science

Every year, a large pool of professional video game (console and computer) artists from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences comes together in an art exhibition called Into the Pixel. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) is not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and recognition of the interactive arts with more than 20,000 members.

The best entries submitted to the exhibition are chosen by a group of five jurors, including some senior figures from the artistic side of the video game industry. The contest was created to celebrate the incredible art of video games, and I find the winning entries to be mesmerizing. Some major gaming titles and studios made it into the final group of 20 images, such as BioShock Infinite, Mass Effect 2, Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, and many more. Seventeen of those images are available to view in our gallery below.

The works of art will also be on display at E3 2011 from June 7 to 9 in the Concourse Foyer at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Personally, I think a few of these drawings should belong in an art museum. Move over Mona Lisa! … Read more

By the end of this year, people will be able to buy an LED light bulb controllable from an Android device, part of Google's move into home automation.

At the Google I/O conference today, Google demonstrated how Android devices, including tablets and smartphones, can act as a hub for controlling multiple devices in the home, including lighting, appliances, thermostats, and music.

Google concocted a lighting demo system with Lighting Sciences Group, which developed an LED bulb that can talk to Android. It uses a new mesh network wireless protocol rather than Wi-Fi, ZigBee, or the other proprietary home … Read more

I remember programming turtle graphics in Logo when I was in high school. These days, students can learn basic computer science from a robot developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon.

The Finch was co-developed by Tom Lauwers at CMU's Create lab. It's designed to be an interactive, programmable teaching aid to get students into computer science and robotics.

Programmable with Java and Python, the bird-like bot runs on a 15-foot USB cable and comes with temperature and light sensors, a bump sensor, and a three-axis accelerometer that can be used as a mouse.

The machine has a four-color LED beak, speakers, and a pen mount in the tail for drawing capability. It can be programmed to act as an alarm clock or used in a variety of assignments available on its Web site. It's made of sturdy plastic, can survive falls from a table, and is portable in a backpack.

Lauwers launched a start-up called BirdBrain Technologies to produce The Finch and now sells it for $99 apiece. He says it has been tested in high school, university, and after-school programs.

… Read more

For a robot, Don-8r looks a little pathetic. That's fine because people can't stop opening their wallets to help this automated panhandler.

Tim Pryde is a design student at the University of Dundee in Scotland. He created the 2-foot bot to collect cash for charity, and it's been out taking donations for the Dundee Science Centre, which is branded on the machine.

Constructed of vacuum-formed plastic and simple electronics (see the build details here), Don-8r rolls along the ground waving its flag until it flashes a red light and asks passersby for help; coins can be inserted … Read more

Lighting manufacturer Lighting Science Group announced yesterday it will begin selling low-cost LED lightbulbs on Amazon.com beginning today.

The company's A19 omnidirectional 8.5-watt bulb (40-watt equivalent) will sell for $21.98, and is only the first in a line of low-budget LED bulbs planned for sale at the online superstore, according to Lighting Science Group.

The company says its bulbs will last up to 23 years, and are 76 percent more efficient than a standard incandescent bulb.

"Lighting accounts for more than 18 percent of the average U.S. household's energy bill--that's because incandescent … Read more

I am not sure what sorts of people go to libraries these days.

I had always assumed that Google and Amazon had corralled the library system between them, leaving few with the need to go and sit next to the coughing, the chatting, and the lonely.

But it seems that people do still go to libraries and still object to some of the books they see there. It so happens that the American Libraries Association, conscious of its continuing role in monitoring the national mood and culture, issues a list of those books that have been challenged by individuals or … Read more

Smartphones have been around for at least several years now, but they still have certain limitations. Despite having a plethora of wireless technologies built-in--Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G, etc.--there's no simple way to transfer "clippings" of data from one device to another. But a new research project at MIT called Sparsh is aiming to fix that oversight.

Sparsh (the Hindi word for "touch") isn't an app, at least not in the way we generally use the word. It's a tool that's supposed to be part of a mobile operating system, like "undo" or "select all," running within apps at all times. It creates a virtual cloud-based clipboard where any data, like a phone number or photograph, can temporarily live until it's "pasted" to another device.

For it to work, at least two devices need to be Sparsh-enabled. A user wanting to share data becomes, in concept, an avatar for a copy-and-paste-like function. The person touches data on a device, such as a photo or text, and Sparsh sends it to the cloud. The same person then touches another device, and presto! The relevant information is pasted in as if it had been copied from the same machine.

Sparsh isn't the only tool for transferring small amounts of device-to-device data on the scene. Indeed, a popular iPhone app called Bump allows people to trade photos, apps, contact info, and even music from one phone to another simply by bumping the devices together.

Bump is very cool, but it requires both the sender and recipient to be running the app. In addition, it's not open with what it can send or where it can send it--it only works from phone to phone, and while there are many options for things it can send, there are more things it simply can't. Sparsh aims to live in the devices we use at the operating-system level, meaning it would seem intuitive to use and be available within any app for almost any type of data. … Read more

Drawing from nature, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Daniel Nocera thinks he can draw cheap and clean energy from water.

At the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Nocera yesterday presented results from research on making an "artificial leaf" to split water to get hydrogen fuel and oxygen. The goal is to use the solar cell to make hydrogen, which would be stored and then used in a fuel cell to make electricity.

"The artificial leaf shows particular promise as an inexpensive source of electricity for homes of the poor in developing countries. Our goal is … Read more

A Turing machine is a very simple computer that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape to perform feats of logic. There isn't really much of a purpose to them these days; they exist as a novelty based on early computational theory by the great mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. They're made as a type of thought experiment to show the advantages and limits of mechanical computing. To really understand what a Turing machine demonstrates, you probably have to be the type who can speak binary.

Many have been made over the years, but one caught our eye on YouTube this week (video below). We didn't notice it because it's elegant or attractive--indeed, it's rather harsh-looking--but because it's entirely mechanical. It uses magnets and springs, but no electronics or even electricity. It was made by British hobbyist Jim MacArthur as a demonstration for a Maker Faire in the U.K.

Most Turing devices use a type of tape on which symbols are punched, but this one moves along a metal grid. Ball bearings are dropped into grid squares based on the data input via a series of small levers. The positions of the balls on the grid act as symbols. When one knows what they're doing, the pattern of ball bearings on the grid can be translated into a rough program.

For a logic unit, it uses a left-or-right switch mechanism to create binary input. It has up to 5 input symbols that allow for 10 "states." If that doesn't make sense to you, that's OK, it's not really supposed to. It's a technical way of saying that while this DIY machine won't catch up to a pocket calculator anytime soon, it's still an impressive feat of engineering for not having any batteries. … Read more