Inspired by the brilliant getaway mechanism of octopi and squids who use a blast of water to propel themselves away from danger, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering in Germany have developed a similarly stealthy propulsion system for boats and submarines. And it can be created with a single run on a 3D printer, meaning it has the potential to be a cheap alternative to traditional watercraft motors.
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Apple is exploring active phone and tablet bezels that would be able to dynamically change between giving a place to grip and extending the interface, maximizing the potential display space for small-screen devices that possibly includes the iWatch. The research, detailed in a new Apple patent for “Electronic device, display and touch-sensitive user interface”, centers
One thing that I’ve personally experienced from living the always-connected 21st century lifestyle – your gadgets can stress you out. Whether it’s the pressure that you constantly need to check email, or that your boss might text you at three in the morning, it’s become almost impossible to distance yourself from the stressors of work and life if you’re carrying a smartphone. Now, a group of technologists at Stanford are working on a program to help decrease the stress caused by technology – and by life in general.
The Stanford Calming Tech Center is focused on research and development of technologies which can help us better manage our stress, while decreasing the likelihood that gadgets become an added source of stress. I was recently introduced to this budding program while attending Further with Ford, an annual event which shares not only the auto manufacturer’s vision for the future, but provides access to technology and design thought-leaders to share their insights.
The Calming Tech program was founded by Neema Moraveji, who says that the stresses caused by our gadgets can affect your breathing. There’s even evidence that shows that checking your email can cause the same sort of irregular breathing caused by our fight-or-flight mechanism. So how can we decrease our stress levels in the connected world? While you could lock your devices away, that’s not always practical.
What Moraveji proposes is that we leverage our gadgets to help us live more consciously – through practices such as breathing exercises and meditation. His research shows that the introduction of “calmors” such as music, intentional distractions, and moments of mindfulness can make a difference. Among their projects, the Calming Tech team is working on a system called BreathAware, a biofeedback device that pairs with your wireless device to help you manage your breathing throughout the day.
In addition, the team is working on ideas for user interfaces which reduce stress, as well as tools which let users know how frequently they’re performing common tasks like reading emails. The lab also offers a regular course called “d.compress – Designing Calm,” which encourages students to create interactive technologies which reduce, rather than introduce stress.
It’s a very interesting field of study, and one well worth pursuing in my opinion. While I’m all for pervasive technology and connectivity, it is important that we don’t let them add new forms of stress to our lives.
Samsung will need to shift from relentlessly chasing Apple to simultaneously defending its smartphone userbase, analysts have warned, with the Korean company facing an unexpected challenge from Sony in what has so far been a European stronghold. Samsung devices now make up almost half of all smartphones sold in Europe, according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech
College-age kids these days are pretty good at a few things: selfies, social oversharing and staring into screens. But can you leverage that self-obsession into a mechanism for learning? The mad scientists at North Carolina State University think so and they’ve got a program to prove it. Dubbed JavaTutor, the software’s aimed at teaching our future workforce the basics of computer science. And it does this by tracking facial expressions — using the Computer Expressions Recognition Toolbox, or CERT, as its base — during online tutorial sessions. Frown and the AI knows you’re frustrated; concentrate intently and the same automated emotion detection applies. So, what’s the end sum of all this? Well, it seems the research team wants to gauge the effectiveness of online courses and use the cultivated feedback to better tailor the next iteration of the JavaTutor system. But the greater takeaway here, folks, is that at NCSU, online tutoring learns you!
Filed under: Science, Software
Source: North Carolina State University
And here we thought the only privacy risk with having a Wi-Fi network at home was someone figuring out our password. Researchers at MIT felt that a stranger having access to your wireless network wasn’t scary enough, so they developed a way for someone to use Wi-Fi signals as a sort of x-ray vision to track a person’s movements in another room.
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Artificially inseminated babies created from the genes of three people could be a reality as early as 2014, with the UK the first to approve so-called mitochondria replacement to prevent inheritable diseases. The controversial procedure involves transferring the genetic material from two parents into an egg from another woman; by removing the donor egg’s nucleus,
A Star Trek style deflector shield that could protect deep-space astronauts, such as the much-discussed manned mission to Mars, from cancer-causing levels of radiation is in testing, researchers have revealed. The system, described as a “mini-magnetosphere” in reference to the Earth’s magnetic field which protects us from solar radiation, is the handiwork of the Rutherford
Using WiFi to “see through walls” and track people when they’re moving could be a new feature on your next smartphone, if MIT researchers have their way, with a low-cost method of tracking relying on the wireless connectivity cooked up in their labs. The project, dubbed Wi-Vi, repurposes WiFi in a similar manner to sonar
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