rpiquepa - Slashdot User

Submission + - SPAM: Smart and interactive textile structures

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Roland Piquepaille

on Saturday November 29, 2008 @01:47PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "It's not the first time that I'm writing about smart textiles — check here or there for previous stories. But today, let's look at the work of Lena Berglin, a Swedish PhD student who is creating multifunctional textiles based on smart materials. She already has developed an intelligent glove, capable of transmitting communication, and several garments for health monitoring including a tanktop, a cardigan and a belt that measure ECG, muscular activity and breathing frequency. Here is a short quote from Lena Berglin: 'I wanted to do something that gave a positive health effect and made life easier.' Read more for many additional details and pictures of the researcher and of her smart glove."

Submission + - SPAM: The world's most powerful virtual telescope

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Roland Piquepaille

on Friday November 28, 2008 @11:28AM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Astronomers have successfully combined three telescopes located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to create the largest virtual telescope for short wavelengths. The Extended SubMillimeter Array (eSMA) connects the signals from the SubMillimeter Array (SMA), consisting of eight dishes with 6-meter diameter, with those from the 15-meter James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) and the 10-meter Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) through fiber-optic cables. The signals from all ten dishes are electronically combined in a large special-purpose computer to create a virtual telescope with a diameter of 782 meters, allowing for an exceptionally sharp view. Preliminary results obtained with this virtual telescope are very promising. They might prefigure what we'll see when the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) becomes operational in Chile in 2013. Read more for many additional details a satellite view of the eSMA."

Submission + - SPAM: NASA and DoE team on dark energy research

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Roland Piquepaille

on Thursday November 27, 2008 @02:01PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) have teamed up to operate the future Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM). As you probably know, recent astronomical measurements have showed that about 72% of the total energy in the universe is dark energy, even if scientists don't know much about it, but speculate that it is present almost since the beginning of our Universe more than 13 billion years ago. The JDEM 'mission will make precise measurements of the expansion rate of the universe to understand how this rate has changed with time. These measurements will yield vital clues about the nature of dark energy.' The launch of a spacecraft for the JDEM mission is not planned before 2015. Read more for additional details and pictures describing the timeline and the contents of the Universe."

Submission + - SPAM: Facial recognition systems for border security

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Roland Piquepaille

on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @02:12PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Facial recognition systems are used around the world to check very quickly if an individual's photo appears in a database of known or suspected criminals. Unfortunately, the systems often acquire poor facial images in real-world environments such as airports. Now, researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have found that several simple steps can significantly improve the quality of facial images that are acquired at border entry points such as airports and seaports. The researchers add that their recommendations for improving facial images could be implemented relatively easily — and cheaply — with existing facial recognition technology. Read more for additional details and a picture showing how the NIST facial recognition system rates a number of face attributes."

Submission + - SPAM: A fully customizable home robot

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Roland Piquepaille

on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @02:15PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Imagine a completely customizable robot with selectable software options. Buy one component, and it will take care of your lawn. Buy another one and it will clean your toilets. With a third one, it will pick up UPS or FedEx deliveries on your porch. If you are taking some vacation, another piece of software will transform this robot into a personal guard. Prototypes of such a revolutionary robot, dubbed AgBot, have been developed by Louisiana State University (LSU). 'It is solar-powered and can move as fast as six miles per hour for a minimum time span of four hours. With artificial intelligence, Bluetooth, and advanced GPS systems, the AgBot is a problem-solving robot.' According to the LSU team, you might see a commercial version of this robot in about five years. Read more for additional details and a picture of the AgBot prototype."

Submission + - SPAM: How our brain sees natural scenes

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Roland Piquepaille

on Monday November 24, 2008 @02:21PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers have developed a new computational model explaining how the brain processes images to interpret natural scenes. According to ACM TechNews, the team 'used an algorithm to analyze the patterns that compose natural scenes and determine which patterns are most likely associated with each other.' And the team leader said that they 'were astonished that the model reproduced so many of the properties of these cells just as a result of solving this computational problem.' He added that it's still a theory, so they need to test it further.' Read more for additional details and a picture showing how statistical patterns distinguish local regions of natural scenes."

Submission + - SPAM: A computer composing and playing jazz

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Roland Piquepaille

on Sunday November 23, 2008 @01:36PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has some unusual teaching programs. One PhD student, Øyvind Brandtsegg, is a graduate of the jazz program and this article describes how has developed a computer program and a musical instrument for improvisation. The PhD student is 36 years old and is at the same time a composer, a musician and computer programmer. His 'computer instrument' can take any recorded sound as input and split it into a number of very short sound particles that can last for between 1 and 10 milliseconds. 'These fragments may be infinitely reshuffled, making it possible to vary the music with no change in the fundamental theme.' But read more for additional details and a picture of Brandtsegg giving a public demonstration of his 'computer instrument.'"

Submission + - SPAM: Watching the nanoworld in 4-D

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Roland Piquepaille

on Friday November 21, 2008 @02:02PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Caltech researchers have developed a new technique named 4-D electron microscopy to capture images of atoms in real time. They claim that their 4-D microscope will revolutionize the way we look at the nanoworld. Caltech adds that Ahmed Zewail, winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and his colleagues, have introduced the time dimension into high-resolution electron microscopy. The Caltech news release is so enthusiastic about 'this revolutionary development' that it's better to look at the technical papers published by the research team. my roundup covers additional details and includes pictures describing a 'nanodrumming' phenomenon and the 4-D microscope used for imaging it."

