Ten Thousand:

Robot bird lands on human hand:

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrated a robotic bird that lands perched on someone’s hand. From UIUC:

Perching is routinely used by birds to land on objects such as tree branches, power wires, or building ledges. According to the researchers, there are two factors that make perching challenging to engineer: 1) the maneuver’s duration is very short, on the same order as the aircraft dynamics, and 2) a high level of position accuracy is required for a successful perched landing.

“Our aerial robot concept lacks a vertical tail for improved agility, similar to birds, which renders it dynamically unstable and exacerbates both of these factors,” (postdoc Aditya) Paranjape said. “We choose a perching maneuver to demonstrate the capabilities of our articulated-winged aircraft concept, novel guidance algorithms, and control design. In particular, the ability to perform perched landings on a human hand endows our robot with the ability to operate around humans.”

“First-ever demonstration of autonomous bird-like robot perching on a human hand“

[Includes some discussion of Fukushima. -egg]

An interesting way to explain radiation exposure and risk:

Science blogger Lee Falin has a potentially useful analogy for putting radiation dose and risk into perspective—treat it like currency. Part of the problem with explaining radiation is that there are multiple units of measurement in play and they’re all unfamiliar to the average Joe and Jane. The numbers get confusing quickly and when numbers get confusing, most people just tune them out. “Blah blah blah blah radiation blah blah” is both an unhelpful message, and an often terrifying one.

Falin tries to get around that problem by putting radiation doses into a number system that everybody knows and uses every day—money. He starts by deciding arbitrarily that 1 sievert of exposure is worth $1000. Once you’ve got that established, it’s easier to understand relative doses. In this system, getting $4000 all at once is a deadly dose. Most of us get $2.00-$3.00 a year in background radiation exposure. A mammogram is worth .40.

This is not a perfect method. In particular, it seems to work best for acute exposure. Falin still hasn’t totally solved the problem of explaining the accumulation of radiation over time. But I think that this idea—thinking of radiation doses in terms of money—could go a long way to helping some people understand this stuff a little better. I really liked how he explained cancer risks, for instance:

What about the long term risk of cancer caused by radiation exposure? According to the EPA, an average of 2,000 out of every 10,000 adults will die from some form of cancer. If you expose everyone in that group to an extra $10.00 of radiation in one year, the number will jump to about 2,005 people.

Read the rest at Everyday Einstein

Image: International Money Pile in Cash and Coins, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from epsos’s photostream

The Augmented Reality Sandbox:

While I truly appreciate the need for any kid to get dirty in a sandbox or let their imagination run wild in a field of mud puddles (something I was doing myself only an hour ago), I love to see how technology like a Kinect 3D camera can create new interactive environments and games. Case in point this new augmented reality sandbox designed by Oliver Kreylos out of U.C. Davis that projects a real-time colored topographic map complete with contour lines onto the surface of the sand while you manipulate it. The system even allows you to pour virtual water on your creation and interact with it in real time. It’s not hard to imagine switching the entire system to volcano mode, or using the projection in some sort of three dimensional toy battlefield. Gah!
According to Krelos’ YouTube page, the project was funded by the National Science Foundation with the hopes of installing these systems as exhibits at science museums like the Lawrence Hall of Science or the Tahoe Environmental Research Center. See another demo of this 21st century sandbox here. (via reddit)

“NPR reported this morning on a traffic jam in California caused by an algorithmic glitch…”: “NPR reported this morning on a traffic jam in California caused by an algorithmic glitch “accidentally summon[ing] 1,200 people to jury duty on the same morning”. An excellent reminder of the tendency of algorithmic dysfunction to manifest as physical dysfunction, and (at a relatively small scale) of the potentially disproportionate impact of glitches when they are translated from dataspace into an infrastructural system. The glitch may be as simple as having accidentally swapped the 0 indicating “do not come in” for the 1 indicating “come in”, but the resulting jam is rendered in aluminum autobodies and on asphalt corridors where it is much more difficult to clear than it was to create.”

– glitch jam – mammoth // building nothing out of something

Starry Night: Light Installations by Lee Eunyeol:







Photographer Lee Eunyeol constructs elaborate light installations that appear as if the night sky was flipped upside down with glowing stars and planets nested inside tall grass or between deep earthen cracks. Though Lee does not have a website I can quote his artist statement I received via email:

Starry night expresses private spaces given by night and various emotions that are not able to be defined and described in the space. I’ve chosen analogue type for the expression which attempts to install electric bulbs in an objet to be expressed using back space of night by taking advantage of huge studio. There are two spaces in photographs. One is a space before electric bulbs of familiar landscape are installed and the other is a space after electric bulbs expressed by dispersing personal emotion are installed. Unified light from these two spaces generates a mysterious landscape.

Eunyeol will be showing this series of photos at the Gana Art Space in Seoul starting this week. I want to thank @jealouqity for helping get in touch with the gallery for this post, and if you liked this, also check out the work of Barry Underwood.

Bugs on Book Covers:

I’m really enjoying this collection of bugs painted on book covers by Bristol-based artist Rose Sanderson. See more and read a brief interview over on Daily DuJour.

Urban Cityscapes Spray Painted on Cardboard Panels by EVOL:






German street artist EVOL (previously) is currently showing a number of new pieces at Jonathan LeVine gallery. The new works feature urban facades spray painted with the use of stencils on flat sheets of cardboard. Much like his outdoor graffiti, these stencils display an uncanny attention to detail, depicting light and shadow that transforms mundane surfaces of consumer packaging into fascinating, seemingly multi-dimensional pieces of art. The show runs through May 5th. (via juxtapoz)

Photographic Specimens by Michael Mapes:









New York artist Michael Mapes creates elaborate specimen boxes by dissecting photographs and then compartmentalizing individual fragments within plastic bags, glass vials, magnifiers, in gelatin capsules and on insect pins. The boxes exist in an uncanny area between photography and sculpture, functioning both as portraits and as fascinating scientific canvases that make you question the the logic behind the organization of each piece. See more of his work over at Parlor Gallery, and if you liked this also check out the work of David Adey. (via lost at e minor)