Suck It, Street View, Navteq Maps the World in 3D... With Lasers [GPS]

Google's Street View team famously photographs all kinds of weird stuff as they drive the world, but Navteq, who basically invented this stuff, just built a mount with seven cameras and 64 lasers to see everything better, in 3D.
Mounted atop a VW Jetta wagon is this crazy apparatus with a 12-megapixel panoramic camera on top and six more cameras pointed in specific directions to pick up signs and other data points. But the best gadgetry—the laser array—is housed inside a rapidly spinning barrel positioned at an angle. By using LIDAR, basically radar but with lasers, they scan everything within view, capturing 1.2 million points of data every second. The result is all kinds of terrain data that is not possible using just cameras.

The goal is "high accuracy maps," a deliberately vague notion that ranges from additional information—bridge underpass clearance heights, multilayer cloverleaf navigation and other obvious issues—to super rich 3D environments like the ones you see below. Those aren't CG renderings, in the traditional sense, it's laser-enriched photography.

Navteq, a Chicago company owned by Nokia who has been driving around making maps since the first GPS satellites were hurled into orbit, still provides a massive share of map data for web and devices, so the fruits of this tech might get to you sooner than you know.
As for your own personal rig, I sure want one, and my guess is that Google wants one too—if they don't have it already.
[Gizmodo via Navteq]

Investigators Reveal Folding Principles of the Human Genome

Scientists have long been speculating on how DNA gets packaged inside chromosomes while remaining readable and easily accessible. In a paper just published in Science, researchers from Harvard and MIT have discovered that sections of the DNA bunch together into 'fractal globule, a knot-free, polymer conformation that enables maximally dense packing while preserving the ability to easily fold and unfold any genomic locus.' The image on the side shows the 'equilibrium globule' configuration that was thought to be the structure (left) and the actual configuration (right) that was identified by the team.

Key to deciphering the genome's structure was the development of the new Hi-C technique, which permits genome-wide analysis of the proximity of individual genes. The scientists first used formaldehyde to link together DNA strands that are nearby in the cell's nucleus. They then determined the identity of the neighboring segments by shredding the DNA into many tiny pieces, attaching the linked DNA into small loops, and performing massively parallel DNA sequencing.

Lieberman-Aiden observed that the data suggest a fractal globule. He then teamed up with Mirny and Mirny's student Maxim Imakaev to confirm his hypothesis and demonstrate conclusively that the Hi-C data matched fractal globule behavior. Computer simulations further helped to reveal biologically important features of such a DNA architecture.

In future experiments, the researchers hope to follow the development of stem cells into mature cell types such as kidney cells, says Lieberman-Aiden. 'We want to understand how that process takes place, because it clearly involves some 3-D remodeling of the nucleus.'

Press release: A new dimension for genome studies...

Abstract in Science: Comprehensive Mapping of Long-Range Interactions Reveals Folding Principles of the Human Genome

[Medgadget]