NASA Picks Seven Commercial Spaceships for the Next Generation of Suborbital Science Missions

Virgin SpaceShip

The new post-shuttle NASA has said it aims to work more cooperatively with private space industry and outside sources of innovation in writing the next chapter in space exploration and science, and the agency is putting its money where its mouth is. After selecting 30 future technology proposals for funding earlier this week, NASA has now inked a number of much larger contracts with seven private space companies--including Virgin Galactic--to integrate and fly various technology payloads aboard their suborbital spacecraft.

We single out Virgin because its SpaceShipTwo is the furthest spacecraft along, development-wise, which means it could soon be ferrying scientific payloads into suborbital space, making it the first commercial company to take that role over from NASA in the post-shuttle era. SpaceShipTwo is already undergoing flight tests and could begin commercial operation as soon as next year.

That’s a big deal, because it’s a stepping stone toward fulfilling NASA’s vision of opening up space to more scientists and technology developers, and doing it on someone else’s less-expensive spacecraft. And Virgin isn’t the only company with a dog in this hunt: the other companies splitting the $10 million in contracts are Armadillo Aerospace, Near Space Corp., Masten Space Systems, Up Aerospace Inc., Whittinghill Aerospace LLC, and XCOR.

Many of these companies are looking to carry tourists into space, but the overarching idea of the Flight Opportunities Program (that’s the NASA funding initiative) is to cultivate a variety of ways for researchers to get their experiments--manned or unmanned--into space as well. There’s a lot of benefit to be spread around in doing so.

For one, it opens up suborbital space to groups that couldn’t afford it or simply couldn’t make the manifest on prior NASA missions (which were quite selective and pricey per pound of cargo). It also supports the private space industry by opening up another revenue stream for the Virgins and XCORs and Mastens of the world. But perhaps most importantly for NASA it means a proliferation in space science and technology development, and technologies that fall out of this program just might become part of NASA’s next-gen space transportation model.

Source: SPACE

Second Huge Solar Plant In California

Solar Panels

BrightSource Energy, the California startup that is building the first large-scale solar thermal power plant to break ground in the United States in 20 years, on Friday filed a license application with California regulators to build a second huge solar complex that features new technology.

The 500-megawatt Hidden Hills Solar Electric Generating System would be built in two 250-megawatt phases on 5.12 square miles of privately owned Mojave Desert land in California’s Inyo County on the Nevada border. The site is 45 miles west of Las Vegas and north of BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah facility now under construction on the California side of the border.


The project is the first to seek approval from the California Energy Commission since regulators rushed to approve nine large solar thermal power plants last year so their developers could qualify for billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees. The loan guarantee program is set to sunset on Sept. 30 and Hidden Hills will test financiers’ appetite for such projects absent such a subsidy.

BrightSource, which is backed by French energy giant Alstom, Morgan Stanley, Google, Chevron and NRG Energy, filed for a $250 million initial public offering in April and has signed contracts to deliver 2,610 megawatts of electricity to utilities Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.

The company deploys vast fields of mirrors called heliostats to focus the sun’s rays on a water-filled boiler that sits atop a tower. The resulting steam drives an electricity-generating turbine.

In a sign that solar technology is unlikely to stand still for long in the race to bring more efficient power plants online, BrightSource has increased the height of its “power tower” at the Hidden Hills project to 750 feet from the 459-foot height of those being built at Ivanpah. Each tower at Hidden Hills would be surrounded by a field of 85,000 heliostats.

“The new, higher, 750-foot solar power tower allows the heliostat rows to be placed closer together, with the mirrors at a steeper angle,” the company stated in its license application. “This substantially reduces mirror shading and allows more heliostats to be placed per acre. More megawatts can be generated per acre and the design is more efficient overall.”

BrightSource on Wednesday announced it would incorporate molten salt storage in its power plants to extend their operating hours past sunset. No mention of such a system was made in the Hidden Hills application but its addition would most likely depend on a request from the utility that purchases the complex’s electricity.

The company has set out an ambitious construction schedule, stating that it anticipates ground would be broken by the third quarter of 2012 and Hidden Hills would begin generating electricity in 2015.

In contrast, it took more than three years for state and federal regulators to approve the Ivanpah project, which is being built on land managed by the Interior Department.

