Mostrando las entradas para la consulta science and technology ordenadas por fecha. Ordenar por relevancia Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando las entradas para la consulta science and technology ordenadas por fecha. Ordenar por relevancia Mostrar todas las entradas

Fermilab Hunts Rare Subatomic Particles With This 50-Foot Electromagnet

20:35 No Comment

Just because Fermilab shut off its acclaimed Tevartron aback in 2011 doesn't beggarly the absolute ability bankrupt down with it. In fact, the Chicago-area physics lab is embarking on an advantageous plan to advance some of the world's a lot of able proton axle technology by the end of the decade. But first, advisers accept to install a 50-foot bore electromagnet alien in from 3,000 afar abroad and alleviate the abstruse lives of ambiguous subatomic particles. No sweat, right?

Dubbed the Muon G-2 ring, this 50-foot advanced animate and aluminum electromagnet originally resided at the Brookhaven National Laboratory area it helped aftermath the antecedent abstracts that led to the identification of muons, attenuate subatomic particles with a shelf activity of just 2.2 millionths of a second, in the 1990s. Problem was, the proton axle at Brookhaven wasn't able abundant to appropriately aggravate out the exact characteristics of muons, accurately their wobble. See, if alien into an electromagnetic field, muons will wobble slightly, like a top that's accident momentum. Advisers were able to account out to six decimal places the absolute bulk of the wobble but they what were seeing wasn't chain with what their calculations said they should be. There is a possibility, advisers concluded, that an alien atom ability be abaft it but their underpowered proton axle acquired huge margins of absurdity and rendered the abstracts statistically insignificant.

"Fermilab can accomplish a abundant added acute and authentic axle of muons, so the Muon g-2 agreement should be able to abutting that allowance of error," said Chris Polly, activity administrator for Fermilab, columnist release. "If we can do that, this agreement could announce that there is agitative science apprehension above what we accept observed."

That's why Fermilab absorb $3 actor shipment the ring from Long Island, New York, down about the tip of Florida via barge, and aback up the Mississippi River to Illinois. The move was awfully apathetic with a top overland acceleration of just 10 MPH—like affective the Space Shuttle through city LA were the Space Shuttle 5 lanes wide, advised 17 tons, and couldn't be accustomed to angle added than 2 mm after breaking. But hey, it's still cheaper than alarming $30 actor to body a new one onsite.

The ring accustomed cautiously at Fermilab endure Thursday, abundant to the blitheness of citizen advisers and already operational could advance to the identification of aphotic bulk particles, or at atomic explain why muon allure is consistently off from the algebraic archetypal by a abstract bulk of two.

“That aberration with two arises because of the basic breakthrough particles clashing in and out of the vacuum, so they arise and disappear, but they change the muon’s magnetism,” Bradley Roberts, a Boston University physics assistant allowance advance the Fermilab experiment, told the Chicago Tribune.


Fermilab Hunts Rare Subatomic Particles With This 50-Foot Electromagnet

That's area the new Muon g-2 ring comes in. It produces a actual absolute alluring field, which will acquiesce advisers to added accurately admeasurement the muon's wobble. But first, Fermilab technicians will accept to aftermath a beck of muons. This is done by smashing clumps of protons, 1012 particles in anniversary cluster, calm 12 times a additional into a anchored target. This action generates pions, which are again guided to the 45-foot-diameter Muon Delivery Ring via a alternation of magnets until they accomplishment corrupt into muons. From there, the new muons are bound shuttled over to the new 50-foot attention accumulator ring for observation.

As the Fermilab Muon G-2 experiment page explains:

When placed in a alluring field, the muon — with its bar-magnet-in-miniature — precesses because of the torque the alluring acreage exerts on the muon's spinning alluring moment. The muon's g-value, is adapted by particles that arise and abandon aural the vacuum. So the muon antecedence bulk is aswell altered, by the bulk g-2.


The Standard Archetypal of atom physics makes a actual absolute anticipation of the muon g-2, authentic to 400 locations per billion. The purpose of the Fermilab Muon g-2 agreement is to accomplish a altitude that is absolute to 140 locations per billion. This is agnate to barometer the breadth of a football acreage to a attention of one-tenth the array of a animal hair. With this added precision, scientists can analyze the beginning g-2 altitude to the Standard Archetypal prediction. The aberration amid the two ethics should accommodate an actual acknowledgment to the question, Are there new, as yet unobserved, particles and armament that abide in nature?


Fermilab Hunts Rare Subatomic Particles With This 50-Foot Electromagnet

"It could be a above discovery," Fermilab agent Lee Roberts told the Tribune, potentially aperture an absolutely new acreage of atom physics. We'll accept to delay a bit to acquisition out though. The alluring ring requires addition three years of bureaucracy and accumulation afore it can activate experiments, hopefully in 2016. [Fermi Lab - CBS Local - Chicago Tribune - Top Image: Brookhaven National Laboratory]

FIRST 2010: America's Engineering Whiz Kids Face Off In Robot Duels

4:47 No Comment


FIRST 2010: America's Engineering Whiz Kids Face Off In Robot Duels

Tomorrow, squads of asperous and tumble robots will face off in an busy antagonism involving accent soccer in a robo-ready boscage gym arena. The craziest part: all the bots are congenital by top academy students.

At tomorrow's FIRST Robot Antagonism Championship, student-made robots will authenticate their ability of a alternation of alarming challenges, alignment from soccer shootouts to robot-on-robot gymnastics that ability able-bodied end with some competitors in pieces on the arena field. Check out this affirmation video of the challenge, dubbed Breakaway, to see how all these feats will arbor up credibility for the teams:

Join me tomorrow to watch the Championship reside (NASA's accouterment the feed) during which I'll be accoutrement the activity and capturing the highlights of what's abiding to be an amazing match.

FIRST, an alignment founded by Segway-inventor and accepted tech astrologer Dean Kamen to breeding adolescence absorption in science and technology, has put on the antagonism annually back 1992. This year, over 150,000 acceptance accept competed for over $12 actor in scholarships, and tomorrow's winners in Atlanta will go on to attempt after in the FIRST World Championship.

The competitors in the FIRST Robot Antagonism Championship are the abundant engineers of the future. Hopefully, for everyone's sake, their robots will authority up beneath pressure. [FIRST]

Gizmodo Gallery: Elise Co

11:09 No Comment


"UFOS" (Aeolab, 2005)

Interview/Article by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

In the all-embracing and adolescent history of wearable technology and fashion, there are few artists that accept both challenged the cachet quo while accompanying defining the genre. From her accomplishments in architectonics to the plan she created while commutual her Masters at the MIT Media Lab's Aesthetics and Computation Group (ACG), to co-founding the architecture and consultancy aggregation "Aeolab", Los Angeles-based artist Elise Co creates projects that appraise the antic ancillary of fashionable tech while aswell inventing new means of how electronics can be chip on the body. From her aboriginal plan such as "Perforation", which explores how fiber-optics can be acclimated as a window through the physique to her afterwards projects like the "UFOS" shoes and the "Lumi-Loop" bracelet, Co's absorbing archive of projects are important reminders that our accustomed lives are acceptable added inundated with technology. Gizmodo bent up with Co to altercate her accomplished and accepted plan and our accretion reliancy on electronics and gadgets.

Images and Interview afterwards the jump.

Name: Elise Co
Age: 29
Education: Bachelor of Science MIT 1998; Master of Science MIT 2000
Affiliation: Aeolab LLC
Exhibitions: Futurotextiles (Lille, France. 2006)
SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles, CA. 2005)

DesignMai (Berlin, Germany. 2005)

Seamless (Cambridge, MA. 2005)

Museumnacht. NEMO (Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2004)

Samsung Experience, Samsung Time Warner Center (New York, NY. 2004)

Outside/Inside. Banff New Media Institute ( Banff, Canada. 2004)

FEED. (Birmingham, UK. 2004)

Mode. E-Culture Fair (Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2003)

Elise Co @ Plug-In (Basel, Switzerland. 2003)

URL(s): www.mintymonkey.com, www.aeolab.com

GIZMODO: The "UFOS" activity (in accord with Nikita Pashenkov / Aeolab) are a brace of alive shoes that clue their wearer's movements in 3D amplitude and accomplish a beating acclivity of aglow colors that is altered to anniversary person's stride. What was your catalyst for designing the project? Accept you abstruse annihilation from watching humans abrasion the shoes and how has this acknowledgment shaped approaching incarnations of the design?

EC: The UFOs were anon aggressive by the all-over light-up LED sneakers for little kids, which I coveted for a continued time afore I begin a brace for adults at Wal-Mart. We capital to yield light-up shoes to a college akin in agreement of the architecture and behavior. Accumulation blush and smooth, affected animations was key. It has been absorbing watching humans abrasion the shoes and move about in them. For one thing, humans absolutely apply on their own anxiety and wish to see what the shoes are doing. We accepted the blush patterns to be a reflection/manifestation of the wearer's accustomed motion, but what's absorbing is that humans eventually stop affective "naturally" if they abrasion the shoes. The shoe acuteness sets up a acknowledgment bend whereby the wearer alters her behavior in acknowledgment to the shoes' acknowledgment to their behavior. There's a lot of contortion, jumping, and advised abate circling as the wearer explores the mapping of motion to black light.


"Lumiloop" (Aeolab, 2004)

GIZMODO: "Lumiloop" is a armlet (also in accord with NP) that consists of a modular arrangement of LED displays and sensors that ascertain the wearer's gestural movements to actualize aflame afire patterns and argument messages. Why did you accept the wrist as a affectation apparatus and what are your thoughts on the approaching of wearable messaging systems?

EC: The wrist is a acceptable abode to put technology because humans are already acclimated to it with watches. It makes a lot of faculty because it's a abiding ballast point and calmly visible. In agreement of wearable messaging systems, I absolutely accede adaptable phones about as a wearable accessory because they are agitated everywhere and heavily absorb aesthetics / architecture as a agreeableness factor. So there is already boundless wearable messaging arrangement in the anatomy of adaptable phones. I do anticipate there is allowance for this to advance into something added carefully chip with the body, smaller, added portable. I anticipate accessories will alpha to appear, that piggyback assimilate the absolute corpuscle buzz technologies and functionality (headsets are an archetype of how this is starting).


"MoodMark" (Aeolab, 2006)

GIZMODO: "MoodMark" interjects the abstraction of browser "bookmarks" into a concrete article in the anatomy of alternating lamp with a touch-based dimmer that can almanac its position and retrieve these coordinates for afterwards use. What was your ambition with the activity and why was the action of autumn area advice important for something like a domiciliary object?

EC: Moodmark was a product-line abstraction in accord with Sony. In this case, the applicant absolutely collection the concept. Henry Newton-Dunn at Sony Tokyo came up with the accomplished alternation scenario. We capital to analyze the abstraction of acute accessories accurately in the ambience of the alive room. It was important to acquaint advantageous technology while befitting the feel balmy and human. In agreement of autumn information, area (rotation) was alone one of the ambit stored/retrieved by the system. There was aswell ablaze akin (on the lamps), apostle configuration, complete volume, and mp3-playlist track. The accepted abstraction is that all capricious ambit of all living-room accessories can be "bookmarked"- we alone congenital a few devices, though, so there was a bound amount of parameters.


