5 Incredible Ways Technology Is Making Life Easier

While we can sometimes feel like throwing our computers out the window, ultimately technology gives us a wealth of opportunities to have more comfortable lives.

Technology is intended to make our lives easier. While we can sometimes feel like throwing our computers out the window, or going on vacation just to get away from all the buzzing, beeping, and being too connected, ultimately technology gives us a wealth of opportunities to have more comfortable lives - even with lower carbon footprints.

Check out 5 incredible ways technology is helping us breathe easier and live smarter.

Telemedicine

 

Using telecommunications to improve medicine has become invaluable to doctors and patients in rural and underprivileged areas. Doctors from any location can communicate with the most highly skilled of their colleagues at major hospitals to get consultations on patients, improving the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses without requiring the patients to travel. Telemedicine has been a huge boon for people from post-quake Haiti to Argentina.

 

 

iPad and Tablet Devices

It is still up for debate how much of a game-changer tablet devices will become, however it's clear that there are countless uses for it in making our lives easier to dematerialize. Tablet devices can act as books, magazines, gaming devices, netbooks for surfing the internet and checking email, and so much more. It can potentially be an all-in-one device for consumers - from getting news to monitoring your home's energy use - as well as find a myriad of uses in places from school classrooms to medical facilities to business boardrooms. While they also have the potential to be a massive e-waste problem, if used well and kept running for years, they could help us reduce energy consumption, since they have a longer battery life than laptops and even some mobile phones; and help us reduce our consumption, since they replace many gadgets and other objects we might otherwise purchase.

Augmented Reality

Layering data over our field of vision seems to be the next wave of technology that helps us navigate our world, both literally - some apps are already built that help us find our way to, and through, subway systems or cycle in the right direction without holding a map - and figuratively, with apps that could help us find the green businesses nearby. Supplementing our vision with a whole lot of information - even to the point of wearing contacts with augmented reality display capabilities - can lead to an infinite number of potential uses, though it could equally lead to information overload. It'll be interesting to watch how augmented reality finds its niches. 

 

Smart Cities

the innovations around transitioning our urban infrastructure into intelligent, interconnected grids is vastly important for reducing our consumption of resources. New technologies for the smart grid, for smart water management, for smart cars and urban transportation are all guiding us towards making more happen with less. We are developing everything from dashboards for monitoring our energy and water use both in homes and business structures, to algorithms for more intelligent data centers, and fully embracing the idea of if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. We're finally getting technology to effectively manage our resources

 

Product Service Systems

Okay, so this is actually an ancient notion. But today's technology is making it easier than ever to turn a product into a service. This means our hardware stores are transformed into tool libraries, our car dealerships into car-share programs, even the stuff in our closet into a neighborhood rental system. Most of this is thanks to the Internet and social networking sites connecting people to each other and the stuff we can share. Why buy when you can borrow? Technology - including smart phone apps - are making it easier than ever to save money and the planet by swapping instead of shopping

 

 

Graphene Supercapacitors to aid Renewable Energy

 

The next generation of energy storage has been developed using graphene to create supercapacitors that could be used for renewable energy storage.

Graphene, a one atom thick layer of graphite has properties of high thermal and electrical conductivity, and is also strong and flexible.

These properties make graphene an interesting proposition for clean technology such as solar cell production however; researchers from Monash University, based in Australia, have developed a method of combining graphene, utilizing its properties, with supercapacitor technology.

Supercapacitors consist of highly porous carbon combined with a liquid electrolyte, which transports an electrical charge. The main advantages of supercapacitors consist of a near unlimited lifespan and quick re-charge capabilities.

Drawbacks consist of a low energy density, the ratio of energy storage to volume, of about five to eight watt-hours per liter meaning that they have to be constantly charged and are typically large.

 

Graphene supercapacitors could really benefit renewable energy due to its high energy density.

Enter Professor Dan Li and his team, at the department of materials engineering, who have created a graphene supercapacitor with an energy density of 60-watt hours per liter, 12 times higher than some standard supercapacitors.

"It has long been a challenge to make SCs smaller, lighter and compact to meet the increasingly demanding needs of many commercial uses." Professor Li said.

Using liquid electrolytes and a graphene gel film, the team were able to control the spacing between graphene sheets on the sub-nanometer scale enabling the liquid electrolytes to maintain minute space between graphene sheets as well as conduct electricity which maximizes energy density.

