Capacitive SSVEP Brain Computer Interface

Driving a model car by capacitive EEG helmet. System is based on steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP) in the visual cortex of the human brain. Technische Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina

TED Talk: Robert Full on How engineers learn from evolution

Insects and animals have evolved some amazing skills -- but, as Robert Full notes, many animals are actually over-engineered. The trick is to copy only what's necessary. He shows how human engineers can learn from animals' tricks. - TED

Video: ted.com/talks/view/id/280

Brain-computer interface

On 7th June 2008, Keio University succeeded in the world’s first demonstration experiment with the help of a disabled person to use brainwave to chat and stroll through the virtual world.

The research group led by Assistant Prof. Junichi Ushiba of the Faculty of Science and Technology of Keio University applied the technology “to operate the computer using brain images released last year and succeeds in enabling a disabled person suffering muscle disorder (41 year old male) to stroll through “Second Life®*”, a three-dimentional virtual world on the Internet, to walk towards the avatar of a student logged in at Keio University located 16km from the subject’s home, and to have a conversation with the student using the “voice chat” function.

This demonstration experiment opens a new possibility for motion-impaired people in serious conditions to communicate with others and to engage in business. This experiment is a marriage of leading-edge technologies in brain science and the Internet, and is the world’s first successful example to meet with people and have conversation in the virtual world. - Science Daily

Thought controlled robot arm

If these monkeys were 1970s TV stars, they would play crime-fighting cyborgs in “The Six Million Dollar Monkeys.”

Macaque monkeys with electrodes implanted in their brains learned to control a robotic arm with their thoughts, researchers report.

Scientists gently restrained the monkeys’ own arms and positioned the mechanical arm at each animal’s left shoulder as if it were a real arm. After practicing for several days, the monkeys appeared to treat the robotic arm as their own and could feed themselves with the arm using fluid, rapid motions. - Science News

Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation

Levitation has been elevated from being pure science fiction to science fact, according to a study reported today by physicists.

Beijing saleswoman demonstrates toy which levitates by magnetic force; Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation
In theory the discovery could be used to levitate a person

In earlier work the same team of theoretical physicists showed that invisibility cloaks are feasible.

Now, in another report that sounds like it comes out of the pages of a Harry Potter book, the University of St Andrews team has created an 'incredible levitation effects’ by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together.

Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing this pheneomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts. - Telegraph.co.uk

wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect

What is the Grid?

Well, there's a short answer, and then there's a very long answer.

The short answer is that, whereas the Web is a service for sharing information over the Internet, the Grid is a service for sharing computer power and data storage capacity over the Internet. The Grid goes well beyond simple communication between computers, and aims ultimately to turn the global network of computers into one vast computational resource.

That is the dream. But the reality is that today, the Grid is a "work in progress", with the underlying technology still in a prototype phase, and being developed by hundreds of researchers and software engineers around the world.

The Grid is attracting a lot of interest because its future, even if still uncertain,is potentially revolutionary. - GridCafé

Beaming solar energy down from space

By 2030, India's Planning Commission estimates that the country will have to generate at least 700,000 megawatts of additional power to meet the demands of its expanding economy and growing population.

Much of that electricity will come from coal-fired power plants, like the $4 billion so-called ultra mega complex scheduled to be built south of Tunda Wand, a tiny village near the Gulf of Kutch, an inlet of the Arabian Sea on India's west coast. Dozens of other such projects are already or soon will be under way.

Yet Mehta has another solution for India's chronic electricity shortage, one that does not involve power plants on the ground but instead massive sun-gathering satellites in geosynchronous orbits 22,000 miles in the sky.

