Invisibility cloak from Harry Potter soon

And if the invisibility cloak from Harry Potter was not quite in the range of science fiction? While many scientific teams compete in the world to try to make objects undetectable, American researchers from Cornell University in New York announced that it has developed a system that will cover an event for a tiny fraction of second, so it leaves no trace in the future. To do this, the team headed by Moti Fridman and financed by the Pentagon has used the properties of the light spectrum, including the speed difference between the various colors that compose it.

According to their findings published in the journal Nature, the laboratory experiment was to create a kind of temporal rift for circulating a discharge laser in a fiber optic cable through which a beam of green light. To create a window of about 50 picoseconds (or 5/100 trillionth of a second), the scientists used a lens radius dividing the green in two original blue and red light beams of slightly different speeds, a gap that they accentuated using another transparent obstacle. Once the laser discharge forty picoseconds introduced a new transparent obstacle can restore the speed of both blue and red beams, and a second lens can be combined to reconstruct the single green flash, as if ultimately nothing s ‘happened … The laser discharge is always present, but there is nothing to guess at their existence.

“Our results represent a significant step towards the realization of a complete spatiotemporal cloak,” said Moti Fridman. However, no excitement, there is only a very brief flash of optical fiber and you will probably not play the invisible man before a long time. Researchers will now endeavor to generate a broader temporal rift that conceals an event of greater magnitude. But, initially, the prowess of the team of Cornell University would especially help secure data transfers by making them travel in installments in optical fibers. A method that would make it almost impossible to intercept them.

Solar tree

A big challenge for the coming years is the production of energy. In accordance with environmental problems, the use of solar cells is spreading. Most of times, these pannels are hidden on the roofs of buildings. However, 5 years ago, a new device appeared, call the solar tree. Designed by Ross Lovegrove from the Museum for Angewandte Kunst (MAK) in Vienna, this tree is used in street asa streetlight. It is a symbiosis between pioneering design and cutting-edge eco-compatible technology.

Solar Tree draws inspiration from the organic forms of nature, reinterpreting the morphology of the tree and introducing the sensuality of the natural world into the urban context. In the words of Ross Lovegrove, “This is a project that celebrates design, nature and art and represents the DNA of our time”.

Books are alive

The stop-motion is a type of video using mostly immobile pictures. It is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own.

The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence.

This kind of video takes lot of time to be created. Here, the stop-motion is used to breath live into books.

Dance meets even More Technology

Ad for Samsung’s Galaxy SII smartphone launch in France. Featuring Internet Finger Tutting phenomenon–JayFunk.
Adding after effect to enhance finger tutting enjoyment. Makes you rethink potentials of augmented reality in a performance context.

Bookcases

I’m a big big fan of not just books, but bookcases as well. These are some awesome interesting bookcases, and I love some of the creative designs!

http://apartmentsilike.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/creative-bookshelves/

Dance meets Technology

HOK and his buddies doing some cool tutting using apple devices.

Kinect Incubator

One interesting development in the last year or so has been that Microsoft started supporting Kinect applications with more enthusiasm. One of the programs that Microsoft has started is the Kinect Incubator: http://www.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-announces-kinect-incubator-6346437

It’s an awesome initiative, and I’m waiting to see the kind of products that come out from there. The Kinect is one example of industry driven technology making awesome research projects affordable for researchers.

Autism and collaboration

Teachiing collaboration and turn-taking to children in general, and children with autism in particular, is a challenge. A lot of researchers have come up with creative ways of getting children to learn collaboration.
A few of the games or activities I really liked were:

https://sites.google.com/site/autismtechnology/tools-for-Social-Behavior-and-Affect/conversation-skills/collaborative-learning-puzzle-game

http://reactickles.org/

Interactive Storytelling

This was one of the inspirations for our project:

http://morrislessmore.com/

One f the most interesting fact about it is that it won at the Oscars this year, in the short animated category! We are moving towards this kind digital content now, where interaction and creativity on the part of the user have also become a part of the more traditional one-way entertainment.

Awesome Japanese music percussion game

It’s not really a game, but it’s a really different and creative way of creating music, specifically percussion. check it out at http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/japanfan/e7a3/