Not Just Another Pretty Vase

Not Just Another Pretty Vase


Who doesn’t love a fresh bouquet of flowers? When the garden is in full bloom, there’s nothing nicer than giving (or keeping!) fresh cut flowers that are ready to display. Mother Nature will supply the blossoms — and in the “flower holding” department, we’ve discovered a clever solution with Jill-able vases.

Unlike a traditional glass vase, Jill-ables are unbreakable, collapsible and reusable. Just add water to create a sturdy, colorful vase, and simply collapse it when it’s not in use—they even store flat in a drawer, taking up no more room than an envelope. Jill-able vases come in four different colors and are made from recycled plastic, so they’re both earth-friendly and a real space saver.

Perfect for gifting and reusing, the Jill-able vase is a nice way to share flowers with a friend without adding to their clutter. It’s a particularly thoughtful choice for small apartments, kid-busy homes, classrooms, or hospital rooms. Keep a few for yourself, too, and enjoy the bounty of the season anytime.




Socks that Sustain

What can we say about these simple, organic cotton socks? A lot.

These socks tell a story about their creator, Gina Locklear, who grew up among sock makers. Gina is following in the footsteps of her parents, who built a sock manufacturing company in Fort Payne, Alabama. Throughout most of the 20th century, the majority of socks made in the United States were produced in Fort Payne. Today, competition from overseas manufacturers threatens the remaining hosiery businesses in Gina’s hometown. But she’s bringing some life back into the local industry with a fresh approach to sock-making that incorporates Gina’s passion for ecologically sensible living and green business.



Gina founded Zkano in October. She does the designing and her parents’ company, called Emi-G Knitting, makes the socks (available in athletic crew, no show and heavy weight crew syles). Each pair is made from certified organic ring-spun cotton, grown without pesticides or chemicals, and finished without metal dyes. The name Zkano is derived from a Native American word that describes “a state of being good.” That sentiment perfectly captures Gina’s goal of creating products that are good for the environment and good for the people who wear them. Her socks cost a little more than socks manufactured overseas — because they’re worth it.

Video – Skydiver Stunt

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雲林地層下陷亮紅燈?! 國土淪陷 水資源濫用?! 高鐵安全拉警報?!

雲林地層下陷亮紅燈?! 國土淪陷 水資源濫用?! 高鐵安全拉警報?!
張貼者： 有話好說-南部開講 發表於： 星期六, 四月 10, 2010




















受到雲林地區地層持續下陷影響，高鐵跨越台七十八線處墩柱，角度變化首度超出警戒值1/1500，基礎地層去年的年沈陷速率達6.5公分，也超過高鐵設計標準4公分，使得軌道線型改變將直接影響行車安全，若不加強修補，高鐵行車將有安全上的疑慮。根據高鐵局和水利署的監控資料，過去7年累積高鐵墩柱下陷最嚴重地區，以跨越台78線處沈陷55公分最嚴重、雲158線處48公分、雲林虎尾站預定地41公分，這段長約6公里路段是最「淪陷」地區，預估103年後部分的地表高度將差距60公分以上，長期一定會有問題。

但是高鐵局認為，高鐵墩柱沉陷情況已逐漸趨緩，沉陷程度也在容許值內，目前高鐵結構與行車安全無虞。水利署也表示，已經針對高鐵沿線3公里範圍內的87口公有水井進行封井，雲林大部分地區下陷速率也從92年的12.2公分降至7.3公分，下陷面積也自610平方公里降為414平方公里，雲林地層下陷現象，呈現持續減緩趨勢。

然而下陷速率仍超過高鐵設計標準，中央希望雲林縣能取締一千多口的非法灌溉井，但是雲林縣認為農民權益可能受到影響，堅決不封井。農民也認為，抽取地下水灌溉是不得已措施，畢竟政府遲遲未拿出替代水源，與其他配套，他們不可能讓良田荒廢成荒地。面對中央、地方與農民三方的角力，高鐵雲林段地層下陷似乎難解。

台灣西部沿海長期地層下陷問題，在高鐵動工前就是老問題，高鐵雲林段下陷，不過是中央及地方長期漠視水資源運用的結果？雲林高鐵沿線有一萬多口井，不論封井是否可行，重點是，即使把雲林所有的井都封起來，對於阻擋高鐵地層下陷也只是杯水車薪？雲林地區一直沒有水庫，長期面臨缺水問題；但政府過去幾年仍核准了幾項重大開發案，包括耗能耗水的石化業跟面板業在內。即使未來湖山水庫完工，就能支應中部地區的用水問題？

