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Image: University of Liege

Issue no. 17, 2011 Published: May 13, 2011
Sound test could identify 'locked-in' patients
New isotope found for climatological dating
'Vertical street' collects rainwater
Translucent curtains soak up sound
Flexible phone made from electronic paper created
Computers sing to a better tune
Telepresence robots go airborne

Sound test could identify 'locked-in' patients
While some people with serious brain damage are totally unaware of their surroundings, others are in a 'minimally conscious' state (MCS). These patients have some level of awareness but may be unable express it to those around them because of the injuries to their brain. The discovery of a signalling pathway in the brain that is different in the two conditions could open the way to an easy and objective way of telling whether a particular patient has any remaining consciousness. At present, making these assessments is time-consuming and subjective, and misdiagnoses are common. But now researchers from the University of Liège in Belgium think they have discovered a new way of telling these patients apart. They played irregular sounds to eight people previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state, 13 people in a minimally conscious state and a healthy control group. When the team compared how the three groups responded to the sounds, they found that the brains of healthy and MCS patients generated a much longer signal than patients in a vegetative state. The analysis pointed to a specific feedback mechanism between the temporal cortex and the frontal cortex. Both healthy and MCS subjects were able to send signals between these brain areas in both directions. In vegetative state patients, signals could pass from the auditory area to the frontal cortex, but not in the opposite direction. The team believe the loss of this so-called 'top-down' process is what causes unconsciousness in brain-damaged patients, and that it can therefore be used to identify MCS patients. If further research backs up these findings, EEG could be used at the bedside of severely brain-damaged patients to diagnose their state of consciousness.
New Scientist / Science May 12, 2011	back to top

New isotope found for climatological dating
Radioactive dating is used to determine everything from the age of dinosaur fossils to Native American arrowheads. A new technique recently developed at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory may give researchers another tool for radioactive dating that could be of particular use in studying the history of climate change. Argonne researchers created a special 'atom trap' to isolate and study argon-39, an exceptionally rare isotope of a noble gas that occurs naturally in small quantities in the atmosphere. Most atmospheric argon is argon-40, which means it contains 18 protons and 22 neutrons. However, occasionally an incoming high-energy proton from outer space collides with the nucleus of an argon-40 atom to kick out one neutron and create an unstable, radioactive isotope. This process happens so infrequently that radioactive argon-39 is present in the atmosphere in only extremely minute quantities. The advantage of using argon-39 for radioactive dating lies in its unique half-life, which is approximately 270 years. Scientists studying the dynamics of groundwater or ocean currents on the timescale of 100 to 1,000 years might find argon-39 dating to be a particularly useful tool in their analysis, according to the researchers. To isolate argon-39 atoms from argon gas the team built a device called an atom trap. The atom trap uses six laser beams to form a 'cage' that catches only argon-39 while letting through all atoms of argon-40 or any other isotopes present in the sample. Once trapped, an argon-39 atom appears as a bright dot on a sensitive video camera.
R&D Magazine May 12, 2011	back to top

'Vertical street' collects rainwater
The world's first 'vertical street' will soon be built in Melbourne, Australia. Every sixth floor of the 35-storey building will have gardens capable of growing trees up to 10 metres tall and the entire building will be boasting the very latest in green technology. While roof gardens and landscaped balconies have been constructed in the past, architect Robert Caulfield says this is the first time that five high-rise communal gardens have been attempted in the same building. To achieve this feat, purpose-built planter boxes allowing tree roots to grow in the confined 120-square-metre gardens, and structural supports that hold the weight of the soil and trees will be used. Heat-reflective glass and solar-powered lighting will also be incorporated. Since the site is a mere 360 square metres, the building's external walls - more than 8000 square metres - will be used to catch rainwater. Triangular balconies and a jagged façade are used to reduce the sideways movement of the wind, minimising the water escaping from the side. The catchment will feed into the building's water supply to be used for garden watering and toilet flushing. The heating and cooling systems are also designed around the gardens. A cooling system installed in each garden will pump water to six floors, three above and three below. The short pipe minimises heating or cooling loss. The building, which will house shops, offices and 154 apartments, will be completed by 2014.
New Scientist May 12, 2011	back to top

