invisibility
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Invisibility 'cloak' hides objects by making them seem flat
Humanity is still some distance away from a real, honest-to-goodness invisibility cloak, but British scientists are that much closer to making it practical. They've developed a coating that uses graded refractive index nanocomposite materials (just rolls off the tongue, really) to reduce an object's electromagnetic signature. Ultimately, it makes curved surfaces seem flat -- electromagnetic waves leave almost as if there were no object at all.
Scientists are developing an invisibility cloak for solar panels
Current solar panel technology has enough trouble as it is converting sunlight into useable current, what with their paltry 20 percent average efficiencies. And it certainly doesn't help matters that up to a tenth of every solar panel's active collection areas are obscured from the sun by electrical leads called "contact fingers." But researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a novel workaround: they're wrapping the finger contacts in little invisibility cloaks.
These 'privacy glasses' make you invisible to facial recognition
You're going out with friends mid-week, and you don't want the boss/significant other/parole officer to find out. But it's a birthday celebration, and Facebook's auto-tagging the pictures your buddies upload like a dirty snitch. The first piece of advice: never "friend" your parole officer. The second? Maybe grab a pair of these "privacy" glasses from software security firm AVG. You, of course, can see my visage above, but AVG claims the technology in the specs means facial recognition software (like that of Facebook) will not.
Scientists make an invisibility cloak using off-the-shelf optical lenses
Most invisibility cloaks require fairly exotic technology to work, such as fiber optics or light-altering metamaterials. That's not very practical, especially since the illusion still tends to break when you move. The University of Rochester may have a far more realistic solution, however -- it has developed a cloak that only needs run of the mill optical lenses to hide objects from view. The system really boils down to clever math. By positioning two pairs of lenses in the right order, researchers can bend light in a way that hides almost everything you put in the middle of this arrangement. The approach scales up with the size of the glass, and it works at angles of 15 degrees or more; you don't need to look head-on to see the effect.
Invisibility suits are coming thanks to squid-like displays
It's not as hard to make an invisibility cloak as you might think, but making one that's truly sophisticated is another matter; metamaterials (substances that change the behavior of light) are hard to build. Rice University appears to have solved part of the problem, however. It just developed a squid-like color display (shown below) that should eventually lead to smart camouflage. The new technology uses grids of nanoscopic aluminum rods to both create vivid, finely-tuned colors as well as polarize light. By its lonesome, the invention could lead to very sharp, long-lasting screens. The pixels are about 40 times smaller than those in LCDs, and they won't fade after sustained light exposure.
Challenge modes 101: Farming invis pots and how to use them
This is the third in a series on getting challenge modes done before the Warlords of Draenor content patch. You will find all the articles in the series here. For non-mages and groups without access to the rogue's Shroud of Concealment, plan on using a lot of Invisibility Potions for challenge modes. If you're not on a big server, the odds of finding them on the auction house are low, but farming them in quantity is easy. Ghost Mushrooms grow and respawn very quickly in the Fungal Rock cave in northeastern Un'Goro, and you can get more Sungrass than you'll ever use with a few circuits around the edge of Thousand Needles. Get a potion-specced alchemist to make the pots for you.
Mischief managed: researchers produce an invisibility cloak in just 15 minutes
Grab your Marauder's Map and get ready to roll. Researchers at Zhejiang University in China have pioneered a new, time-efficient method of producing real world invisibility cloaks made out of Teflon. While it isn't the first time we've come across an invisibility cloak, it is the first to make use of an innovation called topology optimization. Thus far, physicists working on invisibility have largely relied on metamaterials -- synthetic materials that alter the behavior of light as it interacts with objects -- but the cost and difficulty of manufacturing them has made them an impractical option. The Zhejiang team has circumvented those obstacles by creating a so-called "eyelid" out of Teflon, the computer-altered topology of which minimizes the distortion of light as it moves past a cloaked object -- and it only took 15 minutes to produce. Since the Teflon eyelid is only invisible to microwaves, it won't enable you to roam the halls of Hogwarts unseen, but the technology could potentially open up new avenues in exploring invisibility on other wavelengths. To learn more, read the full paper at the source link below.
