Technology

THE Soviet Union once powered

lighthouses on its Arctic coast

using radioactive batteries,

leaving its successors the problem

of disposing of the nuclear waste.

Now a cleaner technology is being

harnessed to power lighthouses

in remote places: fuel cells.

A consortium led by CPI of

Wilton, Teesside, UK, is using a

fuel cell to power the South Gare

lighthouse at Redcar on England’s

North Sea coast. It was previously

prone to power outages when the

mains power cable was damaged

by the wind and heavy seas.

CPI has proofed its fuel cell

against the ravages of salty air and

seawater, and has developed a

novel water-based cooling system

for it, too. CPI spokesman Graham

Hillier told New Scientist the light

is working reliably – and like its

predecessor is visible from some

40 kilometres out at sea.

THROW out those stress balls.

Playing computer games that

encourage a positive attitude

might be the best way to release

tension in the workplace.

Mark Baldwin and colleagues

at McGill University in Montreal,

Canada, asked call centre workers

to play a very simple game for

5 minutes before they started

work. The game involved finding,

13tonnes. Weight of “bunker-busting” bombs for which the Pentagon has requested funding, fuelling fears of a US strike against Iran

In Chinese opera a red face indicates

bravery, a white one villainy. Together

with their exaggerated expressions,

performers’ brightly painted faces are a

key part of the performance. Now

Sudhir Mudur and Hao Zhou at

Concordia University in Montreal,

Canada, are hoping to preserve the

ancient art form by creating 3D

computer models of faces that move to

match audio recordings.

As the younger generation turns to

more modern forms of entertainment,

the Chinese government, fearing that

opera will fade into obscurity, has taken

steps to document more than 350

operas. The idea was to combine audio

recordings of famous singers from the

1940s to the 1960s with footage of more

recent performers. However, it is

difficult to synchronise the audio and

video seamlessly, say Mudur and Zhou.

Instead they used a 3D scanner to

capture the texture and shape of a

volunteer’s face while they made a

wide range of different expressions,

representing emotions like anger,

happiness or surprise. They then

“painted” each 3D image using

software. To animate the images, they

matched the facial expressions to each

part of an audio recording, then created

animations that morphed consecutive

images realistically.

The result was a video sequence that

was in sync with the soundtrack and

which could show the “performance”

from any desired angle (Computers and Graphics, DOI: 10.1016/j.cag.2007.08.

005). In future Mudur is hoping to

extend the work to depicting whole-

body movement in addition to faces.

ANIMATION SUSTAINS DYING ART

as quickly as possible, an image

of a single smiling face in an array

of 16 photos, the rest of which

showed a frowning face. The team

found that employees who had

played the game produced 17 per

cent less of the stress hormone

cortisol after their shift than

those who did not play the game.

Baldwin speculates that in

dismissing the negative, frowning

images the game “disengages”

people from stress. “Just

5 minutes of game-play per day

had a significant effect,” he says.

An artificial muscle is being patented by the University of Texas, Dallas (WO 2007/103832).

It consists of a shape-memory alloy coated with a platinum catalyst in a device that

allows methanol to be drawn along its surface. Exposing that surface to air oxidises

the methanol, heating the alloy and making it bend. Cutting the methanol supply

returns the alloy to its original shape, says inventor Ray Baughman.

A liquid crystal display that is said to be ideal for making clocks and speedometers in

novel non-rectangular shapes has been developed by Toshiba Matsushita Display of

Japan. TMD’s trick is to place the driver circuitry that switches pixels on and off

beneath the display rather than at its edges. This allows displays with a far greater

range of shapes to be designed, such as circular ones for car dashboards.

GIZMO

57.2% Internet Explorer 35.4% Firefox

1.6% Safari 1.5% Opera 1.2% Mozilla

3.1% Others

BROWSER WARS

By September 2007, Firefox had more than one-

third of the market, up 5.1 per cent in one year

Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research in San Francisco, predicts that Google’s runaway success as a general web search engine will be

eclipsed as numerous smarter, specialist search engines appear, covering every conceivable pastime and endeavour (Newsweek.com, 29 October)

“Google won the first stage of the search race. It won’t win the next”

–I always wanted to be in cartoons–

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Hydrogen power

lights up the seas

Smile hunting

relieves stress

www.newscientist.com 3 November 2007 | NewScientist | 29

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