techgeek0279 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Haptic photography develops images that can be both seen and felt (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Monday March 26, 2012 @06:18PM

techgeek0279 writes: "Katherine J. Kuchenbecker, Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation for Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) at the University of Pennsylvania, explains the work she and her research team are conducting on haptic photography. Haptography, like photography in the visual domain, enables an individual to quickly record the haptic feel of a real object and reproduce it later for others to interact with in a variety of contexts. Particular positive ramifications of establishing the approach of haptography are to let doctors and dentists create haptic records of medical afflictions such as a decayed tooth surface to assist in diagnosis and patient health tracking; to improve the realism and consequent training efficacy of haptic surgical simulators and other computer-based education tools; to allow a wide range of people, such as museum goers and online shoppers, to touch realistic virtual copies of valuable items; to facilitate a haptographic approach to low-bandwidth and time-delayed teleoperation, as found in space exploration; and to enable new insights on human and robot touch capabilities."

Submission + - Zapping pathogens: New technologies shows promise in keeping our food safe (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Monday March 26, 2012 @03:09PM

techgeek0279 writes: "Pink slime fed to kids at schools. Listeria and arsenic found in food. Even food packaging can leech unhealthy chemicals into our diet. While the cases of severe foodborne illness are relatively low, these news stories demonstrate how the food we eat can make us sick. This makes recent budget cuts to the microbiological data program, which monitors food borne pathogens, troublesome. Luckily, new innovative procedures appear promising for reducing foodborne pathogens on food."

Submission + - Facebook's 'white hat' counter-trolling of Yahoo (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Monday March 26, 2012 @02:32PM

techgeek0279 writes: "Facebook recently fired a salvo in its defense against Yahoo by purchasing 750 patents from IBM. To backtrack a bit for those who have not been following the latest patent war, Yahoo recently sued Facebook. It’s not hard to see why they did it. Yahoo’s lost nearly five billion dollars for 2011. Compare to Facebook’s $3.71 billion profits for the same time period. The days when Yahoo was one of the hottest buzzwords on the Internet seem far, far away. The days when Facebook becomes yesterday’s news is nearly impossible to imagine."

Submission + - Researchers develop 'swarm intelligence' in the form of driverless transport veh (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Friday March 23, 2012 @06:37PM

techgeek0279 writes: "At the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML in Dortmund, Germany, researchers are working to harness swarm intelligence as a means of improving the flow of materials and goods in the warehouse environment. In a research hall 1000 square meters in size, the scientists have replicated a small-scale distribution warehouse with storage shelves for 600 small-part carriers and eight picking stations."

Submission + - Play to the crowd: Crowdsourcing works for science and businesses alike (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Thursday March 22, 2012 @01:41PM

techgeek0279 writes: "When you’re trained to be a scientist, you learn the fundamental process of experimentation: The scientific method. New-generation scientists see enormous potential in crowdsourcing this revered method. Their attempts to crowdsource science have been successful and even better than some traditional methods using super computers and standard practices."

Submission + - A camera that can see around corners developed by MIT (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Wednesday March 21, 2012 @04:28PM

techgeek0279 writes: "MIT researchers are able to produce recognizable 3D images of a wooden figurine and of foam cutouts outside a camera’s line of sight. The research could ultimately lead to imaging systems that allow emergency responders to evaluate dangerous environments or vehicle navigation systems that can negotiate blind turns, among other applications. The principle behind the system is essentially that of the periscope. But instead of using angled mirrors to redirect light, the system uses ordinary walls, doors or floors — surfaces that aren’t generally thought of as reflective. The system exploits a device called a femtosecond laser, which emits bursts of light so short that their duration is measured in quadrillionths of a second. To peer into a room that’s outside its line of sight, the system might fire femtosecond bursts of laser light at the wall opposite the doorway. The light would reflect off the wall and into the room, then bounce around and re-emerge, ultimately striking a detector that can take measurements every few picoseconds, or trillionths of a second. Because the light bursts are so short, the system can gauge how far they’ve traveled by measuring the time it takes them to reach the detector."

Submission + - A blood test with no needles (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Tuesday March 20, 2012 @07:05PM

techgeek0279 writes: "Undiagnosed anemia, and subsequent hemorrhaging, is a major — but completely preventable — cause of death in childbirth around the world. In this inspiring TED talk, Myshkin Ingawale describes how (after 32 tries) he and his team created a simple, portable device that tests for anemia without pricking the skin."

Submission + - Chlorinated silk: Hottest new microbe-stopping fashion in hospital wear? (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Tuesday March 20, 2012 @02:49PM

techgeek0279 writes: "Due to its deadly nature and near invulnerability, the fear of anthrax being used in a terrorist attack is quite high; however, scientists have developed a new, simple procedure to chlorinate silk, giving the fabric strong antimicrobial effects."

Submission + - Tracking diseased proteins in the brain (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Monday March 19, 2012 @06:59PM

techgeek0279 writes: "A research team led by the University of Melbourne has developed a new technique to track diseased proteins as they form clusters in brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s. Dr. Danny Hatters and his team used a flow cytometer, which analyzes cell particles through light waves, to track protein clusters in cells at a rate of 1000 seconds per minute."

Submission + - Could Twitter prevent epidemics? Using the Internet to survey public health. (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Monday March 19, 2012 @02:40PM

techgeek0279 writes: "Most of us have turned to the Internet when we’ve felt under the weather at one point or another. We Google our symptoms to self-diagnose and sometimes we even tweet our distress, perhaps hoping to gain a little sympathy. Researchers have been looking into how this information we put out can be interpreted to map both disease and the spread of information about disease."

Submission + - Top 5 trends in tech this week (3/12/2012 to 3/16/2012) (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Friday March 16, 2012 @07:11PM

techgeek0279 writes: "These are the industry trends that might have slipped under the radar ..."

Submission + - Walking may lessen the influence of genes on obesity by half (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Thursday March 15, 2012 @04:31PM

techgeek0279 writes: "Watching too much TV can worsen your genetic tendency towards obesity, but you can cut the effect in half by walking briskly for an hour a day, researchers report at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism meeting this week."

Submission + - Cancer epigenetics: Breakthrough in identifying target genes (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @09:48PM

techgeek0279 writes: "Cancer is usually attributed to faulty genes, but growing evidence from the field of cancer epigenetics indicates a key role for the gene "silencing" proteins that turn genes off inside the cell nucleus. A new study from Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) promises to speed research in the field by rapidly identifying the genes epigenetic proteins can target for silencing."

Submission + - World's tallest man stops growing. It's about time. (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @06:51PM

techgeek0279 writes: "The world’s tallest man seems to have stopped growing after treatment at the University of Virginia (UVA) Medical Center."

Submission + - Hacktivist Sabu: Anonymous traitor or FBI martyr? (patexia.com)

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techgeek0279

on Tuesday March 13, 2012 @05:11PM

techgeek0279 writes: "Hacktivism: a term coined about 14 years ago that now has more meaning than ever in the history of our world. Hacking of Indonesian government websites, the Mexican finance department website, the Pentagon website, the World Trade Organization web server, the World Economic Forum web server, the World Bank web server, Scientology websites, the CNN website, the European Climate Exchange website, Mastercard and Visa websites, the Department of Justice website, FBI and CIA databases, most recently the Vatican website and so many other illegal breaches by hacktivist organizations has led to the realization that cyber-security may very well be our nation’s number one threat today."

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