For all music lovers here is something you will definitely like to purchase : A T-Shirt With Built-In Electronic Drum
ThinkGeek has come up with a unique t-shirt featuring a built-in electronic drum machine. The t-shirt, known as the Electronic Drum Machine Shirt, works with the help of a drum machine, looper and nine different drum kits with seven professional grade sounds each. These sounds include labelled Rock Drums, Retro 808, Discotek, Techno Punk, Classic Jazz, Bass Invaders, Chiptune, Zapf Dingbeats and Scratchy.
According to a report by The Inquisitr, anyone who wears the shirt can loop sounds together and then build and layer beats over an unlimited number of tracks up to three minutes in length. The users can enjoy the ability to produce sounds from all seven pads at once if they choose or while pressing any combination of multiple pads at one time with the polyphonic capabilities of the t-shirt.
It comes with a mini amp and an analogue audio output jack to play back music in real time. The shirt requires four AA batteries. Users can remove the drumpads to wash the t-shirt. It is priced at $30.
Solar power is gaining much power. A study conducted by International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) says that solar power may be deployed in space but it will take at least three decades to do so. It is believed to help overcome the drawbacks of the power sector that we face today, while accepting solar energy as sustainable and reliable source of energy.
The study conducted on ten nations in three years revealed that a space based solar power plant is such a solution, which is technically and economically feasible. The satellites would be established in particular orbits, which can harvest the solar energy in space. This energy will then be converted into electricity in the satellite itself and transmitted to earth via LASERS or large microwave transmitting antennas, said a report.
The present solar energy harvesting systems are not reliable. The report cites the variation in intensity of sun depending upon place, time and season as a major reason for this. The power from satellites can be used 24X7 without interruption and will remove unreliability.
Researchers will have to struggle for this project of space based power plants. The initial funding could be an issue. The governments in India and U.S. have shown interest in this project, which may solve this issue along with funds from the private sector. The exact figures of funding is however, not disclosed.
If the space based solar plants become a reality, it will be able to generate twice the amount of energy as generated using earth based power-plants.
Your favourite animation is about to become reality...at least for Gundam. A Japanese research firm is currently developing a 13-foot working, wearable Gundam tribute robot. Hajime Sakamoto, president, Hajime Research Institute is working to make a dream Gundam robot dedicated to the anime fans.
Development on the 13-foot mobile robot suit began in 2010, though the company has been manufacturing humanoid robots since 2002. As far as the size goes, the robots are getting larger. In 2007, Hajime Robot 25 was three feet tall, in 2009 robot 33 was seven feet tall and so on. The giant humanoid robot from the firm is the largest in the world and will be able to do bipedal walking.
The company is currently looking for sponsors who can provide an assisting hand in the project. The 13-foot Gundam tribute may seem amazing enough, but Hajime Sakamoto has bigger plans for the future. Hajime, being a devout fan of Gundam, aims to make a working version of the now-disassembled, 59-foot giant mecha in Shizuoka, which was created as part of the anime series’ 30th anniversary. He plans on creating a 26-foot robot to lead up to the final giant Gundam suit, which the company president hopes to complete in eight years, just in time for the Gundam series’ 40th anniversary.
A demonstration from the Sony company shows off a much more useful product - battery that can 'digest' waste paper and turn it into energy.
As we know In 2007, Sony demonstrated a Walkman that used a similar bio battery that generated electricity by "digesting" food, just like humans do.
But a new demonstration at Eco-Products 2011 in Tokyo shows off a much more useful product, the Daily Mail reported.
The prototype - on show at Eco-Products 2011 in Tokyo, shows how it could be possible to use enzymes to 'break down' waste paper into a fuel we can use. The prototype generates enough energy to power a (very) small fan.
The process is unlike conventional batteries - and initially at least, much more like the action of a digestive system. A digestive enzyme, cellulase, 'breaks down' the cellulose in paper into glucose, a sugar that Sony's 'bio batteries' can use as fuel. The company claims that the paper-powered battery can generate electricity up to 18wh which is enough to power a (very) small fan. The process is much more like the action of a digestive system, said Chisato Kitsukawa, a public relations manager at Sony. "This is the same mechanism with which termites eat wood to get energy," Kitsukawa was quoted as saying.
