Photo fabric July 10, 2009

From BBC News:

The researchers stretch out large fibres to make thin threads

Clothes could one day take snaps of everything happening around whoever is wearing them.

US researchers have made smart fabric that can detect the wavelength and direction of light falling on it.

The research team has found a way to accurately place sensors in each fibre and co-ordinate the electrical signals they send when light falls on them.

The results were a step towards “ambient light imaging fabrics” said the researchers.

Led by Dr Yoel Fink from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the researchers have extended earlier work that placed sensors in relatively large polymer fibres.

Dr Fink and colleagues found a way to stretch the 25mm strands of polymer into much thinner fibres while maintaining the relative positions of the sensors.

This earlier work has led to the creation of very long and flexible light and temperature sensors that may find a role in smart fabrics for soldiers or those working in hostile environments.

In their latest work, described in a paper in Nano Letters, these thinner strands were woven into a 0.1m square section of fabric. The careful creation of the fibres and positioning of the light-sensitive elements meant that the team knew which signals were being sent by which sensors.

This enabled the team to reconstruct, albeit crudely, an image projected onto the small square of fabric. The researchers said their work was an “important step” towards finding ways to get many nanoscale devices working together.

Beyond the box July 10, 2009

From SEED Magazine:

A new breed of architectural objects, inspired by theoretical science, is changing how we think about building and what counts as art.

“Transitory Objects,” the latest exhibit at Vienna’s influential Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary gallery, features some of the most innovative and splendidly unconventional forms coming out of the architectural world today, including works from Matthew Ritchie, Neri Oxman, Alisa Andrasek, François Roche, Greg Lynn, and Hernan Diaz Alonso. To have these mesmerizing structures together in one exhibit is remarkable in itself, but to have them positioned alongside works of contemporary art, as this exhibit has done, raises a provocative point about how boundaries have collapsed between architectural objects, conceptual art, and theoretical science. The exhibit aims to look at those architectural works that “have achieved an appearance of being autonomous forms,” says curator Daniela Zyman, suggesting that these works are meaningful outside of a specific context or place.

Ritchie, Oxman, Roche, and their colleagues split deeply from the finite, permanent, and utilitarian tradition of architecture. Not to say their end products are not useful or habitable. In fact, their structures are arguably better suited to the constantly morphing, impermanent, and aesthetically driven needs and desires of modern society. Rather than working with an end product or useful context in mind, they focus on the process of producing a structure that follows certain laws or principles. These resulting objects rise from computational models and algorithms whose inputs are being drawn from or at least inspired by some of the most boundary-pushing and abstract ideas in science, like quantum physics or the multiverse theory.

“Transitory Objects” includes two elegant models from Alisa Andrasek/BIOTHING that are part of a design project called “Mesonic Emission,” a reference to mesons, subatomic particles composed of quarks. These designs are made from an algorithm that is based on behaviors of electro-magnetic fields and is sophisticated enough to respond to the shape of the environment and to “grow” around obstructing objects. [For details about the algorithm, click here].

Read the full article.

Lecture: Mingling Art with Science July 9, 2009

Tomorrow, 10 July 2009, at 10:00 a.m., Trinity College Dublin’s Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN), will present a public lecture by Professor Sir Fraser Stoddart entitled ‘Mingling Art with Science’ this Friday in the Science Gallery. The Science Gallery is a project created by CRANN to promote the integration of art and science.

This free lecture will draw attention to how art, in its many different guises, has fashioned the chemistry of the eminent  nanoscientist Sir Fraser over the years.

According to Wikipedia, 

Stoddart’s papers and other material are instantly recognizable because of a distinctive “cartoon“-style of representation he has developed since the late 1980s. A solid circle is often placed in the middle of the aromatic rings of the molecular structures he has reported, and different colors to highlight different parts of the molecules. Indeed, he was one of the first researchers to make extensive use of color in chemistry publications. The different colors usually correspond to the different parts of a cartoon representation of the molecule, but are also used to represent specific molecular properties (blue, for example, is used to represent electron poor recognition units while red is used to represent the corresponding electron rich recognition units). Stoddart maintains this standardized color scheme across all of his publications and presentations, and his style has been adopted by other researchers reporting molecular machines based on his syntheses.

Nice to know that a nanoscientist can use the paintbucket tool. But seriously, it is important to understand the usefulness of color and art in science and educational settings. It’s nice to hear of adoptions of behaviors that involve art.

If you’re in Dublin tomorrow morning, check it out. The Science Gallery always has some interesting exhibit going on as well. Right now their exhibit is INFECTIOUS.

Robots strike up the band July 9, 2009

I seem to be posting a lot of articles about robots lately. Hmmm, I wonder if it’s just because people in general are more interested in robots, or if it’s  just me…

Ripped from the electronic pages of Scientific American and Lemurbot.org:

League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) is a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists who create robotic musical instruments. Founded in 2000 by musician and engineer Eric Singer, LEMUR creates exotic, sculptural musical instruments which integrate robotic technology. LEMUR’s philosophy is to build robots that are new types of musical instruments, as opposed to animatronic robots that play existing instruments.

LEMUR’s growing ensemble includes over 50 robotic instruments, including Guitarbot, Modbots, The Ill-Tempered Clangier which plays 44 tuned tubes (better than 99 red balloons), Forestbot, and Tibetbot. 

Michael Hearst, founder of the music group One Ring Zero, has enlisted the help of some robotic colleagues for his second solo project, Songs for Unusual Creatures. The LemurBots are all designed with a MIDI interface so they can be used with standard music composition programs.

Check out the video/audio page featuring the Lemurbots.

Michael Hearst and Guitarbot

handbook for geek travelers July 8, 2009

The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive, by John Graham-Cumming,  was published recently, and from what I’ve seen it seems indispensable for the average, or above-average, science aficionado.

Each of the 128 chapters discusses a new place to explore that caters to the engineer, the biomedical student, or Nobel prize winner groupie.

Most of the places Graham-Cumming lists are in Europe, specifically the U.K., but he’s got one spot in Canada and Taiwan each, a few spots in Japan and Australia, and from Chapters 81 onward are spots in the U.S., so there’s something cool and nerdy going on everywhere. Most of the places listed are museums, but some places are where the real science happens, like the Parkes Radio Telescope in Parkes, Australia.

He’s also set up a map on his homepage so you can see exactly where each of these places are.

Overall a pretty cool idea for a book, and one that I hope takes off.

The Pride of Tokyo July 8, 2009

I love seeing literature, even comic book literature, be represented in a real-life setting. 

Courtesy BBC News:

 Nothing better sums up the relationship between the Japanese and robotics than a giant model robot model – 18 metres high and weighing 35 tonnes – that has taken pride of place in the centre of Tokyo.

The robot is one from the Gundam series, which began in the late 1970s. It towers over the capital’s Odaiba Island as an exact replica of what a “real life” robot would look like if it existed.

Japan has been obsessed with the idea of giant robots. They are the stars of shows such as Macross and Getter Robo. The original Transformer toys, known as Diaclone, were made here before being turned into a global phenomenon by the US toymaker Hasbro.

But according to Patrick Galbraith, ethnographer at the University of Tokyo, and author of The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider’s Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan, there is “no series is more beloved” than Gundam.

“In Japan, they skipped all that negativity after the industrial revolution, and really, what they have is technology and mechanics as the hope for the future,” he told BBC World Service’s Digital Planet programme.

“In Gundam, you see a young man gets on board a giant robot, he reads a tech manual and he says, ‘I can fly this thing and save the world’ – and in fact, he does.

“I think that hopefulness is what the Japanese see in robots.”

Read full story at BBC News.

How robots are made July 7, 2009

Sometimes it’s done in someone’s garage using spare parts from an out of date VCR. However, for the robots in the film franchise Transformers , the storyline of their creation is a little different.

