Supposedly if the tattoo has changed, either by laser removal, adding more ink or even surgery, the infrared cameras can pick up on the change, and actually illustrate what the original design once looked like. It'd prove invaluable for detectives seeking criminals who may've tried disguising themselves, though reports of cameras detecting wigs and fake mustaches are still sadly unfounded. [TechRadar]

If the device "senses" contact with a virtual boundary, it reacts accordingly. For example, If you're drawing on a virtual surface, the pen pulls in the opposite direction to represent friction.

The idea is to use the device in museum applications and such, but let's face it. This thing was built as a Light Cycle control device. All other uses are secondary. [Tachi Lab via Designboom]

New Scientist reports that Google has spent the past three years developing a quantum algorithm that can automatically recognize and sort objects from still images or video.

The promise of quantum computing rests with the bizarre physics that occurs at the subatomic level. Different research teams have worked on creating quantum processors that store information as qubits (quantum bits), which can represent both the 1 and 0 of binary computer language at the same time. That dual possibility state allows for much more efficient processing and information storage.

To take an example cited by Google, a classical computer might need 500,000 peeks on average to find a ball hidden somewhere within a million drawers. But a quantum computer could find the ball by just looking into 1,000 drawers — a nice little stunt known as Grover's algorithm.

Google has been using a quantum computing device created by D-Wave, a Canadian firm. But a lack of information about how D-Wave's chip works has led to outside skepticism regarding whether it does indeed count as a quantum computer.

"Unfortunately, it is not easy to demonstrate that a multi-qubit system such as the D-Wave chip indeed exhibits the desired quantum behavior and experimental physicists from various institutions are still in the process of characterizing the chip," wrote Hartmut Neven, head of Google's image recognition team, on the Google research blog.

Whatever D-Wave built has apparently worked for Google. Neven described a new algorithm based on the work of MIT that can sort images of cars from among 20,000 photos faster than anything running in a Google data center today — although the team first trained the algorithm by hand-labeling cars in a test photo batch.

Google's image recognition team has previously made its algorithms work for better online image searches and automatic photo organization. Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised that the Google folk have also delved into quantum computing, or at least something much faster than existing classical computing.

[via New Scientist]

Popular Science is your wormhole to the future. Reporting on what's new and what's next in science and technology, we deliver the future now.

Many attribute the technical difficulties involved with communicating under large bodies of water as being one of the major reasons why our knowledge of the depths is so limited. Neptune will change all that using a 497-mile ring of fiber-optic cable sitting off the coast of Canada. The ring has five nodes that will stream data from hundreds of undersea devices directly to the internet. Wally, the robot pictured above, is an example of one of those devices. He just happens to be the world's first internet-operated deep-sea crawler.

"It's revolutionary in that it brings two new components into the ocean environment, which are power and high-bandwidth Internet," says Project Director Chris Barnes, from the project's offices at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. "We're really on the verge of wiring the oceans."

Outside of the scientific community, I'm willing to bet that the military would be interested in this kind of technology as well. Check out Scientific American for a full gallery of images. [Scientific American via PopSci]

The $5 million Mind Machine Project (MMP), a patchwork team of two dozen academics, students and researchers, intends to go back to the discipline's beginnings, rebuilding the field from the ground up. With 20/20 hindsight, a few generations worth of experience, and better, faster technology, this time researchers in AI — an ambiguous field to begin with — plan to get things right.

The study of AI is a half a century old, beginning with lofty expectations at a 1956 conference but quickly fragmenting into different specializations and sub-fields. The MMP wants to roll back the clock, fixing early assumptions that are now foundations of the field and redefining what the objectives of AI research should be.

The fundamental problem, it seems, is that the mind, memory and body function both together and separately to solve any number of problems, and the way they work together (and alone) varies from problem to problem. The human mind alone applies various systems and functions to any given problem. Many AI solutions have attempted to solve all the problems with one system or function rather than multiple systems working together as in the human mind, a "silver bullet" approach that hinders real progress.

Likewise, when it comes to memory, researchers have created models that work more like computers, where everything is either one or zero. Real memory is filled with gray areas, ambiguities and inconsistencies, but functions in spite of not always being congruent. MMP researchers also intend to bring computer science and physiology together, forcing computers to work within the confines of physical space and time just like the body does.

The team even proposes discarding the Turing Test, the long-recognized standard for determining artificial intelligence. Instead, MMP researchers want to test for a machine's comprehension of a children's book — rather than a human's comprehension of another human being — to gain a better understanding or the AI's ability to process and regurgitate thought.

It's a big-picture approach to a big challenge, and while it's perhaps unlikely that the team can re-imagine AI in the ambitious five-year window they've given themselves, it very well could shore up some of the loose underpinnings of a discipline that has boundless potential to shape a better world (or, for you SkyNet junkies, limitless potential to destroy it). If nothing else, it's a responsible admission from the scientific community that they simply don't have it quite right, that we need to rethink what we think we know.

