Clearly garbage. As most of these things are. I hesitate to say 'all', since it's possible someone will make an actual breakthrough. At best, this thing would give you no added power or efficiency, since all power used to turn water to hydrogen came from the car engine in the first place. Why not just apply that power to the wheels instead of converting it to hydrogen and then converting that back into engine power....that goes to the wheels. Assuming perfect conversion efficiency at each step, you gain nothing. With actual real-world conversion efficiency, you lose energy at each step.

As for their maths, my guess is they went for (23.2 - 9.4)/23.2 to get their wonderful 60% improvement, instead of say 23.2/9.4 to get the 'real' 247% improvement.

@ csbmonkey - Wow, people have started calling Austrians 'Aussies' now, that will get very confusing :)

As for the video, nice idea, not completely original, but then what is these days. Songs not much good though.

I think this one would also be very tiring. Think about where his bum is going to want to go when he pushes the pedal with his foot. The only thing stopping that would be the strange shiny coil thing behind him (whatever it is) and his arms holding the handle bars. Since said coil doesn't look like it would be very helpful, you'd spend the whole time you were pedaling clinging on with your arms to stop yourself from being unseated. Which is why recumbents have full-backed seats in them. Pretty, but not really functional.

The Marketoids are at it again. The wedge shaped slice out of the screw at the bottom seems to result in a nice flat triangular surface on the leading edge of the thread, which would press against the wood as the screw is turned. Not sure how that would result in cutting of fibres.

As for the little notches further up the thread, the previous length of the thread (whats left of it) has already done the cutting, they serve no purpose.

But hey, I could be wrong. Double-blind (possibly literally, since you can see the thread notch) torque measured tests are now required to prove their claims. Whats that you say? A patent? Well then, by all means, forget science and go straight to the racking-in of the cash. :)

I'm just amazed that people reading this blog are so jaded that the responses to the this article are: "You speak funny" and "Company have silly name", instead of, say: "Holy shit, I can be a cyborg for less than its costs to rent a car?!" Or something of that order. Sure its early days with this thing, but I thought people who read gadget blogs actually *liked* gadgets. Guess I know better now. :)

Robot 44 in the list is from GitS, but its not the big spider tank, its a Tachikoma from the animated series GitS:Stand Alone Complexi

As interesting as all this is, I think part of the issue/problem with these experiments is the conclusions being drawn by the scientists about what fMRI images actually mean. I've been lucky enough to run into (through friends) a few people who work in cognitive science research and their opinion seems to be that fMRI is not as the great and wonderful tool that its held out to be by many in the scientific and journalistic communities. Certainly it's very useful, and provides all sorts of interesting and new information about the brain and how its operates. I'm not a neuro-scientist, but when researchers in the field are expressing their reservations about the rigor of experimental design and conclusions drawn, you need to think about adding salt to your mental diet. Something about extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence comes to mind.

Forget steam. Buy half a dozen sheets of bending ply (or less depending on thickness), make former (see above), bend and glue to former, trim to shape with whatever tool you prefer (fret saw, sanding drum, scroll saw, whatever), use. I think the other reason that its so expensive is that its supposed to be a fashion accessory (a bangle) *as well* as a coffee cup cuff. And given the nature of fashion, arguments about its use as a bangle seem pointless.

Am I the only one who saw "cleared contractors" and thought: "Wow, the CoS is branching out into supplying contract labour to government departments now."

Hmm, that should read 'genteel'. I mean 'gentile' might *also* apply, but thats not what I meant.

Gandalf,
You only have to fuck one goat...

That said, reasonable force definitely covers chicken shit, but not railways sleepers, at least as far as the circumstances detailed here seem to suggest. And he's edging past the English tradition of gentile eccentricity and into the territory of plain old nutter.

Correction, they *could* be discharge lamps. Xenon arc lamps are exactly what theses expensive cinema bulbs I was referring to are, apparently. So if the home projector bulbs use the same technology, then that might account for the high price. Proprietary price gouging nowithstanding, of course.

I think the important factor here is, as a couple of people have pointed out, volume. Normal incandescent bulbs and now even compact fluoro bulbs are churned out in the hundreds of millions a year (probably more). The economies of scale on that compared with maybe tens of thousands of special, high brightness, high life bulbs are staggering. For purposes of comparison on performance, try staring at a standard bulb for a little while and see if you can last that long staring at a projector bulb (without the lenses, assuming you can physically achieve that). You get the idea. Much more performance, much higher manufacturing requirements.

And as for cinema bulbs, you aren't paying $10 a ticket for a $500 bulb. Cinema bulbs are much more expensive than that (I can't remember how much, but think thousands) and some come shipped in a box, within a case, within a case. Very high pressure bulbs, quite delicate and more than capable, once installed, of setting fire to a piece of paper held in front of them (eventually).

How much technology they share with home projector bulbs I don't know, but bulbs with Xenon in them probably aren't going to be discharge lamps. Xenon is a noble gas usually used for preventing immediate filament oxidation in high end incandescent bulbs.