Oct 19

In Rural China, Students Use Phones to Learn to Read

Posted in: R&D and Inventions, research, Today's Chili

In many parts of the developing world, mobile phones have leapfrogged literacy, reaching places books and newspapers are rarely seen. In rural China, researchers with the Mobile & Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies (MILLEE) Project are using those phones to teach children how to read.

Scholars from Carnegie Mellon, UC-Berkeley, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences worked with children in Xin’an, an underdeveloped region in Henan Province, China, using two mobile learning games, inspired by traditional Chinese children’s games. MILLEE later repeated these studies with young children at a privately run school in urban Beijing. Both runs suggest that phone-based games could be a useful tool in teaching literacy.

According to Carnegie Mellon’s Matthew Kam, despite their comparatively small screens and low computing power, mobile phones could become a major educational resource as wireless carriers and mobile phone manufacturers move aggressively to extend mobile phone penetration across the globe. And if the educational benefits of mobile phones can be demonstrated convincingly, he added, consumers will have an additional motivation for getting mobile phone service, which could further spur mobile phone adoption in developing countries.

First, MILLEE researchers had to create games that would be meaningful and useful for children with little to no experience with either writing or computers. They analyzed 25 traditional Chinese children’s games to identify elements, such as cooperation between players, songs and handmade game objects, for use in the games.

They eventually developed two games: Multimedia Word and Drumming Stroke. In MW, the app provides hints to the children for recognizing characters: This might be a hints at pronunciation, a sketch, a photo or another multimedia object. In Drumming Stroke, children pass the mobile phone to one another to the rhythm of a phone-generated drum sound. Each player writes one stroke of a given Chinese character by following the exact stroke order.

Nokia has sponsored a MILLEE project teaching English literacy to rural children in India using mobile phone-based games, begining with 800 children in 40 villages in southern India’s Andhra Pradesh. MILLEE is also working with the University of Nairobi to explore how the games could be adapted to English literacy learning for rural children in Kenya.

Culturally inspired mobile phone games help Chinese children learn language characters [Carnegie Mellon via EurekAlert]
The MILLEE Classroom [Millee.org] Image via MILLEE.

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Oct 18

Flexible, implantable LEDs look set to start a new body modification craze

Posted in: LED, Medicine, research, robotics, Today's Chili, university, waterproof

LED lights are cool, you’re cool, why not combine the two, right? We doubt that’s quite the reasoning that led to this international research project, but it’s certainly an appealing way to look at it. Our old buddy John Rogers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has headed up a research team with participants from the US, China, Korea, and Singapore, who have together produced and demonstrated a new flexible and implantable LED array. Bettering previous efforts at inserting lights under the human skin, this approach allows for stretching and twisting by as much as 75 percent, while the whole substrate is encased in thin silicon rubber making it waterproof. Basically, it’s a green light to subdermal illumination, which could aid such things as monitoring the healing of wounds, activating light-sensitive drug delivery, spectroscopy, and even robotics. By which we’re guessing they mean our robot overlords will be able to color-code us more easily. Yeah, that must be it.

Flexible, implantable LEDs look set to start a new body modification craze originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourcePhysOrg  | Email this | Comments

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Oct 15

Study: 85 Percent of U.S. Customers Own Cellphones

Posted in: cellphones, Phones, research, Today's Chili


If you’re wondering why your cellphone reception sucks so badly, part of it is because so many people carry phones today. In fact, the cellphone is by far the most popular gadget in the United States.

A whopping 85 percent of U.S. adults and three quarters of teens now own a cellphone, according to a new research report by Pew. That compares to 59 percent of American adults who own a desktop computer, 52 percent who own a laptop, 47 percent with an MP3 player and 42 percent with a game console.

A mere 4 percent of U.S. adults own a tablet computer (i.e., the iPad), and about the same number own an e-book reader, according to Pew.

The report found that about 80 percent of U.S. adults own two or more devices in these categories. I’m mildly ashamed to admit I own at least one device in every single category — but hey, it’s my job to have things.

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Graphic: Pew Research


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Oct 14

Robots learning our pain threshold by punching humans and seeing if they cry

Posted in: research, robot, RobotApocalypse, robotics, Today's Chili, university

The first rule of robotics is you do not talk about robotics that a robot should not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. But how does a robot know when its acts or omissions are causing nearby fleshies discomfort? The obvious way is to scan for the same signals of distress that we humans do — facial, physical, and aural — but another, more fun, way is to just hit people over and over again and ask them how much each blow hurt. That’s what professor Borut Povse over in Slovenia is doing, in a research project he describes as “impact emulation,” where six test subjects are punched by a robotic arm until they can’t take it anymore. It’s funny, yes, but it’s also novel and a somewhat ingenious way to collect data and produce more intelligent machines. Of course, whether we actually want more intelligent machines is another matter altogether.