Climatologists, take notes.

[MIT News]

Popular Science is your wormhole to the future. Reporting on what's new and what's next in science and technology, we deliver the future now.

I say safe "again" because I honestly don't know where we stand in the back and forth debate between cellphone manufacturers, Chicken Littles and these-are-bad-for-you studies from legitimate scientists.

Were cellphones safe up until now, and this data just reinforces that fact, or was the last study a doom and gloom bombshell that had us all promising to use our phones a few minutes less each day—that is until we realized we love our phones and started using them normally again a few hours later? I can't remember, and neither can my sperm.

In any event, this latest study falls into the "safe" category. Good. And it's a huge study. Also good. Executed by the Danish Cancer Society ad published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the final report details brain cancer rates in Scandinavian countries over the past 30 years. The result? The researchers did not find "any clear change in the long-term time trends in the incidence of brain tumours." There was a slow increase in glioma diagnosis since the 1970s, they note, but the increase could be explained by factors outside of cellphone use. Time to use some minutes!

Regardless of the results, what I do know is that, tumor or no tumor, you'll never catch me wearing a Bluetooth headset. We don't need any additional data on that front. See you all next month when cellphones are bad for you again. [CrunchGear]

IOLs have been around since the late ‘40s, but recent developments have made them pretty amazing. The newest procedure involves inserting the lens into the eye with the basic focus worked out. Then, once the eye heals, doctors can direct UV light at highly specific areas on the lens to fine tune the focus. The end result is amazing, custom tuned vision, better than 20/20 in many cases.

Not a new idea, sure, but one that resonated with me. I've always thought about getting LASIK, but I'm scared by how once that laser burns away at your cornea, there's no going back. If my vision ever got worse, it'd probably be back to glasses and contacts. I'm sure plenty of you readers have had wonderful experiences with the procedure, but I'm really risk averse.

The amazing thing about most IOLs is that they're reversible. If my vision ever changed, I could just get a new lens implanted. The surgery may not be as easy as that right now, but maybe someday the procedure will be so minimally invasive replacement will be a non-issue.

Unfortunately, this new procedure only corrects for cataracts and farsightedness right now. Here's to hoping nearsightedness is next on the list. [Sky News via SmartPlanet via @editorialiste]

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed an alloy antenna that can be bent a la pretzel before resuming its native shape. The feat is accomplished through the micro liquid metal chambers that form as the building blocks of the antenna, allowing the device to so receive RF like metal, but maintain flexibility, like liquid.

Of course, as with any promising technology, the military is slated to get it first. And after hundreds of thousands of our service men and women develop strange, liquid-metal-related tumors, the public will get to buy an ever so safer 2.0 version. [Gadget Lab]

According to manufacturer NT Research, their RAMeX bots are just humanoids with tele-operated arms and hands. Whatever, dudes. Wasn't the Obamaraman watching over all these potential killers? [NT Research via PInk Tentacle]

Amy Hopper, the play's director, cast one autonomous, military-grade flying robot and five smaller remote control devices as fairies in Shakespeare's comedy. "To see them flying, spinning and bouncing through the air just adds to the magic and mystery of the world Shakespeare created," she explained.

But the drama department isn't the only one interested in the robotic thespians. Researchers in the school's Department of Computer Science and Engineering are studying how the audience reacts to the robots for application in robotic search-and-rescue missions.

"It's now possible for these unmanned aerial vehicles to be used for evacuation or crowd control," explained Robin Murphy, one of the researchers. "But what's missing is an understanding of what makes a person trust or fear the robot." Murphy and others in the department are now poring over the data they collected during the play's run which ended earlier this week. [PopSci and PhysOrg]

Researchers at the Peking and Tsinghua Universities have adapted carbon nanotubes into a sponge-like material which can be squeezed dry, which sounds like extremely exciting news for the infomercial cleaning product industry. One minor detail:

since carbon nanotubes are hydrophobic, there's no modification required to make them not absorb water.

For the record, that includes mysteriously blue infomercial demo water, so there goes that. If not ABSORBING 20 TIMES AS MUCH WATER AS ITS LEADING COMPETITOR, what exactly is this new type of sponge good for? Environmental cleanup, evidently. See, instead of just dropping dispersants into the middle of an oil or chemical spill—which forces the spill to simply absorb into the water—these nanosponges could be used to sop up the spill, after which they could theoretically be wrung dry and reused, like so:

It's an amazing idea, but I get the feeling that carbon nanotube sponges, riskily abbreviated as CNT sponges, aren't exactly cheap. [Materials View via Treehugger]

How do they do it? With a triple junction compound solar cell that uses three photo absorption layers made from elements like indium and gallium. I'll leave it to the physical chemistry geniuses among you to explain exactly what that means in the comments.

