Research

[This Physorg article reports research published in the March issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, is suggesting that we process images in two very distinct ways. From the article: " Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Psychologist Tzvi Ganel and his colleagues presented research participants with the “Ponzo” illusion, an image common in psychological research that makes two objects that are similar in length appear drastically different. They then hooked participants’ index finger and thumb to computerized position tracking equipment and asked them to grasp the objects with their fingers.

Even thought the object appeared to be larger (or smaller) than it really was, the size of their grasp reflected the object’s real rather than apparent size. For good measure, the researchers arranged the illusion so that the object that appeared to be the smaller of the two was actually the larger of the two.

This ScienceDaily article reports scientists at the University of Illinois have created the first mixed reality state in a physical system using a virtual pendulum and its real-world counterpart. From the article: "Through bidirectional instantaneous coupling, each pendulum "sensed" the other, their motions became correlated, and the two began swinging as one.

"In a mixed reality state there is no clear boundary between the real system and the virtual system," said U. of I. physicist Alfred Hubler. "The line blurs between what's real and what isn't."

This ICT Results article reports SIMILAR, a European task force focused on human-computer interaction (HCI), plans to make human-computer interaction ‘similar’ to the way humans do it. From the article: "Human-computer interaction has not improved enormously since Mark Twain’s time, when the typewriter was invented. A European research task force hopes to change that by making human-computer interaction, well, ‘similar’ to the way humans do it.

This Science Daily article reports engineers at the University of Washington have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights. From the article: "Movie characters from the Terminator to the Bionic Woman use bionic eyes to zoom in on far-off scenes, have useful facts pop into their field of view, or create virtual crosshairs. Off the screen, virtual displays have been proposed for more practical purposes -- visual aids to help vision-impaired people, holographic driving control panels and even as a way to surf the Web on the go.

This NewScientist Technology Blog post takes a look at the relative keyboard project: a solution for entering text into mobile devices which could permits to type on any touch-sensitive surface and have it recognised correctly. From the post: "Do you ever get bored of looking at the same old keyboard? Fortunately two researchers at the Language Technologies Institute of Carnegie Mellon University have a new idea - making them invisible.

This Physorg.com article reports researchers from the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), a joint project of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, have for the first time described a mechanism called “dynamic connectivity,” in which neuronal circuits are rewired “on the fly” allowing stimuli to be more keenly sensed. From the article: "This new, biologically inspired algorithm for analyzing the brain at work allows scientists to explain why when we notice a scent, the brain can quickly sort through input and determine exactly what that smell is.

[This Physorg.com article reports University of Leicester researchers have discovered that they can tell what a person is actually seeing from the firing of a specific type of neuron. From the article: " The original research by Dr R Quian Quiroga, of the University’s Department of Engineering, showed that one neuron fired to, for instance, Jennifer Aniston, another one to Halle Berry, another one to the Sydney Opera House, etc.

The responses were abstract. For example, the neuron firing to Halle Berry responded to several different pictures of her and even to the letters of her name, but not to other people or names.

This press release reports the University of Ottawa and IBM are engaging in a partnership to further pursue research in collaborative tele-presence at the DISCOVER Lab. From the press release: "This initiative is being supported by an IBM Shared University Research (SUR) grant.

The main objective of collaborative tele-presence is to give the impression to its users that they “exist” in the same virtual or real location, when in reality they are not, to the extent that they can interact with each other and with shared objects as in the real world.

This BBC News article takes a look at Arden: a virtual world created by Professor Edward Castronova and colleagues, in the Synthetic Worlds Institute at the University of Indiana, made to experiment with social dynamics and economics. From the article: "Usually it is only actors that play Shakespeare but now gamers are getting the chance to go adventuring in a virtual world built around the Bard's plays.

Called Arden, the virtual world is the creation of Professor Edward Castronova and colleagues in the Synthetic Worlds Institute at the University of Indiana.

This Columbian article takes a look at the haptic interface researches made at Washington State University. From the article: "This is how the Matrix begins: with Randy Bullion of La Center sitting in a white-walled lab, his right hand extended, grabbing at nothing.

The interesting thing here isn't the computer program that's tracking his movements and projecting an artificial world into the visor he's wearing. Virtual reality is old news.

The thing to notice here is the $4,000 metal glove draped over Bullion's forearm. It's his master's thesis, and it's one step in associate professor Hakan Gurocak's big plan to put Washington State University Vancouver's fledgling robotics lab on the map.