Animated beer

Still from a video clip of beer bubbling and foaming while being poured in a glass. Credit: CSIRO Still from a video clip of beer bubbling and foaming while being poured in a glass. Credit: CSIRO Researchers from CSIRO and Korea’s ETRI will pour a virtual glass of beer in San Diego next week at SIGGRAPH 07, the world’s largest computer graphics conference, to showcase their innovative fluid special effects software. CSIRO fluids researcher Dr Mahesh Prakash says the physics of bubble creation in carbonated drinks like beer is complex. “As you pour beer into a glass, you see bubbles appearing on what are called nucleation sites, where the glass isn’t quite smooth,” Dr Prakash says. “The bubbles expand to a certain size then rise up in streams to the surface, where they bump into each other and form a raft of foam that floats on the top.” Dr Prakash and his colleagues have captured the maths describing these processes in software that allows movie makers, film production houses and others to create super-realistic special effects. The four-year project is being undertaken jointly by CSIRO and South Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, one of the world’s largest computer graphics developers for games, with most of the research being done in Melbourne. Clever maths called smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) helps the software do its job by working smarter not harder. The software uses less computer power and takes less time to get better results than other special effects software it has been benchmarked against. CSIRO Business and Commercialisation Manager, Andrew Dingjan says CSIRO and ETRI hope this will bring the fluid animation software within reach of smaller film production houses. “Big Hollywood studios spend vast sums on single-use solutions when they make blockbusters like ‘Poseidon’ and ‘The Perfect Storm’ but we’d like our software to make realistic special effects easier to come by,” Mr Dingian says. Computer animation is a US$55billion global industry. Discussions with potential global commercialisers of the software will follow next year. CSIRO and ETRI’s presentation, ‘Bubbling and Frothing Liquids,’ is part of a technical session on animating fluids at the San Diego Convention Center on Thursday 9 August. Beer animation available: http://www.csiro.au/multimedia/FluidSpecialEffects.html Source: CSIRO Australia This news is brought to you by PhysOrg.com

Beer in space

Beer in space: A short but frothy history - space - 31 July 2007 - New Scientist Space

13:50 31 July 2007 * NewScientist.com news service * Anna Davison Bubbles of carbon dioxide are not buoyant in space, producing foam throughout the liquid, as shown in this image of a drop of Coca-Cola taken on a space shuttle in 1985 (Image: NASA) Enlarge image Bubbles of carbon dioxide are not buoyant in space, producing foam throughout the liquid, as shown in this image of a drop of Coca-Cola taken on a space shuttle in 1985 (Image: NASA) Kirsten Sterrett used a Kirsten Sterrett used a "Fluid Processing Apparatus" to ferment beer on a space shuttle (Image: NASA) After allegations that astronauts flew drunk, NASA's rules on alcohol are under scrutiny. The agency currently doesn't allow its astronauts to imbibe in orbit, but over the years of crewed space travel, many astronauts have enjoyed a tipple. In 1969, Buzz Aldrin took communion after landing on the Moon, sipping wine from a small chalice. In the Moon's feeble gravity, he later wrote, the wine swirled like syrup around the cup. Small amounts of alcohol were apparently allowed on the Soviet space station Mir, and when Russian astronauts joined the International Space Station, there were some grumblings about the decree that it be dry. That hasn't stopped some researchers from working on ways to brew and serve alcohol in space, however. Graduate student Kirsten Sterrett at the University of Colorado in the US wrote a thesis on fermentation in space, with support from US beer behemoth Coors. She sent a miniature brewing kit into orbit aboard a space shuttle several years ago and produced a few sips of beer. She later sampled the space brew, but because of chemicals in and near it from her analysis, it didn't taste great by the time she tried it. Beyond the challenge of producing beer in space is the problem of serving it, says Jonathan Clark, a former flight surgeon and now the space medicine liaison for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Houston, Texas, US. Without gravity, bubbles don't rise, so "obviously the foam isn't going to come to a head", Clark told New Scientist. The answer, Dutch researchers suggested in 2000, is to store beer in a flexible membrane inside a barrel. Air can be pumped between the barrel and the membrane, forcing the beer out of a tap. Astronauts could then use straws to suck up blobs of beer (see Beer balls). Wet burps Unfortunately for thirsty astronauts, beer is poorly suited to space consumption because of the gas it includes. Without gravity to draw liquids to the bottoms of their stomachs, leaving gases at the top, astronauts tend to produce wet burps. "That's one of the reasons why we don't have carbonated beverages on the space menu," NASA spokesperson William Jeffs told New Scientist. Jeffs says no research has been done on the effects of alcohol in a microgravity environment. But he says: "There may be differences in alcohol absorption and metabolism in space, which makes one suspect that there may be differences in the effects of alcohol in space." Clark says medications sometimes have unusual effects in space, which "run the gamut from increased to decreased reactions". So, should astronauts be allowed to drink in space? "It depends on the length of the mission and any cultural norms," says Jay Buckey, a former astronaut who studies space physiology at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, US. "Mine was a very short mission," says Buckey, who spent 16 days aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1998. "I didn't see any need for it."

