[From The Gazette in Montreal; the original story includes a 2:52 minute video] This is your brain. Any questions? Simulator for neurosurgeons. ‘Training brain’ responds to user’s touch, replicating the qualities of the real thing By MONIQUE MUISE, The Gazette September 16, 2010 It looked like a brain, felt like a brain, even pulsated ever so slightly like a brain, but the lifelike organ unveiled to reporters and medical professionals yesterday in Montreal was actually a highly sophisticated imposter. Made up of detailed MRI images transferred into a computer to create a remarkably real 3-D simulation, the “training brain” is…

[From Connecting with Consumers] If You Can Touch It, You’ll Pay More For It By A J Kimmel on Friday, September 10 2010 Okay, here’s a question for you: You’re at a fine restaurant. It’s getting late, and after a terrific appetizer and main plate, you’re feeling kind of filled. There’s maybe a half glass worth of wine left in the bottle and your companion obligingly informs you that it’s your’s for the taking. So now the big decision – to dessert or not to dessert. Oh yeah, I almost forgot the question. Does it matter whether they simply list…

[From The Oxford Press in Oxford, Ohio; more details are available here] [Image: A screenshot of the virtual reality mandala created by AIMS students working on projects to help preserve Tibetan culture] Miami students work on digital archives for Tibet By Caitlin Kluener Contributing Writer September 13, 2010 OXFORD — Students and faculty alike are anxiously awaiting the arrival of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama at Miami University for his public lecture Oct. 21. A group of students headed by Glenn Platt and the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies, however, has other plans for him. They plan on asking His…

[From MIT’s Technology Review Editors blog] Thursday, August 05, 2010 A Strange New Take on Telepresence Could a blob-like robot better convey the presence of a remote user? By Kristina Grifantini Many telepresence robots–like Anybot and Texai–resemble a teleconferencing system on wheels. Roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, who has previously created some unnervingly realistic humanoid machines, has a different idea. His newest and arguably most unsettling robot yet is Telenoid, which resembles a barely-formed robotic child, with a soft body, clay-like face and stubs instead of limbs. Ishiguro explains that Telenoid is meant to represent a human presence, and could be used…

[From Space Daily] [Image: DLR’s Space Justin is to be deployed in space as a service robot] Outer Space Close Enough To Touch by Staff Writers Bonn, Germany (SPX) Sep 08, 2010 Telerobots (remotely controlled robots) can be used not only in outer space but also in terrestrial environments that are hazardous for human beings, such as minefields or areas affected by nuclear radiation. Innovations derived from virtual reality telepresence and teleaction are also being employed in technology for medicine and production environments. The German Aerospace Center leads the world with its research into the field known as ‘multimodal telepresence’.…

[From The Chronicle of Higher Education’s College 2.0 blog] September 6, 2010 The Celebrity Effect of Scholarly Videoconferencing By Jeff Young Singapore—For some researchers in the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology, every Tuesday means another meeting by videoconference. Findings are shared, research procedures are debated, and suggestions for next steps are decided with people who in some cases are known only as an image on a screen. Maroun Khoury, a postdoctoral associate for the effort, which runs joint research projects between the two locations, recently found out that the giant high-resolution screens in the conference rooms at facilities here…

[From The Globe and Mail] Driving a message home with an optical illusion By Rebecca Lindell Vancouver – From Thursday’s Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Sep. 02, 2010 It’s already on the big screen, but now a 3D image is being used on the streets of West Vancouver in an attempt to jolt reckless drivers into reality. Motorists travelling on 22nd Street in West Vancouver will be confronted with a 3D image of a little girl chasing a ball in the street starting next Tuesday. The girl will be an optical illusion, but the scenario is very real, according…

[From memeburn] [Image: A scene from a virtual version of Guantanamo Bay prison] Immersive journalism uses virtual gaming platforms to tell stories By Nonny de la Pena Ernest Wilson, the dean of the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism, put it like this: “What if, after receiving the home and garden section in the morning, the reader could walk right into the section and visit a garden?” This bucolic vision reflects one potential scenario for what we at the Annenberg school are calling “immersive journalism,” a new genre that utilises gaming platforms and virtual environments to…

[From NPR; the original story includes audio, video and additional information] [Image: Edward and Lavinia Fitzgerald in Savannah, Ga., have dinner while telecaregiver Denise Cady of ResCare, a camera monitoring service, looks on.] Wired Homes Keep Tabs On Aging Parents by Jennifer Ludden August 24, 2010 Part three in a four-part series The boomer generation that has grown up with e-mail, cell phones and video cameras is now using all of these things to help care for their aging parents. That’s leading to some odd dinnertime scenes, like the one that plays out every evening in the ranch house of…

[From Singularity Hub] Japan’s Augmented Reality Teleconference Room August 27th, 2010 by Aaron Saenz Get ready for teleconferencing in the round. NTT, the world’s second largest telecomm, has developed a new video room that allows users to share an overlapping virtual environment. Dubbed the t-Room, NTT’s next generation conferencing solution takes real time video of your friends and displays them on tall window-like screens surrounding you. Your image, in turn, is shown in a window in your friend’s t-Room. When you overlap in the same window you can see the other person ‘behind you’ in the screen. It’s a sort…

[From Medill Reports] [Image: “Oceans of Change,” a virtual visulatization of the passage of time.] Life – now in exciting 3D! by Jessica Krinke Aug 27, 2010 Chicago artist Ellen Sandor has been bending the dimensions of visual art since the 1980s, creating scientific visualizations of everything from fractal math to viruses. Driven originally by what she describes as “a healthy appetite for kitsch,” Sandor was fascinated by turn-of-the-century novelties such as lenticular postcards and stereoscopic films. She set out to develop ways to include similar alternative effects in her work. Sandor, a pioneer the fields of digital art and…

[From The Ski Channel Television Network] Thursday, Aug 26, 2010 @ 16:35:48 PM Skullcandy debuts virtual reality dressing room Sure pro skier Tom Wallisch looks stylish in the new Skullcandy Roc Nation headphones, but will you? That’s the age old question that once faced consumers but not anymore. Skullcandy has launched a first in the headphone space and something never before seen in the action sports world, debuting a virtual dressing room for their Roc Nation Aviator headphone. By downloading a simple plugin, and accessing the user’s webcam, the Skullcandy Virtual Room tracks the users eyes and displays live footage…