Technology Bits

MIT student invents an electric unicycle that beats Segway

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:57:00 +0000


Bright spark: MIT student Stephan Boyer demonstrates his 'almost self-balancing' electric unicycle. The unicycle has a 'kill switch' that turns off the motor (pictured in his right hand)

MIT student invents first 'self-balancing' electric unicycle
- It has a top speed of 15mph which is 2mph more than previously developed Segway.
It could be a great way of getting around town, but it needs plenty of practise.
A student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has invented an ‘almost self-balancing’ electric unicycle that he uses to zoom around the campus.
It’s like a mini Segway – you lean forward to go faster and back to brake - but is so hard to ride that the creator, Stephan Boyer, admits that not even his unicycling friends got to grips with it.Writing on his blog, Mr Boyer says: ‘Unfortunately, one cannot simply pick up a self-balancing unicycle and ride it with ease.

‘It took me several hours to be able to ride in a straight line without crashing, and it took several days to learn how to turn in a controlled manner. Many of my friends have tried riding it, usually with little success (including some actual unicyclers).’The reason for it being tricky to ride is because while it will automatically self-right if it tips too far forward or back, it can fall over to the side while being ridden.What it lacks in ease of use, however, it makes up for in speed and endurance.Flat out the unicycle can hit 15mph and can travel for five miles on a single charge.Mr Boyer has dubbed it the ‘bullet’ and has released YouTube footage of him riding the device up and down an MIT corridor to show off its performance.

Segway has maximum speed of 13mph

He adds that the unicycle comes with a ‘kill switch’ that turns off the motor should panic set in.

Twitter Crashes on new year's eve: 16,197 tweets per second

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:37:00 +0000

All a Twitter: Users were
devastated that the network crashed

Social network Twitter ground to a halt yesterday as it was overloaded with New Year messages. In Britain the site crashed at about 3pm and was out of action for more than an hour.

It coincided with midnight celebrations in Japan when revellers were sending a record 16,197 tweets per second.

The overload meant no one could post new messages or read existing ones. Instead, frustrated users were greeted with the error message: 'Twitter is over capacity.'

The site returned to working order but then stopped on several other occasions, prompting speculation that it was being hit by the arrival of New Year in different parts of the world.

One user tweeted: 'It's amazing how three words can ruin my day! Twitter over capacity.'

Another joked: 'Twitter's New Year resolution needs to be I will never go over capacity.'

Out with a bang: Fireworks welcomed in the new year, but
Tweeters were silenced because of the crashed website

The meltdown happened as the world welcomed in 2012, a year of historic importance for Britain, with the Olympics, the Paralympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee set to be defining moments.

Up to 250,000 people poured into Central London, some in Trafalgar Square and others watching the pyrotechnics centred on the London Eye.

A total of 12,000 fireworks were primed to explode in an 11-minute spectacular as Big Ben struck midnight.

There were 3,000 police officers on duty in London, while London Ambulance Service expected a huge surge in 999 calls and set up 14 'treatment centres' for revellers.

So-called 'booze buses' were also deployed for people suffering alcohol-related illnesses or injuries so ambulances were freed up for patients needing more serious treatment.

Large crowds also gathered in Edinburgh for the famous Hogmanay street party, while Cardiff's annual Calennig celebrations also featured a firework display at midnight.

However, fireworks planned for Manchester city centre were cancelled after the event failed to find a sponsor. And in Weymouth, Dorset, about 20,000 revellers gathered for the New Year's Eve fancy dress party, which has been running for the past 20 years.

Earlier, in Sydney, more than a million people gathered at vantage points along the harbour to watch the spectacular pyrotechnics display, which again featured the arch of the bridge as its focal point.

The first places to celebrate were the South Pacific islands of Samoa and Tokelau. They are usually the last, but they jumped across the international dateline – missing out on December 30 entirely.

Bad weather forced New Zealand to cancel several outdoor events, but a low-key fireworks display went ahead at Auckland's Sky Tower. Heavy rain meant celebrations on Wellington's waterfront were called off.

'We hate having to cancel events but especially for something like New Year's Eve,' said Wellington's events manager Lauren Fantham.

In Tokyo, people released helium balloons in front of the Tokyo Tower at midnight with notes attached listing their hopes for 2012.

Many wished for a better year, following the earthquake and tsunami of 2011. 'I hope it will be a year full of smiles.

For those who are crying now, I hope they'll be smiling too,' said 21-year-old Horie Soichiro.

In a downbeat message, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said 2012 would be more difficult than 2011, but hoped Europe's debt crisis would bring its member states closer.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said he hoped the new year would continue the move towards democracy that protesters had started during the Arab Spring.

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin's New Year's greetings came mixed with sarcasm toward those protesting that his election back to the presidency had been fixed.

He wished prosperity 'to all our citizens regardless of their political persuasion, including those who sympathise with leftist force'.

At his traditional New Year's Eve service, the Pope said: 'We await a New Year with the trepidation, desires and expectations of always.'

Now Computers can see what we see.

