Augmented Reality Flooring - putting the beach in your living room

Technology Review - 4.28.10 (by Kristina Grifantini)

Augmented Steps This "haptic" floor can mimic the look and feel of sand.
Credit: Yon Visell


Researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada have developed floor tiles that can simulate the look, sound and feel of snow, grass or pebbles underfoot. Such a tool could perhaps be used for augmented reality applications, tele-presence, training, rehabilitation or even as virtual foot controllers.

The modular "haptic" floor tiling system is made up of a deformable plate suspended on a platform. Between the plate and platform are sensors that detect forces from the user's foot. And the plate can give off vibrations that mimic the feeling of stepping on different materials. A top-down projection and speakers add visual and audio feedback.

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Turning off your brain - Faith healers know how to do it

NewScientist - 4.27.10 (by Andy Coghlan)

Shut down (Image: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty)

WHEN we fall under the spell of a charismatic figure, areas of the brain responsible for scepticism and vigilance become less active. That's the finding of a study which looked at people's response to prayers spoken by someone purportedly possessing divine healing powers.

To identify the brain processes underlying the influence of charismatic individuals, Uffe Schjødt of Aarhus University in Denmark and colleagues turned to Pentecostal Christians, who believe that some people have divinely inspired powers of healing, wisdom and prophecy.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Schjødt and his colleagues scanned the brains of 20 Pentecostalists and 20 non-believers while playing them recorded prayers. The volunteers were told that six of the prayers were read by a non-Christian, six by an ordinary Christian and six by a healer. In fact, all were read by ordinary Christians.

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Each neuron a computer, the brain a vast network?

NewScientist - 4/26/10 (by Brian J. Ford)

Modeling the neuron as little more than a simple on/off switch is a big mistake (Image: Dan Webber).

So where does that leave the neuron, the most highly evolved cell we know? It ought to be in an interesting and privileged place. After all, neurons are so specialized that they have virtually abandoned division and reproduction. Yet we model this cell as little more than an organic transistor, an on/off switch. But if a red alga can "work out" how to solve problems, or an amoeba construct a stone home with all the "ingenuity" of a master builder, how can the human neuron be so lowly?

Unraveling brain structure and function has come to mean understanding the interrelationship between neurons, rather than understanding the neurons themselves. My hunch is that the brain's power will turn out to derive from data processing within the neuron rather than activity between neurons. And networks of neurons enhance the effect of those neurons "thinking" between themselves. I think the neuron's action potentials are rather like a language neurons use to transmit processed data from one to the next.

Back in 2004, we set out to record these potentials, from neurons cultured in the lab. They emit electrical signals of around 40 hertz, which sound like a buzzing, irritating noise played back as audio files. I used some specialist software to distinguish the signal within the noise - and to produce sound from within each peak that is closer to the frequency of a human voice and therefore more revealing to the ear.

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Gives new meaning to "Keep your eyes on the road!"

NPR - 4.23.10

Scientist David Latotzky of Freie Universitaet Berlin sits on the passenger seat of a car turning the steering wheel with his eye movements in Berlin, Friday, April 23, 2010. The scientists developed the software "EyeDriver" to steer their car "Spirit of Berlin" just by movement of the eyes.

Tired of spinning that steering wheel? Try this: German researchers have developed a new technology that lets drivers steer cars using only their eyes.

Raul Rojas, an artificial intelligence researcher at Berlin's Free University, said Friday that the technology tracks a driver's eye movement and, in turn, steers the car in whatever direction they're looking.

Rojas and his team presented the technology-packed prototype under a clear blue sky at an airport in the German capital.

The Dodge Caravan crisscrossed the tarmac at the abandoned Tempelhof Airport, its driver using his line of sight to control the car. The car's steering wheel was turning as if guided by ghostly hands.

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Hawking says, Don't talk to (alien) strangers

TimesOnline - 4.25.10 (by Jonathan Leake)

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

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Fast Robot Hands (Video)

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What's better than Hi-Def? A VisWall

Click here to watch the video.