政府基於整體經濟發展，若認為這些重度耗水耗能的產業必須存在，就須設法就用水「開源」。包括在符合環保的原則下，如何更有效地運用地表水，而不能抱著鴕鳥心態認為「撐過去」就好，任令抽取地下水。尤其在水資源更為珍貴的此時，高鐵雲林段地層下陷，突顯的是政府對於水資源政策的亂無章法？產業政策缺乏國土規劃思維？



來賓介紹

雲林縣水利處副處長 林榮川

台灣生態學會雲林工作站主任 陳清圳


台大土木工程水利工程組教授 李鴻源


中研院地球科學研究所研究員 汪中和

(Discovery Channel) TAIPEI 101

福爾摩沙-.空中散步 ( and 迷樣台灣-澎湖的百慕達 )

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Sony PRS-600SC Touch Edition E-Book रेअदेर; PRS-700 Review

The Sony PRS-600SC Touch Edition E-Book Reader allows readers to access up to 350 of their favorite books from anywhere. The intuitive touch screen display makes navigation a breeze, and lets readers turn pages with the swipe of a finger. An included stylus offers freehand highlighting and annotation. The Sony PRS-600SC Touch Edition E-Book Reader also supports multiple file formats including ePub and PDF, giving owners access to more books from more places, including The eBook Store from Sony including more than one million free public domain titles from Google Books. The Sony PRS-600SC Touch Edition E-Book Reader should appeal to avid readers who want to carry their favorite books with them, as well as those looking for more options in where they purchase, check out, and download eBooks!









http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW2vnSy1kZ4&feature=related

Aluratek Libre eBook Reader Pro

Twitter Developer Conference live from SF!

Watch live video from Twitter Chirp Conference on Justin.tv

雲林地層下陷亮紅燈?! 國土淪陷 水資源濫用?! 高鐵安全拉警報?!

雲林地層下陷亮紅燈?! 國土淪陷 水資源濫用?! 高鐵安全拉警報?!
張貼者： 有話好說-南部開講 發表於： 星期六, 四月 10, 2010



受到雲林地區地層持續下陷影響，高鐵跨越台七十八線處墩柱，角度變化首度超出警戒值1/1500，基礎地層去年的年沈陷速率達6.5公分，也超過高鐵設計標準4公分，使得軌道線型改變將直接影響行車安全，若不加強修補，高鐵行車將有安全上的疑慮。根據高鐵局和水利署的監控資料，過去7年累積高鐵墩柱下陷最嚴重地區，以跨越台78線處沈陷55公分最嚴重、雲158線處48公分、雲林虎尾站預定地41公分，這段長約6公里路段是最「淪陷」地區，預估103年後部分的地表高度將差距60公分以上，長期一定會有問題。

但是高鐵局認為，高鐵墩柱沉陷情況已逐漸趨緩，沉陷程度也在容許值內，目前高鐵結構與行車安全無虞。水利署也表示，已經針對高鐵沿線3公里範圍內的87口公有水井進行封井，雲林大部分地區下陷速率也從92年的12.2公分降至7.3公分，下陷面積也自610平方公里降為414平方公里，雲林地層下陷現象，呈現持續減緩趨勢。

然而下陷速率仍超過高鐵設計標準，中央希望雲林縣能取締一千多口的非法灌溉井，但是雲林縣認為農民權益可能受到影響，堅決不封井。農民也認為，抽取地下水灌溉是不得已措施，畢竟政府遲遲未拿出替代水源，與其他配套，他們不可能讓良田荒廢成荒地。面對中央、地方與農民三方的角力，高鐵雲林段地層下陷似乎難解。

台灣西部沿海長期地層下陷問題，在高鐵動工前就是老問題，高鐵雲林段下陷，不過是中央及地方長期漠視水資源運用的結果？雲林高鐵沿線有一萬多口井，不論封井是否可行，重點是，即使把雲林所有的井都封起來，對於阻擋高鐵地層下陷也只是杯水車薪？雲林地區一直沒有水庫，長期面臨缺水問題；但政府過去幾年仍核准了幾項重大開發案，包括耗能耗水的石化業跟面板業在內。即使未來湖山水庫完工，就能支應中部地區的用水問題？

政府基於整體經濟發展，若認為這些重度耗水耗能的產業必須存在，就須設法就用水「開源」。包括在符合環保的原則下，如何更有效地運用地表水，而不能抱著鴕鳥心態認為「撐過去」就好，任令抽取地下水。尤其在水資源更為珍貴的此時，高鐵雲林段地層下陷，突顯的是政府對於水資源政策的亂無章法？產業政策缺乏國土規劃思維？



