Technology

A latest experimental technology system, called WorldKit reportedly turns any surface into a touchscreen by pairing a depth-sensing camera lens with a projector lens.

According to Fox News, WorldKit’s aim is to transform all of the surroundings into touchscreens, equipping walls, tables, and couches with interactive and intuitive controls.

Chris Harrison, a soon-to-be professor in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University and Robert Xiao, a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon and lead researcher have together come up with the latest innovation.

A scientist, who is working to find an alternative for oil, has placed his bets on algae to become the fuel of the future.

Professor Juergen Polle, Professor of biology at Brooklyn College, told CBS News that planes cannot be flown with ethanol.

He asserted that to power a plane, oil is needed, and algae are capable of making oil as a drop-in replacement for fossil fuel.

Proponents find algae appealing, as it has the ability to grow in salt water.

Antimatter has been detected in solar flares via microwave and magnetic-field data, according to a new research.

The research sheds light on the puzzling strong asymmetry between matter and antimatter by gathering data on a very large scale using the Sun as a laboratory.

While antiparticles can be created and then detected with costly and complex particle-accelerator experiments, such particles are otherwise very difficult to study.

Defying 30 mph gusts and temperatures down to minus 22 F, NASA’s new polar rover in Greenland has demonstrated that it could operate completely autonomously in one of Earth’s harshest environments.

The robot known as GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, was designed by teams of students attending engineering boot camps at Goddard in the summers of 2010 and 2011.

Researchers at the University of Bath have developed a device that can help blind people use sounds to build an image in their minds of the things happening around them.

The vOICe sensory substitution tool, that instructs the brain to turn sounds into images, could be used as an alternative to invasive treatment for blind and partially-sighted people.

The team of researchers, led by Dr Michael Proulx, from the University’s Department of Psychology, looked at how blindfolded sighted participants responded to an eye test using the device.

Passenger pigeon, which was once among the most abundant birds in North America, is now extinct because of hunting and habitat destruction but scientists are planning to bring it to life.

The research is being spearheaded by young biologist Ben J. Novak .

Novak’s idea seems to have been taken from techno thriller ‘Jurassic Park,’ in which dinosaur DNA was completed by corresponding fragments from living amphibians, birds and reptiles, the Washington Post reported.

An international team of scientists, has observed six stars similar to the Sun with extraordinary dust belts.

The newly discovered debris disks are not only bigger than the Kuiper belt. Above all they are extremely cold.

With a temperature of about minus 250C they are the coldest debris disks known so far.

“We were surprised that such cold debris disks exist at all,” Alexander Krivov, the lead author of the new study, said.

By way of comparison, the Kuiper belt is about 70C degree warmer, some of the dust disks even reach room temperature.

A return to the Moon could be hampered by dust, a poorly-understood threat to machines and people alike, it has been revealed.

Simulations by scientists in Britain and France show that in key zones of Earth’s satellite, dust kicked up by a landing or exploration gains an electrostatic force that briefly overcomes lunar gravity, a space conference heard.

As a result, the dust lingers high above the surface, presenting a thin grey cloud of fine, sticky, abrasive particles that hamper visibility, coat solar panels and threaten moving parts, News.com.au reported.

Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, who visited Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and baby North West in the hospital just a day after the birth, has now opened up about the meeting.

The visit was set up by Kardashian for Kanye”s birthday as she wanted the two to meet for a surprise lunch and have Wozniak sign one of two Apple Pro Computer mice, ABC News reported.

The other mouse had already been signed by Steve Jobs.

Talking to the publication, Wozniak appreciated Kardashian’s idea, saying that the reality TV star was keen to do something nice and unusual for her man.

A recent study revealed that news agencies continue to have an edge over Twitter in being first to provide news to viewers.

According to the research, Twitter can only break news before newswires in rare incidences, but for major events there is little evidence that it can replace traditional news outlets.

Twitter”s can bring additional coverage of events, and for sharing news items of interest to niche audiences, such as local sports results.

A new study on fruitbats used cutting edge technology to see how these small mammals move through the air.

According to Dr Nicolai Konow (Brown University, USA), who led the research, “Energy is stored in the triceps tendon, which is used to power elbow extension – in essence, elbow extension happens using ‘recycled’ energy. State of knowledge, and our results, indicates that bats are unique among small mammals in stretching their tendons, as small mammal limb tendons are thought to be too thick and stiff to be stretched.”

A new study has found that female mice with greater life expectancy are less active and less explorative than their fellow females with lower life expectancy.

Anna Lindholm, behavioral biologists from the University of Zurich, and her doctoral student Yannick Auclair investigated whether risky behavior can lead to premature death in animals – like it does in humans – by studying the behavior of 82 house mice.

