Sci-Tech briefs

Japan makes smallest camera

Japan’s Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. will launch the smallest single-lens reflex (SLR) camera in the world. The new camera is targeted at female buyers who prefer to use light-weight cameras.

SLR cameras are very popular in the market, but their bulky size has been a major a drawback.
The new model, DMC-G1, is 27 percent smaller than the existing model and weighs just 385 grams.

The camera will go on sale in Japan Oct. 31 and will be released worldwide in early November. Matsushita plans to sell the camera body and the lens for $839.50.

Source: Reuters

Big Bang to be recreated

The world’s largest and most powerful collider, the Large Hadron Collider, located at CERN laboratory outside Geneva, was successfully activated after 14 years of hard work.

The intention was to collide opposing beams of protons — one of several types of hadrons — with very high-kinetic energy.

Such a collision will give an insight into the origin and evolution of the universe.
Researchers plan to accelerate protons to energies of 7 trillion electron volts and make them collide.

This process will recreate the conditions present during the early stages after the birth of the universe, less than a second after the Big Bang.

Source: The New York Times

Researchers make robots that see

Scientists have discovered how the brain learns to recognize objects. This revelation is expected to lead to the invention of robots that can “see.”

Studies have revealed that people never look at objects in the same way twice. The light patterns entering the eyes are different each time one looks at the object. In spite of this, the brain recognizes faces and objects accurately. The brain combines different views of objects obtained over a certain period of time and forms one image.

This hypothesis was tested on monkeys.

They were made to look at a video screen with different pictures of a sailboat. Occasionally, one of the sailboat images was switched for an image of a teacup.
The neurons in the monkey’s brain responded to the teacup instead.

This shows how humans learn to categorize and recognize objects they see in relation to nearby images.

This is expected to help humans build computers with vision-like systems.

Source: msnbc.com

Meteorites studied in Antarctica

Scientists are inspecting Antarctica’s icy surface for traces of meteorites.

Although 30 to 80 tons of meteorites fall on Earth each year, most fall into oceans or onto terrains where they are hard to find.

Antarctica provides an easier way of finding meteorites or dust rocks from space because it has blue sheets which are clear. This shows the meteorite distinctly.
The meteorites give insight into the processes of the early solar system and the conditions of our solar system before it evolved.

Source:universetoday.com