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August 29 2011
The Plane Truth: Boarding by Rows Is the Worst Possible Way, Says Physicist
Let’s face it: boarding an airplane with luggage is just downright frustrating. Not only do you have to puzzle out how you are going to wrestle your carry-on bag into the aircraft’s tiny overhead compartment, but you have to do it while trying not to get swept away by the tugging current of other passengers.
“OK, everybody count off!”
Courtesy of Steffen, arXiv
But surely not all boarding procedures are created equal—simply boarding the plane back to front would be the easiest and most efficient method, right? Wrong. In fact, boarding by sequential rows is the worst possible approach (pdf), according to a new study by physicist Jason Steffen of the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics.
Steffen tested the efficiency of several different boarding procedures by sending 72 luggage-toting passengers into a movie-set Boeing 757. Among the boarding techniques tested was the zone/block style, where passengers fill the plane back to front, one large group at a time; WilMA, or Window, Middle, then Aisle (how the “l” got where it did is a mystery); and Steffen’s own procedure (imaginatively called “the Steffen method”), which incorporates both the other two techniques (see chart).
Steffen timed ...
July 10 2011
Not Just Sci-Fi Anymore: Students Create Gesture-Controlled Robot Drones
Combining the Kinect‘s body-scanning camera with overhead cameras, students at ETH Zurich’s Flying Machine Arena have created a nifty quadrocopter that’s controlled with simple gestures. Move around your right arm and the drone follows a similar path; raise your left arm and it flips; clap and it lands.
Hey, this is sort of like that sci-fi movie where people virtually controlled robots with just their body movements. It’s the weekend and we can’t think of the film—help us out in the comments section.
(via PopSci)
May 19 2011
Laser-Equipped Wheelchairs Let the Blind “See” Obstacles in Their Path
The story of a PhD student weaving his way through a busy university corridor doesn’t usually make for breaking news. But then the average PhD student isn’t wheelchair-bound, visually impaired, and testing a new laser-based wheelchair navigation system. In front of a crowd of onlookers earlier this month, a student performed the first public demonstration of a wheelchair that lets blind people “see” and avoid obstacles, afterward remarking that it was just “like using a white cane” (presumably underselling the technology to blunt the jealousy blooming in the onlookers).
From the user’s perspective, the new high-tech wheelchair is quite simple: You hold a joystick in one hand to drive the motorized chair, while the other hand engages a “haptic interface” that gives tactile feedback warning you about objects in your path, be they walls, fire hydrants, or those mobile collision-makers called people.
Developed at Sweden’s Luleå University of Technology (who brought us the autonomous wheelchair), this wheelchair uses lasers that make use of the time of flight technique, wherein “a laser pulse is sent out and a portion of the pulse is reflected from any surface encountered,” and the distance ...
May 10 2011
A Toast! To Scottish Homes Powered by Whisky
If you live in Scotland, the same whisky that energize your visits to the pub may also energize your home: Contracts are underway to construct a combined heat and power plant that runs on the leftovers of some of Scotland’s most famous distilleries. Scheduled to be up and running by 2013, this particular alcohol-powered project is Scotland’s first whisky-fueled energy project that will provide electricity to the public.
Sixteen whisky labels located in Speyside, Scotland—including Glenfiddich, Chivas Regal, and Famous Grouse—will contribute material to the new power plant. They’ll transport their spent grains (or draff) from the distilleries to the biofuel plant, where it’ll be combined with wood chips and burned, generating over 7.0 MW of power. This energy output—about the same as two large wind turbines—is expected to power at least 9,000 homes. In addition, the residue called pot ale, which accumulates in the distilleries’ copper stills, will be turned into animal feed and fertilizer for nearby farmers.To minimize the energy used to run the plant and ensure the process is energy efficient, no draff will be collected from distilleries farther than 25 miles away. Still, while Sam ...
May 09 2011
Everything You Wanted to Know About Semen-Collecting Robots (and Then Some)
Ever since last month’s China International Medical Equipment Fair in Shenzhen, China, a curious video (above) has been spreading across the blogosphere. The gadget in question is apparently an automatic sperm collector, an all-in-one machine into which men can donate sperm (hands-free). The video treats the entire subject in a rather ridiculous manner, raising two questions: How does this gadget actually work? And does anyone actually use them?
