2009-04-30

World's Fastest Camera

Clipped from: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Debut for world's fastest camera

Debut for world's fastest camera

The fastest imaging system ever devised has been demonstrated by researchers reporting in the journal Nature.
Their camera's "shutter speed" is just a half a billionth of a second, and it can capture over six million images in a second continuously.
Its "flashbulb" is a fast laser pulse dispersed in space and then stretched in time and detected electronically.

The technique hinges on an ordered spreading of the colours in laser light

Clipped from: Fastest Camera Ever Built Uses Lasers | Wired Science

Fastest Camera Ever Built Uses Lasers

Scientists have made the fastest camera ever. It can take 6.1 million pictures in a single second, at a shutter speed of 440 trillionths of a second. Light itself moves just a fraction of a centimeter in that time.
The camera works by illuminating objects with a laser that emits a different infrared frequency for every single pixel, allowing them to custom-amplify a signal that would otherwise be too dim to see.

Clipped from: YouTube - World's Fastest Camera

Clipped from: World's fastest camera : Nature News

Speedy snapshots captured using laser light.

The new camera can take snaps every 163 nanoseconds.

The team captured pictures of tiny beads moving through microfluidic channels.

Clipped from: Keisuke Goda @ UCLA

Welcome to Keisuke Goda @ UCLA

Keisuke Goda is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Optoelectronic Circuits and Systems Laboratory led by Prof. Bahram Jalali in the Department of Electrical Engineering at University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests lie in the fields of optoelectronics, biomedical optics, and silicon photonics for biomedical and defense applications. For more information about his ongoing research projects, go to the Research page.

STEAM - the world's fastest camera demonstrated

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2009-04-29

Brain Music Therapy

Clipped from: Feds Turn to ‘Brain Music’ to Boost Emergency Worker Performance | Danger Room

Feds Turn to ‘Brain Music’ to Boost Emergency Worker Performance

The program is supposed to study how “brain music” — a customized soundtrack designed to either boost alertness or reduce stress — can improve the performance of police, firefighters and other first responders. As described by DHS, researchers will test how an “instrumental alert track” [...] can boost focus and energy, or act to reduce stress. A group of firefighters will take part in the experiment.

Clipped from: Employment Opportunities

Brain Music Therapy (BMT)

BMT is an effective, scientifically proven treatment for stress, insomnia, anxiety, and depression. It has also been found to increase productivity and concentration, and help reduce headaches. BMT records an individual's brain waves and converts them into unique musical sounds. These musical sounds correlate to brain waves that promote relaxation and trigger activation in your body. The musical sounds are presented to you in the form of two musical files - one relaxing, and one activating. Playing those files promotes relaxation and activation in your body. BMT does not involve taking pills, and has had no side effects to date. It is customized to an individual's unique brain waves and backed by solid scientific evidence, including double blind studies.

Brain Music Therapy finds, records, and reinforces brain waves that are associated with various physiological parameters, such as heart rate and muscle tension.

Changes in brain activity correlate with physiological parameters and reflect on emotions and behavior. The rhythmic patterns of brain waves promote distinct meditative and activating states. Unfortunately, a person's desire to fall asleep does not always correspond to his/her brain wave state.

Brain Music Therapy records brain waves using EEG (electroencephalogram) equipment, and translates them into unique musical compositions. These musical sounds are presented in the form of two music files: relaxing and activating. Listening those files reflects on individual brain wave patterns and promotes the desired state of mind.

Clipped from: HUMAN BIONICS

HUMAN BIONICS has been awarded a Phase III SBIR contract by The Department of Homeland Security to study a proprietary Wellness Program that provides Nutrition Education and Music-Based Neurotraining to reduce stress and improve sleep and cognitive on-the-job performance. Please Read: Cerebral Melodies.

Clipped from: DHS | Science and Technology (S&T) Snapshots

Cerebral Melodies

Improving emergency response through music

Human brains are powerful instruments. The Department of Homeland Security wants to help emergency responders manage their demanding jobs better using the music created by them.

The concept of Brain Music is to use the frequency, amplitude, and duration of musical sounds to move the brain from an anxious state to a more relaxed state. In British philosopher John Locke’s terms, Brain Music brings new meaning to his famous phrase: “A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World.”

