ARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2013
INTERNATIONAL
24
World News Roundup
In this photo made on Jan 24, 2013 in Chicago, University of Illinois-Chicago computer scientist Jason Leigh, co-inventor of the CAVE2 virtual reality system, stands in the CAVE2. (Inset): In this photo taken on Jan 24, 2013, in Chicago,
Pattern
brain surgeon Ali Alaraj talks about the first time he viewed the brain using the CAVE2. (AP)
Science
‘Fibonacci’ CAVE2 technology ‘a national treasure’
Nature follows number series
Using 3D worlds to visualize data
By Lee Reich
W
hat do pine cones and paintings have in common? A 13th century Italian mathematician named Leonardo of Pisa. Better known by his pen name, Fibonacci, he came up with a number sequence that keeps popping up throughout the plant kingdom, and the art world too. A fibonacci sequence is simple enough to generate: Starting with the number one, you merely add the previous two numbers in the sequence to generate the next one. So the sequence, early on, is 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on. To see how it works in nature, go outside and find an intact pine cone (or any other cone). Look carefully and you’ll notice that the bracts that make up the cone are Fibonacci arranged in a spiral. Actually two spirals, running in opposite directions, with one rising steeply and the other gradually from the cone’s base to its tip. Count the number of spirals in each direction — a job made easier by dabbing the bracts along one line of each spiral with a colored marker. The number of spirals in either direction is a fibonacci number. I just counted 5 parallel spirals going in one direction and 8 parallel spirals going in the opposite direction on a Norway spruce cone. Or you might examine a pineapple. Focus on one of the hexagonal scales near the fruit’s midriff and you can pick out three spirals, each aligned to a different pair of opposing sides of the hexagon. One set rises gradually, another moderately and the third steeply. Count the number of spirals and you’ll find eight gradual, 13 moderate and 21 steeply rising ones. Fibonacci numbers again. Scales and bracts are modified leaves, and the spiral arrangements in pine cones and pineapples reflect the spiral growth habit of stems. To confirm this, bring in a leafless stem from some tree or shrub and look at its buds, where leaves were attached. The buds range up the stem in a spiral pattern, which kept each leaf out of the shadow of leaves just above it. The amount of spiraling varies from plant to plant, with new leaves developing in some fraction — such as 2/5, 3/5, 3/8 or 8/13 — of a spiral. Eureka, the numbers in those fractions are fibonacci numbers! You can determine the fraction on your dormant stem by finding a bud directly above another one, then counting the number of full circles the stem went through to get there while generating buds in between. So if the stems made three full circles to get a bud back where it started and generated eight buds getting there, the fraction is 3/8, with each bud 3/8 of a turn off its neighbor upstairs or downstairs. (AP)
A Russian technician of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) looks at a monitor during the inauguration of a system for monitoring and correction, part of the Russian Global System of Satellite Navigation (GLONASS), at Brasilia’s University, in Brasilia on Feb 19. This GLONASS station, the first built outside Russia, is an important step to improve the efficiency of its navigation system - Russia’s new rival to the US-made Global Position Service GPS. (AFP)
Space NASA regains station contact: The International Space Station regained contact with NASA controllers in Houston after nearly three hours of accidental quiet, the space agency says in Washington. Officials say the six crew members and station are fine and had no problem during the brief outage. NASA spokesman Josh Byerly said something went wrong around 9:45 am. EST Tuesday (1445 GMT during a computer software update on the station. The outpost abruptly lost all communication, voice and command from Houston. Communication was restored less than three hours later, Byerly said “We’ve got our command and control back,” he said. Station commander Kevin Ford was able to briefly radio Moscow while the station was flying over Russia. Normally, NASA communicates with and sends commands to the station from Houston, via three communications satellites that transmit voice, video and data. Such interruptions have happened a few times in the past, the space agency said. (AP) ❑ ❑ ❑
Caltech prez to lead university: California Institute of Technology President Jean-Lou Chameau plans to step down from the top job at the prestigious institute to lead a new Saudi Arabian university. Caltech announced Chameau’s decision in a letter Tuesday in Pasadena, California, with officials thanking him for his commitment to expanding resources for “high-risk, high-reward research.” In his resignation letter to the community, Chameau said there’s historical significance to his new job as president of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. With significant resources and a lofty mission, Chameau’s new role will have him leading a school poised to “have a dramatic impact on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and the world,” he said in a statement Tuesday. Chameau was provost of the Georgia Institute of Technology before he became Caltech’s eighth president in 2006 — a role
CHICAGO, Feb 20, (AP): Take a walk through a human brain? Fly over the surface of Mars? Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago are pushing science fiction closer to reality with a wraparound virtual world where a researcher wearing 3D glasses can do all that and more. In the system, known as CAVE2, an 8-foot-high screen encircles the viewer 320 degrees. A panorama of images springs from 72 stereoscopic liquid crystal display panels, conveying a dizzying sense of being able to touch what’s not really there. As far back as 1950, sci-fi author Ray Bradbury imagined a children’s nursery that could make bedtime stories disturbingly real. “Star Trek” fans might remember the holodeck as the virtual playground where the fictional Enterprise crew relaxed in fantasy worlds. The Illinois computer scientists have more serious matters in mind when they hand visitors 3D glasses and a controller called a “wand.” Scientists in many fields today share a common challenge: How to truly understand overwhelming amounts of data. Jason Leigh, coinventor of the CAVE2 virtual reality system, believes this technology answers that challenge. “In the next five years, we anticipate using the CAVE to look at really large-scale data to help scientists make sense of that information. CAVEs are essentially fantastic lenses for bringing data into focus,” Leigh said. The CAVE2 virtual world could change the way doctors are trained and improve patient care, Leigh said. Pharmaceutical researchers could use it to model the way new drugs bind to proteins in the human body. Car designers could virtually “drive” their new vehicle designs.