Today, there are in fact several companies selling automatic sperm collectors on the internet (here, here, and here, for example). Your average sperm-collecting gadget consists of a kiosk with a monitor that provides stimulating visuals (!), complimented by sounds (!!). A little lower is a “semen-collection sheath,” which purportedly simulates the feel and movement of a vagina.On top of visual stimuli, another company says that their gadget uses “infrared heating to simulate the temperature of female vagina [sic],” which consists of two inflatable tire-like structures. Once enveloping a penis, the sheath continues vibrating until the man, er… successfully donates his sperm.
The robotic sperm collector apparently has a “high success rate of 95%.” (I’ll leave it at that.) And it’s touted ...
May 02 2011
Luddites Rejoice! New Glasses Let You Watch 3D Films in 2D
Eyestrain. Headaches. Nausea. For some people, this is all part of the 3D movie experience. And until now, your choice was to either suffer through 3D; find a cheaper, low-tech theater; or else forgo some new films altogether. But that was before one guy invented 2D Glasses, a pair of specs that converts projected 3D images into 2D (yup, you read that right). It’s touted as a way of preventing eye strain while still enjoying a flick with your 3D-loving friends.
The story starts at the end of 2010, when inventor Hank Green wanted to watch Tron Legacy in 3D with his wife. She confessed that 3D movies give her headaches; Green wanted to see the film in all three dimensions, but didn’t wanted to see it alone, which sparked the idea of modifying 3D glasses into 2D glasses. As Green writes on his website, “after a lot of poking and twisting and gluing and cutting and cursing and sawing, I had created my first pair of 2D Glasses.” He then went to see
April 29 2011
Can the U.S. Military Shower Trackable Dust Onto Terrorists?
If the Air Force gets its way, it will have spying eyes hidden in the very motes on its enemies’ boots. In a wonderfully vague request this week, the Air Force called for companies to design miniature drones capable of dusting targets with signal-emitting particles. They say the technology (assuming it works) could be used to identify civilians or track wildlife, which is military-speak for “we want to track and kill terrorists, not bunnies.”
According to the request, the Air Force wants a small remotely piloted aircraft, or SRPA, that would “unobtrusively distribute taggants onto moving targets.” They describe taggants as tiny electro-magnetic-emitting devices. The key part of the request is for the tracked person to not be aware that he’s being tracked. The request makes the laughable point that a swooping SRPA or tracking-device-laden paint ball probably wouldn’t be obtrusive enough because “the target would obviously notice a swooping SRPA and likely feel the sting of the well-placed pellet.” (Either that, or you’re dealing with one very unaware terrorist.)
To be unobtrusive enough, the Air Force says that the drone should be able to deliver a ...
April 28 2011
Bonus! New Night-Vision Helmet Lets You See in the Dark AND Look Ridiculous
The latest state-of-the-art night-vision helmet should probably come with a warning label: “May cause uncontrollable laughter.” Despite its goofy, high-tech-Frankenstein appearance, the helmet actually makes a significant improvement in night vision by doubling the field of view compared to—and making that view much sharper than—the view through current goggles.
Called the High Resolution Night Vision System (HRNVS), these helmets are designed to give U.S. Air Force pilots higher-resolution images and an over-80-degree field of view, which is much better than the fuzzy, 40-degree field of view of conventional goggles. With the helmet in place, a pilot simply flips the viewers over his eyes to peer into the night. Each eyepiece is fed a synced image from two digital night-vision sensors. In addition to seeing more, the pilot also receives a crisper image because the helmet is programmed to enhance edges and contrasts, says SA Photonics, the company that developed the device. And as he spies another aircraft, a HUD-like digital overlay tells him how high it is and how fast it’s moving; and he can even record what he’s seeing as a video.
My JELL-O Says I’m Pancreatitis-Free
Grad students are a notoriously impoverished group, and so it’s only fitting that one has invented a pancreatitis test using a dollar’s worth of materials. In less than an hour, Reynolds Wrap, JELL-O, and milk can tell you whether you have pancreatitis, a sudden pancreas inflammation that can cause nausea, fever, shock, and even death.
Invented by biochemistry grad student Brian Zaccheo, this match-box-sized test detects high levels of trypsin, a pancreatic enzyme that’s abundant in pancreatitic patients. The diagnosis involves two simple steps: First, you drip some blood from a patient onto a gelatin and milk-protein layer, which breaks down in the presence of trypsin. Second, you add a drop of sodium hydroxide, or lye, which—if the trypsin has reacted through the entire gelatin layer—dissolves the Reynolds wrap that’s underneath the gelatin; the dissolved foil frees up a connection between a magnesium anode and an iron salt cathode, which creates enough current to light a red LED. “In essence, the device is a battery having a trypsin-selective switch that closes the circuit between the anode and cathode,” Zaccheo writes in a paper published ...
