2009-11-30

Aliens Living Among Us, Bulgarian Scientists Claim

Aliens 'already exist on earth', Bulgarian scientists claim

Aliens from outer space are already among us on earth, say Bulgarian government scientists who claim they are already in contact with extraterrestrial life.

Work on deciphering a complex set of symbols sent to them is underway, scientists from the country's Space Research Institute said.

They claim aliens are currently answering 30 questions posed to them.

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Bulgarian Academy Scientists Reported to Be in Touch with Aliens

Scientists from the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) have been reported to be in touch with extraterrestrial beings.

The Bulgarian Novinar Daily has reported that the Bulgarian scientists are currently working on deciphering pictograms which are said to have come in the form of the so called “crop circles” with which the aliens answered 30 questions posed by the BAS researchers.

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Bulgaria: We Are in Contact with Aliens

Lachezar Filipov believes crop circles contain the answers to questions his team have posed to extra-terrestrials. Photo by metro.co.uk

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The dragonfly crop circle which appeared in Yatesbury, Wiltshire, this year

In all, his team are analysing 150 crop circles from around the world which they believe answer questions beamed into outer space.

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Superhydrophobic Materials

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

Superhydrophobe

Superhydrophobic surfaces such as the leaves of the lotus plant have surfaces that are highly hydrophobic, i.e., extremely difficult to wet. The contact angles of a water droplet exceeds 150° and the roll-off angle is less than 10°.^[1] This is referred to as the Lotus effect.

clipped from lotus-shower.isunet.edu

The Physical Basis

To understand the physics behind the Lotus-Effect, one has to take a look the
forces that act upon a drop of liquid on a surface.

A droplet on a hydrophilic rough surface seems to sink into the gaps

A droplet on a rough hydrophobic surface sitting on the spikes

Self-Cleaning Properties

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Left to right: Water on a lotus leaf; Surface microstructure of the lotus leaf; ORNL "Nano-
Cones" on glass.

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Super hydrophobic substances

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Axisymmetric droplet impinging on a hydrophobic surface

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Hydration Shell Dynamics of a Hydrophobic Particle

clipped from medtechinsider.com

Some insect wings, for example, are superhydrophobic, which is the combined result of their chemistry and the detailed nanoscale structures on their surface.

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The Ostendo CRVD Curved Display

clipped from www.popsci.com

Ostendo CDM43

This 41-inch-wide curved display can replace several computer screens or create wraparound views for gaming. Software inside splits data from your PC into four images, which are emitted by four miniature projectors and blended into one. (As eye-popping as the view: the price.)

clipped from www.ostendotech.com

Ostendo Technologies, Inc.
Home
CRVD™
About

clipped from www.ostendotech.com

It's easy on the eyes.

The CRVD eliminates eye fatigue because the screen is curved and the user's focal distance remains constant across the screen.
Learn more »

Increase productivity and reduce frustration.

With its 2880-by-900 resolution, the CRVD will expand your desktop and give you extra space to be more productive.
Learn more »

Works with existing graphics cards and games.

CRVD displays work with existing graphics cards, drivers, and games, so there is no need for special hardware or software.
Learn more »

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Car racing on 3 CRVDs

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CRVD on San Diego CW6 News

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News at Seven Virtual Newscast

clipped from www.popsci.com

A.I. Anchors Replace Human Reporters In Newsroom of the Future

A.I. Anchors Engineers at Northwestern have created an entire newsroom operation using artificial intelligence, even using avatars to anchor the evening news.

clipped from infolab.northwestern.edu

Projects News At Seven

News At Seven is a system that automatically generates a virtual news show.

Totally autonomous, it collects, parses, edits and organizes news stories and then passes the formatted content to artificial anchors for presentation. Using the resources present on the web, the system goes beyond the straight text of the news stories to also retrieve relevant images and blogs with commentary on the topics to be presented.

Once it has assembled and edited its material, News At Seven presents the content to its audience using avatars and text-to-speech (TTS) technology in a manner similar to the nightly news watched regularly by millions of Americans. The result is a cohesive, compelling performance that successfully combines techniques of modern news programming with features made by possible only by the fact that the system is, at its core, completely virtual.

