Walyou |  |
- EsoGlove Robotic Wearable Restores Hand Movements
- If Star Wars Characters Were Fashion Models
- 10 Dog Collars & Accessories to Make a Geekier Pet
- Cheero Sleepion Employs Light, Sound and Aroma to Induce Sleep
- Pay What You Want: Expert Photography Bundle
- The Galaxy S7 Might Be Water Proof And Use SD Cards
- David Bowie: That Time He Was In A Video Game
| EsoGlove Robotic Wearable Restores Hand Movements Posted: 13 Jan 2016 09:32 AM PST  A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore has developed a robotic glove that can help with hand rehabilitation after nerve-damaging injuries or strokes. Injuries, nerve-related conditions and strokes can cause people to lose motor skills, and hands are most frequently affected. The NUS research team comprised of Asst Prof Yeow, his clinical collaborator Dr Lim Jeong Hoon from the NUS Department of Medicine, as well as PhD candidate Mr Yap Hong Kai and undergraduate student Mr Benjamin Ang Wee Keong, who are both from the NUS Department of Biomedical Engineering, has developed a robotic glove they named EsoGlove in an attempt to restore hand movements in these patients. “For patients to restore their hand functions, they need to go through rehabilitation programmes that involve repetitive tasks such as gripping and releasing objects,” explained Assistant Professor Raye Yeow from the NUS Department of Biomedical Engineering, a specialist in soft wearable robotics and a key member of the research team. “These exercises are often labour intensive and are confined to clinical settings. EsoGlove is designed to enable patients to carry out rehabilitation exercises in various settings – in the hospital wards, rehabilitation centres and even at home. Equipped with technology that can detect and interpret muscle signals, EsoGlove can also assist patients in daily activities, for instance by guiding the fingers to perform tasks such as holding a cup.” The robotic glove represents a step forward from the conventional hand rehabilitation devices, which have rigid electromechanical components, since its sensors are able to pick up muscle signals and the it is able to follow the natural movements of the human hand, thus diminishing both injury risks and discomfort. On top of that, EsoGlove is also very portable thanks to its very compact design. “EsoGlove is unique as it is made entirely of soft components and does not require complicated mechanical setups. The main body of the glove is made of fabric, with soft actuators embedded. It also has adjustable Velcro straps to cater to different hand sizes,” Asst Prof Yeow said. “With this unique approach, we can develop therapeutic tools using safe and wearable robotic technology. Patients can take the initiative in their own rehabilitative process, rather than being passive recipients of therapists' intervention,” added Dr Lim, a Senior Consultant at the National University Hospital's Division of Neurology. Mr Yap, who is also from the NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, explained how exactly the EsoGlove is supposed to work: “As the soft actuators in the EsoGlove are made from non-ferromagnetic materials, they are suitable for use in functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. We hope that the robotic glove can contribute towards investigating the brain’s activity in relation to motor performance during hand rehabilitation, and unravel the functional effects of soft rehabilitation robotics on brain stimulation.”. EsoGlove is patent-pending device, and once that is obtained, the team will start a spin-off company to sell the product. Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the robotic glove that helps stroke patients regain motor skills, or the Goldfinger smart glove that is powered by finger movements.         |
| If Star Wars Characters Were Fashion Models Posted: 13 Jan 2016 05:00 AM PST  Taking Star Wars characters and outfit designs and turning them into something of a runway show for fashion models isn’t the most obvious of ideas, but that’s when fan art truly fulfill its purpose. The easiest of transformations comes with Rey, who is played by the stunning Daisy Ridley, so no points for creativity there. But to think of Chewbacca turned into a coat of fur is both ambitious and cruel, and turning droids into Heroic chic like models deserve a few more credits too. My favorite of the bunch is turning BB-8 into a fully functional dress, although Yoda actually being anything other than a short, old Jedi Master is always interesting to look at. Last thought: I wonder if the Boba Fett model has a Sarlaac waiting for her at the end of the runway. Check out this awesome Star Wars Couture Collection, which was created by the very talented by Guillermo Meraz. Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter. For more star wars related topics you might what to check out these awesome behind the scenes photos from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, also make sure to visit our Star Wars section on Walyou.    |