April 25 2011
Me First! Flesh-Harvesting, Hair-Transplanting Robot Gets FDA Approval
Some bald men are willing to go to great lengths to grow hair, including paying a robot to punch holes through their scalp skin. Recently approved by the FDA, a new robot takes out tiny pieces of your flesh in order to harvest hair follicles that can then be manually implanted into your bald spots.
Dubbed the ARTAS System, this automated robot images your head to single out a follicular unit, and then uses its robotic arm to make 1 mm-diameter “dermal punches” into your scalp. It continues extracting hair follicles from parts of your head that have sufficient amounts of hair (a process known as follicular unit extraction, or FUE), and these bits of flesh and hair are then stored until a doctor implants them into your bald and thinning areas. Within a few months, these newly-planted hairs start growing just like your other ones.
Having a robot punch out small pieces of your flesh certainly beats the alternative: strip harvesting. This technique does exactly what its name implies: It harvests skin-strips from your scalp. Then your doctor carefully extracts the follicular units from the strip, and implants then ...
April 08 2011
Vatican Says Computer Hackers Are More Saint Than Sinner
I like the habit because it makes me
look like the Linux penguin.
From elite hackers, to white-hat hackers, to hacktivists, hackers don’t generally have sterling reputations as upstanding citizens—at least as far as the general public is concerned. That’s why it may come as a surprise that the Vatican has published an essay that redeems computer hackers and even compares hacker philosophy with Catholic theology.
In his article published in the Vatican-vetted Civilta Cattolica, technology expert, literary critic, and Jesuit priest Antonio Spadaro draws similarities between hackers and Catholics (via TechWorld):
Hacker mentality implies a joyful application of intelligence to problem solving, rejecting the concept of work as repetitive, burdensome and stupid, Spadaro wrote. Hacker ethics rejected a capitalistic, profit-oriented approach to work, eschewing idleness but favoring a flexible, creative approach that was respectful of the human dimension and natural rhythms, he said.
In addition, hacker philosophy fosters creativity and sharing, and is both committed yet playful. “Under fire are control, competition, property. It’s a vision that is … of a clear theological origin,” writes Spadaro. He argues (rather vaguely) that many of these characteristics are also, as odd as it ...
April 07 2011
Mechanical Tail Lets You Rest Tripod-Style, Like a Kangaroo
Aching legs. Throbbing feet. Creaky knees. Standing for long periods of time can be a chore. And if there aren’t any chairs or clean floors to sit on, it’s also inevitable—unless you have a new invention that resembles a retractable robotic kangaroo tail.
Meet Emanuele Lopopolo, an Italian inventor who unveiled this portable backrest this device (picture of Lepopolo using the backrest here) at this week’s 39th International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva. As he puts it, “the kangaroo can rest its weight on its tail, so we’ve made the same thing for humans.” You just have to buckle yourself into Lopopolo’s backrest, extend the telescopic pole that juts out of the back, and then lean back: By reclining at a 60-degree angle, you can give your feet a break from supporting your full body weight. It’s intended for chair-less humans who want to take a load off without bending down to sit.
This quirky invention is only one of “1,000 completely new inventions” displayed at Geneva’s annual invention fair, which, with 765 exhibitors from 45 countries and over 60,000 visitors, is the largest ...
March 29 2011
What Every Lonely Guy Needs: A Fake Facebook Girlfriend
Some guys only dream of having a Facebook girlfriend; others are willing to pay a company to create one for them. Soon, lonely dudes with extra cash may feel better about themselves as they interact with a “virtual girlfriend,” convincing their friends that they actually are dating material.
A startup called Cloud Girlfriend plans to provide a service that would post messages on your Facebook wall from a virtual girlfriend (or what they call your “social network girlfriend”). The process is simple: “Step 1: Define your perfect girlfriend. Step 2: We bring her into existence. Step 3: Connect and interact with her publicly on your favorite social network. Step 4: Enjoy a public long distance relationship with your perfect girl.”
Currently the website only allows visitors to provide their emails in order to know when the service actually launches. According to Technology Review’s Christopher Mims, despite having not even started yet, “it’s already experiencing overwhelming demand.”
