Swedish Medical Center Seattle: On Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (PST), Drs. Ron Young and Ryder Gwinn, surgeons from the Swedish Neuroscience Institute, will host a livestream on this page to discuss the affects of Essential Tremor (ET), the Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) surgical procedure used to treat ET and the other innovative treatment options for ET available at Swedish and throughout the country.
ET is a progressive neurological condition that causes a rhythmic trembling of the hands, head, voice, legs or trunk. It is often confused with Parkinson’s disease and is often un-diagnosed.
The livestream will feature a video stream of a recorded DBS surgical procedure performed at Swedish, accompanied by a live web chat led by Drs. Young and Gwinn. The DBS device is like a pacemaker for the brain. During the surgery, a tiny wire is implanted in the area of the brain that controls abnormal movement. This wire modifies the brain’s electrical signals to help control tremors and other abnormal movements. Continue HERE
Patients Risk Brain Surgery to Fix Shaky Hands by Ingrid Wickelgren at Streams of Consciousness.
MIRA KAMDAR: The French have found a way to cope with the unrelenting bad economic news in Europe: escape to India. Not the real India but a fantasy land far removed from the realities of sinking currencies and credit-rating downgrades.
Paris metro stations are papered with huge posters for “Rani,” this year’s Christmas-season television special about the improbable adventures of a dispossessed marquise in 18th-century France and India. While, for a much more elite public, the house of Chanel unveiled on Dec. 6 to 200 handpicked guests, including Frieda Pinto and Sonam Kapoor, its Paris-Bombay collection at a sumptuous durbar in the Grand Palais.
The title “Rani” is helpfully translated for the French public as “the Hindi word for the raja’s wife.” The raja, who makes the French renegade Jolanne de Valcourt his wife, is played by Hrithik Roshan, the only name Indian actor in the series. The lead role is played by French actress Mylène Jampanoi who was married in real-life to Indian model and actor Milind Sonam. Continue HERE
Yu Muroga is a Japanese driver. It was his tour took place when the earthquake March 11, 2011. Like most people of his area, he did not feel threatened by the tsumani, as it was far enough from the coast. So he continued to drive and do its job. The HD camera mounted on the dashboard has not only captured the shock but also the moments that followed, where many drivers were stranded by the waters of the tsunami.
Rachel Kaufman: In a few years, you could be listening to an album of new songs featuring a duet between Elvis and Kurt Cobain. No, the two never cut a record together, but engineers and computer programmers are getting closer to being able to “resurrect” any singer’s voice for use in synthesized songs.
Yamaha’s been developing voice synthesizers for years — think Mac’s text-to-speech meets AutoTune — under the brand name Vocaloid. But to build a Vocaloid “voice library,” a singer typically had to sing every possible syllable, one at a time, in the target language. A computer later would synthesize the fragments into songs.
But now the Vocaloid team has announced that it has succeeded in building a library based on the voice of someone who couldn’t participate in the painstaking process: Hitoshi Ueki, a popular Japanese vocalist who died in 2007. The initial results were revealed on a Japanese video-streaming site earlier this year. Continue HERE
The Playing with Pigs project is researching the complex relationship we have with domesticated pigs by designing a game. Designing new forms of human-pig interaction can create the opportunity for consumers and pigs to forge new relations as well as to experience the cognitive capabilities of each other. The game is called Pig Chase.
The Playing with Pigs project is a collaboration between the Utrecht School of the Arts (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht), Wageningen University and Wageningen UR Livestock Research. Playing with Pigs is the outcome of a research project ‘ethical room for manoeuvre in livestock farming’, financed by the NWO program ‘ethics, research and public policy’. Pig Chase is being realized with support from Gamefonds. We are very grateful for the cooperation of Varkensbedrijf van der Vegt. We are also thankful for the help from The Village Coffee & Music, Niek Eilander, Michiel Korthals and Marc Bracke.
Designers Kars Alfrink, Irene van Peer and Hein Lagerweij:
“During the design process we discovered something that, to our knowledge at the time, animal scientists had not noticed until now: pigs like to play with light. For example, pigs are fascinated by the movement of reflected points of light, and are attracted to new light spots on a surface.
We are very fascinated by the idea of further developing the forms of play this offers, to experiment more with the idea of a symmetrical playspace, and forms of play that are actually cognitively challenging to pigs. Through a game we hope to establish a new relationship between pigs and humans, one that takes elements from the farm, the circus and domestic pets and mixes them in an interesting way.” Text provided by Playing with Pigs
The traditional “Krampus and Perchten” procession is a much loved traditional event which attracts visitors from all over. More than 400 “Perchten”, evil demons and St Nicholasses assemble in the Herrengasse for this annual event.
Black hole extravaganza in 1080p. From ESOcast. Not long ago, watching something being ripped apart as it falls towards a giant black hole would be science fiction. This is now reality.
Observers under dark skies, far from the bright city lights, can marvel at the splendor of the Milky Way, arching in an imposing band across the sky. Zooming in towards the center of our galaxy, about 25000 light years away, you can see that it is composed of myriads of stars.
This is a pretty impressive sight, but much is hidden from view by interstellar dust, and astronomers need to look using a different wavelength, the infrared, that can penetrate the dust clouds. With large telescopes, astronomers can then see in detail the swarm of stars circling the supermassive black hole, in the same way that the Earth orbits the Sun.
The Galactic Center harbors the closest supermassive black hole known, and the one that is also the largest in terms of its angular diameter on the sky, making it the best choice for a detailed study of black holes.
This black hole’s mass is a hefty four million times that of the Sun, earning it the title of supermassive black hole. Although it is huge, this black hole is currently supplied with little material and is not shining brightly. But this is about to change.
Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, a team of astronomers has discovered a new object that is heading almost straight towards the black hole at vertiginous speed. The object is not a star, but a cloud of gas.
“The cloud consists mainly of hydrogen gas, gas which we see anyhow in the galactic center all over the place. This particular cloud weighs more or less three times the mass of Earth. So it’s a rather small and tiny blob only, but it glows very brightly in the light of the stars which are surrounding it .”
As the astronomers watch, the cloud has been picking up pace as it gets closer to the giant black hole. Its speed has doubled in the last seven years and it is now speeding towards the black hole at more than 8 million kilometers per hour.
The astronomers have already seen the cloud’s outer layers becoming more and more disrupted over the last few years as it approaches the black hole. But the exciting part is yet to come.
“The Black hole, imagine it sitting here, has a tremendous gravitational force and the cloud, as it comes in, it will be elongated and stretched, it will become essentially like spaghetti. It will be elongated and falling into the black hole.”
“The next few years will be really fantastic and exciting because we are probing the territory. Here this cloud comes and gets disrupted, but now it will begin to interact with the hot gas right around the black hole. We have never seen this before.”
No one knows what will happen next. The cloud will probably heat up and may start to emit powerful X- rays as it gets disrupted. In the end the material will eventually disappear by falling into the black hole. For the scientists, this event is truly a unique chance to probe the hot gas around the black hole.
“But this process of how material gets into the black hole really is not clear to us we don’t understand it in any detail. And here in the galactic center we have an opportunity so to speak to have a probe of this process. How material really gets added to the black hole, and what the physical processes are, how the interactions happen in this very central region. That’s a fantastic opportunity.”
This animation compares the X-ray ‘heartbeats’ of GRS 1915 and IGR J17091, two black holes that ingest gas from companion stars. GRS 1915 has nearly five times the mass of IGR J17091, which at three solar masses may be the smallest black hole known. A fly-through relates the heartbeats to hypothesized changes in the black hole’s jet and disk.
Data from NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite has identified a candidate for the smallest-known black hole. The evidence comes from a specific type of X-ray pattern — nicknamed a “heartbeat” because of its resemblance to an electrocardiogram — that until now has been recorded in only one other black hole system.
