The manifestation of the confluence of incompetency and greed 5000 feet below the surface of water spewing up from a plugless hole in the territory of the world’s super power, the seat of MIT, Caltech and Harvard. Every one stands still and pray the Lord to plug the hole. Where science was ignored, people in shock and the government in awe.
Live feed courtesy of PBS news hour.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Tattoo, Gaming and Type I Diabetes
Tattoo with a carbon nanotube and a glucose measuring device as sensor. What does this mean? No more pricking to measure glucose multiple times a day. This is a great news for children with insulin dependent diabetes, also known as type I diabetes.
The technology behind the sensor, described in a December 2009 issue of ACS Nano, is fundamentally different from existing sensors, says Michael Strano, Associate Professor at MIT, who developed this technology. The sensor is based on carbon nanotubes wrapped in a polymer that is sensitive to glucose concentrations. When this sensor encounters glucose, the nanotubes fluoresce, which can be detected by shining near-infrared light on them. Measuring the amount of fluorescence reveals the concentration of glucose.
The researchers plan to create an “ink” of these nanoparticles suspended in a saline solution that could be injected under the skin like a tattoo. The “tattoo” would last for a specified length of time, probably six months, before needing to be refreshed.
It was not long ago that Bayer described a glucometer that can be connected to a gaming devise that would make glucose measurement incentive driven. A glucose measuring instrument is used by diabetics to monitor their blood glucose. Bayer's glucometer connects directly to Nintendo DS™ and DS Lite gaming systems to help kids manage a lifelong disease by rewarding them for building consistent testing habits and meeting personalized blood glucose target ranges.
Are we going to see a merger of nanotechnology and gaming in revolutionizing health care?
Source for tatto based glucose sensing: MIT news office
The technology behind the sensor, described in a December 2009 issue of ACS Nano, is fundamentally different from existing sensors, says Michael Strano, Associate Professor at MIT, who developed this technology. The sensor is based on carbon nanotubes wrapped in a polymer that is sensitive to glucose concentrations. When this sensor encounters glucose, the nanotubes fluoresce, which can be detected by shining near-infrared light on them. Measuring the amount of fluorescence reveals the concentration of glucose.
The researchers plan to create an “ink” of these nanoparticles suspended in a saline solution that could be injected under the skin like a tattoo. The “tattoo” would last for a specified length of time, probably six months, before needing to be refreshed.
It was not long ago that Bayer described a glucometer that can be connected to a gaming devise that would make glucose measurement incentive driven. A glucose measuring instrument is used by diabetics to monitor their blood glucose. Bayer's glucometer connects directly to Nintendo DS™ and DS Lite gaming systems to help kids manage a lifelong disease by rewarding them for building consistent testing habits and meeting personalized blood glucose target ranges.
Are we going to see a merger of nanotechnology and gaming in revolutionizing health care?
Source for tatto based glucose sensing: MIT news office
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Gesture Computing - Gaming with Color Gloves
Next time when you buy a laptop, order a pair of colorful gloves too. This is not to keep 'viruses' away. Just wear the gloves and play your game on the laptop. You may need no mouse or joystick hereafter. Have you seen the movie Minority Report? This innovation is akin to the "Minority Report Interface" where a high speed gestural user interface helped communication with a computer by hand gestures!
MIT researchers have developed a system that could make gestural interfaces much more practical. Aside from a standard webcam, like those found in many new computers, the system uses only a single piece of hardware: a multicolored Lycra glove that could be manufactured for about a dollar.
The glove is covered with 20 irregularly shaped patches that use 10 different colors. The system is being developed by Robert Wang, a graduate student in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory with his mentor Jovan Popovic, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science.
The most obvious application of the technology, Wang says, would be in video games: Gamers navigating a virtual world could pick up and wield objects simply by using hand gestures.Wang also imagines that engineers and designers could use the system to more easily and intuitively manipulate 3-D models of commercial products or large civic structures.
Wang's software crops out the glove background, reduces the resolution of the image to 40x40 pixels, searches through a database containing myriad 40-by-40 digital models of a hand clad in the distinctive glove, in a range of different positions. Once it's found a match, it simply looks up the corresponding hand position.