So what are the benefits of having a virtual girlfriend? According to company co-founder David Fuhriman, having a fake girlfriend may help men get a real one: Women seeing that at least one other woman likes this guy ...
March 28 2011
Time (Eats) Flies: Clock Powers Itself by Catching & Eating Bugs
Cat clocks. Cuckoo clocks. Grandfather clocks. Often times, clocks are named after the objects, animals, or people they resemble. Not so the fly clock: This mechanical wonder is billed as the first-ever carnivorous clock, sucking energy from decomposed fly carcasses (giving new meaning to the phrase “eating up time”).
The mechanics are quite elegant: Unsuspecting flies get stuck on the clock’s flypaper, which is rigged as a corpse-carrying conveyor belt. A blade on the clock scrapes the catch into a microbial fuel cell. As it digests the fly, the fuel cell extracts electrons to power the LCD screen. As flypaper keeps trapping and the wheels keep turning, you have yourself an Earth-friendly, critter-ridding timepiece the likes the world has never seen.
UK engineers got the idea of a carnivorous clock from Chris Melhuish at the Bristol Robotics Lab, whose team previously developed another fly-powered robot, according to MSNBC. But the idea of carnivorous robots goes back at least a decade, to the aptly named Slugbot.
Related Content:
80beats: Video: Fluorescent Bacteria Keep Time Like a Clock
The Loom: The Clock That Breeds
80beats: Men Have a Biological Clock, Too
Science Not Fiction:
March 25 2011
How to Protect World Cup Crowds From Blazing Sun? Carbon-Fiber Flying-Saucer Clouds
Picturing yourself at the 2022 World Cup, surrounded by Qatar’s (as-yet-to-be-built) state-of-the-art stadium sounds like a soccer-fan’s dream, but there’s one problem: In the summer, when the event is traditionally held, this desert country’s temperatures can easily top 115 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s hard to enjoy soccer when you’re suffering a heat stroke, which is why engineers are developing a flying-saucer-like carbon-fiber cloud that will float above soccer-eyed spectators and automatically reposition itself to block the sun, cooling them from the sizzling heat.
As Saud Ghani, head of Qatar University’s Mechanical and Industrial Engineering group, told CNN, this giant iPhone-shaped robotic cloud could potentially drop temperatures by 10 degrees Fahrenheit. It does this by shielding the pitch from sunlight (a simple-enough concept). So how does it stay aloft, and stay in the right place to block the sun?
“Artificial clouds will move by remote control, [be] made of 100 percent light carbonic materials, fueled by four solar-powered engines and will fly high to protect direct and indirect sun rays to control temperatures at the open playgrounds,” Ghani said in a statement. Pockets ...
March 09 2011
New “Gastric Pacemaker” Aims to Zap People Into Weight Loss
Not many people would be excited about getting shocks to their vagus nerve, but a new electronic device implanted into the abdomen does just that in an effort to keep appetites in check.
The tiny device, called abiliti and made by Intrapace, attaches to the vagus nerve, which sends status updates about the body’s organs to the brain. The pacemaker then hacks the nervous system’s normal communication, according to the company’s website:
The abiliti system is designed to support these good habits by making the patient feel full sooner when eating. The abiliti system may also help in keeping them satisfied longer and helping them to eat less frequently.
Intrapace reports that the 65 study participants in the initial trials have lost on average 22 percent of their body weight; the biggest loser dropped 38 percent. (These results haven’t been published or peer-reviewed.)
The device is billed as an alternative to more invasive weight-loss procedures, like stomach bypasses or gastric bands, and may have fewer side effects. It is implanted into the abdomen, where it floats around near the stomach, connected to nerves by electrodes through which it senses how extended ...
February 02 2011
From 8-Tracks to Grave Torpedoes: The Quest for an Extinct Technology
NPR’s Robert Krulwich has a challenge for you: Can you name an invention or tool from the dawn of humanity until now that has become entirely extinct?
The question is based on a bet that he made with the founding editor of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly. In a recent NPR conversation with Krulwich, Kelly said, “I say there is no species of technology that have ever gone globally extinct on this planet.”
That’s a bold assertion, but try as he might, Krulwich couldn’t find an example to prove him wrong. As Krulwich explains on his blog:
If you listen to our Morning Edition debate, I tried carbon paper (still being made), steam powered car engine parts (still being made), Paleolithic hammers (still being made), 6 pages of agricultural tools from an 1895 Montgomery Ward & Co. Catalogue (every one of them still being made), and to my utter astonishment, I couldn’t find a provable example of an technology that has disappeared completely.
