DIET SUNGLASSES :: YUMETAI

A Japanese company named Yumetai seems to have given some serious thought to the matter, creating dieter's sunglasses with deep blue lenses that make the food you're eating look, well, disgusting.

There's more to it than that - according to Yumetai, there's a scientific explanation behind these sunglasses and the lenses are blue for a very good reason: the color blue acts to calm the brains appetite center.

At the same time, the lenses block rays of red light which tend to stimulate the appetite. Make sense?

[+ more]
via moreinspiration

EVERY DESKTOP IS A COMPUTER :: INTERACTIVE SURFACES

The newest line of computers does not require a mouse or a keyboard, just your fingers.

"And when I put my fingers on it, there's a camera that recognizes where I'm touching. In fact, I can touch it different places, from any side of the table. And so it's actually a windows personal computer, but with this new surface capability.

The table-top computers are not only touch-sensitive, they can also recognize devices equipped with wireless or Bluetooth capabilities. Product Director Jeffrey Gattis from microsoft says it also reads credit cards.

"I'm in a Sheraton Hotel, I can take my room key or my Sheraton-preferred card, just throw it down on the surface. It instantly knows who I am. It sees that I have 5,500 points in my account."

It also lets consumers buy music. Place a portable music player on the surface and you can use your fingers to upload music. It is all done without wires.

And digital photos are literally a snap. Gates says the computer recognizes Wi-Fi-equipped cameras and downloads the pictures instantly.

"Any photo I've taken and I want to add to this collection, it can actually see that there's a camera there and it'll use the wireless connection to actually get the photos and bring those down onto the surface."

Software companies have been investing heavily in developing natural interfaces that can be used for practical applications, such as ordering food or drinks. Microsoft Surface Computing General Manager Pete Thompson believes the new technology will make computing easy for anyone, including technophobes.

"One of the things that I'm personally very excited about with surface computers is the fact that it unlocks the power for people that have been intimidated before with computing products. Now this is just "drop-dead" simple. You don't have to know computing to be able to use this product and that is extremely exciting."

But at a cost of between five to ten-thousand dollars per unit, it will be available only to commercial outlets, at least for the time being.

Mr Gates said:
"We used to say a computer on every desktop and now I would say that every desktop will be a computer."

[+jeff han]
[+ibar]
[+microsoft surface]

AIRSHIPS THAT "SWIM" THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE

This is fascinating: making an airship's surface contract and expand so as to enable it to "swim" through the atmosphere. These artificial muscles are made of polymers which deform when subjected to an electrical field.

Conventional propeller driven airships have their disadvantages. They are inefficient, and thereby wasteful of energy, and they are noisy too. Empa scientists are looking to solve both these problems by using a technology which is simultaneously very advanced and yet simple in concept – their design lets an airship “swim” through the air like a fish moving through water. That this idea could become reality thanks to the development of electroactive polymers (EAPs) is demonstrated by the first flight trials as well as computer simulations. The EAPs need further development, however, and their reliability and useful lifetime must be improved.

If the patented idea of Empa researcher Silvain Michel and his team becomes established, then the airship of the future will be a non-rigid airship (blimp) that glides through the air as silently and using the same means of propulsion as a trout swimming in a brook – by bending its body in one direction and simultaneously moving its tail in the opposite way. The technically simplified version of this trout-like motion, using three rigid, interconnected body segments, is known in scientific jargon as the “bending-rotation-stroke”, says Michel.

“This technique can be transferred directly from water to air”, he explains further. “A blimp moving through the air is, in terms of the physics involved, exactly the same as a fish moving through water. In both cases a body is moving through a fluid and is subject to the same laws of fluid dynamics.” The new propulsion technique, combine with a sleeker, trout-like shape, doubles the efficiency of the blimp design from an aerodynamic point of view.

[+ more]
via morfogen

FROM SUPERBOT TO MOLECUBE - PROGRAMMABLE FOOD CONCEPT

SuperBot is a new type of robots that are modular, multifunctional, and easily reconfigurable. Its modules can be dynamically configured into different robots to fit the user's needs. For example, it can crawl, walk, roll, climb, carry, fetch, or survey. The reconfiguration and module exchanges are easy and do not require any special knowledge or training. Such robots are economic because a single robot can provide diverse behaviors and can be changed frequently. This is ideal for home campanions, search and rescue, security, surveillance, and so on.

A step further is that we produce these modules on nano scale and create nanorobots. Since nanorobots would be microscopic in size, it would probably be necessary for very large numbers of them to work together to perform macroscopic tasks.In such plans, future medical nanotechnology has been posited to employ nanorobots injected into the patient to perform treatment on a cellular level.

Far-fetched? The processed-food giant Kraft and a group of research laboratories are busy working towards 'programmable food'. One product they are working on is a colourless, tasteless drink that you, the consumer, will design after you've bought it. You'll decide what colour and flavour you'd like the drink to be, and what nutrients it will have in it, once you get home. You'll zap the product with a correctly-tuned microwave transmitter - presumably Kraft will sell you that, too.

[+ superbot]
[+ wiki]
[+ nanofood]

MIKE KUNIAVSKY - TASTE 3 CONFERENCE 2007

Mike Kuniavsky is a writer, researcher and designer exploring the intersections of high technology and everyday life. People around the world use Mike’s 2003 book, 'Observing the User Experience,' to understand the relationship between people and products.

His talk was a somewhat speculative presentation tracing some of the history of appliance design and how ubiquitous computing may change that. In his talk, he presents the history of blender controls as an example of the encapsulation of knowledge into our tools. He then showed several examples of how networked kitchen devices may (or may not) present a fundamental shift in the nature of how we relate to our kitchen tools:

"Imagine that every time you used this [networked, barcode-reading microwave], it quietly told a database somewhere--say, in your iPod--how many calories you just ate. Then your iPod could query your shoes about how much you had run the previous day. The next time you went for a run, your iPod would pick songs with a different tempo to encourage you burn off that Mac and Cheese. Now that’s starting to get interesting. It is now possible for our tools to automatically encapsulate knowledge and share it with each other."

[+ presentation]
[+ orangecone]
[+ taste3]

POTION VESSEL - NOUMENON

The vessel in which a liquid potion is able to be contained, takes on the initial form of a thin white disc of plastic. This disc comprises of memory polymer that embodies an intricate structure of cylindrically knitted SMA wire, arranged in a flat circular format. This embedded shape memory alloy wire network acts in synergy with its polymer covering, to enable a subsequent change of form an d transparency to take place on the application of heat.

The reaction occurs when a liquid, heated to 70 °C, is gracefully poured onto the flat form; intantaneously triggering a transformation. At the moment the liquid makes contact with the disc, the edges of the disc lift themselves off of the table surface, the opacity of the plastic begins to lessen, and, as the vessel becoms fully deformed, the wire structure becomes visible through the plastic material. The object has adopted an entirely new shape and appearance, that of a transparent potion vessel.

Once it reaches room temperature again, the vessel gently lies down and becomes a nondescript circular mat. Concept: Carl De Smet.

[+ website]

PLASTIC SHEETS PERFORM AUTO-ORIGAMI

Sheets of plastic that fold into tiny pyramids, boxes and spheres when water is added have been created by French researchers. They think the technique could one day be used to mass-produce the microscopic 3D components used in found inside many different devices from printers to medical sensors.

José Bico and colleagues at the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI), in Paris, together with a team from the Paris Institute of Technology have shown that water droplets can be used to make flat shapes fold up to create more complex 3D structures.

They add water droplets to flat plastic shapes just a couple of millimetres across. As a droplet evaporates, its volume changes while the surface tension holding it to the sheet remains the same. This pulls the shape into a more complex 3D structure. A time-lapse video shows a triangular shape folding into a pyramid (.mov format).

Bico and colleagues designed sheets to make different shapes. For example, a flower-like pattern produces a sphere, a triangle becomes a tetrahedron and a flat cross shape folds into a cube. They also discovered that varying the thickness of the sheet controls how much a structure folds up and that the effect of surface tension becomes stronger as the size is decreased. Make sure you watch the movie!

[+ movie]
via newscientist

NEW WEED MAY FLAG LAND MINES - ARESA

A weed that turns red when it grows near land mines could help clear dangerous fields in war-torn countries such as Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The genetically modified Thales cress is sensitive to nitrogen dioxide, a byproduct of mines, and changes from green to red when the gas is present in soil.

Currently, mines can be detected only by human or canine probing. Scientists hope the plant will show where the land mines are so they can be removed safely, greatly reducing fatalities and injuries among those who hunt for mines and the unsuspecting public.

Danish biotechnology company Aresa Biodetection, which is creating the genetically altered plant, hopes to start selling it within a few years, after researchers complete field tests on its effectiveness.

Lab results so far look promising, says Simon Oestergaard, chief executive of Aresa. He envisions that the plant will be used mostly to clear fields suitable for farming. "The main target of this product is soil that will be used for different agricultural activities," he says.

One concern, however, is that the weed is shallow-rooted, so it would not be able to detect deeply planted mines. But most mines are found closer to the surface, says Geir Bjoersvik of the mine action unit at Norwegian Peoples Aid in Oslo.

Field tests, scheduled to start in Denmark this spring and in other countries soon after, will determine how sensitive the plant is to nitrogen dioxide and how much of the gas is required to make it turn red. So far, the plant has shown signs of being oversensitive. "It's better to have a red spot and check it and find there isn't a mine than miss one that's there," Dr. Meier says.

The plant is self-pollinating. Researchers also removed the gene for an important growth hormone, which eliminates the risk of spreading pollen to unmodified plants because the new weed neither germinates nor sets seeds unless a specific fertilizer is used.

[+ website]
via moreinspiration

LIVING GLASS - DAVID BENJAMIN AND SOO-IN YANG

David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang of ‘The Living’ Architects presented their recent work at the Interactive Architecture event which Ruairi Glynn organised at Eyebeam last month. They have just released 2 lovely little books called ‘Life Size‘ 1 & 2 which explore the possibility of creating open source design processes. The first volume of Life Size includes ‘DIY directions for making a responsive kinetic system, an energy self-sufficient display, and a collapsible framing structure out of weak materials.’ & the second volume of this series includes essays by Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Livia Corona, Holly Kretschmar, Seth Mnookin, William Wu and SISYPHUS.

Whats most interesting for me about David and Soo-ins work is their methodology they call "flash research," which they define as an architectural research project with a budget under $1000 and a ninety-day timeline, expected to result in a fully functioning, 1:1 scale prototype. To me this seems a challenging approach that forces you to consider low tech solutions rather than spending a fortune on answering problems often with unsustainable answers.

David and Soo-in run a graduate class at Columbia Architecture school where with their students, they continue to experiment with these ideas of rapid experimentation often in the context of responsive & kinetic spatial design. Check out their website where you can find out more about their projects such as living River Glow, a network of pods that act as an interface between the water quality of the river and local inhabitants awareness of environmental conditions and Living Glass, a silent transforming and transparent surface that responds to inhabitants proximity.

[+ website]
via interactivearchitecture

EDIBLE RFID TAGS

Inventors keep coming up with new ways to exploit RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags. Now Kodak wants to use them to probe a person’s digestive system.

RFID tags are tiny radio chips that resonate with a single echo when hit with a radio trigger. Kodak’s digestible tags are harmless and intentionally fragile. The tags would be covered with soft gelatin that takes a while to dissolve in the stomach. After swallowing a tag a patient need only sit next to a radio source and receiver.

They stop working when exposed to gastric acid for a specific period of time, providing a subtle way to monitor a patient’s digestive tract.

Kodak says that similar radio tags could also be embedded in an artificial knee or hip joint in such a way that they disintegrate as the joint does, warning of the need for more surgery. Attaching tags to ordinary pills could also help nurses confirm that a patient has really taken their medicine as ordered.

[+patent]
via newscientist

SHAPE SHIFTING POLYMER PLASTIC

Researchers have invented a new plastic material that can change into three different shapes based on heat. The chemical engineers from MIT and the Helmhotz Association of German Research Centers demonstrated a plastic tube with three "programmed" diameters (4.5 mm, 6.9 mm, 5.8 mm) that are selected by altering the temperature.

From the MIT News Office:
An "intelligent stent" made of the new class of plastics could assume three different shapes to facilitate medical procedures: It would assume a handy oval shape for insertion, then a fully inflated round shape for temporary use inside a blood vessel, duct or other cylindrical organ, and lastly, a compressed cylindrical shape for easy removal.

The triple-shape-shift from shape A to B to C could also have applications in industry. In factories, changeable plastic fasteners could be implanted in, or attached to, one part, then heated to extend an arm to another part. With further heating, the fastener would change shape yet again to lock itself in place. In effect, it would be an automated form of self-assembly.

via boing boing