來賓介紹

雲林縣水利處副處長 林榮川

台灣生態學會雲林工作站主任 陳清圳


台大土木工程水利工程組教授 李鴻源


中研院地球科學研究所研究員 汪中和

兒童不見了! 台灣人在消失中？

兒童不見了! 台灣人在消失中？
張貼者： 公視有話好說NGO觀點 於 星期四, 四月 08, 2010
























與談人
內政部兒童局長 張秀鴛
中研院社科所研究員 楊文山
相親銀行秘書長 盧麗萍
婦女新知董事長 范雲



台灣生育率從1951年每名婦女生7個孩子，到去年只剩下1個，全球最低。今年又適逢虎年，婦產科醫生擔心出生數可能再大幅減少，恐跌破1%。根據調查，除了不婚，礙於經濟考量，是台灣人不敢生小孩最大原因，一般民眾認為養個小孩至少要千萬，真有這麼貴？很多生兩個以上孩子的父母坦承，養小孩其實沒那麼貴，很多用金湯匙育小孩是可以替代的。




全世界的婦女總生育率只剩下台灣與葡萄牙還在下降，內政部催生不遺餘力，甚至重金懸賞，100萬徵求一個『聽了會想生小孩』的口號。究竟要怎樣的獎勵才能讓人生產報國，內政部研議齊頭式發放每月5000元0至3歲幼兒津貼，連同之前推出「育兒津貼」、「托育補助」、「育嬰留職津貼」、「社區保母系統」等鼓勵生育的政策，為何不見效？

內政部一度提議「接受未婚生子，鼓勵適齡結婚」引起廣泛討論。部長江宜樺事後澄清，強調「接納」不代表「鼓勵」。台灣的價值觀兩極落差很大，歐美國家新生兒當中有很高比率為非婚生子女，法國甚至50%。台灣是否也該順應國際潮流，調整相關法令與配套，對非婚生子更加友善？



本週六晚間七點公視十三頻道NGO觀點，「兒童不見了，台灣人正在消失中！？」

Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn

Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn

View more presentations from Eric Eldon.

Hawaii International Film Festival


http://www.asiapacificfilms.com/

2010 marks the thirtieth year that the Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) has been presenting the finest Asian and Pacific Island films to the people of Hawaii and beyond. HIFF’s purpose remains promoting cultural understanding between the East and West through the screening of the films made by Asians and Pacific Islanders.
Up to 80,000 people attend the festival each year, making the Hawaii International Film Festival the largest “East meets West” Festival in the United States. One of the many unique features about HIFF is that each year a selection of HIFF festival movies are shown free for the public on Waikiki beach under the clear Hawaiian skies. HIFF is the sister festival of Shanghai International Film Festival and Shanghai Media and Entertainment Group.
Many internationally acclaimed films that are streaming on AsiaPacificFilms.com were introduced to the West during HIFF. These titles include: Mother Courage (Tjoet Nja Dhien) directed by Eros Djarot from Indonesia; Pari, directed by Dariush Mehrjui from Iran; The Eunich directed by Lee Doo-Young of Korea; Act of War: the Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation directed and produced by Na Maka o Ka `Aina.

Gruber: Apple Was Right, Adobe Get Over It

Gruber: Apple Was Right, Adobe Get Over It

by Evelyn Rusli on Apr 12, 2010




Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has unexpectedly emerged as a central figure in the Apple-Adobe fiasco. It was his treatise on “Why Apple Changed Section 3.3.1″ that launched a thousand tweets. And it was his post that Steve Jobs referenced when a developer requested comment (“We think John Gruber’s post is very insightful and not negative…Steve”). Whether you agree with Apple or not, it’s hard to argue with Gruber’s logic for Apple’s motivations.
Today, we talked to Gruber via Skype. When asked for his response to Steve’s shout-out, Gruber meekly grinned and said, “I just smiled.” Thankfully, he saved his verbosity for the rest of the interview. We’ve included two clips, one focusing on his personal opinion on Apple’s decision and the fate of Adobe (above) and the second on how the iPad will influence the computer market and Apple’s future strategy (below).

