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Magnets could soon track your fingers in virtual reality
In an ideal world, you'd grab objects in virtual reality with your hands, like you do in real life. However, that's not usually how it works -- outside of some specialized gloves, you're left using abstract controllers. Oculus and University of Washington researchers might make it a reality, though. They've developed Finexus, a control method that uses a combination of fingertip electromagnets and sensors to track your hands. The system detects the distances between each finger and the sensor, and uses the intersection of each distance to determine a given digit's exact 3D position. Unlike with camera tracking, you don't need a direct line of sight to the sensors for this to work -- you could tie your virtual shoelaces if you wanted.
Wrist sensor logs the devices you use and your power consumption
MagnifiSense is a high-tech wristband developed by University of Washington researchers. Unlike fitness trackers, though, it doesn't log the number of steps you've taken or calories burned: it takes note of the electronics and appliances you personally use to keep track of your power consumption. During their tests, the researchers found that the sensor can correctly identify and differentiate 12 devices from each other, including electric toothbrushes, lamps, laptops and even cars. It's able to tell them apart by "listening" to the electronic radiation they generate. According to lead researcher Edward Wang, electronics actually produce distinct sounds similar to "vocal cord patterns," so "a blender 'sings' quite differently than a hair dryer."
Celebrities get digital puppets made from paparazzi photos
Typically, recreating a celebrity as an animated 3D character requires painstaking modeling based on motion capture and laser scans. In the future, though, all you'll need is a few limo-chasing photographers. University of Washington researchers have developed a system that creates digital face "puppets" by running a collection of photos -- in this case, paparazzi shots -- through special face tracking software. The digital dopplegangers (such as Kevin Spacey and Arnold Schwarzenegger) bear an uncanny resemblance to their real-world counterparts, but are sophisticated enough to mimic the expressions of virtually anyone else. Want the Japanese Prime Minister saying Daniel Craig's lines? You can make it happen.
Gas planets can become habitable if their stars get grabby
It's tempting to think of gas planets as permanently hostile to life as we know it. A pair of University of Washington researchers beg to differ, however. They've used computer modelling to determine that these worlds can become habitable when their stars get particularly grabby. If a relatively small, solid-core gas planet orbits a class M dwarf, tidal forces can tug it into a habitable zone and not only wipe out the gas (through the dwarf's X-ray and ultraviolet radiation), but produce life-giving water from the core's ice. Provided the timing is right, the result could be downright Earth-like.
Study proves that we can control each other's brains over the internet
A group of University of Washington researchers showed a year ago that brain-to-brain interfacing is possible in real life. Now, they're back after conducting a more thorough experiment, proving that their initial success wasn't a fluke. This time, the team performed tests using not just one pair, but six people divided into three pairs: one receiver and one transmitter. Just like before, the transmitters are hooked to an EEG machine (above) that can read brain waves, while sitting in front of a computer game. They need to defend a city in the game by firing cannons, but they cannot interact with it directly -- they can only transmit thoughts via the internet to their partners seated somewhere across the campus.
Experimental app can detect jaundice in newborns with just a snapshot
Want to make sure your newborn baby's jaundice-free? There's an app for that! A team of researchers from the University of Washington have developed an app that can diagnose jaundice among infants just by taking their pictures. Since the condition's typically diagnosed by the excessive yellowing of one's skin, it's not too odd to develop a tool that can detect it with just a snapshot, just like that app that can spot skin cancer through a smartphone. You simply place a color calibration card (which helps the software determine lighting and flash conditions, as well as account for the baby's skintone) on the baby's tummy, take a picture and then upload it to the cloud for analysis. The algorithm quickly does its job, and you get the results and the baby's bilirubin levels almost instantly.