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News at Seven

Kris Hammond, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and his research group have developed a new automated newscast, called News at Seven.

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Virtual Newscast: News at Seven

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World's First Osmotic Power Plant

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

Norway's Statkraft opens first osmotic power plant

The world's first power project that generates energy by mixing fresh water with sea water has opened in Norway.

The Norwegian renewable power company Statkraft has built a prototype osmotic power plant on the Oslo fiord.

clipped from www.google.com

New Norway power plant uses salt to make electricity

TOFTE, Norway — Norway unveiled the world's first osmotic power plant on Tuesday, harnessing the energy-unleashing encounter of freshwater and seawater to make clean electricity.
"While salt might not save the world alone, we believe osmotic power will be an important part of the global energy portfolio," the head of state-owned power group Statkraft, Baard Mikkelsen, told reporters.
Statkraft, which claims to be the biggest renewable energy company in Europe, is running the osmotic power plant prototype in a former chlorine factory on the banks of the Oslo fjord, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of the Norwegian capital.

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Statkraft claims to be the biggest renewable energy company in Europe

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Statkraft hopes to start building the first commercial osmotic power plant in 2015

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The plant is driven by osmosis that naturally draws fresh water across a membrane and toward the seawater side. This creates higher pressure on the sea water side, driving a turbine and producing electricity.

Once new membrane "architecture" is solved, Statkraft believes the global production capacity for osmotic energy could amount to 1,600 to 1,700 terawatt hours annually, or about half of the European Union's total electricity demand.

clipped from www.statkraft.com

HRH Crown Princess Mette-Marit arriving for the opening at Tofte.

Read more about Osmotic Power and the new plant

The oil- and energyminister's speech for the opening of the plant.
The Norwegian Government's article on osmotic power.
Statkraft's pages on osmotic power.

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Statkraft - Osmotic Power Plant

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Metamaterials To Develop Invisibility Cloaks

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Scientists Working on Invisibility Cloak

The Imperial College of London and the University of Southampton have been awarded a £4.9 million grant from the Leverhulme Trust to further research "metamaterials" that could hopefully bend light away as it reflects from the surface, tricking the human eye into believing an item made of metamaterials is not there. To create the materials, scientists have to alter the structure of an already existing material using complex nanopatterns. In other words, eerily floating chess pieces for everyone!

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk

We may be seeing Harry Potter's invisibility suit sooner than we think...

Fiction made real? Harry Potter goes invisible in the 'Goblet of Fire'

A photo of 'meta-material', which can deflect microwave beams so they flow around a 'hidden' object

clipped from www3.imperial.ac.uk

£4.9 million to develop metamaterials for 'invisibility cloaks' and 'perfect lenses'
Imperial receives major new funding grant from The Leverhulme Trust - News Release

The new grant is one of two The Leverhulme Trust is awarding for 'embedding emerging disciplines'. The project team is led by two of Imperial College London's Professors: Professor Sir John Pendry, a world-leading physicist and pioneer in the field, who first proposed that metamaterials could be used to build an invisibility 'cloak' in 2006, and Professor Stefan Maier who is a leading experimentalist in the field of plasmonics. Also collaborating in the project is Professor Nikolay Zheludev's team at the University of Southampton.

clipped from physics.aps.org

Taking the wraps off cloaking

$(Top) A hot desert surface causes a refractive index gradient in the air above, causing rays of light to be refracted continuously to form a reflection in the road and hence the appearance of water. (Bottom) Similarly, a graded refractive index cloak can guide light around a hidden object so that an observer sees only that which is behind the cloak.$

Illustration: Top: www.dreamstime.com; Bottom: Pendry et al. [7]

$(Top left) A ray of light in free space travels in a straight line. The undistorted coordinate system is shown. (Top right) The coordinates are transformed to exclude the cloaked region. Trajectories of rays are pinned to the coordinate mesh and therefore avoid the cloaked region, returning to their original path after traversing the cloak. (Bottom) In contrast, this cloaking scheme operates by cancelling scattering due to the hidden object. Here we show a high-refractive-index sphere hidden by$

A ray of light in free space travels in a straight line. The undistorted coordinate system is shown. (Top right) The coordinates are transformed to exclude the cloaked region. Trajectories of rays are pinned to the coordinate mesh and therefore avoid the cloaked region, returning to their original path after traversing the cloak.

