Science & TechnologyS


Display

Eyes turn to dawn of 'visual computing'


Agence France-Presse
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:28 UTC
Lifelike graphics are breaking free of elite computer games and spreading throughout society in what industry insiders proclaim is the dawning of a "visual computing era."

Astronauts, film makers and celebrities joined software savants, engineers and gamers in the heart of Silicon Valley this week for a first-ever NVision conference devoted to computer imagery advances changing the way people and machines interact.

"Visual computing is transforming the videogame industry; transforming the film industry, and has all kinds of potential for how we view real-time television," NVIDIA co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang told those gathered at the event.

"We solve some of the most challenging problems for more and more companies around the world. Let the era of visual computing begin."
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Monkey Wrench

UMass startup DigitRobotics' uBot builds other robots

Brendan Lynch
MHT \ The Journal of New England Technology
Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:40 UTC
DigitRobotics LLC, founded by a pair of University of Massachusetts Amherst Ph.D. students, wants to do some of robotics researchers' work for them.

The company plans to sell its uBot to people who make robots, according to its co-founders, Bryan Thibodeau and Patrick Deegan.
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Magic Wand

Immaterial display allows viewers to handle 3D images in air

Lisa Zyga
PhysOrg
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:47 UTC
In the future of immersive entertainment, people may not only walk through floating 3D images, but also manipulate the images in thin air. Taking a step toward this reality, researchers have built a prototype of a room-sized 3D immaterial display, demonstrating the possibility of using the technology for a variety of entertainment purposes.

3D teapot
©Cha Lee, et al. ©2008 IEEE.
Image of a 3D teapot, displayed using two perpendicular FogScreens.

Computer scientists Cha Lee, Stephen DiVerdi, and Tobias Höllerer from the University of California Santa Barbara have designed their depth-fused 3D (DFD) display, which uses up to two FogScreens and projectors, along with a user-tracking system, to achieve a 3D effect. The results of their experiments will be published in an upcoming issue of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.
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Info

Crystals improve understanding of volcanic eruption triggers


PhysOrg
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:10 UTC
Scientists have exploited crystals from lavas to unravel the records of volcanic eruptions. The team, from Durham University and the University of Leeds, studied crystal formation from a volcano, in Santorini, in Greece, to calculate the timescale between the trigger of volcanic activity and the volcano's eruption.

Image
©Durham University
Scientists have studied crystals from the Nea Kameni volcano in Santorini, Greece, to learn more about the timescale of volcanic eruptions.

They say the technique can be applied to other volcanoes - such as Vesuvius, near Naples, in Italy - and will help inform the decisions of civil defence agencies.

Worldwide, it is estimated that between 50 and 70 volcanoes erupt each year, but due to the long gaps between eruptions at most volcanoes it is hard to understand how any individual volcano behaves. This work allows scientists to better understand this behaviour.

The research, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), is published this week in the prestigious scientific journal Science.
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Meteor

Flashback Newfound Comet Means Increased Chance of Meteor Showers

Robin Lloyd
Space.com
Thu, 11 Nov 1999 15:03 UTC
Less than a week before the peak of the Leonids meteor shower, there is a slim chance that an astral display from a newly-discovered comet will be visible Thursday in the northern sky -- near the lower left star in the bowl of the Big Dipper.

Comet LINEAR, found in May by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research team, made its closest pass to the sun on September 20.
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Telescope

Minimum Mass For Galaxies Discovered: Breakthrough Sheds Light On Mysterious Dark Matter


Science Daily
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:01 UTC
By analyzing light from small, faint galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, UC Irvine scientists believe they have discovered the minimum mass for galaxies in the universe - 10 million times the mass of the sun.

Image
©J. Bullock/M. Geha/R. Powell University of California - Irvine
Satellite galaxies studied by UCI researchers that are within 500,000 light-years from the Milky Way.

This mass could be the smallest known "building block" of the mysterious, invisible substance called dark matter. Stars that form within these building blocks clump together and turn into galaxies.

Scientists know very little about the microscopic properties of dark matter, even though it accounts for approximately five-sixths of all matter in the universe.

