Posts Tagged ‘contests’
Winners of the 2011 Astronomy Photographer of the Year Contest
Click here to launch a gallery of the best of the winning photos.
From among the winners, we've put together a gallery of our favorites, including auroras, supernova remnant and beautiful views of the Milky Way. These photos almost make us ready to pack up and move out of the city so we can reacquaint ourselves with the stars. Almost.
Students’ Innovative 3-D Vision System Wins Prize
PopSci and National Instruments hand top honors to a Chinese team that could revolutionize 3-D
College students have a special aptitude for bending LabView to their will, and the finalists on display in Austin were very hard to choose between.
Rice University built a sensor-filled baseball that precisely transmits the mechanics of a throw to better teach pitching. UC San Diego created a trumpet that not only detects the exact pitch being played, but can bend that pitch in real time to hit the proper note—a sort of auto-tune for the brass section. The University of Konkuk, South Korea, created an autonomous flying drone out of remarkably few parts. And the University of Leeds built an astounding haptic feedback system for simulating the feel of tumors under the hands of doctors in training.
In the end, however, we chose the entry from Tsinghua University, China. Five students there built an entirely new 3-D imaging system. They conquered the classic glasses-or-no-glasses problem by simply stepping around it: instead of a conventional flat screen, they built a four-sided glass enclosure which displays the four sides of a simulated object. The system scans an object on a turntable, acquires the image data, and reproduces it by projecting the image with four projectors onto four panes of glass. Walk around the simulated object on display, and it’s like walking around it in real life. In addition, the system recognizes gestures, allowing you to rotate and zoom in on an object with your hands. You can imagine the implications for medical analysis, enhanced teaching, point-of-sale displays, and telecommunication.
The thing that blew my mind, however, was the sheer discipline of these kids in dealing with costs. They had developed several alternative systems, they told me, including one that used a rotating mirror and a high-speed projector. But they had given themselves the goal of keeping the thing cheap, and this was the cheapest workable solution.
The adoption of prototying software like LabView seems to be collapsing the time and costs involved in building new devices. “We’re still far away from a product,” Gao Yongfeng, a member of the 3-D team, told me. But the kid’s still in college. By the time he’s headed to grad school, this thing could be on store shelves.
Brilliant Teenagers, World-Saving Tech and Dance Parties at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup
Teams from all over the world descend on New York City to launch their innovations: a note-taking system for visually impaired students, an in-car device that monitors driver safety and more.
Click here to launch a gallery of the winners and highlights of the Microsoft Imagine Cup.
Microsoft’s Imagine Cup is an annual student technology competition that draws entries from all over the globe. I rolled into town for the worldwide finals, held this year in New York City. This is the competition's ninth year, and the first time the finals have been held in the U.S. Over 350,000 students ages 16 and up in 183 countries registered this year to compete in the Imagine Cup's nine competitions. Six of these are smaller, more specific challenges and didn’t have as large a presence at the finals. The big three, the holy trinity of the Imagine Cup, were game design (split up into mobile, web and Windows/Xbox), embedded development (building a separate, stand-alone device), and software development (a more general category). The top 100 teams (made up of 1 to 4 students each) in those three categories were invited to New York to showcase their projects. The top three teams in each category receive cash prizes, but the "Imagine Cup" itself goes to the winner in software development, last year received by Team Skeek from Thailand for their software that translated English into sign language in real time. Even for those who don't win, the exposure the Imagine Cup brings is proclaimed by several teams to be invaluable.
By the time I arrived, the competition had already been narrowed down to the top 21 teams, but the Times Square Marriott was still overrun with color-coded badge-wearing competitors, judges, Microsoft employees and international press. Banners hung around the hotel said “Make new friends. Gain new skills. Change the world.”
That’s the theme of the Imagine Cup: “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.” In developing their projects, teams were asked to think about the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals, international development goals with the deadline of 2015. Many of the teams did address such goals as environmental sustainability, or combating disease. But a lot of the students are more personally attached to their projects. There’s the legally blind student who developed a system for visually impaired students to take notes more easily. A team from China made a hands-free computer control software because a team member’s mother is disabled. “These students are brilliant,” said Suzi Levine, director of communications and education at Microsoft. “They come bringing in their life experiences.”
The projects themselves are amazing. They are all, perhaps unsurprisingly, designed with Microsoft technology. I did see a Wiimote in one of the projects, and Levine assured me that the only Microsoft product teams are required to use is the .Net framework for software design. Regardless, it was always Bing maps, not Google maps; always Windows Phone 7, not the iPhone.
Finalists in the top three categories spent the next-to-last day of competition pitching and demoing their projects in front of a panel of judges who grilled them with questions. Teams were judged on how well they adhered to the theme, how well they communicated that their project could make a viable business, and how good of a project it was.
All the finalists put on remarkably polished presentations, but the software developers were the rock stars of the Imagine Cup. Perhaps it’s because they were whittled down from a larger pool than the other categories, so the competition was steeper. Whatever the reason, people actually interrupted their presentations to applaud. Fellow competitors with yellow badges scattered throughout the packed ballroom stood up and whistled, and judges who earlier in the day were congratulating teams on “making it this far” were now saying things like “that was awesome” and “I can’t think of any questions.” When OneBuzz, a team that developed a malaria prediction software, finished their presentation, they raised their index fingers in the air in unison like a boy band signing out after a concert. Ladies and gentlemen, OneBuzz has left the building.
While not all the presentations had that stadium feel, every team, across categories, has the strangest combination of idealism and pragmatism. Coming in, I expected pie-in-the-sky ideas for projects that could never really be implemented, or maybe just a more grown-up science fair, all whizzes and bangs but no practicality. There was an undeniable “change the world” mentality pervading the event. The leader of a French team whose television system allows seniors to easily send and receive messages actually said “the return investment will be in smiles.”
But what might come across as naïveté is belied by the depth of their knowledge about what it will take to actually get their project on the market. Almost everyone has an impressively detailed business plan involving field testing or clinical trials. They know their target audience and who they need to pitch to for funding. And they have no illusions about the flaws of their product, easily rattling off a list of improvements yet to be made when the judges inevitably ask. Many of the students see the Imagine Cup as their chance to get venture funding, according to Levine. “We try to pour lighter fluid on that,” she says.
All of the lighter fluid, and money, that Microsoft has poured into the Imagine Cup culminated at the awards ceremony. There was an emcee (a Microsoft employee), a celebrity presenter (Eva Longoria, who proclaimed herself a “techie”) and fog machines. Every student was promised a Windows Phone 7.5 when it comes out. Crazy mounted lights zoomed over the kids before the show as they draped themselves in their countries’ flags and danced to situation-appropriate songs like “Empire State of Mind,” “Don’t Stop Believing” and something about it not being about the money.
And it really isn’t. Yes, the event is extravagant and yes, the winners are handed giant five-figure checks. But Levine tells me many of the game designers will go on to release their games for free. The presentations I saw were very concerned with their business models, but not so much with the profit. They wanted to get funding to be able to produce their projects. This competition is not the endgame; it is just a stop along the way.
ESO’s “Hidden Treasures” Astrophotography Contest Shows Incredibly Talented Amateurs
This kind of imaging is no easy task; the amateur entrants had to scour the ESO's many terabytes of data just to find an image that would, with proper processing and artistic recreation, yield something we'd want to look at. And that's all before the actual processing, which entails an awful lot of correcting, sharpening, and adjusting for the limits of the telescopes' images. There aren't really any restrictions, short of manually painting in images--any number or type of filters, combination of frames, and enhancements are allowed. Processing these kinds of images is highly difficult, requiring the use of complicated professional tools like Scisoft to combine and process the different shots, but also fairly open--you can see in the Flickr compendium that there are a few different takes on the same "scene," so to speak.
The ESO got about 80 entries (all of which you can see on Flickr), which is actually pretty impressive considering the high level of difficulty involved in the project. You can't just snag a photo, insert some colors with Photoshop, and call it a day--this work requires an intense level of commitment and effort. The grand prize is a trip to the ESO's Very Large Telescope, located in Paranal, Chile, with runners-up rewarded with iPods, a model of the Telescope, and various space-related books. The grand prize winner is pictured above--congratulations to Igor Chekalin of Russia, who we're sure is looking forward to his trip to Chile!
our favorite astrophotography from the Hidden Treasures competition.