[Thanks, Anthony]

Robots learning our pain threshold by punching humans and seeing if they cry originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 06:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink News.com.au  |  sourceNew Scientist  | Email this | Comments

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Oct 13

Elpida and Sharp team up for ReRAM in 2013: 10,000x the speed of current NAND flash chips

Posted in: Japan, memory, partnership, plans, research, roadmap, Sharp, storage, Today's Chili, university

Want to know where the next breakthrough in mobile technology will come from? Well, if Elpida and Sharp have their way, the answer will be the usual suspect of Japan, where they’re working away on new memory chips said to be capable of four orders of magnitude faster performance than the ordinary NAND flash storage of today. Dubbed ReRAM, or Resistive Random Access Memory, this project targets a 2013 date for commercialization and counts the University of Tokyo and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology among its development team. Details on how such blinding speeds will be reached aren’t readily available, but the Nikkei reports power consumption will be down to “virtually zero” when the memory’s not in use. So with ReRAM and HP’s memristors both set for three years from now, can we schedule NAND’s funeral for 2014 or what?

Elpida and Sharp team up for ReRAM in 2013: 10,000x the speed of current NAND flash chips originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Oct 2010 04:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink MRAM-info  |  sourceReuters  | Email this | Comments

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Oct 08

New Blu-Ray Lasers Mean Faster Burns, Quad-Layer Discs

Posted in: blu-ray, R&D and Inventions, research, Sharp, sony, Today's Chili

This week, Sony launched the first commercial 400mW blue–violet laser diode for Blu-ray. The higher-power lasers can perform triple or even quadruple-layer recording at 8X-12X speeds, storing up to 128GB on a single disc.

Sony’s blue-violet laser diode, called the SLD3237VF, will cost about $12. Until the Blu-ray Super-Sized to 128GB, Requires New Player“>multi-layer BDXL spec is supported by players that can read the higher-storage discs, Sony says the new laser will allow a greater range of lenses and prisms to be used in constructing Blu-Ray devices, freeing up some of the restrictions on current hardware. Devices with the more powerful lasers already in place will be easier to upgrade later.

A year ago, Sharp announced a similar technical breakthrough with a 500mW blue-violet laser, with plans to ship in late 2010. Sharp representatives did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

In laboratory experiments, Sony’s Advanced Materials Laboratories and their research partners at Tohoku University have developed blue-violet ultra-fast pulsed semiconductor lasers that can generate as much as 100W. In addition to industrial and nanotech applications, Sony is already experimenting using these lasers to create next-generation optical storage of even higher capacities.

Image above of 100W Experimental Laser by Sony via Semiconductor Today.

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Oct 06

Rat controls vehicle with its brain, Pinky and The Brain apply for ‘one last run’

Posted in: research, Today's Chili, university

So, let’s paint the picture, shall we? There’s a rat, a bundle of electrodes, more wiring than an electrician would know what to do with and some sort of wheeled apparatus. In the background stands a team of crazed Japanese scientists, intent on never sleeping again until said rat controls said vehicle entirely with his mind. Nah, it’s not a re-run of a WB classic — it’s real life, and it’s happening now in a dark, shadowy corner at the University of Tokyo. The RatCar is a newly developed rat-vehicle experiment that researchers hope will open new doors for those with mobility issues; we’ve seen brain-machine interfaces change the lives of the disabled before, but giving them the ability to control their wheelchair with their mind (for instance) would be taking things to an entirely new level. As of now, the team still has to figure out how to accurately determine how much movement is coming from the rat’s feet and how much is coming from its mind, but there’s no question that the research shows promise — just don’t let the humanoids learn of our findings, okay folks?

Rat controls vehicle with its brain, Pinky and The Brain apply for ‘one last run’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Switched, Popular Science  |  sourceIEEE Spectrum  | Email this | Comments

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Oct 06

Screen-Research Breakthroughs Promise Low Power, Fast Response

Posted in: e ink, LCD, R&D and Inventions, research, Today's Chili

Improvements in fundamental screen technologies by separate teams at Vanderbilt and Cincinnati point towards the low-power, quick-response displays of the future.

If this research bears fruit, it could improve the next generation of LCD displays for computers, televisions, e-readers and commercial interfaces.

For the University of Cincinnati team, the key challenge for power consumption in screens is how to reduce the energy used to illuminate the display so you can see it. They sidestepped the problem of traditional designs by using a highly reflective surface in the screen’s substrata that reflects ambient light rather than generating its own.

