[From Discover magazine’s

The Alice Illusion – scientists convince people that they’re dolls or giants

May 26th, 2011 by Ed Yong

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the titular heroine quaffs a potion that shrinks her down to the size of a doll, and eats a cake that makes her grow to gigantic proportions. Such magic doesn’t exist outside of Lewis Carroll’s imagination, but there are certainly ways of making people think that they have changed in size.

There’s nowhere in the world that’s better at creating such illusions than the lab of Henrik Ehrsson in Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. In a typical experiment, a volunteer is being stroked while wearing a virtual reality headset. She’s lyng down and looking at her feet, but she doesn’t see them. Instead, the headset shows her the legs of a mannequin lying next to her.

As she watches, Bjorn van der Hoort, one of Ehrsson’s former interns, uses two rods to stroke her leg, and the leg of the mannequin, at the same time. This simple trick creates an overwhelming feeling that the mannequin’s legs are her own.  If the legs belong to a Barbie, she feels like she’s the size of a doll. If the legs are huge, she feels like a 13-foot giant.

Van der Hoort performed this illusion on almost 200 people. Questionnaires revealed that they did indeed think of the mannequins as their own body parts. Familiar objects didn’t break the spell. When van der Hoort threatened the mannequins’ legs with a knife, the volunteers’ skin broke into a worried sweat, as if their real bodies were in danger. If he touched the doll’s legs with a pencil or his finger, the recruits thought they were being prodded by giant objects. Rather than feeling like dolls in a normal world, they felt like normal people in a giant world.

Ehrsson’s group have spent the last several years developing several similar illusions, all using headsets and synchronous stroking. They have convinced people that they’re having out-of-body experiences, fooled people into thinking that they have swapped bodies with a person of the opposite gender or a mannequin, and convinced people that they have three arms. The illusions are amusing, but this is serious work – each one reveals something new about our sense of self, and how we know that we own our bodies. Fooling people into thinking that they’re dolls or giants was just the start. The team used the illusion to show that our size affects the way we see other objects. Read more on The Alice Illusion – scientists convince people that they’re dolls or giants…

[From Washington state’s

WALLY’S WORLD: It’s amazing how fresh the real world sounds

By Wally Duchateau
Enumclaw Courier Herald Columnist
May 26 2011

Today I’d like to address the younger set, if any of them happen to read these columns.  Say, those men and women younger than 25 years of age.

Among the springtime deluge of rain storms, thunder storms and flash floods, you might have noticed — for the briefest instant — a trace of sunlight. During those dazzling moments, you may also have sensed a desire to get out of the house, your place of work, your car or whatever, and actually feel the sun’s warmth. Do it! And in so doing, leave all your technological goodies behind, including your cell phone. Should an emergency arise, this might prove quite inconvenient and even devastating, but gamble on this. Shed all your latest, high-tech devices and step outside without any intervening or secondary contraptions.

Walking about the world in such a naked state may come as quite a jolt, mentally and physically, but rest assured, you have nothing to fear. All your usual bodily functions (respiration, circulation, digestion, etc.) will continue to work.

One of the first things you’ll notice is how real everything is. Read more on The effects of technology-mediated experience: Rediscovering the ‘real’ world…

[From

[Image: Dartmoor National Park, UK]

VR Greenery Aid to Convalescence

May 25, 2011

University scientists are seeking to take virtual reality to a new level – with a view to helping sick people who cannot get access to the outside world. The researchers in Birmingham plan their new worlds to be “sensorily rich”.

They are using large screen TVs, video projectors and head mounted displays to create virtual versions of soothing rural and coastal scenes. The initial development is re-creating a stretch of the coastline of south Devon and an area within Dartmoor National Park.

The developers say there is research evidence that exposure to greenery, such as trees, can improve patient recovery and reduce pain levels. Tests on volunteers are due to start later this summer. Read more on Virtual outdoors to aid patient recovery, reduce pain levels…

[From New Scientist’s

Telepresence robots go airborne

12 May 2011
Jim Giles, contributor, Vancouver, Canada

Picture the scene: your boss phones to say he is working from home. A calm descends over the office. Workers lean back in their chairs. Feet go up on desks – this shift is going to be pretty chilled.

Suddenly, a super-sized video feed of your boss, projected onto to the front of a helium-filled balloon equipped with a loudspeaker, floats silently into the room and starts issuing orders from above your head. Not such a good day.

This blimp-based boss, which brings to mind the all-seeing Big Brother of George Orwell’s 1984, is the creation of Tobita Hiroaki and colleagues at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo. Its eerie quality hasn’t escaped Hiroaki – he says that his colleagues described the experience of talking to a metre-wide floating image of a co-worker as “very strange”.

The project does have some non-sinister applications. It’s part of a wider movement aimed at making “telepresence” possible. Read more on Telepresence robots go airborne…

[A press release from here]

Sharp and NHK Successfully Develop 85-Inch Direct-View LCD
Compatible with Super Hi-Vision, a World First*¹

NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) (Shibuya Ward, Tokyo; President: Masayuki Matsumoto) and Sharp Corporation (Abeno Ward, Osaka; President: Mikio Katayama) have jointly developed an 85-inch LCD compatible with Super Hi-Vision, a next-generation television broadcast format. This is a world first for a direct-view display. Read more on Sharp and NHK develop “VR-like” 85-inch, direct-view LCD for Super Hi-Vision broadcast format…