Walls

Antiviral walls

Repairing for death he targets of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) determine their own mode of death, say Dennis Keefe, Judy Lieberman, and colleagues (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA). The dying cells patch themselves up so that rapid and messy necrosis is avoided in favor of a more lengthy and controlled apoptosis. The CTLs deliver their insult in the form of perforin, a pore-forming protein...

Treatment Walls

The GroundWater Remediation Technologies Analysis Center (GWRTAC) is a national environmental technology transfer center that provides information on the use of innovative technologies to clean-up contaminated groundwater. Established in 1995, GWRTAC is operated by the National Environmental Technology Applications Center (NETAC) in association with the University of Pittsburgh's Environmental ...

Weightless Walls

In this paper we describe how future office environments can benefit from the addition of weightless walls—virtual, sound blocking walls created using headsets. We particularly focus on exploring how different interaction techniques can be employed to efficiently create, erase, or edit the layouts of these walls, and envisioning how they could impact the overall office experience. Metaphoricall...

Soft Walls

Moving Walls

In the early 1980s, I used Stan Rosenschein’s functional language REX to servo Flakey’s two wheels to set points of speed and direction that were functions of sonar readings. This let Flakey drive along hallways with no dead reckoning or planning whatsoever. It seemed miraculous at the time; a situated automaton that knew things without needing any models. However, I thought of it as (sensor-dr...