Imagine if the computations in chips (or CPUs, Computer Processing Units) could be performed at the speed of light instead of electrons. Photonic chips are such devices that use light beams instead of electrons to carry out their computational tasks. Researchers at MIT have made a breakthrough that allows them to make those optical chips using standard microchip manufacturing machinery, with the design of the circuit produced “just like an integrated-circuit person can design a whole microprocessor. Now, you can do an integrated optical circuit.”

Photonic chips “may be the next generation in terms of speed” for communications systems, says Caroline Ross, the Toyota Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT who lead the development.

Read the paper at: nature photonics.

Read the article at: Physorg.

Biomedical engineers at Toronto’s Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital have created a Virtual Musical Instrument (VMI) that allows a quadraplegic to play music with slight movements of his head. A computer’s webcam captures his movements, and as his head passes through particular shapes displayed on the screen, different classical music phrases are played.

He is Eric Wan, a software engineer by training and paralyzed from the neck down. He is also playing Pachelbel’s Canon before an audience with the Montreal Chamber Orchestra at the renowned Place des Arts tonight. Playing along with Wan is another talented Toronto musician, Adrian Anantawan, a violinist who uses a prosthetic hand to hold his bow. The concert is a proof of concept that the VMI can be used at the highest levels of musical performance.

via thestar

Researchers at Washington University have embedded micro circuitry into contact lenses that can project images in front of the eyes. The eventuak goal is to embed hundreds more pixels into the flexible lens to allow it to project complex holographic images. Practical uses may include projecting journey directions, a vehicle’s speed, creating a virtual world for video gaming, and providing up-to-date medical information.

Read the article at: BBC.

The secret of many beautiful pictures from pros is that they are heavily photoshopped. The skills lie in the post processing ability to take a mundane photograph and add pizazz to it. We look, wonder at the beautiful light, about the exposure settings, equipment used, etc. when more often than not, the magic happened in Photoshop.

Case in point is The Belmonte Castle picture which won a Gold Award at the 2008 Canon AIPP Australian Professional Photography Awards. In this article over at Luminous Landscape, Peter Eastway explains how he took a rather ordinary looking photo of the castle (6 photos in fact, stitched together) and, in post processing, cloned a tree, squeezed the picture to make everything look taller, added a color that was not there in the original scene and added direction to the light to add drama — and to create a beautiful print and win the prize.

Note that in contrast to many professional photography contests where digital manipulation is strictly prohibited, Canon’s photo contests tend to allow extensive digital manipulation of images.

Read the article and view the images at: Luminous Landscape.

Imagine a camera designed by Apple. That’s the premise of the Air Clicker, the ultimate bare bones needed for a camera were Apple to design it, consisting of two finger-wearable parts: the camera itself worn as a ring on your thumb, and the shutter release worn on your forefinger.

Of course, were Apple to be involved, it would be iCloud ready. No words on sensor and resolution.

Read more at: Yanko Design.

via bitrebels

Image credit: NASA

Two instruments on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft have produced the sharpest ever elevation map of the Moon. Using the data from the camera instrument (specifically the Wide Angle Camera) and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (Lola) instrument, NASA scientists have mapped the troughs and bumps over nearly the entire Moon with a pixel scale close to 100m (328 ft).

via BBC

What do you do when the light seemingly does not cooperate and, try as you may, you are unable to get an exposure that will assure a sharp image? Throw the rules out of the window, as Jeff Wignall over at BlackStar did.

Read Breaking All the Rules Can Lead to Surprising Images.

Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, a photographic process which produced a single positive image, in 1839. He used iodine on a silver-coated copper plate to obtain a coating of silver iodide on the plate. When he exposed it to light for several minutes, the plate turned dark where light fell on it. The resultant plate produced an exact, though laterally reversed, image of the scene.

Daguerreotypes were usually portraits, taking several minutes to expose and requiring the subject to remain stock still. Daguerrotypes of streets of Paris did not show any humans because the long exposure times required to expose the image meant that all moving people were not still long enough to be recorded.

Millions of Daguerreotypes were produced, but by 1851, the year of Daguerre’s death, the Fox Talbot negative process was refined by the development of the wet collodion process, whereby a glass negative enabled a limitless number of sharp prints to be made. These developments made the Daguerreotype redundant and the process very soon disappeared.

source Wikipedia