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April 09 2012
To Increase Your Tongue Agility, Play This Game
If you thought the Kinect was just for things like controlling flying quadrocopters and getting in touch with your inner Han Solo, get ready to stick your tongue out. That’s right, scientists in Japan have created a Kinect game for your tongue. You wiggle it around to shoot at circles.
You’re not running out of your house to buy the game right this second? Well, you probably weren’t the target audience anyway. Japanese researchers created the game to help in diagnosis and treatment of oral motor disorders. People who have trouble speaking or swallowing could play the game to train their tongues. For the rest of us, how about a game that teaches French kissing?
July 01 2011
Coming to a Dental School Near You: The Dental Robot With the Sex-Doll Face
Good news dental students: soon you will no longer have to approach your first victim patient with shaky, unsure hands. Researchers at Showa University in Japan have unveiled a new dental dummy, a realistic robot for dental students to practice on before taking the drill to real, human mouths.
I use the term “dummy” here loosely. Showa Tanako 2, as the researchers call her, has a wide range of human-like features. She can engage in simple conversations, flinch, roll her eyes, cough, and close her mouth like a real patient suffering from jaw fatigue. Oh, and she has a gag reflex.
So how did a group of dental researchers build such a realistic—albeit slightly scary—looking robot? Naturally, they sought help from Japanese sex doll maker, Orient Industry, who helped fashion the robot’s skin, tongue, and mouth. If the doll’s face didn’t look realistic, it wouldn’t “have the same effect on users psychologically,” Showa University professor Koutaro Maki said in the video released by DigInfo. “How doctors and students actually feel in the presence of a patient is a really big factor.”
On top of her movements, speech, and look, Showa Tanako 2 has one final similarity to human patients: she judges. ...
May 31 2011
May 27 2011
Officials Use Blue, Peelable Goo to Decontaminate Japan
Just pour and peel! Also slices and dices.
Put away that Swiffer—when you’ve got a real mess to clean up, turn to this blue goo.
Japanese officials looking to clean up radioactive contamination are applying a product called DeconGel to the problem. The usual method is distressingly Stone Age: soap and water applied by human beings. As you can imagine, there are a number of problems with this, like what to do with all that radioactive water, which has a tendency to leak all over the place, and what to do about radiation exposure of said human beings.
DeconGel, 100 buckets of which were donated to the relief effort by its manufacturer, CBI Polymers, looks to be a handy way to bypass all that. A radiation-mitigation expert working with Japanese officials put them on to it: “I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” he says, “and there’s nothing comparable to DeconGel out there that I know of today.” (via CNNMoney)
If you’ve ever used a lint roller, you’re familiar with the basic mechanics of DeconGel. The viscous blue goop is poured onto the contaminated surface, allowed to dry, and then peeled off like masking tape from a ...
February 24 2011
And They’re Off! World’s First Robot Marathon Gets Underway
First there was RoboCup, in which teams of robots kicked soccer balls around indoor fields. And now, as I write these words, five robots are competing in Robo Mara Full, the world’s first marathon for our plastic and metallic friends.
This video shows the competitors in a practice run:
Funded by the city government of Osaka, Japan, and organized by the robotics company Vstone, the race began on Thursday. These robots aren’t exactly speed demons–the winner is expected to finish sometime on Sunday. The race is taking place on an indoor track at Osaka’s Asia-Pacific trade center, a business complex in Osaka. Tto complete the 26.2-mile marathon, the robots will have to make it around the track 422 times.
The competition is a cross between a traditional, human-run marathon and a NASCAR race: The robots must complete the marathon without the help of humans, but the teams are allowed to switch out their robots’ batteries and to make repairs. If you think it’s not fair that the engineers get to repair their robots during the marathon, keep in mind that the time taken for these repairs counts in the racing time.
To warm up for the big race on Thursday, ...
February 17 2011
Japan Wants to Send a Tweeting Companion-Bot to the Space Station
It’s official: The robots are taking over the space station.
It will start with Robonaut 2, the humanoid maintenance bot that NASA is sending to the International Space Station next week. And now Japan’s space agency (JAXA) has announced plans to send its own bot to the ISS. JAXA’s humanoid robot will not only talk and Twitter, but it will also act as a space nurse, monitoring the health of the astronauts.
The researchers behind the project say the bot would have a number of attributes that would make it a valuable crew member. For example, they say, it would never have to sleep–so it could keep watch when the flesh and blood astronauts are in dreamland.
And then there are its conversational skills, which would make it a lively companion for those lonley spacefarers. “We are thinking in terms of a very human-like robot that would have facial expressions and be able to converse with the astronauts,” JAXA’s Satoshi Sano told the AP.
Finally, the bot could take up that crutial task: manning a Twitter feed. The researchers note that NASA’s bot has a Twitter feed, but ...
January 18 2011
Booze-Soaked Superconductors Provide Hot Physics Results
A paper that explores the unlikely coupling of warm wine and the electric properties of iron is currently making its rounds on the media circuit—leading us to conclude that people get excited about science when there is alcohol involved.