Scientists use metal and silicon to create invisibility cloak (no, you can't wear it)
In the quest to achieve that much-desired invisibility cloak, scientists have redirected light, used heat monitoring and even gone underwater -- with varying degrees of success. The latest attempt at this optical illusion is from engineers at Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania, who have developed a device that can detect light without being seen itself. When the ratio of metal to silicon is just right, the light reflected from the two materials is completely canceled out. The process, called plasmonic cloaking, controls the flow of light to create optical and electronic functions while leaving nothing for the eye to see. Scientists envision this tech being used in cameras -- plasmonic cloaking could reduce blur by minimizing the cross-talk between pixels. Other applications include solar cells, sensors and solid-state lighting -- human usage is conspicuously absent on that list.
Lichborne: Useful consumables your death knight should stock
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. So you've geared out. You've memorized your rotations. You've practiced them at the testing dummy. What's the next step? What do you do now to get your game to the next level and get some good habits going that will set you apart from the pack? One of the easiest ways to do that is to pay attention to your consumables. Consumables are one-time use items that can heal you or give you a stat boost of varying lengths of time. The downside is that they do cost money or time to acquire. The upside is that they can have a significant boost on your DPS or survivability. Any player who's trying to play at the top level or even the middling level can and should use them. Today, we'll take a look at some of the most basic consumables death knights should be using and discuss how to get them and when to use them.
Cornell scientists perform optical illusion, herald invisibility through bending of light (video)
Taken at face value, you'd almost think that Cornell scientists had successfully bent the fabric of time. With gobs of fiber optics at their disposal, the researchers have devised a method to distort light in a way that makes events in time undetectable to observers. Initial success in this Pentagon-backed invisibility project has cloaked an event for 40 trillionths of a second, leading Cornell scientists to tout, "You kind of create a hole in time where an event takes place. You just don't know that anything ever happened." The feat is performed by separating light into more fundamental wavelengths, first by slowing the red and speeding the blue. A resultant gap forms in the beam, which leaves a small window for subterfuge. Then, as the light passes through another set of fibers -- which slow the blue and speed the red -- light reaches the observer as if no disturbance had taken place at all. While the brilliant researchers ultimately imagine art thieves being able to pass undetected through museums with this method, the immediate challenge will be in prolonging the light gap. This could prove frustrating, however, due to the scattering and dispersion effects of light. As Cornell scientists dream of their ultimate heist, visual learners will most certainly want to check the video after the break.
Wakfu open beta starts January 4th
Ankama and Square-Enix have announced that Wakfu's open beta will begin on January 4th. The date will also mark the release of content update 0.311, which will bring a new achievement tracking tool and the Srams Shadow class to the game. The Shadow is an assassin archetype who comes complete with invisibility mechanics and the ability to dish out considerable melee damage. The devs will also be wiping the servers for the open beta phase, but contest, promotional items, and holiday event items will persist through the reset. Ankama is also temporarily removing two classes (the Ecaflip and the Rogue) for further balancing. Look for the Rogue and its rival Masqueraider to make their return shortly after Wakfu's February launch. [Thanks to AterNox for the tip!]
