These all seemed very interesting to me across the subject areas of cool technologies and healthcare.
The First Virtual Reality Technology to Let You See, Hear, Smell, Taste and Touch
Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (03/04/09) Stern, Dan
Scientists at the University of Warwick and York University are developing virtual reality devices that are capable of stimulating all five senses with a high degree of realism. The research is part of the Towards Real Virtuality project, which is creating a fully immersive virtual reality experience in which users are unable to tell whether it is real or not. Teams from York and Warwick are working with experts from the universities of Bangor, Bradford, and Brighton to develop a Virtual Cocoon, a virtual reality device that will simulate all of the senses more realistically than any other device. The Virtual Cocoon will be a headset that incorporates specially developed electronics and computing capabilities. The researchers say the device could be used to unlock the full potential of Real Virtuality in a variety of fields. A mock-up of the Virtual Cocoon is on display at the Pioneers 09 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council showcase event in London. "Virtual reality projects have typically only focused on one or two of the five senses--usually sight and hearing," says York professor David Howard, the project's lead scientist. "We're not aware of any other research group anywhere else in the world doing what we plan to do." Howard says smell will be generated using a new technique from researchers at Warwick that will deliver a pre-determined smell on demand, and because taste and smell are so closely related, providing a texture sensation related to something being smelled will create the sensation of taste. A key goal of the project is to optimize the way all five senses interact.
Researchers Mine Millions of Metaphors Through Computer-Based Techniques
San Jose Mercury News (CA) (02/28/09) Krieger, Lisa M.
A digital humanities project that started at Stanford University is teaching computers how to analyze text and extract metaphors to build a searchable database, which will enable users to browse historic patterns of word uses. "As a tool, it provides a really powerful way of thinking about a lot of literature at once," says University of Virginia English literature professor Brad Pasanek, who is working on the project with computer scientist D. Sculley. The project is making tangible what the German linguist Herald Weinrich called the "metaphoric field." Digitized libraries have made a wide range of books available online, including obscure and rare books. Researchers can use data-mining techniques to search the millions of words in those books to study subtle changes in how the words have been used throughout history. "The nature of metaphor is such that it does not lend itself to easy detection by the usual sorts of pattern-matching algorithms," says Stanford computer scientist Matt Jockers, who created the digital database used for the project. Pasanek provided the computer with examples of metaphors and trained the software to recognize metaphors, using proximity searches between words likely to be metaphoric. Sculley says a similar technique is used in spam-detection software. "Pasanek's database is the first metaphoric field that we can actually see and use," says Stanford professor Franco Moretti. "It provides empirical proof for a daring but never wholly solid concept."
New 'Smart' Homes for Dementia Sufferers
University of Bath (03/04/09) Just, Vicky
A sensing system that assists people who suffer from dementia will be among the smart home technologies on display at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's Pioneers 09 showcase event in London. Care homes in London and the West Country have been using the smart system as part of a trial over the past year, and its developers say it could be installed in residential homes. Developed at the University of Bath, the smart system is designed to monitor a person's movements around the home; provide voice prompts, such as for turning off the water or lights; and even switching off appliances to avoid a potentially dangerous situation. The Bath team believes the sensing system will enable people with dementia to live on their own, and ease some of the burden on families, healthcare professionals, and healthcare budgets. Operating on a "plug in and use" basis, with minimal visibility or intrusiveness, the sensing system makes use of the voices of relatives or friends to deliver reassuring messages and influence behavior. "The next step is to make sure the systems can be managed by nontechnical local authority carers and healthcare staff," says Roger Orpwood, the lead scientist for the project.
Researchers Strive to Improve Online Education
ASU News (02/26/09) Martin, Verina Palmer
Arizona State University's (ASU's) New American University project aims to enroll 100,000 students in online courses by 2012, which will require finding more effective ways of providing instruction online. "Learning can be as effective online as it can be face to face," says ASU professor James Klein, who is investigating the use of collaborative learning in several settings, including online and in the classroom. Klein's research has explored the effects of collaboration in such settings on students from public schools, community colleges, universities, and corporate training sessions for working adults. One study examined how to teach teachers online and help them integrate technology into their classrooms. "The continued proliferation of online courses means we must continue to do research in this area," Klein says. "What we know is that interaction increases learning." Klein's research has revealed that people who work face to face have higher positive attitudes than people who work online, but that online students learn as much as students in the classroom. Overall, students prefer working together over individual studying, but collaborative efforts do not necessarily result in better information retention, and forced online interaction results in lower student motivation. Klein says because online courses could have a significant impact on higher education it is important to develop well-designed tools, strategies, and interactions.
MIT Speeds Health Work in Project That Uses PDAs to Track TB Data
Campus Technology (02/25/09) Schaffhauser, Dian
A program developed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate student that used personal digital assistants (PDAs) to monitor the test results of patients with tuberculosis has been a success in Lima, Peru, and has now been expanded across the city. For the healthcare workers who visit more than 100 healthcare centers and labs twice a week to record patient test results on paper, and then transcribe the results onto two sets of forms per patient when they return to the main office, the PDAs allow them to enter the data remotely and sync up with their computers when they go back to the office. "The doctors get what they want, the administrators get what they want, and the team only has to enter the data once," says Joaquin Blaya, a PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST). Blaya worked with HST, the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Partners in Health, and the non-profit's sister organization in Peru, Socios en Salud, to devise the program. The handheld devices use specially designed software to maintain patient data. The program has reduced the average time patients' test results reach doctors from 23 days to eight days, and also costs less than the previous paper-based system.