Why my dog drinks beer

* 17:00 26 April 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Roxanne Khamsi
When dogs learn new tricks, they do not simply copy what they see, but interpret it, suggests a new study, which provides evidence that man's best friend possesses a human-like ability to understand the goals and intentions of others.

In the experiment, a well-trained Border collie bitch demonstrated to untrained dogs how to pull a lever for food using her paw. If she did this while carrying a toy ball between her teeth, the dogs in her audience would instead tug the lever with their mouths when their turn arrived. These animals appeared to be thinking that she used her paw only because her mouth held a ball, say researchers.

Forty other dogs – none of which had seen the food lever before – observed the well-trained collie pull it for a biscuit 10 times. Half of them saw the collie carry out the task with nothing in her mouth. Almost all of these observers used their paws when given a chance to tug the lever for food.

"We were very surprised to see this 'selective imitation' by the dogs," says Range, referring to how the dogs' actions depended on whether the Border collie carried a ball. "They didn't just copy blindly what they saw." She believes it is the first time that this sort of selective imitation has been shown in animals besides humans.

The new dog study involved almost two dozen breeds, including Labradors and various herding dogs, ranging in age from one to 12 years. So Range believes that most dogs rely on selective imitation to learn.Read on...

Thinking out of the box

She notes that some experiments in chimps have shown signs of a related – but not identical – type of sophisticated imitation. In one study, for example, chimps observed a human poke a stick twice into a transparent box of food. The first, an ineffective jab from above, was always followed by a fruitful jab from the side. The chimps skipped the first, unnecessary jab when they had a chance to try for the food reward themselves.

But while Range argues that sophisticated imitation might help animals learn, some experts believe that mindless copying can actually give species – even humans – an advantage when used appropriately.

Basic copycat behaviour can result in speedier mastery of very simple tasks, they say (see Mindless imitation teaches us how to be human).

Journal reference: Current Biology (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2007.04.026)

But do they iron?

Scientists Unveil Internet-Controlled Robots That Anyone Can Build

Qwerkbot a three-wheeled robot that can send images over the Internet is one of several robots that can be built with the Telepresence Robot Kit (TeRK) a combination of a robot controller commonly available parts and assembly instructions (recipes) d ...
Qwerkbot, a three-wheeled robot that can send images over the Internet, is one of several robots that can be built with the Telepresence Robot Kit (TeRK), a combination of a robot controller, commonly available parts and assembly instructions (recipes) developed by the CREATE Lab in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. Photo credit: Ken Andreyo/CMU

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new series of robots that are simple enough for almost anyone to build with off-the-shelf parts, but are sophisticated machines that wirelessly connect to the Internet.

The robots can take many forms, from a three-wheeled model with a mounted camera to a flower loaded with infrared sensors. They can be easily customized and their ability to wirelessly link to the Internet allows users to control and monitor their robots’ actions from any Internet-connected computer in the world.

The new tools that make this possible are a single piece of hardware and a set of "recipes" that people follow to build their ’bots. Both are part of the Telepresence Robot Kit (TeRK) developed by Associate Professor of Robotics Illah Nourbakhsh and members of his Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) Lab. Their goal is to make highly capable robots accessible and affordable for college and pre-college students, as well as anyone interested in robots.

Unlike other educational robot kits on the market, TeRK is not sold as a complete set of parts. The CREATE Lab’s recipes allow for a variety of robots to be built with parts commonly available through hardware and hobbyist outlets.

At the heart of each TeRK robot is a unique controller called Qwerk that combines a computer with the software and electronics necessary to control the robot’s motors, cameras and other devices. Qwerk, developed by the CREATE Lab and Charmed Labs of Austin, Texas, also connects the robot automatically and wirelessly to the Internet so it can be controlled by any Internet-connected computer.