Translucent curtains soak up sound
Researchers in Switzerland have developed a new kind of lightweight curtain that can absorb sound waves while still letting light through. They say it is ideal for soaking up noise in offices, conference rooms or other places where natural light is needed. The material for the curtains was designed using a computer model developed by researchers at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. The model was used to predict the acoustic behaviour of a variety of curtains, with properties such as a curtain's size, porosity and mass per unit area altered to maximize sound absorption over a wide range of frequencies. Textile designer Annette Douglas then used the model to build an actual material - weaving together four or five different modified polyester yarns in such a way as to maintain the absorption characteristics while also ensuring fire resistance and light transmittance. The material was then put to the test inside Empa's reverberation chamber. With the curtain positioned 15 cm from a wall, the researchers found it could absorb up to five times as much sound as typical lightweight curtains. At low frequencies of about 200 Hz, it absorbed no more than about a fifth of the incident sound energy. However, at frequencies above 500 Hz (human ears having a maximum sensitivity between about 3000-4000 Hz) the material absorbed around three-quarters of the incident sound energy.
Physics World May 10, 2011	back to top

Flexible phone made from electronic paper created
A prototype flexible smartphone made of electronic paper has been created by Canadian researchers. The PaperPhone can do all the things bulkier smartphones can do such as make and take calls, send messages, play music or display e-books. The gadget triggers different functions and features when bent, folded and flexed at its corners or sides. The device emerged from a collaboration between researchers at the Human Media Lab at Queen's University, Canada and Arizona State University's Motivational Environments Research group. The millimetres thick prototype is built from the same e-ink technology found in Amazon's Kindle e-book reader and this is bonded to flex sensors and a touchscreen that interprets drawings and text written on it. The prototype was created in order to investigate how easy it is for people to use bending and flexing to control such a device. The early version is connected to a laptop to interpret and record the ways test subjects flexed it.
BBC News May 06, 2011	back to top

Computers sing to a better tune
In recent years, voice synthesis for converting text to spoken word has improved considerably but combining that technology with auto-tuning capability allows computers to 'sing'. Software, such as Vocaloid, can successfully create lead vocals and harmony parts from an input of lyrics and musical score. Careful tweaking of the 'frequency curve' can make the vocals sound almost natural by adding tremolo, vibrato and note overshoot. It is the tweaking of the frequency curve that is critical to success but this process is labour intensive and prone to human error. Researchers at the University of Tokyo have turned to evolution to devise a novel algorithm that compares the frequency curves from real human performances and uses them to home in on a more realistic curve to apply to the synthetic song. The team has simplified the optimisation process for creating vocal frequency curves and have developed a frequency model that can emulate human expression in a synthetic vocal. Production of the first generation involves making eight individual curves with random parameters and feeding them into Vocaloid. The second step is for the music producer to listen to the effect of each curve on their synthetic vocal and to move slider bars in the software interface to reflect how well each curve works. In the third stage, the best curves are used as the 'parents' to create a new generation of curves. Finally, the second generation curves undergo crossover and random mutation and the process repeated from step 2. Eventually, the fittest frequency curves will emerge that endow the synthetic vocal with the most realistic characteristics of human singing.
PhysOrg / International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Soft Data Paradigms May 06, 2011	back to top

Telepresence robots go airborne
Picture the scene: your boss phones to say he is working from home. A calm descends over the office. Workers lean back in their chairs. Feet go up on desks. Suddenly, a super-sized video feed of your boss, projected onto to the front of a helium-filled balloon equipped with a loudspeaker, floats silently into the room and starts issuing orders from above your head. Not such a good day. This blimp-based boss, which brings to mind the all-seeing Big Brother of George Orwell's 1984, is the creation of researchers at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Tokyo. The project is part of a wider movement aimed at making 'telepresence' possible. Imagine a medical specialist who can't make it to a regional hospital, but needs to consult with a patient there. Or an academic expert who wants to deliver a lecture remotely. Telepresence researchers are working on technology that can get a representation of these people into the room. To put it another way: telepresence lets you be in two places at the same time. The project is still an early stage. The team have built a blimp and shown that it can be operated remotely. Now they have to do user studies - experiments that examine what it's like to interact with the device.
New Scientist May 12, 2011	back to top