Author: kenmay

Researchers manipulate electrical signals to give prosthetic limbs a sense of touch

Adding the sense of touch to prosthetic limbs could significantly improve an amputee’s quality of life, so there’s a long list of researchers trying to make it happen . Some of those scientists make up one team out of Cleveland, who — according to their paper recently published in Science — have successfully recreated the sense of touch for two men missing an arm in a lab setting. Just like a recent experiment conducted by a team from the EU, this group implanted electrodes around three main nerves in the test subjects’ arm stumps. A machine then sends electrical signals between the electrodes and the prosthesis when it’s attached, something which, the subjects said, felt like electric tingles at first. After a while, though, the researchers learned how to control the patterns and intensities of those signals. Doing so allowed the subjects to recognize the texture of cotton and even sort berries without crushing them — a really big deal, since many other studies are still stuck at the “tingling” stage. Sadly, the researchers still need to better understand how they can manipulate the signals before they can make prostheses that can feel everything: even their two subjects only get to use their high-tech limbs once or twice a month, and only inside the lab. For now, you can watch some of the experiments they’ve conducted in the video below. Filed under: Science Comments Via: Popular Science , AP Source: Science

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Researchers manipulate electrical signals to give prosthetic limbs a sense of touch

Tesla’s New Dual-Motor, AWD Car Has Autopilot That Reads Speed Limit Signs–and Automatically Sticks to the Limit

Yesterday Tesla Motors held a press event where they announced their new all-wheel-drive models, which hit the road in December. These being electric cars, rather than using a single motor to drive all four wheels, Tesla is simply dropping a second motor into the car; with one up front and one in back, there’s no need for a driveshaft in between and all of those pesky linkages. And these cars will go from 0-60 in an absurd 3.2 seconds, in case you need to smoke a Bugatti. “This car is nuts, ” Tesla skipper Elon Musk told the audience. “It’s like taking off from a carrier deck.” (See video below for the full carrier deck/ Battlestar Galactica -esque “launch sequence.”) Some optimists assumed that at last night’s event, Musk was going to pull the sheets off of a completely self-driving car. While that’s undoubtedly a ways off, the autopilot features announced last night for the new models indicate it’s not as far off in the future as you might think. Using a combination of radar, a camera and a dozen sensors, this is what Tesla’s new models can reportedly do: – The new system will move the car over a lane when the driver uses the turn signal. – The car reads speed-limit signs and adjusts the car to the speed on the sign. – Drivers will be able to get out of the car in their driveways and watch it park itself in the garage. When drivers are ready to leave, the car will able to drive itself up, with the car’s temperature and stereo system set to the driver’s preferences. “It will come to you wherever you are, ” Musk says. “It will slowly make its way to you.” I’m not sure why you’d choose to get out of your car in the driveway rather than in the garage—most architects are thoughtful enough to put a door between the garage and the house—but then again, perhaps Musk is targeting the super-rich owners who live in manses apart from the stables. (more…)

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Tesla’s New Dual-Motor, AWD Car Has Autopilot That Reads Speed Limit Signs–and Automatically Sticks to the Limit

The Tempescope shows you tomorrow’s weather by physically creating it

Another very cool item hidden within CEATEC, Japan’s biggest tech show, was the Tempescope. The team behind it call it “an ambient physical display that visualizes the weather, inside your living room” — it’s an elaborate lit-up box that shows you tomorrow’s weather in a very classy, oddly relaxing, way. To work out exact what kind of weather it should summon, the Tempescope pulls hourly forecasts from a wireless connection from a PC (future models could pretty easily pluck similar information from your smartphone), and once the ‘scope knows what’s happening, it’ll try to create those meteorological conditions inside the sealed cuboid you see above. A combination of water and ultrasonics creates the cloudy vapor inside the box, while water can also be gathered at the top, and dripped down to create rain. LED lights at the top attempt offer up an estimation of either thunder or sunshine, depending on what’s going down tomorrow. The product of after-hours and weekend tinkering by a small team of three, it’s been in development for a few years and now they plan to launch crowdfunding campaign early next year which, if successful, will pave the way for a professionally-finished, thoroughly modern weather vane. You can check their site for all the details — and even the whole schematics for the thing, if you’re feeling particularly productive. Filed under: Misc Comments Source: Tempescope

