Showing posts with label Art Of Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art Of Life. Show all posts
BlueBiped: A human-like walking robot that requires no power source
Today’s groundbreaking entry into theUncanny Valley is a pair of mechanical, robot legs that are propelled entirely by their own weight: they can walk with a human-like gait without motors or external control. If this sounds too good (or crazy) to be true, watch the first video at the end of the story, wipe the tendrils of drool off your chin, and then find your way back up here for an explanation.
Without making this accomplishment any less awesome, these robot legs — called BlueBiped, and made by researchers at the Nagoya Institute of Technology in Japan — are basically just an imitation of human physiology. There are thighs and lower legs made out of aluminium that are the same length as their human counterparts, and ankles and knee joints for articulation, but… that’s it. No sensors, no computers, no “musculature” — the legs are completely passive, you just give them a push… and they carry on walking. As long as there’s a slight downwards slope, anyway — there has to be some source of energy, after all, and in this case it’s gravity.
BlueBiped uses the “principle of falling,” much in the same way that humans walk by falling forward. As long as the robot’s weight is pitched slightly forward, the momentum of each step is enough to throw it into another step, and so on. Presumably, with the addition of motors, BlueBiped could also walk horizontally and up hill, but then you’re into MABEL or AlphaDog territory — and that doesn’t seem to be the purpose of this project.
Last year, BlueBiped successfully walked for 13 hours continuously — 100,000 consecutive steps, 9 miles (15km) — without human intervention. Now the researchers seem to be thinking of actual, commercial applications for BlueBiped. They have tested a modified version that can be worn like an exoskeleton, which apparently can help people walk. In the video, “sports equipment” is also mentioned, though we’re not sure what that means — robot tennis instructors, perhaps?
Read (a little bit) more at Sano Lab, Nagoya Institute of Technology [translated], or watch the videos below.
Scientists create brain-like, massively parallel computer from molecules
By Sebastian Anthony If you thought that Japan was merely the master of miniaturization, tentacles, and creepy robots, think again: A group of Japanese scientists have built a massively-parallel, brain-like computer out of an organic molecule called DDQ. This computer, which is built from 300 DDQ “neurons,” has successfully calculated how heat diffuses through a medium, and the mutation of normal cells into cancer cells.
From the very start of the research paper, the scientists point out a phenomenon that all computer geeks are aware of: for the most part, computer processors are single-threaded, sequential-logic machines. You can throw more cores at the problem, or thousands of CPUs (as in supercomputers), or scale to thousands of megahertz, but silicon, transistor-transistor, clock-driven computers are essentially sequential. Animal brains, on the other hand, are almost the complete opposite of modern CPUs: neurons can only fire around 100 times per second, but in a human brain there could be hundreds of millions of neurons all firing at the same time, and each neuron can have a 1,000 synapses to other neurons. It is this scaling, massively-parallel computation that the scientists have recreated using molecules.
The work of Anirban Bandyopadhyay and his team from the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, revolves around a molecule called 2,3-dichloro-5,6-dicyano-p-benzoquinone, or DDQ for short. DDQ is a ring molecule that can connect with up to six neighboring DDQ molecules. Most importantly, each DDQ molecule can be programmed into four different states, each conducting electricity differently. 300 DDQ molecules are placed on a gold substrate, and their conductive states and connections to other molecules are programmed using a scanning tunneling microscope.
The end result is a cellular automaton of 300 neuron-like molecules that can perform calculations in a massively parallel way. For now, it seems like DDQ has only been used to perform pre-programmed calculations — and while that’s useful, conventional computers are unlikely to be usurped any time soon. It is another characteristic of DDQ “brains” that is most intriguing: When a DDQ molecule changes state, the change ripples down through the molecules that it’s connected to, destroying old bonds and creating new circuits as it goes — much like a neuron making new synapse connections. This could eventually lead to emergent computing, where the DDQ brain can react to external stimuli and evolve over time.
Read more at The Physics arXiv Blog, or read the research paper [PDF] (it’s not an easy read)
5 deal-breaking flaws in Windows 8
At the Build Windows in Anaheim, California, excitement, eagerness, and trepidation fill the air in equal measures. Developers are overjoyed that Microsoft’s best-in-class development tools can now target tablets, a slew of new, low-level features will usher in entirely new species of always-on, omnipresent devices, and few can deny the awesome money-making potential of the Windows Store.
Once you see past the emphatically strident Steven Sinofsky and the repeated reassurance that you will like Windows 8, however, a handful of flaws begin to rear their ugly heads. As awesome as Metro might be, and as fresh and invigorated the re-imagined Windows team is, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Windows 8 will break the user experience paradigm that two or three billion people have grown accustomed to. Almost every computer user alive today cut their teeth on Windows — on icons, on Alt-Tab, and on the Start menu — and as of Windows 8, that body of experience, that muscle memory, and those expectations, will all be for nought.
Windows 8 re-imagines Windows, and Metro – the primary interface that you have to use — is completely different from what users expect. Metro might not be a separate OS, but beyond low-level features like the kernel and drivers, Metro is about as disparate as it gets. It’s like iOS and Mac OS X, or Android and Ubuntu — they’re built on much the same architecture, but you interact with them in very, very different ways.
Five flaws
Now, it wouldn’t be quite so bad if Metro and Explorer/Desktop were separate, but Windows 8 machines will run both interfaces interchangeably — as Sinofsky says, you can switch between Metro and standard Win32 “like tabs in a browser” — but don’t be fooled into thinking that Desktop is a first-class citizen in Windows 8. Many affordances are made to ensure that Windows 8 is tablet- and touch-first, and as a result the desktop and laptop experience will suffer.
There are five big potholes that, unless they are rectified, will create a seriously jarring experience for most of Earth’s inhabitants.
1. Multi-tasking
The most obvious omission from Windows 8 is proper multi-tasking and task/app switching. Unless you are in Desktop and you have a keyboard attached, there is no way to switch between currently-running apps; all you can do is flick cyclicly through open apps — in just one direction. If you want to alternate between two apps — to copy and paste something, for example — it’s simply not possible. If you have 10 apps open (an activity that is encouraged because Windows 8 has received a bevy of power management tweaks) you need to flick left 10 times to arrive back at the beginning.2. You can’t close apps
As a corollary, if you want to close a handful of those 10 apps — if you want to make task switching easier, or free up some memory — then… well… you can’t. The only way to close apps in Windows 8 is through Task Manager, which exists solely within Desktop. Needless to say, toying with Task Manager with a fat finger isn’t the best experience in the world. We would expect that a Close button might appear in the right-side menu at a later date, though.
3. Goodbye Start menu
For 16 years Windows has revolved around the Start menu — but in Windows 8, the Start menu ceases to exist; in fact, the Metro-style interface that Windows 8 boots up into is actually called the Start screen. Even if you flip into Desktop view and click the flag in the bottom left corner you don’t get the Start menu; it just jumps back to Metro. It’s hard to describe how this will affect Windows veterans: it’s now Metro tiles, Desktop icons… and that’s it. The interface paradigms that they have come to know (and in rare cases love) are gone; it’s time to re-skill, whether you like it or not.
The only saving grace is that the glorious Windows 7 superbar still exists — but before you get too excited, only standard Windows (Win32) programs will grace the task bar; again, beyond flicking left, there is no way to switch between Metro apps.
4. It’s very hard to reboot and shut down
It now requires no less than four gestures to shut down or reboot a Windows 8 tablet — and for some reason it is hidden behind the Settings charm in what is now the Metro-style system tray. Basically, Microsoft doesn’t want you to shut down Windows 8 — much in the same way that you rarely shut down Android, iOS, or any other mobile OS. Instead, Microsoft wants you to hit the physical power button, which simply hibernates the machine — which makes sense, if you only use the Metro side of Windows 8, but what about all of the business and enterprise users that might need to reboot a buggy machine?
