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Video: The Navy's 'Shoulder-to-Shoulder' Firefighting Robot's First Trial By Fire

Written By Fantasya on Thursday, May 3, 2012 | 3:04 AM


Octavia's Trial by Fire Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence
A couple of weeks back we first heard about Octavia, the Naval Research Lab’s (NRL) and Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) new firefighting robot designed to perform “shoulder-to-shoulder” firefighting operations with humans aboard Navy vessels. Today we get to see Octavia in action, fighting a simulated fire in a demonstration video that is somewhat less-than-confidence-inspiring.

Admittedly, the emphatic gesturing and unnatural command language that Octavia’s human handler must employ--under emergency conditions, no less--are a bit awkward and clunky, as user interfaces go. Octavia itself seems in no real rush to extinguish this simulated shipboard fire--and if there’s one thing all flesh-and-blood firefighters understand, it’s that there are no spare seconds when your ship is ablaze in the middle of the ocean.

But to be fair, this platform is brand new. The NRL is working on improving the interface to be more natural so human-machine interactions will come off much more organically, like an exchange between two human firefighters. And if all goes to plan, Octavia will someday be able to not only go where human firefighters simply can’t, but also to use various instruments to characterize the type and behavior of a particular fire in order to devise the proper strategy for putting it out quickly and effectively.

For the First Time, Electrons are Observed Splitting into Smaller Quasi-Particles

Written By Fantasya on Wednesday, May 2, 2012 | 2:54 AM


An Electron Splitting In Two David Hilf, Hamburg via PhysOrg
We generally think of electrons as fundamental building blocks of atoms, elementary subatomic particles with no smaller components to speak of. But according to Swiss and German researchers reporting in Nature this week, we are wrong to think so. For the first time, the researchers have recorded an observation of an electron splitting into two different quasi-particles, each taking different characteristics of the original electron with it.
Using samples of the copper-oxide compound Sr2CuO3, the researchers lifted some of the electrons belonging to the copper atoms out of their orbits and placed them into higher orbits by manipulating them with X-rays. Upon placing them in these higher--and higher-velocity--orbits, the electrons split into two parts, one called a spinon that carried the electron’s spin with it, and another called an obitron that carried the electron’s orbital momentum with it.
Spin and orbit are--at least as our basic understanding goes--attached to each particular electron. So the fact that they have been separated is pretty significant. And while researchers have thought for a while that this kind of separation could be theoretically achieved, they’ve had a hard time proving it empirically until now. It’s a reminder that at the quantum level there are still things that more or less mystify us. But that’s not all it is. This particular observation of an electron splitting could have big-time implications in the field of high-temperature superconductivity. Understanding the way electrons can decay into quasi-particles could improve our overall understanding of the electron and how it moves, and thus help us figure out new ways of moving electrons--or electricity--around in bulk without losing large amounts of it as waste.

The Age of the Pico Projector is Upon Us (For Real This Time)

Written By Fantasya on Tuesday, May 1, 2012 | 2:51 AM


MicroVision PicoP Gen2 Demo Device
There’s always been a lot to love about a pico projector. A palm-sized device that can port video from anything from a laptop to an iPod onto a large projected screen? Sign me up. Until now, though, picos only came is two forms: as a standalone box, or strapped onto the back of a device like a smartphone, rendering the gadget bulky and extremely power inefficient. Enter MicroVision’s PicoP Gen2 projector, debuting this week. The PicoP Gen2 is among the smallest pico system we’ve seen, and it’s incredibly power efficient--perfect for embeds in multi-function devices. Oh yeah, and it’s 720p high-def, too.

To start, the entire PicoP Gen2 setup is wafer-thin (about 6 millimeters)—I’d wager about half the size of the gen-one product. But MicroVision has crammed much, much more onto that small piece of hardware. The addition of a green laser (in addition to red and blue ones) brings the color gamut up to 64,000, while MicroVIsion’s newly-updated mirrors reflect up to 25 lumens. The kicker, of course, is the ability to project a 720p image as large as 20 feet across.

It’d be quite a shame for all that power to go to waste in simple standalone projectors. Naturally, MicroVision is talking to a number of OEM partners to get the PicoP Gen2 into more devices later in 2012, but there’s no official comment as to what, when, and how much. The company’s reference designs, though crude (read: projector setups literally strapped onto existing devices), do get the point across. First up was a PicoP attached to a Roku XS box, which could become a roving Netflix and Hulu showcase, if not a way to play large-screen Angry Birds anywhere. The company also showed us an OnLive cloud gaming demo; with a projector resting atop an Onlive console—itself about the size of a hard drive—the makeshift system became a mobile arcade theater.