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:26:00 +0000

Computer Vision Research at Intel Labs Seattle

An essential question confronting neuroscientists and computer vision researchers alike is how objects can be identified by simply "looking" at an image. Introspectively, we know that the human brain solves this problem very well. We only have to look at something to know what it is.

But teaching a computer to "know" what it's looking at is far harder. In research published this fall in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Computational Biology journal, a team from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Chatham University, and Emory University first measured human performance on a visual task ‑ identifying a certain kind
of shape when an image is flashed in front of a viewer for a very short amount of time (20-200 milliseconds). Human performance gets worse, as expected, when the image is shown for shorter time periods. Also as expected, humans do worse when the shapes are more complicated.

But could a computer be taught to recognize shapes as well, and then do it faster than humans? The team tried developing a computer model based on human neural structure and function, to do what we do, and possibly do it better.

Their paper, "Model Cortical Association Fields Account for the Time Course and Dependence on Target Complexity of Human Contour Perception," describes how, after measuring human performance, they created a computer model to also attempt to pick out the shapes.

The camera is obviously quite
important in computer vision research.

"This model is biologically inspired and relies on leveraging lateral connections between neurons in the same layer of a model of the human visual system," said Vadas Gintautas of Chatham University in Pittsburgh and formerly a researcher at Los Alamos.

Neuroscientists have characterized neurons in the primate visual cortex that appear to underlie object recognition, noted senior author Garrett Kenyon of Los Alamos. "These neurons, located in the inferotemporal cortex, can be strongly activated when particular objects are visible, regardless of how far away the objects are or how the objects are posed, a phenomenon referred to as viewpoint invariance."

The brain has an uncanny ability to detect and identify certain things, even if they're barely visible. Now the challenge is to get computers to do the same thing. And programming the computer to process the information laterally, like the brain does, might be a step in the right direction.

How inferotemporal neurons acquire their viewpoint invariant properties is unknown, but many neuroscientists point to the hierarchical organization of the human visual cortex as likely being an essential aspect.

"Lateral connections have been generally overlooked in similar models designed to solve similar tasks. We demonstrated that our model qualitatively reproduces human performance on the same task, both in terms of time and difficulty. Although this is certainly no guarantee that the human visual system is using lateral interactions in the same way to solve this task, it does open up a new way to approach object detection problems," Gintautas said.

Simple features, such as particular edges of the image in a specific orientation, are extracted at the first cortical processing stage, called the primary visual cortex, or V1. Then subsequent cortical processing stages, V2, V4, etc., extract progressively more complex features, culminating in the inferotemporal cortex where that essential "viewpoint invariant object identification" is thought to occur. But, most of the connections in the human brain do not project up the cortical hierarchy, as might be expected from gross neuroanatomy, but rather connect neurons located at the same hierarchical level, called lateral connections, and also project down the cortical hierarchy to lower processing levels.

Petavision Team at LANL

In the recently published work, the team modeled lateral interactions between cortical edge detectors to determine if such connections could explain the difficulty and time course of human contour perception. This research thus combined high-performance computer simulations of cortical circuits, using a National Science Foundation funded neural simulation toolbox, called PetaVision, developed by LANL researchers, along with "speed-of-sight" psychophysical measurements of human contour perception. The psychophysical measurements refer to an experimental technique that neuroscientists use to study mechanisms of cortical processing, using the open-source Psychtoolbox software as an advanced starting point.

"Our research represented the first example of a large-scale cortical model being used to account for both the overall accuracy, as well as the processing time, of human subjects performing a challenging visual-perception task," said Kenyon.

Will Google Plus overtake Facebook?

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 14:19:00 +0000

Facebook Timeline like Google Plus

Google Plus is supposed to have 400million users by the end of year 2012.

Here’s some news Mark Zuckerberg won’t ‘like’ - Google’s social networking site Google Plus will have more than 400million users by the end of 2012, according to a researcher.

The prediction comes from U.S. analyst Paul Allen, who said that Google Plus, which went public in September, has just passed the 62million mark, with a quarter of those signing up in December.

He said 625,000 members are signing up every day and expects that number to rapidly increase – partly because over 700,000 Android devices are bought every day, which makes signing up to Google Plus easier, and partly through integration with other products and the power of word of mouth.

The Google Plus 'timeline': It'll be a Facebook-worrying
400million users strong by the end of 2012, according to a researcher

Naturally, he posted the results of his findings on Google Plus.
He doesn’t know quite why December saw such huge numbers flock to the site, saying that ‘it may be the holidays, the TV commercials, the Android 4 signups, celebrity and brand appeal, or positive word of mouth, or a combination of all these factors’, but he’s in no doubt that the growth will continue at an astonishing rate.

He said: ‘Based on the accelerated growth I'm seeing and all the dials and levers Google can still utilise, and the developer ecosystem that will be developed, I predict that 2012 is going to be a breakout year for Google Plus and that it will end next year with more than 400million users.’

