There could be a revolution brewing in billboard advertising. Instead of simply presenting a static image, why not let people interact with the advertisement? This is the vision of electronics giant Samsung and interactive advertising company Reactrix Systems. The two companies have partnered to bring 57-inch interactive displays to Hilton hotel lobbies by the end of the year. These displays can "see" people standing up to 15 feet away from the screen as they wave their hands to play games, navigate menus, and use maps.
Read more @ www.technologyreview.com
A Display That Tracks Your Movements
Intelligent Computers See Your Human Traits
Today’s computers can do a lot as far as computation goes, but they tend to do it in an impersonal, stand-offish way, so to speak. However, computer engineers are busy changing that, as they try to give computers a bit of a personal touch to make human-computer interaction more natural and friendly.
For instance, two studies from a recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia have investigated enabling computers to recognize users’ emotional states and ages. The researchers hope that tomorrow’s computers will be able to “look” at a human face and extract this type of information, much like humans do with each other.
Read Complete
Doughnut-shaped Universe bites back
The doughnut is making a comeback – at least as a possible shape for our Universe.
The idea that the universe is finite and relatively small, rather than infinitely large, first became popular in 2003, when cosmologists noticed unexpected patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the relic radiation left behind by the Big Bang.
Read Complete @ www.nature.com
Dutch robot Flame walks like a human
Researcher Daan Hobbelen of TU Delft has developed a new, highly-advanced walking robot: Flame. This type of research, for which Hobbelen will receive his PhD on Friday 30 May, is important as it provides insight into how people walk. This can in turn help people with walking difficulties through improved diagnoses, training and rehabilitation equipment.
TU Delft is a pioneer of the other method used for constructing walking robots, based on the way humans walk. This is really very similar to falling forward in a controlled fashion. Adopting this method replaces the cautious, rigid way in which robots walk with the more fluid, energy-efficient movement used by humans.
Read Complete @ physorg.com
Climate scientists call for their own 'Manhattan Project'
In the wake of a thousand-year drought in Australia and last weekend's lethal cyclone in Burma, the world's climate modellers are drawing up plans for a global supercomputing centre that would provide detailed local forecasts of future climate change.
Meeting at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK, the scientists liken the billion-dollar project to CERN, the international particle accelerator near Geneva, and to the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. They hope to present their plan to the G8 meeting in Japan this summer.
The modellers say they need a centre with computing power of 100 petaflops – two thousand times greater they have access to today.
"We think we know how to do it, but we need the computing power," said Jagadish Shukla, chair of a meeting of 150 top modellers drawing up the plans.
Read Complete @ newscientist.com
Robotic suit could usher in super soldier era
Software engineer Rex Jameson, wearing a robotic soldier suit being made for the U.S. Army by Raytheon, poses next to a mockup statue of a future soldier on Monday, April 14, 2008, in Salt Lake City. The suit can multiply its wearer's strength and endurance as many as 20 times, with relatively little loss of agility, by sensing and almost instantly amplifying every movement the wearer makes. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)
Read Complete @ physorg.com
Fifty years of DARPA: A surprising history
n 1957, the Soviet Union caught the US completely off-guard. Its military launched Sputnik – the world's first artificial satellite – heralding the dawn of the space age.
President Eisenhower's response was to create the Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPA) with a clear mission: "prevent technological surprise". Eisenhower hoped that the agency would produce revolutionary technologies and thus guarantee that never again would the US military be caught with its technological trousers down.
Now in its 50th year, the Defence Advance Research Projects Agency has an impressive list of accomplishments behind it.
After playing an integral role in the fledgling US space programme, DARPA gave us the satellite-based global positioning system (GPS), stealth aircraft and the precursor to the internet. So it is hard to argue that the agency hasn't lived up to Eisenhower's early dream.