BrightSource will largely avoid the feds involvement by building on land leased from a private owner. The company also apparently hopes to sidestep disputes over the impact of its power plants on the imperiled desert tortoise, a controversy that has dogged the Ivanpah project.

According to its license application for Hidden Hills, initial surveys found only two desert tortoises on the project site.

Saudi Arabia Set to Own Title of World's Tallest Building

Kingdom Tower Adrian Smith & Gordon Gill Architecture

The design, by Chicago-based Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, pairs radical developments in skyscraper technology with a sleek, tapered aesthetic inspired by the folded fronts of young desert plant growth.

Saudi Arabia is set to shatter the record for the tallest building in the world, with a slender, asymmetrical spire that'll rise at least 3,280 feet in the air. That's more than twice the size of the Willis Tower, the tallest building in the United States, and 568 feet taller than the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.

The $1.2 billion Kingdom Tower will be built in north Jeddah, the major urban center of western Saudi and an historic gateway to Mecca just off the shores of the Red Sea. The building, by Chicago-based Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (Smith also designed the Burj Khalifa while at SOM), pairs new developments in skyscraper technology with a sleek, “three-petal” form inspired by the folded fronts of young desert plant growth. “The way the fronds sprout upward from the ground as a single form, then start separating from each other at the top, is an analogy of new growth fused with technology,” Gill says.

The tower’s got a slick, aerodynamic shape with tapering wings that’ll help slash structural loading caused by wind. A high-performance facade is expected to drastically reduce energy consumption, and notches in each of the skyscraper’s three “petals” will create pockets of shade, shielding occupants from the harsh desert sun and providing outdoor terraces with views of Jeddah and the Red Sea. Kingdom Tower will include a Four Seasons hotel and apartments, luxury condominiums, and Class A offices spread over roughly 3.5-million square feet. It'll also have a sky terrace on the 157th floor (the 157th floor!) and the highest observatory in the world.

Kingdom Tower is the linchpin of a larger, $20 billion waterfront development venture for Jeddah -- part of the Saudi monarchy’s ambitious efforts to diversify its economy beyond crude oil. (Financing for the Kingdom Tower results from a deal between the investment firm of Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and the Saudi Binladin Group, a construction conglomerate founded by the father of you know who.) The proposed Kingdom Tower Waterfront District -- the master plan of which is also designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill -- will include residential and commercial buildings, a shopping mall, outdoor spaces, and other amenities.

First Artificial Neural Network Created from DNA

One of the things that our brains excel at is the ability to recognize what things are, even when presented with an incomplete set of data. If we know only that an animal is sold in pet stores and stuffs food in its cheeks, for instance, we can be pretty certain that the animal in question is a hamster. Now, for the first time ever, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a DNA-based artificial neural network that can do the same thing ... albeit on a very basic level. They believe that it could have huge implications for the development of true artificial intelligence.

The neural network is made up of just four artificial neurons, as opposed to the human brain's 100 billion real ones.

To test the network, the scientists played a game with it. That game started with the network being trained to "know" four scientists, each one identifiable by a unique combination of yes/no answers to the same four questions (such as "Is the scientist British?"). Human players then chose one of those scientists, and provided the network with an incomplete set of the identifying answers. They did this by dropping DNA strands that were programmed to correspond to those answers, into water in a test tube that contained the neurons.

Communicating through fluorescent signals, the network would then either correctly identify the chosen scientist, it would indicate that it didn't have enough data to identify just one scientist, or it would state that the data didn't match any of the scientists.

This was possible because of the manner in which the added strands of DNA paired with the strands already present in the network. This, in turn, was determined by whether or not the sequences programmed into both strands complimented one another.

It should be noted that the network took eight hours to come up with each of its responses, and that new DNA strands had to be created for each game. Still, theCaltech team state that the technology could ultimately be used for creating biochemical systems with artificial intelligence, which could revolutionize fields such as medicine, chemistry, and biological research.

The research was recently published in the journal Nature.