It’s still far short of Facebook’s 800million users, but these figures are sure to make CEO Mark Zuckerberg sit up and take notice.
It should be pointed out, however, that Mr Allen’s methodology is not based not actual figures and could best be described as a ‘guestimate’.
His approach was to track a big list of unusual names in the U.S. and note how many people with those names mentioned they were on Google Plus when they applied for work through recruitment site Elance.
He does have some backing, though, from the Global Web Index, who last week announced that Google Plus actually has 150million active users, more than double Mr Allen’s estimate.
Google Plus is built on the idea that some posts are public and some private - so users have different 'circles' for friends, colleagues as well as 'public' posts that anyone can see.
It also features a ‘what’s hot’ button, that gives users a feed of the posts being shared the most.
Google Plus has so far had a slightly rocky start with even the search engine’s own staff criticising the site.

HOW GOOGLE PLUS HAS GROWN ACCORDING TO PAUL ALLEN

----------------------------------------------------------------

Month Number of users

-----------------------------------------------------------------

July 13 10million

August 1 20.5million

September 1 24.7million

October 1 38million

November 1 43million

December 1 50million

December 27 62million

January 1 65.8million (forecast)

February 1 85.2million (forecast)

Leader of the social networking pack: Facebook has 800million users

Google engineer Steve Yegge accidentally posted a blog entry on his 'Public' circle saying that Plus was a 'knee-jerk' reaction and a 'pathetic afterthought'.
If Mr Allen is right, it could be the most successful 'afterthought' in internet history.
Google declined to comment on the researcher's predictions.

New astronomy software can render astonishing images of earth as what it looked like 240million years ago.

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:56:00 +0000

A warm, earthlike planet orbiting a red dwarf star. Mendez's
software lets astronomers enter the data they know about a
planet and then constructs a vision of what it might look like

First software that 'renders' 3D worlds based on what we know
Draws worlds based on their size, chemistry and distance from star
Can render our Earth from historical data

Astrobiologist Abel Mendez of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo has designed a software package that can draw real-looking worlds based on the scientific data we receive from space telescopes - and says Nasa gets it wrong.

Mendez's software package draws planets based on their size, distance from their parent star and chemistry - and can create 3D images that correspond to the data.

The imagery sent out when missions such as Nasa's Kepler telescope find 'exoplanets' - planets outside our solar system - is still imagined by artists. Mendez claims that his approach is more scientific.

A hot exoplanet about the size of Mars

The Scientific Exoplanets Rendereris is designed to generate 'photo-real' images of other planets - and 'draws' its reconstructions using data such as chemicals detected by space telescopes and their size and surface temperature.

Unlike 'artists reconstructions', it's all done mathematically.

Mendez said of Nasa's reconstruction of Kepler 22-b, 'I think that the Nasa image got the color right but I don’t expect clouds like that. It probably will be more featureless like Uranus or Neptune and not so good for a press release.'

Mendez's software is specially designed to reconstruct Earth-like exoplanets, either rocky or ocean in nature, but it is also able to generate visuals for gas giants and stars.

It includes the reconstruction of realistic clouds and weather effects.

A small, cold planet as recreated by Mendez's software. He says that
Nasa's imaginings of planets may not always be accurate

A warm world larger than our Earth. Unlike 'artist's renderings' of planets,
Mendez's software 'creates worlds' based on available scientific information

Earth rendered 240 million years ago - when the continents were still
gathered together into the 'supercontinent' named Pangaea

Quantum Computing With Holograms.

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 13:37:00 +0000

The US Air Force is developing simple but reliable quantum computers that can be built with off-the-shelf components

Light is one of the most promising carriers of quantum information. It is robust against decoherence because it does not interact with stray electric and magnetic fields and passes unscathed through transparent matter.

But this prized robustness is also a serious limitation. Photons do not easily interact with each other so processing the information they carry is tricky.

In recent years, however, physicists have worked out how to make photons interact using interferometers and to carry out quantum computations using the output of one interferometer as the input for another.

The trouble is that interferometers are notoriously fickle. Sneeze and they need re-calibrating. So cascades of them tend to be hard to handle.

Today, Jonathan McDonald at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome New York, and a few pals reveal a way round this problem.

Their idea is to make holograms of interferometers so that their properties become 'frozen' in glass. This makes them much more stable.

The researchers then plan to stack the interferometers to perform simple quantum computations. "The approach here will "lock" these interferometers within a tempered piece of glass that is resistant to environmental factors," they say.

MacDonald and co suggest using a commercial holographic material called OptiGrate to store these holograms and show how these devices could carry out simple tasks such as quantum teleportation and CNOT logic.

There are two serious limitations to this approach, however. First, these devices are not scalable. The reason is that a hologram requires a certain volume of space to carry out each computation with high fidelity. And since computations scale exponentially in quantum computers, so must the volume.

Second, these devices are not reprogrammable, at least not with today's technology. The reason is that OptiGrate is a write-once material. Re-recordable holographic media are available but not currently with the fidelity that allows this kind of work though clearly that could change in future.

Given these limitations it's easy to dismiss this idea as just another of a growing number of exotic forms of quantum computation that are gathering dust on (metaphorical) library shelves.

But there are a number of emerging applications for the kind of reliable but low-dimensional quantum computations that these devices could perform. These include quantum memory buses, quantum error correction circuits and quantum key distribution relays.

