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September 29, 2005
The code of life
Look carefully at The Last Supper. Measure the angle between the sloping right-hand side of Christ and the figure — John the Baptist, or is it Mary Magdalene? — leaning away on his right. It measures 81 degrees. This is the exact angle at which the hypodermic must be be inserted into the aorta for a successful angioplasty. Leonardo da Vinci not only knew the geometry of a quadruple bypass: but he left a detailed set of coded instructions on procedure. Count the number of transverse rafters on the ceiling: seven. Now balance these against the five supporting beams: there you have the precise ratio of camphor and opium required for successful anaesthesia. Finally, note the position of the disciple’s hands on the left, held up vertically as a clear sign — or is it a warning? — that a reflux of blood back towards the ventricle alone cannot be the force that closes the valve. As Francis Wells, a consultant surgeon at Papworth Hospital, notes: “All cardiac surgeons will know this phenomenon when the valve is ‘tripped’ open during the infusion of antegrade aortic cardioplegia.”
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 26, 2005
Brainy Communicator
The research project Brainy Communicator is the first of its kind in Singapore that would allow the user to control the computer via brain activity, without any use of hands, legs or voice. Together the Society of Physically Disabled (SPD) and the Institute of Infocomm Research (I²R) hope to find a solution for people with complete loss of limb movement using neuroscience methods and computer technology in order to access the computer.
Essentially, the Brainy Communicator acts as an interface which allows severely handicapped people the freedom to communicate with computers by reading a person's thoughts. The interface picks out what the user is thinking and types it out on the computer. There are no needles, injections or medication involved, hence it is non-invasive. Participants of the Brainy Communicator will be adults above 16 years with severe physical disabilities, mainly: those who suffer from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and tetraplegia.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 09:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 25, 2005
Racing Robots
Wanted by the Pentagon: A muscular, outdoorsy specimen. Must be intelligent and, above all, self-driven.
When 20 hulking robotic vehicles face off next month in a rugged race across the Nevada desert, the winning machine (if any crosses the finish line) will blend the latest technological bling and the most smarts.
The military sponsors the race to speed the development of unmanned vehicles for combat. The project had an inauspicious start: Last year's inaugural contest ended soon after it began when the robots careered off course or abruptly stalled. One even got tangled in barbed wire.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 22, 2005
Non-silicon computing
Silicon and binary logic have taken us a very long way. They form, as they say, the paradigm of a computer. But the paradigm has some drawbacks – the time it takes to tackle non-linear problems such as database searching and image processing, for example, and power consumption. There are other, much more flexible computers around.
The one in your head is a great example, but we couldn’t begin to design a device based on a similar architecture, in which simple structures – in this case neurons – combine to create complex behaviours. While God knows how the brain handles data, it probably isn’t limited to binary.
At the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol, Dr Larry Bull, a computer scientist, doesn’t really care what base it uses. Bull is investigating the computational behaviour of collections of rat neurons, trying to probe the system to work out how to control it and get it doing useful things. What exactly is going on in the neural network from a logical point of view, is of limited concern.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 19, 2005
Can Spies Decipher Keyboard Clicks?
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to turn the clicks and clacks of typing on a computer keyboard into a startlingly accurate transcript of what exactly is being typed.
In a paper released last week, the researchers explained how they developed software that could analyze the sound of someone typing on a keyboard for just ten minutes and then piece together as much as 96 percent of what had been typed.
The technique works because of the simple fact that the sound of someone striking an "a" key is different from the sound of striking the "t," according to Doug Tygar, a professor of computer science at Berkeley. "Think of a conga drum. If you hit a conga drum on different parts of the skin, it makes a different tone," he said. "That's an analogy for what's happening here, because there's a plate underneath the keyboard [that is] being struck in different locations."
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 06:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 18, 2005
The Air Car
French company Moteur Developpment International (MDI) has developed a car powered by compressed air. The air expands to push pistons and then the pistons drive a crankshaft in a way similar to the way an internal combustion engine works. The vehicle has a compressor driven from plugging into an electric socket that recharges the compressed air in 3 to 4 hours.
Read more How it works
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 09:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 17, 2005
Soccer-playing robots
Soccer-playing robots are kicking their way to world titles in artificial intelligence research.
Thursday, at the University of California at Merced, soccer "coach" Raul Rojas — a computer science and mathematics professor from Germany — gave a talk about his championship team.
"The soccer field is a good laboratory," said Rojas, who teaches at Freie Universitaet in Berlin. "It's small enough, but it's also very complex. The game is very fast."