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2009-04-28

Super-Strong Metallic Spider Silk

Clipped from: Scientists make super-strong metallic spider silk | Reuters

Scientists make super-strong metallic spider silk

LONDON (Reuters) - Spider silk is already tougher and lighter than steel, and now scientists have made it three times stronger by adding small amounts of metal.
The technique may be useful for manufacturing super-tough textiles and high-tech medical materials, including artificial bones and tendons.
"It could make very strong thread for surgical operations," researcher Seung-Mo Lee of the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle, Germany, said in a telephone interview.

Clipped from: German Scientists Spin Stretchier and Stronger Spider Silk

Many insects and other creatures incorporate small amounts of metals such as zinc, manganese, calcium or copper into body parts like jaws, claws and stingers to make them stiffer and harder. The scientists drew on a technique called 'atomic layer deposition' (ALD) to get zinc, titanium and aluminium ions into the spider silk.

Normally ALD just leaves a layer of metal oxides on the surface of the treated fibre; treating spider silk in this way therefore had little impact on its strength. However, by adapting the technique slightly, the researchers were able to get the metal ions to infiltrate the spider silk and become part of the thread.

Clipped from: Max Planck Society - Press Release

Power thrust for spider silk

A team of scientists from Halle has succeeded in making spider silk significantly more break-resistant and ductile through the addition of metals

Fig.: Endurance test for spider silk: in many ways, spider silk - here the picture of a garden cross spider in its web- is stronger than a metal wire of the same thickness. After researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics infiltrated spider silk with metal ions, a double-strand of silk can support the weight of a cube of 27.5 grams, three times more than an untreated strand.

Despite its dramatically improved properties, metal-infiltrated spider silk is unlikely to be used to reinforce either fenders or aircraft wings in the future. "It would probably be more or less impossible to obtain large volumes of natural spider silk," says Knez. The insects are very difficult to keep and are not particularly productive when it comes to spinning their silk. Nonetheless, Knez is convinced of the practical use of this power thrust for materials: "We are pretty certain that we will also be able to improve the properties of synthetic materials that imitate natural ones using our process."

Clipped from: Greatly Increased Toughness of Infiltrated Spider Silk -- Lee et al. 324 (5926): 488 -- Science

Reports

Greatly Increased Toughness of Infiltrated Spider Silk

Seung-Mo Lee,¹^,* Eckhard Pippel,¹ Ulrich Gösele,¹ Christian Dresbach,² Yong Qin,¹ C. Vinod Chandran,³ Thomas Bräuniger,³ Gerd Hause,⁴ Mato Knez¹^,*

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Animal-Like Leg Extensions

Clipped from: Kim Graham Studios

Digigrade Leg Extensions

These are Digigrade leg extensions. They are made of steel and add 14 inches of height to the wearer. But these are not ordinary stilts; they give a person the uncanny and graceful appearance of an animal. It is really cool! The movement of the legs is genuinely graceful and naturalistic. It is a great deal of fun being so much taller.

Clipped from: YouTube - Digilegs Demo

Clipped from: Silk Mermaid

Constructing large sculptures, step by step

Professional sculptor Kim Graham works at many scales. She especially likes creating large-scale (12-15-foot, 4-5m) sculptures. On this website, SilkMermaid.com, Kim describes in exact detail each step in constructing these large projects, from initial maquette (model) to eventual completion.

...

From time to time, Kim has paused work on the large projects to execute other commissions. She chronicles some of these on this blog, such as her recent commission “Satyr Legs.” The Satyr Legs project prompted Kim to design her new digigrade leg extensions, [...]

Clipped from: Digitigrade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Digitigrade

A digitigrade is an animal that stands or walks on its digits, or toes. Digitigrades include walking birds (what many assume to be bird knees are actually ankles), cats, dogs, and most other mammals, but not humans, bears, and a few others (cf. plantigrade, unguligrade). They are generally quicker and move more quietly than other mammals.

While humans usually walk with the soles of their feet on the ground, i.e. plantigrade locomotion, digitigrade animals walk on their distal and intermediate phalanges. Digitigrade locomotion is responsible for the distinctive hooked shape of dog legs.

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Kim Graham Studios
Kim Graham's Gallery
YouTube - Digilegs Demo
Digitigrade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Silk Mermaid

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2009-04-27

Watson -- IBM's Question and Answering System

Clipped from: Computer Program to Take On ‘Jeopardy!’ - NYTimes.com

Computer Program to Take On ‘Jeopardy!’

I.B.M. plans to announce Monday that it is in the final stages of completing a computer program to compete against human “Jeopardy!” contestants. If the program beats the humans, the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward.

Clipped from: Artificial intelligence's next frontier: Jeopardy | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Artificial intelligence's next frontier: Jeopardy

Watson will be competing against humans on Jeopardy, the popular quiz show. IBM is hoping that Watson will be able to understand complex questions—presumably from Alex Trebek—and answer them fast enough to compete with humans.
The knowledge part of Jeopardy—history, culture, science and other topics—can be packed into Watson. What’s unclear is whether the system can get all the nuances of the clues.

Dave Ferrucci, IBM scientist and Watson project director, with his baby.

Clipped from: YouTube - IBM "Watson" System to Challenge Humans at Jeopardy!

Clipped from: IBM - Research: Jeopardy!

“Question Answering” is technology's next grand challenge

IBM's computing system — called a Question Answering (QA) system among computer scientists — has been under development for nearly two years. With the April 27 announcement, IBM's researchers plan to put it to the test in a machine versus human contest on the gold-standard quiz show. And, officials from Jeopardy! announced plans to produce a human vs. machine contest on the renowned show.
Code-named "Watson," the IBM computing system is being designed to rival the human mind's ability to determine precise answers to natural language questions and to compute accurate confidences in the answers. According to Dr. David Ferrucci, leader of the project team, "The confidence processing ability is key to winning at Jeopardy! and is critical to implementing useful business applications of Question Answering."
Watson will also incorporate massively parallel analytical capabilities and, just like human competitors, Watson will not be connected to the Internet or have any other outside assistance.

Clipped from: IBM - The DeepQA Project - United States

Competing at Jeopardy! is just the first step

As difficult as it will be for the Watson computing system to compete on the leading quiz show for brainy humans, the ultimate test will be to move beyond the Jeopardy! Challenge. The goal is to have computers start to interact in natural human terms across a range of applications and processes, understanding the questions that humans ask and providing answers that humans can understand and justify.

[...]

Moving beyond the Jeopardy! competition, automatic Question Answering will help drive the future of business intelligence, analytics and information management, so that business and government decision makers will have the most cutting-edge capabilities for finding the precise information they need from the mountains of data they produce.

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2009-04-26

Andasol 1 Solar Power -- Molten Salt Technology

Clipped from: How to Use Solar Energy at Night: Scientific American

How to Use Solar Energy at Night

Molten salts can store the sun's heat during the day and provide power at night

Near Granada, Spain, more than 28,000 metric tons of salt is now coursing through pipes at the Andasol 1 power plant. That salt will be used to solve a pressing if obvious problem for solar power: What do you do when the sun is not shining and at night?

The answer: store sunlight as heat energy for such a rainy day.

Clipped from: Solar Millennium AG - We re Developing the Future. - Home

Andasol 1, the first parabolic trough power plant in Europe, has initiated its test run. This solar-thermal power plant is an important reference for Solar Millennium's expertise in project development and technology. Andasol 1 will supply up to 200.000 people with climate-friendly electricity and save about 149,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year compared with a modern coal power plant.

Clipped from: Andasol Projects

	nTechnology: „Solar-only“ Parabolic Trough Power Plant
	nInstalled Capacity: 3 x 49,9 MWel
	nStorage: Two-tank molten salt storage for 7 full load hours
	nProject Site: Plateau of Guadix, Province Granada, Spain
	nNet electricity production: 3 x 157 Mio. kWh/a
	nInvestmentbudget: approx. 260 Mio. € per plant

Clipped from: How to use solar energy at night or during rainy days | Solar Power | The Green Optimistic

The molted salt technology is very simple in theory. The molted salt has 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium-nitrate. The salt melts at 430 Fahrenheit and is kept liquid at 550 Fahrenheit in an insulated cold storage tank. The molted salt is pumped to the top of the tower, where sunlight heats it in a receiver to 1050 degrees Fahrenheit. The 1050 F heated salt flows back down to a second insulated hot storage tank. Hot salt goes into a steam generator which produces very hot steam for a turbine.

