Category: Blog

  • Publishing wizardry!

    In the latest issue of our Research Information magazine, there is an article on the subject of augmented reality – and the possibilities of using the technology in the world of academic publishing.

    On page 20 is an image portraying an imagined front page of a newspaper – the Daily Impact. While the image is on the face of it quite unremarkable, if look at it through your mobile phone using an app called Zappar it springs to life and begins to play a short animated video that is ‘locked’ to the magazine page beneath.

    The technology, being developed by Cactus Communications, is remarkably reminiscent of the magical newspaper, the Daily Prophet, that appeared throughout the Harry Potter series of films – but it could have exciting implications in the world of education and academia, and in many other areas of publishing.

    Imagine technical drawings that spring into animated life in the pages of medical textbooks or journals, short videos of laboratory processes that might otherwise take thousands of words to explain, or animations that sum up technical features or white papers.

    Indeed, the best way to experience this technology is to download the Zappar app, let your phone hover over the image above, and check out the wizardry yourself (though you can read a longer explanation here).

    Wingardium leviosa!

  • Zooming in on piggy welfare

    Face recognition technology seems to be a widespread feature of our world these days.

    Airport immigration is nowadays controlled by means of facial recognition, the most modern mobile phones use it as a security check, and China is said to be using a huge system to track its Uighur Muslim minority – even if the US city of San Francisco is said to be close to banning the technology outright.

    However, it’s not just human beings that are subject to having their faces scanned in the most minute detail.

    As reported in our Imaging and Machine Vision Europe title, face recognition technology is being used in an attempt to detect different emotional states in pigs.

    Research by Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) in Edinburgh has shown that pigs can signal their intentions to other pigs using expressions. There is also evidence of different expressions when they are in pain or under stress – and scientists are hoping to develop a tool that can monitor individual animals’ faces and alert farmers to any health and welfare problems.

    It’s not just pigs hogging the limelight – the Centre for Machine Vision in Bristol, UK, is working on a system to monitor the welfare of dairy cows. We wouldn’t want to use that as an excuse to milk the puns any further though. That would be udderly boaring.

    Read more about the project – and the equipment being used in the research – here.

  • Exposed – camera shoots at 100 million frames per second

    Exposed – camera shoots at 100 million frames per second

    As an editor of scientific magazines I come across some astounding numbers – the number of floating point operations per second performed by the latest high-performance computers, for instance, or the vast quantity of scientific journal articles published each year, writes Tim Gillett.

    Occasionally, though, one is introduced to a fact that seems barely believable – one that instantly requires checking because it just *has* to be a typo, right?

    That was exactly my reaction when I was asked to proof-read a story for our magazine Imaging and Machine Vision Europe, referring to a camera that will be able to shoot an astonishing 100 million frames per second at one-megapixel resolution with the aim of imaging tissue in cancer research.

    The world’s most advanced high-speed video camera is being developed by the Rosalind Franklin Institute, based in Oxfordshire, UK, and will be used to further researchers’ understanding of a new cancer drug delivery method using ultrasound.

    Researchers will be able to see how ultrasound interacts with drug-loaded particles and tissue, and how that enables controlled uptake of drugs into cancer cells. The camera will help researchers understand the biophysical mechanisms behind the drug delivery method.

    The new instrument will be developed through a collaboration between an team at the University of Oxford and a UK-SME specialising in high-speed imaging, Invisible Vision. Once completed, it will be housed at the new Rosalind Franklin Institute (RFI) being built at the Harwell Research Complex in Oxfordshire.

    Eleanor Stride from the University of Oxford explained: ‘A major challenge with current delivery methods for cancer drugs is that they rely on the active molecules reaching and entering the tumour cells by diffusion. This makes it difficult to ensure that all parts of a tumour are treated and leads to terrible side effects because large volumes of healthy tissue also absorb the drug. We need to find a better way to get these drugs into cancer cells specifically, quickly and effectively.’

    She continued: ‘The approach we’re developing introduces harmless particles into the bloodstream and then uses ultrasound to activate them, in order to both release the drug at a specific site and helping to drive it into the tumour to reach all of the cells within in it.’

    Currently, the fastest long-record-duration framing cameras in the world best suited for these applications are still mechanical, operating at speeds of 25 million frames per second. The new camera will be smaller and more compact, around the size of a conventional video camera.