“What we’ve developed breaks down a significant barrier to bright electronic displays that don’t require a heavy battery to power them,” lead researcher Jason Heikenfeld said. He believes his team’s new display can generate brighter, high-color-saturated devices equal to that of a conventional LCD screen with an energy cost comparable to the E Ink displays on devices like Amazon’s Kindle.

“Conventional wisdom says you can’t have it all with electronic devices: speed, brightness and low-cost manufacturing,” Heikenfeld said. “That’s going to change with the introduction of this new discovery into the market.”

It’s not the first time people have made use of reflective layers to illuminate LCD screens. Startup Pixel Qi offers a multimode display which, in its low-power state, uses reflected light instead of battery-draining LED or fluorescent illumination, as most LCDs do.

And Qualcomm’s new Mirasol screen technology also offers full-color and video at low power, but Heikenfeld claims his team’s new display technology is at least three times brighter than Qualcomm’s.

The Vanderbilt University team’s claims are relatively more modest, but perhaps more easily incorporated into existing screen technology. The chemical lab led by Piotr Kaszynski thinks one path to a low-energy, quick-response display future is to change the chemical composition of our LCD screens.

Zwitterionic liquid crystals./Kaszynski lab

“We have created liquid crystals with an unprecedented electric dipole, more than twice that of existing liquid crystals,” says Kaszynski. This means the dipoles will require a lower threshold voltage (using less power) and switch between light and dark states much faster, allowing for a quicker refresh rate.

The new liquid crystals have a “zwitterionic” structure: Their inorganic portions are negatively charged and organic portions are positively charged, but they carry a net electrical charge of zero. Zwitterions have long been thought a key to producing more-efficient liquid crystals, but the chemical procedure to produce them in the proper structure was only discovered in 2002.

Top image: Jason Heikenfeld, Angela Klocke/University of Cincinnati

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Oct 05

Despite Runaway Popularity, iPad Isn’t Hurting PC Sales

Posted in: Apple, ipad, research, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili

Contrary to popular belief, the iPad isn’t gobbling up huge chunks of PC sales, according to a market research company.

According to an NPD research report, only 13 percent of iPad owners surveyed chose to buy an iPad instead of a PC. That’s a small number, considering that 24 percent of iPad owners replaced a planned e-reader purchase with Apple’s tablet.

The report also noted that iPad owners, especially early adopters, are a particularly tech-savvy bunch, as they’re significantly more likely to own Apple gadgets, e-readers or smartphones.

NPD’s findings clash with earlier reports that suggested the iPad was stealing away a significant number of sales from traditional personal computers. Last month, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn said the iPad had replaced as much as 50 percent of all laptop sales at the retail chain. That’s a significant number, but it’s also just an internal estimate for just one brick-and-mortar outlet.

That doesn’t go to say that the iPad isn’t selling extremely well. Bernstein Research recently issued a report claiming that iPad adoption rates are the fastest in electronics product history, with sales of approximately 4.5 million units sold per quarter. By way of comparison, the original iPhone sold 1 million per quarter at launch, and DVD players sold about 350,000 per quarter when they first launched.

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Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.com


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Oct 04

NC State patents multifunctional smart sensors, looks to ‘revolutionize energy and communications infrastructure’

Posted in: Environment, green, patent, processor, research, science, sensor, Today's Chili, university

Bold words coming from a program that choked in epic fashion this past Saturday in front of 58,000+, don’t you think? Thankfully for those who are actually involved in the global energy and communications infrastructure (not to mention depressed alumni), NC State‘s athletics department is far removed from its research labs, and the university’s latest development was born and bred in the latter. A team of researchers have managed to patent a new technology that is expected to enable the development of “high-power, high-voltage and high-current devices that are critical for the development of energy distribution devices, such as smart grid technology and high-frequency military communications.” The secret? Integrating gallium nitride (GaN) sensors and devices directly into silicon-based computer chips, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished by any team prior. According to Dr. Jay Narayan, this newfangled integration has “enabled the creation of multifunctional smart sensors, high-electron mobility transistors, high-power devices, and high-voltage switches for smart grids,” and it also makes a broader range of radio frequencies available — something that’ll obviously be beneficial in the advancement of communications. Best of all, a US-based corporation is already in the process of licensing the technology, so it’s likely that we’ll see this in use in the not-too-distant future. An ACC championship, however, remains far more elusive.

NC State patents multifunctional smart sensors, looks to ‘revolutionize energy and communications infrastructure’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Oct 2010 12:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Physorg  |  sourceNC State University  | Email this | Comments

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