Read Complete @ www.newscientist.com
Closer encounter:Nasa plans landing on 40m-wide asteroid travelling at 28,000mph
t was once considered the most dangerous object in the universe, heading for Earth with the explosive power of 84 Hiroshimas. Now an asteroid called 2000SG344, a lump of rock barely the size of a large yacht, is in the spotlight again, this time as a contender for the next giant leap for mankind.
Nasa engineers have identified the 1.1m tonne asteroid, which in 2000 was given a significant chance of slamming into Earth, as a potential landing site for astronauts, ahead of the Bush administration's plans to venture deeper into the solar system with a crewed voyage to Mars.
Read Complete @ www.guardian.co.uk
Prepping Robots to Perform Surgery
Dr. Moll, 56, is a soft-spoken man who can look uncomfortable on stage. Yet his role in founding Intuitive Surgical, the company that now dominates the field, and his current involvement with three other robotics companies, has kept him in the sights of investors, health care providers and fellow entrepreneurs.
He’s now best known as chief executive of Hansen Medical, a publicly traded robotics company focused on minimally invasive cardiac care. But he’s also an investor in and a board member of Mako Surgical, an orthopedics robotics company that recently went public, and he is a co-founder and chairman of Restoration Robotics, a start-up company focused on cosmetic surgery.
Read complete @ www.nytimes.com
Spiraling nanotrees offer new twist on growth of nanowires
Spiraling pine tree-like nanowires created by University of Wisconsin-Madison chemistry professor Song Jin and graduate student Matthew Bierman are evidence of an entirely different way of growing the tiny wires, one that could be harnessed to make better nanowires for applications such as high performance integrated circuits, LEDs and lasers, biosensors, and solar cells. The rapid elongation of the trunks is driven by a spiral defect within them called "screw dislocation," which causes them to twist as they grow and their branches to spiral.Photo by: courtesy Song Jin
Read Complete @ www.physorg.com
Storing data for the next 1000 years
Have you ever thought how vulnerable your data may be through the simple fact that you may be storing your entire digital life on a single hard drive? On single drive can hold tens of thousands of pictures, thousands of music files, videos, letters and countless other documents. One malfunctioning drive can wipe out your virtual life in a blink of an eye. A scary thought. On a greater scale, at least portions of the digital information describing our generation may be put at risk by current storage technologies. There are only a few decades of life in tape and disk storage these days, but a team of researchers claims to have come up with a power-efficient, scalable way to reliably store data with regular hard drives for an estimated (theoretical) 1400 years.
Read complete @ tgdaily.com
Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions
It will soon be 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin and 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species, arguably the most important book ever written. In it, Darwin outlined an idea that many still find shocking – that all life on Earth, including human life, evolved through natural selection.
Darwin presented compelling evidence for evolution in On the Origin and, since his time, the case has become overwhelming. Countless fossil discoveries allow us to trace the evolution of today's organisms from earlier forms. DNA sequencing has confirmed beyond any doubt that all living creatures share a common origin. Innumerable examples of evolution in action can be seen all around us, from the pollution-matching pepper moth to fast-changing viruses such as HIV and H5N1 bird flu. Evolution is as firmly established a scientific fact as the roundness of the Earth.
Read Complete @ NewScientist.com
The Ultimate Test of Atom and Neutron Neutrality
Researchers from Stanford University have proposed a new way to test the neutrality of an atom and even a neutron, a method they say will be far more sensitive than current methods, able to probe the charge of an atom or neutron down to an unbelievably small fraction of the electron charge, e.
This experiment will help answer important questions about charge quantization. Why does the charge appear in units of the electron charge? Why do some particles have no charge? Do the electrons and protons in an atom really cancel out to zero charge?
Read complete @ physorg.com
UCS Satellite Database- Countries and their Satellites
The UCS Satellite Database is a listing of operational satellites currently in orbit around Earth. The UCS Satellite Database is the only free, comprehensive compilation of active satellites in an easy to manipulate, commonly-used database format.
Find it here
Music Builds Bridges in the Brain
Taking music lessons can strengthen connections between the two hemispheres of the brain in children, but only if they practice diligently, according to a study reported here 14 April at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. The findings add to a long-running debate about the effects of musical training on the brain.