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 08:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 13, 2005
Mac mini robot
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma have built a Mac mini-powered robot, which uses iSight as its eyes.
The project aimed to: "see what it is like to control a robot using the built-in visual and aural sensors before designing an agent to do the same task". The researchers eventually hope to create an autonomous robot.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 06:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 12, 2005
Nanohelix structure
A previously-unknown zinc oxide nanostructure that resembles the helical configuration of DNA could provide engineers with a new building block for creating nanometer-scale sensors, transducers, resonators and other devices that rely on electromechanical coupling.
Based on a superlattice composed of alternating single-crystal "stripes" just a few nanometers wide, the "nanohelix" structure is part of a family of nanobelts – tiny ribbon-like structures with semiconducting and piezoelectric properties – that were first reported in 2001.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 08:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 11, 2005
Bio Programming
The next step after reading genetic code is writing it. In June, biotech pioneers J. Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith launched Synthetic Genomics, a Rockville, MD-based "synthetic biology" startup aimed at creating custom-made micro-organisms.
The new company's president is Juan Enriquez, former director of Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project and CEO of the Wellesley, MA, investment partnership Biotechonomy, which funds Synthetic Genomics.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 09, 2005
Peugeot Moovie
The Moovie was created by a Portuguese designer, André Costa, and was voted as the best project among 3,800 entries.
The main reasons for the award were the original style, expressing a clear allegiance with the Marque, and its many innovations which make it a genuine future prospect.
The Peugeot likeness is shown subtly, since André Costa cleverly used the U, which usually frames the lion on the front of the Marque’s models.This presentation is even more astute, since here the U structures the passenger compartment, connecting the generous front windscreen to the rear windscreen in a single line.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 09:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 08, 2005
Six Degrees of Separation
University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have invented a new algorithm that solves a network-searching conundrum that has puzzled computer scientists and sociologists for years.
The scientists created an algorithm that helps explain the sociological findings that led to the theory of “six degrees of separation,” and could have broad implications for how networks are navigated, from improving emergency response systems to preventing the spread of computer viruses.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 06, 2005
4G prototypes reach blistering speeds
Cellphones capable of transmitting data at blistering speeds have been demonstrated by NTT DoCoMo in Japan.
In experiments, prototype phones were used to view 32 high definition video streams, while travelling in an automobile at 20 kilometres per hour. Officials from NTT DoCoMo say the phones could receive data at 100 megabits per second on the move and at up to a gigabit per second while static. At this rate, an entire DVD could be downloaded within a minute. DoCoMo's current 3G (third generation) phone network offers download speeds of 384 kilobits per second and upload speeds of 129 kilobits per second.
The technology behind NTT DoCoMo's high-speed phone network remains experimental, but the 4G tests used a method called Variable-Spreading-Factor Spread Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (VSF-Spread OFDM), which increases downlink speeds by using multiple radio frequencies to send the same data stream.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 05, 2005
Pilotless helicopter
Robots with artificial intelligence are moving from the realm of imagination to reality, opening opportunities for both military and commercial use.
New Mexico State University graduate and undergraduate engineering students and a faculty member are developing an autonomous helicopter _ one that can pilot itself without a human in the cockpit or holding a remote control.
From the university's NASA-funded RioRoboLab, which specializes in combining robotics and artificial intelligence, they are working with White Sands Missile Range and Lockheed Martin Corp.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 04:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 04, 2005
Greg Olsen To Orbit
Gregory Olsen, has been confirmed to the Soyuz TMA-7 crew, which is scheduled for an October 1 launch. Olsen would become the third space tourist to go to the International Space Station (ISS) and the first since the Columbia Space Shuttle tragedy.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 06:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 02, 2005
Aerobot aims for Titan
An intelligent floating robot could help to explore Saturn's moon Titan, following flight tests that prove it can survey large areas of land completely autonomously. The aerobot is even smart enough to avoid dangerous turbulence.
"After the Huygens probe returned those stunning pictures of Titan's surface, there's been a lot of interest in another mission," says Alberto Elfes, a robotics expert at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He and his colleagues think that their aerobot could spend months cruising through the moon's atmosphere, mapping the surface and collecting samples.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 06:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 01, 2005
Intra-segment evolution
The concept of user interfaces with evolving levels of complexity has come up in several recent conversations I've had with companies involved in this space. The basic premise is this: a user's needs change constantly throughout the ownership lifetime of their mobile device, therefore the interface should be capable of evolving to match those needs. The interface platform needs to teach itself to respond better to the needs of the user.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 02:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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