Some key highlights from the interview:

On his personal opinion on Apple’s SDK agreement:
I think that they’re right to disallow platforms, cross-platform, meta-platforms, to be built on top of the native iPhone touch and the app store. I think, just strategically looking out for the best interests of the company… the problem you could run into is, and a developer named…Louis Gerbarg posited it this morning: Imagine if Flash was allowed to do this and a year from now let’s say 10% of the apps in the app store are going through Flash rather than writing specifically through x-code to the native SDK and Apple wants to do something with iPhone OS 5 a year from now that isn’t compatible with the output right now of Adobe Flash CS5. Well all of a sudden 10% of the apps in the app store can’t be updated to the latest version until Adobe updates their developer tools. And we’ve seen this before…


On Adobe’s Fate:
The one thing to keep in mind, Adobe is a very big company, they have plenty of products. I think, and this isn’t going to happen, I don’t think it’s going to happen, but let’s just say that they just announce tomorrow, “You know what, white flag, we give up on Flash. Flash is done, we’re going to eliminate our Flash developer tools and we’re going to ask everybody to just throw their Flash away”…Adobe still has plenty of other.. the whole CS Suite does so many things other than Flash, they’ve got Lightroom, it’s my favorite tool for managing photos, has nothing to do with Flash. Flash is important to Adobe but it is not the majority of their business. And that’s not going to happen, no matter how badly the next few years go for Flash overall it’s not going to disappear it has tremendous market share already and that sort of thing dwindles overtime. But in terms of Adobe’s hopes to extend what Flash and tools like Flash (like Air which is sort of built on top of Flash)…to extend that sort of thing to mobile devices as a software platform…I think they’re in pretty bad shape.

Dennis Hong: My seven species of robot

So, the first robot to talk about is called STriDER. It stands for Self-excited Tripedal Dynamic Experimental Robot. It's a robot that has three legs, which is inspired by nature. But have you seen anything in nature an animal that has three legs? Probably not. So, why do I call this a biologically-inspired robot? How would it work? But before that, let's look at pop culture. So, you know H.G. Wells War of the Worlds novel and movie. And what you see over here is a very popular video game. In the fiction they describe these alien creatures are robots that have there legs that terrorize Earth. But my robot, STriDER, does not move like this.

So, this is an actual dynamic simulation animation. I'm just going to show you how the robot works. It flips its body 180 degrees. It swings its leg between its two legs to catch the fall. So, that's how it walks. But when you look at us human being, bipedal walking, what you're doing is you're not really using a muscle to lift your leg and walk like a robot. Right? What you're doing is you really swing your leg and catch the fall, stand up again, swing your leg and catch the fall. Using your built-in dynamics, the physics of your body, just like a pendulum. We call that the concept of passive dynamic locomotion. What you're doing is, when you stand up, potential energy to kinetic energy, potential energy to kinetic energy. It's a constantly falling process. So, even though there is nothing in nature that looks like this, really we were inspired by biology and applying the principles of walking to this robot, thus it's a biologically inspired robot.

What you see over here, this is what we want to do next. We want to fold up the legs and shoot it up for long-range motion. And it deploys legs, it looks almost like Star Wars. When it lands, it absorbs the shock and starts walking. What you see over here, this yellow thing, this is not a death ray. This is just to show you that if you have cameras or different type of sensors because it is tall, it's 1.8 meters tall, you can see over obstacles like bushes and those kind of things.

So we have two prototypes. The first version, in the back, that's STriDER I. The one in front, the smaller, is STriDER II. The problem that we had with STriDER I is it was just too heavy in the body. We had so many motors, you know, aligning the joints, and those kinds of things. So, we decided to synthesize a mechanical mechanism so we can get rid of all the motors, and with a single motor we can coordinate all the motions. It's a mechanical solution to a problem, instead of using mechatronics. So, with this now, the top body is light enough so it can walk in a lab. This was the very first successful step. It's still not perfected. It's coffee falls down, so we still have a lot of work to do.

The second robot I want to talk about is called IMPASS. Intelligent Mobility Platform with Actuated Spoke System. So, it's a wheel-leg hybrid robot. So, think of a rimless wheel, or a spoke wheel. But the spokes individually move in and out of the hub. So, it's a wheel-leg hybrid. We are literally re-inventing the wheel here. Let me demonstrate how it works. So, in this video we're using an approach called reactive approach. Just simply using the tactile sensors on the feet, it's trying to walk over a changing terrain, a soft terrain where it pushes down and changes. And just by the tactile information it successfully crosses over these type of terrain.

But, when it encounters a very extreme terrain, in this case, this obstacle is more than three times the height of the robot, Then it switches to a deliberate mode, where it uses a laser range finder, and camera systems, to identify the obstacle and the size, and it plans, carefully plans the motion of the spokes, and coordinates it so that it can show this kind of very very impressive mobility. You probably haven't seen anything like this out there. This is a very high mobility robot that we developed, called IMPASS. Ah! isn't that cool?

