It’s about as glamorous as wearing an old-style TV set on your head.
But the dome-shaped headgear from Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. isn’t meant to be fashionable. It’s designed to show images in a 360-degree view – synched with the motion of the wearer’s head to deliver the illusion of being someplace else: a cityscape at night, for example, or outer space.
The still experimental 6-pound bubble-headed helmet has infrared sensors on top that detect which way the wearer’s head is moving. A projector in the back of the helmet displays corresponding images on a 16-inch screen right before the user’s eyes.
Although the headgear looks bulky, it’s actually smaller than older versions of the same technology, Toshiba spokeswoman Kaori Hiraki said.
Get a glimpse of Darwin’s work: Charles Darwin’s work has evolved again. Now it’s available in an online archive that launched this month.
The creators of www.darwin-online.org.uk say the Internet trove is only half complete. But it already includes manuscripts, notebooks and other material, much of which comes from the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University.
These include the first edition of the “Journal of Researches” (1839) (or “Voyage of the Beagle”), “The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle” (1838-43) and “The Descent of Man” (1871). The archive has multiple editions of “On the Origin of Species.”
The notebook in which Darwin recorded his thoughts on seeing the Galapagos Islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean – where he made many of the observations that formed his theory of natural selection – was stolen in the early 1980s and is still missing. But the text is available in the online archive.
Color Sao Paulo green: South America’s largest city might be getting a bit greener. A bus company in Sao Paulo is now powering part of its fleet with a new mix of biofuels and diesel in an effort to curb emissions and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
The mix – a blend of 30 percent biodiesel, 8 percent alcohol and 62 percent petroleum diesel – will eventually be used by 1,900 buses, about a quarter of Sao Paulo’s entire bus fleet, said Paulo Mendes, director of B100, which was created by the Itaim Paulista bus company to research alternative fuels.
The fuel was developed as part of joint effort between B100 and state-run oil company Petrobras.
A school lunch lady’s best friend: It takes more than a lunch lady to run today’s public school cafeterias. It takes a logistics expert.
Take Rome, Ga.’s, West End Elementary School, where two classrooms of students charge into the lunchroom every five minutes, load their trays up with corn dogs, steak nuggets and fresh fruit and pile into cashier Lydia Galego’s line.
Galego, though, has a new tool to help handle the rush. Each student stops at a computer in front of Galego and presses an index finger up to a reader before trotting off to a table. The student’s names flash across Galego’s monitor, and each of their prepaid accounts are automatically debited $1.10.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
