Tomorrow's High-Tech Clothing

By Charles Q. Choi, Special to LiveScience

Fashion always keeps at least one eye on the future. Now scientists are lending a hand, developing tomorrow's super-powered clothing such as garments that can recharge your MP3 player and exoskeletons that enhance strength.

For instance, electronics could get recharged in the future simply by plugging them into your outerwear, because Australian researchers are designing clothing that can harvest energy from a person. The garments would incorporate devices to convert vibration energy from a person's movements into electricity. Advanced conductive fabrics would carry this energy to flexible batteries.

"It will look like an ordinary garment but have extraordinary capabilities," said Adam Best, principal research scientist with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization’s energy technology division. CSIRO scientists announced US$4 million in funds for such research Oct. 17.

"This kind of technology has important applications for soldiers in the field and could mean they no longer need to carry heavy batteries," Best added. "Essentially, they’d be wearing the battery, not carrying it."

Besides helping soldiers, these garments could also have civilian applications, such as powering radios, mobile phones, MP3 players or medical devices such as vital-sign monitoring systems. Solar-powered handbags could accomplish the same thing.

Underwear and sports uniforms could go weeks without washing thanks to self-cleaning fabrics developed by scientists working for the U.S. Air Force. The new technology attaches particles just nanometer or billionths of a meter wide to fibers using microwaves. These nanoparticles repel water, oil and bacteria.

Advanced materials could also help serve as armor. For instance, future yarns made with carbon nanofibers could yield bulletproof uniforms stronger than Kevlar, and complex compounds could lead to soft helmets that turn hard in a crash.

Not all the potential fabrics of tomorrow are necessarily high-tech. For instance, chicken feathers, rice straw and other castoffs of the farming industry could get transformed into fabrics resembling wool, linen or cotton, helping reduce the use of petroleum-based synthetic fabrics such as polyester.

Scientific advances are also creating wool that doesn't itch or shrink. Researchers at the USDA developed a "bio-polishing" technique that bleaches and partially digests wool, smoothing out the fibers.

And robotic exoskeletons could help soldiers shoulder heavy packs and help people walk. But not all electronic garments have such serious aims—some might serve as video gaming consoles in a perfect blend of high technology and haute couture.

Researchers develop a 360-degree holographic display

Scanners 'can treat depression'

Scanners can help combat depression, a US study of rats shows.
Harvard Medical School researchers found MRI scanners, which take internal images of the body, can have the same effect as standard anti-depressants.

The team employed a rarely-used type of scan known as EP-MRSI which tends to be used for brain scans.

But UK experts said they were sceptical about the findings and said more research was needed.

The team found rats experiencing stress and exhibiting helplessness - the rat equivalent of despair - recovered significantly when exposed to EP-MRSI, the journal Biological Psychiatry reported.

The scientists carried out the study after doctors reported similar effects in human patients with bipolar disorder.

Lead researcher Dr Bruce Cohen, a psychiatrist at the McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, which is affiliated to Harvard Medical School, said the findings had the potential to revolutionise depression treatment.

"The rats behaved as if they had received an anti-depressant. It's a non-drug way to change the firing of nerve cells.

"That's why the implications of this work have the potential to be so profound."

But William Carlezon, who also took part in the study, added it could also mean that some forms of MRI could be damaging to patients.




courtesy of http://news.bbc.co.uk

Brain Surgery Robot - neuroArm

The Calgary Health Region and the University of Calgary are developing the world's first image-guided surgical robot in collaboration with MD Robotics, the creators of Canadarm. As a world leader in space robotics, MD Robotics is now looking towards inner space - to the microscopic reaches of the human brain. The goal is to reduce the invasiveness of brain surgery by the use of precise tool manipulation under visual and MRI guidance and ultimately, improved patient recovery rates for neurosurgery.