A giant video screen that takes up an entire wall, floor to ceiling, is allowing scientists to see details they've never seen before. The high definition clarity of the VisWall rivals IMAX in its sharpness. Credit: NSF.
 
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The web is making it personal

gigaom - 4.21.10 (by Liz Gannes)

Facebook, as expected, launched at its f8 conference in San Francisco today its master plan to make the rest of the web social. CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the social networking company’s director of product, Bret Taylor, laid out three major initiatives to that effect.

The f8 launches expand on the concept of authenticating on sites using Facebook Connect — which reached 100 million users in its first 15 months — and sending back updates to the Facebook news feed. Most interestingly, Facebook will move from the idea of a transitory stream of actions to give outside sites persistent access to its users.

First, social plugins are little widgets that bring Facebook to the rest of the web. They offer “instant personalization,” said Taylor, with the goal of increasing user engagement, using an iFrame and a cookie remembering the Facebook user. So when you visit a website, even if it’s new to you, you’ll see which friends have also logged in there, what their activity is and a set of recommendations based on their actions.

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Put some skin on those robots

NewScientist - 4.19.10 (by Paul Marks)

Gimme five and I'll feel it (Image: IIT).

BEAUTY may be only skin deep, but for humanoid robots a fleshy covering is about more than mere aesthetics, it could be essential to making them socially acceptable. A touch-sensitive coating could prevent such machines from accidentally injuring anybody within their reach.

In May, a team at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa will dispatch to labs across Europe the first pieces of touch-sensing skin designed for their nascent humanoid robot, the iCub. The skin IIT and its partners have developed contains flexible pressure sensors that aim to put robots in touch with the world.

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3D Printers now for sale

PopSci - 4.19.10 (by Clay Dillow)

HP's Designjet 3D Printer    HP

Remember back in January when HP announced it would bring a tabletop 3-D printer to market, at a place and time to be named later? That place and time just became a quite a bit less ambiguous. Today Stratasys, the company that is manufacturing the device for HP, announced that it has shipped the first units of the HP-branded Designjet 3D fabrication machines, which will be available in May -- but only in Europe.

The Designjet 3D is based on Stratasys's Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology, which turns three-dimensional CAD drawings into tangible prototypes by extruding partially molten ABS plastic in extremely fine layers one atop the other, forming the entire 3-D model in a single piece from the ground up. Designjet 3D will print in ivory-colored plastic only while Designjet Color 3D will print single-color parts in up to eight different colors (we're not sure why you can't just put a different hue of ABS plastic in the Designjet 3D).

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The next big thing - Synthetic Biology

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Your brain really can focus on two things at once

Scientific American - 4.15.10 (by Katherine Harmon)

New research shows that rather than being totally devoted to one goal at a time, the human brain can distribute two goals to different hemispheres to keep them both in mind--if it perceives a worthy reward for doing so

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MULTITASKING: Researchers used fMRI to examine subjects' brains as they switched between two tasks (actions A and B) for which there were separate rewards (goals A and B).

The human brain is considered to be pretty quick, but it lacks many of qualities of a super-efficient computer. For instance, we have trouble switching between tasks and cannot seem to actually do more than one thing at a time. So despite the increasing options—and demands—to multitask, our brains seem to have trouble keeping tabs on many activities at once.

A new study, however, illustrates how the brain can simultaneously keep track of two separate goals, even while it is busy performing a task related to one of the aims, hinting that the mind might be better at multitasking than previously thought.

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One dad, two moms - Embryos with DNA from 3 parents

Sun - 4.15.10 (by Emma Morton)

UK scientists have created "designer embryos" containing DNA from a man and TWO women.

The breakthrough gives hope of healthy children to couples with genetic disorders in their families.

It also offers the prospect of eradicating fatal genetic diseases.

But the procedure - dubbed three person IVF - sparked controversy last night.

