Who woulda thunk it – gecko in the news!

Living in a tropical area, gecko’s are a very common sght.

 a gecko

My maid must spend more time cleaning gecko “kaka” from my walls than she does cleaning my laundry (only becasue I run around in the same pair of shorts for a week).

But now, the lonely gecko has made news TWICE in the span of that many days.

First up is a report by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley who used  a high-speed video camera to discover that a flick of a geckos’ tail is enough to right it in mid air. Once the gecko is right way up, it uses its tail and “hang-glides” to the ground.

That finding, along with already known knowledge that geckos use sticky pads on their feet to hang on to walls and ceilings has excited biologist Robert Full of UCB who said the research adds to development of wall-climbing robots.

YES, robots.  The R2D2 kind.

“This is an outstanding example of how important interdisciplinary collaborations can be in research,” said Full adding that researchers from the gecko-bot project, known as Robots in Scansorial Environments or RiSE, had told UCLA scientists the climbing robot needed a tail to make it more stable.

Both the University of Pennsylvania’s DynaClimber and Stanford University robots Spinybot and Stickybot had contacted Full to say further stability was needed if the gecko-bot was to be successful. And Full contributed with his high speed camera research.

The next gecko news comes from Thailand. 

Yes, home of Thai food, Thai smiles Buddhist temples and tons of geckos now comes the Gecko Laptop, a subnotebook built by a Thai based company, Norhtec which specializes in tiny servers.

The small machine will be built by Quanta and will run Linux Lite from Linpus.

It will likely sport a 7″ screen, a decent-sized keyboard, and a trackpad. The machine is unfortunately powered by a VIA chip – no other information is available. Design-wise, the machine looks nearly identical to the Eee PC.

Rumor has it Norhtec will announce the machine soon, and that will be priced at less than $300.

Norhtec’s Gecko Laptop

Author: movie boss

Scott Rosenberg is an award winning entertainment journalist covering stories bridging the United States and Asia. He is also managing director of AMW International Co. Ltd., a Bangkok based pr and marketing boutique. Wearing his journalist cap, he serves as Asian Pacific Bureau Chief of US based Film Journal International and former editor of Monsters and Critics. Formerly Scott was Thailand correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter and Southeast Asian correspondent for Variety. Scott has served as consultant to many international film festivals, most recently serving as director for the inaugural Phuket Film Festival in Phuket, Thailand in October 2007. Scott was presented the “Friends of Thailand” Award by the Thai Government in 2002 for his contributions to the Kingdom through his journalistic endeavors while having received from His Majesty Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia, that same year the royal titles Commandeur de l'ordre Royal du Sahametrei and Commandeur de l'ordre Royal du Cambodge. As a hobby, Scott raises rare breed, pedigree Thai Ridgeback Dogs and "hangs-out" with Thai Elephants in northern Thailand as they paint. Their paintings can be found at www.elephant-paintings.com

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.