SpringerLink - Natural Computing, Volume 1, Number 1. Free Open Source Surveillance Software and Motion Detection - iSpy.
The Great Beyond: Ground coffee helps robots get a grip. Most robotic hands are modelled on human or animal hands and use digits to grasp objects, but artificial fingers are a complicated business. Before a hand can pick up an object, the fingers must position themselves correctly and judge the force required to grasp the object correctly. This involves a multitude of different sensors and is computationally intensive, requiring a central processor to do the job the brain would do for a human or animal hand. But now a collaboration led by Eric Brown of the University of Chicago, which also includes Cornell University and US firm iRobot, has come up with a simple solution to the complexities of robotic hands.
They have ditched the fingers altogether, replacing them with a rubber bag full of granular material – the ‘hand’ or gripper in the video above is full of ground coffee. The gripper is placed over objects, deforming around them. Jaeger suggests the gripper could be part of a robot sent in to burning buildings or other dangerous situations. Escher-like internet map could speed online traffic - tech - 08 September 2010. A novel map of the internet created by Marián Boguñá and colleagues at the University of Barcelona, Spain, could help make network glitches a thing of the past. Boguñá squeezed the entire network into a disc using hyperbolic geometry, more familiar to us through the circular mosaic-like artworks of M. C. Escher. Each square on the map is an "autonomous system" – a section of the network managed by a single body such as a national government or a service provider.
The most well-connected systems are close to the centre, while the least connected are at the edges. Like all good cartographers, Boguñá's team hopes their map will help speed up navigation. Network coordinates Boguñá's map could do away with all this by providing "coordinates" for every system on the network. This trapping can happen when, for example, a packet reaches a point that is geographically close to its destination, but that lacks a direct link. Journal reference: Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1063) Audio zoom picks out lone voice in the crowd - tech - 05 October 2010. Professional footballers beware: the argument you are having with your coach could soon be overheard even within the cacophony of a packed stadium. A new microphone system allows broadcasters to zoom in on sounds as well as sights, to pick out a single conversation. Physicists Morgan Kjølerbakken and Vibeke Jahr, formerly at the University of Oslo, Norway, were working on sonar technology when they came up with the idea for what they call a supermicrophone, now dubbed the AudioScope.
The device is made up of around 300 microphones arranged in a fixed circular array above the sports ground. They are used in conjunction with a wide-angle camera that can zoom in to any position on the pitch. Because the camera is also fixed, it can be calibrated to zoom in to any location within its range. "If we correct the audio arriving at three microphones then we have a signal that is three times as strong," says Kjølerbakken.
New Scientist Not just a website! More From New Scientist More from the web. 10 Dead Simple Gmail Tips, Tricks & Shortcuts. Gmail can be tweaked almost endlessly with various Firefox and Chrome extensions, and offers some pretty nifty Labs options too. However, we've taken a look at some simple tips, tricks, tweaks and shortcuts you can use without going down the plugin or experimental route. These 10 features will help you get so much more out of the webmail service, from an enhanced chat experience, to smarter filters, to offline access. Have a read through now and let us know any neat Gmail hints you'd like to share in the comments box below. 1. Add Emphasis in Chat Gmail's instant messaging Chat function is one of the more basic options around, but there are a few bits of formatting you can use to add nuance to your online communication.
To bold a word, asterisk it like this: *Mashable* To add italics, just underscore before and after the word like this: _Mashable_ And to strike a word through, add hyphens before and after like so: -Mashable- 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. More Gmail Resources from Mashable. Homebrew Cray-1A | ChrisFenton.com. As part two (see previous attempt) of my ongoing series in ‘computational necromancy,’ I’ve spent the last year and a half or so constructing my own 1/10-scale, binary-compatible, cycle-accurate Cray-1. This project falls purely into the “because I can!” Category – I was poking around the internet one day looking for a Cray emulator and came up dry, so I decided to do something about it.
Luckily, the Cray-1 hardware reference manual turned out to be useful enough that implementing most of this was pretty straightforward. The Cray-1 is one of those iconic machines that just makes you say “Now that‘s a super computer!” Sure, your iPhone is 10X faster, and it’s completely useless to own one, but admit it . . you really want one, don’t you? The Cray-1A Architecture Now, let’s get down to specs – What is this bad boy running? It’s a fairly RISC-y design, with 8 64-bit scalar (S) registers , 8 64-bit/64-word vector (V) registers, and 8 24-bit address (A) registers. Vector Chaining in Action! Brother's AirScouter floats a 16-inch display onto your eye biscuit (video) Z-Tree. Z-Tree (Zurich Toolbox for Readymade Economic Experiments) is a software for experimental economics.
This software package allows to develop and to carry out economic experiments. In this program features that are needed in most experiments are generally defined. Among them are the communication between the computers, data saving, time display, profit calculation and tools for screen layout. A further strength of the program lies in the versatility: It can be used for a wide range of possible experiments such as public good experiments, structured bargaining experiments or markets - including double auctions and Dutch auctions. Moreover, experiments can easily be composed and combined. Another feature of the program is its user-friendliness. There is a new version of z-Tree allowing to present graphics. Current version is 3.4.2 You can get z-Tree for free. There is some support provided for z-Tree:
Computing.