Source:Gizmag

Russia launches 'largest telescope ever made'

To look at the Russian RadioAstron spacecraft, which launched from Kazakhstan this Monday, it doesn't seem particularly record-breaking. Its 10-meter (33-foot) antenna is certainly no match for those on earthbound radio telescopes, which can be up to 300 meters (984 feet) across. Once in orbit, however, its signal will join forces with those from ground-based telescopes to form one giant virtual telescope. Using a process known as interferometry, they will form the equivalent of a single radio telescope dish that at over 350,000 kilometers (217,480 miles) across is almost 30 times wider than the Earth. Although it's not actually one physical object, it is nonetheless being heralded as the largest telescope ever created.

Interferometry itself is nothing new, having been around since the 1960s. Very basically speaking, it involves combining the output of two or more geographically-separated telescopes to obtain one image with a resolution higher than either telescope could achieve on its own.

While radio telescopes have been sent into space for this purpose before, the plan is for RadioAstron's oval-shaped orbit to take it up to ten times farther than any of those other spacecraft have traveled, at 10,000 to 390,000 kilometers (6,214 to 242,335 miles) from Earth. Working with telescopes in locations such as West Virginia, Germany and Puerto Rico, it should be able to capture details at 10,000 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Plans for its use include the observation of a huge black hole at the center of a nearby galaxy, M87.

Although already launched, it will still be a few months before the spacecraft reaches the starting point of its orbit, and then goes through a check-out period with its ground control team at Russia's Lebedev Physical Institute Astro Space Center. Once it starts receiving and transmitting data ... well, there will be a lot of it. It's estimated that RadioAstron will be taking in up to 144 megabits per second, which will be continuously relayed to the ground.

So far, however, there is only one 22-meter (72-foot) dish set up to receive that data, near Moscow. This means that much of the data will simply be lost. It is hoped that throughout RadioAstron's five-year mission, more receiving stations can be set up.

Source: Gizmag via New Scientist

Shelby Supercar Tuatara aims for Bugatti Veyron 268 mph speed record for production cars

The competition for the world's fastest car appears set to escalate once more with Shelby Super Cars finally pulling the wraps off the car it has had under development for several years.

The aluminum and carbon fiber SSC Tuatara was styled by talented American designer Jason Castriota, and will run a mid-rear mounted, seven-litre, twin-turbo, Quad camshaft V8 producing 1,350 bhp.

Shelby is making no bones about the aim of the car - it is aiming for 280 mph and wants to once more produce the world's fastest production car, a title it held as recently as 2010 with the 1183 bhp, twin-turbo V8 Ultimate Aero TT which ran 412.68 km/h (256.18 mph).

It bested the previous fastest, the original 1001 bhp Bugatti Veyron's 408 km/h (254 mph) but lost the title back to the French marque last year when a 1200 bhp Bugatti Veyron Super Sport ran 431 km/h (268 mph).

SSC has only just disclosed the name of the car and some images, and no doubt intends to get as much value from the project as it can by staged releases of additional information over time. Hence we don't yet know what the performance figures will be for the car, but it can reasonably be expected to eclipse the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport's 268 mph.

Traditionally, new speed records are achieved in small increments unless your name is Bugatti. The McLaren F1 held the record at 386.4 km/h (240.1mph) for seven years, before it was marginally improved to 387.87 kmh (241.01 mph) by the Koennigsegg CCR. Then followed Bugatti's 408 km/h (254 mph), the Ultimate Aero TT's 412.68 km/h (256.18 mph) and then the quantum leap by the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport to 431km/h (268 mph).

Hence, our bet is that when the SSC speed runs are made, the American crew will be aiming for something in the vicinity of 280 mph from the Tuatara and even then, there are some who believe that the Bugatti's 268 mph speed might not be bettered for some time.

It must be noted that 431 km/h is an astonishing top speed for a road car, considering it's capable of pulling out and passing any Formula One car in a straight line. Indeed, it'll best any speed an F1 car can do by more than the outright speed limit in most countries and happens to be the exact speed of the Shanghai Maglev train.

In terms of further details of the SSC Tuatara, very little more is known at this stage. The twin turbo V8 delivers its power through a seven-speed gearbox which will come with either a conventional H-pattern stick shift or F1-style sequential paddle shifters tucked in behind the steering wheel.

The Tuatara will be built almost entirely of carbon fiber - the cabin, chassis, sub-frames and even the wheels are carbon fiber while there are also some "energy absorbing aluminum crash structures".