In 1995, a study led by neurologist and neuroscientist Gottfried Schlaug found that professional musicians who started playing before the age of 7 have an unusually thick corpus callosum, the bundle of axons that serves as an information superhighway between the left and right sides of the brain. Schlaug and colleagues saw this as evidence that musical training can bolster neural connections, but skeptics pointed to the possibility that the musicians had bigger corpora callosa to begin with. Perhaps their neural wiring had enhanced their musical pursuits instead of the other way around.
Read complete @ sciencenow.sciencemag.org
CyberCarpet
A stroll around the ancient city of Pompeii will be made possible this week thanks to an omni-directional treadmill developed by European researchers.
The treadmill is a "motion platform" which gives the impression of "natural walking" in any direction. The platform, called CyberCarpet, is made up of several belts which form an endless plane along two axes.
Scientists have combined the platform with a tracking system and virtual reality software recreating Pompeii.Read more @ news.bbc.co.uk
‘Breathing’ columns
These tubes that recoil to the ceiling when someone approaches and return to their original position when the person leaves are examples of teleonomic environments, a topic of research pursued by UB architecture faculty member Omar Khan.
Read complete @ www.buffalo.edu
Robots, our new friends electric?
Fictional robots always have a personality: Marvin was paranoid, C-3PO was fussy and HAL 9000 was murderous. But reality is disappointingly different. Sophisticated enough to assemble cars and assist during complex surgery, modern robots are dumb automatons, incapable of striking up relationships with their human operators.
But that could soon change. Engineers argue that, as robots begin to form a bigger part of society, the new machines will need a way to interact with humans. In short, they will need artificial personalities.
This week, engineers, psychologists and computer scientists from across Europe will begin a major project that aims to develop the first robot personalities.
"What we're looking at here is long-term interactions between people and robots in real situations," said Peter McOwan of Queen Mary, University of London, coordinator of the £6.6m, EU-funded Lirec project. "The big question is: what sort of properties does a synthetic companion need to have so that you feel you want to engage in a relationship with it over an extended period of time?"
Read complete @ www.guardian.co.uk
Mind Control Makes A Perfect Soldier
The human mind has always been an object of study, and seeing how the average person uses only 10 percent of their brain, we cannot control our own consciousness. But, what if there are those who can control all the minds in the world and manipulate every individual? If this sounds like an excerpt from a sci-fi film, there are records of researches and experiments with the human mind. There are more and more mind control methods today and they are mostly used fro military purposes.
Read complete @ www.javno.com
Fiction, not science - the long road to HAL
One of the most popular storylines in science fiction is the one about the computer that eventually outsmarts its creator. The machine's maker either comes to a sticky end at the hands of his invention or puts it to work in a plot to dominate the world.
Professor Nik Kasabov, head of the Knowledge Engineering Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI) at AUT University, has no fears of falling victim to a silicon-based killing machine - not for another 40 or 50 years, at any rate.
Read complete @ www.nzherald.co.nzGraphene gazing gives glimpse of foundations of universe
The researchers from The School of Physics and Astronomy, led by Professor Andre Geim, have found that the world’s thinnest material absorbs a well-defined fraction of visible light, which allows the direct determination of the fine structure constant.
Working with Portuguese theorists from The University of Minho in Portugal, Geim and colleagues report their findings online in the latest edition of Science Express. The paper will be published in the journal Science in the coming weeks.
The universe and life on this planet are intimately controlled by several exact numbers; so-called fundamental or universal constants such as the speed of light and the electric charge of an electron.
Read complete @ physorg.com
Japan Gears Up to Become a Full-On Robot Nation
If you've noticed an unusually large number of utilitarian humanoids hailing from Japan in the last few years, then you probably won't be surprised to hear about the country's official robot initiative. Right now, Japan is in the midst of executing a grand plan to make robots an integrated part of everyday life. To compensate for the shortage of young workers willing to do menial tasks, the Japan Robot Association, the government, and several technology institutions drafted a formal plan to create a society in which robots live side by side with humans by the year 2010. Since 2010 is just a couple years away, I called up a roboticist at the forefront of this movement to find out how it's going.
