Like many other alluring things on this Earth, video games can toe the line between good and evil. They are notoriously addicting (sometimes to their users’ detriment) — but that quality also allows them to function as a successful medium in rehabilitation and therapy applications.

“There are some people who claim that playing video games contributes to attention deficit, that it rewires our brains,” said NASA Langley Research Center scientist Alan Pope. “Well, if that’s the case, then let’s decide how we want video games rewiring our brain.” Pope and his team are developing “Mindshift” gaming technology that helps users learn how to control stress and sharpen their ability to concentrate. A former version of this NASA-developed technology has also been commercialized into a game for children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Read more about the technology here.

It appears that games may indeed “rewire” our brains — for better or for worse. In a recent University of Oxford experiment, healthy volunteers viewed a film that included traumatic images of injury from a variety of sources. After waiting for 30 minutes, 20 volunteers played Tetris for 10 minutes, 20 volunteers played Pub Quiz, a word-based quiz game, for 10 minutes, and a final set of 20 volunteers did nothing.

Subjects who played Tetris reportedly experienced significantly fewer flashbacks of the film, while those who played Pub Quiz actually experienced significantly more flashbacks, in comparison to the control group of volunteers who did nothing. This surprised me, because I had guessed that the games would have a neutral or beneficial effect on the subjects — certainly not a negative effect, as in the case of the word-based game.

Could it be the visual component of Tetris that, at least in this particular experiment, made it a better candidate for reducing the incidence of traumatic flashbacks? Whatever the reason, it’s nice to have an excuse to play a bit of Techtris (NASA Tech Briefs’ version of Tetris) — strictly to pay tribute to the game’s potentially therapeutic qualities, of course.

Given increased time-to-market pressures, design engineers are caught in a never-ending quest to streamline design and production processes. The challenges are formidable: proprietary or incompatible software, poor design tools, incomplete parts documentation, equipment issues – all can slow down prototyping and production. Although the government and industry associations have undertaken efforts to standardize tools and processes, such efforts take time and often only succeed when major companies decide to follow.

Printed circuit board solutions provider Sunstone Circuits is taking a grassroots approach to knock down the roadblocks in the design-to-production process for printed circuit boards. Called the Sunstone ECOsystem®, the process would encompass the entire design and supply chain of IP, vendors, tools, and libraries needed to take boards from concept into production. It intends to find and make use of low- or no-cost design tools and produce quality working prototypes in fewer turns at a lower cost.

Sunstone is known for its ability to provide quickturn printed circuit board prototypes and short-run electronic assembly services. It is partnering with several industry heavyweights to help achieve this goal: Digi-Key, National Instruments, NXP Semiconductors, and Screaming Circuits. Digi-Key is a global distributor of electronic components for more than 400 manufacturers. National Instruments supplies graphical programming software to automate pc board design. NXP is the semiconductor giant founded by Philips, while Screaming Circuits also provides pc board prototyping and assembly services.

When the group gathered with journalists at a recent roundtable meeting in Boston, it became clear that the companies’ efforts have gone well beyond the initial discussion stage into concrete action. There is already an online link between National Instruments and Sunstone Circuits, and a link between Sunstone and Screaming Circuits to facilitate quoting and ordering will be announced in early October. The group showed a ECOsystem® step-by-step roadmap to create a seamless pc board design and production process over the next 18 months.

One participant cited an industry association’s statistics stating that 75% of the total cost of a printed circuit board was in design and 30% of an engineer’s time was spent resolving parts issues. In a market where any loss of time and cost can adversely impact a company’s bottom line, the Sunstone ECOsystem® effort appears to a step in the right direction.

Although less publicized than alcohol, driver fatigue is a major contributor to auto accidents in the U.S. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that 56,000 sleep-related road crashes occur annually in the U.S., resulting in 40,000 injuries and 1,550 fatalities. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, 52 percent of 107 single vehicle incidents involving heavy trucks were fatigue-related, confirming the belief that fatigue is a significant problem for long-distance truck drivers.

Unfortunately, no standard screening method exists to detect weary drivers, as breathalyzers exist to detect drunk drivers. But there may be hope in a computer program developed by researchers at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, and two India-based universities.

Using an in-car camera, the program uses image processing software to capture a sequence of images on the driver’s face. Analyzing facial expression changes, the program identifies yawning as a facial movement distinct from other movements, such as smiling, talking, and singing.

The researchers say the algorithm is effective at detecting yawns, regardless of image intensity and contrast, small head movements, viewing angle, spectacle wearing, and skin color. The program correlates yawn frequency with fatigue behavior and could be hooked up to a warning system to alert drivers.

Although it may be years before such a system is implemented in vehicles, I would welcome it sooner based on my own experience with driver fatigue. Earlier this year, I nodded off on an interstate highway in New Jersey and meandered onto the side of the road. My car clipped a guardrail, damaging the right front quarter panel and requiring replacement. Fortunately, I was not injured.

Driver fatigue can happen to anyone. I would welcome any means to warn drowsy drivers to take a much-needed break.

NASA/Industry Partnership Results in New Decision-Making Software

As part of NASA’s Partnership Seed Fund program, Goddard Space Flight Center is integrating the ILIADS software, a geospatial information system (GIS) it developed for lunar applications, with Questus(TM), a management and planning software tool developed by United Space Alliance (USA) for space shuttle operations. The integration will result in a new decision-making application that NASA can use to plan and carry out future robotic and crewed missions to the Moon.

Using internal research and development funding, Goddard technologists modified commercial off-the-shelf GIS software typically used in terrestrial applications to design ILIADS (Integrated Lunar Information Architecture for Decision Support). It gives users access to 3D lunar crater scenes, topographic contour maps, surface distance and elevation measurements, in situ resource and hazard maps, and historical mission data and other useful datasets.

The ILIADS-Questus software will let mission planners directly apply scientific data gathered from remote-sensing satellites and other sources to select potential landing and habitat sites. Ultimately, the tool will support human exploratory sorties on the lunar surface later in the next decade. USA can commercialize the new product, particularly in its work developing NASA’s next-generation trans- portation system, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). Goddard and USA expect to complete the integration of ILIADS and Questus in time for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a Goddard-led mission that will spend a year mapping the Moon after its launch in 2008.

Read the full story here.

Software Enables First Responders to Help Those With Special Needs

First responders will be able to better prepare individuals with special needs thanks to new open-source software developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab. The Special Population Planner software is an extension to commercial ArcView Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, and provides a database for creating a list of individuals with special needs throughout a given emergency planning area. Individuals with special needs include the physically, mentally, and medically disabled; those without transportation; and latchkey children.

The project began in 1998 with funding from the U.S. Army under the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program for the seven areas across the country where chemical weapons are stored. These areas have emergency evacuation plans for neighboring residents, and Argonne researchers were asked to gather data and develop software to help identify and plan for individuals with special needs. The study covered most of a six-county area with 115,000 households and 275,000 residents, of whom about 9 percent reported special needs.

Said Ed Tanzman, project lead for Argonne’s Decision and Information Sciences Division, “Hurricane Katrina highlighted the national problem of emergency planning for persons with special needs, when a number of residents — many disabled persons or their caregivers — were trapped for days at the Superdome because of evacuation problems.” The Army recognized a need to make the software available to all emergency planners. Using the software, emergency planners for any area can begin building a database of persons with special needs and developing emergency response or evacuation plans to accommodate them.

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