Science and research

FingerLink turns paper into touch screens

There are many gestural interfaces under development, but our fingers remain one of the most useful tools we have. Fujitsu's FingerLink lets your fingers control a scanner and projector for printed information, acting as a bridge between digital and analog tech.

The prototype uses off-the-shelf cameras and projectors. Fujitsu's image-processing software links the two.

It can accurately detect where your fingers are as you touch or swipe any printed matter, letting you copy text or images and project them elsewhere. The size of projected images can similarly be adjusted with a fingertip. … Read more

A new way to predict breast cancer survival

A researcher who used to work in digital television has just led a team of Columbia University engineers to win the Sage Bionetworks / DREAM Breast Cancer Prognosis Challenge.

Dimitris Anastassiou, who is now a systems biologist (meaning he investigates interactions within biological systems), reports in the April 17 issue of Science Translational Medicine that his team's winning computation model is extremely predictive of breast cancer survival.

Before the challenge, Anastassiou and his team identified what they call "attractor metagenes," which are genetic signatures expressed in almost the exact same way across many types of cancer. Their new … Read more

New teeny-tiny battery charges in less than a second

One of the biggest bugbears of smartphones is just how much juice they drain -- and how long they take to recharge. Batteries are also the reason many devices can't be smaller; after all, the batteries have to fit somewhere (although, given the burgeoning phablet market, that's not exactly a huge problem).

Scientists have made several recent attempts to build a better lithium ion battery. In the latest push, a team of researchers led by mechanical science and engineering professor William P. King at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign has developed a new type of lithium ion battery that's just a fraction of the size of the batteries we use now -- and that can out-power the best supercapacitors. … Read more

NASA's Kepler spacecraft to reveal new planetary discoveries?

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has been in hot pursuit of extraterrestrial life for four years now. And, on Thursday, it's letting people know just what it's found lurking in the Milky Way.

NASA is holding a Kepler briefing at 11 a.m. PT on Thursday. It will be broadcast live on NASA Television and on UStream. The agency will also host a moderated Web chat with Kepler Deputy Project Scientist Nick Gautier of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. During the briefing, people can submit questions to the Kepler scientists via Twitter with the hashtag #AskNASA.

Kepler launched in … Read more

Diving for Coral-bots to repair the world's dying reefs

Head underwater at the Great Barrier Reef with Google Maps, and you'll notice something deeply saddening: instead of the vividly colored corals you would expect, vast swathes of the reef are dull brown -- dying, thanks to pollution, fishing, and climate change. This is a situation repeated the world over, with 20 percent of the world's reefs dead, and another 50 percent under immediate threat.

Although coral reefs, when left alone, can regenerate, those closer to human habitation aren't so lucky. It seems hopeless; short of drastic intervention, such as the cessation of fishing and dropping waste into the sea, how on earth could we combat this?

Humans have been trying to help. Fragments of Hope is a coral nursery in Belize that sends divers down to plant pieces of healthy coral in the dying reefs to speed up the recovery process. This work is painstaking and slow, however, and -- perhaps most pertinently -- subject to the limitations of the human body. There are places where humans cannot dive, and human endurance has a limit.

The Coral-bot Team from the U.K. has proposed that robots go where humans can't tread. The team has designed and built a series of robots that could autonomously navigate the depths and continue the work of planting coral. … Read more

New moms more likely to seek help for depression if it's online

Postpartum depression afflicts between 10 percent and 15 percent of new moms. But with some never seeking help, those numbers may be even higher. And in a new study out of Case Western Reserve, researchers found that many women don't seek counseling because of the stigma attached to depression and because they feel they simply don't have the time -- but they would go online for help if professionals were available and they could remain anonymous.

"Mothers cannot always find a sitter and then spend time driving to and from counseling," Judith Maloni, lead investigator and … Read more

NASA experimenting with 3D printing for space exploration

NASA is getting into the 3D printing business. At NASA's Ames Research Center, engineers and researchers are experimenting with the technology with the hope that one day their creations will be used in space exploration. "Space Shop is our attempt to take the best practices and lessons learned from what we call the maker community," said Dave Korsmeyer, the director of engineering at NASA Ames.

The program is still in its nascent stages. But NASA sees potential in the technology because it enables designers and engineers to get the manufacturing information early in the design process and … Read more

Reading on treadmill no sweat with ReadingMate

No diversion can divert me from the fact that treadmills are boring. Even if the weather is bad, I'm not much of a TV viewer -- on or off the treadmill. And I often find the most energizing music to also be the most annoying. Reading on a treadmill can be downright nauseating.

But thanks to an experimental system out of Purdue University, I soon may be able to catch up on my backlog of New Yorker digital issues while clocking time on the dreaded tread.… Read more

Leap Motion strikes bundling, embedding deal with HP

Leap Motion has struck a deal with Hewlett-Packard to bundle and embed its 3D motion control technology in some of the computer giant's devices.

The San Francisco startup's gesture-control system measures users' movements to an accuracy of a hundredth of a millimeter. It plans to release the technology in mid-May, charging $80 for a small thumb drive-size device that plugs into a computer's USB port.

Already, Leap Motion had cemented deals to bundle its controller with Asus PCs, and to sell it in Best Buy stores and at Bestbuy.com, as well as on its own Web … Read more