Monthly Archives: October 2009

The EyeWriter – A Truly Remarkable and Touching Invention!

  By ScienceProg | 25 October, 2009 - 8:23 am |
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Sometimes, we should be glad to be born as a healthy person. Even though we might be infected by cold or fever occasionally, but we’ll soon recover from it very soon.

Honestly, there are many unfortunate people outside there, who trying their best to live their life, even they’ve already diagnosed as a half handicapped or totally disabled.

Tony Quan would be the main character of our today’s story. Why? It’s because he was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), which is a form of motor neuron disease that caused by the degeneration of motor neurons in the central nervous system! Due to the torturing of this unmerciful master, Tony almost completely physically paralyzed except for his eyes.

EyeWriter

In order to let Tony expresses thoughts inside his mind, his friends have been developed a cool device called, “EyeWriter”. The most amazing part about the EyeWriter is allowing Tony to draw with his eyes.

Honestly, the whole project is based on the very basic components, such as:

  • Cheap sunglasses,

  • A micro CCD camera,

  • IR LEDs,

  • Miscellaneous electrical hardware and electrical components,

  • Custom software written in openFrameworks,

  • Capture card,

  • Projector,

  • Wireless broadband USB stick, and

  • Laptop!

It’s truly a low-cost eye-tracking device, which is enabling the patients with ALS to write or draw using their eyes! Frankly, it’s one of the coolest devices that we’ve ever seen in the past few years… [http://fffff.at/eyewriter/]

Paper Battery – The Alternative Power for Electronics

  By ScienceProg | 24 October, 2009 - 11:46 pm |
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When is the last time you received the birthday presents from your loved ones, friends or relatives? In certain circumstances, you might find that it’s a waste to just tore the birthday gift’s wrapping paper away, as it wrote with the blessing words, such as Happy Birthday on it!

Furthermore, you’ll be even cherished the birthday gift, if it being wrapped by the built in battery paper, which is a new type of battery made out of paper. In this case, the paper is automatically light up with words, which is has been programmed into it.

Mr. Albert Mihranyan and the research team have been discovered that this potential application of a new battery made of cellulose is going to be the next green and environmentally friendly batteries!

Paper battery

During the experiment, the research team undiscovered the secret behind the performance of the paper battery. They described it as the presence of the homogeneous, uninterrupted, yet nano-thin coating, which is about 1/50,000th the thickness of a human hair! The PPy coating on cellulose fibers can be molded into paper sheets. It was special cellulose, which is extracted from a certain species of green algae with 100 times the surface area of cellulose found in plants.

The design of the paper battery is incredibly simple. Furthermore, the battery recharged a few time faster than conventional rechargeable batteries. No doubt, the paper battery is going to be the new trend in the near future…[sciencedaily]

Sticky Light – The Art of Pure Light Interaction

  By ScienceProg | 23 October, 2009 - 8:38 am |
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People always say that it’s impossible to catch a light, as the light moving in a very high speed. However, if you’re giving the opportunity to grab and hold the laser light in your palms, would you mind to give it a shot?

Sticky Light on palms

As you can see on the above picture, a person is holding the red laser light inside his/her hands. Theoretically, it’s a laser spot bounces on a figure being drawn on paper and trying to escape the labyrinth of lines.

No camera or projector is used in the experiment. The Sticky Light proposes an experience and allows the users to touch and interact with a beam of pure light. It even fun, when you can play the classic PONG game with this Sticky Light all with your bare hands! (more…)

The New Discovery on Microscopic Images

  By ScienceProg | 22 October, 2009 - 8:47 am |
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It’s very tough for us to see those very tiny images, especially the microscopic images with our bare eyes. After all, it’s totally impossible to do it, unless we can interpreting the images generated in a new way!

A doctoral student at the research center of Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf had suggested that it’s possible to interpret and generate the microscopic images by Kelvin probe force microscopy.

She mentioned that the atomic force microscopy is well-known, even though in the public as a versatile tool for the production of images on the nanoscale level.

Microscopy images

The Kelvin probe force microscopy is a special type of technique, which is named after Lord Kelvin, the British renowned mathematical physicist and engineer.

Christine Baumgart, the doctoral student of the nanospintronics group at the FZD has described that the atomic force microscopes come along with a resolution even beyond the nanoscale level. The microscopes generate an image of the surface topography by only simply moving a tiny tip fixed on a small beam over the sample under investigation. The tip interacts with the atoms sitting on the surface of the sample is allowing the atoms to exert a force on the tip. As a result, the force affects the small beam and deformation can be measured by a laser system! [sciencedaily]