$(Top left) The first implementation of a cloak: resonant elements, shown inset, are incorporated in a metamaterial and tuned to give a magnetic response graded from the inner to outer radius. Dimensions are shown in mm. The cloak is designed to operate at $8.5\ \textrm{GHz}$. (Bottom left) A proposed design for an optical version of the cloak, incorporating metal wires in a dielectric host and designed to operate at $632.8\ \textrm{nm}$ in a cloak approximately 4 microns in diameter. The latter$

Illustration: Top left: Schurig et al. [11]; bottom left: Smolyaninov et al. [21]; top and bottom right: Valentine et al. [19]

Illustration: Torrent and Sánchez-Dehesa [28]

Figure 5: (Left) Schematic view of the acoustic cloaking shell consisting of two different materials of the same thicknesses arranged in a cylindrical multilayered structure. (Right) Pressure map for a planar wave incident on a multilayer structure comprising 200 layers.

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First Universal Programmable Quantum Computer

clipped from www.popsci.com

Scientists Test First Universal Programmable Quantum Computer

Physicists have been taking baby steps toward creating a full-fledged quantum computer faster and more powerful than any computer in existence, by making quantum processors capable of performing individual tasks. Now a group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed the world's first universal programmable quantum computer that can run any program that's possible under the rules of quantum mechanics.

clipped from www.zmescience.com

First Universal Two-Qubit quantum processor created

This processor could prove to be a major breakthrough for a future quantum computer, that could very well be the ‘evolutionary leap’ in the computers’ life thus resulting the possible solve of problems that are untouchable today. The discovery was presented in the latest edition of Nature Physics and this marks the first time anybody has moved beyond asking a single task from a quantum computer.

clipped from www.nature.com

Realization of a programmable two-qubit quantum processor

D. Hanneke, J. P. Home, J. D. Jost, J. M. Amini, D. Leibfried, D. J. Wineland

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Ion Storage Group

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David Hanneke
Quantum Mechanic

clipped from www.nist.gov

NIST postdoctoral researcher David Hanneke at the laser table used to demonstrate the first universal programmable processor for a potential quantum computer. A pair of beryllium ions (charged atoms) that hold information in the processor are trapped inside the cylinder at the lower right. A colorized image of the two ions is displayed on the monitor in the background.

“This is the first time anyone has demonstrated a programmable quantum processor for more than one qubit,” says NIST postdoctoral researcher David Hanneke, first author of the paper. “It’s a step toward the big goal of doing calculations with lots and lots of qubits. The idea is you’d have lots of these processors, and you’d link them together.

The NIST processor stores binary information (1s and 0s) in two beryllium ions (electrically charged atoms), which are held in an electromagnetic trap and manipulated with ultraviolet lasers. Two magnesium ions in the trap help cool the beryllium ions.

NIST scientists can manipulate the states of each beryllium qubit, including placing the ions in a “superposition” of both 1 and 0 values at the same time, a significant potential advantage of information processing in the quantum world. Scientists also can “entangle” the two qubits, a quantum phenomenon that links the pair’s properties even when the ions are physically separated.

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X-Flex Blast Protection System

clipped from www.inhabitat.com

Bomb-Proof Wallpaper Could Save You in a Natural Disaster

Imagine: a hurricane is barreling towards your house, but instead of hiding in the basement, you can stay safely and comfortably in your living room, all thanks to your X-Flex Blast Protection System wallpaper. It’s not a fantasy; the wallpaper, invented by Berry Plastics in a partnership with the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, actually exists — and a single sheet is strong enough to stop a wrecking ball.