For the moment, no technology does these jobs reliably well, although there are many pretenders for this crown. The difference with McDonald and co's idea is that it ought to be possible to build these devices now with off-the-shelf technology.

In fact, it wouldn't be surprising if this paper was a forerunner for practical work being done to develop prototypes. We'll be watching!

Prototypes will be important for ironing out a number of practical question marks about this approach. For example, these holograms will have to be stacked to carry out even simple quantum computations. But nobody is quite sure whether this output from one hologram can be accurately channelled into the input for another.

There's only one way to find out.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1112.3489: Quantum Computing In A Piece Of Glass

China will be riding faster than bullets!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:59:00 +0000

China's new bullet train achieved 300mph.( Not yet operational)

The train runs at a speed of 300mph which is 100mph greater than current record holder train.
Made of plastic materials reinforced with carbon fibre.

China has produced a

super-rapid test train capable of travelling at speeds of up to 300 miles per hour - 100mph faster than the current record-holder.

The train, made from plastic materials reinforced with carbon fibre, is designed to resemble an ancient Chinese sword and 'will provide useful reference for current high-speed railway operations', according to train expert Shen Zhiyun.

Earlier this year, the Communist regime unveiled its fastest operational locomotive which was able to cover the 824-mile trip between Beijing and Shanghai in five hours - reaching record-breaking top speed of 200mph and maintaining an average speed of 165mph.

The latest test model has a maximum tractive power of 22,800 kilowatts, compared with 9,600 kilowatts for the Beijing-Shanghai CRH380 trains.

But future Chinese trains will not necessarily run at such high speeds. CSR chairman Zhao Xiaogang said: 'We aims to ensure the safety of trains operation.'

China is home to the largest network of bullet-train track in the world, with 8,000 miles of track linking up the vast country at a cost of 700billion yuan (£66billion). Another 8,000 miles of line is expected to be added by 2015.

Already out of date: The CRH380A high-speed train was launched earlier this year and currently holds the world train speed record. But the new model can outrun it by 100mph

Conclusion:

Critics also claim that railway officials have diverted too much money to high-speed rail and should be expanding lower-cost traditional rail.

The Ministry of Railways claims it has made extensive preparations for safety and security on the trains.

They include plans for daily inspections of tracks and other facilities and an earthquake monitoring system.

You Cellphones are not safe!!! : Hackers can now hack it easily

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:39:00 +0000

Famous security expert Karsten Nohl said that any
phone that is on GSM network can be hacked easily and
made to send sms and calls without the owner's consent.

GSM is a widely used digital mobile telephony system.Mobile services based on GSM technology were first launched in Finland in 1991. Today, more than 690 mobile networks provide GSM services across 213 countries and GSM represents 82.4% of all global mobile connections. According to GSM World, there are now more than 2 billion GSM mobile phone users worldwide. GSM World references China as "the largest single GSM market, with more than 370 million users, followed by Russia with 145 million, India with 83 million and the USA with 78 million users."

But a new vulnerability demonstrated by Karsten Nohl, head of Germany's Security Research Labs, shows that any phone on any GSM network is vulnerable to attack.

The new attack - which Nohl did not publish - allows hackers to control hundreds of thousands of mobile phones at once.

The attack allows hackers complete control over the handsets, and could be used to make or send texts to premium phone and messaging services - a typical fraudster attack which can leave victims with enormous bills.

Nohl said that although he refused to lay out details of how the attack worked, it was inevitable that hackers would reproduce it 'within weeks'.

'We can do it to hundreds of thousands of phones in a short timeframe,' Nohl said in advance of a presentation at a hacking convention in Berlin on Tuesday.

Security Research Labs said, 'GSM telephony is the world’s most popular communication technology - connecting over four billion devices.'

'The security standards for voice and text messaging date back to 1990 and have never been overhauled.'

Any GSM phone can be easily hacked
without the users knowing.

Similar attacks against a small number of smartphones have been done before, but the new attack could expose any cellphone using GSM technology.
Such attacks are fairly common against corporate phone systems.
Fraudsters make calls to the numbers from hacked business phone systems or mobile phones, then collect their cash and move on before the activity is identified.

Conclusion:
The phone users typically don’t identify the problem until after they receive their bills and telecommunications carriers often end up footing at least some of the costs.
Even though Nohl will not present details of attack at the conference, he said hackers will usually replicate the code needed for attacks within a few weeks.

It is a comet? Is it a UFO?

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 07:44:00 +0000

Bolt of light: Scientists and individuals alike were initially
baffled as to whether the blaze was space junk or a comet

A mysterious bar of light shot through the night sky on Christmas Eve leaving many Europeans perplexed.
Captured on videos throughout Germany, France, Belgium and Luxembourg the light moved much slower than a normal shooting star, was far brighter and more detailed

It quickly became a popular topic on Twitter with people baffled as to whether it was a comet, meteor or space junk.

The leading edge of the streak looks round and white, while the tail has an amber tone in some images.

Andreas Schutz of the German Aerospace Centre, the country's national aerospace research, told MailOnline that it was space junk from the Russian Soyuz rocket.