Read complete @ io9.com
Why Web 2.0 is an easier investment than biotech
Just five years ago, the high-tech industry was in the dumps and fickle Silicon Valley hearts were turning to biotechnology and so-called convergence companies that would combine computing know-how with life sciences.
At the time, it seemed like the best place to move the investment chips: The ideas behind social media were just starting to coagulate. The telecommunications build-out of the 1990s had long since ended. And big tech-boom buyers like Yahoo (which my CNET News.com colleague Charlie Cooper to this day curses for forever saddling us with billionaire basketball maven Mark Cuban) had shut the money spigot.
Read Complete @ News.com
The Pentagon's battle bugs
Biological weapons delivered by cyborg insects. It sounds like a nightmare scenario straight out of the wilder realms of science fiction, but it could be a reality if a current Pentagon project comes to fruition.
Right now, researchers are already growing insects with electronics inside them. They're creating cyborg moths and flying beetles that can be remotely controlled. One day, the US military may field squadrons of winged insect/machine hybrids with on-board audio, video or chemical sensors. These cyborg insects could conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions on distant battlefields, in far-off caves, or maybe even in cities closer to home, and transmit detailed data back to their handlers at US military bases.
Read complete @ Asia Times
The End of Antibiotics
Antibiotics are going to be seen as one of the worst things to ever come out of pharmaceutical science because they have made us only weaker in the face of ever increasingly strong super bugs that are resistant to antibiotics.
When we look at how deep the rabbit hole goes with antibiotics, we will get sick in our souls. Antibiotics have fulfilled their anti–biotic anti-life role leaving a long trail of death and suffering in the wake of their use.
Diseases include measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, pneumonia, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria and polio. All were in decline for several decades before the introduction of antibiotics or vaccines - Dr. Lawrence Wilson.
Read complete article @ Natural News
Robotic Minds Think Alike?
Led by Linköping University in Sweden, the researchers in the COSPAL project adopted an innovative approach to making robots recognise, identify and interact with objects, particularly in random, unforeseen situations.
"Gösta Granlund, head of the Computer Vision Laboratory at Linköping University, came up with the concept that action precedes perception in learning. That may sound counterintuitive, but it is exactly how humans learn,” explains Michael Felsberg, coordinator of the EU-funded COSPAL.
Charity Battles Imaginary Killing Machines
London-based charity Landmine Action wants autonomous robots capable of killing people banned under the same kind of treaty that has outlawed landmines in over 150 countries.
Machine-gun wielding military robots are currently remotely controlled by soldiers. But the US Department of Defence wants them in future to work without supervision, meaning they would have to make their own decisions about when to pull the trigger.
Noel Sharkey, a roboticist at Sheffield University, UK, raised the profile of these plans when he condemned them earlier this month.
Read more @ New Scientist
also read @ Wired.com
Robotic Guidance for Knee Surgery
Painful arthritis of the knee can make it difficult to take even a short walk. Knee replacements can give osteoarthritis patients a new lease on life. But some patients, particularly younger ones, don't need the entire joint replaced, and they may benefit from a minimally invasive, partial knee replacement. Patients have fewer complications and faster recovery times following such surgeries, but they're tricky to perform and not routinely done. The robotic guidance system helps orthopedic surgeons create and execute detailed plans for this complex surgery.
Credit: MAKO Surgical Corp.
Read complete @ Technology Review
10 Emerging Technologies 2008
MIT's Technology Review magazine has just published its annual list of the top ten emerging technologies.
Read more @ Technology Review
BigDog
BigDogBI is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog's legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight.