BAE's infrared invisibility cloak makes tanks cold as ice, warm as cows
Warfare's constantly evolving. Daylight battles became late-night duels, and pre-noon skirmishes shifted to sundown slaughters -- some might say we're just getting lazy, but either way, thermal imaging now plays quite the vital role. Now BAE and the FMV -- Sweden's equivalent to DARPA -- have a way to mask the heat signature of heavy machinery. Adaptiv is a wall of 14 centimeter panels that monitor the ambient heat and match it, so it can't be picked out from the background radiation. The tech can also be used to replicate the profiles of other things -- you know, like a spotted calf or a Fiat 500. BAE believes the tech is scaleable for buildings and warships, the only downside being that all future commanders will have to make sure their operations are finished before dawn. Wouldn't want your soldiers to see that five o'clock (AM) shadow, now would we? [Thanks, Rob]
Arcane Brilliance: The mage survival guide, part 1
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week and next, we look at the time-honored tradition of mages dying whenever something looks at them funny and discuss a few ways to break that tradition. Way #1: Stand next to the warlock, pull aggro, cast Frost Nova, then Blink away. I'm just kidding; that's a terrible idea. Funny, but terrible. Only do it once, purely for the humor value, then concentrate on downing the boss. Okay, maybe twice. If you've run a heroic in Cataclysm, you may have noticed something: Nobody's healing you. In Wrath, when I'd take my holy pally out for a spin, everybody got heals. I was healing the tank, the off tank, the off-off tank, the DPS, the other healers, the hunter's pet, the death knight's ghoul, the guy standing in the fire ... they all got heals. Now? Not so much. These days, healers spend 75% of their time healing the tank and the other 25% praying that their mana bars will go back up. That leaves exactly 0% of their time to spend on keeping your mage alive. We're on our own, guys. When you see your health bar start to drop in a Cataclysm heroic or raid, just know that it won't be going back up any time soon. Our survival as DPSers is squarely our own responsibility. And what's the first rule of magehood? That's right: Dead mages do terrible DPS. We need to stay alive, our raid needs us to stay alive, and the only way that's going to happen is if we do it ourselves. "But Christian," you might be saying, "I'm a mage! I wear a dress into combat! A particularly vigorous sneeze could kill me." Those things are all true. But you do have a few tricks up your sleeve that can help stave off death, if not forever, then at least long enough to pump out a few thousand more points of damage before you port up to that last great mage table in the sky.
Arcane Brilliance: News and notes for mages from PTR patch 4.0.6
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, a magical journey awaits ... a fantastic voyage through a mystical realm. I speak, of course, of the Public Test Realm, and the wondrous patch notes that dwell therein. Now before we begin, I should make it clear that mages aren't getting anything even remotely earth-shattering in patch 4.0.6. It's not like Blizzard is letting us autofire while moving or anything. But a patch is still a patch. Things are going to change, and though mages have been left largely un-fiddled-around-with (at least in comparison to many other classes), we do have some incoming alterations to be aware of. So with our expectations in an appropriately subdued state, let's peek beyond the jump for an annotated look at what be happening, yo.
Kinect now offers a stealth mode, courtesy of optical camouflage hack (video)
You've seen so many Kinect hacks by now that you probably think you know them all -- but wait, have you seen one that makes you look like Predator when he's busy predatorizing the populace? Or one that lets you reenact your favorite Metal Gear Solid scenes with Snake's camo turned on? Yup, a Japanese coder by the name of Takayuki Fukatsu has exploited the versatile openFrameworks to give Kinect a mode where it tracks your movement and position, but turns the dull details of your visage into an almost perfectly transparent outline. Of course, you're not actually transparent, it looks to be just the system skinning an image of the background onto the contours of your body in real time, but man, it sure is cool to look at. You can do so for yourself with the video after the break.
Flexible metamaterial could make your next invisibility cloak rather more comfortable
Metamaterials have a lot of potential future applications, but only one of them really gets our geeky senses tingling: invisibility cloaks. Previous theoretical examples we've seen were built upon rigid silicon substrates, meaning they'd be about as comfortable to wear as a motherboard jacket with ISA sleeves. But, a new material at the University of St. Andrews has been created that offers similar light-bending properties in a flexible package, crafted by the formation of a membrane upon a release layer, etching microscopic gold bars upon it, and then removing the release layer to have just the blingy membrane left behind. It can be tuned to bend various wavelengths, with the team having success working at wavelengths as short as 620nm -- you know, red. If there's one problem it's the size of the thing, with current prototypes measuring just 5 x 8mm, but it is said to be "scalable to industrial levels," meaning next-year's Harry Potter costume could be the best one ever.
