Kinect Now Used In Medical Research In Place Of $150,000 System

TheKinecthas only been out for a few months and it has been used for abunchof different purposes and even broke aGuinness World Recordfor sales. Now, Kinect can add another milestone to its resume: medical research.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found a way to use the Kinect in place of a $100,000 system to monitor children being diagnosed with OCD and ADD. Professor Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos said that,“As a doctor, you don’t have tangible data. We try to provide the tools in order to back up claims of a mental disorder.” The data he is referring to is now gained from a tweaked version of Kinect.

The Kinect has proven itself to be an amazing device, especially at its price point.“Something we can do three years down the line, we can do it today because of technology that was destined for the gaming industry. I don’t think Microsoft has realized that {Kinect} is something that could change medicine,” said Papanikolopoulos.

Theresearchrecently won a $3 million grant from the NSF to use Kinect in observing and analyzing abnormal movements and behaviors in children.

{via1up}

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News Corp: WSJ Tablet Subscriptions Are Blowing Up

I think we are all still pretty skeptical of thetablet-based newspapers right now— nothing against them, it’s just a question of scale and pricing. With surprisingly low pricing like the Daily’s, or (relatively) high pricing like the WSJ’s, can they get enough people to subscribe to make turn a dollar?

As it turns out: yes, at least on the Wall Street Journal’s part. The paper’s publisher, Les Hinton, saysthe number of tablet subscribers to the WSJ has quadrupled since last year, and is now hovering around 200,000. The paper itself has a circulation of about 1.6 million, so that’s not bad at all.

Then there’sthe Daily, which is a different value proposition, being only on the tablet. My guess is they’re struggling for subscribers right now, but they probably expected that to happen. They’re among the first to go all-tablet, and that’s risky. But if they’re willing to spend the money at the beginning, they can work out the process, squash the bugs, and be at 100% when the others launch their inevitable competitors.

Two sure things: the marketisgrowing and people are willing to pay, so it’s too early to call it one thing or another.

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Burton Makes A Serious Camera Backpack: The F-Stop

You don’t have to only make photo gear in order to make decent photo gear, it looks like.This multi-purpose F-Stop packwould be great for the sports photographers and documentary filmmakers who spend a lot of time on the mountain.

It’s got a compartmentalized main cargo area, with room for a large SLR camera, a few lenses, and a few filters, batteries, and so on. There are the usual big-backpack luxuries, like load-balancing straps and a padded back, and this one, being a Burton bag, actually has a big strap system for mounting your board as well.

Looks solid to me. Costs $225, but they’re out of stock now. Check back later.

{viaDoobybrain}

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Dragon Age 2 Comes To The Mac On Day One

The originalDragon Agewas a pretty good game— very free roaming, but precise. It wasn’t uncommon to spend 90+ hours in the main story, but at least the story had substance, just a bit long. Today,Dragon Age 2released, and continuing on the steam from the first, the developerBioWare, has released the game for PC, XBox, PlayStation 3 and Mac OS X simultaneously.

Mac gamers now have a really good game to look forward to, and on day 1 too. Mac users will need a pretty powerful machine. Dragon Age II needs at least a Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86Ghz or faster chip, Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later, 2GB of RAM or more and a minimum ATI HD2600 or NVidia 9400 or better video card (at least 256MB VRAM).

Gamers can grab the game for $60.

{viamacnn}

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DIY Bluetooth Handset For Your Hand (Video)

You would expect someone with blue hair to wear a purpleglove phone. This DIY Bluetooth glove, sourced from a purple fingerless glove and a Bluetooth headset, was made with just a few extra wires and shrink wrapping.

Once fitted, the wires and components were sewn in and a microswitch was added for easy calling and working.

I think this should make a run up on Kickstarter, so that everyone make easy calls with right at their fingertips.

{viainstructables}

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800 Swiss ETA Movements Stolen From Watchmaker In Porrentruy

Thieves took a a cache ofBuran-signed800 ETA movements from a watchmaker in Porrentruy, Switzerland. They included some 2824-2 and 7750 movements. The7750sare used in chronographs.

ETA movements are become increasingly more rare as the company’s owner, the Swatch Group, is cracking down on their international distribution. This cache, while small, could be work up to $800,000 depending on the quality and type of movement.

WatchmakerTorsten Nagengastis asking folks to keep an eye out for Buran-branded movements in the wild.

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Enjoying Conspicuous Consumption With Gresso’s iPhone 4 Black Diamonds For Lady

Got some extra gold bricks lying around? Check out the GressoiPhone4 Black Diamonds for Lady. It’s not a case, rather the phone has been modded to house 6 carats of black diamonds, edging in platinum, a 2 carat diamond home button and a frame of white diamonds. The back of the phone is made of a 200-year-old African Blackwood.

So far price is not known, but the versionwithoutdiamonds is $10,000. I’d rather use a white iPhone.

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Yikes, A RoboRoach Made By Grafting A Toy Bug To A Real Bug

Some aspiring Dr. Frankensteins have taken the circuitry from aHexbugremote control critter and grafted it directly to the nervous system of a large cockroach. They can now steer the cockroach.

I’m not taking any kind of moral high ground here, and this stuff is very interesting to me, but it still squicks me out to think that we are capable of doing this bio-manipulation so easily.Backyard Brains, the company who made this“RoboRoach,” are planning on offering a kit. A mind-control kit for bugs!Oh my god, you guys.

{viaBoingBoing}

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Doom: The Love Child Of D&D And NeXT

We here at CrunchGear love John Carmack. HisQuakeworld 2010 keynoteremains one of ourfavoriteno-nonsense tech talks, up there with the unveiling of the iPhone. So when he speaks, we listen with interest. Unfortunately, he wasn’t at GDC to talk about the origins of Doom, everyone’s favorite mom-shocking FPS from the early 90s. Fortunately,JohnRomeroand Tom Hall were. Man, I wish I was there!

I’ve always been interested in the development of Doom and Quake, since those games were a serious cut above the competition at the time, and have aged extremely well. Some stuff is known about the incubation process of the game, but Romero and Hall today talked about how they digitized clay models on their NeXT Cube, played and replayed levels, and how they basically were inspired by (read: ripped off) D&D for a lot of their levels and monsters.

1up has more info on the panel, but I’m hoping a full transcript or video will be available later, this super-early game development stuff is really interesting to me.

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Exterminate Enemies With The Ride In Dalek

Here’s a toy for the youngsters: aRide In Dalek. It allows your kid to be the mutant in a mechanical shell. There is an electric motor that allows for 360-degree movement and there is an illuminated cockpit with 10 different sound effects and Dalek phrases. Also, the manipulator and arms can be moved.

The whole thing breaks down into three pieces for charging and storage. (Kinda jealous of kids right now.)

Price is£199.99 with free delivery.

{via7gadgets}

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