As an irritating aside, because the Start menu has died a death, shutting down Windows 8 with a mouse is painful: you have to click in the bottom left corner, then move your mouse all the way over to the right to click the Power button; fun times.
5. The beautiful Start menu search is dead
Finally, one of Windows 7′s best features — the ability to hit the Windows key and find any app or file on your computer simply by typing — is no more. You can still search in a similar fashion in Windows 8 (though it requires a right flick and then a click) but you can only search apps, or settings,or files — and changing between each category requires yet another click/prod.
If you’ve installed Windows 8 Developer Preview on your laptop, desktop, or tablet, let us know if you’ve come across any other weird or wonderful delights.
LOVE UR MOTHER
Do you know?
a human body can bear only upto 45 Del (unit) of pain.
But at the time of giving birth, a woman feels upto 57 Del of Pain.
This is similar to 20 bones getting fractured at a time!!!!
a human body can bear only upto 45 Del (unit) of pain.
But at the time of giving birth, a woman feels upto 57 Del of Pain.
This is similar to 20 bones getting fractured at a time!!!!
Independence Day
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore
Gitanjali
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
Rabindranath Tagore
Gitanjali
India Before and After the Independence.
With the decision by Britain to withdraw from the Indian subcontinent, the Congress Party and Muslim League agreed in June 1947 to a partition of India along religious lines. Under the provisions of the Indian Independence Act, India and Pakistan were established as independent dominions with predominantly Hindu areas allocated to India and predominantly Muslim areas to Pakistan.
After India's independence on August 15, 1947, India received most of the subcontinent's 562 widely scattered polities, or princely states, as well as the majority of the British provinces, and parts of three of the remaining provinces. Muslim Pakistan received the remainder. Pakistan consisted of a western wing, with the approximate boundaries of modern Pakistan, and an eastern wing, with the boundaries of present-day Bangladesh.
The division of the subcontinent caused tremendous dislocation of populations; inter-communal violence cost more than 1,000,000 lives. Some 3.5 million Hindus and Sikhs moved from Pakistan into India, andabout 5 million Muslims migrated from India to Pakistan. In Punjab, where the Sikh community was cut in half, a period of terrible bloodshed followed. Overall, the demographic shift caused an initial bitterness between the two countries that was further intensified by each country's accession of a portion of the princely states.
Adding to the tensions, the issue of the polities Kashmir, Hyderabad, and the small and fragmented state of Junagadh (in present-day Gujarat), remained unsettled at independence. Later, the Muslim ruler of Hindu-majority Junagadh agreed to join to Pakistan, but a movement by his people, followed by Indian military action and a plebiscite (people's vote of self-determination), brought the state into India.
The nizam of Hyderabad, also a Muslim ruler of a Hindu-majority populace, tried to maneuver to gain independence for his very large and populous state, which was, however, surrounded by India.
After more than a year of fruitless negotiations, India sent its army in a police action in September 1948, and Hyderabad became part of India.
The Hindu ruler of Kashmir, whose subjects were 85 percent Muslim, decided to join India. Pakistan, however, questioned his right to do so, and a war broke out between India and Pakistan. A cease-fire was arranged in 1949, with the cease-fire line creating a de facto partition of the region.
The central and eastern areas of the state came under Indian administration as Jammu and Kashmir state, while the northwestern quarter came under Pakistani control as Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas. Although a UN peacekeeping force was sent in to enforce the cease-fire, the dispute was not resolved.This deadlock has intensified suspicion and antagonism between the two countries.
In 1971, Pakistan was itself subdivided when its eastern section broke away and formed Bangladesh. Border disputes continue to embitter Pakistani-Indian relations, as Pakistan has produced a series of autocratic military rulers, while India maintained a parliamentary democracy.
Independence Day
I am in love,I am passionate about him,
I loving every moment of it and
why not its her 64th Birth Day.
Happy Independence Day 2011
Other might have forgotten,
But never can i,
The Flag of my country
Furls very high,
But never can i,
The Flag of my country
Furls very high,
Happy Independence day 2011
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