The company's bio batteries are now so advanced that the company showed off one thin enough to fit inside a greetings card alongside the paper-digesting battery.
It uses fruit juice for fuel, and can generate enough power to play a melody from inside the car.
As it stands, though, the 'paper-eating' battery can only generate a very small amount of power.
Although Kitsukawa said. It is currently sufficient to run digital music players but not powerful enough to replace commonly used batteries, he added.
Have you ever heard about a Camera that can even capture the photons at a very fast rate of Trillion-Frame-Per-Second ? Yes, you heard it right. Now we can capture the video of the fastest known particle in the universe, the photons.This virtual slow motion camera captures the video of photons traversing through space. This high-speed camera is more than enough to produce a slow motion video of light travelling through objects.
Engineers at MIT have built a camera that captures one trillion exposures per second. The camera is capable of capturing the movement of light beam through a one litre bottle. Andreas Velten, one of the developers of this new camera system, terms the innovation as the 'ultimate' in slow motion capture. He says that there's nothing in our Universe that looks fast to this camera.
The camera consists of an array of 500 sensors, which are triggered at almost trillions of a second delay. Titanium sapphire laser is used as the light source in this camera. The works upon an innovative technology called the streak camera.
According to the details available on the MIT website, "The system relies on streak camera, deployed in a totally unexpected way. The aperture of the streak camera is a narrow slit. Particles of light--photons--enter the camera through the slit and pass through an electric field that deflects them in a direction perpendicular to the slit. Because the electric field is changing very rapidly, it deflects late-arriving photons more than it does early-arriving ones. The image produced by the camera is thus two-dimensional, but only one of the dimensions--the one corresponding to the direction of the slit--is spatial. The other dimension, corresponding to the degree of deflection, is time. The image thus represents the time of arrival of photons passing through a one-dimensional slice of space."
Since the basics of consumer photography depends on lighting effects, photographers have faced a lot of difficulties setting expensive and sophisticated light sources at the correct angles. This device can ease these problems as it can capture photons that are moving through space, and analyze its movement. This helps the photographer to develop better photos, rather than the ones that were caught with lighting effects, by installing expensive light sources. By using this camera, we can analyze how light will scatter inside the human body.
The camera can be used in laboratories where the motion of light needs to be captured. But there is a serious drawback in the camera. The statement says, "To produce their super-slow-mo videos, Velten, Media Lab Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar and Moungi Bawendi, the Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry, must perform the same experiment--such as passing a light pulse through a bottle--over and over, continually repositioning the streak camera to gradually build up a two-dimensional image. Synchronising the camera and the laser that generates the pulse, so that the timing of every exposure is the same, requires a battery of sophisticated optical equipment and exquisite mechanical control. It takes only a nanosecond--a billionth of a second--for light to scatter through a bottle, but it takes about an hour to collect all the data necessary for the final video. For that reason, Raskar calls the new system the world's slowest fastest camera."
OnceCalifornian biologist Andrew Hessel said, 'Cells are living computers and DNA is a programming language,' but warns that this could lead to viruses and bacteria used to 'hack' human minds.
The field of 'synthetic biology' is in its infancy. We can 'tweak' the genetics of life forms - but billionaire entrepreneur Craig Venter only created 'artificial life' for the first time last year, christening his life form 'Synthia'.
But experts working within the field believe that our expertise is out-accelerating natural evolution by a factor of millions of years - and some warn that synthetic biology could spin out of control.
It could lead, says Andrew Hessel of Singularity University, on Nasa's research campus, to a world where hackers could engineer viruses or bacteria to control human minds.
Hessel believes that genetic engineering is the next frontier of computing.
'This is one of the most powerful technologies in the world,' says Hessel 'Synthetic biology - the writing of life.'
'I advocate that cells are living computers and DNA is a programming language.'
'I want to see life programmed and used to solve global challenges so that humanity can achieve a sustainable relationship within the biosphere,' he says.It's growing fast. It will grow faster than computer technologies.'
He predicts a world where we can 'print' DNA, and even 'decode' it. But he warned, in a speech at technology conference TXM, that viruses and bacteria send chemicals into human brains - and could be used to influence, or even 'control' their host.
A literal virus - injected into a 'host' in the guise of a vaccine, say - could be used to control behaviour.
Hessel warns that we 'may have to learn how to counterattack' against such weapons.
Security expert Marc Goodman said, 'Synthetic biology will lead to new forms of bioterrorism,' and said, 'Bio-crime today is akin to computer crime in the early Eighties, Few initially recognised the problem - but it grew exponentially.'
When billionaire entrepreneur Craig Venter 'created life' last year by adding synthetic DNA to a bacteria cell, Professor Julian Savulescu, an Oxford University ethicist, said: 'Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny.This could be used in the future to make the most powerful bioweapons imaginable. The challenge is to eat the fruit without the worm.'
Hessel, however, is generally optimistic about the future of synthetic biology.
The scientist - who had a vasectomy because he 'never trusted the process' of natural reproduction, says, 'We are going to make synthetic genomes - human genomes. It will make cloning look organic. It will make human reproduction look quaint.'
Computer World blogger Darlene Storm says, 'I know people who can't even keep their computers protected, updated and patched - I wonder if they would be more security minded when the hacking could be lethal?'
Have you ever imagined a Flash Chip that can store up to 128-GigaBit of data but of size even less than our fingertip?
If you haven't then you must know thatIntel and Micron Technology have launched what is claimed to be the world's first 20 nanometre (nm), 128 gigabit (Gb), multilevel-cell (MLC) device. The companies also announced mass production of their 64Gb 20nm NAND. The new 20nm monolithic 128Gb device is said to be the first in the industry to enable a terabit (Tb) of data storage in a fingertip-size package by using just eight die.
It has been developed through Intel and Micron's joint-development venture, IM Flash Technologies (IMFT).
The 128Gb device provides twice the storage capacity and performance of the companies' existing 20nm 64Gb NAND device. It meets the ONFI 3.0 specification to achieve speeds of 333 megatransfers per second (MT/s). With these features, the chip provides customers with a cost-effective solid-state storage solution for today's slim, sleek product designs.
"As portable devices get smaller and sleeker, and server demands increase, our customers look to Micron for innovative new storage technologies and system solutions that meet these challenges," said Glen Hawk, vice president of Micron's NAND Solutions Group. "Our collaboration with Intel continues to deliver leading NAND technologies and expertise that are critical to building those systems."
The companies revealed that their 20nm NAND uses a planar cell structure which allows individual memory cells to scale much smaller than before. It breaks the scaling constraints of the standard NAND floating gate cell by integrating the first Hi-K/metal gate stack on NAND production.
Imagine tapping into the mind of a coma patient, or watching one’s own dream on YouTube. With a cutting-edge blend of brain imaging and computer simulation, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are bringing these futuristic scenarios within reach.
Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and reconstructing people’s dynamic visual experiences – in this case, watching Hollywood movie trailers.
As yet, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have already viewed. However, the breakthrough paves the way for reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as dreams and memories, according to researchers.
“This is a major leap toward reconstructing internal imagery,” said Professor Jack Gallant, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist and coauthor of the study published online today (Sept. 22) in the journal Current Biology. “We are opening a window into the movies in our minds.”
Eventually, practical applications of the technology could include a better understanding of what goes on in the minds of people who cannot communicate verbally, such as stroke victims, coma patients and people with neurodegenerative diseases.
It may also lay the groundwork for brain-machine interface so that people with cerebral palsy or paralysis, for example, can guide computers with their minds.
However, researchers point out that the technology is decades from allowing users to read others’ thoughts and intentions, as portrayed in such sci-fi classics as “Brainstorm,” in which scientists recorded a person’s sensations so that others could experience them.
Previously, Gallant and fellow researchers recorded brain activity in the visual cortex while a subject viewed black-and-white photographs. They then built a computational model that enabled them to predict with overwhelming accuracy which picture the subject was looking at.
In their latest experiment, researchers say they have solved a much more difficult problem by actually decoding brain signals generated by moving pictures.
“Our natural visual experience is like watching a movie,” said Shinji Nishimoto, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral researcher in Gallant’s lab. “In order for this technology to have wide applicability, we must understand how the brain processes these dynamic visual experiences.”
Nishimoto and two other research team members served as subjects for the experiment, because the procedure requires volunteers to remain still inside the MRI scanner for hours at a time.
They watched two separate sets of Hollywood movie trailers, while fMRI was used to measure blood flow through the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information. On the computer, the brain was divided into small, three-dimensional cubes known as volumetric pixels, or “voxels.”
“We built a model for each voxel that describes how shape and motion information in the movie is mapped into brain activity,” Nishimoto said.
The brain activity recorded while subjects viewed the first set of clips was fed into a computer program that learned, second by second, to associate visual patterns in the movie with the corresponding brain activity.
Brain activity evoked by the second set of clips was used to test the movie reconstruction algorithm. This was done by feeding 18 million seconds of random YouTube videos into the computer program so that it could predict the brain activity that each film clip would most likely evoke in each subject.
Finally, the 100 clips that the computer program decided were most similar to the clip that the subject had probably seen were merged to produce a blurry yet continuous reconstruction of the original movie.
Reconstructing movies using brain scans has been challenging because the blood flow signals measured using fMRI change much more slowly than the neural signals that encode dynamic information in movies, researchers said. For this reason, most previous attempts to decode brain activity have focused on static images.
“We addressed this problem by developing a two-stage model that separately describes the underlying neural population and blood flow signals,” Nishimoto said.
Ultimately, Nishimoto said, scientists need to understand how the brain processes dynamic visual events that we experience in everyday life.
“We need to know how the brain works in naturalistic conditions,” he said. “For that, we need to first understand how the brain works while we are watching movies.”
Other coauthors of the study are Thomas Naselaris with UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute; An T. Vu with UC Berkeley’s Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering; and Yuval Benjamini and Professor Bin Yu with the UC Berkeley Department of Statistics.
AT £70, the price alone of Britain’s most expensive coffee is enough to wake you up.
And if that isn’t enough to shock, the method by which it is made just might.
Kopi Luwak coffee, which is produced on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, is made from animal droppings.
The beans are extracted from the droppings of the native palm civet — a cat-like creature that eats only the ripest coffee cherries - but can’t digest the hard centres.
They digest the fruit pulp and excrete the beans on to the forest floor.
The droppings, combined with the animal’s gastric juices, are said to be the key to the coffee’s rich, frothy flavour.
The beans are extremely rare and only around 450lb per year are harvested.
It can be served with or without sugar.Exactly seven grams are weighed out before being brewed and poured into a heated coffee cup, which helps form a frothy layer on top.
The coffee is to go on sale at new venue DSTRKT, near London’s Piccadilly.
It boasts a bar, restaurant and nightclub after a £25 million renovation of the Planet Hollywood site.
Operations manager and partner Fraser Donaldson said yesterday: ‘It’s not a gimmick. The beans actually make a really, really nice cup of coffee.
‘The way it is made might put some people off but it will certainly wake you up at 10 o’clock at night.
‘We are the only people in the UK to sell it with the next nearest place the Ritz Carlton in Paris.
TIFR conducts summer programmes in which talented students are given an exposure to research activities in areas of Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics (Astronomy & Astrophysics, Condensed Matter Physics & Material Sciences, High Energy Physics, Nuclear & Atomic Physics and Theoretical Physics). The programmes are held at the Mumbai campus of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research as well as at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), Pune.