When you drive your car, when you steer your car, you use a method called Ackermann steering. The front wheels rotate like this. For most of those small wheeled robots they use a method called differential steering where the left and right wheel turn the opposite direction. For IMPASS, we can do many many different type of motion. For example, in this case, even though left and right wheel is connected with a single axle, rotating at the same angle of velocity. We just simply change the length of the spoke. It affects the diameter, and then it turns to the left, turns to the right. So, these are just some examples of the neat things that we can do with IMPASS.

This robot is called CLIMBeR, Cable-suspended Limbed Intelligent Matching Behavior Robot. So, I've been talking to a lot of NASA JPL scientists, at JPL they are famous for the Mars rovers. And the scientists, geologists always tells me that the real interesting science, the science-rich sites, are always at the cliffs. But the current rovers can not get there. So, inspired by that we wanted to build a robot that can climb a structured cliff environment.

So, this is CLIMBeR. So, what it does, it has three legs. It's probably difficult to see, but it has a winch and a cable at the top. And it tries to figure out the best place to put its foot. And then once it figures that out in real time it calculates the force distribution. How much force it needs to exert to the surface so it doesn't tip and doesn't slip. Once it stabilizes that it lifts a foot, and then with the winch, it can climb up these kind of thing. Also for search and rescue applications as well.

Five years ago I actually worked at NASA JPL during the summer as a faculty fellow. And they already had a six legged robot called LEMUR. So, this is actually based on that. This robot is called MARS, Multi-Appendage Robotic System. So, it's a hexapod robot. We developed our adaptive gate planner. We actually have a very interesting payload on there. The students like to have fun. And here you can see that it's walking over unstructured terrain. It's trying to walk on the cold stone terrain, inside the area, but depending on the moisture content or the grain size of the sand the foot's soil sinkage model changes. So, it tries to adapt its gait to successfully cross over these kind of things. And also, it does some fun stuff, as can imagine. We get so many visitors visiting our lab. So, when the visitors come, MARS walks up to the computer, "Hello, my name is MARS." Welcome to RoMeLa, the Robotics Mechanisms Laboratory at Virginia Tech.

This robot is an amoeba robot. Now, we don't have enough time to go into technical details, I'll just show you some of the experiments. So, this is some of the early feasibility experiments. We store potential energy to the elastic skin to make it move. Or use an active tension cords to make it move forward and backward. It's called ChIMERA. We also have been working with some scientists and engineers from UPenn to come up with a chemically actuated version of this amoeba robot. We do something to something And just like magic, it moves. The blob.

This robot is a very recent project. It's called RAPHaEL. Robotic Air Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments. There are a lot of really neat, very good robotic hands out there in the market. The problem is they're just too expensive, tens of thousands of dollars. So, for prosthesis applications it's probably not too practical, because it's not affordable. We wanted to go tackle this problem in a very different direction. Instead of using electrical motors, electromechanical actuators, we're using compressed air. We developed these novel actuators for joints. It is compliant. You can actually change the force, simply just changing the air pressure. And it can actually crush an empty soda can. It can pick up very delicate objects like a raw egg, or in this case, a lightbulb. The best part, it took only $200 dollars to make the first prototype.

This robot is actually a family of snake robots that we call HyDRAS, Hyper Degrees-of-freedom Robotic Articulated Serpentine. This is a robot that can climb structures. This is a HyDRAS's arm. It's a 12 degrees of freedom robotic arm. But the cool part is the user interface. The cable over there, that's an optical fiber. And this student, probably the first time using it, but she can articulate it many different ways. So, for example in Iraq, you know, the war zone, there is roadside bombs. Currently you send this remotely controlled vehicles that are armed. It takes really a lot of time and it's expensive to train the operator to operate this complex arm. in this case it's very intuitive. This student, probably the first time using it, doing very complex manipulation task, picking up objects and doing manipulation, just like that, very intuitive.

Now, this robot is currently our star robot. We actually have a fan club for the robot DARWIn, Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot With Intelligence. As you know we are very interested in in humanoid robot, human walking, so we decided to build a small humanoid robot. This in in 2004, at that time this was something really really revolutionary. This was more of a feasibility study, what kind of motors should we use? Is it even possible? What kind of controls should we do? So, this does not have any sensors. So, it's an open loop control. For those of you who probably know, if you don't have any sensors and there is any disturbances, you know what happens. (Laughter)

So, based on that success, the following year we did the proper mechanical design starting from kinematics. And thus, DARWIn I was born in 2005. It stands up. It walks, very impressive. However, still, as you can see, it has a cord, umbilical cord. So, we're still using external power source, and external communication.