Professor Li further states, "We have created a macroscopic graphene material that is a step beyond what has been achieved previously. It is almost at the stage of moving from the lab to commercial development."

 

Graphene gel is made up from the conversion of graphite into highly porous, mechanically robust conductive films.

To ensure a cost-effective production that could be scaled for industrial use, this material was created using a similar methodology to that of traditional papermaking.

The advantages of supercapacitors go hand in hand with renewable energy and utilizing with innovations such as electric vehicles, the drawbacks coming from the low energy density. Combining this with graphene, it can improve the density twelve times over meaning that this can be utilized in the commercial and industrial sector in the future.

Using Data Science Tools to Discover New Nanostructured Materials

Oct. 28, 2013 — Researchers at Columbia Engineering, led by Chemical Engineering Professors Venkat Venkatasubramanian and Sanat Kumar, have developed a new approach to designing novel nanostructured materials through an inverse design framework using genetic algorithms. The study, published in the October 28 Early Online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is the first to demonstrate the application of this methodology to the design of self-assembled nanostructures, and shows the potential of machine learning and "big data" approaches embodied in the new Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering at Columbia.

 

Phase diagram showing the cluster formations predicted by GA and their validation (squares). (Credit: Columbia Engineering)

"Our framework can help speed up the materials discovery process," says Venkatasubramanian, Samuel Ruben-Peter G. Viele Professor of Engineering, and co-author of the paper. "In a sense, we are leveraging how nature discovers new materials -- the Darwinian model of evolution -- by suitably marrying it with computational methods. It's Darwin on steroids!"
Using a genetic algorithm they developed, the researchers designed DNA-grafted particles that self-assembled into the crystalline structures they wanted. Theirs was an "inverse" way of doing research. In conventional research, colloidal particles grafted with single-stranded DNA are allowed to self-assemble, and then the resulting crystal structures are examined. "Although this Edisonian approach is useful for a posteriori understanding of the factors that govern assembly," notes Kumar, Chemical Engineering Department Chair and the study's co-author, "it doesn't allow us to a priori design these materials into desired structures. Our study addresses this design issue and presents an evolutionary optimization approach that was not only able to reproduce the original phase diagram detailing regions of known crystals, but also to elucidate previously unobserved structures."
The researchers are using "big data" concepts and techniques to discover and design new nanomaterials -- a priority area under the White House's Materials Genome Initiative -- using a methodology that will revolutionize materials design, impacting a broad range of products that affect our daily lives, from drugs and agricultural chemicals such as pesticides or herbicides to fuel additives, paints and varnishes, and even personal care products such as shampoo.
"This inverse design approach demonstrates the potential of machine learning and algorithm engineering approaches to challenging problems in materials science," says Kathleen McKeown, director of the Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering and Henry and Gertrude Rothschild Professor of Computer Science. "At the Institute, we are focused on pioneering such advances in a number problems of great practical importance in engineering."
Venkatasubramanian adds, "Discovering and designing new advanced materials and formulations with desired properties is an important and challenging problem, encompassing a wide variety of products in industries addressing clean energy, national security, and human welfare." He points out that the traditional Edisonian trial-and-error discovery approach is time-consuming and costly -- it can cause major delays in time-to-market as well as miss potential solutions. And the ever-increasing amount of high-throughput experimentation data, while a major modeling and informatics challenge, has also created opportunities for material design and discovery.
The researchers built upon their earlier work to develop what they call an evolutionary framework for the automated discovery of new materials. Venkatasubramanian proposed the design framework and analyzed the results, and Kumar developed the framework in the context of self-assembled nanomaterials. Babji Srinivasan, a postdoc with Venkatasubramanian and Kumar and now an assistant professor at IIT Gandhinagar, and Thi Vo, a PhD candidate at Columbia Engineering, carried out the computational research. The team collaborated with Oleg Gang and Yugang Zhang of Brookhaven National Laboratory, who carried out the supporting experiments.
The team plans to continue exploring the design space of potential ssDNA-grafted colloidal nanostructures, improving its forward models, and bring in more advanced machine learning techniques. "We need a new paradigm that increases the idea flow, broadens the search horizon, and archives the knowledge from today's successes to accelerate those of tomorrow," says Venkatasubramanian.
This research has been funded by a $1.4 million three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

