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High-speed cam catches cool 3D shots of snowflakes

Now that winter has passed, those of us who live in cold climes can once again appreciate the beauty of snowflakes without feeling the urge to curse them for making us dig out the shovel. And if ever snowflakes looked lovely, it's in these images shot by a high-speed camera system developed specifically to photograph them in 3D as they fell.

"Until our device, there was no good instrument for automatically photographing the shapes and sizes of snowflakes in free fall," says Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah and one of the developers of the cam known as MASC, or Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera. "We are photographing these snowflakes completely untouched by any device, as they exist naturally in the air."

MASC -- under development for three years -- takes 9- to 37-micron-resolution stereographic photographs of snowflakes from three angles while simultaneously measuring the speed of their fall, a highly influential factor in the location and lifetime of a storm. … Read more

Skin-stretching game controller pitched for next Xbox

An experimental game controller that pulls and stretches the skin of your thumbs has been pitched to Microsoft and other console makers, according to the BBC.

We've spent years prodding and poking at game controllers, but now it looks like they're finally fighting back. The painful-sounding peripheral has been crafted by engineers from the University of Utah, and features two red "tactors" that sit under your thumbs, and feel like the prickly cursor controllers you find in the middle of some laptops.

Those contact buds will jerk and move around underneath your thumbs, stretching your skin to mimic onscreen action.

Read more of "Skin-stretching game controller pitched for next Xbox" at Crave UK. … Read more

Computer science moves toward the Mac

In a sign that Apple's Mac OS X operating system has gone truly mainstream, computer science programs like that at the University of Utah have formally announced classes like "Mac OS X Deployment v10.5" focused on administering Mac OS X.

While a quick scan of computer science courses at Harvard and Stanford doesn't reveal any Mac OS X-centric courses, and a quick Google search doesn't reveal much more, it's possible that the University of Utah, which has several OS X classes, is the vanguard for OS X's classroom uptake and a clear signal of enterprise adoption.… Read more