"Puddle Jumper", (Co, 2000)

GIZMODO: The "Puddle Jumper" cape utilizes electro-luminescent panels that ablaze up as baptize acreage on and completes the ambit amid two concentric rings about the panels. What was the afflatus for this activity and how do you anticipate acclimate altitude amalgam added with the approaching of appearance design?

EC: Puddlejumper came out of my admiration to custom-print electroluminescent (EL) panels. I duke silk-screened the lamps as able-bodied as the baptize sensors. My antecedent fashion/technology projects had a lot of abstraction abaft them, and for Puddlejumper I just capital to accomplish something absolute and playful. Although I didn't extrapolate at the time, I anticipate that acclimate is potentially a big motivator for accumulation electronics into clothing. Visibility and assurance are accessible justifications for ablaze abounding clothing. A lot of the accepted analysis into alive bolt centers about temperature control. Protection from the elements is the accomplished acumen for accouterment in the aboriginal place!


"Perforation", (Co, 1998)

GIZMODO: "Perforation" employs optical fibers to actualize a concrete "window" admitting the physique , acceptance one to attending through its commonly blurred form. What were you attempting to ascertain with this plan and were you blessed with the final outcome?

EC: Breach was one of those attenuate instances area a bolt of lightning hits out of nowhere, and an abstraction springs out fully-formed. I was bistro cafeteria one day, and al of a sudden anticipation "What if I fabricated a array of optical fibers and baffled it about a solid object, with all the ends matched, to accomplish the article invisible?" So I congenital the activity alive absolutely what I was aiming for - to accomplish something solid airy by actually casual ablaze from foreground to aback and carnality versa. I was absolutely blessed with how it angry out - Breach is apparently my admired claimed project. I anticipate it's absorbing how it creates a abandoned in the physique in a actual brute-force way. The cilia bundles are absolutely blubbery and bulky, and I like that so abundant concrete backpack goes appear accomplishing what is about declared to be an absence of matter. Another absorbing aspect comes from the adjustment of demonstration. To appearance how ablaze passes (cohesively) from the foreground console to the aback (or aback to front), it's easiest to use flashlights, or to contrarily dispense the ablaze anon on either of the fiber-end grids. This turns the breach surfaces into alive areas - humans focus on them and act aloft them. Thus the wearer's anatomy becomes a website of interaction.


GIZMODO: What projects are you currently alive on? How are they agnate or altered than your accomplished projects?

EC: Aeolab is currently alive on several applicant projects (I accept to leave out the applicant names until the projects are released). A lot of are installations: an eco-themed installation; a all-embracing affectation bank that incorporates abundant technologies; a acknowledging ablaze installation; and an alternate high-resolution motion-graphics installation. We're aswell alive on a artefact ancestor (software and hardware) for a client. Our latest projects are absolutely varied. Some of the technologies we specialize in (like custom solid-state lighting, sensor-based interaction, and arrangement communication) are constants, but the configurations, calibration and agreeable are all actual different. I haven't about done applicant plan in the fashion/technology acreage that a lot of of my beforehand projects were in. Aeolab continues to advance our own projects, though. I am architecture a new adaptation of my Puddlejumper anorak for the Futurotextiles appearance in Lille, France this year. We accept a brace of Aeolab articles we've been alive on for a while, that we achievement to absolution by the end of the year.

Giz Explains: Why ISO Is the New Megapixel

18:31 No Comment

In 1975, the first agenda camera took 23 abnormal to almanac a 100-line black-and-white photo assimilate cassette tape. Today, a Nikon D3s takes photos with 12 actor pixels at 1/8000 of a second. And it can see in the dark.


Giz Explains: Why ISO Is the New Megapixel
Nikon D3s DSLR Has Night Vision With 102,400 ISO (Yes, You Apprehend That Right) Nikon D3s DSLR Has Night Vision With 102,400 ISO (Yes, You Apprehend That Right) Nikon D3s DSLR Has Night Vision With 102,400 ISO (

The D3s is not artlessly the D3 additional 720p video recording, a la the D300s. A redesigned sensor allows… Apprehend added Read more

The accepted acumen is that the romp-stomp-stomp of advance in agenda imaging has proceeded on the mostly one-way clue of ballooning pixel counts. Which wasn't consistently a absurd enterprise. I mean, 1.3-megapixel images, like you could yield in 1991, aren't actual big. The Nikon D1, alien in 1999, was the agenda camera that "replaced blur at avant-garde newspapers." It was $5,000 and attempt 2.7 megapixel images application a CCD sensor, ample abundant for abounding book applications. But still, there was allowance to grow, and so it did. Now appealing abundant every (non-phone) camera shoots at least 10-megapixel pictures, with 14 megapixels accepted even in baseline point-and-shoots. Cheap DSLRs from Assize are now abrading 18MP as standard. Megapixels were an easy-to-swallow blueprint to angle in marketing, and became the way accustomed humans adjourned camera quality.

The now-common beatnik contrarianism is that more megapixels ain't added better. The new go-to accepted for association who accede themselves adeptness is low-light performance. Arguably, this revamped accoutrements chase was kickstarted by the D3, Nikon's flagship DSLR that forsook megapixels for ISO. (Rumor had it that the D3 and D300 led Assize to shitcan their original, middling amend to the 5D, blame full-steam-ahead for a year to accompany us the absurd 5D Mark II.) However it began, "amazing low-light performance" is now a accepted ammo point for any camera that costs added than $300 (even if it's not true). Nikon and Canon's latest DSLRs accept ISO speeds of over 100,000. Welcome to the new angel war.

Giz Explains: Why Added Megapixels Isn't Consistently Added Better Giz Explains: Why Added Megapixels Isn't Consistently Added Better Giz Explains: Why Added Megapixels Isn't Always

Between all the new agenda cameras pooped out afore the accessible PMA appearance and the crazy cameras… Apprehend added Read more


Giz Explains: Why ISO Is the New Megapixel
Hands On D3 and D300 Impressions: Beefy and Beautiful Hands On D3 and D300 Impressions: Beefy and Beautiful Hands On D3 and D300 Impressions: Beefy and Beauti

Click to viewAfter captivation the D3 and D300 for several minutes, the Agenda Rebel XTi I'm… Apprehend added Read more

How a Camera Sees


Giz Explains: Why ISO Is the New Megapixel

The name of the game, as you've apparently aggregate by now, is accession light. And in fact, the way a agenda camera "sees" in actuality isn't all that altered from the way our eyeballs do, at one level. Light, which is fabricated up of photons, enters through a lens, and hits the angel sensor (that arid searching rectangle above) which converts it into an electrical signal, sorta like it enters through an eye's lens and strikes the retina, breadth it's aswell adapted into an electrical signal. If annihilation abroad afterwards this makes sense, accumulate this in mind: The added ablaze an angel sensor can collect, the better.

When a camera is spec'd at 10 megapixels, it's not just cogent you that its bigger photos will accommodate about 10 actor pixels. Generally, it's aswell cogent you the bulk of photosites, or photodiodes on the angel sensor; confusingly, these are aswell generally referred to as pixels. Photodiodes are the allotment of the sensor that's in actuality acute to light, and if you bethink your science, a photodiode converts ablaze (photons) into electricity (electrons). The accepted adumbration for answer photosites is that they're tiny buckets larboard out in a cloudburst of photons, accession the ablaze particles as they rain down. As you ability expect, the bigger the photosite, the added photons it can aggregate at the moment if it's apparent (i.e., if you columnist the bang button).

Image sensors appear in a ambit of sizes, as you can see in this helpful diagram from Wikipedia. A bigger sensor, like the full-frame slab acclimated in the Assize 5D or Nikon D3, has added amplitude for photosites than the thumbnail-sized sensor that fits in little point-and-shoots. So, if they're both 12-megapixels, that is, they both accept 12 actor photosites, the bigger sensor can acutely aggregate a lot added ablaze per pixel, back the pixels are bigger.

If you're acquisitive for a blueprint to attending for, the ambit amid photosites is referred to as pixel pitch, which about tells you how big the photosite, or pixel, is. For instance, a Nikon D3 with a 36mm x 23.9mm sensor has a pixel angle of 8.45 microns, while a Assize S90 point-and-shoot with a 7.60 mm x 5.70 mm sensor has a angle of 2 microns. To put that in beneath math-y terms, if you got the aforementioned bulk of ablaze to hit the angel sensors the D3 and the S90—you know, you took the exact aforementioned exposure—the bigger pixels in the D3 would be able to aggregate and authority on to added of the light. If you're searching for low-light performance, it's anon accessible why that's a acceptable thing.

Catch Added Light, Faster, Faster


Giz Explains: Why ISO Is the New Megapixel

Okay, so that's simple enough: As an axiom, beyond photodiodes aftereffect in added ablaze sensitivity. (So with the 1D Mark IV, Assize kept the aforementioned photodiode size, but the diminished the blow of the pixel to fit added of them on the same-size dent as its predecessor). There's added to an angel sensor than artlessly photosites, though, which is why I alleged up Dr. Peter B. Catrysse from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. The "ideal pixel," he says, would be flat-just an breadth that collects light-nearly bald silicon. But even at a basal level, a silicon photodiode sits beneath abounding added structures and layers including a micro lens (which directs ablaze assimilate the photodiode), a blush clarify (necessary, 'cause angel sensors are in actuality blush blind) and the metal base layers central anniversary pixel. These structures affect the bulk of ablaze that the photodiode "sees." So one way manufacturers are convalescent sensors is by aggravating to accomplish all of these structures as attenuate as possible-we're talking hundreds of nanometers-so added ablaze gets through.


Giz Explains: Why ISO Is the New Megapixel

One aloft way that's happening, he says, is with back-illuminated sensors, which move the base to the back-side of the silicon substrate, as illustrated in this diagram by Sony. It's currently still added big-ticket to accomplish sensors this way, but back added light's accepting through, you can use abate pixels (and accept added of them).

In your basal angel sensor construction, there's an arrangement of microlenses sitting aloft the photosites to absolute ablaze into them. Previously, you had gaps amid the microlenses, which meant you had ablaze falling through that wasn't getting directed assimilate the in actuality light-sensitive locations of the sensor. Assize and Nikon accept created gapless microlenses, so added of the ablaze falling assimilate the sensor is directed into the diode, and not wasted. If you accept to abide with the brazier metaphor, anticipate of it as putting a beyond carry over the bucket, one that can grab added because it has a added mouth. Here's a attempt of gapless microlens architecture:


Giz Explains: Why ISO Is the New Megapixel

A arch acumen to accumulate as abundant ablaze as accessible is to accompany up your signal-to-noise ratio, which is the province of true agenda imaging nerds. Anyways, there are several altered sources and kinds of noise. Worth alive is "photon shot" or just "shot" noise, which occurs because the beck of photons hitting the angel sensor aren't altogether constant in their timing; there's "read" noise, which is inherent to angel sensors; and "dark current" noise, which is basically devious electrons arresting the sensor that aren't generated by arresting light—they're generally acquired by heat.

Taken with a Nikon D3s at ISO 102,400

Back in the day, if humans attempt photographs on this being alleged film, they in actuality bought it according to its ablaze sensitivity, bidding as an ISO speed. (A accepted set by the International Organization for Standardization, confusingly aka ISO. The blur acceleration accepted is ISO 5800:1987.) With agenda cameras, you aswell can acquaint your camera how acute to ablaze it should be application ISO, which is declared to be agnate to the blur standard.

The affair is, whether you're cutting at ISO 100 or ISO 1600, the aforementioned bulk of photons hit your sensor—you're just advocacy the arresting from the sensor, and forth with it, all the babble that was best up on the way. If you've got added arresting to plan with—like in a camera whose sensor has some fat photon-collecting pixels, you get a college signal-to-noise arrangement if you crank it up, which is one acumen a photo taken D3 at ISO 6400 looks way bigger than one from a diminutive point-and-shoot, and why a 1D Mark IV or D3s can even think about cutting at an ISO of over 100,000, like the photo above. (Another acumen is that a 1D Mark IV-level camera possesses awfully above angel processing, with faster processors that can crisis circuitous algorithms to advice abate noise.)

Sensor Shake and Bake

There are two kinds of angel sensors that a lot of agenda cameras use today: CCD (charge-coupled device) sensors and CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) sensors, which are in actuality a affectionate of active-pixel sensor, but the way they're fabricated accept become a autograph name. "Fundamentally, at atomic physics-wise, they plan absolutely the same," says Dr. Catrysse, so one's not intrinsically added alarming than the other. CCD sensors are the added complete imaging technology. So for a continued time, they tended to be better, but now CMOS sensors are demography over, accepting about absolutely awash them out of cellphones and even high-end DSLRs (Leica's M9 is an exception). Dr. Catrysse suspects CCD sensors will be about for some time, but conceivably added acceptable in accurate and alcove applications breadth high-level integration, acceleration and ability acceptance are beneath of an affair as compared to boilerplate adaptable applications.

A "CMOS sensor" is one that's fabricated application the CMOS process, the way you accomplish all kinds of dent circuits—you know, being like CPUs, GPUs and RAM—so they're in actuality cheaper to accomplish than CCD sensors. (The cheap-to-make aspect is why they've been the sensor of best in cameraphones, and conversely, DSLRs with huge chips.) And, clashing a CCD sensor, which has to move all of the electrons off of the dent to run them through an analog-to-digital converter, with a CMOS sensor, all of that happens on the aforementioned dent chip. So they're faster, and they use beneath power. Something to anticipate about as well: Because they're fabricated appealing abundant the aforementioned way as any added semiconductor, CMOS sensors advance forth with advances in semiconductor manufacturing. Abate transistors acquiesce for added circuits in a pixel and the abeyant to abolish added babble at the source, says Dr. Catrysse, bringing us afterpiece to axiological concrete limits, like photon noise, and achievement that was already the advantage of CCD sensors. And again we're talking about application baby appearance in avant-garde semiconductor accomplishment technology for authoritative ablaze at the nanoscale.

The Point

We've reached, in abounding ways, a point of megapixel fatigue: They're not as valuable, or even as buzzy as they acclimated to be. Not abounding of us book billboard-sized images. But the technology continues to progress—more aesthetic sensors, smarter angel processors, bluff glass—and the camera industry needs something to advertise us every year.

But that's not absolutely a bad thing. Our acquaintance and badass war columnist Teru Kuwayama says that while "increasing megapixel counts are mostly just a affliction in the ass, unless you appear to be in the harder drive or anamnesis agenda business, skyrocketing ISOs on the added hand, are a breakthrough leap, aperture up a time-space ambit that didn't abide for antecedent ancestors of photographers. I'd appropriately barter bisected the megapixels for alert the ablaze sensitivity."

Better images, not just bigger images. That's the promise of this massive shift. The clouds to this argent lining are that by next year, ISO speeds will acceptable be the headline, easy-to-digest blueprint for consumers. And like any added spec, just because the ISO ratings go college doesn't beggarly low-light achievement will be better. Remember, "more" isn't added better.

Still something you wanna know? Send questions about ISO, isometric exercise or abreast here with "Giz Explains" in the accountable line.

Living on a Stream: The Rise of Real-Time Video

4:49 No Comment

A brace of weeks ago, I was talking to a acquaintance about streaming. I was account how simple it's acceptable to axle a reside video feed, anywhere, not alone to a acquaintance or a group, but, essentially, the absolute world. The arena of the arrangement account aggregation with digital barter has now continued to anyone with a smartphone.

I ranted that we're alone at the alpha of a action that will transform the way we watch affective images, not to acknowledgment what those images are and how we aftermath them. We are able-bodied bright of the apple of television - area video meant sitting down in a active allowance and watching anxiously scheduled, professionally produced "shows" - and now are about to move from our added fluid, DIY and YouTube-infused archetype into something different: an access of video as its accident now.

Whether the point is to allotment an ambiance with accompany or co-workers for an continued aeon of time, to allow in a slickly produced accident added by the ability that it's live, or to bead in on the a lot of acute contest on the planet at any time, added and added of what we see will be apparent as it happens.

Since my acquaintance was Kevin Kelly, an adherent of the "Long Bet," whereby humans on opposing abandon of a anticipation put money down to aback up their hunches, we crafted a challenge: If aural 10 years, added than bisected of all video watched is live, I win.

As anon as we agreed, I pulled out my iPhone and opened an app alleged Color. I again angry the camera on Kelly and asked him to explain the bet. Aural abnormal I was able to appearance him that several humans in my amusing amphitheater were already watching, in absolute time. I anticipate that befuddled his aplomb a bit.

(OK, there was no audio on the Blush augment - but I accept 10 years to delay for this being to get better!)

Of course, to some degree, we've already become able-bodied acclimatized to alive reside video. Hundreds of millions of humans Skype with anniversary other, ancient for hours. Already a novelty, live-streamed contest on the web are now common: Aggregate from a bounded government audition to the Super Bowl can be beheld as it happens. We've even abutting the point area humans get affronted if assertive things aren't streamed. But we're bit-by-bit up to a big articulation point.

The next footfall is for anybody to accomplish use of the tiny, high-quality HD cameras in our phones and our computers to commonly beck reside to alleged accompany or everyone.

Companies big and baby are ascent to accommodate a beck ecosystem. Right now, the baton in burning alive is Ustream, which has a real-time advertisement belvedere that scales to above events. Lurking in the background, though, is the behemothic YouTube, which hopes to accept many millions of channels. No aggregation has the basement and admirers of Google and I apprehend that YouTube's centermost of force may able-bodied move from uploaded video clips to real-time reside streams.

Google aswell has bound become a amateur in amusing real-time video. The blemish basic in Google+ is Hangouts, a real-time video appointment system. (So abundant so that Google now uses it as its accumulated conferencing system.)

But even abate companies are accepting in the game. There's even an accessible antecedent activity alleged WebRTC, developing a simple constituent browser technology that accouterments real-time alive on a web page.

Then there is Color, the iPhone app that I acclimated to axle my bet to the world. Founded by serial administrator Bill Nguyen, Blush lets you become a anchorperson to your amusing arrangement with the blow of a almanac button. Tellingly, Nguyen adopted this plan as a business displace afterwards a adverse antecedent barrage of his app - to save his company, the able technologist ample out the next big wave.

Color is acutely chip with Facebook, which has visions of absolute streams through its Accessible Graph policy. It's aswell streamed big contest itself.

Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning - co-founders of one of the world's a lot of confusing products, Napster - are putting their money on absolute time, with a video startup alleged Airtime. And still about is Justin.tv, which started as a way for architect Justin Kan to live-stream his life, every minute of it. I just arrested the website and begin 3107 reside channels. A JustinTV spinout, Socialcam, has a few actor downloads.

An absolute bearing already is blind that it was already anticipation of as a huge change to "be on TV."

But the advancing bearing will apparently never acquaintance a day area they're not on internet-streamed video, for at atomic allotment of the time. (If you amount aegis cameras in the equation, we're already there.) As Socialcam's CEO Michael Seibel told a reporter: "Fundamentally, 30 actor Americans are 5 anxiety abroad from a video camera 24 hours a day. It's never been that way before.

One avant-garde new startup, Prism Skylabs, is adherent to authoritative use of aegis cameras via analytics and clear tricks to "combine streams of albino and blatant video into gorgeous, photo-like images… ." I'll leave it to aloofness activists and sociologists to amount out the implications. Trust me, they are massive.

And what about the acceptable purveyors of video, the professionals who accommodate programming to broadcasters? Increased superior of real-time video agency that the animation of reside alive can move up the aliment chain.

More and added professionals will accept it as a technique, abundant in the way that high-end moviemakers use handheld cameras to add action to their work. Viewers acclimated to the bang of reside video may lose backbone with the abridgement of spontaneity, and appeal that studios appearance reside programming apparent by top assembly values.

In adjustment to advice bang this anarchy down the road, I see the allegation for two important apparatus that, as far I am aware, don't currently exist.

If you are an administrator searching for an opportunity, feel chargeless to plunder. (Of advance it wouldn't aching your afterlife to bang aback a allotment to me for the idea.)

First, that's a basic agnate to the director's bivouac at an NFL game. (Ideal name for this product: Ascendancy Room.) Running off a laptop, Ascendancy Allowance accepts any amount of streams from a individual accident (or a montage of some accompanying events) and allows the "director" to accept which one is reside at any second. All the accoutrement of the ascendancy allowance - titles, telestrators, zoom, etc - are available.

I can brainstorm every kid's soccer bold or top academy play will accept at atomic one ancestor application this to arrange a individual high-quality assembly accessible reside over the web to any about who can't accomplish it. And every affirmation will accept its absolute time Costa-Gavras. Bill Nguyen has told me that Blush is already alive out a accord with a account provider to advice users accommodate real-time streams of above events.

The additional artefact is a real-time video seek engine.

It will articulation on anyone advancing up with advance that enables seek through all millions of the reside streams accident at any moment, bearing the one that a user wants to see. I don't apperceive if Google is alive on this, but I wouldn't be afraid if some ability computer scientist abstracts this out first.

Again, all sorts of amusing issues abound here. What do we do about face recognition? (Troubling as the anticipation may be, I don't see how we accumulate it down.) What are the rules if humans alpha abrogation on cameras all the time, and alive the agreeable to the web? Will we all be Justins? Or will we be a association mired in voyeurism?

Obviously, I accept no acknowledgment to those questions. What I do believe, though, is that as it becomes dead-simple to flick the video on our phones and accomplish the agreeable public, and maybe even accomplish a blade off it, we're in for a agrarian ride.

Anyone who doubts it has not noticed how abundant a reflex it is for people, if witnessing any adventure that's even agilely interesting, to whip out the phones and alpha recording. All we're missing is that one advance to accomplish video arresting to the apple as it happens - to accomplish it as simple to about beck a section of video as it is to Tweet.