 

Russia To Open A Hotel In Space by 2016

The rich and famous look for the most exotic places to spend their vacations. Orbital Technologies, a Russian company, has announced plans to make one of the most exotic hotel ever. Their idea to create a space hotel for commercial use is both metaphorically and literally out of this world.
The hotel, officially called Commercial Space Station, will be able to accommodate seven guests in four cabins. It will orbit the earth at a height of 350 kilometers above the earth’s surface. Guests will be able to relax in zero-gravity and can pass the time by watching TV, surfing the web, or sleeping (both horizontally and vertically). There will be no flowing water which means washing will be done using wet wipes and even the toilets will carry waste via flowing air. The waste water and air will all be filtered and recycled in the satellite and then reused by the occupants of the hotel. The food will be prepared on Earth and freeze-dried before being sent up to the hotel. Another drawback (for most customers) is the prohibition of the consumption of alcohol in the hotel.
The vacation has only one standard package costing close to a million dollars. This package consists of a 5 day stay in the Commercial Space Station and the two day trip to and from the Space Station via a Soyuz rocket. According to Orbital Technologies, development of the hotel is underway and it will be ready for launch by 2016. Below are computer generated images of the project:

A cross-sectional view of the space hotel

Inside view

Outward apperance

 source:wonderfulengineering.com

Reduce Your Electricity Bills With New Solar Roof Tiles

source:http://wonderfulengineering.com

Solar power is the new “in” thing these days. It’s free, it’s clean and it’s abundant. So, what better use than to employ this free energy at home? Solar energy has been around since the dawn of man and it has probably been harnessed by civilizations before ours. Only recently, have we explored solar energy as an alternative to non-renewable energy. The Scandinavia, Germany and now China are swiftly developing solar energy tools to utilize maximum possible energy in the cheapest possible way.

A popular invention of the recent century is the ‘solar cell’ which is basically a semi-conductor material that converts solar energy to electrical energy. Solar cells gave birth to the concept of solar cars, solar heaters and solar parks. Recently, these cells have found their way into residential dwellings too!
Now you can simply turn your roof into a solar module using these solar cells and harness sun’s unlimited energy for no cost. Although, we do agree that the cells are costly but it is a one time investment and specially if you live in tropical or equatorial regions, the investment can be worth it.
One thing to keep in mind while you are planning to install solar cells on your rooftop is the orientation angle. The orientation angle is the particular angle of the rooftop, intensity of incoming radiations will depend on this angle. In order to maximize the energy, the orientation angle should be such that solar radiations make maximum contact with the roof.
These amazing and good looking cells can help you cut down on your energy bill. Of course when you are using solar power for half or even all of the appliances at home, the national grid cannot charge you much. Another useful advantage of solar modules is their easy availability whenever you are out of power (because solar power is a 24 hours service).
Many people are quickly turning their house roofs into solar panels and cutting down on their energy bills efficiently. Considering the global climate change and carbon footprint, anthropogenic activities are causing, we all can put in little efforts like buying solar cells, to help mitigate the environmental problem. Imagine how the environment can benefit if all the millions of people in the US alone shift to green energy. Not to mention, the roof looks spectacular with these solar cells. See for yourself.

 

Smart Window Blocks Heat, Generates Electricity

Buildings are going green and so it’s no surprise that researchers are working to develop smarter windows.
Among the smartest is a window designed by researchers at Shanghai University, led by Yanfeng Gao, which does triple duty: It’s transparent, regulates temperature fluctuations and doesn’t require external power to work.

The team’s goal was to find a way to merge a window with the power-generating capabilities of a solar panel, which typically isn’t transparent. Ideally, the researchers wanted to develop a window that would change its optical properties in response to temperature and do it without requiring power.
The answer was vanadium oxide. Gao’s team sandwiched a thin film of vanadium oxide between two layers of polycarbonate, the same material used in strong eyeglasses.
At room temperature, the polycarbonate panels appeared transparent. In fact, up to temperatures of 154 degrees Fahrenheit (68 C), the panels allowed heat — infrared light — to pass through. But once the temperature rose above that, the VO2 turned metallic and started reflecting the infrared wavelength, even though the panels appeared transparent to the eye.
In addition to regulating the wavelength of light, the vanadium also scattered some of the light to the sides of the panel. That’s where Gao’s group put a simple photovoltaic cell, which faced into the glass from the edge. In their experiment, sections of smart glass only a few inches on a side powered a 1.5-volt lamp.
Such a window would likely be more expensive than simple glass panes. But Gao and his co-authors noted in their study that buildings eat up 30 to 40 percent of the energy humans produce, and it all goes to heating, cooling and lighting. So a smart window like this could make a dent in that percentage.
The research is described in the current issue of the journal Scientific Reports.

 

Nanoscale Engineering Boosts Performance of Quantum Dot Light Emitting Diodes

Oct. 25, 2013 — Dramatic advances in the field of quantum dot light emitting diodes (QD-LEDs) could come from recent work by the Nanotechnology and Advanced Spectroscopy team at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

 

The quantum dot device structure shown with a transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image of a cross-section of a real device. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory)

Quantum dots are nano-sized semiconductor particles whose emission color can be tuned by simply changing their dimensions. They feature near-unity emission quantum yields and narrow emission bands, which result in excellent color purity. The new research aims to improve QD-LEDs by using a new generation of engineered quantum dots tailored specifically to have reduced wasteful charge-carrier interactions that compete with the production of light.
"QD-LEDs can potentially provide many advantages over standard lighting technologies, such as incandescent bulbs, especially in the areas of efficiency, operating lifetime and the color quality of the emitted light," said Victor Klimov of Los Alamos.
Incandescent bulbs, known for converting only 10 percent of electrical energy into light and losing 90 percent of it to heat, are rapidly being replaced worldwide by less wasteful fluorescent light sources. However, the most efficient approach to lighting is direct conversion of electricity into light using electroluminescent devices such as LEDs.
Due to spectrally narrow, tunable emission, and ease of processing, colloidal QDs are attractive materials for LED technologies. In the last decade, vigorous research in QD-LEDs has led to dramatic improvements in their performance, to the point where it nearly meets the requirements for commercial products. One outstanding challenge in the field is the so-called efficiency roll-off (known also as "droop"), that is, the drop in efficiency at high currents.
"This 'droop' problem complicates achieving practical levels of brightness required especially for lighting applications," said Wan Ki Bae, a postdoctoral researcher on the nanotech team.
By conducting spectroscopic studies on operational QD-LEDs, the Los Alamos researchers have established that the main factor responsible for the reduction in efficiency is an effect called Auger recombination. In this process, instead of being emitted as a photon, the energy from recombination of an excited electron and hole is transferred to the excess charge and subsequently dissipated as heat.
A paper, "Controlling the influence of Auger recombination on the performance of quantum-dot light-emitting diodes" is being published Oct. 25 in Nature Communications. In addition, an overview article on the field of quantum-dot light-emitting diodes and specifically the role of Auger effects appeared in the September Materials Research Society Bulletin, Volume 38, Issue 09, also authored by researchers of the Los Alamos nanotech team.
Not only has this work identified the mechanism for efficiency losses in QD-LEDs, Klimov said, but it has also demonstrated two different nano-engineering strategies for circumventing the problem in QD-LEDs based on bright quantum dots made of cadmium selenide cores overcoated with cadmium sulfide shells.
The first approach is to reduce the efficiency of Auger recombination itself, which can be done by incorporating a thin layer of cadmium selenide sulfide alloy at the core/shell interface of each quantum dot.
The other approach attacks the problem of charge imbalance by better controlling the flow of extra electrons into the dots themselves. This can be accomplished by coating each dot in a thin layer of zinc cadmium sulfide, which selectively impedes electron injection. According to Jeffrey Pietryga, a chemist in the nanotech team, "This fine tuning of electron and hole injection currents helps maintain the dots in a charge-neutral state and thus prevents activation of Auger recombination."
These studies were funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

 

Low-Priced Plastic Photovoltaics

Oct. 22, 2013 — Photovoltaic devices, which tap the power of the sun and convert it to electricity, offer a green -- and potentially unlimited -- alternative to fossil fuel use. So why haven't solar technologies been more widely adopted?