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Best Of What's New 2009: Bombproof Wallpaper Test

clipped from xflexsystem.com

X-FLEX is a revolutionary advanced composite film tape that is used to reinforce and retrofit CMU, brick and other external wall surfaces. Developed cooperatively by leading researchers, scientists and engineers from US Army Corps of Engineers (ERDC) and Berry Plastics, X-FLEX is specifically engineered to protect structures that may be subject to acts of terrorism such as blast events or catastrophic occurrences.

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Technology

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X-FLEX Blast Protection System

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French Hamster Hotel

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk

French hamster hotel lets guests live like rodents

A French hotel is offering guests the chance to live like a hamster for a day.

It's a unique concept according to its creators. A hotel in the French city of
Nantes is offering the chance for people to become a hamster.
For 99 euros (£88) a night, visitors to the hotel in Nantes can feast on hamster grain, get a workout by running in a giant wheel and sleep in hay stacks in the suite called the "Hamster Villa".

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France's human hamster hotel Video Reuters com

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Below you can find a news video clip of an interview with home decorator Frédéric Tabary, one of the two men who created the room. The interview is in French, but the pictures really tell the story.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk

Heavy petting at France's human hamster hotel

So where did the idea come from? Yann Falquerho, the 42-year-old scenographer who lets the property through his quirky urban gîte company, Un Coin Chez Soi, told me that he and Frédéric Tabary, the interior designer with whom he works, had wanted to find something that was simply "very funny".
"We wanted to create a place that was a real gîte - a place where you could sleep and be comfortable - but also where you could have a real experience," he explained. "We wanted it to be eccentric and we decided that the funniest experience would be to become an animal."

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Title:

Wednesday's Halftime Report
Published: Wed, 18 Nov 2009

Description: Is Andy planning on visiting the hamster hotel?

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Multi-Touch Table for Casinos

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Multitouch Poker: The Future of Casinos?

Moto Development Group has thrown together a neat prototype device that could possibly be the future of casinos: A multitouch, automatic, cybernetic Blackjack table. Finger-flicking financial fun, perhaps, but also a way to cut down on cheating.

clipped from labs.moto.com

Multi-Touch Table

This table is a departure from earlier examples because it is relatively easy to use by non-technical content creators. It works in most lighting because it doesn’t use a camera. It is market quality, and does not require tuning on location.

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Blackjack for Multi-Touch

Gaming is an ideal application for multi-touch screen technology. Replacing physical tokens, chips, cards, or game pieces with virtual items eliminates tedious setup, distribution, and cleanup tasks while increasing the efficiency and accuracy of gameplay.

And unlike many other real-world computing tasks, games have well-established norms and behaviors that are straightforward to translate into multi-touch gestures and interactions; players still feel that they “own” their cards, pieces, or money. Meanwhile, team-oriented play is actually easier in a virtual gamespace, because players can collaborate and share cards without having to physically pass them back-and-forth.

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Scalable Multi-Touch

Watch the demo:

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2009-11-16

Epipheo transforms the way you think

clipped from www.adpulp.com

"Epipheos" from Epipheo Studios are designed to be the center piece of online viral marketing campaigns for everything from consumer products to non-profit initiatives.

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What is an epipheo?

An epipheo is a video designed to pass on epiphanies. There are few things as powerful as an epiphany. An epiphany, when it finds you, will transform the way that you think and live. The problem is epiphanies are hard to come by.

clipped from www.epipheostudios.com

CINCINNATI, Ohio. - May 27th - Epipheo Studios is the first video production studio in the world dedicated exclusively to creating internet videos that cause people to have epiphanies. These epiphany videos called “epipheos” (pronounced i’pif’ee’oh) are designed to be the center piece of online viral marketing campaigns for everything from consumer products to non-profit initiatives.

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How the Internet is Changing Advertising

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Advent Conspiracy 2.0

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What is Google Wave?

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The Mandelbulb a 3D Mandelbrot Set

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Fractal

A fractal is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole,"^[1] a property called self-similarity.

The Mandelbrot set is a famous example of a fractal

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Mandelbrot set

The Mandelbrot set is self-similar under magnification [...]

Zoom animation

Regardless of the extent to which one zooms in on a Mandelbrot set, there is always additional detail to see.

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Exterminate - Mandelbrot Fractal Zoom Music Video

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The Real 3D Mandelbulb

It's found by following a relatively simple math formula. But in the end, it's still only 2D and flat - there's no depth, shadows, perspective, or light sourcing. What we have featured in this article is a potential 3D version of the same fractal.

Resulting renders

But it wasn't until I incorporated proper shadowing that the subtleties of this incredible object became apparent. For the renders below and exploration afterwards,

clipped from www.skytopia.com

Further exploration of the 3D Mandelbulb

What does it look like on the inside?

Any interesting analogues to the 2D Mandelbrot set?

A 3D Mandelbrot stalk (a deep zoom inside the Bulb)

A 2D Mandelbrot stalk

A 3D Mandelbulb spiral (found at a deeper zoom inside the "Ice Cream from Uranus" picture). Click to enlarge, and see this page of the thread for how it was found.

A 2D Mandelbrot spiral

Are gorgeous flyovers and parallax zooms now possible?

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Mandelbulb zoom

A zoom into the 3D mandelbulb (split in half), with full light sourcing. Enjoy.

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3D Mandelbulb mountain cross sections

Over 1000 cross sections of a zoomed in section from the 3D Mandelbulb. Observe the absurdly ornate detail within. This took around a couple of days to render.

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The Intel Reader

clipped from news.cnet.com

Intel debuts text reader for the blind

The company announced on Tuesday the debut of the Intel Reader, a handheld text-to-speech device that can read any printed text aloud to those who are blind or have difficulties seeing or reading.

The Atom-powered device uses a high-resolution camera to capture images of any printed text, which it then converts into digital format to read out loud. The Reader can be used as a standalone device to snap pictures of text. But paired with Intel's Portable Capture Station, which can hold the Reader in place, the device can grab huge amounts of text, such as an entire book, according to Intel.

clipped from brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com

A camera that reads text aloud

Ben Foss, director of access technology in Intel's Digital Health Group, uses the Intel Reader to scan a book. Photo: Jon Fortt.

The Intel Reader has a 4.3-inch LCD display, 4 gigabytes of flash storage and USB slots for adding more. It weighs 1.38 pounds. Image: Intel.

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Intel News Release

Ready, Set, Read: Intel® Reader Transforms Printed Text to Spoken Word

Intel Launches Mobile Handheld Device for People with Reading-Based Disabilities, such as Dyslexia or Low-Vision, or for Those Who are Blind

The new Intel Reader (reader.intel.com), a mobile handheld device, increases independence for people with reading-based disabilities.

The size of a paperback book, the Intel Reader converts printed text to digital text and then reads it aloud to the user.

The Intel Reader can help the estimated 55 million people in the U.S. who have specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia or vision problems.

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New Intel® Reader Transforms the Printed Word

Download the Intel® Reader brochure

Blind & low vision versionFiletype/Size: PDF 301KB
Educator versionFiletype/Size: PDF 286KB

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Features And Technical Specs

Features

A more in-depth look
Learn more

Sources

SARTRE -- Safe Road Trains for the Environment

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With Road Trains, Highways Become Public Transportation

Researchers in the European Union are using telematics to create “road trains” that join the benefits of carpooling with the freedom of driving alone.

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Cars that drive themselves can become reality within ten years

A new EU project SARTRE is being launched to develop and test technology for vehicles that can drive themselves in long road trains on motorways. This technology has the potential to improve traffic flow and journey times, offer greater comfort to drivers, reduce accidents, and improve fuel consumption and hence lower CO2 emissions.

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'Road trains' get ready to roll

How a road train could work

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

The lead vehicle would be handled by a professional driver who would monitor the status of the road train. Those in following vehicles could take their hands off the wheel, read a book or watch TV, while they travel along the motorway. Their vehicle would be controlled by the lead vehicle.

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Needle Free Vaccinations

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com

Patch Could Stretch the Supply of Flu Vaccine

Executives at Iomai Corp. see the future of flu vaccinations like this: A small patch containing the vaccine, along with stimulants to make it more potent, is mailed to patients who stick the patch to their arms for a few hours, then toss it in the trash.

