[From Creative Boom] The Virtual Hospital Posted by Katy Cowan on Wednesday 30th November 2011. Computer-generated tours of virtual hospitals can help patients with intellectual disabilities overcome fears and to understand treatments they are about to undergo, according to a new study. The research was led by Professor Val Hall, professor of midwifery at the Centre for Health Research, University of Brighton. She was one of four experts who studied the virtual hospital as a means of helping patients and providing medical staff with a toolkit to better assess a patient’s capacity to give consent to treatment. The findings, published…

[From ZDnet’s Tech Broiler blog] Retail in 2021: When clicks have buried bricks Summary: Ten years from now, virtually all shopping will take place at home. By Jason Perlow | November 29, 2011 Edgewater, New Jersey. Mindy Konsumer was in waking sleep when she heard the sound of birds tweeting. They progressively got louder, and louder and louder. She pulled the covers over her head. “Ugh. Why did Josef set it to those horrible birds again instead of my wind chimes?” “Bitch, deactivate the alarm. I’m up.” YES MINDY. GOOD MORNING. IT IS MONDAY, 8:30AM, THE 29TH OF NOVEMBER, 2021.…

[From Transportation Nation] Choose Your Own Rail Adventure By Matt Dellinger | 11/28/2011 “I remember the first time I saw a train go by,” a choked-up grown man says in the video trailer for Railworks’s Train Simulator 2012. He goes on, with a weepy nostalgia that rivals the treacliest Chevy commercial. “My dad took me to the crossing one hot summer evening….. I could see the engineer in his cab. Gotta be the best seat in the world.” Though Amtrak ridership reached a record high, and House Transportation Chairman John Mica has recently warmed to the idea of Amtrak-led high…

[From The New York Times’ Media Decoder blog, where the post includes two videos including the ad and additional images] The Blogger Who Found Jenny Not on the Block By Noam Cohen November 24, 2011 A new ad featuring the pop star Jennifer Lopez behind the wheel of a Fiat 500 as she reflects on her Bronx upbringing may have done the impossible – shock a jaded public well accustomed to fakery in TV advertising. The ad uses a body double for the scenes in the Bronx, which have been carefully spliced with material shot with Ms. Lopez in Los…

[From The University of Maine’s Maine Campus] [Image: Rob Stigile, Maine Campus features editor, tries on the Head Mounted Display at the VEMI lab. Photo by Jesse Scardina] Get plugged in UMaine virtual reality lab creates something from nothing By Robert Stigile Thursday, November 10th, 2011 Imagine you are in a Boston hotel room on the 20th floor when all of a sudden an explosion rocks the building, shattering glass and activating alarms of various kinds throughout the neighborhood. This emergency scenario presents a multitude of barriers on the path to safety: blocked exits, hallways engulfed in flames, streets closed…

[From IT World’s CoreIT blog; a related story can be found in New Scientist] Researchers build computer monitor into contact lens It’s only one pixel, but it gets the image and power wirelessly, and didn’t hurt the rabbit By Kevin Fogarty November 22, 2011 There have been a million science-fictioney stories, movies, photos and late-night caffeine-psychosis-induced hallucinations imagining how super-mobile, universally connected and unrealistically convenient computing will be in 10 years, or 20 or 50. None of them quite got past [the] barrier posed by the one component of any computer system that can’t shrink in size to a nanoparticle…

[From DigInfo TV, where the story includes a 2:51 minute video; more information is available at the researchers’ web site] [Image: ‘Invoked Computing’ at home] Invoked Computing – Device-free Ubiquitous Augmented Reality 18 November 2011 A research group at the University of Tokyo are creating a new paradigm in Human Computer Interaction. Dubbed ‘Invoked Computing’ the idea is to turn everyday objects into computer interfaces and communication devices. “For example, if you make a gesture, the computer should be able to recognize this as “I want to use the telephone”. So with an iPhone for example, you have everything in…

[From SmartPlanet] World class robot art includes a telepresent ocean By Christie Nicholson | November 2, 2011 We are often followed by cameras as we go about our daily routines, getting cash, buying milk, throwing underwear into laundromat dryers, yet most of us routinely forget this fact. Want to get a more intense feeling of what it’s like to be tracked? Now through to December 18 you have your opportunity to let robots get closer to you at an art installation, Desire of Codes, at the InterCommunication Center in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. The artist Mikami Seiko set up walls covered…

[From The Wall Street Journal; a related article is available in THE Journal] [Image: Students at Monarch High School in Louisville, Colo., watch lessons in 3-D.] Coming Soon To Schools: Dissecting Frogs in 3-D By Michelle Kung September 7, 2011 When Maurio Medley, an eighth-grade math teacher at Ocoee Middle School in central Florida, wants to teach his students how to find the volume of a cylinder, he doesn’t turn to a textbook or chalkboard. Instead, he turns on a 3-D-enabled projector to rotate a virtual Euclidian solid. Schools are trying to keep up with the multiplex, keen to find…

[From The National Post] [Image: The “street lab” recreates the environment outside the hospital. Tyler Anderson / National Post.] Virtual danger: Toronto lab recreates the world — and may revolutionize research Tom Blackwell Nov 16, 2011 It looks like a typical, comfortably furnished one-bedroom condominium, with a few notable exceptions — the apartment has no ceiling, it is surrounded by a catwalk that lets scientists peer down at the occupants and the entire thing is situated in a downtown hospital. “Home lab,” as researchers at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute have dubbed their open-top apartment, is part of an impressive $36-million complex whose…

[From iTnews] Bell Labs builds telepresence ‘robots’ Nethead could reach market in two years. By Liz Tay on Nov 7, 2011   Videoconferencing ‘robots’ in development at Alcatel-Lucent’s research arm, Bell Labs, could give remote workers a more physical presence in office meetings within two years. Researchers are working on a low-cost camera and screen that swivels on a set of robotic shoulders, and sits at a meeting table with physical attendees. Each so-called ‘Nethead’ represents a remote participant, who appears by video on the screen, and can control the direction the robot faces by naturally turning his or her…

[From CNET’s Crave blog; more information, including images and a 1:31 minute video, is available at DigInfo TV] Giant robot cat mask purrfect for pesky mice by Tim Hornyak November 14, 2011 Japanese writer Natsume Soseki, author of the celebrated novel “I Am a Cat,” would have loved this one. Researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University’s Ideea Lab have developed a giant furry cat head that mimics the movements of its human wearers. The Neko Kaburu headpiece, aka the AnimatronInterface, consists of an inner mesh mask equipped with sensors that track eyelid, mouth, and muscle movements. These are reproduced in the…