Named IGR J17091-3624 after the astronomical coordinates of its sky position, the binary system pairs a normal star with a black hole that may weigh less than three times the sun’s mass, near the theoretical boundary where black-hole status is first becomes possible. Flare-ups occur when gas from the normal star streams toward the black hole and forms a disk around it. Friction within the disk heats the gas to millions of degrees, which is hot enough to radiate X-rays.
Many black hole binaries show distinct and highly structured patterns of X-ray changes, which scientists distinguish by Greek-letter names. But to date only IGR J17091 and one other system, named GRS 1915+105, exhibit so-called rho-class oscillations that astronomers describe as a ‘heartbeat’ reflecting the accretion and ejection of matter.
It’s thought that strong magnetic fields near the black hole’s event horizon eject some of the gas into dual, oppositely directed jets that blast outward at nearly the speed of light. The peak of its heartbeat emission corresponds to the emergence of the jet. Changes in the X-ray spectrum observed by RXTE during each beat in GRS 1915 reveal that the innermost region of the disk emits enough radiation to push back the gas, creating a strong outward wind that staunches the inward flow, briefly starving the black hole and shutting down the jet. This corresponds to the faintest emission. Eventually the inner disk gets so bright and so hot that it essentially disintegrates and plunges toward the black hole, re-establishing the jet and beginning the cycle anew.
In GRS 1915+105, which at 14 solar masses is by for the more massive of the two, this cycle occurs in as little as 40 seconds. It occurs eight times faster in IGR J17091.
WiFi at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design
YOUrban: “It has been very exiting to see how our film ‘Immaterials: Light Painting WiFi’ has being linked to and discussed across a broad range of audiences, disciplines and fields of research, including urbanism, technology, architecture, advertising and art.
A common question, particularly from interaction design and technology communities is how we designed and built the WiFi measuring rod. So we thought it would be a good idea to go into some details about the design and development of the probe and the techniques, and also point towards how design research can contribute to understanding immaterial phenomena of networks and the city.”
Making WiFi measuring rod
“In 2009 we started investigating the concept of ‘immaterials’ in a collaboration between the AHO based research-project Touch and the design studio BERG from London. ‘Immaterials: Light painting WiFi’ is is a continuation of our explorations of intangible phenomena that have both have implications for design and effect how products and cities are experienced. Jack Schulze of BERG explains that:
‘The products we design now are made with new stuffs. Service layers, video, animation, subscription models, customisation, interface, software, behaviours, places, radio, data, APIs and connectivity are amongst the immaterials for modern products.’
Jack Schulze (BERG)
Jack’s colleague Matt Jones have summarised and discussed the concept of ‘immaterials’ further, and uses sociality, data, radio and time as key examples. The networked city is filled with several forms of intangible phenomena that can be described as ‘immaterials’, such as data from embedded sensors, GPS signals and RFID travel cards. Radio and wireless communication are a fundamental part of the construction of networked cities. In my ongoing PhD research, entitled ‘Pockets and cities’, I specifically want to get at the material, spatial and contextual qualities of these immaterials of the networked city and how they relate to daily city life.” Continue HERE
This video is about exploring the spatial qualities of RFID, visualised through an RFID probe, long exposure photography and animation.
It features Timo Arnall of the Touch project and Jack Schulze of BERG.
Kokeshi Dolls originated in North-East Japan as wooden toys for children. They began being produced towards the end of the Edo period (1603~1868) by woodwork artisans, called Kiji-shi, who normally made bowls, trays and other tableware by using a lathe. They began to make small dolls in the winter to sell to visitors who came to bathe in the many hot springs near their villages, which was believed to be a cure for the demands of a strenuous agricultural lifestyle.
The popularity of Kokeshi dolls began to spread to other areas, so woodworkers from other hot spring resorts imitated those skills and made their own Kokeshi dolls to sell as souvenirs. They then gradually established their own Kokeshi style.