Researchers at Newcastle University set out to prevent damaged DNA in mitochondria - the "batteries" that power cells - from being passed on to offspring.

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HULC Exoskeleton - Military wearable robot

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Bionic eye to be implanted

ScienceDaily - 4.12.10

Bionic Vision Australia (BVA) has unveiled its wide-view neurostimulator concept -- a bionic eye that will be implanted into Australia's first recipient of the technology.

The prototype bionic eye, developed by BVA researchers at the University of New South Wales and unveiled at the BVA consortium's official launch at the University of Melbourne, will deliver improved quality of life for patients suffering from degenerative vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration.

The device, which is currently undergoing testing, consists of a miniature camera mounted on glasses that captures visual input, transforming it into electrical signals that directly stimulate surviving neurons in the retina. The implant will enable recipients to perceive points of light in the visual field that the brain can then reconstruct into an image.

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The thing about men's brains is...

Live Science - 4.9.10 (by Robin Nixon)

Most popular notions about the male brain are based on studies of men ages 18 to 22 — undergrads subjecting themselves to experiments for beer money or course credit. But a man's brain varies tremendously over his life span, quickly contradicting the image of the single-minded sex addict that circulates in mainstream consciousness.

From his wandering eye to his desire to mate for life, here's what you need to know about guys' minds.

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Your 2020 Life - Predictions for your life in 10 years

The article excerpt below is part of a larger series on what your life will be like in 2020.

Forbes - 4.8.10 (by Mark Rolston)

Your Computer In 2020 - Traditional computers are disappearing; human beings themselves are becoming information augmented.

What's the most fascinating shift that computing is creating in our lives? You might think it's just "smaller, better, faster," but there is an even more dramatic story about how computing is changing who we are as people and a society.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, the idea of managing two distinct lives has become common for many of us. We have always had the first life--our physical existence, the one we can't escape until we die. But today many of us have also adapted a second life. We have long had the opportunity to invent ourselves through media, historically through writing. We could invent a new self. Yet our first lives remained dominant for most of us.

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Self-Powered Nano Sensors - Coming to your body soon

Technology Review - April 2010 (by Katherine Bourzac)

Nanoscale sensors are exquisitely sensitive, very frugal with power, and, of course, tiny. They could be useful in detecting molecular signs of disease in the blood, minute amounts of poisonous gases in the air, and trace contaminants in food. But the batteries and integrated circuits necessary to drive these devices make them difficult to fully miniaturize. The goal of Zhong Lin Wang, a materials scientist at Georgia Tech, is to bring power to the nano world with minuscule generators that take advantage of piezoelectricity. If he succeeds, biological and chemical nano sensors will be able to power themselves.

The piezoelectric effect--in which crystalline materials under mechanical stress produce an electrical potential--has been known of for more than a century. But in 2005, Wang was the first to demonstrate it at the nanoscale by bending zinc oxide nanowires with the probe of an atomic-force microscope. As the wires flex and return to their original shape, the potential produced by the zinc and oxide ions drives an electrical current. The current that Wang coaxed from the wires in his initial experiments was tiny; the electrical potential peaked at a few millivolts. But Wang rightly suspected that with enough engineering, he could design a practical nanoscale power source by harnessing the tiny vibrations all around us--sound waves, the wind, even the turbulence of blood flow over an implanted device. These subtle movements would bend nanowires, generating electricity.

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Wormholes? We may already be in one

Indiana University News Room - 4.5.10

IU theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski in research published in "Physics Letters B" uses Euclidean-based mathematical modeling to suggest that all black holes may have wormholes inside which exist universes created at the same time as the black holes.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Could our universe be located within the interior of a wormhole which itself is part of a black hole that lies within a much larger universe?

Such a scenario in which the universe is born from inside a wormhole (also called an Einstein-Rosen Bridge) is suggested in a paper from Indiana University theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski in Physics Letters B. The final version of the paper was available online March 29 and will be published in the journal edition April 12.