So, in 2006, now it's really time to have fun. Let's give it intelligence. We give it all the computing power it needs, 1.5 gigahertz pentium chip, two firewire cameras, eight gyros, [unclear] four torque sensors on the foot, lithium power batteries. And now DARWIn II is completely autonomous. It is not remote controlled. There is not tethers. It looks around, searches for the ball, looks around, searches for the ball, and it tries to play a game of soccer, autonomously, artificial intelligence. Let's see how it does. This was our very first trial, and... Video: Goal!

So, there is actually a competition called RoboCup. I don't know how many of you heard about RoboCup. It's an international autonomous robot soccer competition. And the goal of RoboCup, the actual goal is, by the year 2050 we want to have full size, autonomous humanoid robots play soccer against the human World Cup champions and win. It's a true actual goal. It's a very ambitious goal, but we truly believe that we can do it.

So, this is last year in China. We were the very first team in the United States that qualified in the humanoid robot competition. This is this year, this was in Austria. You're going to see the action, three against three, completely autonomous. There you go. Yes! The robots track and they play, team play amongst themselves. It's very impressive. It's really a researched event packaged in a more exciting competition event. What you see over here, this is the beautiful [unclear] cup trophy. So, this is for the best humanoid, and we would like to bring this for the very first time to the United States, next year, so wish us luck. Thank you. (Applause)

DARWIn also has a lot of other talents. Last year it actually conducted the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra for the holiday concert. This is the next generation robot, DARWIn IV, but smarter, faster, stronger. And it's trying to show off it's ability. "I'm macho, I'm strong." I can also do some Jackie Chan-motion martial-art movements. (Laughter) And it walks away. So, this is DARWIn IV, again, you'll be able to see it in the lobby. We truly believe this is going to be the very first running, humanoid robot in the United States. So, stay tuned.

Alright, so I showed you some of our exciting robots at work. So, what is the secret of our success? Where do we come up with these ideas? How do we develop these kind of ideas? We have a fully autonomous vehicle that can drive into an urban environment. We won a half a million dollars in DARPA Urban Challenge. We also have the world's very first vehicle than can be driven by the blind. We call it the blind driver challenge, very exciting, and many many other robotics projects I want to talk about. These are just the awards that we won in 2007 fall, from robotics competition and those kind of things.

So, really we have five secrets. First is where do we get inspiration, where do we get this spark of imagination? This is a true story, my personal story. At night when I go to bed, 3 or 4 am in the morning, I lie down, close my eyes, and I see these lines and circles and different shapes floating around, and they assemble, and they form these kind of mechanisms. And then I think, "Ah this is cool." So, right next to my bed I keep a notebook, a journal, with a special pen that has a light on it, LED light, because I don't want to turn on the light and wake up my wife.

So, I see this, scribble everything down, draw things, and I go to bed. Every day in the morning, the first thing I do before my first cup of coffee, before I brush my teeth, I open my notebook. Many times it's empty, sometimes I have something there sometimes it's junk, but most of the time I can't even read my handwriting. And so, 4 am in the morning, what do you expect, right? So, I need to decipher what I wrote. But sometimes I see this ingenius idea in there, and I have this eureka moment. I directly run to my home office, sit at my computer, I type in the ideas, I sketch things out, and I keep a database of ideas. So, when we have these call for proposals I try to find a match between my potential ideas and the problem, if there is a match we write a research proposal, get the research funding in, and that's how we start our research programs.

But just a spark of imagination is not good enough. How do we develop these kind of ideas? At our lab RoMeLa, the Robotics Mechanisms Laboratory, we have this fantastic brainstorming sessions. So, we gather around, and we discuss about problems and social problems and talk about it. But before we start we set this golden rule. The rule is: Nobody criticizes anybody's ideas. Nobody criticizes any opinion. This is important, because many times, students, they fear or they feel uncomfortable how others might think about their opinions and thoughts.

So, once you do this, it is amazing how the students open up. They have these whacky cool crazy brilliant ideas, the whole room is just electrified with creative energy. And this is how we develop our ideas.