Typically, VSRP students will have just completed a year of their Master's programme, and get an opportunity to work on a research project at TIFR during the period mid May-mid to July each year.
At TIFR, research is carried out in frontline areas of all the fundamental sciences: Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Mathematics and Physics, as well as in the field of Science Education. TIFR Scientists are world leaders in several fields and their published contributions to scientific knowledge are internationally recognised. Over the years, the Institute has developed many new areas of research as well as training programmes.
Electronic chip-sandwiched Lifebuoy soap created panic amongst the households in Beemapally and Valiyathura. These ‘special’ soaps were provided by a survey agency, which wanted to study the health and hygiene habits of the people in the coastal areas.
The survey was conducted by Socio Economic Unit Foundation (SEUF), an NGO based at Vellayambalam, for Unilever Research Medicine (UK) and Intertek CRS limited. The survey agency distributed electronic chip-sandwiched Lifebuoy soap to the locals to read their hygiene habits. They promised Rs 400 in return for every used soap, said a TOI report.
Some women, using the soap, reported of the hidden micro chips inside the soaps to the police on Saturday, following which, police took the two agency officials into custody, who were later released.
The police said that a detailed brochure on the methodology of the survey in Malayalam was distributed to each and every participant. The TOI report quoted a police officer as saying, "We found that the brochure has the information about the chip and only those who agreed to the use of such soaps were enrolled for the survey. Moreover, the agency, which did the survey is an authorised one.
The Kajimoto Laboratory at the University of Electro-Communications is conducting research into tactile communications, with the aim of creating a device which can effectively transmit the feeling of a kiss.
"This device is for communications within the mouth, in other words, the goal is to obtain the feeling of kissing."
"If you take one device in your mouth and turn it with your tongue, the other device turns in the same way. If you turn it back the other way, then your partner's turns back the same way, so your partner's device turns whichever way your own device turns."
"It is achieved only by motor rotations, and you control the rotation positions via PC. It is called a bilateral control, and the turn angle information is sent reciprocally by both devices to maintain the same position. Right now the values are handled by one PC, but if a system is put together to handle the values over a network, then it would be easy for this operation to be conducted remotely."
The position information values can also be recorded, and the kiss information for different individuals can be freely replayed.
"For example, if you have a popular entertainer use this device and record it, that could be hugely popular if you offer it to fans."
"The elements of a kiss include the sense of taste, the manner of breathing, and the moistness of the tongue. If we can recreate all of those I think it will be a really powerful device.
You can watch the working of this device in this video atYouTube
Max Shulaker,an electrical engineering graduate student at Stanford University,is making prototypes of a new kind of semiconductor circuit that may one day be installed in the world's fastest supercomputers.Though the custom manufacturing process is demanding, if successful it could help increase computers' processing speed significantly.
"If the new technology proves workable, it will avert a crisis that threatens to halt more than five decades of progress by chip makers, who now routinely etch circuits smaller than a wavelength of light to make ever more powerful computers," The New York Times reports.
In their pursuit of designing smaller, faster and cheaper circuit boards, electrical engineers are developing what could become the basis for the world's smallest and lowest-powered consumer gadgets. Earlier this year, Intel unveiled a 3-D transistor showing off what it called the most radical shift in semiconductor technology in more than 50 years. The world's largest chip maker said its technology could bring more computing power to gadgets as well as speed up corporate data centres.
Shulaker is a member of the Robust Systems Group at Stanford. He, along with other student researchers, is making a new switch called a carbon nanotube field effect transistor, or C.N.F.E.T. To make prototype switches, Shulaker first chemically grows billions of carbon nanotubes on a quartz surface, mentions the report by The New York Times. After coating nanotubes with an ultrafine layer of gold, Shulaker uses a piece of tape to pick them up by hand and transfer them gently to a silicon wafer.
Tribogenics, a Los Angeles based start-up is building a next generation X-Ray machines by shrinking their size down to a size of an iPhone. This x-Ray machines could be an “AWW” moment to a one and half century old X-Ray technology, as this X-Ray machine does not require a high voltage input required in conventional X-Ray machines, which has been a limitation for downsizing the X-Ray machines, this long.