“Drunk scientists pour wine on superconductors and make incredibly discovery,” declares the (slightly inaccurate) headline on io9. “’Tis the season to be pickling your liver in alcohol,” announces the (slightly irrelevant) opening line of a CNET article.
The researchers’ experiment—led by Keita Deguchi of the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan—involved first submersing an iron alloy in various hot alcoholic beverages, and then finding the temperature at which the treated alloy starts to display superconducting properties. A superconductor is a material that has no electrical resistivity, allowing electrons to flow through it with essentially zero friction.
The paper abstract, which was published on arXiv, gives an overview of the experiment’s findings and method (although there’s no mention of beverage consumption that might have inspired these scientific antics):
“We found that hot commercial alcohol drinks are much effective to induce superconductivity in FeTe0.8S0.2 compared to water, ethanol and water-ethanol ...
December 16 2010
Pee-based Gaming Coming to a Urinal Near You (If You’re in Japan)
For you men, peeing has become complicated these days: You have to deal with everything from tests judging your ability to pick a urinal to pictures of women laughing at you. It’s about time someone put the fun back in pee time, and SEGA thinks they have just the thing: urinal gaming. As Pocket Lint describes:
This wacky video (filmed in Japan, where else?) shows off the pee-based game in which the speed and accuracy of your urine stream is judged and converted to a cartoon-like mini-game display on the LCD.
Games to play with you pee include a graffiti cleaning task, a Marilyn Monroe-esque trick that blows wind up a lady’s skirt, and a game that asks you to shoot milk from your character’s nose. You control the game by hitting the sensor in the urinal, which rates you on how long and hard you can pee. The aim of the game is to help dudes stay on target, Popular Science explains:
If you can’t go standing up, perhaps Toirettsu isn’t for you (sorry ladies, but your hands-free method allows you to play Angry Birds on the can anyhow). Toirettsu targets restaurant and retail environments, ostensibly in hopes that by giving users goal-oriented mini-games to focus on, their men’s room floors might stay a bit cleaner as gents have somewhere to aim. And, of course, it gives establishments (and Sega) somewhere to place an ad.
Related Content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Gaming at work positively correlated with multitasking
Discoblog: The Good Old Days, When Psychologists Used to Hang Out in Toilet Stalls
Discoblog: Brazilians Urged to Pee in the Shower to Conserve Water
Discoblog: Step 1: Pee on Stick. Step 2: Ask Your Phone if You Have an STD
Bad Astronomy: In space, no one can hear you pee
DISCOVER: Video Games That Make the World Better
Video:Youtube/uye515
December 03 2010
I’m Dreaming of an Eel-Illuminated Christmas
When an aquarium in Japan planned their holiday displays for Christmas, they decided to harness the natural talents of one resident: the electric eel. The lights on one small Christmas tree are powered by the eel’s natural electricity, which is picked up by two aluminum panels in the tank that act as electrodes.
The eel-powered Christmas tree has been a fixture at the aquarium for the past few years, but Reuters reports that this year the aquarium broadened its alternative energy experiment by adding a dancing Santa powered by stomping human feet.
As we admire the tree, let’s also take a moment to appreciate Kazuhiko Minawa, the inventor of this marvel and a spokesman for the Enoshima Aquarium. He says in the 2008 video below: “If we could gather all the electric eels from all around the world, we would be able to light up an unimaginably large Christmas tree.” Oh Mr. Minawa, we can imagine it.
Related Content:
The Loom: When Love Shocks
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Two fish families evolved electric powers by tweaking the same gene
Science Not Fiction: How to Conduct the World’s First Electric Fish Orchestra
Science Not Fiction: Electric Fish “Plug in” and Turn Their Zapping Into Music
Image: Wikimedia Commons
October 18 2010
Dance, Fembot, Dance–Right Into the Uncanny Valley
The world’s first robot pop star, aka Divabot, made her debut last week at the Digital Contents Expo. Tech News Daily’s take on her:
The warbling robot, with the Star Wars-esque designation HRP-4C, stands at about five feet, two inches (1.58 meters) tall. It has the appearance of a young Japanese girl, although one admittedly wearing a RoboCop suit minus the helmet.
The Divabot was born from the brains of researchers at Japan’s Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. She can sing realistically because of some special software that mimics human head, mouth, and facial movements, called VocalWatcher, and she synthesizes the song with software the team created called VocalListener (their original bot used Yamaha’s Vocaloid software). The researchers even added in real-life breath sounds and blinks to make her even more humanoid. The team believes that Divabot is the first of many robo-entertainers to come, team leader Masataka Goto told Tech News Daily:
“For robots to become widespread in society, I think they need to be used widely in the entertainment industry,” said Masataka Goto, leader of the media interaction group at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology that is developing HRP-4C. “As one way of enabling this, we’ve tackled the challenge of seeing how well a robot can imitate a human singer.”
Related content:
Discoblog: Punching Robot Totally Breaks Asimov’s First Rule
Discoblog: Helpful Robot Can Play With Your Socks
DISCOVER: HERB, the Robot Butler (Video)
80beats: A Hide-and-Seek-Playing Robot Learns How to Lie
Visual Science: Life and Love in the Uncanny Valley
Videos: Youtube/kmoriyama and Diginfonews
October 11 2010
“Whale Wars” TV Show Leads to Real-Life Feud Between Activists
It’s not so surprising that the violent destruction of a $1.5 million boat would lead to an argument. But you would expect the argument to be between the owners of the boat and the vessel that rammed it.