The satellites would electromagnetically beam gigawatts of solar energy back to ground-based receivers, where it would then be converted to electricity and transferred to power grids. And because in high Earth orbit, satellites are unaffected by the earth's shadow virtually 365 days a year, the floating power plants could provide round-the-clock clean, renewable electricity. - CNN

Robots: Taking inspiration from Nature

Forget traditional robots that look like humans, these days robots come in all different shapes and sizes. But it's not only their appearance that is changing - robotics researchers are also thinking very differently about how the function, as discussed in a review this week in the journal Science. Whereas the focus used to be on getting robots to perform specific tasks, like packaging chocolates in a manufacturing plant, researchers are now looking at creating more complex machines that can deal with unpredictable circumstances. - NewScientist

AI Goggles recognize objects and faces

Called "AI Goggles", this device basically consists of a camera attached to goggles. The recorded data is sent to a computer and then analyzed in real-time, using complex algorithms. According to the researchers, these algorithms "enable the goggle to recognize not only particular objects, but also faces, similar to devices used for digital cameras -- once the faces and objects are registered on the database, the recognition time becomes even faster." - TechEBlog



Crunchlabz - Home of the Kolibri CMS

Toward a Quantum Internet

Researchers have built a quantum logic gate in an optical fiber, laying the foundation for a quantum computer network.

The promise of quantum computers is tantalizingly great: near-instantaneous problem solving, and perfectly secure data transmission. For the most part, however, small-scale demonstrations of quantum computation remain isolated in labs throughout the world. Now, Prem Kumar, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University, has taken a step toward making quantum computing more practical. Kumar and his team have shown that they can build a quantum logic gate--a fundamental component of a quantum computer--within an optical fiber. The gate could be part of a circuit that relays information securely, over hundreds of kilometers of fiber, from one quantum computer to another. It could also be used on its own to find solutions to complicated mathematical problems. - Technology Review

Super thin flexible displays

Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen

You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world" using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid -- toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten. In Rosling's hands, global trends -- life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates -- become clear, intuitive and even playful. - TED

Video: ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92

George Dyson: Let's take a nuclear-powered rocket to Saturn

George Dyson tells the amazing story of Project Orion, a massive, nuclear-powered spacecraft that could have taken us to Saturn in five years. With a priceless insider's perspective and a cache of documents, photos and film, Dyson brings this dusty Atomic Age dream to vivid life. - TED

Video: ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/221

Slowing light down to the speed of a bicycle and turning it into matter

Ultraslow light propagation in Bose–Einstein condensates represents an extreme example of resonant light manipulation using cold atoms. Here we demonstrate that a slow light pulse can be stopped and stored in one Bose–Einstein condensate and subsequently revived from a totally different condensate, 160 mum away; information is transferred through conversion of the optical pulse into a travelling matter wave. - Nature

Video: nature.com/nature/videoarchive/trickofthelight

Ferrofluid: Liquid Magnets

A ferrofluid (from the Latin ferrum, meaning iron) is a liquid which becomes strongly polarised in the presence of a magnetic field. It is a colloidal mixture comprising extremely small magnetic particles suspended in a synthetic oil. The particles are coated with a a soap or detergent to prevent them from clumping together. - WikiPedia

Anatomy of a black hole

An interactive guide.



Think Technologies

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."

[..] The Many-Worlds theory also certainly contradicts the idea of Occam's razor, that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Even stranger is the implication by the Many-Worlds theory that time doesn't exist in a coherent, linear motion. Instead, it moves in jumps and starts, existing not as a line, but as branches. These branches are as numerous as the number of consequences to all of the actions that have ever been taken. [..] - How Stuff Works

Google Lunar X PRIZE

The Google Lunar X PRIZE seeks to create a global private race to the Moon that excites and involves people around the world and, accelerates space exploration for the benefit of all humanity. The use of space has dramatically enhanced the quality of life and may ultimately lead to solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems that we face on earth – energy independence and climate change. - Google Lunar X PRIZE


googlelunarxprize.org

Cymatics: Bringing matter to life with sound

Cymatics is the study of wave phenomena. It is typically associated with the physical patterns produced through the interaction of sound waves in a medium. - Wikipedia

Part 2: youtube.com/watch?v=NxOZ--igANs
Part 3: youtube.com/watch?v=4gVKvDhT79o

Conspiracy of Science - Earth is in fact growing

An animation by Neal Adams about his theory that the earth is growing. I'm not sure what powers this expansion (heat, probably) and where all the water is coming from but it's looks convincing.