Grade-school gamers test the foundation of DARPA's next training software
Inside the University of Washington's Center for Game Science (CGS), there's a department that is making video games for children, and it's funded mostly by DARPA. If you'll recall, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency is the part of the US Department of Defense that looks into emerging tech and its potential use by the armed forces -- things like robots, for example. But in order to gauge software components, the educational titles developed at the CGS cultivate "adaptive learning" tech that could be employed for military training. With tools that foster school-age students' STEM skills, researchers can test a game's adaptive teaching abilities and potential for use in other learning scenarios. Developers examine how AI that changes to suit education level could be leveraged for real-world use, which moves beyond the DOD to include science and biochemistry queries. In fact, it was the CGS' game Foldit that crowdsources scientific research through protein puzzle solving that caught the attention of DARPA in the first place. You can have a look at that particular title on the other side of the break. [Photo credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images]
Schools find ways to get more women into computer science courses
Technology giants like Apple and Google are frequently dominated by men, in part because relatively few women pursue computer science degrees; just 18 percent of American comp sci grads are female. However, at least a few schools have found ways to get more women into these programs. Carnegie Mellon University saw female enrollment jump to 40 percent after it both scrapped a programming experience requirement and created a tutoring system, giving women a support network they didn't have as a minority. Harvey Mudd College and the University of Washington, meanwhile, saw greater uptake (40 and 30 percent) after they reworked courses to portray coding as a solution to real-world problems, rather than something to study out of personal interest. Harvey Mudd's recruiters also made an effort to be more inclusive in advertising and campus tours.
Visual encyclopedia builds itself by scouring the internet
Crowdsourced knowledge bases like Wikipedia encompass a lot of knowledge, but humans can only add to them so quickly. Wouldn't it be better if computers did all the hard work? The University of Washington certainly believes so. Its LEVAN (Learn EVerything about ANything) program is building a visual encyclopedia by automatically searching the Google Books library for descriptive language, and using that to find pictures illustrating the associated concepts. Once LEVAN has seen enough, it can associate images with ideas simply by looking at pixel arrangements. Unlike earlier learning systems, such as Carnegie Mellon's NEIL, it's smart enough to tell the difference between two similar objects (such as a Trojan horse and a racing horse) while lumping them under one broader category.
This is the thinnest LED that anyone can make
Companies have been racing to slim down LED backlights as devices get ever thinner, but the University of Washington may have just beaten everyone to the finish line. Its scientists have developed an LED that, at three atoms thick, is easily the thinnest LED to date -- in fact, it's impossible to build something thinner using current knowledge. The key ingredient is tungsten diselenide, the thinnest known semiconductor. A single sheet of the material is less than a tenth as thick as a conventional LED, but still emits measurable light. It's flexible and strong, too. On a basic level, the technology could be handy for optical circuits, nanolasers and other areas where miniscule lighting is necessary. However, the researchers also see uses for their LED in mobile devices -- it could end up in wearables and other gadgets where even a slight difference in thickness could make a big impact.
Google announces uProxy: internet censorship avoidance in a browser extension
At its Ideas Summit in New York, Google revealed Uproxy: a service that aims to change the way people around the globe use the internet. A browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, uProxy can bypass restrictive firewalls that hinder users from accessing vital (and trivial) information online by creating peer-to-peer connections. If someone from a country with limited internet access installs uProxy, they can get a friend from the US to authorize them to surf the open web using their connection. The service has yet to launch, but its creators -- the University of Washington and Brave New Software -- have opened a restricted beta for select, technically adept users to make it as "secure, private, and robust" as possible. If you know anyone who could benefit from uProxy, especially in times of need, direct them to the source link below for the sign-up page.
Peripheral Vision 003: Professor John Slough on how nuclear power could get us to Mars in 30 days
"We thought of a clever idea of how you might use fusion to do manned space travel," explains John Slough. The University of Washington research professor discusses such seemingly impossible ideas with the cavalier nature one might otherwise reserve for picking out shirts in the morning. The white-haired academic wore his sandals to the office today, chuckling on occasion about the grandiosity of it all. Here in a nondescript business park in Redmond, WA, Slough and fellow UW staff members think they've found the secret to speedy interplanetary travel: small-scale nuclear fusion. "A realistic trip to Mars, as NASA has studied extensively, requires 1,680 days," Slough says, standing in front of the mess of electronics his company has taken to calling The Fusion Engine. "It required 11 launches from the most powerful rockets we have. Those two things would probably eliminate it. It would be something like $20 billion just to put the stuff in space. We thought that if you could exhaust the propellant at a speed that's comparable to the speed you want to go, which you can do with a different energy source, you can reduce that trip time to as short as 30 days." It's a lot to wrap one's head around, how imploding metal can heat plasma to fusion temperature in the neighborhood of hundreds of millions of degrees, but Slough breaks it all down on the latest Peripheral Vision with the patience and simple language of the high school science teacher we all wished we'd had.