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Intercell Smart Vaccines

Compared with traditional injection sets, the needle-free vaccine delivery patch from Iomai (now part of Intercell) features a transcutaneous vaccination technology and a patch form for vaccine. As a result, it promises a safer and healthier injection.

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Immunity That's More Than Skin Deep

clipped from www.iomai.com

Iomai's transcutaneous immunization (TCI) technology offers distinct advantages to traditional injected vaccines. Leveraging the immune system cells in the skin to deliver vaccines, the TCI patch is a novel approach to protecting individuals from a range of infectious diseases.

Physician Administered

Self Administered

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Digital Ants Protect Computers

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New Biomimicry in Digital Security - Ants Swarm to Protect Computers

Science Daily reports that biomimicry is playing a key role in upcoming computer security technology. By looking at the way ants call for backup and overpower invaders through sheer quantity of soldiers, security experts have devised a "digital ant" that will help human operators more quickly spot threats to computer systems.

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk

Ants inspire new computer antivirus software

Scientists have studied the behaviour of ants to develop a new generation of antivirus software for computers.

clipped from www.wfu.edu

Computer science professor Errin Fulp works with graduate students Brian Williams (center) and Wes Featherstun (far right), who worked this summer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory developing a new type of computer network security software modeled after ants.

Computer security mimics nature
Unlike traditional security devices, which are static, these “digital ants” wander through computer networks looking for threats, such as “computer worms” — self-replicating programs designed to steal information or facilitate unauthorized use of machines. When a digital ant detects a threat, it doesn’t take long for an army of ants to converge at that location, drawing the attention of human operators who step in to investigate.

The concept, called “swarm intelligence,” promises to transform cyber security because it adapts readily to changing threats.

Sources:
New Biomimicry in Digital Security - Ants Swarm to Protect Computers : TreeHugger
Ants inspire new computer antivirus software - Telegraph
WFU | Window on Wake Forest | Ants vs. worms: Computer security mimics nature
Related:
Ants Vs. Worms: New Computer Security Mimics Nature
Digital ants to the rescue
HowStuffWorks "How Computer Viruses Work"
Wake Forest University — Winston-Salem, North Carolina
PNNL: About PNNL
E. W. Fulp

2009-11-07

Mavizen TTX02 World's First E-Bike

clipped from wheels.blogs.nytimes.com

Mavizen TTX02: Plug-and-Play Racing for the People

Mr. Hussain is the founder of the TTXGP, a race for zero-emissions motorcycles. The TTXGP staged its first event last June during the famous Isle of Man TT, between Ireland and Britain. The race, a grueling 37-mile time trial, was won by Agni Motors, and the team joined with Mr. Hussain over the summer to build the TTX02, a race-ready bike that’s expected to have a top speed of more than 100 miles an hour.

clipped from www.asphaltandrubber.com

SEMA: Mavizen TTX02 Unveiled – KTM RC8 Sourced Chassis, 130 MPH Top Speed, & Built-in Web Server with WiFi Connection [UPDATED]

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Mavizen TTX02 Launch Promo **LEAK***

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Mavizen TTX02 Press Conference and Reveal at SEMA 2009 Las Vegas

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TTX02 is the world’s first production electric supersport bike. With a number of world first feature combined with the proven chassis from a world class manufacturer and drive train from the Isle of Man TT winning Agni bike; the TTX02 is a limited opportunity to procure a platform for development and racing across the entire TTXGP road racing programme. The TTX02 chassis is FIM homologated for racing and ships with a valid VIN number for registration in your local jurisdiction.

First motorsport vehicle in the world to ship with integrated IP connectivity
Core operating system is open source Linux
USB based system bus allows virtually unlimited number of peripherals to extend the capabilities of the machine with plug’n’play
Remote factory support package available
Swappable drive train and batteries at trackside. Common chassis for multiple racing series.
Multiple configurations available depending on the racing series.
Built on a homologated, world class chassis
Drive train developed from the TTXGP Isle of Man 2009 Champion
Strictly limited numbers.