This is an image of the polymer blend morphology without (left) and with (right) nanowires. (Credit: Imperial College/S. Wood & J. Bailey)

Quite simply, "they're too expensive," says Ji-Seon Kim, a senior lecturer in experimental solid-state physics at Imperial College London, who, along with her colleagues, has come up with a technology that might help bring the prices down.
The scientists describe their new approach to making cheaper, more efficient solar panels in a paper in The Journal of Chemical Physics, produced by AIP Publishing.
"To collect a lot of sunlight you need to cover a large area in solar panels, which is very expensive for traditional inorganic -- usually silicon -- photovoltaics," explains Kim. The high costs arise because traditional panels must be made from high purity crystals that require high temperatures and vacuum conditions to manufacture.
A cheaper solution is to construct the photovoltaic devices out of organic compounds -- building what are essentially plastic solar cells. Organic semiconducting materials, and especially polymers, can be dissolved to make an ink and then simply "printed" in a very thin layer, some 100 billionths of a meter thick, over a large area. "Covering a large area in plastic is much cheaper than covering it in silicon, and as a result the cost per Watt of electricity-generating capacity has the potential to be much lower," she says.
One major difficulty with doing this, however, is controlling the arrangement of polymer molecules within the thin layer. In their paper, Kim and colleagues describe a new method for exerting such control. "We have developed an advanced structural probe technique to determine the molecular packing of two different polymers when they are mixed together," she says. By manipulating how the molecules of the two different polymers pack together, Kim and her colleagues created ordered pathways -- or "nanowires" -- along which electrical charges can more easily travel. This enables the solar cell to produce more electrical current, she said.
"Our work highlights the importance of the precise arrangement of polymer molecules in a polymer solar cell for it to work efficiently," says Kim, who expects polymer solar cells to reach the commercial market within 5 to 10 years.

 

Apple unveils thinner, lighter iPad Air,cylindrical Mac Pro

Apple unveils thinner, lighter iPad Air, cylindrical Mac Pro

At launch event today in the US, Apple has announced a bltiz of new products:

Today’s Apple event was expected to focus on the company’s newest generation of iPad tablets. Apple, however, used much of the event to debut new hardware and software for its desktop and notebook computing lineup. In addition to OS X Mavericks and a new line of Macbooks, Apple today announced what longtime Apple fans have been waiting a long time to hear – a newly designed Mac Pro desktop computer.

The new design of the Mac Pro is an odd-looking cylindrical black shape. Apple stated that the new design is one-eighth of the volume of previous Mac Pro towers.
Inside, Apple is packing in serious computing power for professionals who use Macs. The presentation focused heavily on how the new Mac Pro can output video to up to three 4K displays, including one 4K TV. The company also mentioned that its new computers will be well-equipped for 4K video editing.

The new Mac Pros will have Intel Xeon E5 processors, available in quad-, 6-, 8-, or 12-core iterations. Apple is also offering up to 64GB of 1866MHz DDR3 RAM. The new Mac Pro comes with two AMD FirePro GPUs standard, with up to 12GB of GDDR5 VRAM for them. The computer will not have a hard drive, and instead comes with an SSD drive with up to 1TB of storage.
The lowest-end version of the new Mac Pro starts at $2999. That version comes with a 3.7GHz quad-core Xenon processor, 12GB of RAM, Dual FirePro D300 GPUs (with 2GB of RAM on each), and a 256GB SSD. Obviously, upgrades such as a 12-core processor or more SSD drive space for video editing will quickly drive up the cost of the computer. The new Mac Pro will be out sometime before the end of the year, with Apple’s presentation slide showing a December release date.

• iBooks, which gives you instant access to your iBooks library and works seamlessly across your devices;
• Maps, which brings powerful mapping technology to the desktop and lets you plan a trip from your Mac and send it to your iPhone® for voice navigation on the road;
• a streamlined Calendar that estimates travel time between appointments, and provides a map with weather forecast;
• a new version of Safari with Shared Links, which helps you find what’s new on the web by consolidating links shared by people you follow on Twitter and LinkedIn;
• iCloud® Keychain®, which safely stores your website usernames and passwords, credit card numbers and Wi-Fi passwords and pushes them to your trusted devices so you don’t need to remember them;
• enhanced multi-display support, which makes using multiple displays easier and more powerful, with no configuration required;
• interactive Notifications, allowing you to reply to a message, respond to a FaceTime® call or even delete an email without leaving the app you’re using;
• Finder Tabs, which help unclutter your desktop by consolidating multiple Finder windows into a single window with multiple tabs; and
• Finder Tags, a powerful new way to organise and find your files located on your Mac or in iCloud.
• Mavericks also includes new core technologies that boost performance and improve the battery life of your Mac. Timer Coalescing and App Nap™ intelligently save energy and reduce power consumption. Compressed Memory automatically shrinks inactive data to keep your Mac fast and responsive. Mavericks also delivers significant performance enhancements for systems with integrated graphics through optimised OpenCL support and dynamic video memory allocation.

