Sports photogs aren't compensating for something by swinging gigantic, monopod-mounted lenses; they need the focal length. Focusing and zooming on outfielders usually means glass far from the camera body, but not so when using so-called "origami optics," flat lenses being researched at UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering that use internal reflection to achieve long focal lengths. Only the outer ring actually captures the image, while the others bounce it around before depositing light onto the film or sensor. The military is sponsoring this research, wanting better eyes on its UAVs, and we're hoping for improved optics in our gadgets -- though we were equally jazzed about liquid lenses, and those haven't exactly revolutionized mobile photography yet. A snooze-inducing Engineering TV clip after the break explains it all in more detail, so don't click on until you've had your morning cuppa -- or two.

Jacob Whitehill at UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering has demonstrated a proof of concept that allows his facial expressions to speed-up and slow-down video playback. Pretty sweet. But we're more interested to hear that his project is part of a larger effort at the UCSD Machine Perception Lab (gulp) to use automated face recognition to "make robots more effective teachers." We can see the future now...

Human: (frowning)
Robot: Aw, my meat bag is sad, I will now give it a hamburger and turn on Golden Girls.

Fortunately, human teachers who've somehow missed out on the billions of years of biologically evolution required to recognize the "oh face" can take advantage of this research as well. See a video demonstration of that after the break, face-controlled video here.

For AV freaks enamored with their own HDTV and hardcore gamers who doubt anyone's ability to unleash more graphical firepower than that found in their rig, prepare to be humbled. As part of the HIPerSpace visualization system, engineers at the University of California, San Diego "have constructed the highest-resolution computer display in the world, with a screen resolution of up to 220 million pixels." The system, which links between UCSD and UC-Irvine (responsible for the mighty HiPerWall) via dedicated optical networking, contains a "graphics super cluster" that relies on 80 NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 GPUs. Reportedly, scientists dealing with large-scale applications involving "Earth sciences, climate prediction, biomedical engineering, genomics, and brain imaging" will be able to make use of the newfangled setup in order to better digest the information they're dealing with. Sheesh, all we want is a solid day with this thing, infinite Doritos, and Halo 3.

[Via MedGadget]

While the Virtual Hallucinating goggles and Brain Machine can certainly give you a taste of the erratic, a new behavioral-pattern monitor at the University of California, San Diego will reportedly be used to "study the behavior of patients with mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia." The LifeShirt, "a computerized vest that continuously monitors the patient's movements," sports integrated sensors to monitor hyperactive and repetitive movements and record data on "respiration, heart rate, and other physiological measures." Notably, the padded room wearers are presumably crammed into sports a ceiling-mounted webcam that films their exploratory behavior in order to better analyze movement patterns associated with certain disorders. Eventually, of course, researchers are hoping that data collected from the sensor-laden straight jacket could be used to create new drugs to help combat the behavioral abnormalities, but for all of our sakes, let's hope this thing doesn't fall into the wrong hands.

[Via MedGadget, photo courtesy of TechnologyReview]