Month: October 2015

WASHINGTON (TIP): Scientists are developing new technologies that will allow computers to recognise non-verbal commands like gestures, body language and facial expressions.

For most people, using a computer is limited to clicking, typing, searching, and, thanks to Siri and similar software, verbal commands.”Compare that with how humans interact with each other, face to face -smiling, frowning, pointing, tone of voice, all lend richness to communication,” the researchers said. The new project titled Communication through gestures, expression and hared perception’ aims to evolutionise everyday interactions between humans and computers. “Current humancomputer interfaces are still everely limited,” said Pro essor Bruce Draper, from Colorado State University, who is leading the project. “First, they provide essentially one-way communication: users tell the computer what to do. This was fine when computers were crude tools, ut more and more computers re becoming our partners and ssistants in complex tasks. Communication with computers needs to become a two-way dialogue,” said Draper.

The team has proposed cre ating a library of what are called Elementary Composable Ideas (ECIs). Like little packets of information recognizable to computers, each ECI contains information about a gesture or facial expression, derived from human users as well as a syntactical element that constrains how the information can be read.

To achieve this, the researchers have set up a Microsoft Kinect interface. A human subject sits down at a table with blocks, pictures and other stimuli. The researchers try to communicate with and record the person’s natural gestures for concepts like `stop’ or,
`huh?’.

“We don’t want to say what gestures you should use,” Draper said. “We want people to come in and tell us what gestures are natural. Then, we take those gestures and say, OK, if that’s a natural gesture, how do we recognise it in real time, and what are its semantics? What roles does it play in the conversation? When do you use it?When do you not use it?” he said.

According to the project proposal, the work could someday allow people to communicate more easily with computers in noisy settings, or when a person is deaf or hard of hearing, or speaks another language.

LONDON (TIP): British archaeologists have discovered a 6,000year-old `eco-home’ close to the iconic prehistoric Stonehenge monument. The shelter -in a hollow left behind by a fallen tree -at Blick Mead was used over a 90-year period from 4336 BC, archaeologists believed. They said the minimalist property close to Stonehenge dates from between 4336BC to 4246BC, making it about 6,000 years old.

Archaeologist David Jac ques, said: “They … used the stump of the tree, about three metres high, as a wall.”

The finds are being shown to UN heritage experts, who are currently visiting Stonehenge, the ancient stone circle that has puzzled scholars for centuries. Archaeologists are concerned a planned 2.9 km tunnel being considered for the nearby A303 main road will damage the site.

Discoveries have also shown stones were warmed up by the Mesolithic Period inhabitants and used in a hearth to emit heat in the earthy snug. Jacques, a senior research fellow at the University of Buckingham, has worked at Blick Mead for over a decade, making a number of discoveries about the inhabitants. The tree stump created a wall height similar to a “modern bungalow”.

“They’ve draped probably animal skins or thatch around the basin and connect ed it to a post so it’s a very com fortable snug little place,” Jac ques was quoted as saying by the BBC. The wooden wall o the hollow was lined with flints and the large earthy pi created by the tree root lined with cobbles and decorated with “exotic” stones from out side the area. “There are some clever and sophisticated thi ngs going on, the hot stones that they put into this little type of alcove wouldn’t have been on fire,” said Jacques.

Scientists have created the blackest material ever made, so dark that it can absorb almost all light that hits it. The researchers, who were inspired by a completely white beetle, hope that the superblack material could help develop better and more efficient solar panels or completely change the way that they are made.

The material absorbs 99% of light, at all angles, making it 26% darker than carbon nanotubes, which are the darkest material before known. The ideal thing to absorb energy would be a dark material that “absorbs radiation and at all angles and polarisations”, the researchers write. That aim is probably impossible, but scientists still aspire to create ever darker materials. The study was published in Nature Nanotechnology.

People who have seen record-breaking dark materials say doing so is “strange” and “alien” as it is so dark that the eye can’t comprehend it, and instead just sees an unending abyss.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Earthquakes can change elastic properties of the Earth’s crust up to 6,000 kilometres away, altering its ability to withstand stresses for up to a few weeks, a new study has found.

The research demonstrates that the Earth is a dynamic and interconnected system, where one large earthquake can create a cascading sequence of events thousands of kilometres away, researchers said.

“Earthquakes can fundamentally change the elastic properties of the Earth’s crust in regions up to 6,000 kilometres away, altering its ability to withstand stresses for a period of up to a few weeks,” said Kevin Chao, a postdoc in Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and a member of a research team led by Andrew Delorey at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

When a surface wave from an earthquake some way off passes through another fault region, it changes the balance between the frictional properties that keep the surfaces locked together, the elasticity that allows the crust to withstand strain, and the stress state that can cause it to fail, Chao said.

“When surface waves pass through, all of these properties rearrange and change. If a fault with high stress is ready to fail, it will accumulate more stresses in the fault, meaning an earthquake could occur at any time,” Chao said.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Researchers have developed a pocket-sized device that plugs into a smartphone and can detect early warning signs of asthma attacks.

The device, Wing, is a sensor that works with a companion app to accurately measure two important lung functions: FEV1 (how much air you can exhale in one second) and Peak Flow (how fast you can exhale).

Using Wing consistently over time can help users visualise lung function, detect environmental and medication triggers that can cause symptoms, and know when to take action before asthma or related attacks occur, according to scientists at US-based Sparo Labs.

Wing plugs in via the headphone jack and draws its power from the smartphone, so there is no charging or batteries necessary, ‘Gizmag’ reported. The accompanying app allows users to both monitor and collect readings, while also being able to share them securely with a physician through its cloud-based, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant system. Sparo Labs said Wing can help monitor and manage a variety of lung conditions other than asthma, including COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), CF (cyctic fibrosis) chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and pulmonary fibrosis.