Simulation Imagine turning massive amounts of data — the forces behind a hurricane, for example — into a simulation that a weather researcher could enlarge and explore from the inside. Architects could walk through their skyscrapers before they are built. Surgeons could rehearse a procedure using data from an individual patient. But the size and expense of roombased virtual reality systems may prove insurmountable barriers to widespread use, said Henry Fuchs, a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina at
Moon, asteroid mining lucrative prospect
Space likely for rare earths search SYDNEY, Feb 20, (AFP): The quest for rare earths vital to some of modern life’s most indispensable technologies may see mining robots jet to the stars within decades, a world-first conference in Australia was told Wednesday. Yttrium, Lanthanum and the other 15 minerals which make up the group of elements known as rare earths are crucial to everything from wind turbines and hybrid cars to cruise missiles and the ubiquitous smartphone. As technology advances so too does demand for the elements which, although relatively abundant, require laborious and wasteintensive processing to be freed from surrounding rock. They are a precious commodity — so precious scientists are now looking beyond Earth’s reaches for new supplies, with moon and asteroid mining becoming a lucrative prospect, according to researchers and tech firms gathered in Sydney for the world’s first formal “OffEarth Mining Forum”. “It’s about joining the dots,” explained conference convenor Andrew Dempster from the Australian Centre for Space Engineering. “I think we’ve got to the point where people are saying ‘yeah, I think we can do this’.” A cross-section of the space and
mining industry’s top minds have gathered to swap ideas about the latest advances in space and mining technology, from Rio Tinto and Sandvik to NASA and Japan’s space agency JAXA. Rene Fradet, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory — the organisation behind the current Mars Curiosity Rover mission — believes space mining will be possible and economical within 20-30 years. But Dempster thinks it could be quicker than that. “Most of the technology already exists, but there needs to be a business case. It depends on making that business case.” Like the challenges, the costs are substantial: to transport one kilogram to the moon is $100,000, and none of the cutting-edge completely automated technology comes cheap. One delegate, NASA affiliate Berok Khoshnevis from the University of Southern California, has developed technology to make waterless sulphur-based cement from the loose rubble on Mars and Earth’s moon. Matthew Dunbabin, from the Australia’s government’s science agency CSIRO, has done a large-scale simulation of using mining machinery in space and told delegates the main issue was electrical power. Few space missions had
attempted significant excavations — the sum total of all NASA’s Apollo missions had been 382 kilograms and the Mars programme had netted in the order of “grams”, Dunbabin said. Gravity, temperatures, atmospheric pressure, radiation and the consistency of surfaces themselves all present unique problems, complicated by the fact that operations in space would have to be largely automated and remote-controlled. Space drilling also throws up the question: who owns the moon’s resources? SingTel Optus lawyer Donna Lawler likened it to the law of the high seas, where energy firms can mine in international waters without claiming territorial ownership. More than 100 countries including the US have ratified the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which holds signatory nations responsible for activities in space but it is as yet untested. It may be soon if space mining joins the moon landings in the annals of science fiction-turnedreality. “There’s nothing really science fiction about any of this. In many ways a lot of the technology already exists, I don’t think we really have to invent much science,” said Dempster.
Chapel Hill, who is familiar with the CAVE technology but wasn’t involved in its development. While he calls the CAVE2 “a national treasure,” Fuchs predicts a smaller technology such as Google’s Internet-connected eyeglasses will do more to revolutionize medicine than the CAVE. Still, he says large displays are the best way today for people to interact and collaborate. Believers include the people at Marshalltown, Iowa-based Mechdyne Corp., which has licensed the CAVE2 technology for three years and plans to market it to hospitals, the military and in the oil and gas industry, said Kurt Hoffmeister of Mechdyne. In Chicago, researchers and graduate students are creating virtual sce-
narios for testing in the CAVE2. The Mars flyover is created from real NASA data. The brain tour is based on the layout of blood vessels in a real patient. Brain surgeon Ali Alaraj remembered the first time he viewed the brain using the CAVE2.
aneurysms and determining proper treatment, said Andreas Linninger, UIC professor of bioengineering, chemical engineering and computer science. But it’s not all serious business at the lab. In his spare time during the past two years, research assistant Arthur Nishimoto has been programming the CAVE2 computer with the specifications for the fictional Starship Enterprise. He now can walk around his life-size recreation of the TV spacecraft. The original technology, introduced in the early 1990s, was called CAVE, which stood for Cave Automatic Virtual Environment and also cleverly referred to Plato’s cave, the philosopher’s analogy about shadows and reality.
he believed would complete his career, leading to retirement in Pasadena, where Caltech is based. (AP) ❑ ❑ ❑
Asteroid impact zone found: Scientists have discovered a 200-kilometrewide (125-mile-wide) impact zone in the Australian outback they believe was caused by a massive asteroid smashing
Byerly
Chameau
Fiction “You can walk between the blood vessels,” said the University of Illinois College of Medicine neurosurgeon. “You can look at the arteries from below. You can look at the arteries from the side.... That was science fiction for me.” Would doctors process information faster with fewer errors using CAVE2? That’s the question behind a proposed study that would compare CAVE2 to conventional methods of detecting brain
into Earth more than 300 million years ago. Andrew Glikson, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, said the asteroid measuring 10 to 20 kms in diameter was a giant compared to the plunging meteor that exploded above Russia a week ago. While that event set off a shockwave
that shattered windows and hurt almost 1,000 people in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, Glikson said the consequences of the Australian event would have been global. “This is a new discovery,” Glikson told AFP on Wednesday, describing the impact zone in South Australia’s East Warburton Basin. (AFP)