Wiki: Parahawking is an activity that combines paragliding with falconry. Birds of prey are trained to fly with paragliders, guiding them to thermals for in-flight rewards and performing aerobatic manoeuvres.
Parahawking was developed by British falconer Scott Mason in 2001. Mason began a round-the-world trip in Pokhara, Nepal, where many birds of prey – such as the griffon vulture, steppe eagle and black kite – can be found. While taking a tandem paragliding flight with British paraglider Adam Hill, he had the opportunity to see raptors in flight, and realized that he could combine the sports of paragliding and falconry.
At the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar this week, Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang put on his largest “explosion event” of the last three years, utilizing microchip-controlled explosives to form incredible designs and patterns. The video we’ve embedded of the event is an impressive testament to how a volatile black powder explosion can be controlled and shaped by computer.
Each set of explosions was calculated to paint a different picture. One series of explosions created black smoke clouds that looked like “drops of ink splattered across the sky.”
In another, 8,300 shells embedded with computer microchips exploded in a pyramid shape over the desert.
“Fuehlometer” (Feel-o-meter) or “Public Face” is an interactive art installation that shows the mood of a city by displaying it in the form of a monumental Smiley. The system allows to read emotions out of random people’s faces. The faces are analyzed by sophisticated software (contributed by the Fraunhofer Institut). The obtained mood data are then stored on a server and processed by the smiley to visualize the emotions in real-time. The system has been developed as joint project by the artists Julius von Bismarck, Benjamin Maus, and Richard Wilhelmer. They already realized a much respected media installation at the Gasometer in Berlin-Schöneberg in 2008. For their participation in the summer group show Provinz on Lindau-Island, they installed their interactive installation in and at Lindau-Island’s lighthouse. The emotions are captured by a digital camera that is focused on the faces of the people standing in a specific area on the lakeside. A computer analyzes the photos and sends the results (happy, sad or indifferent) to the giant smiley on top of the lighthouse. Text: Felix Rundel
Waterwheel investigates and celebrates this constant yet volatile global resource, fundamental element, environmental issue, political dilemma, universal theme and symbol of life. It encourages you to explore and discover, share and collaborate, contribute and participate. Waterwheel calls on everyone—performers and artists, scientists and environmentalists, students and academics, you and me, anyone and anywhere—to test the water, dive in, make a splash and start a wave. It provides a platform and forum for experience and exchange, expression and experimentation. Waterwheel draws together different people, practices, places, media and modes of expression. There are no borders or boundaries. Waterwheel flows along its natural course.
You can engage with Waterwheel in many different ways.
This video was prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books and produced by Khaki Films (http://www.thekhakigroup.com/). Originally meant solely for a DK sales conference, the video was such a hit internally that it is now being shared externally. We hope you enjoy it (and make sure you watch it up to at least the halfway point, there’s a surprise!).
The clip was inspired by a video created by an Argentinean agency, Savaglio/TBWA entitled, “Truth”: http://bit.ly/truthvideo
Radu Iorga: Samsung has big plans for the future and while it may not follow Apple’s advice on not using a rectangular shape on tablets, the company surely has some tricks up its sleeve. One of them is using flexible panel technology for the next generation tablets and their displays. The result could look like the foldable, flexible slate below. Via Tablet News
Goovinn: What´s it like flying down a mountain at 250 km/h? Espen Fadnes – The World’s Fastest Flying Human Being 2010 – teamed up with Project Managers Goovinn to communicate the experience of flying. ”SENSE OF FLYING” came out of the collaboration.
Turn up the volume, experience it, share it: SENSE OF FLYING
Credits:
Film by: Stavfel Produktion, Goovinn, Espen Fadnes
Idea: Espen Fadnes/Paul Göransson/Lars Idmyr
Wingsuiting: Espen Fadnes
Cameras: Carl Johan Engberg, Paul Göransson, Espen Fadnes, Lars Idmyr, Kjersti Eide
Car driver + helping hand: Even Flo
Special thanks to: The village Flo for hospitality and help.