Invisibility cloak upgraded to bend infrared light, not to mention our minds
The fabled cloak of invisibility was once considered impossible for modern science, chilling out with perpetual motion up in the clouds, but these days scientists are tilting at blurry windmills with a modicum of success several times a year. The latest advance in theory comes to us from Michigan Tech, which says it can now cloak objects in the infrared spectrum. Previous attempts using metallic metamaterials could only bend microwave radiation, the study claims, but using tiny resonators made of chalcogenide glass arranged in spokes around the object (see diagram at left) researcher Elena Semouchkina and colleagues successfully hid a simulated metal cylinder from 3.5 terahertz waves. While it's hard to say when we might see similar solutions for visible light, even a practical application of infrared cloaking could put your night vision goggles to shame, or perhaps block covert objects from being detected by those newfangled terahertz x-rays.
Arcane Brilliance: The difference between good and great
It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that believes frost mages shouldn't be the only mages to experience the joy of pet ownership. Reader Doidadetanga, aside from having more syllables in his character name than is reasonably necessary, sent in this picture of his very own Arcane Elemental, which (if Blizzard listens to my nightly prayers at all) will be a new spell in Cataclysm ... along with Anti-Warlock Bolt, the new 56-point talent in the Arfrostfirecane tree. I'm about to make a bold statement (literally; it's in bold typeface): I'm a good mage. My GearScore is adequate. I am fully capable of putting out an acceptable amount of damage over an acceptable timespan. When folks want free food and water, I somehow manage to provide it for them. My dress is appropriately pretty, and my staff is sufficiently formidable in terms of both size and the manner in which I employ it. I'm about to make another bold statement: Anybody -- absolutely anybody -- can be a good mage. I can, you can and yes, even that defecting warlock who has finally outgrown his dark eyeliner, Taylor Lautner posters and hating his parents can be a good mage. The problem is, not nearly enough of us manage to move beyond that particular tier of magehood. I know I'm still working on it, five years after I started playing this wonderful game, and chances are you are too. There are a whole lot of good mages out there -- but not a whole lot of truly great ones. But fear not, my fellow mages. Though I have not yet attained greatness, I can recognize it when I see it. I'm willing to bet a good number of you can, too. Follow me past the jump and we'll discuss the fine line that separates a good mage from a great one. Because I'm going to make one final statement, and this one isn't even bold: Every mage can become great. Every single one.
3D invisibility cloak fashioned out of metamaterials
Those HDTV manufacturers did tell us that 3D was going to be everywhere this year, didn't they? Keeping up with the times, scientists investigating potential methods for rendering physical objects invisible to the human eye have now moved to the full three-dimensional realm. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology has developed a photonic metamaterial that can make things disappear when viewed from all angles, advancing from previous light refraction methods that only worked in 2D. It sounds similar to what Berkeley researchers developed not too long ago, and just like Berkeley's findings, this is a method that's still at a very early stage of development and can only cover one micrometer-tall bumps. Theoretically unlimited, the so-called carpet cloak could eventually be expanded to "hide a house," but then who's to say we'll even be living in houses by that time?
Shifting Perspectives: How not to be seen
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we go to pet our kitties and discover that they are not there. I am going to take a short break from stomping Moore's music selections flatter than a Kansas prairie in order to include a Monty Python video, which I think we can all agree is a necessary sacrifice this week given both our subject material and the title that was guaranteed to result. I had the pleasure of meeting a completely new player on my server not all that long ago. He'd rolled a rogue and was slowly making his way through both levels and the avalanche of bewilderment common to new players. I haven't forgotten what it was like to be tossed into a world of frequent acronyms and gamer parlance, and I spent some time giving him tips. Between making helpful suggestions like, "Wow, I guess you can't jump off the Thunder Bluff elevator at that point" and "Did you ever consider rolling a druid?", I discovered that he was in the habit of dying a lot. For new players, that's not unusual, but it was how he was dying that really got my attention. Starting most fights from Stealth, he'd sneak up to a mob, most typically from the front, and then attempt to circle to the side or rear for a Backstab opener. A good 90% of the time, the mob would attack him midway through the process, which -- as you can imagine -- is a disconsolate state of affairs for someone who aspires to be an invisible ninja. As soon as I saw this, I said, "Well, that's your problem right there." "What is?" "You are not an invisible ninja."
