Month: February 2017

BARCELONA—Not every device at Mobile World Congress is a phone or tablet—Sony is launching the "Xperia Touch" a portable short-throw laser projector that turns any surface into a touchable Android device. Sony has shown off the device at various tech conferences as a "concept," but in Barcelona, Sony is announcing the device as a real product, albeit for the eye-popping price of €1,499 ($1,588, probably ~£1400).

The device is a 134mm × 143mm × 69 mm (5.3 × 5.6 × 2.7 inches) metal box with all the usual smartphone parts, but instead of a screen, it has a laser LCoS laser projector with auto focus. As the name implies, the Xperia Touch also supports touch controls, through a combination of an IR array and a 60fps camera,

Andrew Williams

BARCELONA, Spain—VR has the potential to be a very exciting technological domain, but it's lumbered with numerous problems: high price, low performance, and generally the sheer pain-in-the-backside factor, particularly with more advanced setups like the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. At MWC 2017 we tried two solutions that evaporate the physical connection between headset and PC, mostly mitigating the last of those three issues.

The two solutions are DisplayLink XR, made by DisplayLink, and TPCast, which appears to be made by a company called TPCast. We wrote about the latter back in November 2016 when it was first announced in China. Now we’ve physically tried them both.

Enlarge / The LISA mission, currently in planning, will create a space-based gravitational wave detector. (credit: ESA)

Up until a year ago, gravitational waves were a theoretical construct, a consequence of the theory of relativity. We had indirect evidence that they were real, as energy was lost from binary star systems just as Einstein predicted. But directly observing them took the upgraded Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). As soon as we detected them, however, astrophysicists were quick to point out that they gave us a completely new window through which we could view the most energetic events in the Universe.

As a sign of just how seriously that claim is being taken, European physicists just opened up a new detector. Called VIRGO, it will combine with LIGO to give us a better picture of where events are taking place. And Virgo isn't the end. Researchers used the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to discuss the next generations of gravitational wave detectors—as well as the continuation of what's now a decades-long experiment that has come up empty so far.

VIRGO and LIGO work based on the same physical principles. Laser light is sent back and forth between mirrors at the ends of two perpendicular 4km long arms. After a sufficient number of trips, they're recombined in a way that lets small changes in the distance between the mirrors to be detected. Passing gravitational waves ripple the fabric of space, changing that distance infinitesimally.

Axon, the body cam division of Taser International, has announced Signal Sidearm, a gun holster sensor that detects when a weapon has been removed from a holster and automatically prompts all nearby body cams to start recording.

The Signal Sidearm, despite its slightly confusing name and provided artwork, isn't a pricey, complex smart weapon, but rather a sensor that can be retrofitted into "most existing firearm holsters." The sensor is powered by a coin cell battery that lasts approximately 1.5 years. It sounds like the sensor is technologically very simple, which hopefully means it's also very reliable.

Enlarge / The Calicut Medical College Hospital. (credit: Calicut Medical College Hospital)

A network of compassionate volunteers caring for their terminally ill neighbours is helping more people in Kerala, India, to end their days at peace and at home. For Mosaic, Jeremy Laurance meets the man leading the movement. His story is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Thirty years ago a young anaesthetist, newly appointed as head of department at Calicut Medical College Hospital in the Indian state of Kerala, encountered a case that would change his life.

A college professor aged 42 with cancer of the tongue had been referred to him by an oncologist. The man was in severe pain and the anaesthetist, Dr. M R Rajagopal, was asked if he could help. He injected the mandibular nerve in the jaw in a procedure known as a nerve block and told the patient to return in 24 hours. Next day, the pain had almost completely gone and Dr. Raj, as he is known, was pleased with his work.