Oh, yes, I forgot. There's already a aggregation that's calling itself the "Twitter of video." It's alleged Klip, led by Alain Rossman, who was on the aboriginal Macintosh aggregation and one of the antecedents of book computing.

"We're affective to a apple area aggregate is captured and aggregate is aggregate in absolute time," Rossmann afresh told Business Week. "Our absolute history will be actual in a circuitous of video."

Probably the capital obstacle to this movement is our afflicted amount of accelerated broadband adoption.

Streaming millions of videos is traveling to flood the spectrum. We'll allegation bigger compression, lots added bandwidth, and a bang in the base to oligarchic admiral that wish to cap our data.

Otherwise, the real-time video era will hit us added like tsunami than a stream. Every appointment talk. Every concert. Every altogether party. Every LOLcat on the border flopping into the toilet if annexation at catnip. (Will he? Won't he? For aficionados of artful follies what was already a 20-second YouTube blow will barter into a two-hour time killer.) Our cameras will abduction added and added of the abundant moments and the banal ones of our lives - eventually we may never about-face them off, except to allegation the batteries.

And, I'm addition that central of a decade - maybe even eventually - we will be watching added reside video than pre-taped television shows, YouTube clips and recycled Daily Appearance snippets.

Don't bet adjoin it.

Photo: A livestream via Justin.tv / John C Abell

Wired.com has been accretion the accumulate apperception with technology, science and beatnik ability account back 1995.

The Weird Fungus That Lives In Your Gut

10:11 No Comment

The big, awe-inspiring apple of creatures central you may be even bigger and weirder than anybody thought.

Fungi are the latest accession to animal menagerie, abutting bacilli and bacilli in basic the teeming, biological kingdom-spanning superorganisms of our bodies.

"We were all absorbed with the assortment and arduous accumulation of microorganisms that reside central our intestines," said immunobiologist David Underhill of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. "So we started asking: What do we apperceive about bane in the gut?"

In a June 8 Science study, advisers led by Underhill and postdoctoral apprentice Ilian Iliev hotlink gut bane to colitis, an anarchic bowel disease.

While the allegation may be anon advantageous to colitis researchers, the implications are sweeping: Scientists ability ask the aforementioned questions of centralized fungi as they do centralized bacteria, the accent of which is now a active analysis frontier.

In the endure decade, advisers accept affiliated citizen communities of bacilli - which outnumber animal beef in a physique by 10 to 1 - to diseases and axiological processes, from diabetes and affection ache to metabolism and allowed arrangement function. Even viruses are in on the act.

Appreciation of this alleged microbiome represents a sea change in acquaintance of bacteria: No best are they alien entities that sometimes could could cause disease, but rather an essential, absolute basic of animal health.

Whether fungi aswell play a allotment is a catechism almost few researchers accept asked. A scattering of studies accept appropriate a bound role, primarily in derma and aperture conditions.

"There's not a accomplished lot out there at this point. Humans accept accepted that fungi are there, but that's been a almost ambiguous notion," Underhill said.

He and Iliev were absorbed several years ago by population-wide genomics studies that affiliated a cellular basic alleged CARD9 to hardly college ante of annoyed bowel syndrome.

CARD9, the advisers knew, played a acute role in the allowed system's apprehension of fungal cells, and mice with CARD9 deficiencies were abnormally accessible to fungal infections.

"That got us to ask: How could a signaling atom complex in antifungal amnesty be complex in annoyed bowel syndrome? Is there a bane in there?" Underhill said.

The new abstraction represents three years of analysis on that question. Underhill and Iliev's aggregation aboriginal advised atomic probes to ascertain fungi in abrasion stools. They begin hundreds of breed and then, to accomplish abiding it wasn't a mouse-specific phenomenon, afresh the seek in rats, rabbits, dogs and people.

Again and again, they begin a abundance of gut fungi.

Next they engineered a ache of mice defective dectin-1, a cellular basic that interacts with CARD9 in tagging fungal beef for allowed arrangement disposal. With their fungal apprehension systems haywire, the mice developed astringent abdominal inflammation, agnate to colitis.

"We anticipate the bane gets into the tissue and isn't accustomed and killed," Underhill said, and to analysis this achievability they dosed the mice with an antifungal drug. The mice recovered.

Underhill and Iliev afresh looked at abiogenetic abstracts from hundreds of ulcerative colitis patients apparent at Cedars-Sinai. Among humans with the a lot of astringent afflictions, who could not be advised and appropriate anaplasty to abolish their colons, they begin able links to mutations affecting dectin-1.

"I anticipate it makes a appealing able case that there are accepted fungi in the gut that are commonly non-pathogenic that can could could cause problems if not appropriately managed," said Andrew Gewirtz, an Emory University gut bacilli specialist who was not complex in the study.

Underhill warned that the allegation haven't yet been bifold in addition accommodating group, a all-important footfall in ensuring the hotlink to colitis.

A fungal hotlink to colitis is, however, just a aboriginal hypothesis. Underhill and Iliev's abrasion scans begin some 200 fungal species, absolutely bisected of which had never been declared before. Alone a few breed were present in abrasion food, suggesting that fungi are an accustomed allotment of gut communities.

"The cardboard is great. It raises acquaintance for the fungal microbiome in the gut that we apperceive is there but somehow is underappreciated," said Peer Bork, a bioinformaticist at the European Atomic Biological Laboratory.

Bork's own analysis on gut bacilli has begin global patterns akin to claret blazon distributions. Whether that holds accurate for fungi is a now a catechism to be investigated, forth with accessible fungal roles in metabolism, amnesty and added physiological processes.

"People abstraction all that in the ambience of the gut bacteria, in the ambience of bacilli in our microflora," Underhill said. "You can map all those questions to fungi."

Citation: "Interactions Between Commensal Fungi and the C-Type Lectin Receptor Dectin-1 Influence Colitis," by I.D. Iliev; C.N. Reyes; C.A. Becker; M. Dubinsky; D.P.B. McGovern; D.M. Underhill; V.A. Funari; K.D. Taylor; Q. Nguyen; S.P. Strom; J. Brown; J.I. Rotter; P.R. Fleshner at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA; H.L. Wang; D.M. Underhill. Vol 336, Issue 6085, June 8 2012.

Image by Iliyan Iliev


The Weird Fungus That Lives In Your Gut
Wired.com has been accretion the accumulate apperception with technology, science and beatnik ability account back 1995.

Five of Physics's Greatest Sex Scandals

21:36 No Comment

Physicists charge love, too. Just ask Paul Frampton, the physics abettor who was bedevilled afresh afterwards an declared betray involving drugs and a bikini model.

We apperceive it can be harder to abide the allurement of bikini models on the Internet, but physicist Paul Frampton was bamboozled appealing bad. The University of North Carolina abettor flew to Bolivia to accommodated up with archetypal Denise Milani, but Milani never showed up. Instead, a man with a attache claiming to be Milani's agent beatific Frampton on a biologic smuggling mission. Frampton was arrested afore he fabricated it aback the United States and bedevilled endure week. We're all fools in love, huh?

Frampton isn't the alone physicist to get bent up in a adulation scandal. Though a lot of of them haven't concluded up in an Argentine prison, some did accept awkward run-ins with the media. Check out these physicists who allegedly ambition their sex lives were as airy as aphotic matter.

Albert Einstein's approach of relatives

The ancestor of relativity wasn't actual acceptable to his additional aboriginal wife, Mileva Maric. He fabricated her do all the housework, and in return, she got... well, annihilation abundant in the adulation department. That's because he was too active demography lovers, including his accessory Elsa whom he after married. When asked about his adulation life, he would allegedly say, "It's all relatives." Zing!

Marie Curie's radioactive love

Apparently, two Nobel prizes aren't abundant to get humans off your aback about that one activity you had. Afterwards Marie Curie's bedmate died, she fell in adulation with his above student, Pierre Langevin. The man was married, so the French columnist fabricated a big fetor about it and started calling her a homewrecker and a Jew. For the record, Curie was not cheating on anyone herself (and was aswell not Jewish.)

Erwin Schrodinger's mistresses

Here we accept addition physicist who capital little do with his wife. Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger had several mistresses, one accepting the wife of his assistant, Arthur March. The awe-inspiring part: March was air-conditioned with it and stepped in as the ancestor of the adolescent while his wife Hilde confused into the Schrodinger household.

Stephen Hawking and the sex clubs

It doesn't absolutely assume fair to aces on Hawking for a few reasons, the capital one accepting that he currently doesn't accept a wife to bluff on, but the media did it anyway. Hawking allegedly frequents the sex clubs, and the alone acumen that's a aspersion is because it is now horrendously public. No one's accepting aching here, at the actual least.

Image from Wikimedia Commons


Five of Physics's Greatest Sex Scandals
Popular Science is your wormhole to the future. Reporting on what's new and what's next in science and technology, we bear the approaching now.

Gizmodo Gallery: Bootleg Objects

6:15 No Comment


Re-Bo (Bootleg Objects)

Interview/Article by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

In the fetishistic apple of customer electronics devices, the addiction to wish added from an absolute architectonics is usually accustomed amidst buyers. Whether the affection edge relates to added astern affinity or multi-purpose functionality, the affairs that a accessory is missing something is abundant college than those that accept it all. Taking this acumen to new heights is the German-based duo of Markus Bader and Max Wolf. Their project, Bootleg Altar , is a alternation of complete related, biographical, and science afflicted altar that aim to claiming the abstract attributes of banal accessories on the accustomed consumer. Anniversary accessory in the accumulation is aggrandized or afraid to betrayal how cutting-edge technology is afflicted in its architectonics and action by the simplistic attributes of anachronous equipment. GIZMODO bent up with Bootleg Article s Markus Bader and Max Wolf to allocution about how accumulation accomplished and present generally creates a new bend of ingenuity.

Name(s): Markus Bader, Max Wolf
Age(s): 37 , 34
Education: Diploma in Visual Design/Media Art and Product Design, HfG Offenbach.
Affiliation:Artist, Visiting Professor, Bahaus University, Weimar (Max).
URL (s): www.bootleg-objects.com
www.markusbader.net

wolf.meso.net

GIZMODO: How did you aboriginal become absorbed in hacking into customer electronics accessories and furniture?

BO: We met at university in the aboriginal nineties and both our approaches accept consistently dealt with the way we apperceive — and modify, or 'hack' — our surroundings. (see http://www.natural-reality.de and http://wolf.meso.net for some beforehand examples) Studying art and architectonics aswell tends to accomplish one feel that 'newness' is not a amount by itself, and that there already abide baroque designs for a lot of tasks. Consequently, one does not charge to 'invent' the appropriate appearance for a thing, but can rather go and 'find' it, or breed a faculty of 'curatorship' sampling from architectonics history in adjustment to actualize something new. That already sums up our access to designing things, I guess.


RE-SL (Bootleg Objects)

GIZMODO: In RE-SL (a turntable that no best spins), were you were attempting to accompany absorption to the concrete affluence of avant-garde agreeable accessories like Apple's iPod and the MP3 book format?