"The Internet connection means the robots are much more global," Nourbakhsh said. Not only can the robot be operated remotely at any location with a wireless Internet connection, but it can also send photos or video, respond to RSS feeds, or access the Internet to find information. That combination opens a wide range of possibilities. "We’re hoping people notice that the sky’s the limit," he added.

Among the TeRK recipes already available is a small, wheeled robot with a video camera that people might use to keep an eye on their home or pet while they are at work or school. Another recipe under development includes environmental sensors for air quality and sound pollution. A less conventional recipe will produce a robotic, six-petaled flower that can open and close based on moods or use its petals to play a game of catch.

"We want robots that don’t just subscribe to geeky notions of what robots should be," Nourbakhsh said. One recipe under development, for instance, can control a stuffed teddy bear.

"Once people have followed a recipe and become acquainted with robots, they can build on their experience," said Emily Hamner, a senior research associate in the CREATE Lab. "Not only can they customize the recipes to their liking, they can also design new robot types using the Qwerk controller."

Qwerk itself is a full-fledged computer with a Linux operating system that can use any computer language. It features a field programmable gate array (FPGA) to control motors, servos, cameras, amplifiers and other devices. It also accepts USB peripheral devices, such as Web cameras and GPS receivers. "We leveraged several low-cost, yet high-performance components that were originally developed for the consumer electronics industry when we designed Qwerk," said Rich LeGrand, president of Charmed Labs. "The result is a cost-effective robot controller with impressive capabilities."

Building such a capable robot only five years ago would have been all but impossible, Nourbakhsh said. Using the Internet to provide telepresence on a routine basis, he explained, is practical today because of widespread broadband Internet access and the ubiquity of wireless hotspots in both public and residential settings.

Recipes, software, technical support and other information are available free at the TeRK Web site, http://www.terk.ri.cmu.edu . The Qwerk controller is available for sale from Charmed Labs, http://www.charmedlabs.com/ .

Source: Carnegie Mellon University




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Universal Foam

Mathematics Points the Way to a Perfect Head of Beer

April 25, 2007

Mathematics Points the Way to a Perfect Head of Beer

Simple formula may lead to a host of improved materials—and the perfect pour

Researchers may have cracked the code for the perfect head on a glass of beer, and perhaps much more in the process. The key lies in a long sought equation for the growth and shrinkage of individual bubbles in foam and crystalline grains in metals, semiconductors and other materials.

The finding extends a formula that specifies how the area of two-dimensional shapes will change, discovered in part by famed mathematician John von Neumann in 1952. Researchers say the new math may help improve a wide range of industrial processes, from treating metals with heat to controlling the amount of foam in poured beer.

Metals, foams and multicellular organisms are all mosaics of microscopic spaces or domains that jostle with each other, grow or shrink, cave in or bulge out. The driving force behind this evolution is surface tension, the same property that lets a bug sit on water and draws liquid up a narrow straw.

According to the new equation, the change in volume of such a tension-driven domain is essentially the sum of the lengths of the domain's edges (imagine a honeycomb) minus six times the mean width of the domain, all multiplied by a constant that is particular to the material in question.

The key to the discovery was applying the pure math concept of mean width, which is trickier to measure than its cousins—surface area and volume, says materials scientist David Srolovitz of Yeshiva University in New York City, who, along with mathematician Robert MacPherson of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., published the finding online today in Nature.

"It's exhilarating," Srolovitz says. "I've always found this problem very sexy." He says he does not know where it will be applied, but "the ideas are so general it's going to really change the way we think about geometric objects."

"It's very universal. It will touch everything" in materials design, says mathematician David Kinderlehrer of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who studies materials. He predicts it may lead to longer lasting, more efficient materials for everything from airplane wings to nuclear reactors to microprocessors.

For that to happen, researchers must learn to crunch numbers on groups of domains. That is no problem in two dimensions, but the 3-D case adds a new twist, Kinderlehrer says, because the domains have more edges that can shorten or lengthen affecting their neighbors.

"It's a very complicated type of evolution," he says. "It's going to be much harder to figure out how the network behaves."

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Device uses solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into fuel

Device uses solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into fuel

Device uses solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into fuel
Chemists at the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated the feasibility of exploiting sunlight to transform a greenhouse gas into a useful product.
Many Earth Week activities will draw attention to the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the resulting impact on global climate. Now Clifford Kubiak, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and his graduate student Aaron Sathrum have developed a prototype device that can capture energy from the sun, convert it to electrical energy and "split" carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide (CO) and oxygen.

Because their device is not yet optimized, they still need to input additional energy for the process to work. However, they hope that their results, which they presented at last month's meeting of the American Chemical Society, will draw attention to the promise of the approach.

"For every mention of CO2 splitting, there are more than 100 articles on splitting water to produce hydrogen, yet CO2 splitting uses up more of what you want to put a dent into," explained Kubiak. "It also produces CO, an important industrial chemical, which is normally produced from natural gas. So with CO2 splitting you can save fuel, produce a useful chemical and reduce a greenhouse gas."

Unified Theory -FINALLY, Somebody gets it!

Wired for sound

: How the brain senses visual illusions

Wired for sound: How the brain senses visual illusions
In a study that could help reveal how illusions are produced in the brain's visual cortex, researchers at the UCSD School of Medicine have found new evidence of rapid integration of auditory and visual sensations in the brain. Their findings, which provide new insight into neural mechanisms by which visual perception can be altered by concurrent auditory events, will be published online in the April 12 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience.
When subjects were shown a single flash of light interposed between two brief sounds, many subjects reported seeing two distinct flashes of light. Investigating the timing and location of the brain processes that underlie this illusory effect – the illusion of seeing two flashes in the presence of two auditory signals, when only one flash actually occurs – can reveal how information from different senses are integrated in the brain.

The study of 34 subjects was carried out in the laboratory of Steven A. Hillyard, Ph.D., UCSD professor of neurosciences. "This type of perceptual illusion has been described before," said first author Jyoti Mishra, graduate student in the Hillyard lab. "The surprising finding we made is that the illusion depends on a rapidly timed sequence of interactions between the auditory and visual cortical areas."

"This is part of a set of new findings by scientists in the field that show how integration of multiple sensations can happen much more rapidly than we thought before," said Mishra. "We show physiological evidence that visual and auditory stimulation might not be processed separately, then merged together, as previously assumed, but that an almost-simultaneous integration of the sensations may actually take place in the brain."

The UCSD scientists measured event-related potentials (ERPs), brain responses that are directly related to the perceptual experiences induced by sensory stimuli, using an electrophysiological or EEG recording procedure that measures electrical activity of the brain through the skull.

"In subjects who reported seeing a second flash, the ERP measurements showed a boost of activity within the visual cortex of the brain immediately after hearing the second sound," said Mishra, adding that the second sound amplified the brain activity stimulated by the first sound. Perception of the second illusory flash was also marked by a rapid enhancement of processing in the auditory cortex of the brain. By observing the auditory boost, the researchers could predict when subjects would report seeing the visual illusion of a second flash.

"Our results provide evidence that perception of the illusory second flash is based on a very rapid and dynamic interplay between the auditory and visual cortices of the brain – on a time scale less than one tenth the blink of an eye." Mishra said. Interestingly, the pattern was very different between individuals who did or didn't see the second flash, indicating that the brain's wiring and the strength of integration between the different sensory cortices may differ between individuals, or even vary over time. "It suggests that there are consistent differences in the neural connectivity that are possibly shaped during one's development and through experience," she said.

Next, the researchers plan to look at whether or not attention affects these illusory sensations. These studies could shed light on how people deprived of one sensation often compensate by developing another – for instance, blind people with a more acute sense of hearing.

Source: University of California - San Diego

Weekend Project: Make your own hood ornament - Lifehacker

Weekend Project: Make your own hood ornament - Lifehacker

I'll Take 160G, Please, And Can I Get Bluetooth with That?

KurzweilAI.net

The Memory Hacker

Popular Science, April 2007

USC's Center for Neural Engineering researchers have developed a chip that can communicate with brain cells, a first step toward an implantable machine that could restore memories in people with brain damage or help them make new ones.
The chip can receive analog signals from live brain tissue, convert them to digital signals, and then reconvert them to an analog signal relayed to healthy neurons on the other side.
Later this year, colleagues at Wake Forest will hook up a more complex version of the chip to live lab rats whose memories have been temporarily disabled by drugs. If the animals' brains react to the computer-supplied signals with the same regularity as the slice of rat brain in Wet Lab 412C does, it will, Berger says, be a "monumental" moment. "We'll prove we can replace a central part of the brain that has lost a higher cognitive function, such as memory, with a microchip," he says.
Within four years, the team aims to wire a chip beneath the skulls of monkeys, whose brains are even closer to humans. Berger predicts that human trials of a prosthetic device that can actually replace impaired memory cells are less than 15 years away.