27 October 2011
Posted in Digital Horizons

Fifty year-old Trevor Prideaux, a caterer from Britain has been announced as the world’s first patient to have a smart phone docking station built into his prosthetic arm. After being denied by Apple to test the station with a blank i-phone, a Nokia C7 is proudly cradled in his forearm. The increasing struggle of using his cellular device is what led Prideaux to seek effective alternatives.

With the dock he is able to hold the phone to his ear while multitasking, place it on speaker phone, or even take it out of the dock if needed. While reading this article, questions of exposure to radiation begin to develop. Also with the rate at which technology advances, each time the Nokia is updated, Prideaux must update his arm.

Would it be more cost effective to purchase a blue tooth? With Nokia’s announcement of their new Windows phone, it is only a matter of time before the next Nokia update is out to the public signifying a new arm replacement.

Photo courtesy of Forbes Magazine

11 July 2011
Posted in Digital Horizons

As technology advances, we are seeing a shift from old bulky phones to smaller, portable devices that offer a variety of gadgets and applications. Some of the improvements we are seeing are coming by way of display screens, cameras, battery life and processing chips. With phones such as the new Sony Ericsson Xperia PlayStation Smartphone, the need to play video games on a large console is over.

One of the most substantial changes we have seen in phone technology is centered on display screens. We measure the quality of a camera by the amount of megapixels the image is made up of and with today’s technology, a greater number of pixels can be utilized in order to produce a better picture quality.

A more pressing problem with the current mobile displays lie in their power consumption. While OLED screens have improved greatly in terms of power efficiency, displays still require a lot of power consumption. University of Florida researcher Andrew Rinzler, may have discovered the breakthrough that will solve this problem in the near future with the new transistor designed around carbon nanotubes. Rinzler’s carbon nanotube vertical organic light-emitting transistor (CN-VOLET) is about eight times more energy-efficient than existing OLED technology.

Another area where improvements have been made in smartphones is the camera. While advances have been made in picture quality relative to the number of megapixels, the real problem still lies in inadequate lens and flash mechanisms. The new Android Evo 4G duel-lensed camera offers a screen that can display 3-D images without the use of glasses. Along with camera quality, video game devices are also being incorporated into many of the new phones, which can be seen in the Sony Xperia. This phone utilizes all of the functions of earlier models but includes a portable version of a PlayStation gaming console. But, is it worth having a variety of gadgets and applications, when these features are believed to reduce battery life and often cost as must as other devices?

As nano technology has progressed, we have seen an increasing number of cores that can fit on a processing chip. By the year 2014 Nvidia hopes to release its new Stark series Tegra chips that are expected to deliver 100 times better performance than the current Tegra 2 chips. With an increased ability to store data or programs on micro-processing chips, one can only wonder what this technology can lead in terms of cost efficiency and longevity.

04 April 2011
Posted in Experiences

Think back to the last time that you had to do a science experiment. Did you have to make a visual aid to go with it? Most students make a poster to go with their projects, but now it looks like you may learn more by making a video instead.

In Australia two separate grade school classes participated in an experiment to test this theory. One class was asked to make a video and one was asked to make a poster to go along with their science experiments. When they were done, they had to present their experiments to younger students. The class that made the video became much more aware of who they would be presenting their project to because they had to practice when making the video. The group making the poster hardly noticed whom it was they were presenting their project to.

Making a video as part of a science project gets you to capture the active, experimental and visual natures of science. Even video production itself can be a science. It is a really flexible world where anything goes. You can improve your decision-making skills by making a video project, have fun in the process and you don’t have to know everything about fancy equipment to make a video for a project. Make a video about your next science project that is as much fun for people to watch as it was for you to make it!

21 March 2011
Posted in Medical Sim City

Stop worrying about wasting your time away the next time you sit in front of your TV with the video game controller in-hand. Studies have shown the same skills developed from extensive video game play helps develop your hand-eye coordination as well as movement control in your brain.

Your prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that’s in charge of your attention, actions and cognition (thoughts). That’s why it is the area of your brain that’s the most affected by video game play. The control and spatial attention used while playing video games are skills developed in the prefrontal cortex, and they improve with each gaming session. Skills required in some of the latest video games, like ones that require you to look in one direction (typically towards the TV) and reach out in another direction help improve hand-eye coordination.

Experienced video game players could even consider bringing their skills to work with them and becoming a surgeon who performs laparoscopic surgery. This is where the surgeon watches the surgery they are performing on a TV while using a controller to perform the surgery. It’s amazing not only that surgery can be performed this way, but that a love for playing video games can have effects that last well after the console has been turned off.