Submission + - SPAM: A 1.4-gigapixel camera to detect asteroids

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Roland Piquepaille

on Thursday November 20, 2008 @01:17PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "MIT engineers have developed silicon chips that will be at the heart of a telescope installed on Haleakala mountain, Maui, Hawaii, which will begin operation next month. The system, called Pan-STARRS (for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System), is being developed at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy. 'The primary mission of Pan-STARRS is to detect Earth-approaching asteroids and comets that could be dangerous to the planet.' Apparently, it will be able to give us early warnings about dangerous asteroids and comets. The lead researcher says that they 'get an image that is 38,000 by 38,000 pixels in size, or about 200 times larger than you get in a high-end consumer digital camera.' In fact, this telescope will be able to detect 'stars 10 million times fainter than those visible to the naked eye' and other moving objects near the Earth. But read more for additional details, a picture describing this camera and an early image taken by this telescope."

Submission + - SPAM: Towards a World Wide Grid?

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Roland Piquepaille

on Wednesday November 19, 2008 @02:15PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "In recent months, the concept of 'cloud computing' was all the buzz. European researchers think about another name, the World Wide Grid, which could run on top of the Internet. In an article to appear soon, ICT Results will report about the g-Eclipse project. As the scientists said, 'the g-Eclipse project aims to build an integrated workbench framework to access the power of existing Grid infrastructures. The framework will be built on top of the reliable eco-system of the Eclipse community to enable a sustainable development.' The project started in July 2006 and was successfully completed in June 2008 for a total cost of 2.5 million including a EU contribution of 1.96 million. You can submit today jobs to this grid, but read more for additional details and a diagram describing the g-Eclipse architecture."

Submission + - SPAM: Firefly satellite will study thunderstorms

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Roland Piquepaille

on Tuesday November 18, 2008 @02:00PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "The Firefly mission is the second project under the new U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) CubeSat program. The goal of this program is to provide a low cost access to space research. Firefly will be launched in 2010 or 2011 and will try to 'solve the mystery of the most powerful natural particle accelerator in Earth's atmosphere: TGFs, or terrestrial gamma-ray flashes,' according to this NSF news release. As I wrote recently, satellites can cost several hundreds of millions of dollars. But the Firefly represents a new kind of satellite. It is small — the size of a football (4" by 4" by 12") and the cost to develop, launch, and operate it for three years during its science mission is expected to be less than $1 million. Read more for additional details and a picture of NSF's Firefly CubeSat satellite."

Submission + - SPAM: Fast and cheap blood tests

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Roland Piquepaille

on Monday November 17, 2008 @01:59PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "According to this article from Technology Review, U.S. researchers have developed an integrated blood barcode chip which can identify what's in your blood in less than 10 minutes. Instead of going to a lab, having a shot, and waiting for results for a day or two, this new chip will allow physicians to practice sophisticated exams in their offices by using a single drop of your blood. And these tests will be very cheap compared to existing procedures. If this chip becomes widely available, you might one day enter your physician's office and learn a few minutes after that you have a cancer. Of course, such blood chips are a good thing, but they also are frightening. Read more for additional details a picture of this integrated blood barcode chip (IBBC)."

Submission + - SPAM: 1,000-device personal networks in 2017?

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Roland Piquepaille

on Sunday November 16, 2008 @12:04PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "According to ICT Results in 'The Network of Everything,' wireless experts estimate that our personal networks will include about a thousand devices in 2017, including dozens of sensors checking our health and our home. This is why European researchers have launched in 2006 a networking project called 'MAGNET Beyond.' The name is an acronym for 'My personal adaptive Global NET and beyond.' The article suggests that the researchers have in fact built the Smart Personal Network, which integrates the concepts of Personal Networks (PNs) and Personal Area Networks (PANs). Read more to discover the results already achieved and a picture showing the 'MAGNET Beyond' architecture."

Submission + - SPAM: Swarms of small satellites coming soon

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Friday November 14, 2008 @01:35PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "The first satellites were launched about 50 years ago as a way to conquer space. Now, satellites are essential for our civilian and military communications. But they remain large and expensive, some of them costing several hundreds of millions of dollars. This is why researchers from the University of Florida (UF) are building small satellites able to work as a team to take multiple and distributed measurements or observations of weather phenomena for example. These small satellites should cost only about $100,000 to produce. The first one should be launched next year by a NASA rocket and should not be larger than a softball. The goal is to mass-produce these satellites to even reduce their costs. But read more for additional details and pictures showing the expected benefits of multi-satellite systems and a prototype of these samll satellite."

Submission + - SPAM: A rocket to see through the northern lights?

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Thursday November 13, 2008 @01:27PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "The northern lights are beautiful when you see them from the ground. But they can be dangerous for your life if you're in a plane crossing an area where they are active. This is because your plane can lose radio contact for a long time when flying above the northern polar region. This is why a Norwegian professor of physics is about to launch a rocket to discover the mysteries of the northern lights. The 9-meter long rocket should be launched between November 28 and December 7, 2008. It should reach an altitude of 350 kilometers and its flying time will be only 10 minutes. Let's hope that the embarked sensors function correctly. But read more for additional details and a picture of the professor in front of the rocket that will try to uncover some of the mysteries of the northern lights."

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