Stitch together multiple images taken with multiple sensors, and you have a video camera that captures the equivalent of a trillion frames per second. Check out the video in the Technology Review story. In addition to making a great scientific instrument, the technology opens the way for consumer cameras that let you digitally change a scene’s lighting after the fact.
Trillion frames per second
December 15th, 2011Vibrating PINs
December 15th, 2011Replacing keypads with vibrating touchscreen surfaces promises peek-proof PIN entry. New Scientist has the story: Haptic code-entry makes PINs a touch harder to steal.
Graphene-nanotech combo soaks up light
September 8th, 2011Graphene is starting to see the light, although it’s still not ready for primetime. The wonder material — one-atom-thick carbon sheets — is often touted as the future of electronics because it conducts electricity so well. The key word, though, is “future”. Practical uses are still down the road.
But it looks like we could be hearing more about graphene as the future of devices that convert light to electricity: solar cells and optoelectronics. Researchers have dramatically boosted the amount of light graphene can absorb by adding carefully positioned, nanoscale bits of metal.
For a good description of the research and its potential uses, check out physicsworld.com’s article.
Google+: another social network you can’t ignore
July 8th, 2011I’ve been thinking about Google+, Google’s long anticipated response to Facebook. It’s definitely different – Circles versus Groups, and Hangouts versus Skype Video chat. Google+ seems a lot more flexible.
I’ve also been following some of the silliness around the launch of the Google+ field trial.
I wonder how long it will be before someone comes up with a front end that allows you to be in all of your social networks at once.
Quantum computing makes some noise
June 3rd, 2011Lockheed Martin’s purchase of a $10 million computer from D-Wave Systems is making headlines (see Technology Review and Nature News). This marks the first commercial deployment of a quantum computer.
That is, if it actually is a quantum computer. A majority of quantum computing researchers are skeptical of D-Wave Systems’ claims, largely because the company has revealed very little about its technology. The company’s researchers published a paper in Nature last month that shines a little light inside the black box. Here’s hoping there’s more to come.
Separately, another Nature paper shows that quantum mechanics might be able to improve conventional computers. The paper’s principal author, writing in Scientific American, explained that it comes down to negative entropy. It’s all about having the energy used to fetch data from memory cool a computer rather than heat it.
And a feature article in Nature News looks at a way that environmental noise — normally an enemy of quantum processes — could be used to make quantum computers more stable. This idea has been kicking around for a while. Researchers came up with a similar approach nearly a decade ago (see TRN story).
EMFs and biochemistry
February 23rd, 2011Evidence is accumulating that electromagnetic fields induce biochemical changes. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that cellphone EMFs temporarily boost brain cell metabolism. We don’t know yet if this is good, bad or indifferent.
A study published a few years ago in the Journal of Biochemistry shows that cellphone EMFs affect proteins. And ongoing research in Germany details how low-level EMFs inhibit tamoxifen, an anticancer drug widely used to treat breast cancer.
Most of us live in EMFs that are higher than humans evolved with. In that sense we’re all guinea pigs. It’s time we had more research on the biochemical effects of EMFs.
Nanotech: for good and ill
February 22nd, 2011A pair of research papers shows nanotechnology’s Jekyll and Hyde nature. A paper in Nature Nanotechnology details research that suggests carbon nanotubes could be used to treat strokes and other brain injuries. A paper in Environmental Science & Technology shows that nanoparticles in the environment can enter a food chain and become concentrated as they move up the chain. Nanoparticles are a potential health hazard because, undirected, they can kill cells and concentrate in organs.
Has quantum biology’s time come?
January 28th, 2011The idea that quantum processes, particularly entanglement, could play a role in consciousness has intrigued physicists, philosophers and New Age dreamers for decades.
But the improbability of fragile quantum states surviving in living beings, not to mention a pronounced lack of evidence, has led most physicists to view the notion with vigorous skepticism.
In the last few years, however, research results have begun to suggest that quantum processes can survive long enough in biological systems to play a role in how those systems work. In particular, a paper published a year ago in Nature showed that a marine algae uses quantum coherence to perform photosynthesis efficiently.
Now a model reported in a paper in Physical Review Letters suggests that the observed quantum sensitivity of birds’ eyes can be explained by an entanglement-based quantum system that allows birds to see Earth’s magnetic field.
It’s looking increasingly like quantum physics is relevant to biology. That doesn’t mean that a quantum theory of mind necessarily follows, but maybe the notion isn’t so outlandish after all.
As the worm turns — on demand
January 24th, 2011We’ve seen remote control rats (see TRN story) and remote control cockroaches. Now scientists have given us tiny remote control worms. I wonder if the CIA gets ideas when they see things like this.
Augmented reality cell phones arrive
January 4th, 2011Some nifty augmented reality technology has made it from the lab to your cell phone. iPhone app Word Lens modifies the text portion of images in the camera’s video stream to convert the text from Spanish to English or English to Spanish.
Seven years ago TRN covered the app’s predecessor prototypes: PDA translates speech and Cell phone melds video and data. In the 14th paragraph of the PDA translator story we wrote:
The prototype also has a camera attachment that translates text like that on street signs, said Waibel. Snap a picture of a sign with the camera and it automatically extracts the text region, puts the text through a character recognition program, then translates it, he said. “What you then see on the screen is the picture of the scene with a sign and then underneath an English subtitle,” he said.
It takes a lot of years to build such cool gizmos.