Researchers link brains, control each other's actions via the internet (video)
Human brain-to-brain interfacing seems like the stuff of fiction (Pacific Rim, anyone?), but researchers at the University of Washington have made it a reality. A team led by faculty members Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco claim to have pioneered the world's first human-to-human experiment of the sort. Rao and Stocco were placed in different buildings and hooked up to two devices to record, interpret and send their brain signals via the internet. The sender (Rao) wore an EEG machine while the receiver (Stocco) was connected to a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil. The experiment was performed with a simple arcade-style video game, the objective of which was to shoot baddies out of the sky. Rao watched the screen and visualized lifting his hand to press the space bar to fire, but Stocco was the trigger man. Clear across campus, Stocco's finger tapped the space bar at the appropriate time, eliminating the target, despite being unable to hear or see the game's display. To learn more, check out the video after the break or the source link below.
University of Washington harnesses RF and TV waves for battery-free wireless devices (video)
The problem with power is that, eventually, it runs out. To help cope with this inevitability, scientists at the University of Washington have developed prototype "ambient backscatter" devices that can passively harness the juice in radio and TV waves. Because they don't generate their own signal, these devices can get by on the juice they siphon from the air -- communicating by absorbing or reflecting binary information from existing signals, instead. According to the researchers, these signals can travel as far as 6.5 miles from a TV tower at speeds of 1KB per second. Although the project is still in its infancy, its creators are already thinking up practical applications. Ambient backscatter tags could be built into buildings or bridges, for instance, and alert monitoring stations to potential structural damage or defects. The team also imagined tagged keys and furniture, warning a user if they accidentally dropped something between the couch cushions -- all without an energy source. This type of tech could bring us closer to the internet-of-things future we've been promised, allowing smart communications to exist virtually anywhere. The Huskies said this could even enable a dead smartphone to send TV signal-powered text messages -- which could be great considering how often we forget to charge our handsets.
Scientists build soft, transparent contact lens displays with nanomaterials
Of the contact lens display prototypes that we've seen so far, few if any are focused on comfort -- a slight problem when they're meant to sit on our eyeballs. A collaboration between Samsung and multiple universities may solve this with display tech that's meant to be cozy from the start. By putting silver nanowires between graphene layers, researchers have created transparent conductors that can drive LEDs while remaining flexible enough to sit on a contact lens. Current test lenses only have one pixel, but they're so soft that rabbits can wear them for five hours without strain. Scientists also see the seemingly inevitable, Glass-like wearable display as just one development path -- they're working on biosensors and active vision correction. While there's still a long way to go before we reach a cyberpunk future of near-invisible displays, we may finally have some of the groundwork in place.
WiSee uses WiFi signals to detect gestures from anywhere in your house (video)
Have you always dreamed of controlling your TV by flailing in the next room? Researchers at the University of Washington have just the system for you: WiSee, a gesture-recognition interface that uses WiFi to control things like sound systems and temperature settings. Since WiFi signals are capable of passing through walls, WiSee can detect gestures made from neighboring rooms, breaking free from the line-of-sight method relied on by devices like Kinect and Leap Motion. Unlike those two, WiSee doesn't require an additional sensor; the software can theoretically be used with any WiFi-connected device and a router with multiple antennae to detect Doppler shifts created by movement. The prototype was tested in both an office environment and a two-bedroom apartment, and the team reported a 94% accuracy with a set of nine distinct gestures. If you watch the video, embedded after the break, you'll notice that each user performs an identifying motion prior to the control gesture. It's a trick the team picked up from studying Kinect's solution for distinguishing between specific individuals in crowded rooms. Intrigued? Head over to the source link to read the report in full.
