Texas A&M Universty
Last November, German tech firm Evoluce unveiled a Kinect-based prototype multi-touch system that allows users to navigate through Windows 7 applications, simply by moving their hands in the air. While that system utilizes the Kinect unit’s RGB camera and depth sensor to track the user’s hands, a new technology developed at Texas A&M University's Interface Ecology Lab uses a matrix of infrared light beams to do essentially the same thing. It’s called ZeroTouch, and it was presented at last week’s 2011 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver. Read More
We’ve already heard about new types of packaging that use things such as sorbic acid and silver nanoparticles to keep food fresh for longer, but this week scientists from Texas A&M University announced the development of a “nano-brick” film that utilizes yet another substance to achieve the same purpose. That substance is montmorillonite clay, which is one of the ingredients used to make bricks. The film is about 70 percent clay (with the rest of it made from various polymer materials) and when its structure is viewed through an electron microscope, it actually even looks like bricks and mortar. Read More