Confusion: It is thought to be a piece of debris from the
Russian Soyuz rocket but this has not been confirmed

It was the upper-state part of the rocket lost on the re-entry of the atmosphere, he said.

The re-entry was seen over Germany for 30-35 seconds, he said.

'The last part of the flight of the re-entry, this upper stage burnt out with red fire,' he said.

'This is what we seem know in this moment.'

He added: 'we need to wait for other results next week or the start of the new year from our colleagues in the US and Russia'.

A couple of days before the German authority had had a very different interpretation with Mr Schutz telling a newspaper the organisation was '99.9 per cent' certain that the blaze was a meteor.

The Royal Observatory of Belgium said in a statement: 'The fireball observed above Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany on December 24 around 17h30, was the re-entry of the third stage of the Soyuz rocket that transported the Dutch astronaut André Kuipers to the ISS.' (International Space Station)

Blast off: The Russian Soyuz rocket booster lifting off last week to carry three astronauts to the International Space Station. However, the launch was not successful and the upper-stage was lost as debris

A Hi-Tech Life saver insect.

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 07:31:00 +0000

Cyborg insect: This green june beetle is fitted with a tiny motion
generator to produce electricity. This could be
used to power a camera and a microphone

Flying insects fitted with tiny cameras and microphones could be used to search for earthquake survivors during rescue operations, scientists have said.
The tiny devices will power themselves by harnessing power from wing movements.
By converting kinetic energy into electricity, the device could have a lasting power source.

The device could also harness electricity from heat given off and solar panels.

The idea is that once fitted with a camera and a microphone the bugs could be released into collapsed buildings and left to explore.

They could also be used by the military or sent to places which are too dangerous for humans like the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Tiny spy cam: The 'piezoelectric energy harvester' produces
electricity when the bug moves while the thermoelectric
harvester produces power from heat. The bug is a green june beetle

Professor Khalil Najafi and an engineering student are developing the technology to 'scavenge' electricity from the body at the University of Michigan.

The project is being paid for by the government-run Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Professor Najafi said: 'Through energy scavenging, we could potentially power cameras, microphones and other sensors and communications equipment that an insect could carry aboard a tiny backpack.

'We could then send these "bugged" bugs into dangerous or enclosed environments where we would not want humans to go.'

The team have already been able to harness power from the wing movement of a green june beetle. The bug is less than an inch long.

The first flight tests could be carried out next year.

The university is pursuing patents for the technology and are seeking investors to help them pursue the project.

Scientists have been working for years to develop the first cyborg insects.

Previously there have been attempts to get bugs to sniff out toxic substances.

Conclusion:

These type of insects could prove very helpful in disaster affected areas. They can enter places which are out of reach of normal human being and prove to be very efficient and helpful to mankind.

Disaster zone: Men move through the rubble in Haiti as
the clear-up operation gets underway following a huge
earthquake. Insects could be used in environments like this to search for survivors

Gadgets Of The Future!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:54:00 +0000

These futuristic gadgets are creatively cool concept cell phones and accessories that we’d love to see developed and on the market.

Motorola Origami
Origami, a Motorola concept cell phone, is made of thin segmented “technostuff.” It “can be folded into different forms to serve different functions: phone, recording device, camera, and, presumably, a pointy paper crane.”

Coke Powered Phone

Daizi Zheng designed a cell phone to run on Coke. Her design has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium batteries. She wrote, “The concept is using bio battery to replace the traditional battery to create a pollution free environment. Bio battery is an ecologically friendly energy generates electricity from carbohydrates (currently sugar) and utilizes enzymes as the catalyst. By using bio battery as the power source of the phone, it only needs a pack of sugary drink and it generates water and oxygen while the battery dies out.”

Finger Phone

Do you talk with your hands? Then this concept phone may be for you. Finger Touching is a wearable mobile device for enhanced chatting. Excluding the thumb, each finger joint makes up 12 buttons for input.

Green Gadget Phones Of The Future 3 leaf Gadgets Of The Future

Wearable Solar-Powered Leaf Phone Charges on the Go

Designers Seungkyun Woo and Junyi Heo were inspired by photosynthesis. The Leaf cell phone is a wearable bracelet phone that accumulates power from solar cells on its front panel. As a backup, it also can be recharged with electricity. The Leaf offers high-tech fashion and function, however its main objective is to “remind people that they can contribute to energy efficiency.”

The iPhone of Future.

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 11:33:00 +0000

iPhone of 2020

The future of apple's iPhone is clearly going to be awesome and this is how we can imagine our future phones to be developed by Apple.

Steve Jobs left a huge property of his for us to enjoy and make our lives better and better day by day. Its our duty that we should rethink his ideas and concept to develop iPhone of future. Certainly this concept would make Steve(RIP) shake in his shoes.

Designer Josselin Zaïgouche, who created the Zero Phone we’ve shown you half an year ago has now sent us an incredible design, the Apple Black Hole concept, possibly the iPhone of the year 2020. “What’s going to happen in 10 years” asks the designer and the answer should look something like this.