 

 

1st Fully Bionic Man Walks, Talks and Breathes

He walks, he talks and he has a beating heart, but he's not human — he's the world's first fully bionic man.

Like Frankenstein's monster, cobbled together from a hodgepodge of body parts, the bionic man is an amalgam of the most advanced human prostheses — from robotic limbs to artificial organs to a blood-pumping circulatory system.

Million-dollar man
Roboticists Rich Walker and Matthew Godden of Shadow Robot Co. in England led the assembly of the bionic man from prosthetic body parts and artificial organs donated by laboratories around the world.
"Our job was to take the delivery of a large collection of body parts — organs, limbs, eyes, heads — and over a frantic six weeks, turn those parts into a bionic man," Walker told LiveScience during an interview. But it's not as simple as connecting everything like Tinkertoys. "You put a prosthetic part on a human who is missing that part," Walker said. "We had no human; we built a human for the prosthetic parts to occupy."

The robot, which cost almost $1 million to build, was modeled in some physical aspects after Bertolt Meyer, a social psychologist at the University of Zurich, in Switzerland, who wears one of the world's most advanced bionic hands.
The bionic man has the same prosthetic hand as Meyer — the i-LIMB made by Touch Bionics — with a wrist that can fully rotate and motors in each finger. The hand's grasping abilities are impressive, but the bionic man still drops drinks sometimes.
"He's not the world's best bartender," Walker said.
The robot sports a pair of robotic ankles and feet from BiOM in Bedford, Mass., designed and worn by bioengineer Hugh Herr of MIT's Media Lab, who lost his own legs after getting trapped in a blizzard as a teenager.
To support his prosthetic legs, the bionic man wears a robotic exoskeleton dubbed "Rex," made by REX Bionics in New Zealand. His awkward, jerky walk makes him more Frankensteinian than ever.
Factory-made organs 
But it doesn't end there — the bionic man also has a nearly complete set of artificial organs, including an artificial heart, blood, lungs (and windpipe), pancreas, spleen, kidney and functional circulatory system.
The artificial heart, made by SynCardia Systems in Tucson, Ariz., has beenimplanted in more than 100 peopleto replace their ailing hearts for six to 12 months while they wait for a transplant, Walker said. The circulatory system, built by medical researcher Alex Seifalian of University College London,consists of veins and arteries made from a polymer used to create synthetic organs of any shape.
While it might not satisfy the Scarecrow from "The Wizard of Oz," the bionic man's "brain" can mimic certain functions of the human brain. He has a retinal prosthesis, made by Second Sight in Sylmar, Calif., which can restore limited sight in blind people. He also sports a cochlear implant, speech recognition and speech production systems.
The engineers equipped the bionic man with a sophisticated chatbot program that can carry on a conversation. The only problem is, it has the persona of "an annoying 13-year-old boy from the Ukraine," Walker said.
The most unnerving aspect of the bionic man, though, is his prosthetic face. It's an uncanny replica of Meyer's face. In fact, when Meyer first saw it, he hated it, describing it on the show as "awkward."
The bionic man successfully simulates about two-thirds of the human body. But he lacks a few major organs, including a liver, stomach and intestines, which are still too complex to replicate in a lab.
The bionic man brings up some ethical and philosophical questions: Does creating something so humanlike threaten notions of what it means to be human? What amount of body enhancement is acceptable? And is it wrong that only some people have access to these life-extending technologies?
The access issue is especially troublesome, Walker said. "The preservation of life and quality of life has become basically a technical question and an economic question."
The bionic man made his U.S. debut at New York Comic Con Oct. 10-13, and he will be on display at Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. this fall.