Plus, a Video-Recording Eye, a Data-Storing Finger, Sugary Solar Cells and Photos Taken from Space with an $81 Camera.

With the deadline for filing taxes less than a month away, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is offering to fill out people’s tax forms for them. Tomorrow, 250 IRS Tax Payer Assistance Centers (TAC) are offering free tax return preparation for people who earn $42,000 or less annually. Dubbed “Super Saturday,” it also gives people who may have a tax issue or be unable to pay their tax bill the opportunity to work with IRS agents to set up payment plans, regardless of income.

If you can take advantage of this offer, visit an IRS TAC and bring the following information:

• Valid driver’s license or photo identification (self and spouse, if applicable);
• Social Security cards for all persons listed on the return;
• Dates of birth for all persons listed on the return;
• All income statements — Forms W-2, 1099, Social Security, unemployment, or other benefits statements, self-employment records and any documents showing taxes withheld;
• Dependent child care information: payee’s name, address and Social Security Number or Taxpayer Identification Number;
• Proof of account at financial institution for direct debit or deposit (i.e. canceled/voided check or bank statement);
• Prior year tax return (if available); and
• Any other pertinent documents or papers.

For additional last-minute tax tips, see Tax Tips for Entrepreneurs.

Recreating Solar Reactions
Physicists from the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in Livermore, Calif., are hoping to develop to first form of nuclear fusion technology by mimicking the reactions that take place inside the sun.

The researchers will fire 192 separate laser beams capable of generating 500 trillion watts — 1,000 times the power of the U.S. national grid — for a fraction of a second. The energy pulse will be concentrated on a tiny pellet of hydrogen. “We hope the ignition experiments will show that we can generate more power than we put in and that fusion can be the source of a supply of carbon-free energy,” said Ed Moses, director of the NIF.

The NIF project is among a handful of international projects focused on delivering nuclear fusion.

HiPER, a British-led fusion project using high-powered lasers, is expected to build a reactor at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire by 2020, according to the Times (UK). Also, work has begun on building the £8 billion ($11.5 billion) Iter fusion project in France. Iter will use magnetic fields rather than lasers to create the conditions for fusion. Its first “burn,” or reaction, is not expected until 2022.

Tasty Solar Cells
The American Chemical Society launched a contest to its NanoTube users to create a video that helps answer, “What is nano, how is nano best visualized, and where is nano headed?”

One of the entries is from Blake Farrow and the PVK group of Notre Dame, who demonstrated how dye-sensitized solar cells can be made with donuts and tea. Watch how they did it below, or go HERE for the full video that contains their answer to the contest’s question.

Eye Camera
Filmmaker Rob Spence, the self-named “Eyeborg Guy,” hopes to be able to implant a wireless video camera in his eye socket to record everything he sees. Following a shotgun accident at age 13, his eye was removed and replaced with a prosthetic one. Now Spence is looking to upgrade his prosthetic eye to be a video camera as well.

Phil Bowen, an ocularist working with Spence, says the biggest challenge is fitting the camera into the eye. “Also, a digital camera has many more components than the visible lens and the sensor behind it, including the power supply and image-processing circuitry,” Wired adds. “Getting a completely self-contained camera module to fit into the tiny hollow of a prosthetic eye is a significant engineering challenge.”

For now, Bowen redesigned the prosthetic eye into two pieces that could snap shut to house the camera. The modified prosthetic eye will be heavier than traditional ones, and that could affect the eye socket, says Bowen. “The weight might stretch out the lower lid.”

Assuming the size, weight and water-tightness issues can be solved, the camera will have to be connected to a transmitter inside the prosthetic eye that can broadcast the captured video footage.

Spence tells Wired that he “is willing to turn off his camera in spaces such as gyms, theaters or private events. But he will be making many of those decisions on the spur, every day.”

Fingers: Good for Pointing, Storing Data
Finnish computer programmer Jerry Jalava lost half of his left ring finger in a motorcycle accident last summer. The doctors who were treating him joked that he should have a USB “finger drive” after finding out he was a software developer.

Clearly, he thought it was a good idea as he made himself a prosthetic finger with a 2GB memory stick attached. The memory stick is accessed by peeling back the nail.

The finger tip is not permanently attached to his finger so he can dislodge the tip and keep it attached to the computer when in use. “I’m planning to use another prosthetic as a shell for the next version, which will have removable fingertip and RFID tag,” Jalava wrote on his blog.

For more detailed images of the finger drive, visit Jalava’s Flickr page.

Point-and-Shoot Camera Takes Photos from Space
Proving that million-dollar cameras aren’t needed to take photos of Earth from very high altitudes, four Spanish students managed to send and operate a camera-equipped weather balloon into the stratosphere.

Able to take atmospheric readings and photographs 20 miles above the ground, the Meteotek team of IES La Bisbal school in Catalonia built the electronic sensor components from scratch and followed the progress of their balloon using high tech sensors communicating with Google Earth. The camera they used to take photographs was a £56 ($81) point-and-shoot digital camera.

Below are the photos taken from the weather balloon. You can see the string from the weather balloon in the image on the right.

(Image source: Barcroft Media)

The students hoped the balloon would make it past 30,000 ft., which is the altitude that commercial airliners fly, and were delighted to find the balloon continued to work at over 100,000 ft. The balloon deflated soon after and the equipment returned to Earth.
Toodles!