Wood can easily be turned transparent to make energy-saving windows
The researchers’ method stems from the recent discovery that lignin can be made transparent by removing only the parts of its molecules that give them their colour. They brushed hydrogen peroxide, which is often used as a disinfectant, over the surface of the wood and then left it under a UV lamp designed to simulate natural sunlight. After soaking the wood in ethanol to remove any remaining gunk, they filled the pores in the wood with clear epoxy, a step that is also part of making lignin-free transparent wood.
The final product is a piece of wood that allows more than 90 per cent of light to pass through it and is more than 50 times stronger than transparent wood with the lignin completely removed. “The transparent wood is lighter and stronger than glass. It could be used for load-bearing windows and roofs,” says Hu. “It can be potentially used to make a see-through house.”
A reality check on criminality in virtual reality
...In Japan, a 43-yearold woman grew so enraged after her online husband ‘divorced’ her in the interactive Maple Story game, that she committed a virtual murder by eliminating him. The woman, Mayumi Tomari, was later arrested by the Japanese police. Then, there was the killing in Russia of a 33-year-old member of the Platinum clan of an MMORPG guild by a 22-year-old member of the rivalrous Coo-clocks clan. When the two virtual gang members confronted each other in the physical city of Ufa, Russia, the 33-year-old got severely beaten to death. ...
Hezbollah has developed its own shooter computer game named Special Force 2, which acts as a radicalisation medium for young jihadis. In the game, players earn points by launching Katyusha rockets at Israeli towns and becoming ‘suicide’ martyrs. A document leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that both the US and UK were spying on gamers by creating undercover avatars to snoop, recruit informers and perform mass interception between players in various games. Most police officers in the world may not have investigated any case involving a virtual world or MMORPG.
Though it may be tempting to ignore MMORPG crimes considering them virtual, therefore not ‘real’; police must remember that virtual crimes have real-world victims. The psychological and economic impact of virtual crimes on their victims is every bit real to their inhabitants, as is the physical world to most investigators. Finally, VR could be akin to spiritual reality. Unlike in reality, when we die in a video game, it’s not game over. Besides, VR like spirituality helps us have adventures in consciousness and explore our psyches through the mind-altering, dream-changing, ego-breaking VR technology.
— The author is director, Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC)
See the full story here: https://www.dtnext.in/News/City/2021/01/30235011/1273789/A-reality-check-on-criminality-in-virtual-reality.vpf
How Tupac and Thanos led to Douglas, the most impressively humanlike A.I. yet
According to Roble, the team first and foremost envisions Douglas as a visual way of interacting with existing complex and powerful conversational agents that have been created. Beneath Douglas’ photo-real avatar, the studio’s digital human is built on a blend of three of those agents: Google’s popular Dialogflow suite for creating chatbots, an assistant-type agent (similar to Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri); and a powerful conversational A.I. agent (similar to the GPT-3 project) used to produce humanlike, predictive (and reactive) conversational text.
The combination of all three agents gives Douglas the ability to carry on conversations that are both informative and fluid, with discussion of one topic often segueing into related areas of interest.
See the full story here: https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/douglas-digital-domain-artificial-intelligence-human/
Holographic Display Improvements Poised to Enhance Virtual and Augmented Reality
“Although we’ve recently seen tremendous progress in machine-learning driven computer-generated holography, these algorithms are fundamentally limited by the underlying hardware,” said Kim. “We co-designed a new hardware configuration and a new algorithm to overcome some of these limitations and demonstrate state-of-the-art results.”
Boosting quality Holographic displays have the potential to outperform other 3D display technologies used for virtual and augmented reality by enabling more compact displays, improving the user’s ability to focus their eyes at different distances and offering the ability to adjust for users who wear corrective lenses. However, the technology hasn’t yet achieved the image quality of more conventional technologies.
“Augmented and virtual reality systems are poised to have a transformative impact on our society by providing a seamless interface between a user and the digital world,” said research team member Jonghyun Kim from technology company NVIDIA and Stanford University. “Holographic displays could overcome some of the biggest remaining challenges for these systems by improving the user experience and enabling more compact devices.”
See the full story here: https://scitechdaily.com/holographic-display-improvements-poised-to-enhance-virtual-and-augmented-reality/
Sotheby’s and Saatchi Art show augmented reality’s growing usefulness to art world
Sotheby’s auctioned off Botticelli’s Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Roundel for $92.2 million on Thursday. But before it did, the auction house gave everyone the chance to virtually hang the artwork on their walls.
Thanks to an Instagram filter Sotheby’s created with Poplar Studio, a creative platform that builds 3D and AR experiences, users could see what the Old Master painting would look like in their living rooms. The filter is available to Sotheby’s 1.3 million Instagram followers.
The filter was used 145,000 times, and was videoed or photographed 4,300 times, as of Thursday evening. The post announcing the sale currently has an engagement of 1.07%, which is slightly higher than what is considered an average engagement rate.
...But Sotheby’s filter is part of the art world’s broader embrace of the technology especially amid the ongoing pandemic keeping prospective art buyers home. Home art print suppliers including Saatchi Art and Etsy introduced in-app AR art viewings in 2018 and 2019, respectively, hoping to drive sales, and both made significant improvements to their app user experience this year as consumer interest in art skyrocketed.
See the full story here: https://digiday.com/media/sothebys-and-saatchi-augmented-reality/
Virtual Reality Film ‘Namoo’ Releases New Trailer Ahead of Sundance Premiere
Baobab Studios has released the trailer for its new virtual reality experience film “Namoo” ahead of its Sundance premiere.
“Namoo,” which means “tree” in Korean, will be premiering as part of Sundance’s New Frontiers. The feature is written and directed by Erick Oh, who previously worked on “Heart” and “How to Eat Your Apple.”
The film is brought to life through virtual reality and celebrates a grandfather’s passing. It follows the journey of a budding artist — and his tree of life — from start to end.
See the full story here: https://variety.com/2021/artisans/markets-festivals/namoo-trailer-virtual-reality-film-1234894602/
Men Wear Suits, Women Wear Bikinis: Image Generating Algorithms Learn Biases ‘Automatically’
The algorithms also picked up on racial biases linking Black people to weapons
See the full story here: https://onezero.medium.com/men-wear-suits-women-wear-bikinis-image-generating-algorithms-learn-biases-automatically-eee3d8a56f2e
