Physics: A round-up of recent interesting links!

My aplogies for my light posting of late. Outside commitments have kept me from posting nearly as much as I would like. Here is a collection of links that I have saved up over the last several weeks to blog about. I hope you enjoy them, but please note that some of these are not serious, scientific articles - just because it can be found on the Internet doesn't make it science, much less forensic science! If you are particularly interested in any of the topics addressed below, just let me know and I'll delve further in a future posting.

K-Lite codec package update

X-rays made from Scotch(R) tape (hat tip to A.A.)

Superconductivity Can Induce Magnetism

Deaf people feel their way to speech

Seeing Through The Skin: Optic-less Imaging Technology Could Beat Lens-based Imaging Devices

HOWTO read the secret forensic dots in your laser-printer output

Biometric identifcation by body language

Sound-card oscilloscope

Audio bone headphones

Scientists Watch As Listener's Brain Predicts Speaker's Words

Hidden airport scanner will pinpoint terrorists

Overpaid professions

Military camouflage

Police probe cell phones to catch criminals

How magicians control your mind

How forensic lab techniques work

Computers reassemble pieces of fractured archaeology

Review of Microsoft's Photosynth

Images of atmospheric optics

12 worst Photoshop mistakes ever

Darpa super-resolution vision technology R&D

How other senses adjust to blindness

Family name geographical profiler

Brain Science: Train your brain for multi-tasking

As reported by John Tierney of the New York Times (center-left news media, USA), researchers at Wake Forest University and University of North Carolina Greensboro (both in the USA), there may be something to the "Train your brain" fad, at least if you are musical conductor:

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to map the brains of musical conductors and non-musicians who tried to distinguish musical tones while also being shown visual images. The scans showed that non-musicians had to turn off more of their visual sense than the conductors did in order to focus on the task. One of the researchers, Dr. Hodges, director of the Music Research Institute at UNC-Greensboro, says there are two possible interpretations of the results:

One is that the brains of musicians are wired this way, and that’s why they became musicians. The other is that they train their brains for rewiring. Because conductors have to be able to hear a bad note, then identify who did it, perhaps they rewire their brains to combine their visual and auditory senses. An experienced conductor has trained day after day, year after year, to let their brains pick up various signals from their senses.

The article is quite good and highly worth reading through.

Military: Digital camouflage- now on warplanes

I've posted before about digital camouflage being used on military uniforms.  Now, StrategyPage tells us about how it is being used on warplanes, at least on the tops of the airplanes. On the bottoms, which would be seen by people looking up at the sky, they are still using a sky-colored monochrome.  Interestingly, there are multiple patterns for the top sides to match different terrains, such as arctic and desert.

Military: Concealment and Deception or a "Magic Trick"?

The British Ministry of Defence is making news with its "invisible tank" demonstration.  Not to trivialize what their engineers have accomplished, but there are obvious parallels between what they've done and magic tricks - controlled conditions, including the viewing angle of the observers, and unseen technology, including cameras and projectors.  

That is exactly what "concealment and deception", as it is called, is all about, isn't it?  Exploit your control of the local environment and the limitations of your "opponent" to deceive them.  In this case, it involved a tank and not David Copperfield and the Statue of Liberty  (YouTube).

Fun: How To video on making your own infrared goggles

Geeks are Sexy Technology News links to a Metacafe video clip on how to make your own low-cost infrared goggles out of a pair of welding safety goggles and some red and blue light filter material.  The basic idea is that the human visual system can see into the near infrared spectrum and by blocking out visible red and blue light, one can see the left-over infrared.  Watch the video to get an idea of the effect.

Human Visual System: Fun optical illusions for a Friday

Fun video of optical illusions for a Friday.

Military: Digital Camouflage Continues to Catch on

Strategy Page has an article about how the Chinese are the latest to adopt digital camouflage patterns for their combat uniforms. Digital camouflage differs from traditional color blotch patterns in that it looks more "pixelized." The digital patterns hide the wearer better against human observers as well as, get this, night vision gear.

Brain science: Clues to roots of synaesthesia

The Economist (UK weekly news and economics magazine; liberal in the classic sense) has an article on a recent study by Romke Rouw and Steven Scholte of the University of Amsterdam into the biological mechanisms behind one form of the medical condition synaesthesia the causes one to see numbers and letters in color (or colour, as the British spell it).

Human Visual System: Everything you know about the genetics of eye color is wrong

It turns out that the explanation behind what color (or colors, in rare cases) your eyes are is a lot more complicated than what I learned in school.

(Hat tip: GeekPress)

How many megapixels do our eyes have?

BBC Focus Magazine has a regular Q&A section, which, unfortunately, they do not publish on the Internet. The March 2007 edition has a reader's question - "How many megapixels do our eyes have?"

Their answer approaches the question from multiple angles. I won't quote the entire response here, but some of the interesting "factoids" are:

• comparing the number of sensing elements - the eye has 5 million cones (the color receptors) and 100 million rods (the monochrome contrast receptors) which give a human the equivalent of two 105MP (MegaPixel) video cameras (because we have two eyes).
• comparing spatial resolution over the eye's field of view - we have the equivalent of 576MP.

(Source: BBC Focus Magazine)