As you can see, the Apple Black Hole comprises 4 components: the charging base, the Prism, the Black Hole and the gift-box. Things get interesting when you try to use the handset… its central ball will levitate when you open your hand and all functions will be controlled in mid-air, with the aid of holographic technology. How cool is that?

Watch Video:

A super-memory smart drug?

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 10:43:00 +0000

Suppression of the PKR molecule in mutant mice (right) enhances
learning and memory by lowering GABA release,
compared to the process in "wild type" (normal) mice (left) (credit: BCM)

Can this be the
"Limitless" breakthrough we
all have been searching for?

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) have discovered that when the activity of PKR — a molecule normally elevated during viral infections — is inhibited in the brain, mice learn and remember dramatically better.

Baylor College of Medicine

“The molecule PKR (the double-stranded RNA-activated protein kinase) was originally described as a sensor of viral infections, but its function in the brain was totally unknown,” said Dr. Mauro Costa-Mattioli, assistant professor of neuroscience at BCM. But the activity of PKR is altered in a variety of cognitive disorders, so Costa-Mattioli and colleagues decided to take a closer look.

Super memory

We found that when we genetically inhibited PKR, we increased the excitability of brain cells and enhanced learning and memory in a variety of behavioral tests,” said Costa-Mattioli.

Memory-enhancing drug

The BCM researchers also found that this process could be mimicked by a PKR inhibitor — a small molecule that blocks PKR activity and thus acts as a “memory-enhancing drug.” The next step is to use what we have learned in mice and to try to improve brain function in people suffering from memory loss, said Costa-Mattioli.

There are roughly 6 million Americans and 35 million people world-wide with Alzheimer’s disease and more than 70 million Americans over the age of 60 who may suffer from aged-associated impairment of memory. (Not counting the millions who just want to be smarter, which would be just about everybody.)

Unfortunately, there’s a secret government conspiracy to keep this drug out of your hands. :D

But note the figure above: in mice that have been genetically engineering to inhibit PKR (right), the result is to lower GABA release. We know that GABA, the brain’s major inhibitory neurotransmitter, has an anti-anxiety or calming effect, which is why tranquilizers increase GABA production. So could using the PKR inhibitor drug also lead to increased anxiety?

Conclusion
Also, PKR is not just elevated during viral infections. PKR is thought to be a key player in cellular response to different kinds of stress: PKR activation leads to inhibited protein synthesis and transcription of genes involved in an inflammatory response. So you get smarter, but also get sicker if you have the flu or some other stressor? Or maybe just take it when you’re not under stress?

How good Multi-tasker are you?

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 10:03:00 +0000

Can you manage multiple tasks at a time?

The term "multitasking" originated in the computer engineering industry.

Human brain has been considered the most deadliest weapon on earth and it is one of most precious gifts given to us by Almighty God.

But are we utilizing it completely and up to its highest level??
The answer is obviously no, because we don't want to do that moreover its our brain only that does not allows us to do things which would lead us to utilize it to 100%.

Our brain is considered pretty quick but it lacks many of the qualities that a super-computer has. For example we have trouble switching between tasks and ultimately we find ourselves doing only one task. Brain has a trouble keeping tab on multiple tasks as our computers can do easily.

A lot of research has gone into this field. Since 1990s , psychologists and researchers have done many experiments and test on human nature and multitasking capabilities. It has shown that multitasking is not as workable as when we concentrate on one thing at a time. Psychiatrist Edward M. Hallowell has gone so far as to describe multitasking as a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously as effectively as one.”

Brain Divides to Conquer:

Although the human brain cannot actually do two things at the same time, a new study shows how it can keep two separate goals in focus at once.

A new study shows that mind can keep a focus on two tasks while actually doing only one task which could let your mind shift focus between tasks making your mind better multitasking machine as previously thought.

For the study, 32 right-handed subjects were asked to match letters while their brain activity was recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Subjects were motivated by a monetary reward they would receive based on how many letters they matched without error. During this baseline test, both hemispheres of the brain's medial frontal cortex (which is involved in motivation) appeared active. However, when the researchers introduced a second task, where the subjects had to match like uppercase letters in addition to matching like lowercase letters with separately accruing reward tallies, Koechlin and his coauthor Sylvain Charron (of the same institution) found that the subjects' brains divided the two reward-based goals between the two sides of the region. The results were published online April 15 in Science.

The area of the brain that was highly active in the observed multitasking behavior, the frontopolar cortex (which organizes pending goals while the brain completes another task), is "especially well developed" in humans, Koechlin says. It helps organize tasks and the order in which their components should be completed (as highlighted by patients who have damaged this part of the brain and are especially poor at multitasking, he notes). This area's lesser development in other primate species leads Koechlin to think that the ability to hold more than one goal in mind at once might be unique to our species.

Within the results of Koechlin's work is an explanation for why people tend to prefer binary options, such as yes-or-no questions and if-then statements. "This finding further suggests that the frontal function cannot keep track of more than two goals/tasks at the same time," Koechlin explains. "Humans have problems deciding between more than two alternatives…. A possible explanation is that they cannot keep in mind and switch back and forth between three or more alternatives."