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2009 Isle of Man TTXGP

Race footage from the TTXGP, the first ever all-electric motorcycle race at the Isle of Man TT. For more, check out http://hellforleathermagazi...

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Eyeballs Control

clipped from www.pcworld.com

Researchers Turn to Eyeballs to Control Devices

Researchers at NTT DoCoMo have developed a set of prototype in-ear headphones that can detect and measures changes in the body's electrical state that take place when your eyes move, and have harnessed this technology to control the music player on a mobile phone.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk

Introducing the gadgets you can control with your eyes

A researcher for NTT DoCoMo demonstrates how to control a digital music player with his eyes in Tokyo

The new technology from Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo may also enable cell phone cameras to read bar codes to get product information, download music and coupons when the user simply looks at the codes.

'We are working on a cell phone of the future,' Masaaki Fukumoto, executive research engineer at NTT said.

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CEATEC: Eyeballs control a cell phone

NTT DoCoMo showed a set of prototype in-ear headphones that can detect and measures changes in the body's electrical state when your eyes move.

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Mind-reading computer

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk

Scary or sensational? A machine that can look into the mind

Scientists have developed a computerised mind-reading technique which lets them accurately predict the images that people are looking at by using scanners to study brain activity.

clipped from www.dailymail.co.uk

Psychic 'mind-reading' computer will show your thoughts on screen

The device studies patterns of brainwave activity and turns them into a moving image on a computer screen.

clipped from www.foxnews.com

Computer Uses Brain Scans to Read Minds

Associate professor of psychology Jack Gallant and two researchers, Kendrick Kay and Thomas Naselaris, first trained a computer program to recognize which of a set of 1,750 photos Kay and Naselaris were looking at while their brains were scanned by an MRI machine of the sort ordinarily used in hospitals.

A computer display shows magnetic resonance scans of a human brain in Magdeburg, Germany in a 2005 file photo.

clipped from neuroscience.berkeley.edu

Jack Gallant

Professor (Psychology)

Research areas: Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience

The goal of the Gallant Lab is to understand the structure and function of the human visual system at a quantitative, computational level, and to build models that accurately predict how the brain will respond during natural vision. Predictive models of brain activity are the gold standard of computational neuroscience, and are critical for the long-term advancement of neuroscience and medicine.

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Space-Based Solar Power

clipped from www.popsci.com

Japan Wants to Power 300,000 Homes With Wireless Energy From Space

Japan's Wireless, Power-Generating, Solar Satellite
Inhabitat

Japan has serious plans to send a solar-panel-equipped satellite into space that could wirelessly beam a gigawatt-strong stream of power down to earth and power nearly 300,000 homes.

clipped from www.alternative-energy-news.info

A Step Closer to Solar Power in Space

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and IHI Corporation are undertaking an ambitious project of $ 21bn. They are aspiring to design and develop a Space-based solar farm that would generate 1GW of power. This will require an area of four square kilometer consisting of rows of solar panels. This space solar farm will be housed 36,000km above the surface of the earth.

clipped from www.youtube.com

clipped from www.bloomberg.com

Mitsubishi, IHI to Join $21 Bln Space Solar Project (Update1)

A research group representing 16 companies, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., will spend four years developing technology to send electricity without cables in the form of microwaves, according to a statement on the trade ministry’s Web site today.

clipped from global.mitsubishielectric.com

Mitsubishi Electric's space technology includes the manufacture and implementation of satellites, satellite components, and ground systems. Over the past four decades, we have completed more than 330 satellite projects for communications concerns, government agencies, and other large-scale clients that make us the leading company of space systems in Japan.

clipped from www.treehugger.com

While the project might sound like science-fiction now, it likely that the landscape will be more favorable in 30 years (strict carbon emissions caps will make clean energy more cost-competitive, for example).

