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Posts Tagged ‘researchers’

The researchers at Japan’s Tsukuba University seem to be particularly active when it comes to enhancing human body functions. This is the institution where the famous robot suit HAL-5 was developed and now we have another invention that can help boost the efficiency of our bodies – if that’s what we want and need, that is. A research team at said university has constructed a “motorized knee”, which is actually a kit that – once it’s attached to a person’s body – supports the flexing of the knee.

The rest is here:
The “Motorized Knee” makes your runnning 30% more efficient

Two researchers from Japan’s Keio University (which yours truly attended just until recently by the way) have developed a kitchen appliance aimed at the total web geek in you, a YouTube-powered microwave. The so-called Castoven [JP] is based on a conventional, unbranded model of “good quality” but sports a 10.4-inch LCD screen in the door panel

See more here: 
Castoven: Microwave with built-in YouTube player (video)

There can be no doubt “green” energy is becoming more and more important in Japan . And just like the many other inventions in this area, I am sure this newest invention that’s potentially beneficial for the environment can one day make its way outside Japan, too: A floating wind turbine that’s currently in prototype mode and is 12.5m tall (5.5m are above the surface). The turbine is being jointly developed by researchers from Sasebo Heavy Industries , Toda , and Kyoto University

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Japan field-tests floating wind turbine

Once upon a time great wizards named Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Valdivia Y Alvarado created a magical mechanical fish. The King of MIT was pleased and so put forth a press release describing the fish as a “long-term sensing and exploration unit.” The fish are completely self-contained and covered in delicious rubber. It moves just like a real fish by twirling its fins and moving its body to create waves.

Original post: 
Robo-fish swims like a real fish, tastes considerably worse than real fish when fried

“Biomimetic miniature flying platforms” appears to be the theme this week.

Excerpt from: 
Because there weren’t enough Ro-bats in the world

True story: I didn’t even know my Social Security Number until my freshman year of college, when it was used as my dorm building’s PIN.

Read the original here:
Let’s guess each other’s Social Security Numbers, for fun

If you liked the smell of what Acer was cooking with the 11.6-inch Aspire One 751 netbook that was recently released but the relatively anemic 1.33GHz Atom CPU left a bad taste in your mouth, then prepare to cleanse your palate with the digital equivalent of crackers and unflavored water because Acer’s apparently prepping an 11.6-inch Timeline-series computer with an Intel ultra low voltage CPU. Described by Acer’s secret blogger-friend Macles as “at least twice as fast as any current Intel Atom processor,” the Intel ULV SU3500 CPU running at 1.4GHz along with hardware-accelerated video decoding and support for up to 4GB of RAM will mean that the impending “Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T” ought to strike a nice balance between portability and power.

Read more from the original source:
Acer releasing 11.6-inch Timeline ultraportable soon?

Image recognition is still one of those things that humans find easy to do but computers keep stumbling over. Some Google researchers published a paper describing progress they are making in teaching computers how to identify famous landmarks, which may eventually be applied more broadly to image search in general.

In a blog post, Jay Yagnik, the head of Cmputer Vision Research at Google, writes:

While we’ve gone a long way towards unlocking the information stored in text on the web, there’s still much work to be done unlocking the information stored in pixels.

In the experiment, the researchers fed “an unnamed, untagged picture of a landmark” found on the Internet and the system would spit back the name and location of the landmark, such as the Acropolis in Greece. Each untagged photo was be compared to 40 million GPS-tagged images on Picasa and Panoramio (both owned by Google), as well as related photos found through Google Image Search. Using clustering and new image indexing techniques, the Google researchers were able to identify untagged photos of the same landmarks from different angles and under various lighting conditions.

The researchers report that their system can identify 50,000 landmarks with 80 percent accuracy. I’m not sure that’s quite good enough to even roll that out in a beta product, but if Google can get it to 90 percent or 95 percent that would start to be consumer-friendly. Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of progress in image recognition, especially with facial recognition For instance, Face.com does a particularly good job with Facebook photos. But buildings and objects may be pose a different set of image-recognition challenges.