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Driverless cars on the road by 2020

NewScientist - 3.6.10 (by Nic Fleming)

Laid-back driving (Image: Jeffrey Sylvester/Taxi/Getty).

WITH his jeans, white trainers and stripy top, Bob is every inch the well-dressed 6-year-old. He's standing in the middle of a hotel car park and, scarily, I'm driving straight at him. Instead of hitting the brakes, I put my foot down on the accelerator. With just 10 metres to go, a row of red lights flashes across my windscreen and there's an urgent, high-pitched beeping sound. An instant later, I am jerked forward as the brakes slam on automatically and the car screeches to a halt just short of Bob's stomach.

"I see the potential for launching fully autonomous vehicles by 2020."

This is what Bob is for. The child-sized dummy has just helped me test the first in-car system that can sense an imminent collision with pedestrians and brake automatically if the driver doesn't. It is being put through final trials before being launched in May by Swedish car maker Volvo in its new S60 model.

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The Collider and You - Why it Matters

Time - 3.3.10 (by Eben Harrell)

A engineer faces the magnet core of the world's largest superconducting solenoid magnet (CMS, Compact Muon Solenoid), one of the experiments preparing to take data at European Organization for Nuclear Research's Large Hadron Collider. FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP / Getty Images.

The ATLAS particle detector at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) outside Geneva is 150 feet long, 82 feet high, weighs 7,000 tons and contains enough cable and wiring to wrap around Earth's equator seven times. It's a mammoth machine, designed for the delightful purpose of detecting particles so tiny you can fit hundreds of billions of them into a beam narrower than a human hair.

Out on the cusp of human knowledge, particle physics can seem very esoteric indeed. But the LHC's findings may have implications that go beyond pure science.

ATLAS occupies just one small corner of the strange and wonderful world that is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — the circular 14-mile underground particle accelerator that promises scientists untold insights into the mysteries of the cosmos. More than 25 years in the planning, with a price tag of around $10 billion, the LHC officially — finally — began smashing protons together on March 30. The goal: to answer the most fundamental questions about how the universe works.

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Living forever by uploading your consciousness - a valid approach?

IEET - 3.30.10 (by Ben Hyink)

While it may be impolitic now for technoprogressives to focus on uploading, for radical life extension advocates it is invaluable to have access to brief and compelling arguments in favor of the efficacy of such a process.

It is a process that will be necessary to enable people to live longer than an average of 150 years when they are increasingly likely to die from random accidents encountered in a normal lifestyle. In the past I have made arguments against the feasibility of some forms of uploading as a means of life extension. I would like to correct that error by providing a line of argument in favor of uploading as a life extension measure, though the life that is extended may change dramatically with a dilution of the self into a larger group of minds.
Is Consciousness and the Self Bound to Biology?

Multiple types of scientific evidence point by consistent correlation to matter, and particularly matter in neurophysiological states, as the basis or substrate of cognitive processes and conscious experience. While in philosophy of mind we cannot completely rule out the possibility that such correlation is illusory or that the substrate of thought and experience is something other than the observable brain, there seems to be no compelling evidence-based reason to doubt that our observations of brain activity are observations of the locus of thought and experience.

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Watch this robot fold towels

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What does time look like? Ask a Time Lord

NewScientist - 4.1.10 (by Rowan Hooper)

Time Lords walk among us. Two per cent of readers may be surprised to discover that they are members of an elite group with the power to perceive the geography of time.

Sci-fi fans – Anglophile ones, at least – know that the coolest aliens in the universe are Time Lords: time-travelling humanoids with the ability to understand and perceive events throughout time and space. Now it seems that people with a newly described condition have a similar, albeit lesser ability: they experience time as a spatial construct.

Synaesthesia is the condition in which the senses are mixed, so that a sound or a number has a colour, for example. In one version, the sense of touch evokes emotions.

To those variants we can now add time-space synaesthesia.

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