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February 7, 2008 Japan to launch origami planes into outer space Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent Video: how to create the perfct paper plane In a bold bid to take the traditional art of origami beyond the Final Frontier, Japan is planning to release a huge squadron of paper aeroplanes in outer space. The trailblazing experiment, slated for launch later this year, could see around 100 paper planes raining down on the planet as they are captured by the Earth’s gravitational pull and sucked down towards the surface. Astronomers and star-gazers should have plenty of warning of the planes’ arrival,...

Codenamed Origami, Ultra-Mobile Personal Computers Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2006-03-09 11:30. Introduced at CeBIT, the new mobile PC form factor, formerly codenamed “Origami,” provides full Windows functionality with an enhanced touch screen, pen and keyboard input. Microsoft today unveiled details for Ultra-Mobile Personal Computers (UMPCs), a new category of mobile computing devices that features small, lightweight, carry-everywhere hardware designs coupled with the full functionality of a Microsoft Windows-based PC and a choice of input options, including enhanced touch-screen capabilities. The debut of UMPCs here at CeBIT, the world’s largest trade fair showcasing digital IT and telecommunications solutions, follows Microsoft...

Reality check for the much-hyped Origami PC Ina Fried, for News.com Bill Gates' vision of an ultramobile PC seemed like a winner: a device with all-day battery life, yet small enough to fit in a pocket and much cheaper than a laptop. But as devices begin to roll out a year later, reality still trails Microsoft's ambitions. The first generation of devices, being announced Thursday, are bigger, pricier and more power hungry than the software maker had hoped. Microsoft acknowledges that instead of a mass-market hit riding a wave of prelaunch hype, these devices are likely to appeal only to...

In 1980, a Japanese scientist, Dr. Koryo Miura, developed a pattern of peaks and valleys that allows a map to be unfolded all at once, with one pull of a corner. In introducing his method, Dr. Miura wrote that his "experience on deployable space structures and origami science" led him to look for a better way to fold a map. The result of his work, the Miura-ori origami pattern, has indeed been used for solar arrays as well as maps. Last week, in the journal Science, Dr. Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan of Harvard reported that nature itself has an origami trick or...

SCIENTIST AT WORK Rick Friedman for The New York Times Three paper shapes cut and pleated by Dr. Erik Demaine, who is applying insights from wrinkling and crinkling to questions in architecture, robotics and molecular biology. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - "Some people don't even think this exists," says Dr. Erik Demaine, turning in his hands an elaborately folded paper structure. The intricately pleated sail-like form swooshes gracefully in a compound curve and certainly looks real enough - if decidedly tricky to make. Dr. Demaine, an assistant professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the leading theoretician in...

Talk about papering over a problem. Since January, the predominantly Muslim southern provinces of Thailand have been the scenes of violent separatist riots and terrorist bombings apparently linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, the al Qaeda affiliate in Southeast Asia. The death toll exceeds 500. So what's the Thai government to do? After an initially stern response tragically led to 78 prisoners suffocating in police trucks, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra chose a different approach. On Monday, the Thai Army air-dropped 100 million origami cranes over the region. Another 30 million cranes are to be delivered by land. The operation was meticulously planned...