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CU-Boulder Team Develops Swarm of Pingpong Ball-Sized Robots

By Guest PostDecember 19, 2012Science, Technology20 robots, behaviors, career, collaborating cells, colorado boulder, droplets, dustin reishus, fictional nanomorphs, intelligent robotic devices, joseph tanner, liquid that thinks, nick farrow, nikolaus correll, pattern recognition, pingpong ball, robot, robotic building block, robotics, sensor based motion, terminator films, university

University of Colorado Boulder Assistant Professor Nikolaus Correll likes to think in multiples. If one robot can accomplish a singular task, think how much more could be accomplished if you had hundreds of them.

Correll and his computer science research team, including research associate Dustin Reishus and professional research assistant Nick Farrow, have developed a basic robotic building block, which he hopes to reproduce in large quantities to develop increasingly complex systems.

Recently the team created a swarm of 20 robots, each the size of a pingpong ball, which they call “droplets.” When the droplets swarm together, Correll said, they form a “liquid that thinks.” (more…)

German Manufacturer Reduces Energy Consumption by 80% with IBM Mainframe

By Guest PostDecember 18, 2012Technologyandreas dümmler, arburg gmbh, automotive, consumer goods, easy tier technology, electronics, energy consumption, ibm, ibm infrastructure, ibm system storage, ibm technology, ibm zenterprise, injection molding machines, made by arburg, made in germany, market, medical equipment, packaging, plastic products, san volume controller, sap application environment, solid state drives, ssds, storage, storwize v7000 systems

ARBURG selects IBM infrastructure to make better use of its data, stay ahead of the competition

Loßburg/Ehningen – 18 Dec 2012: IBM today announced that ARBURG GmbH + Co KG, a leading manufacturer of injection molding machines used to make plastic products, reduced its energy consumption for servers by 80 percent and for storage by 25 percent with its new IBM infrastructure.

ARBURG serves a broad range of customers across the automotive, electronics, packaging, medical equipment, and consumer goods sectors in some 100 countries worldwide. ARBURG’s IT environment grew along with its business, but was too complex and not able to support the manufacturer’s goals. (more…)

Reappraisal Defuses Strong Emotional Responses to Israel-Palestine Conflict

By Guest PostDecember 18, 2012General, Politicsaggressive policies, cognitive reappraisal, cognitive strategy, conciliatory policies, disengagement, election of hamas, emotional responses, emotionally charged events, eran halperin, gaza strip, hebrew university, herzliya, Israel, israeli palestinian conflict, israeli soldier, james gross, jewish israelis, kidnapping, mahmoud abbas, maya tamir, negative emotions, negative intergroup emotions, palestine, palestinian president, palestinian response, political reactions, reaction, reappraisal, rockets, roni porat, stanford university, un membership, united nations

Reappraisal is a widely-used cognitive strategy that can help people to regulate their reactions to emotionally charged events. Now, new research suggests that reappraisal may even be effective in changing people’s emotional responses in the context of one of the most intractable conflicts worldwide: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Negative intergroup emotions play a crucial role in decisions that perpetuate intractable conflicts,” observes lead researcher Eran Halperin of the New School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel. (more…)

Business Promotional Products Explained – What They Are and How They Are Used

By Guest PostDecember 18, 2012Small Businessaction, bottled beer promotion, brand, business, campaign, christmas, factor, flip flops, language, lexicon, promote business, promotional items, promotional products, promotions manager, summer fun, usb stick

Business promotional products are any items that may be used to promote something about a business. That might be the whole brand – or it might be a specific product or message from within that brand.

Promotional items may be anything at all, as long as they are either directly branded or used in a way that has immediate relevance to a promotion or campaign. Such a promotion or campaign can be targeted for immediate return (as in a product launch) – or it can be a long term promotion, like getting workers within a company to wear branded protective clothing when they do a job. (more…)

Flexing Fingers for Micro-Robotics: Berkeley Lab Scientists Create a Powerful, Microscale Actuator

By Guest PostDecember 18, 2012Scienceartificial muscles, beckoning finger, berkeley lab, chromium metal layer, chun cheng, electron, electronic behaviors, flex, human muscle cells, junqiao wu, kai liu, kevin wang, metal, microactuator, microfluidics, micron, microscale actuator, natural application, oxide material, phase transitions, phenomena, phillip m. duxbury, piezoelectric device, piezoelectric technology, ramamoorthy ramesh, subhendra d mahanti, Technology, temperature variation, university of california, vanadium dioxide, zhenting cheng

Berkeley, Calif., Dec. 2012 — Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley, have developed an elegant and powerful new microscale actuator that can flex like a tiny beckoning finger. Based on an oxide material that expands and contracts dramatically in response to a small temperature variation, the actuators are smaller than the width of a human hair and are promising for microfluidics, drug delivery, and artificial muscles.

“We believe our microactuator is more efficient and powerful than any current microscale actuation technology, including human muscle cells,” says Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley scientist Junqiao Wu. “What’s more, it uses this very interesting material—vanadium dioxide—and tells us more about the fundamental materials science of phase transitions.” (more…)

Environmental Cost of Agriculture: Soil Determines Fate of Phosphorous

By Guest PostDecember 17, 2012Environment21st century, agricultural nutrient, agriculture, alfisol, algae, algal blooms, amazon basin, Argentina, brazil, brown university, buenos aires, clean water act, environmental challenge, environmental consequence, environmental cost, farmer, fertilizer, goldilocks problem, grosso, industrial agriculture, iowa farmers, mato, modern farming, mollisol, overfertilization, oxisol, phosphorous, polluted waterways, renewable, shelby riskin, single crop, soil demand, soil ph, soil type, soybean, soybean fields, soybean harvest, stephen porder, ultisol, united states

Brazil’s soybean yields have become competitive with those of the United States and Argentina, but the soil demands a lot of phosphorous, which is not renewable. In the United States, meanwhile, historical applications of the fertilizer have polluted waterways. What accounts for these problems? It’s the soils, according to a new study comparing agriculture in the three countries.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Just 20 years ago, the soils of the Amazon basin were thought unsuitable for large-scale agriculture, but then industrial agriculture — and the ability to fertilize on a massive scale — came to the Amazon. What were once the poorest soils in the world now produce crops at a rate that rivals that of global breadbaskets. Soils no longer seem to be the driver — or the limiter — of agricultural productivity. But a new Brown University-led study of three soybean growing regions, including Brazil, finds that soils have taken on a new role: mediating the environmental consequences of modern farming. (more…)

IBM Reveals Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives within Five Years

By Guest PostDecember 17, 2012Technologyanatomy, antibiotic resistant bacteria, baby talk, bernie meyerson, cognitive computing systems, cognitive systems, ct scans, era, era of computing, five innovations, galway bay, hendrik hamann, human brain, human views, ibm, ibm scientists, ibm technology, ibm5in5, intuitive interaction, ireland, methicillin-resistant, modalities, mris, mrsa, noise level, pathologies, sensors, smartphone, speech recognition system, staphylococcus aureus, touch experience, ultrasound images, video, visual data, visual media, wedding dress, x-rays, YouTube

Breakthroughs will mark the era of cognitive systems when computers will, in their own way, see, smell, touch, taste and hear

ARMONK, N.Y. – 17 Dec 2012: Today IBM unveiled the seventh annual “IBM 5 in 5” (#ibm5in5) – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years.

The IBM 5 in 5 is based on market and societal trends as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s R&D labs around the world that can make these transformations possible. (more…)

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