Inside neuroArm

neuroArm is an MRI-compatible, ambidextrous robot capable of performing the most technically challenging surgical procedures. Its dextrous components are two image-guided manipulators with end-effectors that mimic human hands and are capable of interfacing with new microsurgical tools. It has tremor filters that eliminate unwanted hand tremors seen under the microscope.

Each end-effector is equipped with a three-dimensional (3D) force-sensor providing the robot with its sense of touch. A surgeon, seated at a surgical workstation, controls the robot using force feedback hand-controllers. Combined with a 3D visual display of the surgical site and 3D MRI displays with superimposed 'virtual' tools, the workstation recreates the sight and sensation of microsurgery. Surgical simulation software on the workstation allows the surgeon to calculate the optimal incision site, plan a path that avoids critical structures and permits risk-free rehearsal of rare or complex procedures. To ensure safety, redundant computer systems continuously monitor and control neuroArm's movements.

Benefits to Patient Care

Technical

• Optimize lesion resection
• Less tissue manipulation
• Major educational tool, creating a surgical centre of excellence
• Optimization of surgical decision-making

Quality

• Greatly improve precision and spatial resolution
• Provide robotic accuracy and repeatability
• Greatly reduce surgeon fatigue
• Smaller craniotomies
• Decreased surgical complications
• Decreased surgical morbidity

Socio-Economic

• Shorter hospital stays
• Increased levels of cell removal, thereby decreased reoccurrence rates and increased survival times
• Reduced operating times
• Less patient trauma
• Less lost waiting time

Hologram Fashion Show

A complete model-less fashion show will become a new trend in fashion mode. Instead of using real human models, a high technology 3D holographic projection is used to bring a 'life' on the catwalk. Check this video out.

Gibson Robot Guitar

Introducing the Gibson Robot Guitar, the world’s first guitar with robot technology. Gibson’s Robot Guitar is the only guitar available with the auto-tuning system.


Gibson Robot Guitar will be pre-calibrated for a standard .010-.046 set of strings. If you change string gauges, restore factory defaults, or are installing the system yourself, you may first want to calibrate the Powerheads individually using the calibration method.


However, since each Powerhead is selfregulated with a Dynamic Runtime Algorithm (DRA) which ensures the change of runtimes according to each string, after several tunings the system will perfect itself automatically. A special “eFunction” algorithm is provided by the software to assist the tuning process.

The Robot guitar will be available December 9th. I'm on real crap internet right now so I'm having trouble discovering if they actually announced a MSRP yet. I'm sure, being Gibson, it'll be a few thousand dollars for the whole rig.

Wondered how it works? Check This Out.

Virtual Air Guitar

The Virtual Air Guitar is a new way of experiencing music. It is an instrument literally played in the air: no strings, no keys, just you, free to perform.


Playing air guitar is like playing rock guitar, only without the guitar or any musical skills. It is a wild show, it is letting go, it is the essence of the rock attitude. But up until now, air guitarists have been limited to playing along existing music. The Virtual Air Guitar changes all this. It is an entertainment device that you can learn to use instantly - no musical skills required. The guitar does not merely respond - you are actually playing it. It's a new way of experiencing music.


The Virtual Air Guitar consists of several pieces of software. The user's actions are read by the input device, such as a webcam, and passed through gesture recognition. A musical intelligence module interprets these gestures and sends commands to the sound model, which produces the final sound. The mapping of the user's gestures into sound model controls is very complex, making the sound model itself totally invisible - the user does not need to know anything about it to play.

The Virtual Air Guitar is a project developed at the Telecommunications Software and Multimedia Laboratory and the Acoustics Laboratory of the Helsinki University of Technology, and was finished in March 2005. It is an entertainment device that lets users have fun in the spirit of air guitar. It is not an expressive instrument that you need to spend years learning how to play. Anyone can play air guitar, so everyone is able to play the Virtual Air Guitar as well. All you need is a pair of orange gloves and a rock'n'roll attitude. The goal is to provide people without musical skills the chance to experience the fun of playing and creating music, and to expand their concept of listening music to experiencing it.

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