Well, we're running out of time, one more thing I want to talk about is you know, just a spark of idea and development is not good enough. There was a great TED moment, I think it was Sir Ken Robinson, was it? He gave a talk about how education and school kills creativity. Well, actually there is two sides to the story. So, there is only so much one can do with just ingenius ideas and creativity and good engineering intuition. If you want to go beyond a tinkering, if you want to go beyond a hobby of robotics and really tackle the grand challenges of robotics through rigorous research we need more than that. This is where school comes in.

Batman, fighting against bad guys, he has this utility belt, he has his grappling hook, has all different kind of gadgets. For us roboticists, engineers and scientists, these tools, these are the courses and classes you take in class. Math, differential equations. I have linear algebra, science, physics, even nowadays, chemistry and biology, as you've seen. These are all the tools that we need. So, the more tools you have, for Batman more effective at fighting the bad guys, for us, more tools to attack these kind of big problems. So, education is very important.

Also, it's not about that, only about that, you also have to work really really hard. So, I always tell my students work smart, then work hard. This picture in the back this is 3 am in the morning. I guarantee if you come to your lab at 3 am, 4 am we have students working there, not because I tell them to, but because we are having too much fun. Which leads to the last topic. Do not forget to have fun. That's really the secret of our success, We're having too much fun. I truly believe that highest priority in when you're having fun. And that's what we're doing. There you go. Thank you so much. (Applause)

Jonathan Drori: Every pollen grain has a story

Thank you. I have two missions here today. The first is to tell you something about pollen, I hope, and to convince you that it's more than just something that gets up your nose. And, secondly, to convince you that every home really ought to have a scanning electron microscope. (Laughter) Pollen is a flower's way of making more flowers. It carries male sex cells from one flower to another. This gives us genetic diversity, or at least it gives the plants genetic diversity. And it's really rather better not to mate with yourself. That's probably true of humans as well, mostly.

Pollen is produced by the anthers of flowers. Each anther can carry up to 100,000 grains of pollen. So, it's quite prolific stuff. And it isn't just bright flowers that have pollen; it's also trees and grasses. And remember that all our cereal crops are grasses as well.

Here is a scanning electron micrograph of a grain of pollen. The little hole in the middle we'll come to a bit later. But that's for the pollen tube to come out later on, very tiny tube. So, that is 20 micrometers across, that pollen grain there. That's about a 50th of a millimeter. But not all pollen is quite so simple looking.

This is Morina. This is a plant which I've always thought to be rather tedious, named after Mora, who was an enterprising French gardener, who issued the first seed catalog, actually, in 1621. But anyway, take a look at its pollen. This is amazing, I think. That little hole in the middle there is for the pollen tube. And when the pollen finds its special female spot in another Morina flower, just on the right species, what happens? Like I said, pollen carries the male sex cells. If you actually didn't realize that plants have sex, they have rampant, promiscuous and really quite interesting and curious sex, really. (Laughter)

My story is actually not about plant propagation, but about pollen itself. So, what are pollen's properties, I hear you ask. First of all, pollen is tiny. Yes we know that. It's also very biologically active, as anyone with hay fever will understand. Now, pollen from plants which are wind-dispersed, like trees and grasses and so on, tend to cause the most hay fever. And the reason for that is, they've got to chuck out masses and masses of pollen to have any chance of the pollen reaching another plant of the same species.

Here are some examples. They're very smooth if you look at them -- of tree pollen that is meant to be carried by the wind. Again, this time, sycamore, wind-dispersed. So, trees, very boring flowers, not really trying to attract insects. Cool pollen there. This one I particularly like. This is the Monterey Pine, which has little air sacks to make the pollen carry even further. Remember, that thing is just about 30 micrometers across.

Now, much more efficient, if you can get insects to do your bidding. This is a bee's leg, with the pollen globbed onto it from a mallow plant. And this is the outrageous and beautiful flower of the mangrove palm. Very showy, to attract lots of insects to do its bidding. The pollen has little barbs on it, if we look. Now, those little barbs obviously stick to the insects well, but there is something else that we can tell from this photograph, and that is that you might be able to see a fracture line across what would be the equator of this, if it was the Earth. That tells me that it's actually been fossilized, this pollen. And I'm rather proud to say that this was found just near London, and that 55 million years ago London was full of mangroves. Isn't that cool? (Laughter)

Okay, so this is another species evolved to be dispersed by insects. You can tell that from the little barbs on there. All these pictures were taken with a scanning electron microscope actually in the lab at Kew Laboratories. No coincidence that these were taken by Rob Kessler, who is an artist. And I think it's someone with a design and an artistic eye like him that has managed to bring out the best in pollen. (Laughter)

Now, all this diversity, means that actually you can look at a pollen grain and tell what species it came from. And that's actually quite handy if you maybe have a sample and you want to see where it came from. So, different species of plants grow in different places. and some pollen carries further than others. So, if you have a pollen sample then, in principle, you should be able to tell where that sample came from. And this is where it gets interesting for forensics.