Read more about BigDog @ Boston Dynamics
Distinguishing Artificial From Natural Is Possible
We like to tell ourselves that it's easy to distinguish between the natural and the artificial, but they have a knack for fooling us. When European colonists traveled through the patchwork of forests and meadows of New England, they thought they were exploring primeval nature. In fact, Native Americans had been tending it carefully with fires for centuries. When the Viking probe snapped a fuzzy picture of a mountain on Mars in 1976, some people were sure it showed a giant face carved by Martians. When another probe took a sharper picture in 2001, all trace of the face had vanished.
Read complete @ wired
Fuel Cell Car
Fuel cells are one of the most promising means of producing energy in the future. Because they do not consume fossil fuels they are considered environmentally friendly. Automobile manufacturers are already experimenting successfully with this technology and it is widely believed that fuel cells will become the energy source for automobiles in the near future.
This new Thames & Kosmos Fuel Cell Kit provides a playful introduction to one of the most significant technologies of the 21st Century. With this kit you can build a model car that actually runs on water!
Find it here
Pivo2 electric car concept
Shiro Nakamura likes to think that designing cars is like making music. As Nissan Motor's chief creative officer and an active cello player, Nakamura should know.
Since he began heading up design at Japan's third-biggest automaker nine years ago, the youthful 57-year-old has transformed the company's image as a technologically savvy but generally form-blind outfit into one known for its design flair.
"Nissan draws hints from contemporary Japan -- things like animation, and 'manga' (comics)," Nakamura said. The bubbly Pivo2 electric car concept, which has an egg-shaped cabin nestled inside four small, swivelling wheels, is a perfect example.
Read more
Mathematical Model Predicts Success Of Businesses
Ping-Chen Lin of the National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences in Kaohsiung and Jiah-Shing Chen of the National Central University, Jhongli, in Taiwan, explain how the financial status of any company can be of interest not only to its owners and employees but to a range of creditors, stockholders, banks, and individual investors. However, there are so many changing and interconnected factors that can lead to success or failure that it is usually considered an impossible task to predict whether a company will fail.
Read Complete @ Sciencedaily
Mindful Motion
Scientific American editor Christine Soares talks with Duke University neuroengineer Miguel Nicolelis about his groundbreaking work in controlling robot movement using only thoughts, as well as efforts to create science cities in Brazil and national development through education, especially in science and technology.
Listen the podcast @ Scientific American
Child-like intelligence created in Second Life
The child is a product of logic-based artificial intelligence and complex modelling techniques, and operates on what has been said to be the most powerful university-based supercomputing system in the world.
A creation of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Eddie has his own set of beliefs, and the ability to reason about his beliefs to draw conclusions in a manner that matches human children his age.
Read complete article @ iTnews
Hybrid Light Shines Longer With Less Energy
Researchers in California have developed a hybrid light that is cheaper, longer lasting, more energy efficient and is as bright as traditional light emitting diodes (LEDs).
The technology, which blends traditional LEDs with newer light emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) could eventually be used to make cheap hi-definition televisions and other displays that are flat as film.
Read complete @ Discovery
Cosmic Clean-Up: Wild Ideas to Sweep Space
Space is littered with millions of bits of orbiting garbage leftover from missions. The flying flotsam can delay launches and could potentially smash into spacecraft. Now some creative ideas are emerging for how to sweep up the junk. One idea even involves an oversized NERF ball. The graveyard of ghostly scraps from satellites and other craft continues to grow. Last year, the intentional destruction of China's Fengyun-1C weather satellite sent at least 150,000 bits of orbital debris less than a half-inch (one centimeter) across and larger into space, according to NASA's Orbital Debris Program. Read complete @ Space.com
True lies of Artificial Intellingence
A virtual child controlled by artificially intelligent software has passed a cognitive test regarded as a major milestone in human development. It could lead to smarter computer games able to predict human players' state of mind.
Children typically master the "false belief test" at age 4 or 5. It tests their ability to realise that the beliefs of others can differ from their own, and from reality.
Read complete @ NewScientist
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