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Tuatara is that it is both visually arresting and immediately identifiable - while many supercars are beginning to look the same from a distance, the Tuatara is visually unique, and for the dozen individuals who will have the money to own one (only a dozen will be built), no-one will be left in any doubt what it is that they're driving.

The car is the work of American design prodigy Jason Castriota.

Castriota designed the SSC Ultimate Aero and his other work so far includes the Bertone Mantide concept, the Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina, the Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, the Maserati GranTurismo, the Maserati Birdcage 75 and the Saab PhoeniX. Pictures of all of these cars are in this article or in the gallery and it's interesting to look at the Tuatara and the cars Castriota has previously penned. Can you see similarities between the Birdcage and the Tuatara, or the aerodynamic detailing of the PhoeniX and the Tuatara?

For such a young designer, his portfolio is already brimming with astonishingly beautiful and significant machinery. He now leads the design team at Saab.

No price has yet been mentioned, but talk suggests you'll not only be able to go faster than a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, you'll also have to contend with a price tag of less than half that of the French supercar.

Which speaks volumes for the efficiencies of SSC - Bugatti spent so much money designing and building the Veyron that many people believe they effectively subsidized the purchase of every single one of them.

Aluminum-Celmet material could boost the range of electric vehicles by 200 percent

Range anxiety, the fear that such vehicles will leave the vehicle's occupants stranded well short of their destination, remains one of, if not the main barrier to the widespread adoption of EVs. A new material developed by Japanese company Sumitomo Electric could help allay such fears by potentially improving the capacity of lithium-ion batteries by 1.5 to three times,
and therefore extending the range of EVs by an extra 50 to 200 percent. That would give a Nissan LEAF a range of up to 109 to 219 miles (175 to 352 km) or a Tesla Roadster a range of up to 366 to 732 miles (589 to 1,178 km) - enough to assuage the range anxiety of the most fretful drivers.

The material in question is called Aluminum-Celmet that features an Aero bar-like, three-dimensional mesh-like structure that forms interconnected, open and spherical pores. Sumitomo Electric had previously been producing its proprietary Celmet material made from nickel or nickel chrome alloy. Its high porosity of up to 98 percent and favorable filling, retaining and current-collecting performance when used with an active material, led to Celmet recently being adopted as a positive electrode current collector in hybrid vehicle nickel-hydrogen batteries. It is also easy to process the porous metal into various shapes by cutting and stamping.

Using a similar process used for producing nickel Celmet, the company has now succeeded in developing Aluminum-Celmet that shares the high porosity of Celmet, but is lighter, offers greater electrical conductivity and excellent corrosion resistance - all attributes that make it attractive for use in lithium-ion batteries for EVs and other batteries operating at high charge/discharge voltages.

Sumitomo Electric says that by replacing the aluminum foil used for the positive electrode in conventional lithium-ion batteries with Aluminum-Celmet's three-dimensional mesh-like structure increases the amount of positive active per unit area. According to the company's trial calculations, the material could increase the capacity of electric vehicle onboard battery packs 1.5 to 3 times. This could extend the range of electric vehicles using the same volume battery pack by an extra 200 percent, or maintain the existing range while reducing the battery volume by one to two-thirds.

While electric vehicles are the most immediately obvious use for extended capacity batteries, Sumitomo points out that such technology also holds advantages for reducing the physical footprint of home-use batteries for storing power from solar and other renewable sources, as well as fuel cells. Similarly, the material can also be used for improving the capacity and reducing the footprint of capacitors.

Sumitomo Electric has set up a small-scale production line in Osaka in an effort to accelerate development of Aluminum-Cemet with an eye towards mass production and commercialization for such applications.

Source: Gizmag Via Autoblog Green

A Biocomputer Can Now Detect Multiple Signs of Disease from Inside the Body

Wouldn’t it be easier to deal with disease if our bodies just fixed themselves? That’s asking quite a bit from our physiologies, but Israeli researchers are working on tiny nano-computers that could do the job for us. They envision tiny machines made of biomolecules that autonomously troll the body looking for disease, computing a diagnosis and delivering drugs all at the same time. It’s a long way off, but they’re making progress--they’ve just developed a biomolecular computer that can autonomously identify multiple molecules at the same time.