"By knowing this minimum galaxy mass, we can better understand how dark matter behaves, which is essential to one day learning how our universe and life as we know it came to be," said Louis Strigari, lead author of this study and a McCue Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCI.

Study results are published Aug. 28 in the journal Nature.
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Info

Subliminal Learning Demonstrated In Human Brain


Science Daily
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:43 UTC
Although the idea that instrumental learning can occur subconsciously has been around for nearly a century, it had not been unequivocally demonstrated. Now, a new study published by Cell Press in the August 28 issue of the journal Neuron used sophisticated perceptual masking, computational modeling, and neuroimaging to show that instrumental learning can occur in the human brain without conscious processing of contextual cues.

human brain
©iStockphoto/Kiyoshi Takahase Segundo
New research uses sophisticated perceptual masking, computational modeling, and neuroimaging to show that instrumental learning can occur in the human brain without conscious processing of contextual cues.

"Humans frequently invoke an argument that their intuition can result in a better decision than conscious reasoning," says lead author Dr. Mathias Pessiglione from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at the University College London. "Such assertions may rely on subconscious associative learning between subliminal signals present in a given situation and choice outcomes." For instance, a seasoned poker player may play more successfully because of a learned association between monetary outcomes and subliminal behavioral manifestations of their opponents.

To investigate this phenomenon, Dr. Pessiglione and colleagues created visual cues from scrambled, novel, abstract symbols. Visual awareness was assessed by displaying two of the masked cues and asking subjects if they perceived any difference. "We reasoned that if subjects were unable to correctly perceive any difference between the masked cues, then they were also unable to build conscious representations of cue-outcome associations," explains Dr. Pessiglione.
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Info

ESA's Cluster Watches Earth's Leaky Atmosphere


Science Daily
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:39 UTC
Oxygen is constantly leaking out of Earth's atmosphere and into space. Now, ESA's formation-flying quartet of satellites, Cluster, has discovered the physical mechanism that is driving the escape. It turns out that the Earth's own magnetic field is accelerating the oxygen away.

Image
©NASA/ESA
This artist's impression shows electrically charged oxygen, hydrogen and helium atoms (ions) leaking into space from the Earth atmosphere, over the poles. ESA's Cluster mission discovered that this accelerated escape is driven by changes in direction of the Earth own magnetic field.

The new work uses data collected by Cluster from 2001 to 2003. During this time, Cluster amassed information about beams of electrically charged oxygen atoms, known as ions, flowing outwards from the polar regions into space. Cluster also measured the strength and direction of the Earth's magnetic field whenever the beams were present.

Hans Nilsson, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, headed a team of space scientists who analysed the data. They discovered that the oxygen ions were being accelerated by changes in the direction of the magnetic field. "It is a bit like a sling-shot effect," says Nilsson.

Having all four Cluster spacecraft was essential to the analysis because it gave astronomers a way to measure the strength and direction of the magnetic field over a wide area. "Cluster allowed us to measure the gradient of the magnetic field and see how it was changing direction with time," says Nilsson.
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Telescope

Strange Clouds at the Edge of Space


NASA
Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:56 UTC
When in space, keep an eye on the window. You never know what you might see.

Last month, astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) witnessed a beautiful display of noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds. The station was located about 340 km over western Mongolia on July 22nd when the crew snapped this picture:

Image
©NASA
Noctilucent clouds photographed by the crew of the ISS: more.
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Bizarro Earth

Flashback Upstart Ice Age Theory Gets Attentive But Chilly Hearing

Richard A. Kerr
Science Magazine
Fri, 11 Jul 1997 22:52 UTC
Selling a new gizmo to replace a longtime favorite is always a tough job--especially if few are convinced that the original is broken. Physicist Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkeley, knows what it's like: For several years, he has been pitching a new way to drive the comings and goings of the ice ages. He's trying to displace the cherished Milankovitch mechanism in which cyclical changes in the elliptical shape of Earth's orbit shift the pattern of solar heating, triggering the buildup or melting of ice sheets.

Image
©R. MULLER AND G. MACDONALD
Battling curves. The single cycle of Earth's changing orbital inclination (green) seems a better match to climate (red) than the multiple cycles of orbital eccentricity (blue).
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