A startup called Light uses a cluster of small camera modules to create top-notch photos. First stop: Your smartphone.
Light aims to put a bunch of small lenses, each paired with its own image sensor, into smartphones and other gadgets. They’ll fire simultaneously when you take a photo, and software will automatically combine the images. This way, Light believes, it can fit the quality and zoom of a bulky, expensive DSLR camera into much smaller, cheaper packages—even phones.
Virtual reality may be effective tool for evaluating balance control in glaucoma patients
The team of ophthalmologists, vision scientists and engineers studied 42 patients with open-angle glaucoma and 38 healthy subjects as a control. The subjects wore Oculus Rift stereoscopic goggles that can simulate different settings while standing on a force platform, a device that measures balance and movement. Measurements were recorded by the force platform, including when the goggles simulated movement such as moving through a tunnel or a spinning floor, and when the goggles were not worn or were not providing visual stimulation.
During simulated movement, researchers found that participants made balance adjustments that were an average of 30 to 40 percent more pronounced in glaucoma patients than in healthy subjects, who were able to regain balance more quickly than those with glaucoma. The study authors suspect that the pronounced lack of balance control in the subjects with glaucoma may be related to the loss of retinal ganglion cells caused by the disease, which leads to slower visual processing and impaired motion perception.
The study also found that the degree to which balance was lost was strongly linked to a history of falls, which validated the study's methods and metrics. The researchers hope that future studies using this paradigm will help ophthalmologists better understand the relationship between risk of falls and retinal ganglion cell loss in people with glaucoma.
See the full story here: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-04-virtual-reality-effective-tool-glaucoma.html
First Quantum Music Composition Unveiled
They begin by thinking of the seven notes in a quantum octave as independent events whose probabilities add up to one. In this scenario, quantum music can be represented by a mathematical structure known as a seven-dimensional Hilbert space.
A pure quantum musical state would then be made up of a linear combination of the seven notes with a specific probability associated with each. And a quantum melody would be the evolution of such a state over time.
An audience listening to such a melody would have a bizarre experience. In the classical world, every member of the audience hears the same sequence of notes. But when a quantum musical state is observed, it can collapse into any one of the notes that make it up.
And since this process is random for all observer, the resulting note will not be the same for each member of the audience.
The researchers go on to discuss the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement in the context of music. Entanglement is the deep connection between quantum objects that share the same existence even though they may be in different parts of the universe. So a measurement on one immediately influences the other, regardless of the distance between them.
There is one obvious problem, however. Nobody knows how to create quantum music or how a human might be able to experience it. Svozil and Putz’s work is entirely theoretical.
Google Glass mark X gets eye-tracking with new patent
The patent that is fueling the rumors about Google Glass describes a complicated technology that uses prisms to take photos of the eyes and juxtapose the data from that photo (the direction the eye is looking at) and synchronizing the images captured by the video feed and with GPS data in order to provide relevant information about the location you’re pointing at.
See the full story here: http://www.geeksnack.com/2015/04/14/google-glass-mark-x-gets-eye-tracking-with-new-patent/
Eating the Uncanny Valley: Inside the Virtual Reality World of Food
Myo Studios is banking on the notion that providing an enhanced visual experience through virtual reality will markedly up its food blog’s ante. Users will be able to “sit down in front of a steak from some restaurant, even though there’s no reservation for three months.” The VR food blog will also be able to “teach someone to cook from a first-person perspective.” DePaula-Santos told me, “One of my hopes is to not just take photographs of food, but also be able to animate it. If you see a sizzling steak in front of you, that’s just one way of stimulating more senses.”
“What about smell?” Perception Fixe is not quite there yet—it is only a visual virtual reality experience.
...what about the all-important act of actually consuming food in the VR world? Word of mouth led me to an ongoing project out in LA, ...
Project Nourished—created by Kokiri Labs and its founder, the ever-entrepreneurial Jinsoo An—bills itself as a “gastronomical virtual reality experience.” This mashup of molecular gastronomy and virtual reality allows users to “experience fine dining without concern for caloric intake of other health-related issues.”
...here’s the deal: You put on your VR headset, Oculus or otherwise; you lift your “food detection sensor,” which, at this stage of development, looks like nothing more than a wooden fork with two prongs wrapped in tinfoil; you eat a hydrocolloid—a flexible substance that is “viscous, emulsifiable, and low caloric”—that has been shaped in a 3-D printed mold to “add physical characteristics to the ‘faux’ food.” Then, with the help of a motion sensor, an aromatic diffuser, and a bone conduction transducer (more on that later) you experience a gourmet meal with no downside in the way of calories, carbs, or allergy-inducing ingredients.
The first three foods to be replicated in hydrocolloid form? Sushi, steak, and apple pie.
Despite its humble roots as a one-man endeavor, Project Nourished has ballooned into a multi-headed beast with a total of 11 creatives, each with varying backgrounds, including Mike Resendez, the molecular mixologist from The Bazaar’s Beverly Hills outpost, and Mark Manguera, the co-founder of LA’s Kogi and Chego.
As hard as it is to get smell right, hitting the mark when it comes to replicating texture or toothsomeness is even more difficult.
...Project Nourished is being pitched as a possible remedy for anorexia, bulimia, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and allergies.
See the full story here: http://munchies.vice.com/articles/eating-the-uncanny-valley-inside-the-virtual-reality-world-of-food