| 10 Dog Collars & Accessories to Make a Geekier Pet Posted: 13 Jan 2016 01:34 AM PST  Giving your pet a Dr. Who Dog Bed or putting it in a Star Wars or Star Trek Dog collar probably means nothing to them. But pimping them up by making them geekier is all about making you happy and proud to be walking around with them. Star Wars Darth Vader Dog CollarThe Darth Vader dog collar might not bring your dog to the dark side, but he’ll certainly be the coolest one running around in the dog park, and maybe even the most menacing thanks to this addition. It’s available for $14.95. Harley Quinn Dog BedUnless your dog is afraid of psychotic assistants to murderous comic book clowns, the Harley Quinn Fleece dog bed should be the perfect spot for your canine to take a nap for 12 to 14 hours a day. Available for $198. Star Trek Dog CollarThe dog collar that will take your dog where no dog has gone before, or at least make him look nerdier than everyone else while liking it, thanks to the rubberized insignia charm on the uniform collars, which make this one so special. It comes in gold, blue and red, while the prices vary depending on size: $11.31 for small, $9.99 for medium, $8.18 for large and $10.77 for the extra large, massive doggies. Game Boy Dog ID TagFor those who want their dogs to be rocking an 80’s kind of vibe, the bone-shaped Game Boy ID Tag is absolute perfection, coming with a back side that’s engravable. Available for $14.99. DC Comics Squeaky Dog ToyEven if your dog is a Marvel fan, he’s probably going to love a squeaky toy in the form of Batman, Robin or Superman. Batman costs $15.99, Robin is $7.99 and Superman is $9.99. Superman Dog CollarIf this won’t make your dog feel like he’s the biggest, baddest pooch walking around the street while his owner is connected to him by a leash, nothing will. Available for $22.95. Star Wars Chewbacca Dog HarnessThere’s no one as cute and lovable as Chewie in the Star Wars universe, which makes the Chewbacca dog harness the perfect fit for your best friend in the whole world, making him even more fluffy and fun to hug, not to mention fancy when walking outside. Available for $24.99 in extra small and small sizes, $27.99 in medium and large sizes. TARDIS Pet BedYour dog (or any other pets) won’t become time travellers when napping on the Doctor Who’s TARDIS dog bed, but comfort should be an issue, nor will be their geekiness level. Available for $35. Transformers Dog CollarNo, your dog isn’t a robot in disguise and doesn’t need energon cubes to get on by. Dog food, or anything you’re eating is probably fine. But for those who grew up on the G-1 cartoon and even those who like the live-action films beyond the first one, this is an awesome way to show your love for the series plus making your dog look really cool. Available for $21.95. Angry Birds Dog ToyJust looking at that Angry Bird’s face is annoying, which is perfect for your dog, and is why the game has been so successful, growing into something bigger. Each Toy comes filled with a special Dura Play foam and most importantly, it squeaks. Available for $10.18. Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter and check out these dogs that got dressed up by geeky owners.    |
| Cheero Sleepion Employs Light, Sound and Aroma to Induce Sleep Posted: 12 Jan 2016 03:34 PM PST  If milk and honey served just before bedtime are no longer effective in helping you fall asleep, you might want to give Cheero’s Sleepion a try. Exhibited at CES 2016 while also being featured on Kickstarter at the same time, Cheero’s Sleepion is a gadget that relies on sound, light, and scents to help you travel faster to the land of dreams. Some could say that a mood lamp, an aromatherapy lamp, and a playlist with nature sounds, but Sleepion is supposed to be more effective than those three combined. After all, Professor Shimizu, on whose research the Sleepion is based, has spent 15 years trying to find out how exactly light, sound and aroma influence our sleep, and how they could be brought together in a single device. “Sounds heard while sleeping plays a significant role in inducing sleep and its healing effects. Among many sounds, those that are close to what occur in nature have particularly strong effects which have been verified in studies,” claims Dr. Shimizu. Sleepion includes 16 distinct healing sound loops that induce sleep by evoking the environment of mother’s womb. Don’t know about you, but I find this part pretty disturbing. As far as light’s influence on sleep is concerned, Professor Shimizu explained that “Light is characterized by its color temperature and luminance, and the optimal levels for sleep are 2700k in color temperature and 35% in luminance. This is close to the color of candlelight, and to the moonlight, which mankind has been gazing at since the birth of the human race.” In terms of aroma, the Sleepion is delivered with three oil blends that include both steam distilled and solvent extracted lavender, cedarwood and geranium scents. Each of them is sourced from different parts of the world, but the effect is the same. Once the aroma fills the room, you start to feel more relaxed. One interesting aspect is that the aroma is not diffused by heating by oil, but by the vibrations generated by the speaker. That means that Sleepion is safe to use even when there are children or pets in the room. The Sleepion Kickstarter campaign is a success, as the $15,000 funding goal has already been surpassed. Anyone who has backed the project with at least $170 should expect to receive their Sleepion kit at the end of March/beginning of April. The device can be ordered in a color of your choice, and the options include white, black, blue, pink, and green. This way, there won’t be any discrepancies between the color of your Sleepion and the color of your room. Unless contrasts are your thing. Considering the campaign’s success, I’d say that quite a few people believe in Sleepion’s effectiveness. We’ll have to wait until April to see some hands-on reviews of the device, and to learn whether it really is as good as its manufacturer claims or not. Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the Barisieur coffee maker-alarm clock hybrid, or the SensorWake alarm clock that fills the room with scents.    |
| Pay What You Want: Expert Photography Bundle Posted: 12 Jan 2016 01:32 PM PST  The latest bundle to be offered on Walyou Deals in a Pay What You Want scheme addresses amateur photographers who want to turn pro without breaking the bank on extremely expensive courses, as well as professionals who want to improve their skills. Assuming that you get to work in the right niche, photography can be quite lucrative, so why not spend a bit of time and as much money as you want on becoming an expert photographer? Walyou Deals Ever since the first camera was invented, photography has been based on the same three principles: shutter speed, aperture and ISO. You’d think that’s all you need to know to become an expert, but in fact, photography is such a complex topic that it can be approached from tens or possibly hundreds of different directions. The courses included in the bundle are:
While some of these are rather general, yet still represent excellent sources of information, others focus on particular aspects, such as night photography, nature photography, food photography, or black & white photography. Becoming a versatile photography may require you to examen all of these courses thoroughly. And then comes the most difficult part: putting into practice all that you’ve learned in these courses. Only by doing so you’ll get familiar to all of the situations described in this bundle. Just remember that you don’t have to spend thousands upon thousands on a camera and accessories. I suggest starting with a cheaper mirrorless camera and building your way up to more feature-rich devices. As you learn more about this topic, your appreciation of more valuable equipment will increase, as well. To get the Expert Photography Bundle, head over to Walyou Deals and pay as much as you want. At the time of writing, the average was $10.67, so paying anything less than that would only get you Night Photography Unlocked – No More Dark or Blurry Photos! and The Ultimate Guide to Using Off-Camera Flash, but beating the average would get you the entire bundle. Furthermore, if you get into the leaderboard at any point, you get one chance to Walyou Deals’ exclusive giveaway, and beating the top price gets you five of these chances. You’ll have to act fast, though, as the bundle will only be available for one more day! As usual, 10% of the proceeds go to charity, and in this particular case, the charity in question is Save the Children. Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories about the Learn to Code Bundle 2016, or the White Hat Hacker Bundle.    |
| The Galaxy S7 Might Be Water Proof And Use SD Cards Posted: 12 Jan 2016 12:47 PM PST  We are getting closer to the release date of the Samsung Galaxy S7, and it seems it will keep the best features of previous entries in the series, but many new ones. Find out all about them in this story! Samsung keep innovating and surprising its userbase with improvements and new features in their mobile devices, but it seems the new Samsung Galaxy S7 attempts to return to the basics and return some classic features too. The new Galaxy S7 models by Samsung will feature in both its standard and curved version a slot for Micro SD, just like they did in the long gone past. Besides, they will be waterproof and have some kind of dust protection thanks to the IP67 system. Do all of this features sound familiar? Because these were all beloved features in the Samsung Galaxy S5. Battery power will also be greatly enhanced, and the Galaxy S7 will sport a 3000 mAh battery in comparison to the 2550 mAh from current models. Its alternative version, the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, could reach some 3600 mAh. This is logical, considering the new screen which is force-sensitive requires some extra power. What’s more, the first model could take up to two hours to do a full charge, while the Edge edition might take only 2,2 hours, with some rumors indicating that users might be able to perform inductive, wireless charging. We can see Samsung are bringing several popular features that had been dropped in previous generations, being close to what we saw in the Samsung Galaxy S5. The Samsung Galaxy S6 was indeed a resounding success, but many users complained about the lack of HDD space and autonomy. If it isn’t broken, do not fix it, right?
