KDDI announced a new prototype phone that uses six different types of sensors to see its surroundings, including other people and objects within proximity. According to Tech Radar, KDDI was hush hush about the specifics, but did reveal the sensors include GPS and multiple types of accelerometers and geomagnetic technology — which are then used to render the environment in OpenGL. Its also able to detect how many calories one has burned via walking or running, even using the microphone (?) in the process. No demo was offered, but I’ll be waiting to hear how this really works. [Tech Radar]
Artist Evan Roth is today hard at work on a series of collector’s plates with messages that show up best on an airport screener’s X-ray monitor. MAKE lets us know that Roth also requires an X-Ray machine to test things out and, we assume, create more art. Or an international incident. Probably both.
A lifelong dream of ours has been to be able to see through stuff, but using a camera based on the way lobsters see isn’t quite what we pictured. The Lobster-Eye X-ray Inspection Device by Physical Optics Corporation works by beaming X-rays through walls and inspecting the reflection. These are low-power X-rays so they’re hopefully safe enough for your coworkers to shine in your face without you getting superhuman strength. Homeland Security is going to use this to check on your luggage, but we’re sure there’s going to be at least a few instances of them peeping into their coworker Debbie’s locker. [poc via The Raw Feed]
Philips yesterday unveiled their 256-slice scanner that renders 3-D images of the body like never before. The $US2-million Brilliance CT machine can capture the body’s skeleton, organs and blood vessels in the minutest of detail, and was unveiled yesterday in Chicago, at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting.
England’s Diamond synchotron, a device that covers five football “pitches” and is capable of generating an X-Ray light source that’s 10 billion times brighter than the sun, will be used to examine precious antique documents that cannot otherwise be handled.
When the beams are fired into a book or a scroll, they bounce off of iron ink, generating a 3D image that can be sliced up and read. One professor involved called this “reading books without opening them,” not as sexy as Frank Herbert’s “travelling without moving” perhaps, but the best way yet to figure out how to read some of the heretofore unseen portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hopefully they won’t burst into flames in the process. [BBC News]
