Beyond braille, this device can output raised patterns, maps, graphics and more, all for the visually impaired using liquid rather than mechanical parts for a more robust machine and fluid experience.

Liquid bubbles raise up on the surface of the device while complimentary software is able to convert various file formats for easy compatibility, accepting files wirelessly or via USB. Blitab Technology boasts of its creation: “This is revolutionary and we want to solve a great issue, and that’s the literacy of blind people. The technology is quite scalable so we can output images and put any tactile relief representation like maps and graphics, such as geometric figures, in order to serve as an educational tool for blind people.”

Current market competitors (like the one shown above) generate only a single line of braille at a time and cannot create more complex shapes – they also cost up to three times as much and thus serve only small niche markets that can afford them.

“We think blind people should be included in the digital era in which we live, with all of the smartphones and tablets, but also ensure that they have a proper way to do everything that sighted people do, like web browsing, reading books and downloading books. Only 1% of all books worldwide are available in printed braille, as it’s very expensive to produce printed braille. Some people are even saying that braille is decreasing among blind people but we want to get to the point where we can actually change this.”

The post Tactile Tablet: Dynamic Liquid Surface Device for the Blind first appeared on Gajitz.

The idea of oceans on other celestial bodies orbiting our sun was once very much a thing of mystery, and a big deal in the case of Mars, but we have since discovered numerous surprising bodies of water on dwarf planets and planetary moons.

Water, particularly in liquid form, is critical to life as we know it, making such discoveries by probes and other robotic explorers all the more important to humanity. A NASA chief scientist was recently so bold as to claim the following at a conference: “I believe we are going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years.”

Nor are extreme conditions necessarily life-prohibitive: “life, at least the simplest forms, may survive in more environments than once believed. Indeed, even on Earth, life is ubiquitous, from scalding volcanic vents to frozen wastes. And we may not, as it turns out, need to travel light years to find extraterrestrial oceans or observe our first alien life forms. The proverbial backyard may suffice.” Even at great distances from our planet, on cold spheres like Europa, liquid water can be found thanks to heat energy and friction. Whether we will find more than building blocks and elementary life within (or beyond) our star is hard to say, but news of known extraterrestrial life may indeed not be too far away.

The post Alien Waters: 9 Extraterrestrial Oceans in Our Solar System first appeared on Gajitz.

Some of the best science starts with an accidental discovery, like a researcher noticing that dots of food coloring were sorting themselves, behaving much like living cells would be expected to do, chasing, dancing around and avoiding one another.

Years of research later, Nate Circa and a team of scientists have published a paper in Nature on what they discovered through subsequent experiments: “The critical fact was that food coloring is a two-component fluid. In such fluids, two different chemical compounds coexist while retaining separate molecular identities.”

“The droplets in this experiment consisted of two molecular compounds found naturally in food coloring: water and propylene glycol. The researchers discovered how the dynamic interactions of these two molecular components enabled inanimate droplets to mimic some of the behaviors of living cells.”

The video and these animated gifs illustrate the phenomena in ways that are far more intuitively easy to grasp than the complex fluid dynamics that explains the behavior – aside from simply being fascinating to watch.

“The physical properties of these fluids give rise to this immense complexity of behavior. For example, chasing and sensing each other, and very much what we call artificial chemotaxis. Chemotaxis is the idea in biology that one single cell can sense where its enemy is, and it brings up all its machinery, and it chases that enemy to try to eat it.”

The post Mystery Attraction: Science Solves Self-Organizing Drops first appeared on Gajitz.