Obscure Research Blog March Archive

I once almost had a accident on Interstate 80, in a construction zone.

Somehow a car that was over packed pulled from between some construction equipment, in front of me.

This driver could not see out any window but right in front of him, and he was pulling across the interstate traffic, not going with the flow. He could not see out the passenger window, that was facing me.

He shot out from between the construction equipment about twenty feet in front of me, while I was doing 45 MPH, remember it was a construction zone.

The correct solutions to the problem was to floor the gas, so that I could get in front of him while there was still space, and get off on the right hand brim of the road.

Toyota's system would have guaranteed that a crash happened in that situation by applying the breaks.

"Toyota cars to monitor driver's eyes for safety

Toyota will start building a safety system into some of its cars this year that monitors if a driver is clearly watching the road during situations when a crash may occur. The system is based around a camera that watches the driver's upper and lower eye lids to evaluate how attentive he or she is to the road ahead. It builds on a current system that measures the driver's head direction when driving. The car's safety system continuously monitors the road ahead using a radar system, and if it determines a crash may be possible, it matches this with the driver evaluation gathered from the camera. If the driver doesn't appear to be paying attention it sounds a buzzer and warning light. If things progress and a crash becomes probable then it also tries to gain attention of the driver by quickly applying and releasing the brakes. At this point the car's pre-crash brake assist system is also readied. When a crash is judged to be unavoidable the safety system engages the brakes and seat-belts for the collision." -

Source: Networkworld Via Keelynet.

"The rotor moves slowly most of the times but does pick up at certain intervals. This process continues for many hours. Since the rotor is quite heavy (and hence more inertia) a small geared DC motor can be connected to the rotor to generate power for cell phones, $100 laptops, and other things in Africa. People can leave this thing to charge their phones/$100 laptops overnight. Basically we have two chambers on either end of the rotating (pivoted) rod. The arrangement of the chambers is such that on either side of the rod, one chamber sits on top of the other (this is important). At the beginning of this operation, I fill the bottom chamber on each side with a yeast sugar solution. Each bottom chamber is always locked under pressure by special valves. Due to pressure the solution starts moving from a bottom chamber into its respective top chamber. Note that by moving upwards, the fluid's center of gravity shifts, resulting in a mass imbalance which causes the wobbling."

Video Source Via Keelynet.

"Scientists have developed a mind-reading technique that allows them to accurately predict images being viewed by people, by using scanners to study brain activity...

The study raises the possibility in future of the technology being harnessed to visualize scenes from a person's dreams or memory..."

Writing in the journal, Nature, the scientists led by Dr Jack Gallant from the University of California at Berkeley said: "Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience at any moment in time."

It will inevitably also raise fears that a suspect's brain could be interrogated against their will, raising the nightmarish possibility of interrogation for "thought crimes..."

-- Source via Infostetics.