint.

But here’s something even the non-military agencies with fleet-purchasing needs will appreciate as they hunt for solutions to reducing fossil dependence 30% by 2020.

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Financially speaking, electric cars are a tough sell in today’s economic climate. The handful of pure-electric cars for sale right now, like the Tesla Roadster, cost more than most people gross in two years of work. Even when you apply generous federal and state tax incentives, like those in Colorado, most of us simply can’t afford an electric car right now. With time, prices will come down, but how long must we wait for an affordable electric car that actually looks like a car?

If Better Place’s plan works, a true electric car could hit the West Coast of the U.S. as soon as 2012 for $20,000 or less before any tax incentives are applied.

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It’s not easy making printers look cool, but Epson pulls it off by merging a Japanese tradition with 3D technology. The end of the year greeting cards in Japan called “nengajo” are a staple in the country, but Epson updates the concept by allowing you to create your own augmented reality greeting cards using just an Epson Colorio printer and a webcam.

The cards feature your face wrapped in the character representing the Japanese new year (2010 is the year of the tiger), and can be see as 3D imagery when viewed via a webcam on your computer. You can see video of how the 3D greeting cards work here

Via Epson

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