With fewer than a dozen flowering plants out of 300,000 species accounting for 80 percent of humanity’s caloric intake, people need to tap unused plants to feed the world in the near future, claims Cornell University plant geneticist Susan McCouch in the Comment feature of the July 4 issue of Nature.

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, have tested the reliability of seven techniques against their record of predicting flares and non-flare events correctly, as well as their history of missed flares and false alarms.

When the predictions were put into context of the Sun’s activity levels over time, some of the most seemingly successful techniques slid down the table.

Solar flares are sudden and dramatic releases of energy from the Sun’s atmosphere in the form of radiation and electrically charged particles.

Researchers at Ohio State University are touting a little antifreeze as a key component to a relatively cheap semiconductor material for use in future solar technologies.

In a new study, they have shown that a process combining some comparatively cheap materials and the same antifreeze that keeps an automobile radiator from freezing in cold weather may be the key to making solar cells that cost less and avoid toxic compounds, while further expanding the use of solar energy.

A urine test can now determine whether a transplanted kidney recipient is in the process of rejecting the donated organ, as well as identifying who is at risk of rejection several weeks and even months before symptoms appear.

Octopods can survive temperature habitats ranging from as low as -1.8C to more than 30C, due to their ability to keep supplying oxygen to their body tissues.

A new study shows that a blue colored pigment, hemocyanin, in their blood, responsible for oxygen transport, crucially allows octopods to live in freezing temperatures.

Research by Michael Oellermann, Hans Portner and Felix Mark at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, looked at how octopods are able to supply oxygen to tissues in freezing temperatures.

An international group of astronomers has spotted a distant galaxy hungrily snacking on nearby gas.

The gas is seen to fall inward toward the galaxy, creating a flow that both fuels star formation and drives the galaxy’s rotation.

This is the best direct observational evidence so far supporting the theory that galaxies pull in and devour nearby material in order to grow and form stars.

Spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way formed billions of years ago in the dark matter concentrations that began to grow shortly after the Big Bang.

Apple Inc. announced the hiring of the erstwhile CEO of French fashion firm Yves Saint Laurent Paul Deneve as vice president of Special Projects.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Paul Deneve to Apple,” company spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said in a statement. “He’ll be working on special projects as a vice president reporting directly to Tim Cook,” CEO of the California-based tech giant.

Deneve, a sales and marketing manager for Apple in Europe between 1990-97, resigned from YSL Tuesday, saying that he was looking for a new opportunity in the tech sector.

Indian doctors in collaboration with a Russian lab have developed software to differentiate dengue, malaria and other viral fevers, otherwise a challenging task due to their similar symptoms, an official said Friday.

The software, developed by a team of doctors from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) and Lab Tech Ltd in St Petersburg, is expected to aid in faster detection, reduction in cost of treatment and minimisation of antibiotic resistance as only fever-specific antibiotics need to be given to patients.

Joining the bandwagon, Videocon Mobile Services has slashed its 2G data rates by 90 percent for its subscribers across the Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh telecom circles, the company said in a statement here Thursday.

“According to the new tariff, once the subscribers exhaust their free 2G Data Pack quota, they can continue to access high speed mobile internet by just paying 1 paise per 10kb, thereby enjoying a huge 90 percent discount,” the statement said.

China will pay more attention to cross-border cyber attacks while improving international cooperation, the country’s top cyber security watchdog said Thursday.

The internet is a valuable commercial tool. But on too many occasions users find their privacy violated through hacking or the stealing of data, reported China Daily citing Zhang Feng, chief engineer at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Researchers have showed that hawkmoths use sonic pulses from their genitals to respond to bats producing the high-frequency sounds.

The scientists said that this could possibly be a self-defence mechanism to jam the echolocation ability of their predators.

Study co-author Akito Kawahara, assistant curator of Lepidoptera at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus, said that ultrasound has only been demonstrated in one other moth group.

Kawahara said that the echolocation research has been focused on porpoises, whales and dolphins.

Doug Engelbart, the man who invented the computer mouse, has died aged 88.

Engelbart developed mouse in the 1960s as a wooden shell covering two metal wheels, patenting it long before the mouse’s widespread use.

According to the BBC, he also worked on early personifications of email, word processing and video teleconferences at a California research institute.

Engelbert’s daughter, Christina, notified about his death to the state’s Computer History Museum in an email.

She said that her father had been in poor health and died peacefully on Tuesday night in his sleep.

A new study has revealed that 6 percent of American adults online reportedly use Reddit, a self-proclaimed first page of Internet which allows users to submit links and vote them up or down based on their quality, novelty or general ability to generate amusement,

According to the study by Pew Center’s Internet and American Life project, the six percent of people who frequent the site put Reddit at par with with Tumblr as compared to Twitter which is used by 1 6 percent of American adults online and 67 percent of those who use Facebook, Washington Post reports.