BO: Not exactly. We like the abstraction of solid-state cyberbanking accessories (without affective parts), as it is technically elegant. It aswell lends itself able-bodied to the DIY access (less attention needed). But what MP3 did for music was to assuredly immaterialize it, and that is a big liberation from all the added weight (think: meters of Vinyl on a shelf). Freedom to appearance approaching music accessories into any form. Which the alternation 'sound' is an exercise in. In actinic terms, not inertness, but it's opposite, 'reactiveness.'

GIZMODO: "Rebraun", (a best FM radio angry wireless, networked music
server) attempts to claiming the absolute architectonics of advertisement radio. What were you aggravating to say about the approaching of advertisement media?

BO: Owing to 1960s technology, the aboriginal re-Braun had a large, and from today's point of view, nostalgic-looking abundance plate, area FM, AM and LW were actually 'hard-wired' into the system. With these systems acceptable obsolete, the audio was about to become unusable. Exchanging this agglomeration of tubes and transistors for a multi-purpose computer is absolutely meant as an act of salvation, an attack to add adaptability for the future. It still does accept FM, but now aswell Internet streams.

GIZMODO: Your plan generally reacts to anachronous or "dying" technology by substituting old media formats with newer ones. This is axiomatic with projects like the "RE-BO," which replaces the audiocassette ascribe with a Smart agenda reader. Do you see this trend as inevitabile with accepted customer electronics devices?


"RE-BO" (Bootleg Objects)

BO: The business assumption of advisedly and actively outdating formats in adjustment to advertise added boxes is apparently, but sadly, assertive in capitalism. The trend will allegedly apathetic down with a assertive assimilation of accumulator amplitude and bandwidth (like it is already with appointment applications). For now, we accede it our albatross to actualize a little acquaintance to the actuality that alternatives exist.


"Self-Ray" (Bootleg Objects)

GIZMODO: With "BOOTLEG OBJECT #BO.07: Cocky Ray" you attack to accompany out a claimed ancillary to the generally abstract architectonics of Ray Eames, how do you see this change affecting the final piece?

BO: Eames' Architectonics is admirable and admirable, but it's 'lobby architecture,' [their] items generally abide bearding and a-historical. My architectonics actuality is alone that of an aberrant accomplishment — affairs a new stool and anon antibacterial it — the alone actual allotment getting the affidavit of authenticity, which is again activated to the archetype of the stool, which was fabricated from a claimed section of wood. The apprenticed will not even acquaint the difference. Experts will apprehension that the adroitness is altered (as the cocky ray is angry from a individual piece). But to the buyer it becomes a carrier of claimed memories, something to be romantically addicted of, a 'souvenir' and a architectonics archetypal at the aforementioned time. I like this hidden virtue.


"BO.06: Michael Faraday" (Bootleg Objects)

GIZMODO: With Bootleg Article BO:06, you charm Physicist Michael Faraday's stool by afterward the architectonics from a "blurry" account taken with a adaptable phone. How do you see this abstruse advocate affecting the final aftereffect of the design?

BO: In the Alternation 'Science', this blunder of advice becomes the active artistic force. All of the stools alter from their 'blueprints' due to a semi-automatic, advised act of 'misunderstanding', which you could aswell accede a assumption of evolution, abacus babble to the gene pool. It aswell reinforces the notable actuality that a absolute archetype does not accomplish a added absorbing object.

GIZMODO: What is your a lot of contempo plan about? How is it agnate or altered from the antecedent projects?

BO: We will be starting some new projects after this year together, but the aftereffect of those is accessible for now. [Max] In my accepted projects, the allegorical assumption is still the abstraction of abacus claimed amount to absolute objects. There is an agitative aggregation of means to do so, both top and low tech, and I intend to try out as abounding as possible. There is a hotlink to our commitment account on the website which you can subscribe to and be adapted on approaching news.

Federal Judge Says NSA Phone Spying Is Probably Unconstitutional

11:19 No Comment

A federal adjudicator just disqualified the NSA's boundless accumulating of buzz annal is a lot of acceptable unconstitutional and gave the go advanced for plaintiffs to book a lawsuit. And awaiting appeal, the adjudicator said that the abstracts collection should be halted. Of course, until that address goes through, the NSA will abide spying.

The cardinal sounds about as affecting as any civilian liberties-loving American would like it to. "[T]he almost-Orwellian technology that enables the Government to abundance and assay the buzz metadata of every blast user in the United States is clashing annihilation that could accept been conceived in 1979," said U.S. District Court Adjudicator Richard Leon apropos to Smith v. Maryland, the aboriginal case acceptance the government to aggregate buzz data. He continued, "The angle that the Government could aggregate agnate abstracts on hundreds of millions of humans and absorb that abstracts for a five-year period, afterlight it with new abstracts every day in perpetuity, was at best, in 1979, the being of science fiction."

Don't Believe a Word of Last Night's 60 Minutes NSA Interview Don't Believe a Word of Last Night's 60 Minutes NSA Interview Don't Believe a Word of Last Night's 6

Last night, CBS ran a 60 Minutes appropriate about the advancing NSA debacle. It claimed to give… Apprehend added Read more


So this is a big deal. As Politico credibility out this "is the aboriginal cogent acknowledged setback for the NSA’s surveillance program" back Edward Snowden's leaks fabricated account in June, and it sets in motion a action that could accompany the NSA spying to halt. But it hasn't yet. Leon's admonition amounts to a bridge bouncer absolution the plaintiffs through to the next allotment of the acknowledged process, but it'll yield some time afore annihilation is final. It'll apparently yield a lot added time afore something crazy like Snowden accepting amnesty happens. [The Wire]

Klayman vs. Obama

Image via AP

FIRST Robot Competition Championship 2010

20:49 No Comment

The championship bout of the 2010 FIRST Apprentice Competition is starting soon. Abounding teams accept collapsed and abounding robots accept collapsed apart. But now it's just the best student-made bots of the lot, aggressive for all the glory. Watch inside!


FIRST Robot Competition Championship 2010
FIRST 2010: America's Engineering Whiz Kids Face Off In Apprentice Duels FIRST 2010: America's Engineering Whiz Kids Face Off In Apprentice Duels FIRST 2010: America's Engineering Whiz Kids Fa

Tomorrow, squads of asperous and tumble robots will face off in an busy antagonism involving… Apprehend added Read more

You can watch the beck of the event, provided by NASA, here.

Learn about the antagonism here.

I'm watching too, so watch that in one tab and brace this column in the other!

We'll be aback on Monday with a close-up attending at the acceptable robots. I had a bang watching the antagonism today, and, if you acquainted in, you saw just how ablaze our engineering approaching looks. These kids artlessly broadcast action at the FRC championship today. Dean Kamen apprenticed to advance the FIRST affairs harder than anytime this advancing year, with the achievement of accepting adolescent humans beyond the nation absorbed on science and technology.

6:44: And that's all she wrote! Congrats to all the teams who participated, and abnormally Aggregation 67, Aggregation 177, and Aggregation 294, the big winners.

6:42: RED ALLIANCE WINS! 16-13! New World Champions!


FIRST Robot Competition Championship 2010

The red aggregation double-hangs to victory:


FIRST Robot Competition Championship 2010

6:41: Ah tie game!

6:40: Blue's off to an aboriginal lead!

6:38: Oh yes! Finals bout 2 about to start. If the Red Alliance wins, they're the champions!

6:35: 10 indicators you charge a breach from Breakway!: (omissions due to my fingers not accepting fast enough)

10. On the demography form, you listed your primary abode as your apprentice body site.
8. You are lobbying your Congressional adumbrative to vote no for bloom affliction until robots are covered.

6. You anticipate if World Cup Soccer was played with 12 balls, Americans ability in actuality watch it (huge applause, here).

4. You get in agitation in gym chic for aggravating to adhere from added kids who are accomplishing cull ups.

2. Your parents are bent because you put red and dejected changeable bumpers on the minivan.

1. You adulation Atlanta, but you are already scoping out hotels in St. Louis! (apparently this is the website of next year's competition).

6:34: Black Eyed Peas bumping on the speakers. It wouldn't be a 2010 robotics antagonism afterwards them, afterwards all.

6:31:"Being the new kid on the block isn't easy"—congrats to aggregation Innovators Robotics, winners of the Rookie of the Year award.

6:30: Creed's playing! (over the PA, not live.)

6:27: The adroitness award, by Xerox, is next. NOT the copycat award, apperception you. It goes to aggregation Las Guerillas, from Bloomfield Hills, MI, for their 10 batter aluminum bot.

6:26: Oh this is cool, though—the woman from Johnson and Johnson is cogent a adventure about how aggregation Ice Cubed bankrupt a bent who blanket a FIRST robot.

6:25: The Gracious Professional award, presented by Johnson and Johnson, for teams with "grace and humility." Robots apperceive no humility, Johnson and Johnson! Don't let Wall-E fool you!

6:22: Hmmm, one of the 7 teams sponsored by Motorola was alleged the "Space Cookies."

6:21: The Red Alliance wins the aboriginal finals bout 16-14! That was close.

6:20: Oh I like this big chicken pyramid bot.

6:19: The Superbowl of Smarts, the anchorperson calls it. It's true—watching these youngster-made machines is appealing alarming stuff.

6:18: A Michigan band on both teams! We win no bulk what!

6:17:The anchorperson is accomplishing a handstand. Things are accepting wacky. Atmosphere at the Georgia Dome seems electric.

6:15:TIME FOR THE FINALS. I've been cat-and-mouse all day for this!

6:14: Engineering Excellence accolade goes to aggregation Patriotics, from Ontario. Theirs is absolutely one of the sleeker searching bots of the bunch.

6:07: Time for the appropriate judges award. They're giving it to the Ridgeview Academy Rambotics, the "best dressed aggregation in Atlanta." The aggregation is, in fact, actual able-bodied dressed, operating their bot in abounding bow-tie get-up.

6:06: Red Alliance wins! They will play in the championship.

6:05: I apprehend "I like to move it, move it," in the accomplishments at the Georgia Dome. That can alone beggarly that the championship is cartoon near.

6:00: Ooh, tie-breaker semi-final match.

5:54: These bots are not so polite. Lots of smashing into anniversary other.

5:53: So this is appealing hectic, but I anticipate this is how these amateur work: The aboriginal 20 abnormal or so are larboard for free apprentice soccer, area the bots just seek out the assurance on their own and try to score. Then the acceptance are accustomed to ascendancy their bots with joysticks.

5:52: This anchorperson has an accomplished authority on the contempo history of FIRST robotics championships. He knows the history of every individual aggregation that's still left, and there's not a individual teleprompter in sight.

5:50: The endure semi-final bout is here!

5:48: The automated architecture accolade goes to aggregation Killer Bees from Auburn Hills, MI. I'm acquainted that a asymmetric bulk of these teams barrage from Michigan, my home state. Why is that, I wonder? We accept a asymmetric bulk of militias, too, as you may know.

5:47: Impressive animations, to be sure. But I wish some apprentice soccer action!

5:44: WHOA, winners of the AutoDesk architecture awards get iPads!

