Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Take a Tablet and Wake Up Smarter?

December 10, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
laptops

Over the years we’ve taken occasional peeks at the fate of the One Laptop Per Child initiative, an intuitively positive-sounding program that reasons giving every young students in the world a key to the digital future has just gotta be a great idea. Perhaps not all that surprisingly, it hasn’t turned out that way, at least not on the scale that visionaries like Nicholas Negroponte have suggested. The seven-year effort retooled itself (again) a year ago, as Jeff Shear reported on this site, with a third version of a cheap (i.e. inexpensive) laptop that would be handed out to children in ... Read More

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The Touchy-Feely Future

November 15, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
senseg3

When I heard that we might soon be able to feel textures through screens, I wanted to play. So I badgered my way into a demonstration with Dave Rice, spokesperson for Senseg, a leading company in the emerging field of haptic (from the Greek meaning “to touch”) technology. We met at a San Francisco coffee shop, where he pulled out a Toshiba tablet that Senseg’s people had hacked with haptics. Engineers had opened up the tablet and embedded their custom electronics. Then they covered the screen’s glass with a special coating that has particular electrical properties. They also ... Read More

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The Love Bot

October 30, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Optimistic Robot

THE ROBOT IS SMILING AT ME, his red rubbery lips curved in a cheery grin. I’m seated in front of a panel with 10 numbered buttons, and the robot, a three-foot-tall, legless automaton with an impish face, is telling me which buttons to push and which hand to push them with. Touch seven with your right hand; touch three with your left. The idea is to go as fast as I can. When I make a mistake, he corrects me; when I speed up, he tells me how much better I’m doing. Despite the simplicity of our interactions, I’m starting to like the little guy. Maybe it’s his round silvery eyes and ... Read More

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The Great Depression and the Rise of the Refrigerator

October 9, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Refrigerator ads from the April 16, 1933 San Antonio Light (San Antonio, TX)

When I moved to Los Angeles and began my search for an apartment I was a little surprised by the fact that a refrigerator wasn't included with most of the units I toured. In every other city where I've ever lived, the average apartment always included a refrigerator with the cost of rent. I was only looking for a one-bedroom apartment, but I was expecting that this was the norm everywhere for the most basic of apartments. When I asked the manager of the apartment building I wound up renting from why there was no refrigerator, she explained that the property only supplies "the essentials." ... Read More

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My Nuclear Bomb Detonates More Safely Than Your Nuclear Bomb

September 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

In yet another example of the serendipity of science, a University of Michigan research team applied “cocrystallization”—a process used in the pharmaceutical industry to alter the physical properties of drugs—to the production of high explosives, and discovered what may improve explosives technology in use for the last half century. Mixing two mainstays, the volatile CL-20 and the popular HMX (two parts to one), chemist Adam J. Matzger and colleagues cooked up an explosive that travels about 1 percent faster than HMX alone, the military’s explosive of choice since the 1940s. Not a ... Read More

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The World’s First Earbud Headphones

September 13, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Earbud headphones of yesteryear (May 1926 Science and Invention)

Yesterday Apple announced its latest and greatest in electronic toys and tools. While most tech writers thought the updates were evolutionary rather than revolutionary in nature, Apple did update one piece of hardware that hasn't really changed much (remote and mic aside) since the iPod was originally released in 2001: their iconic white earbud headphones. Apple's EarPods are said to follow three years of design research and development, breaking new ground in sound and comfort. Earbuds helped shape Apple's comeback in the early 2000s, which was defined as much by marketing as it was new ... Read More

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Electric Glove Helps Police Quell Rioters

August 29, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Electric glove in the Sept 1935 issue of Popular Science

With protests ramping up this week at the Republican National Convention, Tampa police have been out on city streets in full riot gear. Police outnumber protesters in Tampa 4 to 1 but thankfully there hasn't been any threat of violence (yet). Should things get hairy, the modern American police officer has many a weapon at his disposal to subdue protesters, perhaps none more controversial than the taser. Electroshock weapons have become more and more popular in the past decade in police departments across the country. Proponents of electroshock weapons claim that tasers actually save lives ... Read More

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Who’s Afraid of WCIT-12?

August 21, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

As obscure government meetings go, a mid-winter conclave of telegraph agency bureaucrats feels about as distant from power as one gets. And yet, great sturm und drang is greeting the run-up to this December's meeting of the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations body that used to regulate telephone communications and now does...something undecided. Which is where the problems have started. The ITU, arguably the modern world's first international body, theoretically regulates humanity's communications networks. However, as explained in this helpful backgrounder from ... Read More

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Steal Your Face, Disney-style

August 16, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Screen Shot 2012-08-16 at 4.02.47 PM

Madame Tussaud, step aside. Walt Disney Company scientists (not at an oxymoron, it turns out) have developed a new process to replicate real people's facial expressions in ultra-sophisticated detail on the silicon skin of animatronic robots. The process involves 3D scanning of the person's face, then modelling that imagery onto specially designed synthetic skin. "With our method, we can simply create a robotic clone of a real person," says Dr. Bernd Bickel, researcher at Disney Research, Zurich (Zurich?). The results are eerily precise, as you can see in this video. Science, Space & ... Read More

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Chinese Drones Are On Their Way

June 6, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

China is getting into the flying robot business, as much for financial as security reasons, according to business consultants Frost and Sullivan. A report in Singapore’s Straits Times says the consultancy believes the United States is by now well stocked with drones, and between now and 2020 will be scaling back purchases from more than $5 billion per year to $2.3 billion. At the same time, the global market for drones should increase to more than $7 billion. A market opportunity would emerge for Chinese-made drones, which the report claims will ramp up in the next three years, as Chinese ... Read More

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