Sources:

Liquavista's Color, Video E-Paper

/h3

clipped from www.popsci.com

Liquavista's E-Paper Plays Full-Color Movies

E-readers such as Amazon's Kindle DX, Sony's Daily Edition, and Barnes & Noble's multi-touch hybrid might want to start trembling. A new e-paper from Liquivista promises to allow video-playing and digital note-taking on a multi-touch, color screen.

clipped from www.youtube.com

Liquavista October 2009

clipped from www.liquavista.com

Liquavista participates in £12 million project to create next generation flexible, full colour, video displays enabled by UK Technology Strategy Board grant

In the future, electronic readers using Liquavista technology will support full color and video on devices that are as readable and portable as paper.

clipped from www.liquavista.com

Electrowetting Benefits

Liquavista’s technology is unique in offering significant improvement over LCD in all the important areas while exploiting the existing infrastructure. The strong process compatibility to LCD offers a compelling route to manufacturing to existing LCD makers, with a very low investment barrier.

Key Areas

All modes of operation: transmissive,
reflective and transflective

Indoor/Outdoor Usability

Video and Color

Power Savings

Manufacturing compatibility

Sources:

2009-11-30

Aliens 'already exist on earth', Bulgarian scientists claim

Bulgarian Academy Scientists Reported to Be in Touch with Aliens

Bulgaria: We Are in Contact with Aliens

2009-11-29

Super hydrophobic substances

Hydration Shell Dynamics of a Hydrophobic Particle

2009-11-28

Ostendo CDM43

It's easy on the eyes.

Increase productivity and reduce frustration.

Works with existing graphics cards and games.

Car racing on 3 CRVDs

CRVD on San Diego CW6 News

2009-11-26

News at Seven

Virtual Newscast: News at Seven

2009-11-25

Norway's Statkraft opens first osmotic power plant

Read more about Osmotic Power and the new plant

Statkraft - Osmotic Power Plant

2009-11-24

We may be seeing Harry Potter's invisibility suit sooner than we think...

£4.9 million to develop metamaterials for 'invisibility cloaks' and 'perfect lenses'

Taking the wraps off cloaking

2009-11-23

First Universal Two-Qubit quantum processor created

Realization of a programmable two-qubit quantum processor

2009-11-22

Technology

X-FLEX Blast Protection System

2009-11-21

French hamster hotel lets guests live like rodents

A French hotel is offering guests the chance to live like a hamster for a day.

France's human hamster hotel Video Reuters com

Heavy petting at France's human hamster hotel

Wednesday's Halftime Report

2009-11-18

Multitouch Poker: The Future of Casinos?

Multi-Touch Table

Blackjack for Multi-Touch

Scalable Multi-Touch

2009-11-16

What is an epipheo?

How the Internet is Changing Advertising

Advent Conspiracy 2.0

What is Google Wave?

2009-11-15

Exterminate - Mandelbrot Fractal Zoom Music Video

Resulting renders

What does it look like on the inside?

Any interesting analogues to the 2D Mandelbrot set?

Are gorgeous flyovers and parallax zooms now possible?

Mandelbulb zoom

3D Mandelbulb mountain cross sections

2009-11-13

Intel debuts text reader for the blind

A camera that reads text aloud

Intel News Release

Ready, Set, Read: Intel® Reader Transforms Printed Text to Spoken Word

Intel Launches Mobile Handheld Device for People with Reading-Based Disabilities, such as Dyslexia or Low-Vision, or for Those Who are Blind

New Intel® Reader Transforms the Printed Word

Features And Technical Specs

2009-11-11

With Road Trains, Highways Become Public Transportation

Cars that drive themselves can become reality within ten years

'Road trains' get ready to roll

How a road train could work

2009-11-10

Patch Could Stretch the Supply of Flu Vaccine

2009-11-09

Ants inspire new computer antivirus software

Scientists have studied the behaviour of ants to develop a new generation of antivirus software for computers.

2009-11-07

Mavizen TTX02: Plug-and-Play Racing for the People

Mavizen TTX02 Launch Promo **LEAK***

Mavizen TTX02 Press Conference and Reveal at SEMA 2009 Las Vegas

2009 Isle of Man TTXGP

2009-11-05

Researchers Turn to Eyeballs to Control Devices

Mavizen TTX02 Launch Promo LEAK*