The Indoor Personal Mobility Robot isn’t the first robotic wheelchair we’ve seen, but it’s decidedly the most Japanese-looking. Just look at those cutesy eyes!

Developed by the University of Tokyo as a prototype for what could later be the real deal, the Indoor Personal Mobility Robot should be familiar to anyone who’s spent some time on a Segway, though here you’re sitting down. The seat of the wheelchair has sensors in it so that it knows when someone is occupying it, and, once you’re on the round cushion, your movements — leaning forward, back and turning side-to-side — will signal to the chair where you want to go.

Really, though, the main draw of the chair would be its looks, as it’s though that it would be a great aid to the elderly and anyone who’d need to get around the house. (Well, a house with no stairs.) Could its bug-like antennae eyes win over our seniors? Who knows!

Check out a video of the chair in action below:

DigInfoNews, via CrunchGear

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Oscar would love to find a home with his best friend Sasha, please read both their stories. If he cannot find a home with Sasha, he would love to find some special people who will enjoy walks and snuggling up on the sofa with him. He is also an actor in his spare time – a real character!

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Sasha is an affectionate girl who would like nothing more than to find a home with her best friend Oscar who is listed separately. If she cannot find a home for both of them, she would be happy to curl up on the sofa in a home where there are older children and no cats or other dogs. She would be more than happy if her new owner is a man as she really seems to particularly like men! Please read Oscar’s story too

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Two of the world’s biggest freshwater fish are in big trouble, come reports from scientists in North and South America. [More]

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More than a year after 1 billion or so gallons of water polluted by ash spilled from a coal-burning power plant in Tennessee , the Obama administration is struggling to decide whether to declare such waste "hazardous."

Slapping a hazardous label on coal ash and other coal byproducts would trigger the writing of a federal disposal standard to replace a patchwork of state regulations. The standard could outright ban wet storage ponds — such as the one that ruptured in December 2008 in Kingston, Tenn. — and require landfill liners, leak controls and groundwater monitoring at ash dumps.

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What if the only thing life has to fear is life itself? [More]

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You think that Canon DSLR you got for Christmas has a lot of megapixels? Try this: The camera made for the Dark Energy Survey is the size of a car and captures images with 570 megapixels. Created from 74 individual CCDs, the image sensor is over three feet in diameter. Even with the camera’s sophisticated data-acquisition system, each photo is so big that it takes 17 seconds to capture.

That might lead to some serious motion blur if the camera were made for taking pictures of anything other than distant galaxies. The Dark Energy Survey is a Fermilab project with the goal of discovering evidence of dark energy, the still-theoretical phenomenon that’s probably responsible for the universe’s accelerating expansion. I’m no investigative physicist (bad decisions in my last year of college), but tracking 300 million galaxies with the most colossal digital camera every made sounds like a pretty good way to start looking for it.

Wired, via Gizmodo

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The Re Remote is a small accessory for your iPhone that turns it into a remote control for your home theater. The $70 dongle pairs with a special (free) app that lets you set up your phone just like a normal universal remote, with activities, macros, learning ability, customizable buttons — the whole bit. The dongle communicates via infrared, so it’s perfectly compatible with most gear, and yes, it will work with the iPod Touch, too.

That’s all well and good, but is the fundamental premise of the product — using your phone as a remote control — really sound? Strangely, I’m leaning towards no, mainly because I remember some surprisingly serious arguments over the remote control in my household growing up. I really wouldn’t want that happening with my iPhone. Sure, you could just use the Re/iPhone combo as a secondary remote, but then why have it at all? Anyone dying to have this? If so, it should be out by spring.

New Kinetics

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This home theater PC is being touted as eco-friendly thanks to its low power consumption and cypress wood and sheep leather case, but that’s not really what’s impressing me about it. Eco-friendly or not eco-friendly, this is one beautiful machine.

Loaded up with an Intel Core2Duo processor, 4GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive and HDMI outputs, it looks to be a pretty solid HTPC. Of course, there’s no price available for it, so whether or not it’s a reasonable option has yet to be seen.

DesignHara via Yanko Design

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For 33 consecutive years, the Ford F-150 has been America’s best selling vehicle-car, truck, SUV, basically anything with a motor that movies. Moving more than 500,000 units in an average year, the F-150 is just a sales beast, and it is only getting better.

A report by PickupTrucks.com is saying that the F-150 will be getting the new Twin Independent Variable Camshaft Timing (Ti-VCT) 3.7 liter V6 in the near future. This is the same engine that delivers 305 horsepower and 30 MPG in the 2011 Mustang.

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When I visited my former college roommate in northern England last summer, one thing that stood out in my mind was the price of gas. My roommate did the math for me (since they sell it by liter rather than by the gallon) and it was about $10 per gallon. Can you imagine spending $150 to fill your tank?

Most of these high prices come from gas taxes, and the idea has been bounced around the US too. It isn’t a very popular idea here, but GM’s “Maximum” Bob Lutz thinks a higher gas tax would help. And this from the guy who declared global warming a “crock of shit”.

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How do you take an object that is universally bland and boring and suddenly make it new and interesting? Colors! This LED alarm clock looks like every other boring alarm clock you’ve ever seen, with one important difference: the numbers are a rainbow of colors. A nicer way to start your day, to be sure.