So Krulwich has enlisted the help of his readers, asking for suggestions in the comment section that could help him win his ...
September 01 2010
A Romantic Getaway for Japanese Men & Their Virtual Girlfriends
Don’t be fooled by the men taking solo vacation pictures and eating alone at the Japanese resort town of Atami. These guys may look lonely as they sit and poke at their video game devices, but love is in the air. In a promotion that ended yesterday, Atami teamed up with Konami, the manufacturer of the dating video game LovePlus+, to offer a place for players and their virtual girlfriends to get away.
The game, available on Nintendo’s handheld DS, allows players to win their girlfriend’s virtual heart by completing homework, working out, texting, kissing (using a stylus to touch the girl’s face), and calling (via the system’s built-in microphone). It made headlines last year when one player, SAL9000, decided to marry his virtual girl Nene Anegasaki (see video above, via Boing Boing).
Play the dating game just right and you win a virtual getaway to Atami. The recent promotion allowed players to visit the sites they’d seen in the game in real life, though with a little plus–their girlfriends’ faces plastered on everything from banners to fish cakes.
Atsurou Ohno, managing director of Atami’s Hotel Ohnoya, told the The Wall Street Journal in a video interview that Atami tried to create a real experience for the some 1,500 “couples” who flocked to the town.
“We place two of everything in the rooms, even if there is only one person.”
Some of the guests paid up to $500 for a night in Atami hotel rooms–which, we also note from the WSJ video, had two separate beds.
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Discoblog: Is Apple Taking Sexy Back? Raunchy Apps Vanish From the App Store
August 25 2010
Meet Dr. John, the Fancy Japanese Toilet That Gives Check-ups
Instead of going to the doctor’s office for simple health tests, some Japanese can now go to the bathroom. The “Intelligence Toilet” can measure blood pressure, body temperature, weight, and urine sugar levels, all while you… well.
The toilet is the latest in a family of smart loos called “washlets.” Other toilets in manufacturer Toto’s fleet feature water jets for cleaning, warmers for comfort, driers for after the water jet, and “otohime” or “princess of sound” speakers for drowning out any unpleasant user noises.
The toilets also have automatically opening and closing lids, resetting after every use to keep his and her bathrooms in bliss and to help young children or elderly people who may have trouble reaching or bending down. In Japan, the toilets run for around 400,000 yen, about $5,000.
Once the Intelligence Toilet has your health stats, it will display them on a wall monitor, though the toilet has the potential for more. An architect for the firm Daiwa House, which will install a set of the toilets in a retirement home, told the AFP:
“With the current model, your data is sent automatically to your personal computer, and then you can email it to your doctor…. In the next generation model, the data will be sent automatically to family members or doctors via the Internet.”
Just think of the automatic advertisements accompanying emails that detail your pee’s contents.
Related content:
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Discoblog: International Space Station Gets New Toilet, Fridge, and Blogger
Image: flickr / David McKelvey
August 23 2010
Gr8. Victorians txted 2. B4 cells.
A message from the Victorians: “I 1 der if you got that 1 I wrote 2U B4.” Helz ya, 1800s Brit10! We got it. Though they didn’t have cellphones or their 160-character limits, phrases like this one show nineteenth century English writers weren’t above an occasional stylistic shortcut.
The line comes from the poem “Essay to Miss Catharine Jay,” part of Charles Carroll Bombaugh’s 1867 Gleanings From the Harvest-Fields of Literature. The poem will appear in a forthcoming exhibit at The British Library as an example of “emblematic poetry.”
As Discovery News reports, such shortcuts appeared even before the Victorians; for example, the phrase IOU (for I owe you) originated in 1618. Txtese abbreviations appeared in literature from both sides of the Atlantic, with Americans also writing to Miss Catharine Jay, or Miss K T J.
Perhaps the proto-texts teach an important lesson: Lopping off word parts doesn’t mean you don’t have class. Another excerpt meant for Miss Catharine Jay:
But friends and foes alike D K,
As U may plainly C,
In every funeral R A,
Or Uncle’s L E G.
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Discoblog: Watch Those Thumbs Go! Champion Texter Wins $50,000
Discoblog: The New Defense Against Despotism: Text Messaging
Image: Wikimedia
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