Gigabit Squared heading high-speed fiber and wireless internet initiative in Seattle
Seattle may have lost its high-velocity hoops team, but that doesn't mean it's satisfied with anything but speedy internet. The city has come to an agreement with Gigabit Squared (GB2) to build an unnecessarily wordy "fiber-to-the-home/fiber-to-the-business broadband network." With the University of Washington taking care of "community leadership" (as part of the Gig. U initiative), GB2 plans to utilize Seattle's excess fiber infrastructure, and create more, to deliver new internet options in three ways. In addition to the wired fiber network, the Gigabit Seattle project sees the development of a "dedicated gigabit broadband wireless umbrella" for beaming up to 1 Gbps from radio transmitters to others in direct view, as well as municipal WiFi-like services. At this stage, only 12 "demonstration" areas are earmarked in the proposal, although the radio-based wireless "umbrella" has the potential to extend that coverage. Gigabit Squared now needs to find the cash to get going if it wants to meet the distant operational target of "year-end 2014." It's worth remembering that plenty of city-wide internet initiatives have failed before this one, and only a Memorandum of Understanding and a Letter of Intent have been signed by all the involved parties -- agreements which aren't necessarily binding. Full details of the plan are available in PR form and at the source link below, or if you're done with prose, a map of the 12 demo neighborhoods hopefully getting hooked up can be found after the break. [Thanks, Gavin]
Squid extract bridges human / machine divide, cyborgs to become very real
If we ever manage to capture a live giant squid, researchers at the University of Washington are going to have a field day. Enterprising minds at the institution's materials science and engineering department have discovered a use for chitosan -- an extract made from squid pen or crab shells that could lead us down a cybernetic road to human / machine interfaces. The team incorporated the organic compound into their field-effect transistor prototype, and effectively created the first protonic circuitry "that's completely analogous to [the way] an electronic current" can be manipulated. Naturally, the silicon-based tech isn't ready (or safe) for implantation into humans just yet, but could one day be used to control biological functions, sending on / off commands to our bodies. So, maybe we won't have to fear that robot apocalypse, after all. You never know, give scientists ample time to fully flesh this advancement out and Spielberg's next great cinematic, sci-fi opus could wind up becoming a cyborg rom-com. Stranger things have happened folks.
Gamers pwn University of Washington scientists, solve decade-long simian AIDS protein conundrum (video)
No gamer's escaped the throes of adolescence without hearing the damning refrain, "Video games'll rot your brain." While scientific research into that claim has so far proved inconclusive, it turns out the preferred pastime of our digital era could potentially cure cancer, and even help prevent AIDS -- in monkeys. Utilizing crowdsourced results from the downloadable protein-manipulating "game" Foldit, scientists at the University of Washington were able to attain a successful model of the simian AIDS-causing Mason - Pfizer monkey virus retroviral protease. For over a decade, researchers have been arduously attempting to reconstruct the folded shape of M-PMV with the aid of the task-specific Rosetta software, but to no avail. Now, in what they're calling a possible first, gamers were able to do what scientific brains and algorithms could not, creating a sufficient model for molecular replacement -- all in just three weeks. Feel like dedicating your leisure hours to this worthwhile cause? Then be sure to hit up the source link below, and transform yourself from couch potato to couch crusader.
EnerJ power-saving system prioritizes CPU voltage, may reduce energy consumption by 90 percent
It takes a lot of energy for computing systems or data centers to patch up critical errors, but what if we devoted less power to fixing less urgent issues? That's the basic idea behind EnerJ -- a new power-saving system that could cut a chip's energy consumption by 90 percent, simply by prioritizing critical problems over those that are less threatening. Unlike, say, liquid cooling techniques, the University of Washington's framework focuses exclusively on the programming side of the equation and revolves around two interlocking pieces of code: one that handles crucial, precision-based tasks (e.g., password encryption), and another designed to deal with processes that can continue to function, even when facing small errors. The system's software would separate the two codes, meaning that energy from one section of the chip would never be used to fix a major problem that the other should address, while allowing engineers to more efficiently allocate voltage to each region. The system has already cut energy usage by up to 50 percent in lab simulations, but researchers think the 90 percent threshold is well within their reach, with computer engineering professor Luis Ceze (pictured above) predicting that the system may even be able to increase battery life by a factor of ten. The team is hoping to release EnerJ as an open-source tool this summer, but for now, you can find more information in the PR after the break.