From a biomolecular computing standpoint (as well as from a diagnostics standpoint), that’s pretty huge. The researchers have previously demonstrated a biomolecular computer that could sense disease indicators one at a time. Existing in a two state system, it essentially was programmed in a “yes” state for a certain disease indicator. It then performed a series of computation steps, checking for one mRNA disease indicator after another.

If all the indicators of a certain disease are present, the biocomputer would end unchanged in the same “yes” state. If any of the indicators were not present, it would end in a “no” state. It was rudimentary, but it was a diagnosis if an imperfect one.

The breakthrough here is that the team’s biocomputer now can now detect disease indicators from a variety of sources--mRNA, miRNA, proteins, and a variety of small molecules like ATP. The new biocomputer also needs fewer interactions with disease indicators and is designed with fewer moving parts.

The idea is to someday create swarms of biomolecular nano-computers that can autonomously and continuously patrol our bodies for the signs of disease. Because they can now detect indicators from more than one source, diagnoses would be more accurate. And with more and better computation, the biomachines could also deliver the first round of preventative drugs to the site of burgeoning disease, acting as a first line of defense against infection.

Of course, all this is years--decades, really--away. The idea that of nanomachines--even ones constructed of biomolecules--swimming our bloodstreams loaded up with drug payloads is a bit anxiety-inducing. What if they malfunction or misdiagnose? What if they were to accidentally release too much of a drug at the wrong place at the wrong time, or to inadvertently mix the wrong drugs into a harmful pharmaceutical cocktail?

You might lose sleep at night wondering what the tiny machines inside of you were up to. Even so, the idea of constant, vigilant, autonomous oversight of every organ in the body is pretty tantalizing.

Source: Popsci via PhsyOrg

'Sensing skin' could detect cracks in concrete structures

Concrete may be one of the toughest buildings materials in common use but it does develop cracks over time, and in the case of structures such as buildings or bridges, it is imperative that those cracks are noticed before they lead to a collapse. While visual inspections are useful, they are also time-consuming, and may miss tiny but structurally-significant cracks. Some technologies have been developed to automate the process, such as rust sensors for steel-reinforced concrete. Now, an international team of scientists is proposing a system of flexible crack-detecting skins, that could be applied to the surfaces of concrete surfaces.

The "sensing skin" was developed by civil engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), working with physicists at Germany's University of Potsdam.

Structures such as bridges would simply have pieces of the skin glued onto any areas where cracks were considered likely to occur. The skin would contain patterns of capacitive rectangular patches, arranged in different patterns within the skin, depending on the type of stress that was likely - patches oriented diagonally to one another would work best for detecting cracks caused by shear, whereas horizontally-joined patches would be better for detecting sag in horizontal beams, for instance.

The capacitance of each patch (the amount of energy it was storing) would be altered by any movement underneath it, as would be caused by the formation of cracks. Once a day, a computer that was attached to the skin would send an electrical current through it, measuring the capacitance of each patch. If sharp differences were noted between adjacent patches, the computer would note the exact location, and then notify a human inspector of the discrepancy. This ability to pinpoint the location reportedly sets the system apart from other stress-detecting technologies, that don't provide such specific coordinates.

So far, the largest piece of the skin tested in laboratory conditions has measured 8 by 4 inches (20 by 10 cm). While a stretchy silicon fabric with silver electrodes was used initially, it proved to be too thin and flexible for some applications. It has since been replaced with a thermoplastic elastomer mixed with titanium dioxide, with the capacitive patches made from painted-on black carbon.

Source: Gizmag

Plastic2Oil process turns plastic waste into fuel

While a lot of people may be doing their part for the environment by sending their discarded plastic items off for recycling, the fact is that much of the plastic currently in use is non-recyclable. In a not particularly eco-friendly process, some of this plastic is burned to generate electricity, while much of it simply ends up in landfills. Canadian company JBI, however, has developed a process that uses those plastics as a feedstock, and turns them into fuel.

JBI's Plastic2Oil process starts with a variety of unwashed post-commercial and industrial non-recyclable plastics, which are fed through a shredder and a granulator - the system can handle up to 1,800 pounds (816.5 kg) at a time. It is then heated in a process chamber, after which it proceeds into the main reactor. There, a proprietary (read "secret") reusable catalyst is used to crack the plastic's hydrocarbons into shorter hydrocarbon chains, which exit the plastic in a gaseous state. Those gases are captured, compressed and stored.