Molted salt technology is almost 93% efficient compared to directly harvesting the sun energy. The other 7% lost during the heat transfer to water is not so significant if we compare to other technologies of storing the energy that comes from the sun.

Andasol 1 is the first solar-thermal power plant ever built, and the investments costs go up to $380 million (300 million euros).

Clipped from: YouTube - Andasol Power Plant Salt Storage Solar Millenium - solar thermal parabolic trough plant

Andasol Power Plant Salt Storage Solar Millenium - solar thermal parabolic trough plant

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The AlloSphere A 3D Immersive Theater and Research Facility

Clipped from: The AlloSphere at the California NanoSystems Institute, UC Santa Barbara

The AlloSphere is a unique, one-of-a-kind scientific instrument that is a culmination of 24 years of Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin's creativity and research efforts in media systems and studio design. She approached the design of the AlloSphere in much the same way that she composes a piece of music.

[...]

The AlloSphere Research Facility is differentiated from conventional virtual reality environments by its seamless surround-view capabilities and its focus on multiple sensory modalities and interaction. Building the AlloSphere was not an off-the-shelf enterprise. Designing a large-scale multimedia environment to deliver rich, coherent, interactive, high-resolution 3D video and audio streams from voluminous amounts of scientific data, all in real-time, was a non-trivial computational and systems engineering task that involved a significant number of faculty from diverse disciplines. Creating subsequent next generations of the instrument will again require genuine creativity to solve significant research and design challenges.

Clipped from: Demo: Stunning data visualization in the AlloSphere | Video on TED.com

Talks JoAnn Kuchera-Morin: Tour the AlloSphere, a stunning new way to see scientific data

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, a new way to see, hear and interpret scientific data. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ... and detect previously unseen patterns that could lead to new discoveries.

Clipped from: YouTube - JoAnn Kuchera-Morin: Tour the AlloSphere, a stunning new way to see scientific data

Clipped from: The Santa Barbara Independent Enter the Allosphere

Enter the Allosphere

TAKE A LITTLE TRIP: A researcher begins a flight into the Allosphere, a $10-million magical mystery machine at UCSB. Colorful and scientific, the machine gives glimpses into brain activity and atomic relationships, with much more promised for the future.

To see the ’Sphere’s 3-d imagery, users must don a pair of glasses (center) that cost upward of $400 per pair.

UP IN THE AIR: JoAnn Kuchera-Morin and her MAT students stand proudly inside their creation, an expansive mechanical beast whose true future is unknown. Will it further scientific discoveries? Will it become groundbreaking computer theater? Will Hollywood come knocking? Or will it just be some trippy way to spend an afternoon? No one knows, and Kuchera-Morin seems to like it that way.

Clipped from: YouTube - Allosphere - Professor JoeAnn - Part 1 of 2 - University of CA Santa Barbara 21Jan08 Kodak Z1012 IS

Allosphere - Professor JoeAnn - Part 1 of 2

Professor JoeAnn, creator of the Allosphere, tells about her world-altering, three story high machine. It's a laser show in 3D effect.

Clipped from: YouTube - Allosphere Professor JoeAnn Part 2 of 2 University of CA Santa Barbara 21Jan08 Kodak Z1012 IS

Allosphere Professor JoeAnn Part 2 of 2

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AlloSphere three story virtual environment not available for birthday parties, Bat Mitzvahs

2009-04-24

Penn and Teller Explain Magic Tricks

Clipped from: Penn & Teller - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Penn & Teller

Sometimes, the pair will claim to reveal a secret of how a magic trick is done, but those tricks are usually invented by the duo for the sole purpose of exposing them, and therefore designed with more spectacular and weird methods than would have been necessary had it just been a "proper" magic trick.

