MetaFilter posts tagged with MarsRover

"I never doubted that it was all going to work out."

zarq — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 09:09:47 -0800

A life well lived. On October 4, 1973, Josh Miele (4) was permanently blinded in an acid attack by his neighbor (pdf). 40 years later, Dr. Miele has worked for NASA on the Mars Rover project, he's helped develop "WearaBraille", a virtual Braille keyboard interface, and has a new project launching this month: the Descriptive Video Exchange (DVX), which will allow "sighted video viewers to seamlessly add audio description to DVDs as they watch." "...the Descriptive Video Exchange ... is a tool we have developed at Smith-Kettlewell that gives anybody, anywhere, the ability to describe anything, so that anybody, anywhere else, can hear the description. This technology uses a web-based server to store and maintain all of the descriptions associated with videos available on the web, on DVD, or from streamed sources such as Netflix. The server does not store the videos. The server only stores the descriptions, along with the identification and timing information. The server works with a video player that plays whatever video you want to watch, along with the stored descriptions. This system gets around a couple of interesting problems. For example, many videos simply are not described. There is no way to get a described version because it doesn't exist. That's one problem. With this system, anybody anywhere can volunteer to describe that video from their own home and upload the information. Then you, somewhere else, can take advantage of that description and play it back in synchronization with the video that you want to watch. This system does a sort of end run around a number of the issues related to modifying and distributing copyrighted materials. In today's model for video description, it's necessary to record a described version of a film or TV show and redistribute that version. To do that, it's necessary to get permissions. All sorts of legal and financial issues are involved. Our system does not modify or redistribute anybody's copyrighted material. It simply plays the descriptions along with the material from a legitimate source. That means it becomes much simpler to create descriptions."
A sample of a DVX video (mov file), using The Lion King. WearaBraille: * Video Demo * Technical Specs (pdf) Related article: Seattle Revolution: From Your Eyes and Mouth To Their Ears

PhD Comics tv

Blasdelb — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 04:44:32 -0800

You may already be familiar with PhDComics (Previously) and the PhDMovie (Previously), but PhDComics.tv has now become a pretty fantastic resource for both researchers and laymen. Two Minute Thesis:

PhDComics challenged grad students and researchers all over the world to describe their thesis in two minutes or less. What they got was an incredible sampling of their creativity and communication skills now representing hundreds of diverse theses. The 2012 Winners are: Grand Prize Winner: "The Synthesis of NAViSection" (Now Animated!) Description: What defines driver capabilities and how to link that capability to safety. Author: Nahom M. Beyene, U. Pittsburgh Second place: "Transubstantiation" Description: Protestant and Catholic understandings of transubstantiation may not be so different after all. Author: Brett Salkeld, Regis College Third place: "Detective work in space" Description: Theoretical astrophysics and binary stars Author: Michael Marks, U. Bonn Also animated: Whale Barf and Perfume Baillie Redfern from the U. of British Columbia explains her thesis of cloning DNA into yeast to produce an elusive perfume fixative compound called Ambergris. It involves whale barf.

Things Explained:

Alex and the gang visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and go inside the Mars Rover Test lab and chat with engineers Chaz Morantz and (yes) Bobak Ferdowsi. (5:01) Jorge talks to Physicists Daniel Whiteson and Jonathan Feng about what Dark Matters is, how much of it there is, and how we know it's there. (6:11) Physicists Daniel Whiteson and Jonathan Feng update us on life after finding the Higgs Boson (8:11) Jorge talks to Physicist Daniel Whiteson at CERN about what the Higgs Boson is and how they know if they've found it. (7:50) (Previously) What is open access? Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen take us through the world of open access publishing and explain just what it's all about. (8:23)

PhD Detours:

Alex, Jorge and the gang travel around the world to talk to real grad students and young scholars about the work they do and why they do it. From hiking out in lava fields to ethnographic studies of tap dancers, Ph.Detours gives you an inside look at the environments and the people who are doing some of the most interesting research today. Jorge and Alex travel to the highest peak in Hawaii for a look at how Astronomers figure out the molecular composition of far away stars and planets. (11:30) In this episode, Alex and the gang travel to Hawaii to find active flows of lava (16:45) Jorge visits the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. Soybeans and Symbiosis Jorge talks to Fernando, a Ph.D. student who takes care of the farm in exchange for cheap housing at the New Mexico State Chili Pepper Research Institute. Jorge visits the New Mexico State University Chili Peppers Research Institute in Las Cruces, New Mexico and finds out what makes Chili Peppers so hot.

The Audio Ph_iD Podcast

Episode 1: In Which Curiosity Goes Gangnam Style (15:41)

Mars or bust!

Tom-B — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 10:09:05 -0800

Curiosity launched today and is on its way to Mars!