The mentioned specifications aren’t the only ones that will receive upgrades or changes, as the camera will also be greatly enhanced. The Samsung Galaxy S7 will have only 12 megapixels, which is kind of surprising when we consider today’s standards when it comes to photography. This decision helps enhance performance in low light areas, but it still is something upsetting for a group of vocal fans. When it comes to the the front camera, it is going to feature a 5 megapixels one. The Samsung Galaxy S7 will feature on top 4 GB of RAM memory, and a QUAD HD screen. Samsung are looking to renew and improve what we already saw in the Galaxy S6, bringing a similar design but improving its features and hardware for better performance. We are glad they listened to the user’s feedback, and great features from the past from the Galaxy S5 are coming back too. We can not wait to hear more about this upcoming phone once it gets officially introduced and put on sale. Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at CES 2016: Samsung Introduced TVs, Smart Gadgets and Home Appliances and The Samsung Galaxy S7 Will Come In Two Sizes.
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| David Bowie: That Time He Was In A Video Game Posted: 12 Jan 2016 11:53 AM PST  We have just lost one of the most legendary figures in rock music, the brilliant David Bowie at 69 years old. Luckily, his work will live on forever, even his curious work in the 1999 game Omikron.
2016 has started in the worst possible way. A few days into it and we’ve already had our first legendary rockstar passing away – after a long, hard battle against cancer, the famed musician, painter, producer and personiality David Bowie (best known for albums like The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust, Honky Dory, or Blackstar from a couple days ago) has left this mortal soil, and we miss him so much already. In his constant search for innovation, experimentation and building new ways of expression, Bowie did much more than just music, and for example was one of the main characters in the movie Labyrinth, had a hilarious cameo in Zoolander, and was even one of the main characters in a 1999 video game titles “Omikron: The Nomad Soul”, which was Quantic Dream and David Cage’s debut in the gaming world (the team behind Heavy Rain, Farenheit: Indigo Prophecy and Beyond: Two Souls). Bowie was far from the only musician to ever appear in a video game (the fantastic Brutal Legend had like half of the heavy metal pantheon and that’s just one game!), but his role in Omikron: The Nomad Soul was special for appearing right at the end of the 90s, when representing someone’s face using polygons was still a challenge – but as ever, David Bowie was way ahead of the curve. This Eidos video game came out in 1999 for PCs and in 2000 for DreamCast, and although none of the versions were a resounding success, it did earn kind of a cult following despite never making it to the PS2, the best selling console of all time, which was making its debut around that time. Just like with every Quantic Dream game, Omikron is a weird, disjointed experience, and while it plays mostly like an adventure game (not unlike Deus Ex), it also combines many other concepts, ideas and minigames.
In this game, players will control a character living in the city of Omikron, which is under control of a tyrannic artificial intelligence – all very dystopic. Bowie appears as the face and voice of a character named Boz, the leader of a group that exists inside the net and fights the system from within. As Quantic Dream loved collaborating with David Bowie so much, they also created a completely new character for him, the frontman of a rock band called “The Dreamers”, which plays some of his songs, and that can be found hosting shows throughout the game which the player can attend as easter eggs. The experience was so positive for Bowie that he reused many of the concepts, melodies and ideas for his 1999 album “Hours…”. Omikron: The Nomad Soul wasn’t exactly a success, but was enough to launch David Cage’s career, along with the rest of his team’s. The game spent some time as a forgotten gem, unplayable on modern systems until the GOG.com rescued it from oblivion and released it as a digital version for PC. If you like Bowie and gaming, maybe playing this piece of history will help tou cope with the pain of losing such a legend, and if this game is just too weird for you, it’s still okay, for Google confirms that David Bowie is in every video game ever. See you soon, Black Star! Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter, and read more related stories at Dreamcast Cake Celebrates The Sega Console's 13th Birthday and Sega Dreamcast Wristwatch Imported By NCSX.
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