Clipped from: YouTube - Penn and Teller Explain Sleight of Hand

Penn and Teller Explain Sleight of Hand

Clipped from: YouTube - Penn and Teller - cups and ball trick

Penn and Teller - cups and ball trick

Clipped from: Penn & Teller: How to Do the Saw Trick Video – 5min.com

Penn & Teller: How to Do the Saw Trick

Clipped from: Penn and Teller Explain Flag Burning Trick Video – 5min.com

Penn and Teller Explain Flag Burning Trick

Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion

For Teller (that's his full legal name), magic is more than entertainment. He wants his tricks to reveal the everyday fraud of perception so that people become aware of the tension between what is and what seems to be. Our brains don't see everything—the world is too big, too full of stimuli. So the brain takes shortcuts, constructing a picture of reality with relatively simple algorithms for what things are supposed to look like. Magicians capitalize on those rules. "Every time you perform a magic trick, you're engaging in experimental psychology," Teller says. "If the audience asks, 'How the hell did he do that?' then the experiment was successful. I've exploited the efficiencies of your mind."

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Ant Reproduces Without Sex

Clipped from: PHOTO IN THE NEWS: All-Female Ant Species Found

PHOTO IN THE NEWS: All-Female Ant Species Found

April 17, 2009—Save the males? Too late for Mycocepurus smithii (pictured). This leaf-cutter ant species is all female and thrives without sex of any kind—ever—according to a new study. The ants have evolved to reproduce only when queens clone themselves.

Clipped from: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Ants inhabit 'world without sex'

Ants inhabit 'world without sex'

An Amazonian ant has dispensed with sex and developed into an all-female species, researchers have found.
The ants reproduce via cloning - the queen ants copy themselves to produce genetically identical daughters.
[...]
Anna Himler, the biologist from the University of Arizona who led the research, told BBC News that the team used a battery of tests to verify their findings.
[...]
There are advantages to life without sex, Dr Himler explained.

"It avoids the energetic cost of producing males, and doubles the number of reproductive females produced each generation from 50% to 100% of the offspring."

Clipped from: Mycocepurus smithii - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mycocepurus smithii

Mycocepurus smithii is an attini fungus-growing ant from Latin America whose species consists exclusively of females which reproduce asexually. The queen reproduces by parthenogenesis and all ants in a colony are female clones of the queen.^[1] The ants cultivate a garden of fungus inside their colony grown with pieces of dead vegetables and other insects. It is this capacity for farming which initially prompted research into the species as a basal genus member would provide insight into the natural history of the fungal-cultivating ant tribe, Attini.^[2]

Himler research
The research team was led by a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin in the United States, Anna Himler.^[1]^[5] The researchers initially were interested in the ants' capability for cultivating fungus.^[5] The researchers used DNA profiling to confirm that each member of the colony was genetically identical to the queen.^[5] They also discovered through a process of dissection that the mussel organ, a female docking apparatus within the vagina used to hook the mate's genitalia,^[6] had degenerated in members of this species.^[7] A total of six separate tests were carried out, with the researchers unable to locate any male members of the species.^[1] The team's findings were then published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.^[7]

Clipped from: Mycocepurus smithii (Forel, 1893) - Encyclopedia of Life

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Pages

2009-04-30

Debut for world's fastest camera

Fastest Camera Ever Built Uses Lasers

Welcome to Keisuke Goda @ UCLA

2009-04-29

Feds Turn to ‘Brain Music’ to Boost Emergency Worker Performance

Cerebral Melodies

2009-04-28

Scientists make super-strong metallic spider silk

Reports

Greatly Increased Toughness of Infiltrated Spider Silk

Digigrade Leg Extensions

Constructing large sculptures, step by step

Digitigrade

2009-04-27

Computer Program to Take On ‘Jeopardy!’

2009-04-26

How to Use Solar Energy at Night

Molten salts can store the sun's heat during the day and provide power at night

Andasol Power Plant Salt Storage Solar Millenium - solar thermal parabolic trough plant

Talks JoAnn Kuchera-Morin: Tour the AlloSphere, a stunning new way to see scientific data

Enter the Allosphere

Allosphere - Professor JoeAnn - Part 1 of 2

Allosphere Professor JoeAnn Part 2 of 2

2009-04-24

Penn & Teller

Penn and Teller Explain Sleight of Hand

Penn and Teller - cups and ball trick

Penn & Teller: How to Do the Saw Trick

Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion

PHOTO IN THE NEWS: All-Female Ant Species Found

Ants inhabit 'world without sex'

Mycocepurus smithii

Himler research