(via mrdiv)
View high resolution
Mass Participation Dream Experiment Launches
Is it possible to influence people as they sleep and give them their perfect dream?
April 10th saw the launch of a new study that uses a specially designed iPhone app in an attempt to improve the dreams of millions of people around the world. If successful, the study will allow people to create their perfect dream and so wake up feeling especially happy and refreshed.
This study was launched at the Edinburgh International Science Festival by psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire.
Wiseman has teamed-up with app developers YUZA to create ‘Dream:ON’ — an app that monitors a person as they sleep and plays a carefully crafted ‘soundscape’ when they dream.
Each soundscape has been carefully designed to evoke a pleasant scenario, such a walk in the woods, or lying on a beach, and Wiseman hopes that these sounds will influence people’s dreams.
At the end of the dream the app sounds a gentle alarm and prompts the person to submit a description of their dream into a database known as ‘The Dream Catcher’. Users of Dream:ON are also encouraged to share their dreams via Facebook and Twitter.
Each night Wiseman will collect thousands of dream reports and use the information to discover whether it is possible to give the world sweet dreams. “The app is free and we want as many people as possible to participate,” noted Wiseman. “I have conducted many mass participation experiments in the past, but this is by far the most ambitious and exciting.”
(via scinerds)
Conversation for beginners
New software combines ancient Chinese practices and modern medicine to measure health by analyzing images of the tongue.
Contact lenses ‘see’ blood sugar levels for diabetics
Millions of Americans who have diabetes may be able to get rid of their painful blood testing devices in favor of a prototype being developed at the University of Akron. These lenses sense the glucose in your tears that, if not being metabolized correctly, would build up just as it would in your blood. The contact lens would recognize the problem and change color to alert the wearer. […]
[read more @dvice] [University of Akron]
(via emergentfutures)
19 Year Old Invents Rocket Propulsion Device (via thenextweb)
(via emergentfutures)
View high resolution
‘Beams’ from space that could power cities: First tests on solar satellites offer hope of green energy
Researchers at Stratchclyde University have already tested equipment in space, a first step for solar panels to collect energy and transfer it back to earth through microwaves or lasers.
The researchers aim to produce a ‘swarm’ of satellites that could one day power whole cities.
Full Story: Mailonline
I am amazed this hasn’t been done already.