5:43: The actuality that top academy acceptance fabricated all these robots is absolutely appealing amazing. I can't accomplish some of the added complicated LEGO sets.

5:41: Liveblogging is stressful. I don't apperceive how Chen does it.

5:40: Geez, these amateur go fast. Blink and you absence them. Semi Final 1, Bout 2 just concluded and the Dejected Alliance won 22 - 14.

5:37: The anchorperson just said that aggregation O.P. Robotics from Ontario Canada "owns Canada." Next year some Canadian teams are traveling to appear hard.

5:36: So it seems like all of these aggregation are abiding favorites. A lot of World Champs aback afresh to action for the FIRST acme in 2010. Watch here if you're not already.

5:35: Oh boy, it's about to go down! Semi Final 1, Bout 2

5:32:: The Dedalus Project team, acclamation from California, just won the adumbration accolade for the prettiest bot.

5:28: A little video on the abstraction abaft the FIRST logo at the moment. If you absent the video answer this year's challenge—it's an busy aggregate of soccer and apprentice gymnastics—you can bolt up with this video:

5:26: Here's a rap song about FIRST and the joys of robotics, alleged "Dream It, Architecture It, Body It," that you can accept to to pump yourself up for the final match. Nice assembly values!

5:25: The quarter-final matches accept fatigued to a close, and

Dean Kamen, the architect of FIRST (and artist of the Segway), is giving abroad some awards afore the final showdown.

Top photo from endure year's challenge.

Giz Explains: Dolby, DTS and Home Theater Audio Codec Confusion

23:17 No Comment

You in fact apperceive what some of the crazy doodles on the ancillary of an HDTV agency if it comes to video-720p, 1080i, 1080p. Congrats, you're advanced of a lot of people, like my mother. But do you accept the alphabet soup of audio, the abashing afterlife of logos on your Blu-ray player's box? While there are basically two battling home-theater audio encoders-Dolby and DTS-they anniversary accept several altered superior levels and options for altered scenarios. Yeah, it's a lot to accumulate up with, and it annoys us too. So we asked Dolby and DTS to put down their accoutrements for a sec and advice us array it out.

We're bold you apperceive some of the basics-like that 5.1 audio is 5 channels of audio positioned at center, foreground right, foreground left, aback appropriate and aback left, and afresh one subwoofer channel. And that a college bit amount agency added audio abstracts is advancing through, which, generally, agency it's college superior and gonna complete better, aback you're accident beneath of the aboriginal flat sound.

The architecture block of agenda audio is "pulse cipher modulation"-an old technology acclimated for CDs and aggregate since. It can be rendered in several resolutions, from 16-bit being on CD to 24-bit on newer DVD and higher-res formats. It can aswell accept capricious abundance ranges, about from 44.1KHz to 96KHz. Without traveling into added detail, you just charge to apperceive that PCM is bulky, and it is this PCM abstracts that both DTS and Dolby plan to encode into added acquiescent files. If audio advance are decoded in a disc player, they are either beatific out analog via multichannel RCA outputs, or they become PCM advance that any agenda receiver can calmly interpret.

We're demography you through the above branded audio formats that you'll run into if you're ambidextrous with a home theater, or hell, a Blu-ray player.

First up: Dolby. There are basically three tiers of audio: Dolby TrueHD at the top, afresh Dolby Digital Plus, afresh acceptable old Dolby Digital.

Dolby TrueHD is a lossless compression architecture that is bit-for-bit identical to the flat masters. It can handle a bit amount of up to 18 megabits per second, and abutment as abounding as 14 channels of audio, admitting you're added acceptable to see it at 7.1. It's in fact alternative in the Blu-ray spec, but it's accurate by the PS3 and a lot of added new Blu-ray players. Some players break the TrueHD internally, afresh beck out uncompressed PCM audio through HDMI, while others can forward the TrueHD book itself out over HDMI in bitstream for the receiver to decode.

Dolby Agenda Plus is the next footfall down. It still delivers 7.1 audio, but at a max bit amount of 3Mbps. It's a added able codec than the aboriginal Dolby Digital, and is a binding minimum in the Blu-ray 1.1 spec. Dolby Agenda Plus can be acclimated for Benefit View picture-in-picture audio advance on a Blu-ray disc, with the capital audio clue encoded as TrueHD.

Dolby Digital is the everyman rung, at 5.1 audio channels, active at 448Kbps on DVD (though a richer 640Kbps on Blu-ray, used, afresh for appropriate appearance or supplement accent tracks).

DTS's offerings chase a agnate tiered setup.

DTS-HD Adept Audio is at the top. It's a lossless architecture that is aswell bit-for-bit identical to the flat master. It supports a bitrate up to 24Mbps (though the boilerplate Blu-ray flick's audio is alone about 2-3Mbps, with 4-5Mbps spikes) and up to eight channels (like 7.1). (It too, is supported by the PS3.)


Giz Explains: Dolby, DTS and Home Theater Audio Codec Confusion
PlayStation 3 Firmware Amend 2.30 Brings DTS-HD Adept Audio PlayStation 3 Firmware Amend 2.30 Brings DTS-HD Adept Audio PlayStation 3 Firmware Amend 2.30 Brings DTS-HD M

Today, SCEA appear that the latest PS3 update, 2.30, would accompany the adeptness to break DTS-HD… Apprehend added Read more

DTS High Resolution Audio is beneath that. It aswell supports eight channels at a connected bit amount of up to 6Mbps. It's for situations area a flat doesn't wish to eat up disc amplitude with a abounding lossless clue (like benefit appearance or tracks), admitting DTS told us 95 percent of studios who use DTS use the abounding HD Adept Audio.

DTS Agenda Surround is down at the DVD end, with abutment for 5.1 channels and bandwidth up to 1.5Mbps, admitting post-2000 DVDs about accumulate the clue at 768Kbps to save disc space.

You may accept heard a few things about Dolby ProLogic II or IIx, or maybe DTS Neo:6. These aren't agenda codecs, so abundant as they are "matrix" programs that yield stereo advance and avenue it to to the altered speakers in a beleaguer system. A evidence from pre-digital days, humans acclimated to adept stereo advance advisedly for ProLogic-try watching The Simpsons aperture credits through your receiver with ProLogic angry on.

Dolby and DTS aswell accept basic beleaguer technologies that do the adverse of matrixing: They yield 5.1 advance and accomplish abracadabra pocus on them so that they complete surround-y, but play through stereo speakers or headphones. It's added subjective, and has a accomplished altered science to it, so maybe we'll save it for addition time.

That, in a nutshell, is what all of those Dolby and DTS logos on the aback your Blu-ray player, A/V receiver or cine box means. If you wish to apperceive how "golden-eared" audiophiles feel about the accomplished qualities, and how able-bodied they book adjoin uncompressed PCM, analysis out this advisory section from Home Entertainment Magazine. As a rule, DTS HD Adept Audio or Dolby TrueHD will bang ass, but unless you accept a $50,000 complete system, you may not be able to acquaint the aberration amid the average and top tiers anyway.

Something we missed, or you still wanna know? Forward any questions about Dolby, DTS, Dubbly, Dobby or annihilation abroad to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the accountable line.

FireMe!: A Running List of People Tweeting How Much They Hate Their Jobs

14:38 No Comment

"I abhorrence my job!!!!"

"My bang-up is a absolute idiot - get me out of here!!!"

"I accept the affliction job"

Social media does funny things to some people. While a lot of would evidently abstain calling their bungling bang-up an idiot to their face, abounding don't anticipate active afore venting their acrimony and annoyance on Twitter. A new apparatus alleged FireMe! offers a tongue-in-cheek way of admonishing anyone if they accept gone too far.

Ricardo Kawase and colleagues at the University of Hanover in Germany created FireMe! as a way of reminding anybody how chancy it can be accusatory about your job about on Twitter. In a individual anniversary endure June, they begin about 22,000 humans who had tweeted about their job or bang-up in a abrogating way.

The aggregation acclimated an algorithm that looked for admonition phrases advertence anyone had tweeted something abrogating about their bang-up or job. The user again accustomed an automatic active cheep from FireMe! which rebuked them with the message: "Can you brainstorm if your bang-up gets to apperceive that you said: 'I abhorrence my job so much'. You said that on Twitter and the accomplished apple can see it!"

Each active aswell independent a hotlink which, if followed, gave them their FireMeter! account - their adventitious of getting accursed as a percentage. It was affected just for fun but was based on how about they had mentioned their job abnormally in the accomplished 100 tweets and how about they swore. Anniversary user was aswell accustomed the adventitious to bang one of three options if they followed the link: "Delete that compromising tweet!", "Check my aloofness settings on twitter", or "I don't care!".

Out of a absolute of 4304 FireMe! alerts beatific in the amplitude of three weeks, 249 recipients had deleted the cheep if it was arrested 2 hours later. A few aswell replied, from the adequate "Thanks buddy" to the airy "they already apperceive I abhorrence my job. I'm in the action of leaving. Cheers for the active up though!"

An assay begin that humans who tweeted abnormally about their job about tweeted added than approved users and had beneath followers than those who cheep absolute things about their workplace. The plan will be presented at the Web Science appointment in Paris in April.

The aggregation say that adolescent or amateur users would absolutely account from post-hoc aloofness alerts and warnings like FireMe! "Potential dangers of personal, abnormally loaded tweets abide abstruse for a lot of users, until the accident has been done," they say.


FireMe!: A Running List of People Tweeting How Much They Hate Their Jobs
New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the after-effects of animal endeavour set in the ambience of association and culture, accouterment absolute advantage of science and technology news.

The Void of Losing Someone You Don’t Know—in Memory of Aaron Swartz

9:10 No Comment

I didn't apperceive Aaron Swartz personally. We never spoke, not in getting nor by email.

Yet, his suicide today has larboard a big aperture in the apple for me. I begin my own anguish baffling. I didn't apperceive the guy. Why did I, abysmal down, feel such a abandoned in the world? The acumen was: I acquainted a attenuate affiliation to Aaron because of his thoughts and actions. An airy affiliation that alone existed at the bookish level, not a amusing one, through his writing, technology, politics, and his alertness to appearance humanness.

Aaron Swartz's adverse afterlife didn't alone affect those who knew him personal, but aswell all of us accustomed with his activist efforts and plan at large. Mark Bao explores his own acknowledgment to Swartz's abortive departure.

His autograph and thoughts affiliated with me, abnormally his Raw Nerve alternation on how to become bigger at getting human. His autograph showed me that added humans were cerebration about the aforementioned things I was, in agreement of the "backstory" of getting human, the inner. I acquainted like I was on the aforementioned amicableness with addition animal that was cerebration and devoting time to these close pursuits.

His cipher and contributions to software were inspiring, in Python, RSS, and elsewhere. Relentlessly authoritative advance and cerebration about the macro bold of software and technology. Aforementioned wavelength.

His JSTOR incident? Not actually the aforementioned wavelength. But angry for accelerating behavior in government, liberating advice in science and law, application the closer-to-democracy apparatus of the Internet to do that? Absolutely.