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The Tempescope shows you tomorrow’s weather by physically creating it

Tesla D: Model S with second motor and AWD, new driver assist tech

Tesla’s “D” unveiling hasn’t quite started yet, but USA Today has taken the wraps off for Elon Musk & Co. Fitting into some of the rumors, speculation and a car spotted a few days ago, Tesla is rolling out new all wheel drive equipped versions of its Model S. The top of the line dual-motor equipped P85D has a measured 0 – 60 time of 3.2 seconds, which puts it among the fastest sedans ever when it starts shipping in December. Developing… [Image credit: Shutterstock] Filed under: Transportation Comments

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Tesla D: Model S with second motor and AWD, new driver assist tech

Imgur Just Invented a New GIF Format—Here’s Why It Matters

GIFs are the lifeblood of the internet, the reason most of us get up in the morning. But they haven’t really gotten better in the past 25 years—until now. Imgur claims to have created a brand-new GIF which recreates the traditional animated, looping images we love using the best web video format, MP4. Hold onto your jorts! Read more…

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Imgur Just Invented a New GIF Format—Here’s Why It Matters

Google Hangouts Just Got Way Better on the Desktop

Google Hangouts is a nice little chat client, and someday it could be unstoppable . But a few things have been holding it back, including a desktop experience that was just OK. Now, Google’s released a new app for ChromeOS and Windows users that makes it way, way better. Read more…

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Google Hangouts Just Got Way Better on the Desktop

There’s more than one reason why iOS 8’s growth has stalled

Apple If you follow Apple news closely, at some point in the last week you’ve probably seen the graph above. It’s from Apple’s Developer Support page, and the company calculates the figure by looking at the iOS versions of devices accessing the App Store. Like Google’s analogous developer dashboard for Android , it’s meant to give developers a broad look at OS usage so they can use that data to determine which OSes to support with their apps. The problem with the graph above isn’t that it shows iOS 8 and iOS 7 with the same amount of share, but that the number for iOS 8 has climbed just a single percentage point since the last measurement was taken on September 21 . Apple’s data mirrors what a number of other independent firms have been claiming virtually since launch day— Chitika’s data shows that iOS 8 had rolled out to 7.3 percent of the iOS userbase after 24 hours of availability, while iOS 7 had already hit 18.2 percent in the first 24 hours after its launch. More recent data from Fiksu shows an adoption curve closer to iOS 5 (the last version you needed iTunes to upgrade to) than to iOS 6 or iOS 7. Fiksu’s data shows iOS 8 with 40 percent of the iOS pie after 22 days, compared to nearly 60 percent for iOS 7 and iOS 6. Fiksu Though the Ars audience is generally more tech-savvy than the general populace, our own data shows that you guys are embracing iOS 8 less enthusiastically than you picked up iOS 7. Here’s data from iOS 7’s first two full weeks (running from September 22 of 2013 to October 5) compared to data from iOS 8’s first two full weeks (September 21 of 2014 to October 4). Around 70 percent of our site visits came from iOS 7 in that time period, compared to about 60 percent from iOS 8. Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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There’s more than one reason why iOS 8’s growth has stalled

This one U.S. hotspot produces the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane. Why?

The Four Corners area (red) is the major U.S. hot spot for methane emissions in this map showing how much emissions varied from average background concentrations from 2003-2009 (dark colors are lower than average; lighter colors are higher). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Michigan A new study of satellite data by scientists at NASA and University of Michigan One shows that one small “hot spot” in the American Southwest produces the greatest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane in the United States. Read the rest

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This one U.S. hotspot produces the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane. Why?