Conclusion:
Human beings can become a better multitasker in coming future and can improve their productivity and efficiency with which they can do their work. I hope that era comes soon and some technology comes asap so that i can write multiple posts at a time for my dearly readers at techbits404.
PS: Whatever we are and whatever we will be , its always gonna be awesome!!!

Ready for the robot revolution? - 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 15:38:00 +0000

Meet the "social robot" at University of Southern California

Social robot OLIVIA developed to be used as a receptionist

Robots are about to invade our lives.

From performing household chores, to entertaining and educating our children, to looking after the elderly, robotics say we will soon be welcoming their creations into our homes and workplaces.

Researchers believe we are on the cusp of a robot revolution that will mirror the explosive growth of the computer revolution from the 1980s onwards.

They are developing new laws for robot behaviour, and designing new ways for humans and robots to interact.

"I think robotics technology will change who we are, just as eyeglasses and fire changed who we were before," says Rodney Brookes, robotics entrepreneur and former director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Human-like robots

Commercially available robots are already beginning to perform everyday tasks like vacuuming our floors.

The latest prototypes from Japan are able to help the elderly to get out of bed or get up after a fall. They can also remind them when to take medication, or even help wash their hair.

"Current robots are not human like. For example they are things like automated beds and wheelchairs," says celebrated roboticist Prof Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, Japan. He believes the time is coming when robots start looking less like machines, and more like us.

"Everything is becoming automatic, and that means everything is a robot. People want to have a better interface."

"Elderly people don't like using a computer interface, but they can talk with a robot," says Prof Ishiguro.

"In the near future we are going to use more human-like robots, I really think so."

Prof Maja Mataric at the University of Southern California, one of the leading proponents of social caring robots, agrees. "I'm very excited about the fact that today in robotics we have machines that are sophisticated enough to be put together with people in a daily life setting," she says.

"A major point to keep in mind is that people will need human-machine interaction in the future."

The global population is living longer, and getting older, which presents new challenges.

"The question becomes: who will take care of everyone? While people will always be the best caregivers for people, there just aren't enough people. That's where robotic technology can really make a difference," says Prof Mataric.

Her group is developing robots to work with stroke patients, and elderly people undergoing cognitive changes.

The research team has found that people react well to a robot gym instructor, and seem to get less frustrated with it than with instructions given on a computer screen. The robot can act as a perfect trainer, with infinite patience.

"People say things like 'I prefer this robot to my husband! Can I take it home?'" according to Prof Mataric.

"In fact there's a really important point here, that as we create these care giving technologies, we're helping not only the people that need the care, but also the people caring for them. We can give them a break, and help them avoid burnout."

Welcome to the machine

(Image Credit: Clipartof.com)

Much of human interaction takes place unconsciously, through body language. Gestures, eye contact, and concepts of personal space are all things that robots are being taught.

In learning about how people interact with machines, researchers are also discovering new roles for robots in our lives. Robots can communicate with humans in ways that other technology can not.

"If someone finds the robot to be more persuasive, more credible, that's going to affect how they interact with it," says Dr Cynthia Breazeal, director of the Personal Robots Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"We can now start to think about domains where it's the social interaction, which is the core means by which a robot helps someone, through motivating them, or giving positive reinforcement."

Dr Breazeal says that means robots could have applications in education, learning, and healthcare, where social support is important.

Roboticists have had impressive results with autistic children, who often find communication difficult. Children seem to be able to interact more easily with a robot 'buddy' than with other people.

In control

It's a robot, but not as
our science fiction books know it

Science fiction may have primed us for the coming robot revolution, but it has also given us an idea of the types of controls we may want to consider before welcoming robots into our lives and homes.

One of the most celebrated science fiction authors, Isaac Asimov, outlined 'Three Laws of Robotics' in a novel featuring human-like robots. The rules were designed to protect people from harm.

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

"Asimov's laws of robotics were, and remain, a fictional device" says Prof Alan Winfield from the University of the West of England.

"But if not those particular laws, then in the far future there will have to be something like Asimov's laws."

At present, robots are not sophisticated enough to be made to behave ethically. Prof Winfield says that means roboticists building them need to behave ethically instead.

The UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, together with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, has drafted a set of ethical principles for robot design - which can be summarised as follows:

Robots should not be designed solely or primarily to kill or harm humans.
Humans, not robots, are responsible agents. Robots are tools designed to achieve human goals.
Robots should be designed in ways that assure their safety and security.
Robots are artefacts; they should not be designed to exploit vulnerable users by evoking an emotional response or dependency. It should always be possible to tell a robot from a human.
It should always be possible to find out who is legally responsible for a robot.

"At present this code is simply a set of ideas. It's out for debate and discussion," says Prof Winfield.

However he believes that they are ideas that people should be thinking about before the coming 'robot revolution'.

"In my view the principles are less important than the debate and the awareness around the issues that they provoke."

Touchless smartphones and TVs could be on sale in 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 14:51:00 +0000

Using a GPS device without touching it while driving could be safer

So you've lost your TV remote control. Again.
You'll just have to turn your palm towards the screen, and zap away without ever getting off the couch.
No need for under-the-skin electronics or fancy microchips.