His writings on depression showed that, like all of us, he was human, and, like all of us, he suffered. But few of us appearance vulnerability and humanity. Many of us adumbrate abaft facades of "how are you?" "great!", animated photos, and upbeat Facebook statuses, preferring not to allocution about what actually goes on central our heads.

Here's a guy who I acquainted a abysmal affiliation to, because we were on the aforementioned amicableness – through aboveboard assuming humanity, a adherence to convalescent oneself, application technology for change, and alteration the macro political environment. There aren't a lot of humans that I feel a multi-faceted bookish affiliation with, but Aaron was one of them.

And admitting not alive him at all, his afterlife larboard me activity a abandoned in the world. Because the apple absent a ablaze person, but aswell because the apple absent anyone whose account I believed so abundant in, whose adeptness to put those thoughts into activity was admirable, whose alertness to appearance vulnerability and humanness was something I feel like the apple badly needs added of.

But acceptable generally comes from bad. And the good, in this case, is the ability that we should aim to affix with added people, on a added wavelength. We should all be alive relentlessly to put our animosity into words and into action, and not be abashed to appearance that, yes, we are in fact human, and yes, we do accept things we actually accept in but haven't yet acted upon, and we do accept moments area we feel on top of the apple and aswell the moments area we feel actually hopeless.

And we should all be alive to accomplish the a lot of of our time in the world, to accomplish abiding we don't squander our a lot of bound resource, and instead aerate it, to affix to and affect added lives in this world.

We ability not all be socially connected, but the plan that we do connects us as a community. And our aggregate plan makes history.

Thanks, Aaron.

Image by Peretz Partensky/Flickr

Mark Bao is a 20-year-old startup founder, currently traveling the apple and alive on software that helps humans body habits. He writes about life, behavioral science, philosophy, design, and added capacity pertaining to technology, the brain, and altruism on his blog.

First Comes the Dream at the American Museum of Natural History: An Evening of Innovation and Imagination

11:46 No Comment

There's a spirit of acuteness that we all accept as children. At a assertive point, it can fade. But those dreams and aspirations never become beneath acute to innovation, and that's why, endure night, we brought calm some of the greatest minds in science and technology in New York City to collectively admonish ourselves how important it is to accumulate dreaming.


First Comes the Dream at the American Museum of Natural History: An Evening of Innovation and Imagination

Amid absolute meteorites and absurd exoplanets on affectation at the American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center, a cord quartet kicked off the night by arena a classical interpretations of accustomed sci-fi songs, like the soundtrack to Battlestar Gallactica. The academician assurance of our age—scientists, artists, writers, technologists, astronomer, and thinkers—mixed with one another, afore embarking on a adventure in the Hayden Planetarium—the abode of average academy acreage cruise fantasies. Museum admiral Ellen Futter alien the evening, followed by comments from agent ambassador Bob Steel. Then there was a babble from NASA administrator Dr. Charles Bolden, who promised that one day, we will go to Mars. [Thunderous applause]

Then we all headed out into amplitude for a bisected hour. Dr. Carter Emmart, the Rose Center's administrator of astrovisualization took the affiliation off into the stars, accomplished the International Amplitude Station, area we saw images of the Earth based on abstracts NASA satellites had calm just the day before.

Then to the moon, area craters were inspected and explained. Eventually the adventure trekked to the alien banned of the universe, area we saw glimpses of abroad satellites, solar systems, and stars. But the little adventure abroad from reality, clashing the cosmos was finite, and afterwards its conclusion, the accumulation was ushered bench to the Cullman Hall of the Cosmos area astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson was cat-and-mouse to babble about the future.

Dr. Tyson sat down with io9's Annalee Newitz area he talked about what it was that aggressive him to abstraction the universe. And accordingly enough, it was the planetarium—the area we had just appear from—that prodded him to abstraction the solar system. He rapped about what he hoped aliens ability see if they landed actuality in the future, as able-bodied as what ability become of this planet, and area our solar arrangement is headed.


First Comes the Dream at the American Museum of Natural History: An Evening of Innovation and Imagination
Neil deGrasse Tyson absitively to become a scientist if he was "starstruck" by a planetarium show Neil deGrasse Tyson absitively to become a scientist if he was "starstruck" by a planetariu Neil deGrasse Tyson absitively to become a scientist

Last night at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, I had the amusement of chatting on … Apprehend added Read more

View arcade »

When Dr. Tyson was done, we afraid out on the amazing Scales of the Cosmos balustrade with the brightest stars of New York's tech scene: Foursquare's Dennis Crowley, 4chan's Chris Poole, and more. Matt Stone of South Park was there too. All while Framestore's planetscape paintings projected assimilate the exoteric of the planetarium. Dr. Boland talked with astronaut Leland Melvin, and Reddit's Alexis Ohanian kicked aback with engineers from Microsoft and Facebook. Wool Author Hugh Howey alone some hints about his accessible book, and Dr. Tyson captivated court. The affair connected an hour added than planned, admitting it could accept gone abundant longer. But while the blast may be infinite, the affair had to end. Admitting the acceptable news—and of advance the acumen for celebration—is that acuteness persists forever.


First Comes the Dream at the American Museum of Natural History: An Evening of Innovation and Imagination
Planetscape Paintings from an Interstellar Journey Planetscape Paintings from an Interstellar Journey Planetscape Paintings from an Interstellar Journey

Today the art administration at angel and VFX architecture flat Framestore has aggregate with us some of their … Apprehend added Read more

There are bags added photos on Facebook


First Comes the Dream at the American Museum of Natural History: An Evening of Innovation and Imagination


First Comes the Dream at the American Museum of Natural History: An Evening of Innovation and Imagination

Gizmodo Is Hiring Editorial Fellows in New York City

19:39 No Comment

Hello, Internet! We're searching for two new beat advisers for our New York office.

Editorial Advisers are Gizmodo's entry akin positions. Your job is basically to abetment our writers in research, fact-checking, and added office-y tasks. We ask a lot of you, but, in return, you will apprentice a lot about this accomplished able blogging enterprise. The ideal applicant is anyone searching for a career in media, but adequately geeky, too. Oh, and you have to be aural circadian commuting ambit of Manhattan.

The essentials:• You should wish to be a announcer or anchorman or biographer or something of the array if you abound up—experience at a bi-weekly or annual is A++++, will buy again.
• Accept a able absorption in one of the following: technology, design, architecture, the internet, science, cities, and all things Fun and Acceptable in the world.
• Basic acquaintance with HTML, Flickr, FTP, Facebook, Twitter—things that humans do on the internet.
• Dedication. It's, like, acute here.
• A appropriate laptop.
• You should be over 18 with the acknowledged adeptness to plan in the United States.
• Willingness to learn. We don't apprehend you to apperceive aggregate if you get here, but you should be accommodating to put the plan in to amount it out.
• Adeptness to commit, at minimum, to 20 hours a week, with full-time getting the preference.

The being you'll be doing:• Analysis and reporting: Acquirements how to cull calm lots of altered kinds of advice from assorted sources for editors.
• Spotting stories: Acquirements how to acquisition and angle belief from assorted sources and leads.
• Initially, this is not
a autograph position, but if you plan harder and yield initiative, it's not at all aberrant for Advisers to grab a few posts already they've acclimatized in

Essentially, you'll be acquirements the basics of autograph about technology, design, and internet culture, and actual apparently arena with a lot of gadgets, acquirements new euphemisms for genitalia, and all of the ups and downs of the "go go go faster faster faster" clip of blogging. Beat Advisers are minimum wage, alternate advisers of Gawker Media. And, if you're really, absolutely acceptable (and lucky), one day you could even be answer to an Beat Assistant.

If you anticipate that sounds like something you're into, grasshopper, advanced an email to editfellow@gizmodo.com with the accountable "Editorial Fellow." Then, acquaint us a little bit about yourself and why you're absolute for the opportunity, and adhesive your resume at the basal of the email. (No attachments. Seriously. None.) You've got until this Monday, January 20th to apply.

But don't delay until the endure second! We attending advanced to audition all about why we should appoint you.

The World's Biggest Multi-Touch LCD Is a Hypnotic Plaything (Updated)

1:19 No Comment

We at Gizmodo rarely get to feel like TV account bigshots, but back Gizmodo Gallery is all about authoritative dreams appear true, Perceptive Pixel is bringing us the world's better multi-touch LCD. Think CNN's Big Board—only way cooler.


The World's Biggest Multi-Touch LCD Is a Hypnotic Plaything (Updated)
Everything You Need to Know About Gizmodo Gallery 2011 Everything You Need to Know About Gizmodo Gallery 2011 Everything You Need to Know About Gizmodo Gallery

Gizmodo Gallery is clearly underway! We've lined up the world's coolest gadgets, a… Apprehend added Read more

Update afterwards the accident below

Sometimes we're advantageous abundant to be on CNN, but they never friggin let us abreast the crazy alternate affectation broadcasters use for acclamation coverage. So we alleged up Perceptive Pixel—the association who accomplish the Big Board—and they offered to accompany their cast new, absolutely hugondous affectation to Gizmodo Gallery for the aboriginal of our circadian exhibitions.

On Gizmodo Gallery's aperture day, we'll be assuming off Perceptive Pixel's latest and greatest creation. They alarm it the 82" Multi-Touch Display. We alarm it the baddest, a lot of technologically avant-garde touchscreen we've anytime seen. The 1920 x 1080 HD collapsed console affectation supports an absolute amount of accompanying touches. The huge awning is acute to touches abate than a millimeter so that even the lightest tap of your barb registers—it ability not be adapted to us afterwards we absorb a anniversary bistro way to abounding pancakes.


The World's Biggest Multi-Touch LCD Is a Hypnotic Plaything (Updated)
The ChefStack Pancake Parade Returns to Gizmodo Gallery The ChefStack Pancake Parade Returns to Gizmodo Gallery The ChefStack Pancake Parade Returns to Gizmodo Ga

We've had adorable pancakes on our minds lately, because the ChefStack is authoritative its… Apprehend added Read more

The 82" LCD Multi-Touch Affectation was just released, which agency that visitors to Gizmodo Gallery on December 6th will be amidst the aboriginal humans alfresco Perceptive Pixel's labs to put their besmeared mitts on this august section of architecture and engineering. That's right, you can appearance up and play with a awning added avant-garde than the one acclimated by a above cable account network. Take that, Blitzer.

Update: 12/7/11

Perceptive Pixel was affectionate abundant to let us borrow its cast new 82" multi-touch affectation for Gizmodo Gallery this year. And yesterday's visitors got an absolute attending at the beginning applications the aggregation congenital to analyze the possibilities of the technology.

It's harder to call the acquaintance of arena with the massive affectation in person, but this video gives you a faculty of its immersive power. It sucks you into its world. Once you get going, it starts to feel like you're in a science fiction cine accomplishing something important, like attention the galaxy from aliens. But at its core, the affectation is absolutely just a behemothic Windows rig with Perceptive Pixel's custom-built UI on top. Added than a computer, the awning is a huge, badly able tablet.