You might have heard of efficiency ratings that climb into the 40% range. Sharp even lists one in their press release. To clarify, those are different tests. Apparently there's a distinction made in efficiency ratings between concentrated and unfocused light. The more you know, right?

Don't expect to be covering your house in these soon, they're meant for use in satellites. [Akihabara via Engadget]

The idea is that if someone suffers a critical injury and time is of the essence, a small dose of hydrogen sulfide gas could dramatically slow the patient's heartbeat. Effectively the patient would enter a near-death state.

As scary as that sounds, it is reversible. Time would basically move in slow-motion for the patient, while doctors would be able to work in real-time. Instead of having minutes to save a person's life, the technique could give doctors hours.

This all sounds great, but if at all possible I would like to avoid ever having to breathe hydrogen sulfide. Good ol' nitrous oxide would probably be much more enjoyable. [CNN via BoingBoing]

Supposedly Nunnmps is elevated on stilt-like construction in order to preserve the secrecy of the research it will house and it's hard to believe that anything of evil nature would occur in such a peaceful-looking place. But maybe that's the brilliance of the design. Frankly, I don't even want to know what'll go on in there, I just want to know how to pronounce it. [Dazeen]

Make that 4.707 consumers. I have no intention of even considering an eReader until prices drop under $100. I still enjoy reading actual, paper books and I can buy them for next to nothing at a used bookstore or get them free at the library. Plus having a collection of them throughout my home looks good (and it makes me feel smart). eReaders don't have the same appeal as MP3 players—so they sure as hell shouldn't cost me more to buy. But what about you? How low do eReader prices need to be before you would consider buying one? [Forrester]

Designed by scientists at MIT, this mechanized trout shares a lot in common with the British robo-carp we saw earlier this year. For one, its primary use is to carry sensors and monitor industrial projects that present accessibility problems for divers and larger submersibles. It's also colorful, ornate and exceedingly fishlike, which is fun for us, but probably doesn't do a whole lot for its effectiveness as an industrial chemical sniffer.

Unlike the carp, though, these fish aren't comically huge, nor are they very complicated: Each one has just 10 parts, draws just a few watts of power, measures in at between 5 and 8 inches long, and moves in a startlingly lifelike way. (Video below.) The fish are just a research project for now, but the university has firm plans to use these same techniques to build robotized salamanders and manta rays. You know, for science! [CNET]

In layman's terms, the innovation arrives thanks to a liquid semiconducting layer that potentially bends and flexes more reliably than the "vacuum thermal evaporation" technique employed by Samsung.

In the researchers' case, the liquid, officially known as ethylhexyl carbazole (EHCz), will constantly deliver a fresh supply of semiconductors to the emitting layer. To you and me that means better, more flexible screens that might not degrade as quickly as once thought, if and when they arrive in the (near?) future. Just don't try and drink one. [PhysOrg via OLED Info - Thanks, Ron]

Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer at Netflix, dropped this on the Netflix forum:

The advances spurred by the Netflix Prize have so impressed us that we're planning Netflix Prize 2, a new big money contest with some new twists.

Here's one: three years was a long time to compete in Prize 1, so the next contest will be a shorter time limited race, with grand prizes for the best results at 6 and 18 months. While the first contest has been remarkable, we think Netflix Prize 2 will be more challenging, more fun, and even more useful to the field.

He doesn't give any meaningful clues as to what the second challenge will be about, but CNET, having either talked to Hunt or simply just made a bunch of stuff up, seems to think it could be all manner of objectives, from "creating an algorithm to suggest other users to befriend" to "helping the company better determine which movies to purchase to meet demand." But hey, why not just do this for everything? It'd be like having an endless army of unusually eager, underpaid employees, except without all those pesky "labor laws" and "benefits."

Details of the second contest should come on September 1st, when the company will also announce who's getting the cash from the first contest, after that more-fun-than-it-had-any-right-to-be nailbiter of a finish. [AP via CNET]

Here's the vision: anything from a phone to a wall to a desk can be fitted with a small stethoscope sensor, which is able to register distinctive scratch vibrations that the human ear usually can't pick up, and read them as commands. Quick test: run your fingernail across your desk, and listen to the sound. Now, put your ear on your desk, and do the same. Not only is the sound louder the second time around—it's completely different, and much higher-pitched. This distinction is at the core of scratch input.

So different and unique are the sounds that the research team thinks they could design a system that could recognize gestures and shapes—like the letter "S", for example—allowing for relatively complex interaction with applications or devices. Think declining a call or pausing your music by scratching your thigh, or opening Expose by drawing two fingers across your desk. Below, a glimpse into our scratch-controlled future, which bears no small resemblance to footage from a containment cell in a mental health facility. [Wired]