It is an UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) project, backed by DARPA(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and TATRC (Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center),with researchers Carlos Camara, Juan Escobar, Jonathan Hird, and Seth Putterman, found a solution to eliminate the need for high voltage input to X-Ray machines using triboelectrification. Dale Fox, a startup entrepreneur and inventor, along with Dr. Carlos Camera and some other researchers transformed this solution into a product through Tibogenics.
Recently, Tribolgenics railsed $2.5 million from Flywheel Ventures and a network of global angel investors, to ensure the product availability in market within a year. This device, when rolled out in market, could make a huge differnce in X-Ray usage in mining, military, medical imaging, security and other industries.
This patented technology could also make it possible to use the X-Rays for domestic purposes too. Also, it is just the start for these compact X-Ray machines which could get even more smaller and rugged in the future. It is going to be like using the Tricoder from the Star Treck movies.
Scientists from North Carolina State University have figured out a simple way to convert two-dimensional patterns into three-dimensional (3-D) objects using only light. According to Dr Michael Dickey, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State, “This is a novel application of existing materials, and has potential for rapid, high-volume manufacturing processes or packaging applications.”
Dr Dickey is also the co-author of a paper (“Self-folding of polymer sheets using local light absorption”) which describes the research.
The process, as researchers describe it, is remarkably simple. Taking a pre-stressed plastic sheet, they run it through a conventional inkjet printer to print bold black lines on the material. The material, then cut into a desired pattern, is placed under an infrared light, such as a heat lamp.
A news release from the university describes the technique as follows: The bold black lines absorb more energy than the rest of the material, causing the plastic to contract – creating a hinge that folds the sheets into 3-D shapes. This technique can be used to create a variety of objects, such as cubes or pyramids, without ever having to physically touch the material. The technique is compatible with commercial printing techniques, such as screen printing, roll-to-roll printing, and inkjet printing, that are inexpensive and high-throughput but inherently 2-D. By varying the width of the black lines, or hinges, researchers are able to change how far each hinge folds. For example, they can create a hinge that folds 90 degrees for a cube, or a hinge that folds 120 degrees for a pyramid. The wider the hinge, the further it folds. Wider hinges also fold faster, because there is more surface area to absorb energy.
“You can also pattern the lines on either side of the material,” Dickey adds, “which causes the hinges to fold in different directions. This allows you to create more complex structures.”
The three national Science Academies offer several two-month Summer Fellowships to enable students/teachers to work with scientists associated with the three Academies during 2012. A list of those who have consented to guide students/teachers to work on short-term projects is displayed on the online announcement on short-term projects.
Applications are invited from interested students and teachers from all universities and colleges affiliated to UGC/AICTE/MCI/Accredited Institutions of State Universities for these Fellowships.
The application should include:
(a) a brief resume of the applicant (in the prescribed format).
(b) a write-up (in about 250 words) as to what the applicant wants to learn and achieve.
(c) the guide with whom the applicant would like to work.
Student applicants should include a recommendation letter from a teacher (in the prescribed format) familiar with their work, in a sealed envelope. The selected candidate may work in consultation with the assigned guide for two months any time during the calendar year, preferably during the summer.
Applications should be submitted Online through one of the websites
However a copy of the application together with enclosures must be sent by speed post (within 7 days) toThe Coordinator, Science Education Programme, Indian Academy of Sciences, C.V. Raman Avenue, Near Mekri Circle Sadashivanagar, Bangalore 560 080. The registration number assigned soon after online submission must be quoted both in the hard copy of the application to be sent and in the letter of recommendation to be forwarded by the teacher in the case of student applicants.
The last date for receipt of applications is 31 December 2011.
Information of selection along with concurrence of the guide will be despatched by early March 2012.The selected students/teachers will be provided appropriate round trip train fare and a monthly fellowship to meet their living expenses at the place of work.
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