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Creating a social network for scientists is not a revolutionary idea—Academia.edu, Ologeez, and Lab Meeting are all startups that have developed variations of communities for researchers and scientists to share their works. ResearchGATE joins the group by offering a free LinkedIn-like professional network that allows scientists to connect with other colleagues, discover new methods, papers, and people and then collaborate using applications built specifically for researchers.

On ResearchGATE, scientists can create Facebook-like profiles where users can list their education, work experience, skills and interests and attach research papers. Users can add professional contacts by searching for other researchers who have the same focus. ResearchGATE also gives users the option to engage in online discussions by joining or forming groups. ResearchGATE also offers a few applications that help connect scientists in the virtual world. ReStory, similar to GoogleDocs, allows users to collaborate together with colleagues to write and edit documents. ReMeet lets users schedule meetings and conference calls online and ReVote enables users to create surveys and polls on topics. ResearchGATE is planning to roll out several new features in the near future including virtual conferencing and a job board.

The site also offers a powerful search capacity that scours its internal resources and all major external research databases, including Pubmed, Citeseer and others, to find research papers. ResearchGATE also suggests similar papers written about a topic when users upload their own papers, giving users an easy easy to find like-minded individuals and papers. And based on the profiles of other members, ResearchGATE can suggest other scientists, groups, and resources to users.

Currently, ResearchGATE, which was launched earlier this year, has a user base of 50,000 researchers from 196 different countries. More than 40,000 papers and documents have been uploaded to the site and there have been 1100 groups formed around different subject matters. For example, over 100 Influenza specialists formed a research group to discuss the outbreak of the Swine Flu. And more than 1300 researchers from different disciplines formed a group to discuss research methodology and practices. According to the site, ResearchGATE’s groups center mostly around the disciplines of biology, medicine and computer science.

Competitor Labmeeting, lets scientists upload all of those documents, organize them, search them, and share them. Academia.edu also lets scientists connect with each other and provides a useful news feed of papers, conferences and project news and allows users to stay up to date on current events in their field. What makes ResearchGATE’s site useful is not only its its ability to share documents but to be able to connect with scientists all over the world on issues of interest. By suggesting users with similar interests, the site does a lot of the networking work for users. Of course, one of ResearchGATE’s biggest challenges will be recruiting large numbers of scientists to the site. ResearchGATE is hoping to do this by forging partnerships with universities and research institutions and already has a few on board including The University of Georgia and the Medical School of Hannover, Germany.

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This is a guest post by Dave McClure, a startup advisor and internet marketing nerd who runs a seed-stage investment program for Founders Fund.

So you consider yourself an internet entrepreneur, investor or expert, huh? Chances are you know a lot about what it’s like to be a Western technologist with Western customers, but you know very little about how the other half of the world (also known as Asia) lives and works.

If you find yourself reluctantly agreeing with that assessment, perhaps it’s time for you to jump on plane with a bunch of other Bay Area geeks and venture over to the other side of the Pacific Rim. Founders Fund and Web2Asia cordially invite you to join over 25 other techies for an eastward trip we’re calling GeeksOnAPlane (don’t worry, emergency exercises such as this one are not expected mid-flight). Starting on June 7th and lasting for 10 days, our gaggle of geeks will hit up Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai and learn lots about Asian platforms, markets, and partners along the way. And, of course, we’ll have loads of fun and do some cool touristy stuff as well.

Ticket prices vary depending on whether you want to hit up all three cities or just visit one or two. See our event page for full pricing details and the ability to register online today. Airfare gets more expensive after today so make sure to register and book your flights soon.

This is a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity to get a crash course in Asian technology and its associated culture. You’ll not only have a chance to learn about marketing to Asia’s billions of customers. You’ll also meet entrepreneurs in Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai to learn how they execute their visions, and how you can translate certain Asian phenomena - such as advanced mobile technology and lucrative casual gaming experiences - into products that appeal to Western audiences.

These are just some of the topics our tour will touch upon:

- Internet & Software, Mobile Technology, Gaming Environments, Search & Social Platforms
- Startup / Business Culture in China & Japan, Vertical Market Opportunities, Market Entry Partners
- Investment Climate & State of Angel / Venture Capital / other investment sources
- Networking with new people, making cross-cultural connections & partnerships for long-term benefit

To learn more about the trip, and the various events it entails, visit the GeeksOnAPlane website. We look forward to having you join us!

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