Science News

In this video we show how it is possible to perform gesture recognition just with contact microphones and transform every surface into an interactive board.
Through gesture recognition techniques we detect different kind of fingers-touch and associate them with different sounds.
In the video we used two different audio synthesis techniques:
1- physic modelling, which consists in generating the sound by simulating physical laws;
2- concatenative synthesis (audio mosaicing), in which the sound of the contact microphone is associated with its closest frame present in a sound database.

Now that 2011 is behind us, the new year allows for new players to step into the startup game with brand new ideas and visions. Even though companies like Facebook, Apple, Twitter, ...

UC San Diego (UCSD) scientists have created a living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs — a visual display of how researchers in the new field of synthetic biology can engineer living cells like machines.

We've covered a lot of biomimicry news in 2011. Here is a summary of our favorite inventions that lean on the natural world for inspiration.

This 160-by-120 pixel TV will get you stopped at the airport...

In an example of life imitating art, biologists and bioengineers have created a living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs.

Researchers have developed a promising new inexpensive technique for fabricating large-scale flexible and stretchable backplanes using semiconductor-enriched carbon nanotube solutions.

SETTING up home in the modern world means acquiring some furniture—particularly a bed.

(AP) -- Brighten clouds with sea water? Spray aerosols high in the stratosphere? Paint roofs white and plant light-colored crops? How about positioning 'sun shades' over the Earth?

This concept from Philips Microbial Home concept could be the mood lighting of the future.