Gases containing gasoline and diesel can be condensed and separated, the resulting liquid fuel then temporarily stored in tanks. Methane, ethane, butane and propane "off-gas" out of those tanks, and are subsequently compressed and stored themselves. The butane and propane liquefy upon compression, allowing them to be separated, stored and sold, while the others are used to help power the system. Emissions that make it into the atmosphere are said to be less than those that would be produced by a natural gas furnace.

The whole process, for one 1,800-pound load, reportedly takes less than an hour. According to JBI, almost 90 percent of the plastic's hydrocarbon content is captured and converted into fuel. Approximately two percent of the feedstock is left over as waste, which can be removed while the system is operating. It can then be dumped in a landfill, or burned for fuel, as it has a heating value of 10,600 BTU/lb (24,656 kJ/kg).

On June 14th, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation issued the permits necessary for JBI's Niagara Falls three-processor pilot plant to begin operations. The plant, which has a footprint of 1,000 square feet (93 sq. m.), is capable of processing 22 tons of plastic per day, and operates continuously.

The company now plans on opening up more Plastic2Oil plants, and will concentrate on building a few plants each containing several processors, as opposed to many plants each with one processor - this is said to make the most sense for keeping construction costs down, and for maximizing production capacity. Some of the plants will be managed and owned solely by JBI, while others will be run as joint ventures.

A similar system, that utilizes a fluidized bed reactor for converting non-recyclable plastics into a variety of products, is being developed by the University of Warwickin the UK.

Source: Gizmag

PossessedHand controls hand movement with electrical stimulation

It's often during those early stages of learning to play a new instrument that many people give up in despair. Even though you swear that you're hitting the right notes, everything still sounds like an old gramophone recording played at the wrong speed. If only you could let someone take control of your hands to fast forward through the arduous repetition phase before muscle memory kicks in and the piece you're trying to play begins to sound more like it should. That's precisely the kind of potential offered by the PossessedHand project. Electrode-packing armbands placed on a user's forearm send electrical pulses through the muscles to take control of the movement of the hand - with fledgling Koto players testing the system having demonstrated greater accuracy and speedier progress.

The goal of the PossessedHand project was to develop a support system for playing musical instruments where users could quickly learn the gestures, positioning and timing needed for a piece of music without having to wear glove-type devices that digitally control the movement of their fingers. By positioning two belts on the forearm of a user - each containing a number of non-invasive electrode pads - researchers were able to effectively take control of five independent and 11 linked joints in the hand to electrically control the movement of individual fingers of the wearer's hand.

Many of the muscles used to move fingers - like the superficial flexor muscle, deep flexor muscle, long flexor muscle of the thumb, common digital extensor muscle, flexor carpi radialis muscle, long palmar muscle, and flexor carpi ulnaris muscle - are located in the forearm. Movement of the joints can be controlled by stimulating these muscles with electrical pulses. The researchers also discovered that muscles at different depths in the forearm respond to different strengths of voltage, resulting in the system being able to take over control of a total of 16 joints in the user's hand.

The PossessedHand prototype consists of a battery, a condenser, a timing volume, a switching board (Photo-MOS Relays Series AQV221), a microcontroller, and solid gel electrode pads on two belts. One armband is positioned on the upper part of the forearm and the other lower down and then connected to PC via USB and controlled by a specially-developed graphical user interface. The pulse width is 0.2 ms and the voltage range is 17 - 29 V.

To overcome difficulties in precise positioning of the electrodes over specific muscles in different users, the researchers crammed 14 electrodes into each of the two armbands and then developed an automated calibration system. The system estimates the relationship between the 28 electrodes, the level of stimulation and the amount of muscle movement required.

Volunteers were blindfolded and asked to identify which joints were being moved by the system and reactions to PossessedHand ranged from Scary, just scary to I felt like my forearm was pushed by someone to I felt like my body was hacked.

The team then transcribed Japanese Koto scores into PossessedHand scores, which included information on which finger should be moved and when. Two beginners then alternated between system supported and non-supported playing of the music, with arm positioning over the 13-stringed instrument being undertaken by the user in both cases. The team noted a significant reduction in timing errors and fewer fingering mistakes when PossessedHand was active.