Since the system doesn't have to calculate the relative positions of the fingers, palm, and back of the hand on the fly, it's able to provide an answer in a fraction of a second.
Sources: Gesture-based computing on the cheap - With a multicolored glove and Youtube
MIT researchers have developed a system that could make gestural interfaces much more practical. Aside from a standard webcam, like those found in many new computers, the system uses only a single piece of hardware: a multicolored Lycra glove that could be manufactured for about a dollar.
The glove is covered with 20 irregularly shaped patches that use 10 different colors. The system is being developed by Robert Wang, a graduate student in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory with his mentor Jovan Popovic, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science.
The most obvious application of the technology, Wang says, would be in video games: Gamers navigating a virtual world could pick up and wield objects simply by using hand gestures.Wang also imagines that engineers and designers could use the system to more easily and intuitively manipulate 3-D models of commercial products or large civic structures.
Wang's software crops out the glove background, reduces the resolution of the image to 40x40 pixels, searches through a database containing myriad 40-by-40 digital models of a hand clad in the distinctive glove, in a range of different positions. Once it's found a match, it simply looks up the corresponding hand position.
Since the system doesn't have to calculate the relative positions of the fingers, palm, and back of the hand on the fly, it's able to provide an answer in a fraction of a second.
Sources: Gesture-based computing on the cheap - With a multicolored glove and Youtube
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
An oil bath paid for by BP with a plugless hole in the Gulf
Well, we are in 21st century. We can operate a rover in Mars, but we cannot plug an oil spewing pipe under water! In 1962 Kennedy said we will go to moon in 10 years, we went to moon in 1969. Our Apollo 13 was about to die in the space. But we avoided a disaster using our bes
t brains. We can precisely hit targets across the globe by navigating a predator from our soil. Now a broken pipe is spewing millions of gallons of oil 5000 feet under the ocean. Those who put that pipe down do not know how to plug it. Where are our brains? Did we stop teaching science and technology in our schools? Do you know how to plug this stuff? If you know how it can be plugged, post it here.
The Story: A 21 inch pipe, 5000 feet below the sea level, is spewing thousands of gallons of oil beginning April 20. It so happened that BP knew how to siphon the oil, never knew how to fix a pipe if it were to break beneath the ocean floor. BP engineers are trying hard to plug the hole. First they lowered a 60-foot dome to contain and collect the leaking oil in a controlled manner. That failed. Next they lowered a 5-foot "top hat" dome in the hope that it would help them to draw up the leaking
oil to the surface, but failed. As a third attempt they inserted a 6-inch pipe into the 21-inch leaking pipe and started collecting 2000 barrels a day. BP estimated around 5000 barrels being gushed out into the ocean every day, while a Purdue scientist put this figure at whopping 70,000 barrels. The news is that huge oil plumes that extend miles have been formed in the Gulf.
Where is our science and technology leadership? What surprised me was not the leak, why no one had a clue how to plug it. When I take my family out to the park in the summer I will have an extra bottle of water in the car, just in case! When we call four people home for dinner we cook for two more, just in case! If we dont have food or time to cook we simply do not call them home! When you write a grant application to granting agencies, you need to write a separate section called "Potential Problems and Alternate Strategies", because those who give money need to know that in case what you propose do not work, you have a plan B. When you draw out oil from 5000 feet below the water, lots of things can go wrong, so you expect to have redundant and fail-safe plans B, C and D which are mutually independent. If I do not carry enough water in my outing, only my family and I suffer. If you do not get the grant funded only your personnel and you will suffer. But if some one spills millions of gallons of oil in to the ocean, the society will suffer. Is it a social crime? I do not know. (There might be some one out there saying you can dump lot more in ocean, ocean can take it!) . The leak needs to be plugged ASAP, we do not want the Mayan's 2012 consume us sooner.
If you know of a method to plug this pipe, post it here.
