Lifeboat Foundation

Last week an entry for the Best Illusion of the Year Contest called the Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion from Japan’s Kokichi Sugihara confused and delighted viewers all over the world. The video showed six plastic cylinders stuck together, and when they were placed in front of a mirror they inexplicably became squares. When the cylinders were rotated, the reflection finally turned into cylinders, only to have the actual plastic cylinders become squares. As if the amazing visual trick wasn’t impressive enough, Sugihara then outdid himself by adding several different types of groupings even more complicated and unbelievable than the original. It left almost everyone who saw it scratching their heads, and the internet was pretty desperate for answers.

Nice.

The 3DSimo Mini is a 3D printing pen that also offers users capabilities for soldering, burning, and cutting and bills itself as the “ultimate creator’s tool.”

VR for phobias; makes sense. Scared of spiders? Samsung believes VR may be the treatment for you.

Could you face your fears if you knew you weren’t actually facing your fears? That’s the premise behind a virtual reality experiment Samsung is running for a new app called Itsy, which is designed to help people face their fear of spiders. Created with the help of researchers at Stockholm University, Itsy tries to wean people into giving up their fear of arachnids.

The program is being run by Samsung’s Nordic branch, and the reason is extremely specific.

Continue reading “Samsung thinks you can overcome your fear of spiders using virtual reality” »

IRVINE, Calif., July 11, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — From measuring glaucoma to augmenting reality, advances in technology have enabled smart contact lenses to steadily gain traction in the past year. Although still in the early stages of development, the introduction of such novelties will inevitably be life-changing.

Photo — http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160711/388295

Good; and as I had hope it could be done for many years.

Recalling a favorite song could be enough to unlock computers one day. All you’ll need is a tiny earbud to register the electro-brainwaves, researchers say.

Classic test confirms particles’ properties don’t exist until they’re measured.

By laser-cooling atom clusters and studying their movements, a Missouri University of Science and Technology researcher hopes to better understand how atoms and their components are impacted and directed by environmental factors.

With a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Daniel Fischer, assistant professor of physics at Missouri S&T, tests the limits of quantum mechanics through his project titled “Control and Analysis of Atomic Few-Body Dynamics.”

In a hand-built vacuum chamber, Fischer manipulates lithium atoms by trapping them in a magnetic field and then shooting them with different lasers. This gives Fischer a large variety of initial states to test. Tests range from single, polarized atoms to larger groups that are laser-cooled to a consistent energy level. By doing so, Fischer works to help unravel the “few-body problem” that continues to confound the world of physics.

A new study of the early universe reveals how it could have been formed from an older collapsing universe, rather than being brand new. The universe is currently expanding and it is a common theory that this is the result of the ‘Big Bang’ – the universe bursting into existence from a point of infinitely dense and hot material.

Power sensors for distribution networks have inspired a $77-million DARPA program to build a suite of automated cyberdefenses for power grids.