Perceptive Pixel's affectation turns the commonly adamant applications and accoutrement we're acclimated to like maps, angel editors, and video dialogs into activating experiences. Objects and windows bend, spin, slide, and aggrandize intuitively. While the aggregation does accept a accepted set of gestures it uses commercially, the options are limitless. The apps we saw were loaded with all kinds of altered functions developers are dabbling with. Perceptive Pixel's architect Jeff Han told us that now that his aggregation has developed a multi-touch belvedere that's able of about anything, the key is to attenuated the focus while maximizing flexibility. We're psyched to see what happens next!

Gizmodo Gallery 2011 @ White Box


329 Broome Street. New York, NY, 10002


Monday, December 5th

Press Day, Press Only

Inquiries to media@gizmodo.com


Tuesday, December 6th

12noon – 5pm

All Day Special Event: World's Better Multi-Touch LCD

Party: Aperture Party Invite Alone 7pm - 10pm


Wednesday, December 7th

12noon – 8pm

Special Events (secret!)

Party: Gizmodo Reader Meetup and Nerf Party 9pm - 11pm


Thursday December 8th

12noon – 8pm

Special Accident at 6pm: Home Theater How-To and Demo Session

Party: Kotaku Reader Meedup with 3D Gaming


Friday, December 9th

12noon – 8pm

All Day Special Event: MarkerBot Demos

Special Accident at 6pm: Artist Talk - Micah Ganske's MakerBot Experience


Saturday December 10th

11am - 8pm

All Day Special Event: Free Pictures with Lego Santa Yoda


Sunday December 11th

11am - 6pm

All Day Special Event: Free Pictures with Lego Santa Yoda


The World's Biggest Multi-Touch LCD Is a Hypnotic Plaything (Updated)
Lego Adds Some Force to Gizmodo Gallery with LEGO SANTA YODA! Lego Adds Some Force to Gizmodo Gallery with LEGO SANTA YODA! Lego Adds Some Force to Gizmodo Gallery with LEGO

What would Gizmodo Gallery after a little Lego in the picture? Or in this case, a lot of Lego.… Apprehend added Read more


The World's Biggest Multi-Touch LCD Is a Hypnotic Plaything (Updated)
A MakerBot Will Print 3D Dreams All Anniversary at Gizmodo Gallery A MakerBot Will Print 3D Dreams All Anniversary at Gizmodo Gallery A MakerBot Will Print 3D Dreams All Anniversary at Gizmod

We're not just traveling to be assuming off air-conditioned accessories you can buy at Gizmodo Gallery—we're… Apprehend added Read more


The World's Biggest Multi-Touch LCD Is a Hypnotic Plaything (Updated)
Gizmodo Gallery's Big Ass Home Theater: We Will Rock You Gizmodo Gallery's Big Ass Home Theater: We Will Rock You Gizmodo Gallery's Big Ass Home Theater: We Wil

We're installing a tricked out ball arrangement in Gizmodo Gallery. Why? 1) Because we… Apprehend added Read more

Anybody apprehension that she and Sayesha attending a lot alike? Apprehend added Read more


The World's Biggest Multi-Touch LCD Is a Hypnotic Plaything (Updated)
The Gizmodo Gallery Reader Meetup Will Be a Huge Nerf War The Gizmodo Gallery Reader Meetup Will Be a Huge Nerf War The Gizmodo Gallery Reader Meetup Will Be a Huge N

Man, we adulation you guys. After our readers, Gizmodo would be nothing, which is why we've got a … Apprehend added Read more


The World's Biggest Multi-Touch LCD Is a Hypnotic Plaything (Updated)
The World's Biggest Multi-Touch LCD Is a Hypnotic Plaything (Updated) The World's Biggest Multi-Touch LCD Is a Hypnotic Plaything (Updated) The World's Biggest Multi-Touch LCD Is a Hypno

We at Gizmodo rarely get to feel like TV account bigshots, but back Gizmodo Gallery is all about… Apprehend added Read more

Read added about the Gizmodo Gallery here and chase @gizgallery on Twitter. Special acknowledgment to Land Rover - after them, there would be no Gizmodo Gallery.

Gizmodo Gallery: Amos Latteier

3:58 No Comment


Prosthetic Ass (Latteier, 2000)

Interview/Article by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

In the apple of aesthetic interventions into accepted technology, projects that accomplish us catechism how we absorb and use agenda accessories are generally those that advance our attention. Application this assumption as a starting point, Toronto, Ontario-based artist, Amos Latteier creates plan that explores the lighter ancillary of technology. Poking fun at aggregate from accumulated software presentations with his PowerPoint performances to creating homebrew prosthetic limbs with the Prosthetic Ass , his plan examines the subtleties of DIY ability and the abeyant affecting appulse of simple devices. Re-purposing customer electronics in adroit ways, his project, Calculator Haikus , creates balladry from backward calculator displays to accent how a antic access can generally crop abrupt results. On the software side, his analytical PowerPoint lectures apply the banal presentation software to actualize cool relationships amid eyewitness and speaker. Gizmodo bent up with Latteier to altercate his aesthetic practice, aesthetic philosophy, and aim to animate balmy applesauce into affiliated teaching methodologies and banal software and hardware. Interview and photos afterwards the jump...

Name: Amos Latteier
Age: 35
Education: BA Brown University, alone out of a MFA affairs at SFSU
Affiliation: absolute artist
URL:http://www.latteier.com/

GIZMODO: How did you aboriginal become absorbed in architectonics automatic objects?

AL: I like to advise myself things and to experiment. That said, I am not a craftsman, and I'm not actual acceptable at architectonics things. Like a lot of people, I accept a lot of brainless ideas, but what makes me altered from a lot of humans is that I sometimes accept the time and activity to try and chase those account up. A lot of of the machines that I've congenital accept the acidity of amusing and low-tech top academy science projects. In accession to architectonics machines, I aswell do PowerPoint performances. In both practices I am fatigued to account of teaching and learning, humor, and an cool and optimistic inventiveness.

GIZMODO: Your project, "The Prosthetic Ass", (which uses a chainsaw motor as a walking aid) is an absorbing animadversion on the use of electrical accessories as beastly aids in accessible space. What were you aggravating to accomplish with the project?

AL: This activity is based on a animation depicting a automatic "prosthetic ass" in the 1978 book on cybernetics, "Robots On Your Doorstep: A Book About Thinking Machines". The animation bidding to me the action and applesauce of a walking cybernetic backpack. I aswell admired the pun of ass as donkey and ass as base . I capital to see if such a apparatus could be built, and what would appear if the pun was fabricated physical. It angry out to be a alarming and ungainly apparatus that couldn't absolutely backpack abundant weight. However it did accomplish a big burst at the science fair area I aboriginal demoed it. Happily it didn't aching anyone.

500 lb Potato Array (Latteier, 2000)

GIZMODO: With "500 lb. Potato Battery", you absorbed up 500 lb. account of the vegetables to a baby complete system. What was the catalyst abaft this activity and did it in actuality action the way you meant it to?

AL: For this project, I took a acclaimed brand academy science agreement and blew it up to a huge scale. Originally I capital to use the potatoes to calefaction oil to accomplish French fries, but I couldn't get about abundant activity out of them for that. I concluded up accepting them accomplish complete if a acquaintance offered to backpack my activity about in the aback of a U Haul truck. Accepting the potatoes accomplish complete angry out to accurately accompany the acquaintance of exploring the potatoes in the amid amplitude of the aback of the truck. One botheration with the activity was that the electrical access amid the potatoes were actual delicate, so if the barter hit a cavern I had to absorb a continued time award shorts and acclimation the wiring. Another sad allotment of the activity is that the potatoes were rendered inedible by getting acclimated as a battery, so I couldn't eat them at the end of the project.


Call of the Wild (Latteier, 2004)

GIZMODO: In "Call of the Wild", you were attempting to use the corpuscle buzz as an enabling technology for audio attributes tours. How important is the use of adaptable accessories in accustomed environments?

AL: This activity has added anticipation abaft it than some of the others that I've done. I adulation pigeons and added burghal wildlife and I capital to actualize a activity to advice humans apprentice about and acknowledge these animals. I aswell capital to abode the means in which humans and animals are affiliated by aberrant calm beastly history and accustomed history. Corpuscle phones were a abundant best for a few reasons. Corpuscle phones are actual agnate to audio bout machines. Abounding humans already accept them, so this activity fabricated use of technology after acute me to body anything. Finally, corpuscle phones are commonly acclimated to yield humans abroad from their surroundings, so it was fun to actualize a way to use them to affix humans to their environment. You can accept to the audio tours on my web site.


Gizmodo Gallery: Amos Latteier


Calculator Haikus (Latteier, 2000)

GIZMODO: "Calculator Haikus" takes the simple affectation of the calculator and makes haikus from the upside down display. What are you aggravating to say about the artlessness of technology?

AL: This activity comes from my memories of spelling HELL (7734) and BOOBIES (5318008) application calculators in average school. I wondered what added words could be spelled, so I wrote a actual simple computer affairs to analysis the dictionary. It turns out that there are about 100 words. Given this aberrant and baby vocabulary, I wondered what could be written. The accessible best of argument was haiku, back they are so short. The activity explores what happens if you advance a brainless calculator ambush as far as it can go. I absolutely adore the fun means that humans can abusage accustomed technologies.


30 Minute Hovercraft (Latteier, 2000)

GIZMODO: 30 Minute Hovercraft was an agreement in architectonics a hovercraft from agenda and a exhaustion in beneath an hour. What was your catalyst for architectonics this project?

AL: This activity is basically just a top academy science activity presented as art. In fact, I didn't originally anticipate of it as art. At aboriginal it was just something fun do to with my roommate's boutique vac. At the time I lived in a barn so there was lots of allowance to ride a hovercraft. Then I bought a blade blower and started demography the hovercraft to parties. As you could imagine, it was absolutely a hit. Later I entered it in an art appearance mostly because they were alone accepting two-dimensional artwork, and a lot of of what I had was sculpture. I ample that if you afraid the hovercraft to the bank it could calculation as two-dimensional.

GIZMODO: What projects are you currently alive on? How are they agnate or altered than your accomplished projects?

AL: One activity that I'm currently alive on is a blast activity area humans use the buzz like a karaoke apparatus to almanac their own beef songs to the tune of Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Yield It". You can almanac songs about austere things like the war in Iraq, or being like how your freeholder will not anytime adjustment stuff. Then you can accept politicians to forward your songs to. This works because a lot of politicians accept animadversion curve area you can leave them letters about your concerns. The activity will aswell accept a website area you can accept to songs that humans accept recorded.

Another activity I'm alive on is a achievement about the history of zoo architecture. I'm absolutely absorbed in a guy called Karl Hagenbeck who revolutionized zoo architectonics aboriginal in the Twentieth Century. He affected the use of moats rather than bars, and showed animals in naturalistic settings. I wish to analyze this history with abounding added things including the videogame Microsoft Zoo Tycoon, and this history of animals in film. I'm absolutely absorbed in how spaces for beastly affectation accept acquired over the endure century.

 
Copyright © ArticleLLC | Powered by Blogger