Instead, members of the activist group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the group at the center of the Animal Planet TV show Whale Wars, are arguing amongst themselves and are making their he said/he said argument public business.
The group’s expensive and high-tech speedboat, called the Ady Gil, was damaged in a collision with a Japanese whaling ship in early January. The boat, worth $1.5 million, was used to chase down and harass whaling ships. After the crash, the Sea Shepherd crew tried to tow the boat with another vessel for over 36 hours, failing twice, before the salvage effort was given up and the boat was scuttled (deliberately sunk).
After the crash the Ady Gil’s skipper, Pete Bethune, boarded the Japanese ship to confront the captain, but the whalers detained him and Bethune ended up in Japanese court, where he was found guilty of trespassing and assault. In the midst of the legal maneuvering Sea Shepherd’s founder, Paul Watson, fired Bethune, but later said it was a tactical move to get Bethune a reduced sentence. (He was finally given a two-year suspended sentence, and was deported from Japan.)
Last week the argument intensified when a statement by Bethune to Japanese authorities came to light, claiming that Watson had ordered him to board the Japanese ship; there are reports that information has allowed the Japanese authorities to issue a warrant for Watson’s arrest. The reaction to Bethune’s statement was swift and fierce. In an email to Bethune, Watson denied that he had ordered Bethune to board the ship, relieved him of his post at Sea Shepherd, and even blamed Bethune for the destruction of the ship:
We have put the best face possible on it but let’s be honest Pete, there is no excuse for not having your vessel under control in the vicinity of a hostile ship. The Shonan Maru #2 was able to destroy your ship because you allowed them to do so. You took no evasive action.
Check the video below for a view of the original crash:
In response to being fired (again), Bethune made statements to the press, saying that Watson and the rest of Sea Shepherd’s “morally bankrupt” leadership had ordered him to sink the Ady Gil. The Sydney Morning Herald explains Bethune’s accusation:
Mr Bethune, the Ady Gil’s skipper, said the Sea Shepherd founder, Paul Watson, ordered the sinking to “garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV” in the battle against Japan’s Antarctic whaling program. “It was definitely salvageable, it was still rock solid from the engine room back,” he told Radio New Zealand yesterday.
Watson denies the accusations, saying that the ship was under Bethune’s care when the decision was made to sink it. Again, from the Sydney Morning Herald:
Mr Watson told the New Zealand Press Association that he felt betrayed and denied all the allegations, which he said were made because Mr Bethune was angry at being sacked. “No one ordered him to scuttle it. Pete Bethune was captain of the Ady Gil; all decisions on the Ady Gil were his. And that’s all on camera.”
One thing’s for sure: This conflict could make for riveting television.
Related content:
80beats: Controversial Deal Could Allow Japan to Hunt More Whales
80beats: In “Operation Blue Rage,” Sea Shepherd Activists Will Target Tuna Poachers
80beats: Is the Anti-Whaling Activist Who Boarded a Japanese Whaling Ship a Pirate?
80beats: Videos Show Collision Between Japanese Whaling Ship & Protesters
Discoblog: Say What? Japanese Whaling Ships Accuse Animal Planet of Ecoterrorism
Image: Sea Shepard Conservation Society
September 13 2010
Why Did the Children of Samurai Have Lead Poisoning?
Being in the upper crust of Japanese society during the Edo Period may have come with a serious drawback–a new analysis of the remains of samurai warriors and their wives and children suggests that many of the kids had lead poisoning. The suspected culprit: the make-up that mothers wore.
In the Edo Period, which lasted from 1603 to 1868, the military nobles known as samurai protected castle towns like Kokura, where this study was carried out. Researcher Tamiji Nakashima delved into a graveyard where samurai and their families were buried in large clay pots, and examined the remains of 70 people.
The study, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, showed that adult women had more lead in their bones than adult men, but the kids were in the worst trouble. LiveScience reports:
[The researchers found] kids with enough lead in their systems to cause severe intellectual impairment. Children under age 3 were the worst off, with a median level of 1,241 micrograms of lead per gram of dry bone. That’s more than 120 times the level thought to cause neurological and behavioral problems today and as much as 50 times higher than levels the team found in samurai adults. Older kids’ levels were lower, but still very high.
The researchers say that lead-based white face powder was in vogue at the time, as it was used by geisha and Kabuki actors. But although the study suggests that elite children of the era had serious developmental difficulties, those in the lower classes probably escaped that particular fate. Nakashima told LiveScience that people from farming and fishing families were forbidden from using luxurious cosmetics, and were thus spared the luxury of lead poisoning.
Related Content:
80beats: Did the Lead in His Paints Kill the Baroque Artist Caravaggio?
80beats: Andean People Discovered Mercury Mining—and Mercury Pollution—in 1400 B.C.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: The history of poisoning in the future: lessons from Star Trek.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
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