Aasemoon'z Cluster

When the Arduino Duemilanove microcontroller appeared in 2005, it featured a set of female pin headers exposing most of the pins of the ATmega168 for easy hacking and for connecting accessory boards known as 'Shields'. The purpose of a shield is to provide new plug-and-play functionality to the host microcontroller, such as circuit prototyping, motion control, sensor integration, network and radio communication, or gaming interfaces, without worrying too much about the hardware implementation details. Seven years after the birth of the original Arduino, new shields keep coming out and are being cataloged on http://shieldlist.org/, a testament to the versatility of the design. It is also simple to build a DIY shield when nothing out there will meet your needs or when you want to understand how the shield concept works from the ground up.

So after all that you are probably asking, “What is SimpleCV?” It is an open source computer vision framework that lowers the barriers to entry for people to learn, develop, and use it across the globe. Currently there are a few open source vision system libraries in existence, but the downside to these is you have to be quite the domain expert and knowledgeable with vision systems as well as know cryptic programming languages like C. Where SimpleCV is different, is it is “simple”. It has been designed with a web browser interface, which is familiar to Internet users everywhere. It will talk to your webcam (which most computers and smart phones have built in) automatically. It works cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc). It uses the programming language Python rather than C to greatly lower the learning curve of the software. It sacrifices some complexity for simplicity, which is needed for mass adoption of any type of new technology.

Conveniently located right off the B4333 between Blaenannerch and Aberporth (and a short distance from Brynhoffnant, Llangranog, Gwbert, and Mwnt), West Wales Airport has just been officially designated as a UAV testing area by the United Kingdom's Civilian Aviation Authority. This means that you can go out there and test your UAVs over a large area of unrestricted airspace, with civilian and military manned aircraft passing through from time to time that your robot should probably know how not to get run over by. Or vice versa, if you like to think big.

People have been using pens to jot down their thoughts for thousands of years but now engineers at the University of Illinois have developed a silver-inked rollerball pen that allows users to jot down electrical circuits and interconnects on paper, wood and other surfaces. Looking just like a regular ballpoint pen, the pen's ink consists of a solution of real silver that dries to leave electrically conductive silver pathways. These pathways maintain their conductivity through multiple bends and folds of the paper, enabling users to personally fabricate low-cost, flexible and disposable electronic devices. While metallic inks have been used to manufacture electronic devices using inkjet printing technology, the silver pen offers users the freedom and flexibility to construct electronic devices on the fly, says Jennifer Lewis, the Hans Thurnauer professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois who led the research team along with Jennifer Bernhard, a professor of electrical and computer engineering.

When all is said and done, there’ll only be a little Camelot. Starz has opted not to move forward with production on the series, which aired its first season finale earlier this month. “Due to significant production challenges, Starz has decided not to exercise the option for subsequent seasons of Camelot with our production partners GK-tv, Octagon Films and Take 5 Productions,” the cabler explains in a statement cited by The Hollywood Reporter.

Researchers at Purdue University have developed two new techniques for computer-vision technology that mimic how humans perceive three-dimensional shapes.The techniques, heat mapping and heat distribution, apply mathematical methods to enable machines to perceive three-dimensional objects by mimicking how humans perceive three-dimensional shapes by instantly recognizing objects no matter how they are twisted or bent, an advance that could help machines see more like people.

Researchers at MIT's Object Based Media Group (OBMG), led by professor Michael Bove, have developed a 3D hologram using the Xbox Kinect and a laptop. Three GPUs on a graphic card are used to generate diffraction patterns that produce a Star-Wars-Style hologram at 15 frames per second. More information is available in a PopSci web article.

Intel unveiled plans Monday to take supercomputing performance to levels that are orders of magnitude greater than currently possible by the end of the decade. Coincidentally, the news broke just after Japan's K supercomputer had been named the world's fastest, with over three times the processing power as the previous title holder, China's Tianhe-1A system. The power of supercomputers shows no signs of abating. Intel said its new Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture will deliver exaflop-scale supercomputing by 2018, with the fastest supercomputers reaching up to 4 exaflops of performance by 2020.