WJ-SPOTS is a project that was conceived of and designed by media curator Anne Roquigny, in which artists, critics, thinkers, inventors, researchers, curators, organizers and producers of cultural events are invited to look back on 15 years of Internet history.
The interviews are conducted inside the WJ-S multi-screen environment www.wj-s.org, transformed for the occasion into a space for thought and investigation. Online browsing of a selection of emblematic websites, chosen by the speakers, take place simultaneously on 3 big screens. Real time surfing is like a magnified and augmented thought presentation, offering multiple of points of view while the participants answer a series of 5 questions.
QUESTIONS
/ Who are you ? can you tell us in a few words what you have been doing these last years ?
// You have been involved in network activities or netbased projects for many years. From an artistic perspective, what has happened in this field ? what have you witnessed or found interesting about the internet ? What is your experience and feeling about the birth and the adolescence of the internet ?
/// From a social, political, artistic or philosophical point of view. what is the impact of this concept of network ? How has the Internet and the idea of network changed your attitude and practice, your relation to space and time and the way we behave, work, think, share, exchange, collaborate, create… ?
//// In the future do you think internet will still be an interesting territory to explore ? Do you think it can be a fertile space for creation ? Do you think it will produce some kind of interesting artistic mutating forms where the physical world and the virtual world can hybride, mutate, merge, fuse or collide ?
///// What are for you the most important, emblematic, essential, exemplary websites of the last 15 years ? They will be presented and browsed through live by the WJ-SPOTS team on big screens while you will be answering the previous questions.
WJ-Spots Brussels – part 1
The starting view of ASE after loading all the papers matching the query “Dependency Parsing” (DP) from the ACL Anthology Network dataset. Credit: Cody Dunne, Robert Gove, Ben Shneiderman, Bonnie Dorr and Judith Klavans. University of Maryland.
Ellen Ferrante and Lisa-Joy Zgorski: The National Science Foundation- (NSF) funded Action Science Explorer (ASE) allows users to simultaneously search through thousands of academic papers, using a visualization method that determines how papers are connected, for instance, by topic, date, authors, etc. The goal is to use these connections to identify emerging scientific trends and advances.
“We are creating an early warning system for scientific breakthroughs,” said Ben Shneiderman, a professor at the University of Maryland (UM) and founding director of the UM Human-Computer Interaction Lab.
“Such a system would dramatically improve the capability of academic researchers, government program managers and industry analysts to understand emerging scientific topics so as to recognize breakthroughs, controversies and centers of activity,” said Shneiderman. “This would enable appropriate allocation of funds, encourage new collaborations among groups that unknowingly were working on similar topics and accelerate research progress.”
ASE is not itself a product, but rather “a scientific research study that shows some potent new features that could be added to bibliographic systems to support more powerful functions,” said Shneiderman.
This project is unique and provides “powerful network visualization, integrated with search techniques, statistical methods and text analytics to provide automatic summarization of closely related document clusters,” he said. Continue HERE
Michel Surya: Olivier de Sagazan fait de lui même une humanimalité en petit pitoyable, pathétique, magnifique. Se prenant non pas pour modèle, plus de modèle possible, jamais mais pour figure lui même de cette disparition, de ce disparaissement de toute figure. En quoi il conspire au secours et à la consolation de toutes les figures possibles, faibles, folles, infirmes, fragiles, apparaissant, disparaissant, par lesquelles passent toutes ceux à qui l’humanité est contestée, niée”
TED: Imagine having a surgery with no knives involved. At TEDMED, surgeon Yoav Medan shares a technique that uses MRI to find trouble spots and focused ultrasound to treat such issues as brain lesions, uterine fibroids and several kinds of cancerous growths.
WiFi at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Making WiFi measuring rod
The starting view of ASE after loading all the papers matching the query “Dependency Parsing” (DP) from the ACL Anthology Network dataset. Credit: Cody Dunne, Robert Gove, Ben Shneiderman, Bonnie Dorr and Judith Klavans. University of Maryland.
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