Pollen is tiny. It gets on to things, and it sticks to them. So, not only does each type of pollen look different, but each habitat has a different combination of plants, a different pollen signature, if you like, or a different pollen fingerprint. By looking at the proportions and combinations of different kinds of pollen in a sample, you can tell very precisely where it came from. This is some pollen embedded in a cotton shirt, similar to the one that I'm wearing now. Now, much of the pollen will still be there after repeated washings. Where has it been? Four very different habitats might look similar but they've got very different pollen signatures. Actually this one was particularly easy. These were all taken in different countries.

But pollen forensics can be very subtle. It's being used now to track where counterfeit drugs have been made, where banknotes have come from, to look at the provenance of antiques and see that they really did come from the place the seller said they did. And murder suspects have been tracked using their clothing, certainly in the U.K., to within an area that's small enough that you can send in tracker dogs to find the murder victim. So, you can tell from a piece of clothing to within about a kilometer or so, where that piece of clothing has been recently, and then send in dogs. And finally, in a rather gristly way, the Bosnia war crimes. Some of the people brought to trial were brought to trail because of the evidence from pollen, which showed that bodies had been buried, exhumed, and then reburied somewhere else.

I hope I've opened your eyes, if you'll excuse the visual pun, to some of pollen's secrets. This is Horse Chestnut. There is an invisible beauty all around us, each grain with a story to tell, each of us, in fact, with a story to tell, from the pollen fingerprint that's upon us. Thank you to the colleagues at Kew. And thank you to pollenologists everywhere. (Applause)

Engineers develop enhanced vision; GPS tracking tech for your brain

Engineers develop enhanced vision; GPS tracking tech for your brain
By Andrew Nusca | Apr 9, 2010
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Can scientists make our senses smarter?

A team of researchers from the Telecommunications Research Center in Vienna have unveiled cutting-edge technology that combines the Internet, global positioning satellite tracking technology and biofeedback to augment and enhance your natural vision.

Engineers Matthias Baldauf, Peter Fröhlich and Siegfried Hutter took a state-of-the-art eye tracker originally designed for web-use analysis and tweaked it for use in the real world.

The researchers trained one camera on the user’s eye and a second on the scene in front of them. By linking the cameras with a smartphone with a built-in compass and GPS, the researchers could also identify the wearer’s orientation and location.

Then they added sensors that indicate whether the wearer is looking up or down. The entire setup was attached to a bicycle helmet.

If the user closes their eyes for two seconds, a request is made for information about the object(s) in front of them. The request goes to a remotely computer, which scans geo-reference databases on the Internet (such as Google Earth) and forwards the result back to the user’s cell phone.

By using a text-to-speech engine, the data can be heard through an ear piece. The researchers call it a “sixth sense” that happens to use two of the other five to work.

In an example of a real-life application, a person who bumps into an old friend on the street could recall their name and the date of their most recent encounter.

Called “Kibitzer” and targeted for “mobile urban exploration,” the innovation could be useful for industry as well, such as for security training or work in the field.

The proof of concept invention was presented last weekend at the inaugural Augmented Human International Conference in Megeve, France.

But that’s not the only approach to augmenting human ability.

Here’s a video of another wearable “sixth sense” device for gestures developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

Would you stay in a capsule hotel?

Would you stay in a capsule hotel? At 9 Hours in Tokyo, an ultra-efficient vacation
By Andrew Nusca | Apr 2, 2010

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Would you sleep in a sleek, spotless hotel room that’s no bigger than a tent?

At the 9 Hours capsule hotel in Tokyo, travelers get Japanese service and precision without paying for all the wasted space of a traditional hotel room.

“Capsule” hotel, of course, because each person gets just enough space to sleep.

Amenities for the hotel were designed by Fumie Shibata of Design Studio S, and cater to the ultra-dense traveling populations of Asian cities such as Tokyo, the world’s most populous metropolitan area.

At nine stories tall, the hotel hosts 125 capsules, as well as locker rooms, showers and a lounge. Each capsule has a light system designed by tech giant Panasonic that allows you to wake up without requiring any noise.

The hotel the work of parent company Cubic Corp., and was first unveiled in Dec. 2009.

Here’s a look, in a video from Monocle: