Monthly Archives: December 2009

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Cutting steel with electromagnetic fields

plexiglassThe bodies of vehicles need to be strong, but manufacturers also need to cut holes in them, for cable routing.

Working together with a number of partners including Volkswagen, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU in Chemnitz have come up with another way to make holes in press-hardened steel bodywork. Dr. Verena Kräusel, head of department at the IWU, explains: “The new method is based on electromagnetic pulse technology (EMPT), which was previously used primarily to expand or neck aluminum tubes. We’ve modified it to cut even hard steels. Whereas a laser takes around 1.4 seconds to cut a hole, EMPT can do the job in approximately 200 milliseconds — our method is up to seven times faster.”

Another advantage is that it produces no burr, thus doing away with the need for a finishing process. Stamping presses become superfluous, and no costs arise from the need to replace worn-out parts.

I confess I didn’t know this was already being used to cut aluminum. It might be part of the workaday grind to some, but there’s something sf-nally satisfying about using electromagnetism to cut through metals.

[Image: Plexiglass zapped with electricity from Wikimedia Commons via Ethan Hein]

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Editing memories

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Yet again, the line between science fiction and real life gets thinner, and another of our stories gains a slightly prophetic edge.  Richard Kadrey’s Twitter stream alerted me to an article at The Guardian about a therapeutic process whereby traumatic memories can be rewritten or edited in order to make them less debilitating… without the use of drugs. I’m no psychologist, but it reminds me a little bit of the aversion therapy approach:

… 20 volunteers sat in front of a computer screen on which squares of different colours appeared. When blue squares flashed on the screen, they received an electric shock to the wrist.

The next day, the volunteers were shown blue squares again to reactivate the memory. Sensors placed on their skin showed that the images caused the participants to sweat as their stress levels rose.

To erase the memory that linked blue squares with pain, the volunteers were put through “extinction training” which involved flashing blue squares on the screen without the accompanying electrical shocks.

When the volunteers were retested a day later, the fear associated with the squares had gone, but only in participants whose memories were rewritten soon after their fear was reactivated…

In other words, expose the subject to the traumatic memory trigger minus the trauma soon enough after the event, and you can prevent lasting problems. Perhaps this sort of process would be useful for lessening the impact of post-traumatic stress in military personnel on active service? Either which way, it’s reminiscent of Marissa Lingen’s “Erasing The Map”, published here back in February of this year… though Marissa’s story saw memories being deleted rather than edited

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Edward Willett teaches (sf-nal) typing

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Just a quickie – Canadian readers may be interested to know that occasional Futurismic blogger and freelance writer Edward Willett will be teaching an evening course in genre fiction writing at the University of Regina in March and April of next year.

I’m not sure of the exact exchange rate, but I’m guessing ninety-nine Canadian bucks for eight hours tuition from a published sf novelist and prolific freelance writer is a pretty good deal… so any Regina residents with a jones for writing should maybe start scraping the pennies together, eh?

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Crowdsource your plot snags: Twitter as brainstorming tool

I expect many of the writers in Futurismic‘s readership are already using Twitter to communicate with colleagues and friends across the globe… but have you considered putting it to the more practical use of getting people to help you brainstorm your plot problems? PR maven Steve Rubel points to a friend of his, Jeff Kirvin, who has done exactly that.

Personally, I think I’d struggle to ask the hive-mind a question that specific about something I was writing; outsourcing some of the imaginative process would probably derail the pleasure and focus of creation for me, I think. Do you lot ask for help on sticky plots, or do you conquer the mountain alone?

And speaking of help with plot points, I got an email from one Helen Callaghan informing me that she’s hosting a guest blogger whom you might want to ask questions of:

Marcus Chown, popular science author of We Need To Talk About Kelvin [and cosmology consultant to New Scientist – Ed.] will be guest blogging on my site!

He’s agreed to answer science questions from SF writers, so the idea is, if you’ve got a plot issue or setpiece that’s bugging you, or you ever wondered what would happen if a certain scenario came true, here’s your chance to get an expert opinion.

The idea is that we can start asking questions now by posting them in the comments on the site, and the answers will be posted on the 11th.

Thanks, Helen; that gives you a few days, so pop over and leave your questions if you got ’em.