June 28, 2010
Astronomy. What’s the first thing you think of when you read that word? The many beautiful vistas returned from Hubble? A family in a backyard huddled around a small telescope? Giant research observatories such as the Keck? Whatever may come to mind, it usually involves a telescope. But the very nature of telescopes has changed over the centuries, with different arrangements of lenses dominating for decades before succumbing to some combination of basic physics or technical limitations. We’ll (somewhat belatedly) celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope by taking you on a quick tour of four centuries of progress and frustration. Read the rest of this article… Read the comments on this post
June 28, 2010
Ben Michaels was on the verge of losing sight in his right eye. The solution? Two hours of Mario Kart DS a day — using only his bad eye — until the condition improved. And improve it did. We wonder if using the comparatively dim original DS handheld helped… and we’re dying to know what fantastic anecdotal treatments the autostereoscopic Nintendo 3DS might afford civilization at large. Amblyopic six-year-old uses Nintendo DS to regain normal eyesight originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Switched | source Daily Mail | Email this | Comments
June 28, 2010
Researchers at Harvard University have successfully created a functioning, respirating human ‘lung’ on a chip in a lab. Made using human and blood vessel cells and a microchip, the translucent lung is far simpler in terms of observation than traditional, actual human lungs (for obvious reasons), in a small convenient package about the size of a pencil eraser. The researchers have demonstrated its effectiveness and are now moving toward showing its ability to replicate gas exchange between lung cells and the bloodstream. Down the road a bit more, the team hopes to produce other organs on chips, and hook them all up to the already operational heart on a chip. And somewhere in the world, Margaret Atwood and her pigoons are rejoicing, right? Here’s to the future. Video description of the device is below. Continue reading Researchers create functioning human lung on a microchip\ Researchers create functioning human lung on a microchip originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Gizmag, Switched | source Harvard University | Email this | Comments
June 28, 2010
Pay attention, England: This robot has grit. This robot has determination. This robot is not getting paid anything, and is just playing for the love of the game (or maybe because it’s programmed to). But most importantly, this robot takes a dive at 30 seconds in and then gets right back up again. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. This robot is DARwin, from Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa). More specifically, this is DARwin-LC (where the LC stands for “low cost”) which made its debut at RoboCup 2010 in Singapore last week. There’s also a DARwin-HP, where HP means “high performance,” implying more expensive servos and sensors. The basic idea is to make DARwin-LC cheap (on the humanoid robot scale), with DARwin-HP out there as an option if you need the extra power and precision. DARwin is being developed on a National Science Foundation grant specifically to make robotics research, education, and outreach more accessible (read: affordable). As you might expect, the grant goes on to say: The research results from the humanoid-robotics community will find applications in assistive robotics technology for the elderly, intelligent humanoids, and homeland security and the military. Today, they play soccer. Tomorrow, they learn how to do community service and (sometimes) be destructive. Yep, just like professional soccer players. Wonderful. [ RoMeLa ] VIA [ Robots Dreams ]
June 25, 2010
When Oscar the cat got both of his back legs severed by a harvester, his prognosis was undoubtedly grim. Luckily for him, he was referred to a veterinarian, Noel Fitzpatrick, who had some pretty interesting ideas of his own. Dr. Fitzpatrick has successfully given the cat two back prosthetic legs, but they’re completely unlike any prosthetic we’ve ever seen. Oscar’s been given Itaps (intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics) which were developed at University College London. Itaps are custom made pegs which allow the bone and skin to grow to them, meaning that the “prosthetic” actually becomes part of the appendage itself. The surgery has been in testing for humans since 2005, and this one was the first performed on an animal. Hit up the BBC source link to check out a video of the kitty getting mobile. Amputee cat gets bionic back legs and a new attitude originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | source BBC | Email this | Comments
June 25, 2010
In the future, billboard looks at you — with spy tech This electronic billboard just made its debut this morning in New York City’s Times Square, and already it has people stopping in their tracks and watching it with amazement. Using an HD camera and unique spy technology, in real time it can digitally separate pictures of individuals standing in front of the billboard, and make it look like the giant model is plucking their images from the crowd.
June 23, 2010
The hits keep on coming from BP! Today, a bumbling robot knocked the cap off the well, causing the spill to actually increase in its rate of destruction. Well, fuck. More »
June 23, 2010
One of the most striking examples of our brain’s capacity to subconsciously process visual input is the phenomenon called “blindsight.” Individuals with damage to the primary visual cortex are effectively blind—they’re not consciously aware of objects in their visual field. But, remarkably, they remain capable of navigating around obstacles they can’t actually “see.” Now, research with other primates has started to untangle the pathways that enable this blindsight ability. A paper describing the findings will appear in today’s issue of Nature. Read the rest of this article… Read the comments on this post
June 23, 2010
A big train station seems like a very appropriate place to try for a world record in robot line following, and for a brief period last week, Union Station in Kansas City was (partially) given over to a bunch of little robots following a really, really long line. Over 400 feet of line, to be specific. 50 robots managed to follow the line all at once for a few seconds, setting a new world record which, to be fair, hadn’t officially existed beforehand. Now, though, 50 robots on one line for 2 seconds or 15 robots on one line for 1 minute are the numbers to beat. If you want a part in the challenge, you can build a line following robot for next to nothing (or a lot more than that). After the jump, a bot’s-eye view of the event. [ Kansas City Robotics Society ] VIA [ Robots Dreams ]
June 23, 2010
It was a billion dollar lawsuit, and YouTube has won—for now. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York has rejected Viacom’s claim that Google’s premier video site was guilty of massive copyright infringement. Instead, the court has granted Google’s motion for summary judgment and asserted that YouTube fully qualifies for “safe harbor” protections under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. “This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the Web to communicate and share experiences with each other,” Google just announced on its blog. “We’re excited about this decision and look forward to renewing our focus on supporting the incredible variety of ideas and expression that billions of people post and watch on YouTube every day around the world.” Viacom had contended that most of the “safe harbor” provisions in the DMCA did not protect Google from Viacom’s infringement claims. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that if Viacom’s arguments prevailed, they would severely compromise the viability of online content providers both huge and small, and would gut the DMCA’s protections for sites that host or transmit other people’s content. eBay, Facebook, Ask.com, and Yahoo! similarly weighed in on the case. “The present case shows that the DMCA notification regime works efficiently,” the court noted, “when Viacom over a period of months accumulated some 100,000 videos and then sent one mass take-down notice on February 2, 2007. By the next business day YouTube had removed virtually all of them.” Viacom, it should be noted, doesn’t agree with the sweeping judicial ruling (which was a relatively sparse 30-pager), as is evident from the press statement we just received. Viacom intends to appeal the case. “We believe that this ruling by the lower court […]