Seeing is believing, at least in the case of a new pilot treatment for drug-resistant schizophrenia that has patients interact with digital avatars of the imagined voices in their heads. The “avatar therapy,” was designed by researchers at University College London in the UK and is being expanded to larger clinical trial in July, after it helped quiet the voices in the heads of a small group of … Read More → "Digital avatars help silence voices for patients with drug-resistant schizophrenia"

You’d be hard pressed to find a better use case for big data number crunching than Formula 1 racing, where the cars blasting around the track are largely designed, simulated and built on computer screens. There’s a reason for that: as expensive as all that compute fire power is, it’s still cheaper than doing it all manually. Every day the real team spends testing … Read More → "Formula 1 racing changes pose big data challenge"

Lots of interesting stories get trapped inside minerals. Zircons can host clocks that can tell us the ages of the oldest pieces of our Solar System. Diamonds hold onto little bits of the Earth’s mantle that they captured before being blasted upward through the crust. Sometimes crystals can even contain small amounts of fluid locked away since the time they solidified.

The authors of a new study went looking for some … Read More → "Water from Canadian mine looks to be over a billion years old"

A new robot developed by researchers at Cornell University isn’t only capable of assisting you with tasks, it can accurately predict when you might need a hand. Armed with a Kinect sensor, the robot — developed by Ashutosh Saxena and his team of computer scientists — utilizes a dataset of 120 videos to analyze and understand your movements. It can then help you perform certain tasks including making a meal, … Read More → "Precognitive robot knows you need help before you do (video)"

When assembled the Bleep Drum includes four distinct samples with pitch controls for tweaking the sound even further, the ability to tap out and record a sequence, and the requisite stereo hookups you’ll need to patch this into your stereo. With a little hacking you can even upload your own custom sounds, and if you’re not comfortable with your DIY skills the $60 kit also comes in a pre-assembled version for $85.< … Read More → "Build this tiny drum machine and rock out like it’s 1984"

Artist Matthew Picton combines art and history in his meticulous city map sculptures. Based on historical maps and extensive research, the sculptures are crafted from paper materials connected to the history of the cities, from books and newspapers to sheet music. Many of the sculptures depict cities at climactic points in their histories—fires, war, disease—which Picton replicates by burning or otherwise marring … Read More → "Paper map sculptures depict cities at climactic points in history"

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a small “aircraft” that resembles a flying fish which can jump and glide over a greater distance than an equivalent jumping robot. Using a carbon fiber spring to take off, the jumpglider has a pivoting wing that stays out of the way during ascent, but which locks into place to glide farther on the way down.

Like flying snakes, squirrels and fish, the gliding aces … Read More → "Stanford’s flying fish glider bests ordinary jumping robots"

Our recent post on the history of the cuckoo clock inspired some research into other examples of early, non-timekeeping robot birds. For centuries, birds–pigeons and canaries in particular–have been a popular subject for inventors and engineers experimenting with early mechanical systems and robotics. Take, for example, Bubo, the ancient clockwork owl seen in the 1981 film Clash of The Titans. Bubo was forged by Hephaestus … Read More → "A brief history of robot birds"

I posted about Monkey Lights back in 2009, and now the company’s back with a NEW AND IMPROVED version with cooler animations.
via Geekologie

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