Argonne National Labs Library has been cracked (June 24)
Here's the cracked page
http://www.hackernews.com/archive/1999/argonne/index.html
I can't get into the original page, they may have closed it down.
A new approach to 3-D imagery
Technique could add a new dimension to photos and TV
WASHINGTON, June 24 — Scientists say they have invented a new kind of
camera that takes three-dimensional pictures using visible light.
THE CAMERA SYSTEM cannot project an image, like a hologram, which uses a
laser beam. But it can create an image that can be viewed in three
dimensions on a computer and even “walked through” using virtual reality,
the researchers said.
David Brady of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and
colleagues combined two kinds of technology — computed tomography, which is
used to scan the inside of the body, and interferometry, which makes it
possible to see an image without focusing on it.
“The most immediate applications are in microscopy,” Brady, an electrical engineer, said in a telephone interview.
CT scanning can do this through scanning — meaning an image is recorded line by line. Brady’s system more resembles photography in that it records the entire image at once.
So instead of having to put a cell onto a slide for microscopic examination, researchers could suspend the cell in a droplet, then photograph it in real time and in three dimensions.
For everyday consumers, the camera might offer 3-D television without the need for special glasses. “You would be able to record everything in a room, and a person would be able to walk in and see everything,” Brady said.
Writing in the journal Science, Brady’s team said they based their system on the radio interferometry that astronomers use to look at distant objects in space.
“With interferometric cameras there is no need to focus,” Brady said. “The image is in focus at all depths.”
This can be viewed on a computer screen — something many people already do with images taken by digital cameras.
“People think of an image as something that is recorded on film, but when you go to digital systems there is no reason to think of it that way at all,” Brady said.
Brady’s research was funded in part by the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which he said would like to use it for military applications.
A camera that worked without having to focus would be “smarter,” he said. “They have cameras spread throughout the world — a lot more cameras than people,” he said. These include cameras taking pictures from satellites.
“If a missile is flying through the air, for example, it makes it easier to track if you don’t have to focus on it.”
Mimicking Muscles Mechanically Promises To Change The Way That Robots
Explore The Solar System
"We are trying to imitate biological systems," says Professor Kumar
Ramohalli pointing to a 12-inch-long box supported by what look like legs at
the front and legs on wheels at the back.
Ramohalli, of the aerospace and mechanical engineering (AME) department at
The University of Arizona in Tucson, calls this device BiRoD -- Biomorphic
Robot with Distributed power. He hopes to send BiRoDs (pronounced BYE RODS)
to Mars and other distant points in the solar system where they will probe,
dig, photograph, analyze and generally explore the planets, moons and
asteroids.
"BiRoDs are much simpler than robots you have seen in the past," Ramohalli
explains.
Look under BiRoD's hood and you'll see it doesn't have gears, servos and
other complex mechanical systems. Instead, you find shiny, thin wires and
springs known as muscle wires and muscle springs. Hook these wires or
springs to a battery and they contract, mechanically mimicking the actions
of muscles. They contract because the current flowing through muscle wires
causes their molecules to rearrange themselves in a smaller space.
Muscle wires respond in milliseconds or less, can carry 17,000 times their
weight and will go through millions of cycles without failing.
Using muscle wires to animate robots has many advantages, Ramohalli notes.
First, getting rid of all those gears, servos and other mechanical parts
makes BiRoDs both lighter and much less complex. That means they are less
likely to fail and more BiRoDs can be sent in the cargo hold of a
spacecraft. For example, 25 BiRoDs would occupy the same space and payload
weight that the single Sojourner robot needed on the Mars Pathfinder
mission. With more robots, planetary scientists can gather more data, and if
one of the robots breaks down, others can take its place.
BiRoDs also are more reliable because they are not as sensitive to dust and
other enemies of mechanical systems. "We don't have to provide the kind of
protection from the fine, powdery dust found on Mars that is needed by gears
and servos," says AME junior Doug Steibich, one of the students who is
working on the BiRoD project.
"To me, the most important thing is that power is distributed," Ramohalli
adds. "Everything doesn't depend on central control. So if one leg stops
working, everything doesn't jam up and freeze. BiRoD can limp along on the
other legs."
Currently, the BiRoD prototype has two front legs and two unpowered rear
wheels that roll along as the front legs propel it. Soon, however,
Ramohalli's BiRoD team plans to replace the rear wheel/leg combination with
two more powered legs. This will allow it to walk over obstacles, turn
within its own body length, and complete many maneuvers that leave wheeled
vehicles in the dust.
The prototype BiRoD also has infrared vision that enables it to avoid
obstacles even in complete darkness.
BiRoDs will change the way scientists think about robotic capabilities and
how they use them in the field. Unlike most robots, BiRoD can produce bursts
of power -- again like a biological systems, less like machines. "You can
store energy slowly and expend it suddenly," Ramohalli says. "Cats do this,
for instance. They lie around much of the time, but then expend short bursts
of energy to catch prey. They eat, store energy, and then are ready for
another surge of power. Robots with this kind of capability can hop over an
obstacle, turn over a rock or crush a mineral sample. These are things that
today's robots can't do."
The BiRoD research is being conducted in the Space Engineering Research
Center, which Ramohalli directs. The new technology concept for BiRoD has
been filed with NASA. It is protected under a NASA Novel Technology Report.
Related link: http://scorpio.aml.arizona.edu/projects.html
Here's a "not so nice article regarding SETI"
>From New Scientist
http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/ns-its062399.html
Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
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