Amazon via 7 Gadgets

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Right now, refilling your electric vehicle is quite a timely process. Even the best EV charging systems can take several hours to fully charge a depleted battery, and while this might be fine and dandy for commuter cars, it makes living with an electric car as a daily driver a bit more difficult.

But fast charging stations are coming, and could be a real game changer. Coulomb Technologies and Aker Wade are teaming up their technologies to bring a “Level III” charging stations to the world later this year. These stations could charge an electric car in as little as 15 minutes. Now that’s impressive.

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Here’s a brilliantly simple idea: the Gravity Ruler is a very simple way to weigh your luggage before heading off on a trip. With airlines getting more and more strict about what you can carry on and check, it’s important to know where you stand before heading to the airport.

The Gravity Ruler is simply a bungee cord that you loop through your luggage handle. As you lift it up, an orange band on the cord moves through a clear sheath to show you just how much it weighs. Perfect!

Via Core77

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Put aside the fact that each one of these works of art incorporating OLED displays costs around $100,000. Just think of it as a peek into the future, when OLED screens are commonplace and cheap.

Nanobrick calls these media frames “Miyoul,” and as you can see in the gallery below, there’s a variety of styles, incorporating LCD and OLED screens of various sizes.

Yeah, five years from now, you’ll see them on sale at Wal-Mart for $99.99.

Via OLED Display

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Editor’s Note : On Jan. 18, diplomats from 65 countries at the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva will try to agree to begin talks on a treaty that would stop the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Cutting off production of fissile materials for weapons could provide the basis for irreversible reductions of all nuclear weapons.

In the article below, Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian and Frank von Hippel, all at Princeton University and affiliated with the International Panel on Fissile Materials, propose the basic pillars of a fissile material cutoff treaty, how compliance with such a treaty could be verified and who should pay the tab. We’d like your views, which could help inform ongoing discussions of what should be in this treaty and how it might work, as well as help us further develop the article; please use the Comment feature at the end of this page.

[More]

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Okay Apple fanboys and fangirls, this post is for you — all you others, move along.

Now that they’re gone, it’s time to feast your eyes on this info-packed graphic showing most of the latest Apple iTablet rumors. Never mind that we can’t even be sure this alleged tablet will ever even exist, however, as with all things Apple, the rumor mill has taken on a life of its own, showering free advertising down on that revered fruit company from Cupertino.

Be sure to click on the gallery graphic below for a full-sized version, showing you 18 iTablet rumors, along with color-coded assessments of how true they might be. Our take: It’ll be like a 10-inch iPhone, no OLED screen, and it’ll be overpriced.

Via The Green Room

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Well isn’t this the prettiest thermostat you’ve ever seen? It’s the SilverStat 7 from SilverPAC, the same folks who created that elaborate Evolution 5500 remote control we showed you a few weeks ago. This is the smartest thermostat yet, communicating with utility companies, eliminating that pesky meter reading chore they must do every month. It keeps tabs on your energy usage, and similar to that TED 5000 system we reviewed last month, it helpfully displays to you in pretty graphics exactly how much power you’ve been sucking lately.

This is not just for the benefit of the energy mongers and treehuggers. Its Wi-Fi interface and 7-inch display makes it a highly capable network player, showing streaming photos, music and content from your PC or the Internet. It has built-in speakers, Z-Wave home automation so you can manage your lighting and appliances, FM radio, and heck, you can even check your email on the thing.

Look at the gallery full of screenshots of all the various functions this spectacular thermostat can perform. Oh yeah, one more thing: It’s a seven-day programmable thermostat that controls your heating and air conditioning. The wizards at SilverPAC aren’t talking price yet.

SilverPAC, via Gizmodo

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Erik Schiegg has come up with one of the more WTF? gadgets of 2010 — a solar-powered charger disguised as a dog coat. While perhaps not quite as pointless as the pooch oxygen chamber, Schiegg’s creation uses a 2600 mA solar charger with different voltage outputs and built-in lamp on top of a basic dog jacket, and the Swiss national claims the $60 invention charges his Android phone in super-quick time.

Via Make

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If you’re the kind of geek that likes to show off exactly how tech obsessed you are to random visitors the USB Webmail Notifier is an easy purchasing decision. Of course there are tons of email notifiers currently available that fit snugly into your web browser, but nothing says self-importance like watching a giant email icon light up every time you get a new missive.

Created by Chinese device distributor Dream Cheeky, the unit supports Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook Express, and POP3 mail, but only works on Windows PCs. Although the company remains murky on the pricing, you can pick up your USB Webmail Notifier here.

Via Aving

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NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, the STS-129 space shuttle crew and members of the Congressional Black Caucus pose for a group photo at the Capitol Building, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010, in Washington. Back row from left to right: U.S. Rep Donna Edwards (D-MD), U.S. Rep Diane Watson (D-CA), NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, astronauts Leland Melvin, Mike Forman, Robert Satcher, Barry Wilmore, Randy Breznik, and U.S. Rep Mel Watt (D-NC). Front row from left to right: U.S. Rep Robert Scott (D-VA), U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla), U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), U.S. Rep. Donna Christensen (D-VI) and U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ). The crew of STS-129 presented the CBC with a montage commemorating the shuttle mission. Image Credit: NASA/Paul E. Alers

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