m@terials, developed by Jitsuro Mase, use an off-the-shelf LCD projector to display a "3D theater" on a table.

[left: hardware configuration. right: 3D images generated by the device]

A video clip available on the Digital Stadium website.

It's amazing that this actually works because the hardware device looks deceptively simple. On the table top are transparent plastic strips standing diagonally at 45 degrees. The plastic strips make images stand up. The virtual people can be projected on to a strip closer to you or the ones further away from you.

Digital contents that can be effectively displayed on this device should conform to specific rules, however, "it is not so difficult" according to the creator of this device.

This device could be used for many different kinds of things besides the "3D theater" especially if it could be made larger (possibly as big as a computer displays or a building floor?) with hi-fidelity realistic images.

California-based Squid Labs has developed a high-tech rope that senses its own load and signals any weakness, sending the information to a handheld device well before it frays and gives way.

"Internal to the rope, inside the core, are a small proportion of conducting fibers, and as we pull on the rope, we change the structure of the braid and that changes the resistance, and that gives us the sensing capacity," explains Saul Griffith. "As I pull down on the rope you can see it modulating the load in this prototype sensor."

The threads can be made to be waterproof and uses for the invention could include climbing and lifting applications, rock climbing and other sports that involve ropes, optimizing sails on yachts and mooring ships.

The company is showing work at Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance, at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, till October 30.

Via CNN.

Japanese researchers are using femtosecond laser pulses to write data into human fingernails. Capacities are said to be up to 5 mega bits and the stored data lasts for 6 months - the time it takes a fingernail to be completely replaced.

"I don't like carrying around a large number of cards, money and papers," Yoshio Hayasaki from Tokushima University. "I think that a key application will be personal authentication. Data stored in a fingernail can be used with biometrics, such as fingerprint authentication and intravenous authentication of the finger."

The femtosecond laser system writes the data into the nail and a fluorescence microscope reads it out. The key to reading the data out is that the nail's fluorescence increases at the point irradiated by the femtosecond pulses.

Although the initial experiments have concentrated on small pieces of nail, the team is now developing a system that can write data to a fingernail which is still attached to a finger.

Via Optics. Thanks mighty Sathia who read it on slashdot.

BBC reports on a new inexpensive technology to take a baby's temperature, suitable for poorly educated mothers in developping countries, where hypothermia is a major cause of death among newborn babies.

An LCD disc with an adhesive back sticks onto the skin which monitors temperature.

When babies are warm enough, mothers will see a green spot with a smile - but if they are too cold, the smile disappears and the spot turns black.

"The LCD (liquid crystal display) ThermoSpot temperature indicator was developed by John Zeal, whose family firm has been making traditional mercury thermometers since 1888.

Its makers say the device could be produced for as little as 10p.

The disc has now been entered for this year's Medical Futures Innovations Awards".

Researchers from Stanford University and Cornell University have put together a projector-camera system that can read a playing card that is facing away from the camera.

The projector beams black and white pixels at a scene and the camera captures the way the light bounces off objects in the scene. A computer algorithm monitors the data and changes the patterns to gain the needed information.

For example, how can one read a playing card that is facing away from the camera? "In the card experiment, the camera cannot see the card directly, but it can see the surface of the book [behind the card]; the light from the projector bounces off the card, then bounces off the book and hits the camera," said Pradeep Sen from Stanford University.

When the projector shines on a red part of the card the light gets a red tint. "The camera observes it and our algorithm determines that the projector saw something red at that position," said Sen. "In this manner, we put together the projector image pixel-by-pixel and can see the card."

The dual-photography technique could be used to relight movie scenes in five years. It will be 10 or 15 years before it is practical to work with the large data sets needed to use the technique to change the viewpoint of a movie scene after it has been filmed.

Via Technology Research News.

In a scene of Minority Report, Tom Cruise stands in front of a screen and gestures to manipulate data and run analyses.

At Pennsylvania State University, researchers are working on something similar, by combining GIS (geographic information system), natural language technology, cognitive engineering and gestural science.

The system, called Dialogue Assisted Visual Environment for GeoInformation (DAVE_G) is meant to help people work together better while making decisions as a crisis unfolds. It can recognize gestures in conjunction with dialog and interpret the meaning.

"Spatial concepts are vague for computers," explains professor Alan MacEachren. "When a user tells a computer a location is 'near,' 'between' or 'north of' something, it has trouble interpreting what that means. But when you add hand gestures, the accuracy improves."

For example, a crisis team tracking a hurricane might say, "Let's look at the population distribution here in the southeast" and gesture at a map on display, circling the region of interest.

The computer can interpret the combination of voice and gesture commands, zoom in the area and act on the next series of queries. The team member might gesture to indicate the possible track of the hurricane and ask the computer to display what areas would be most affected by flooding if the storm tracks north or south of the current location.

The team is also developing software to let field workers manipulate GIS software on tablet PCs and PDAs using styluses.

Via IFTF's Future Now < GovTech.
Related: "Data-rich" environment for scientific discovery.