Virtual-Reality Video Game Helps Link Depression To Specific Brain Area

Virtual-Reality Video Game Helps Link Depression To Specific Brain Area: "Scientists are using a virtual-reality, three-dimensional video game that challenges spatial memory as a new tool for assessing the link between depression and the hippocampus, the brain's memory hub. Spatial memory is the memory of how things are oriented in space and how to get to them. Researchers found that depressed people performed poorly on the video game compared with nondepressed people, suggesting that their hippocampi were not working properly."

Getting There Faster With Virtual Reality

Getting There Faster With Virtual Reality: "Is the navigation system too complex? Does it distract the driver’s attention from the traffic? To test electronic assistants, their developers have to build numerous prototypes – an expensive and time-consuming business. Tests in a virtual world make prototypes unnecessary."

Coming Soon: The Most Realistic Virtual Reality Room In The World

Coming Soon: The Most Realistic Virtual Reality Room In The World: "You're high above the desert peaks. Your aircraft are approaching their targets. Information from instruments, cameras and radar is before your eyes. And with the help of 100 million pixels of bright and vivid virtual reality you're in control of a swarm of U.S. Air Force unmanned aerial vehicles."

PA Congressman Mike Doyle announces formation of Congressional Caucus on Robotics

News Releases: "Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Doyle and Tennessee Congressman Zach Wamp today announced the formation of a bi-partisan Congressional Caucus on Robotics. The caucus will focus on key issues facing the nation’s traditional industrial robotics industry as well as issues critical to growing companies, markets, and industries based on recent technological advances that enable robots to perform functions beyond traditional assembly line tasks and to operate in environments beyond the factory floor."

Dealing With The Data Deluge

From Molecules To The Milky Way: Dealing With The Data Deluge: "Most people have a few gigabytes of files on their PC. In the next decade, astronomers expect to be processing 10 million gigabytes of data every hour from the Square Kilometre Array telescope."

A New Kind of Science

Author Pays Brainy Undergrad $25,000 for Identifying Simplest Computer: Scientific American: "Wolfram Research, the company founded by A New Kind of Science author Stephen Wolfram, has awarded $25,000 to an undergraduate for proving that a simple model called a 2,3 Turing machine, visualized in action here, can perform any conceivable computation. The machine scans the boxes in each row and applies one of six rules to generate the row underneath."

Robot dogs race to be soldier's best friend

New Scientist Tech Robot dogs race to be soldier's best friend: "A timid-looking four-legged robot about the size of a Chihuahua might seem like an unlikely companion for soldiers of the future. Yet the robot, called LittleDog, could ultimately help researchers create more sophisticated robotic assistants for military personnel, including automated 'pack-mules' capable of hauling heavy loads over tough terrain. This is because LittleDog is remarkably agile for a robot when faced with treacherous, uneven terrain. Researchers are also fine-tuning its movement to be even faster and more animal-like over rough terrain."