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Hologram tech brings 3-D
to life A cure for common cold, finally TRENDS Prof Yash
Pal
THIS UNIVERSE |
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Hologram tech brings 3-D
to life Executives may not be able to beam a full three-dimensional image of themselves across the world just yet but researchers are a step closer to 3-D real-time images, an advance in holographic technology that could make video conferencing far more lifelike. Nasser Peyghambarian of the University of Arizona and colleagues said on Wednesday their new holographic technology can project a near 360-degree image to another location that updates every two seconds. Known as three-dimensional telepresence, the technology addresses shortcomings of
current holograms, which give the illusion of 3-D but leave out the rear view, said Peyghambarian, whose study appears in the journal Nature. “If you look at the 3-D object, we show it is very much like if you look around you. It’s the closest to what you see compared to any other technology,” Peyghambarian, who also holds a position at the National Science Foundation, said on a telephone briefing. He said the earliest use of the technology could be in movies, given the popularity of 3-D films such as “Avatar.” “We foresee many applications, including for example, car or airplane manufacturing. They can look at the hologram and design the system they have in real-time and look at the model and make changes on it as they go,” Peyghambarian told the briefing. Surgeons around the world also could participate in complex operations at the same time, he said. To create the hologram, cameras take colour images at multiple angles and send them over an Ethernet line. In the lab model, images are projected onto a transparent plastic panel and refreshed every few seconds. Future displays will lie flat on a table and the system will create an optical illusion that the image is floating above the screen. The three-dimensional telepresence technology differs from 3-D technology in several ways. With 3-D, one perspective is projected to one eye and another perspective is projected to the other, which is why people wear special glasses. With the hologram, no special glasses are needed and
the number of perspectives is only limited by the number of cameras used. In a videoconference, this means people sitting on one side of a table see the front of a person, people on the side would get a side view and people in the back would see their back. The technology builds on earlier work by the same group, which in 2008 reported a black and white 3-D image that could be updated every four minutes. The new system is more than 100 times faster. “This breakthrough opens new opportunities for optics as a means to transport images in real time,” Lynn Preston, director of the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Centres program, said in a statement. Peyghambarian said the team still needs to work out some issues, including improving the screen and reducing the system’s power demands, which will take about two years. It will be far longer before the system can be used by ordinary consumers. “I don’t think you can see these in our houses in less than seven to 10 years,” he
said. —Reuters |
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A cure for common cold, finally In A dramatic breakthrough that could affect millions of lives, scientists can destroy the common cold virus after it has actually invaded the inner sanctum of a human cell, a feat that was believed until now to be impossible. The discovery opens the door to the development of a new class of antiviral drugs that work by enhancing this natural virus-killing machinery of the cell. Scientists believe the first clinical trials of new drugs based on the findings could begin within two to five years. The researchers said that many other viruses responsible for a range of diseases could also be targeted by the new approach. They include the norovirus, which causes winter vomiting, and rotavirus, which results in severe diarrhoea and kills thousands of children in developing countries. Viruses are still mankind’s biggest killers, responsible for twice as many deaths as cancer, essentially because they can get inside cells where they can hide away from the body’s immune defences and the powerful antibiotic drugs that have proved invaluable against bacterial infections. However, a study has shown that anti-viral antibodies can in fact enter the cell with the invading virus where they are able to trigger the rapid destruction of the foreign invader.
— The Independent |
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Retinal implant helps blind people see LONDON: Scientists have developed an eye implant that allowed three blind patients to see shapes and objects within days of treatment in a trial and say the device could become routine for some kinds of blindness in five years. Experts described the study results as phenomenal and said the device, developed by German researchers, could eventually change the lives of up to 200,000 people worldwide who suffer from blindness due to a degenerative eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa. DNA identifies Ceausescu’s remains BUCHAREST: DNA tests confirmed Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was buried in a grave in Bucharest, forensic experts said on Wednesday, lifting doubt over the ruler’s burial place. Ceausescu ruled Romania from 1965 until he and his wife Elena were captured and shot by firing squad on Christmas Day in 1989 after fleeing mass protests in Bucharest, marking the fall of communism in the southeast European country. Humans mastered tool making early CAPE TOWN: A group of prehistoric people mastered a difficult and delicate process to sharpen stones into spears and knives at least 75,000 years ago, more than 50,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a report. This technique, known as pressure flaking, allowed for the more precise shaping of stones to turn them into better weapons for hunting, a paper published on Thursday in the US periodical Science said. Science tracks destruction of nature LONDON: Scientists are struggling to get a full picture of the variety of wildlife species around the globe as climate change, human exploitation and pollution threaten “mass extinctions,” a series of studies published on Wednesday showed. The 16 studies in a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London said science had an incomplete record of species from animals to plants and microbes at a time when they may be dying out faster than ever before. Fifth of vertebrates face extinction NAGOYA,
JAPAN: About a fifth of the world’s vertebrates are threatened with extinction, a major review has found, highlighting the plight of nature that is the focus of global environment talks underway in Japan. The study by more than 170 scientists across the globe used data for 25,000 species from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of threatened species and examined the status of the world’s mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes.
— Reuters |
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THIS UNIVERSE
Why does a rotating fan stop even when there is no air friction? If you switch off the current, the rotating fan does come to a stop after a while. This happens because a rotating fan is constructed in a way that it should push air towards a certain direction, for example, downwards, if it is a ceiling fan. This pushing of air requires energy because it tends to resist the rotation of the fan. When you switch off the current, the same air resistance would stop the fan after a while. How does an induction cooker work? I have not seen or used an induction cooker, but I can surmise the following: There must be a coil of conducting material through which an oscillating high current can be passed. Separated from this, but near it, we can have a pan or container, preferably made of ferrous material, like iron, in which we place the food that has to be cooked. The oscillating current would produce a magnetic effect on the container producing eddy currents. This is where induction comes in. The eddy currents produce heating in the cooking container, because it is made of material that is only magnetic but not highly conducting. The rest must be some control systems, but nothing very complicated. It is believed that these cookers could be energy efficient, because you do not radiate, or convect away, a lot of energy as you would when you use an electric heater or a gas flame. I see a bright future for such cookers at places with dependable power
supply.
Readers wanting to ask Prof Yash Pal
a question can e-mail him at palyash.pal@gmail.com |