Five Contests That Recognize The Science Achievements of the Everyman
Postcode Lottery Green Challenge
The Challenge:
Create a marketable, user-friendly technology to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. To win the Dutch lottery's prize, your invention should be refined enough to implement within two years. Judges favor creativity, sustainability and entrepreneurship.
The Payoff:
First place: about $700,000; second: about $275,000
The Competition:
A 25-year-old engineer, Scot Frank, won this year for a portable solar concentrator. The runner-up, rainforest researcher Jason Aramburu, also 25, submitted a kiln for people in developing nations to turn waste into carbon-capturing charcoal. greenchallenge.info
N-Prize
The Challenge:
Launch a satellite weighing between 0.35 and 0.70 ounces into low-Earth orbit by September 19, 2011. According to the prize's sponsor, biologist Paul Dear, the launch must cost less than $1,600 and the satellite must circle the planet nine times.
The Payoff:
One-shot launching system: about $16,000; reusable one: about $16,000.
The Competition:
This prize is geared toward basement engineers around the world. The 26 teams that have signed up so far include both professional aerospace engineers and amateurs with no rocket-science background at all. n-prize.com
Sikorsky Human-Powered Helicopter Competition
The Challenge:
Hover at least 9.8 feet off the ground for 60 seconds, using only human power and no energy-storage devices. The Sikorsky Aircraft and American Helicopter Society's contest rules stipulate that lighter-than-air gases such as helium are not allowed.
The Payoff:
$250,000 (and a serious cardio workout).
The Competition:
Only two human-powered copters have ever flown. California State Polytechnic students hovered at eight inches for about eight seconds in 1989. A team from Nihon University in Japan set the current world record in 1994, at the same height for nearly 20 seconds. vtol.org/awards/hph.html
Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge
The Challenge:
Clean up oil spills better than current methods, and without any negative environmental effects. Teams selected by the X Prize Foundation will compete head-to-head for the quickest and most efficient cleanup on a test spill next summer.
The Payoff:
First place: $1 million; second: $300,000; third: $100,000
The Competition:
The X Prize Foundation hasn't yet announced teams, but the Deepwater Horizon disaster has already proved that great ideas can come from anyone, such as the oil-tanker captain who invented a mesh sieve that snags tar balls from the ocean. iprizecleanoceans.org
Rolex Awards For Enterprise
The Challenge:
Build a working prototype of a "world-changing technology." Categories include Science and Health, Environment, Exploration and Discovery, and Applied Technology. Representatives for the watch company judge entries on originality, impact and feasibility.
The Payoff:
First place: $100,000 and a gold Rolex; runners-up: $50,000 and a steel-and-gold Rolex.
The Competition:
Past winning projects were an acoustic whale-detector to protect the animals from ships, and a stove powered by discarded rice husks. Winners have included academics, professionals, entrepreneurs and students. rolexawards.com
Taiwan To Build Tree-Like Skyscraper With Moving Exterior Observation Pods
Its pod-like leaves are mobile observation decks that glide up and down the trunk of the tower. The tree theme stems from the fact that Taiwan is shaped like a leaf, according to Romanian architect Stefan Dorin. He says the observation pods were also influenced by “sci-fi computer gaming culture,” and are made of lightweight materials “borrowed from the spacecraft industry.”
Dorin, of DSBA, in collaboration with upgrade.studio, received four million Taiwan dollars (approximately $130,000) in addition to the right to design the new landmark, financed by the Taichung government.
Not unlike a tree, the Taiwan Tower was designed to be eco-friendly. It has a small footprint at land-level, collects rainwater and purifies it for use as well as generating power from turbines and photovoltaic panels. It also uses a chimney-like system for natural ventilation, and has a geothermal power station in the basement for heating.
Upon completion, the tower will be the focal point for the Taichung Gateway Park, an area being developed after the relocation of the former Taichung Airport.