It's also important when playing a musical instrument to apply the correct amount of force at the appropriate time. Sadly, the PossessedHand experiments could not electrically stimulate enough force to actually grasp an object or play an instrument. As such, this would seem to fit in with learning systems like Piano Hands and Piano Maestro.

Such technology might also find application in the treatment of folks who suffer from impaired muscle control or be used by professionals looking to quickly improve dexterity, such as surgeons.

The paper entitled PossessedHand: Techniques for controlling human hands using electrical muscles stimuli by Emi Tamaki, Takashi Miyaki, and Jun Rekimoto was presented at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver, Canada in May 2011.

The PossessedHand system was recently demonstrated at the World Haptics Conference in Istanbul, Turkey.

Source: Gizmag

OnLive Creator Claims He Can Bring Ultrafast Wireless to Everyone, Seemingly Violating Laws of Physics

Steve Perlman, founder of the cloud-based gaming-on-demand service OnLive, claims to have discovered a new method of wireless communications that would not only drastically outpace what we have now, but would actually disprove many of the accepted rules of how wireless communications in general work.

First things first: This theory popped up in a presentation Perlman gave at the NExTWORK conference, and only received a small mention. There was no demonstration, no real proof given, and since his proposal flies directly in the face of the Shannon-Hartley Theorem, a guideline for wireless technologies, we're not inclined to really believe his claims. But! Sometimes somebody says something so crazy with such confidence that you have to sit up and take notice, and this particular idea would have such massive effects on communications technology that we're bound to at least encourage discussion about it. That's not to be taken as an endorsement, though.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, here's what Perlman (all to briefly) proposed. DIDO is an entirely new radio system, with different towers and different chips that work in an (as yet undisclosed) entirely different way. He claims that DIDO would also be able to broadcast through solid objects that usually block cell signals, that it needs no bigger tower than a small base station "the size of a router," and that the base stations can broadcast a signal much farther than usual towers--up to 30 miles, at which point they'd be dealing with the curvature of the Earth, which Perlman says does not deter them.

Perlman said that his DIDO (distributed-input-distributed-output) system overcomes the traditional broadband system in which each user gets a small piece of the overall bandwidth of the tower to which they're connected. Instead, with DIDO, each user would be able to access the full speed of the tower.

Wired interviewed an electrical engineering professor who noted that elements of the Shannon-Hartley Theorem have in fact been disproved, or at least altered, with multiple-input-multiple-output systems, currently being used in the latest 4G tech. But nobody has yet seen Perlman's DIDO system in action, though he has patented it and insists he is "as confident" about DIDO as anything else he's ever designed. Us? We're skeptical--but that doesn't mean we wouldn't welcome a revolutionary wireless system.

Source: Popsci via Wired

China Opens the World's Longest Bridge Over Water, Toppling American Record-Holder

Along with its massive high-speed rail network, China has officially surpassed the United States in yet another piece of transportation infrastructure: the world’s longest sea bridge.

The new bridge spans Jiaozhou Bay, on the southern coast of China’s Shandong Peninsula in northeastern China. At 26.4 miles long, it beats Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain Causeway — the previous world-record holder — by at least 2 miles, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Chinese workers toiled at marathon pace to build the bridge in four years, starting at each side and meeting in the middle. The structure has 5,200 pillars and cost at least $2.3 billion, according to Chinese state-run media.

The Guinness officials say the bridge is earthquake- and typhoon-proof, and designed to withstand the impact of a 300,000-ton vessel. It links the port city of Qingdao to the island of Huangdao, cutting drive time from 40 to 20 minutes, according to the state-run China Daily.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that Americans are apparently not giving up the world’s longest title without a fight, however. The newspaper talked to Carlton Dufrechou, general manager of the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, who pointed out that the Jiaozhou bridge has a bend in it, and that the over-water length is only 16 miles, compared to 24 for his bridge.

“Bunch of wannabes,” he said. Read the Times-Pic’s piece for his full take, in which he calls the Chinese news “propaganda.”

In any case, the bridge looks pretty neat, especially set to this haunting soundtrack. Check out some aerial views below.

Source: Popsci via via IB Times