Smart glasses that help the blind see

(Image: Stephen Hicks) These specs do more than bring blurry things into focus. This prototype pair of smart glasses translates visual information into images that blind people can see.Many people who are registered as blind can perceive some light and motion. The glasses, developed by Stephen Hicks of the University of Oxford, are an attempt to make that residual vision as useful as possible.They use two cameras, or a camera and an infrared projector,...

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Unprecedented warming uncovered in Pacific depths

The effects of climate change are being felt almost a kilometre down in the biggest ocean on Earth.A new record of water temperatures shows how the Pacific has warmed and cooled since the last ice age. It shows that the ocean has warmed 15 times faster in the last 60 years than at any time in the previous 10,000.The fact that the heat of global warming is penetrating deep into the oceans is yet more evidence that we are dramatically warming the planet,...

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Parking app can predict when a spot will open up

SICK of searching for a city parking spot? Let your phone do the work. An app can automatically determine when its user has parked, and can alert others when the spot comes open again, all without manual input.Built by Wen-Yuah Shih and Kun-Chan Lan of National Cheng Kung University in Tainan City, Taiwan, the app uses a phone's accelerometer to recognise when a motorist is driving, when the car stops, and when they get out of the car and start walking...

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Today on New Scientist

Target hub markets to halt new H7N9 flu wave in China Closing Chinese poultry markets has helped stop H7N9 bird flu in humans, but the new outbreak may need smarter measures focused on well-connected marketsThe Halloween trick that conjures ghosts of the mind The "Bloody Mary" illusion evokes strange sights in the mirror. Douglas Heaven braves an apparition that could help people with schizophreniaZapping your brain enhances your love of classic...

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The Halloween trick that conjures ghosts of the mind

AS I prepare the room, it feels as if I'm getting ready for a seance. I close the curtains to block out most of the light and place two chairs about a metre apart. I prop up a large mirror on one and sit in the other so that I can just see my reflection in the near darkness. Then I set a timer for 10 minutes and wait patiently for the faces to appear.When they do, it is startling. At first the distortions in the mirror are small: a lifted eyebrow,...

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Zapping your brain enhances your love of classic art

"Oh yes, darling, it's fabulous!" Art appreciation classes might help you enthuse over other people's creative efforts, but zapping your brain might work just as well.Zaira Cattaneo at the University of Milan Bicocca in Italy and her colleagues showed paintings to 12 people. Each rated the images before and after receiving either transcranial direct current stimulation, which uses electrodes to deliver a small current to the left dorsolateral prefrontal...

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Crash-happy insect drone hits obstacles to help it fly

Video: Flying sphere exploits collisions to move around Sometimes being clumsy is useful. Instead of avoiding obstacles, a new ball-shaped flying robot exploits collisions to travel through the air, inspired by the behaviour of insects.A prototype called GimBall created by Adrien Briod and his colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne was able to fly autonomously several hundred metres through a forest despite colliding...

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Emission admission: New Zealand to fail carbon target

Talk about a wrong turn. New Zealand's carbon emissions are set to be three times as high as its target, despite the country having an emissions trading scheme.The government wants to cut emissions to half of 1990 levels by 2050. But projections it released last week show that they are likely to be 50 per cent higher than 1990 levels by 2040.The Emissions Trading Scheme has a low carbon price of NZ$3.70 (US$3) a tonne, but under the Kyoto protocol...

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Iron 'nano-ants' made to haul huge loads with light

Video: Ant-like beads move giant cargo Ant-like beads of haematite could be the giants of nanoscale construction. Tiny particles of the iron mineral have been made to pick up and carry cargo more than 10 times their size. The feat could be used in targeted drug delivery or building artificial muscles.Iron-based nanoparticles are ideal cargo-carriers because they can be steered using magnetic fields or by following a thinly etched track. Previous...

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Gene therapy needs a hero to live up to the hype

A modified version of the virus that causes HIV could be the unlikely saviour of a promising treatment for a host of deadly diseases IN TECHNOLOGY, it is called the hype cycle: what initially seems a promising breakthrough leads to inflated expectations – until it becomes clear that a great deal of time, money and effort will be needed to realise that promise. Disillusionment sets in until the first real successes are reported, and then the hype...

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Ditch the pedometer – the AI in your phone is better

FORGET Fitbits, Fuelbands and other pedometers. Your smartphone and its built-in sensors can do a better job of measuring the energy you expend during the day.Amit Pande of the University of California, Davis, designed an activity tracking algorithm for smartphones. It works by training a neural network, which functions like a simplified human brain, to recognise features in the data gathered by the phone's accelerometer and barometer. The system...

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Gaia: The death of a beautiful idea

THE idea that we live on a planet that takes care of us is intuitively appealing. So it's no wonder that James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis – that the biosphere acts like a living organism, one that self-regulates to keep conditions just right for life – became so popular. Although rooted in science, Gaia appeals to the same side of human nature that gods and guardian angels do.It's a complex hypothesis, and was never going to be easy to test. But...

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Get round internet censors using a friend's connection

People living under repressive regimes will soon be able to access the web using the internet connection of friends in censorship-free countries FOR people living under repressive regimes censorship is an everyday reality, and browsing the internet freely is impossible without some serious technical know-how. This week Google threw its weight behind an idea that lets people circumvent censorship by using the internet connection of a friend in a non-censored...

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New dolphin species leaps out of Australian waters

(Image: Guido J. Parra, www.cebel.org.au) They were hiding in plain sight. Where once there was one species of humpback dolphin roaming the Indian Ocean, now there are three.Humpback dolphins (dolphins of the Sousa genus) live around the coasts of Africa, south Asia and Australia. They are named for a small hump just in front of their dorsal fin.It has always been difficult to determine how many humpback dolphin species there are. Many biologists...

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Astrophile: Evil twin planet makes other Earths likely

Astrophile is our weekly column on curious cosmic objects, from the solar system to the far reaches of the multiverse Object: Earth-sized exoplanetComposition: Rock and ironTemperature: ScorchingEarth now has a twin – but it's evil. There's a planet the same size as Earth in a distant solar system, and it shares our planet's mass and composition. However, the rocky exoplanet is so close to its star that it orbits it once every 8 hours, making it...

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Today on New Scientist

Dark matter no-show puts WIMPs in a bind First results from the LUX detector in South Dakota fail to confirm earlier glimpses of the particles thought to be good candidates for dark matterAncient mural may be first picture of volcanic blast An image daubed on a wall 8500 years ago has been interpreted as an exploding volcano – now evidence shows the volcano really did erupt at the timeMy verdict on Gaia hypothesis: beautiful but flawed We now have...

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Sardine disappearance was foreseen but ignored

Western Canada's sardine fleet returned with no fish this month. The loss of the fishery, normally worth CAN$32 million (US$30.7 million), took many by surprise. Yet researchers warned last year that it could happen.There are still sardines off the US Pacific coast. But the vanishing of the Canadian fish is part of a process that could mean they all disappear for decades, says Juan Zwolinski of the University of California at Santa Cruz.Pacific sardine...

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'Bubble kid' success puts gene therapy back on track

Continue reading page |1|2 Five children with a genetic disease that wipes out their immune system have successfully been treated with gene therapy Editorial: "Gene therapy needs a hero to live up to the hype"MOST parents dream of a 5-week-old baby who sleeps through the night, but Aga Warnell knew something was wrong. Her baby, Nina, just wasn't hungry in the way her other daughters had been.Within weeks, Nina became very ill, says her father,...

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