CHANGE IS A CONSTANT

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

This glove could give some independence to elderly and disabled people

Published on Sep 10, 2016

This wearable robot helps disabled patients regain control of their hands

Category: Entertainment
License: Standard YouTube License

Link: https://youtu.be/DJngN7KEFNU

pic.twitter.com/cNQCEpG958

This glove could give some independence to elderly and disabled people

The Exo-Glove is a wearable soft robot

The Exo-Glove was created by a team at SNU Robotics, and it is helping some paralyzed people by allowing them to grasp and lift things up to a pound.

Monday, June 19, 2017

Most Colorful: Mandarin Duck

Mandarin Duck. Photo: Chokchai Leangsuksun/Audubon Photography Awards

Most Colorful: Mandarin Duck

The male Mandarin Duck—a close relative of the Wood Duck—has the most elaborate combination of plumage, with bright red and orange cheeks, a cobalt and magenta chest, and dazzling patches that blanket him from end to end. These stunning creatures, native to eastern Russia, China, Japan, and Korea, far outshine their female counterparts, which are predominantly brown. Way to steal the show, Dad!

Longest Schnoz: Sword-billed Hummingbird

**Sword-billed Hummingbird.** Photo: Andy Morffew/Flickr CC (BY-ND 2.0)

True to its name, the Sword-billed Hummingbird has a beak that measures up to four inches. But bigger isn’t always better: Because his bill is longer than his metallic-colored body, this South American critter has trouble balancing. The good news is that he has to maintain really great posture.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Why academics are losing relevance in society

Why academics are losing relevance in society – and how to stop it

http://theconversation.com/why-academics-are-losing-relevance-in-society-and-how-to-stop-it-64579?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter …

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Mindfulness - history channel documentary - Psychology of Mindfulness - ...

Link: https://youtu.be/slKAFdJ8ZHY

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Bruce Springsteen ''I Ain't Got No Home''

The
music of Woody Guthrie, the voice of Bruce Springsteen and the
photography of Dorothea Lange. From the CD, "Folkways: A Vision Shared".
(no copyright infringement intended)

Link: https://youtu.be/jBl84eo68VI

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Terence McKenna: The Public Is A Reflection of Print Culture

Taken from a video titled 'Overcoming Culture'.

Terence McKenna playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

Link: https://youtu.be/VBhN3KPVRVw

Rumi

If you have much, give of your wealth; If you have little, give of your Heart.~ Rumi

Albert Einstein, Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi with a friend in South Africa, circa 1900 -.

Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Rabindranath Tagore with Albert Einstein in 1926 at Einsteins Home in Berlin Germany

Rab Quotes:
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.]

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Einstein Robot replicates human facial expressions.

Einstein robot's facial expressions and smarts

Chris Velazco, Engadget

The mechanical professor from Hanson Robotics is designed to be your favorite teacher, loaded with tons of knowledge, funny anecdotes and exaggerated expressions.

At a time when digital assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home are making voice-controlled human-machine interactions more common, a chatty "personal genius" for kids seems like a natural progression for mechanical toys.

(Photo credit: Chris Velazco, Engadget)

Einstein communicates in both online and offline modes. When it's connected to the cloud via WiFi, it uses natural language processing to keep the conversation going. Instead of building its own speech recognition technique, the company taps into open-sourced APIs, allowing the robot to do things like pull up weather updates or tell you about Donald Trump. But it seems to be most active in its offline mode, when it connects to an accompanying app called Stein-o-Matic that's designed to keep kids engaged through audio-visual activities.

The company, which has been around 2013, is known for building robots that have life-like expressions. Chatty Sophia made a splash at SXSW last year, while BINA48 was widely acclaimed as one of the most realistic robots. Then there was the lifesize Einstein, which had an uncanny resemblance to the man it emulated. Each machine came one step closer to replicating human facial expressions.

The machine picks up movements of the face right in front of it. This tracking, known as "blob detection" in computer vision, is different from facial recognition. It doesn't record or memorize faces. Instead, it can spot facial features to detect and keep up with movements to maintain eye contact through most conversations.

The robot entertains and educates, and has a price point just under Mattel's recently announced Aristotle -- a $300 connected speaker aimed at a young generation. It also undercuts Lego's Mindstorms collection, a range of robots starting from $350.

While Einstein is pegged as an affordable personal companion, it doesn't seem to have the output required to compete with the personal assistant speakers that have already found a spot on thousands of kitchen counters across the country.

The robot's speaker lacks the clarity of an Amazon Echo or Google Home. And as the machine moves its mouth and head to create the expressions that the company is famous for, a whirring sound makes its voice that much harder to pay attention to.

What's more, Einstein's ability to pull information from the web is a lot slower than say Alexa, for instance. It compensates for its pace with a polite teacher-like disposition: "Let me think about that for a moment."