X-Ray Specs

Rana el Kaliouby and Rosalind Picard have created special glasses that help the wearer interpret emotional cues.  The glasses use a tiny camera and software that analyses facial expressions.  El Kaliouby began to develop the glasses as an aid for autistic people, who often find it hard to pick up on other people's emotions.  She and fellow Cambridge student Simon Baron-Cohen hired actors to mime expressions, and volunteers to describe their meaning, using the most popular responses.

The glasses' camera tracks 24 "feature points" on your conversation partner's face, and software developed by Picard analyses their expressions.

According to Picard, these glasses could become "augmented-reality glasses, which would overlay computer graphics onto the scene in front of the wearer."

Read the whole fascinating article here.

iPhone app helps you predict which seat will become vacant on the train

 A new iPhone app called Densha de Suwaru (sitting down on the train) by Velc helps you make a database of strangers you commute with regularly.  For every passenger you create a list of features, such as which stations they ride between, at what days and times and on which line, along with gender, age, and other identifying details.  The app allows you to make a cartoon-like image of each of your fellow passengers.

The more data you add, the better you will become at predicting which seated passenger will be the next to leave the train.

In Japan, particularly in Tokyo, where it is not uncommon for people to spend 2 hours or more commuting by train every day, finding a seat is an important concern.  In 2005, a book about how to find seats on packed trains became a best-seller book.

The app can be purchased at the iTunes store, but it is unclear whether it is available in languages other than Japanese.

TransLink finally starts installing turnstiles

Photograph by: E015153

Vancouver--After years of ignoring rider complaints, hemming and hawing, claiming that turnstiles are too expensive, denying that the "honour system" is a failure, and hiring Canada's only gang of armed transit security, TransLink has finally begun installing faregates on Vancouver's SkyTrain system.  The first gates are going in at Commercial-Broadway Station, part of a $171-million project which will see gates installed at every station by 2013, and the introduction of electronic fare cards.  The fare cards, called “Compass Cards,” will cover Vancouver’s entire transit system, including the SeaBus and West Coast Express.

TransLink expects the new system will result in a boost in revenues from new ridership and reduced fare evasion.  No word on whether the totally useless Transit Police will be eliminated.

China races to the bottom

China has built a manned submersible capable of diving to 7,000m (23,000ft).

In the coming days, the 26ft-long Jiaolong, named for a mythological shape-shifting water dragon, will attempt to dive to 5,000m (16,000ft) in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii, and next year will attempt to dive to 7,000m.

The only manned vehicle to have dived below 7000m was the bathyscaphe Trieste, which dropped to the bottom of Challenger Deep, the lowest point of the Pacific's Mariana trench, in 1960. The Trieste acheived a depth of 10,916m (35,814ft).

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.