HackingTheUniverse

You are browsing the archives of 2009 July.

At MIT, a research team is developing fabric woven from light detecting fibers that are capable of capturing images. Instead of using a single lens to collect light and create an image, the web of fibers provides a distributed imaging capability across the surface of the fabric. A collection of many small data points can [...]

Rene Descartes was born in France in 1596. He is known as “the father of modern philosophy” and also contributed to mathematics and general science. The cartesian coordinate system is named for him and he created analytic geometry. He also did some work in the field of optics, with both refraction and reflection. Prior to [...]

Using technology and computational power to extend and enhance our cognitive resources and abilities is called “augmented cognition”. This can involve filtering information flow, modulating information volume to stay under overwhelm limits, enhancing data with analysis and visualization, enhancing bandwidth by using multiple channels and information formats, sequencing information properly to allow increased assimilation rates, [...]

Some fast food restaurants use cash register keyboards with symbolic diagrams of different food products on them to make it easier to train new staff. The US military is also moving in that direction, trying to take a field that is complex and often accomplished at a highly intuitive level by self-trained individuals and move [...]

Very light, very thin batteries can now be printed onto flexible substrates. Cutting-edge printable battery is revolutionizing the field – [nanowerk.com] For a long time, batteries were bulky and heavy. Now, a new cutting-edge battery is revolutionizing the field. It is thinner than a millimeter, lighter than a gram, and can be produced cost-effectively through [...]

Voyager1 is currently the most distant human made object from the Earth, somewhere beyond 10 billion miles from the Sun. When we launched Voyager1 in 1977, a “golden record” was included with it, in the hopes that it would be able to communicate something about life on Earth to any intelligent beings that found it. [...]

Wolfram Mathematica allows you to model and visualize mathematical algorithms. It integrates a computational engine, graphics, a programming language, and an interface to a wide variety of external tools. It includes access to a very large set of mathematical and engineering functions. The Mathematica Grid system now extends this computational power across many systems using [...]