Knowing that the PicoP Gen2 will likely project onto some rather rough walls and shabbily-hung sheets, MicroVision engineered the system to display consistent images on any surface. The engine, unlike most mobile projector solutions, renders each pixel of its 720p image one-by-one, which means that the image won’t warp if it’s on an uneven surface; pixels will land flush on whatever they hit. MicroVision showed us a quick demo of this using a 360-degree magic-carpet game; the player stands in the middle of the room, floating the rug and rider across the walls, floor and ceiling. As promised, the image never fractured or lost integrity.
Aside from smoothing images on rough surfaces, the PicoP’s pixel-by-pixel image-rendering allows for quick projected touchscreens. When a user points at the projected image with a stylus, the projector interprets the point as a mouse-click. Because it is seeing which pixel path has been interrupted, instead of constantly mapping the image plane as similar devices do, the PicoP requires no calibration to work. This mapping system is also less taxing on the processor, so whatever device the projector is emended into will still have somewhat decent battery life.


MicroVision PicoP Gen2 Touchscreen Demo:
MicroVision expects products running the PicoP Gen2 projector to begin hitting the market in the second half of 2012.

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2012-01/age-pico-projector-upon-us-real-time

Old Car

Written By Fantasya on Monday, April 30, 2012 | 2:47 AM


May 1953
As lovers of science and innovation, few things delight us more than tinkering around with spare parts. In our 138 years of publication, we've showcased scores of similar-minded inventors who could turn scrap heaps into motorcycles, robots, and four-wheelers. These people aren't just hobbyists, they're visionaries capable of imagining great machinery from what others had deemed broken and useless.
While people have created a great number of things from scratch, cars stand out as the prime project for professional engineers and bored tinkerers alike. We don't blame them - who wouldn't enjoy taking their invention for a celebratory spin upon completion? Join us as we take a look at some of the more curious vehicles assembled in garages over the past hundred years, and decide for yourself whether they're clever or the work of a crackpot.


  We begin in the spring of 1920, where a Pennsylvanian farm owner known simply as Mr. Geissinger has assembled a tractor from a stationary gasoline engine. In those days, stationary engines were used to run power tools and mechanisms like circular saws and pumps. An unlikely candidate for powering a car, sure, but its maker came up with enough scrap materials to convert it into a tractor. Granted, it doesn't look much like a tractor at all, but we won't spoil you -- take a look inside to see how Mr. Geissinger's work turned out.
Then you have your series of go-kart-like vehicles, your bicycle-automobile hybrids, and even a couple of cage-like cars. All of the cars we cover in this gallery were made for personal use, and out of amusement, but all of them reflect how mainstream vehicles have developed over the years. A "motorized Ark" built in 1927 might resemble a modern-day funeral limousine, but during that period, it was a novel camping trailer equipped with a toilet, a stove and a shower. Converting the chassis of a truck into a camping trailer is one thing, but to install a hotel room's worth of amenities speaks for the dedication its creator had to his craft.
Elsewhere, you'll find that most home-based automakers weren't professional engineers or mechanics, but teenagers and artists pursuing a practical diversion. Not all of us carry a lot of automobile know-how, but with a little ingenuity, research, and an enviable hodgepodge of scrap items, you'll be hosting joyrides in your washing machine-jeep hybrid in no time.

Click through our gallery to see how past hobbyists made their "midget autos," egg-shaped cars, kitchen-equipped Fords and more.

A Mouse Made Just For You Will Model Your Medical Problems

Written By Fantasya on Sunday, April 29, 2012 | 3:01 AM



When you check in to a hospital in the future, along with checking your vitals and ordering a blood panel, your doctors may assign you a personal mouse. The immune-deficient creature will receive a transplant of your tissue, which will allow it to mimic your immune system, or maybe your specific type of cancer. Then doctors can try out a cocktail of drugs or gene therapies to see what might work on you.

Two teams of researchers have been working on personalized mouse models, or mouse avatars, that can serve as test beds for doctors looking for the right treatments. Physicians could try different combinations of drugs to see what works best, and if they make some mistakes, it’s OK because it’s a mouse, not a human patient.

In one recent study, Australian researchers were working with a pancreatic cancer patient, trying to determine genetic mutations that could make his cancer susceptible to certain drugs, reports Nature News. They grafted a piece of the patient’s tumor tissue onto mice with depleted immune systems, so the mice would not reject the transplant. They tested a cancer drug that their gene screening suggested could work, and they were right — the tumor shrank after the mice were treated. Sadly for the patient, he died before he could be treated, too. The researchers presented their work at a conference last week.

In another study, doctors at Columbia University created a mouse avatar of a human immune system, which they believe could be used to study autoimmune diseases. Lead author Megan Sykes and colleagues transplanted human bone marrow stem cells and thymus tissue into mice that also had suppressed immune systems. The work took several weeks, but in the end, the mouse had a complete human immune system, including T cells, beta cells and myeloid cells, which create other immune cells. Sykes plans to use this personalized immune mouse to study type 1 diabetes, which is caused by errant T cells attacking insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. That paper was published last week in Science Translational Medicine.
Though personalizing a mouse is tricky and can take precious time — even too much time, as the Australian study shows — these studies herald a future when personalized medicine means more than just genetic profiles. If doctors can test their hypotheses on a virtual you, rather than testing you directly, they might feel free to take more risks. Ultimately, patients might receive better care, thanks to mice on the front lines.
[Nature, Columbia University Medical Center]

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