360 DEGREES Weblog

We’ve been keeping an eye on efforts to make the dreaded dentist’s drill a thing of the past for some time, and now there’s more good news on the horizon for the cavity-prone (and pain-phobic). Engineers at the University of Missouri (MU) in conjunction with Nanova, Inc. have successfully lab-tested a plasma “brush” that can painlessly clean and prep cavities so well, there’s no need for mechanical abrasion prior to filling. The really good news is that human clinical trials begin soon and, if all goes well, the device could hit dentist’s offices as soon as late 2013.

The most amazing window ever created by humankind is not on this planet, but floating in space, the most spectacular part of the International Space Station. It’s the ISS Cupola. This animation shows how it was installed.

I wish everyone on Earth had the opportunity to look through that glass.

Thanks Gizmodo

Tiny video cameras mounted on the end of long thin fiber optic cables, commonly known as endoscopes, have proven invaluable to doctors and researchers wishing to peer inside the human body. Endoscopes can be rather pricey, however, and like anything else that gets put inside peoples’ bodies, need to be sanitized after each use. A newly-developed type of endoscope is claimed to address those drawbacks by being so inexpensive to produce that it can be thrown away after each use. Not only that, but it also features what is likely the world’s smallest complete video camera, which is just one cubic millimeter in size.

National Geographic Channel have created a real-life version of the animated film Up — launching a house thousands of metres into the air using balloons.

A team of scientists, engineers, and two world-class balloon pilots successfully launched a 16′ X 16′ house 18′ tall with 8′ coloured weather balloons from a private airfield east of Los Angeles, and set a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted. Using 300 helium-filled weather balloons, the lightweight building reached an altitude of more than 3000m and remained in the air for about an hour. The filming of the event, from a private airstrip, will be part of a new National Geographic Channel series called How Hard Can it Be?, which will premiere in fall 2011.

Promising early results from research undertaken by the University of Abertay Dundee and the Scottish Police Services Authority could lead to fingerprint evidence being obtained from clothing, for use in criminal prosecution. Refining an existing technique that’s been used to successfully recover print detail from smooth objects such as glass and plastic, forensic scientists have managed to create a kind of photo negative of fingerprint impressions on fabric. It’s a bit hit and miss at the moment, but even when clear ridge detail isn’t retrieved, the technique could still prove useful to investigators looking for other evidence. Hmm, so guys,  just take your wives panties and have them screened for some foreign prints???

The wheel may be one of mankind’s greatest inventions, but it’s an unfortunate fact of life for the wheelchair-bound that much of the modern world is built for the upright – from deli counter-tops and store shelves to stairs and escalators. When Israeli entrepreneur Amit Goffer was left paralyzed after a car accident in 1997 he set about creating “robotic trousers” to replace a wheelchair. The fruits of his labor are now set to help others with his ReWalk robotic exoskelton set to go on sale from the start of 2011.

Price somewhere around $100.000

Twenty-seven stroke victims are alive and well today because of a new tool that vacuums clots out of blood vessels in the brain. Known as the Penumbra System of Continuous Aspiration Thrombectomy, the technology was developed at the Seaman MR Research Centre at Canada

The iBand is made from a material produced by a company called d3o. They make a flexible polymer that falls within the category of Non-Newtonian fluids. In a nutshell, these ?fluids?, um, flow under normal conditions but harden quickly upon sudden impact. Some of you may have seen that Mythbusters episode where they run around barefoot on a mixture of cornstarch and water. This product is kind of like that. Only now you can have it as armor for your iPhone. Used normally, it?s like a rubber case but if you drop it it?ll harden instantly and provide up to 134% more impact protection than most other cases.

We?re not sure about price or availability but the product page is here.

We can’t travel to any of the other 100 billion galaxies in the universe yet, but their photons can travel to us. Capturing those photons over a ten-day period results in the most profound and humbling image ever created, the 2004 image known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Now it’s brought to life in 3D, letting you fly through 10,000 galaxies as they were 13 billion years ago.

As you float through this Hubble Space Telescope image (watch it in HD for the best view), consider that last galaxy