Read on (Associated Press):

A high-tech blockbuster, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is practically two movies in one. There’s the live-action element, which took director Michael Bay and his cast to Egypt, Jordan and New Mexico. Then there’s the animated aspect, encompassing all the robots, which were built by artists at Industrial Light & Magic and Bay’s visual effects company, Digital Domain.

That effort took hundreds of artists, thousands of hours and even caused one computer to explode. “We lost some machinery,” visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar said with a smile. “The thing just kind of gave up.”

It all started with a few sketches. Before any work on the film began, before the script was even written, Bay hired a team of artists to draw the robot characters he saw in his head.

“The fun thing about Transformers is it’s anything your mind can imagine,” he said.

Those images were given to the writers as inspiration, and later to the visual effects creators, who used them as blueprints for the film’s biggest characters, said Farrar, a 28-year veteran of Industrial Light & Magic.

“It’s not unlike a building, where you’ve got to have a good blueprint and you spend a long time on the foundation,” he said. “Then all the sudden, boop, the building goes up.”

Of course, it’s not quite that simple. First, artists transform each of Bay’s 2-D drawings into 3-D digital images. They note the size specifics of each character (for example, Megatron’s feet are 15 feet long and seven feet wide) and how they might look behind various lenses.

Before shooting begins, though, Bay and his crew choreograph where the cameras will be, where robots will be, where the actors will be and how they’ll all interact with each other. Everything is pre-planned, Farrar said.

Because when filming starts, and star Shia LaBeouf runs through a forest to escape a robot fistfight, he’s actually alone.

“There’s nothing there,” the actor said in an interview. “This time we didn’t even have dudes reading lines back. There’s literally nothing.”

All that’s there, Farrar said, are window-washing poles stretched up to 30 feet high. The actors talk to the poles and must react as though giant robots are responding.

“The actors do have to sell it,” he said. “It would be a hoot to show what the sequence looks like with the actors talking back and forth but with nothing there other than a couple of sticks and poles.”

Maybe on the DVD, he joked.

Read the full story.

Robot Ironhide does battle in this scene from the movie “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

Astrophotography book July 7, 2009

Capturing the Stars: Astrophotography by the Masters by Robert Gendler, and reviewed by Discover Magazine:

Astrophotography presents unique challenges — after all, an artist can’t adjust or move the cosmos. But when it’s done well, it can offera  breathtaking journey through space.

The magazine is featuring a gallery of photos from Capturing the Stars: Astrophotography by the Masters, compiled by Robert Gendler. The book covers the work of 35 artists from 14 countries.

Check out the images on Discover Magazine.

Can’t see the fibers for the trees July 6, 2009

Rather than look at photos from far away, let’s look at photos really close up!

What Is This? A Close Look at Pocket Lint? Hint: It dates back to 6th-century China but never really caught on until the mid-1800s, when it was introduced in its packaged, modern form.

The answer? 

Toilet Paper (Unused)

The Chinese first used toilet paper made of rice straw more than 1,400 years ago. Finally, in 1857, Joseph Gayetty introduced the first packaged toilet tissue, which proved to be more convenient than the previously common practice of using The Old Farmer’s Almanac. (In the almanac’s defense, it did have a hole in it for easy toilet-side hanging.) Nowadays, a roll made up of all the TP Americans use in a year would stretch about 300 million miles—more than three times the distance between Earth and the sun.

Pop mosaic July 6, 2009

From Washington Post:

Each day, photo editors for The Washington Post search through thousands of images to bring you Eye on Entertainment. Now the images from the last two months of galleries have been combined into this photo mosaic. Interact with the entire collection of thousands of photos of celebrities by zooming in and moving around.

This photo mosaics was produced using MacOsaiX and presented through Deep Zoom Composer . The Deep Zoom Composer or Deep Zoom Pix divides the images into tiles and works similar to how internet mapping applications like Google Maps works.

The image is displayed on the page via JavaScript and you are only presented the tiles visible at the time allowing you to see a 200 megapixel file over your internet connection without noticeable delay.

Link to the Washington Post.