(Photos: Courtesy NASA; Video from Youtube)
t brains. We can precisely hit targets across the globe by navigating a predator from our soil. Now a broken pipe is spewing millions of gallons of oil 5000 feet under the ocean. Those who put that pipe down do not know how to plug it. Where are our brains? Did we stop teaching science and technology in our schools? Do you know how to plug this stuff? If you know how it can be plugged, post it here.The Story: A 21 inch pipe, 5000 feet below the sea level, is spewing thousands of gallons of oil beginning April 20. It so happened that BP knew how to siphon the oil, never knew how to fix a pipe if it were to break beneath the ocean floor. BP engineers are trying hard to plug the hole. First they lowered a 60-foot dome to contain and collect the leaking oil in a controlled manner. That failed. Next they lowered a 5-foot "top hat" dome in the hope that it would help them to draw up the leaking
oil to the surface, but failed. As a third attempt they inserted a 6-inch pipe into the 21-inch leaking pipe and started collecting 2000 barrels a day. BP estimated around 5000 barrels being gushed out into the ocean every day, while a Purdue scientist put this figure at whopping 70,000 barrels. The news is that huge oil plumes that extend miles have been formed in the Gulf.Where is our science and technology leadership? What surprised me was not the leak, why no one had a clue how to plug it. When I take my family out to the park in the summer I will have an extra bottle of water in the car, just in case! When we call four people home for dinner we cook for two more, just in case! If we dont have food or time to cook we simply do not call them home! When you write a grant application to granting agencies, you need to write a separate section called "Potential Problems and Alternate Strategies", because those who give money need to know that in case what you propose do not work, you have a plan B. When you draw out oil from 5000 feet below the water, lots of things can go wrong, so you expect to have redundant and fail-safe plans B, C and D which are mutually independent. If I do not carry enough water in my outing, only my family and I suffer. If you do not get the grant funded only your personnel and you will suffer. But if some one spills millions of gallons of oil in to the ocean, the society will suffer. Is it a social crime? I do not know. (There might be some one out there saying you can dump lot more in ocean, ocean can take it!) . The leak needs to be plugged ASAP, we do not want the Mayan's 2012 consume us sooner.
If you know of a method to plug this pipe, post it here.
(Photos: Courtesy NASA; Video from Youtube)
Monday, May 17, 2010
Commute to work in airplane- Its coming…
According to NASA supported studies, 20 years from now, airplanes may transform to technological marvels.
The GE Aviation team conceptualizes a 20-passenger aircraft that could reduce congestion at major metropolitan hubs by using community airports for point-to-point travel. The aircraft has an oval-shaped fuselage that seats four across in full-sized seats.
As always, with its 180-passenger D8 "double bubble" configuration, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology team strays farthest from the familiar, fusing two aircraft bodies together lengthwise and mounting three turbofan jet engines on the tail.
The GE Aviation team conceptualizes a 20-passenger aircraft that could reduce congestion at major metropolitan hubs by using community airports for point-to-point travel. The aircraft has an oval-shaped fuselage that seats four across in full-sized seats.
As always, with its 180-passenger D8 "double bubble" configuration, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology team strays farthest from the familiar, fusing two aircraft bodies together lengthwise and mounting three turbofan jet engines on the tail.
The Boeing Company's Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research, or SUGAR, team's preferred concept, the SUGAR Volt, is a twin-engine aircraft with hybrid propulsion technology, a tube-shaped body and a truss-braced wing mounted to the top.
Just beneath the skin of these concepts lie breakthrough airframe and propulsion technologies designed to help the commercial aircraft of tomorrow fly significantly quieter, cleaner, and more fuel-efficiently, with more passenger comfort, and to more of America's airports. You may see ultramodern shape memory alloys, ceramic or fiber composites, carbon nanotube or fiber optic cabling, self-healing skin, hybrid electric engines, folding wings, double fuselages and virtual reality windows. "Standing next to the airplane, you may not be able to tell the difference, but the improvements will be revolutionary," said Richard Wahls, project scientist for the Fundamental Aeronautics Program's Subsonic Fixed Wing Project at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. "Technological beauty is more than skin deep."
With the goals of a reduction of 71-decibel noise, 75 percent NO emission and 70 percent fuel burn for 2030 aircraft, industry and academia responded to the NASA request with these exotic models some of which may allow us a daily airplane commute to work.
Source: Beauty of Future Airplanes is More than Skin Deep
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RogerRoast blog is for current developments in science and technology and interesting stories on science and technology. If you find an interesting story, tweet me. Not all requests may be considered, but all requests will be carefully evaluated for interesting content.
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