Theodore Berger and his team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Department of Biomedical Engineering have developed a neural prosthesis for rats that is able to restore their ability to form long-term memories after they had been pharmacologically blocked.In a dramatic demonstration, Berger blocked the ability to rats to form long-term memories by using pharmacological agents to disrupt the neural circuitry that communicates between two subregions of the hippocampus, CA1 and CA3, which interact to create long-term memory, prior research has shown.

OROUMIEH LAKE, Iran (AP) -- From a hillside, Kamal Saadat looked forlornly at hundreds of potential customers, knowing he could not take them for trips in his boat to enjoy a spring weekend on picturesque Oroumieh Lake, the third largest saltwater lake on earth."Look, the boat is stuck... It cannot move anymore," said Saadat, gesturing to where it lay encased by solidifying salt and lamenting that he could not understand why the lake was fading away.

There is a long history of attempts at replicating neural systems either in software or in conventional semiconductors, such as the FACETS project (not to mention the creation of conventional logic gates from lab-grown biological neurons!) According to a USC Viterbi news release, researchers at the BioRC project, whose goal is research on an artificial cortex, have succeeded in creating a functioning synapse from carbon nanotubes. The new research was presented by Alice C. Parker in the paper "A biomimetic fabricated carbon nanotube synapse for prosthetic applications" at the Life Science Systems and Applications Workshop in April 2011. (unfortunately the actual paper is behind a paywall but the abstract is readable). An earlier paper, "A Biomimetic Carbon Nanotube Synapse Circuit", describes the proposed design of synapse including schematics and comparison with biological neural

May 13, 2011: Okay, try to keep up! The Transporter Team! Dark Matter Ship Designs! Movement on the Anime Front! Stargate: SG-1 Season 6 Memories! Notes on Network Notes! And I Answer Your Stargate Questions!

The Berkeley-based startup is developing exciting new technology that is truly the stuff of comic books and, formerly, of science fiction. Specifically, the company is making wearable, artifi­cially intelligent bionic devices that it calls “exoskeletons”. This has taken shape in two significant forms: eLEGS and HULC. Both of which you can see (as well as an interview with Berkeley Bionics CEO Eythor Bender) in the accompanying video.

Instead of calling CrazyFlie (as it's known) a tiny quadcopter, it might be more accurate to just describe it as a PCB that happens to also be able to launch itself into the air. Measuring a scant 10 centimeters per side, CrazyFlie uses its PCB as a primary structural component, which helps keep the size and weight to a minimum... In total, we're talking about only 20 grams. Despite its tinyness, the quadcopter includes a charging port, radio, 3-axis accelerometer, two gyroscopes, and a lightweight 110 mAh LiPO battery that gives it about four and a half minutes of flying time: 

A couple things come to mind. For one, this is our last issue of "Angel" the ongoing hitting this week, but there's still one more issue of "Spike" which ties directly into Spike's reappearance in "Buffy." That hits next week, and then the week after is "Angel Yearbook" which is our final note with all these characters in the Whedonverse. I do a little two-page story that's essentially a goodbye and thank you to everybody. And what I'd leave you with here is just a huge appreciation for the fan base. These are a lot of people who haven't read comics regularly, and they are going to the shop every week and talking on message boards. That kind of passion and loyalty is really hard to get, and it's something you want to live up to. As we've done "Angel" for the last six years, the best I can hope for is that people are sad it's going away. I know fans will follow the characters to Dark Horse and their stories will continue, but the fact that there are a lot of people who have said they'll have a really hard time going on after us speaks a lot to their passion and loyalty for what we were doing. That's hugely appreciated on our part and made this really fun to do.

Researchers at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam have discovered a universal property of musical scales. Until now it was assumed that the only thing scales throughout the world have in common is the octave.