Instead, the TV - or rather gesture recognition software installed inside - will "read" your moves and execute appropriate commands, without any need for physically pressing any buttons.

Based in Tel Aviv, XTR3D is one of the developers of such motion capture technology, and it has just received $8m (£5m) investment bound to give "touchless" tech another push - and according to the firm, bring the first motion control smartphone into the market as early as next year.

US electronics giant Texas Instruments is among the investors.

Dor Givon of XTR3D demonstrates how gesture control can work

Controlling the TV without a remote would
eliminate the need to look for it

Although the Israeli firm follows in the footsteps of Microsoft's Kinect, the multi-directional gesture control gaming console that was launched last year and has since been selling like hot cakes despite the average $200 price tag, its technology is quite different.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

The Kinect has depth sensors, multi-array microphones and RGB cameras that provide the software with the information it needs to track both voice and gestures.

XTR3D, on the other hand, uses ordinary 2D cameras - such as a webcam of a computer or the one in your smartphone - to extract 3D out of a 2D image.

This creates the same three-dimensional effect as on the Kinect.

According to the Tel Aviv start-up's spokesman Roy Ramati, XTR3D's technology has all the advantages of a 3D camera without any of the disadvantages - it can work in broad daylight, is much cheaper and uses a lot less power.

"And it can be installed into any consumer electronics device," adds Mr Ramati.

Dor Givon, XTR3D's founder and chief technical officer, adds that it is even possible to play a proper Kinect game on a regular laptop that has the software, touchlessly controlling the device from a distance of a few centimetres to up to 5m away.
Gesture-controlled TV Controlling the TV without a remote would eliminate the need to look for it

And, he says, anyone will be able to afford it.

"Our target is to penetrate the market, so it will be something for everyone to try out," says Mr Givon.

"New devices will have the interface embedded in them, with older ones you will be able to download the software from the app store."

Besides gaming and switching TV channels, the existing prototypes include a PC where it is possible to flip through a PowerPoint presentation just by waving your hand, a tablet and a smartphone that have features such as using gestures to create the effect of a joystick, to click, swipe, zoom in and out with a pinch gesture, and a GPS device that can be controlled touchlessly while driving.

Ultrasound and optical

Despite being at the forefront of gesture-controlled technology, XTR3D is not the only firm aiming to make our world touchless.

Various kinds of motion detection have been around for a while.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

For instance, simple gesture recognition such as hovering your hand near a water tap or a toilet flush to activate them are becoming more and more common.

And after Microsoft paved the way with Kinect, bringing new digital dimensions to the gaming world, other companies followed.

Microsoft itself is now actively trying to expand Kinect's use into other industries.

Recently, it announced that it would release a commercial version of the Kinect software development kit in early 2012.

Microsoft has also teamed up with about 200 businesses in more than 20 countries - among them car manufacturer Toyota and digital advertising firm Razorfish - for Kinect to reach well beyond gaming.

"The Kinect can sense your entire body for interaction with the device, and we're only scratching the surface of what can be done because beyond computing there's a lot of scenarios where this kind of natural user interaction could be really powerful, a real paradigm shift," says Shahram Izadi, a researcher from the Microsoft Research Centre in Cambridge, England.

And the creator of the chip that powers the motion-sensing part of the Kinect, an Israeli company called PrimeSense, is now selling a gadget that has the same hardware as Microsoft's device.

Once hooked up to a regular computer, it can provide a Kinect-like experience without the Kinect.

Apple has also filed patents that involve allowing users to touchlessly "throw" content from one device to another, for example from a tablet onto your TV screen.

Another electronics giant, mobile chip maker Qualcomm, has recently bought a small Canadian firm GestureTek.

It targets three devices: tablets (including eReaders), smartphones and TVs, and uses a combination of cameras and ultrasound.

Ordinary 2D cameras and XTR3D software
turn your tablet into a motion-control device

Ultrasound sensors are there for close range "no-look" gesture control - they pick up movements with help of a microphone instead of an optical camera, explains Qualcomm's director of technology Francis MacDougall. "One issue the Kinect has is an inability to track close to a device. The default design can track no closer than 50cm - great for TVs but not so good for tablets and smartphones," says Mr MacDougall.
"So Qualcomm has placed multiple audio sensors - microphones - into their handset designs to isolate the voice location in 3D space while filtering out everything else.
"This technique is extremely low power and can track the hand within one to 15cm of the phone."

Touch-less world

With gesture-controlled interfaces,
touching the screen would become unnecessary

Imagine that you are driving a car and your child is on the back seat watching a movie on a tablet - you don't have to divert your attention from the road, but just by making a gesture near the tablet you would be able to pause it or turn it off.

And such possibilities are endless, says Mr MacDougall.

For instance, how about answering a phone when you're cooking, eating or driving without touching the screen or even having to look at it? Or turning pages on an eReader with swipe gestures? Or skipping to the next song with a swipe or pausing it with a palm raised?

These touchless features are pretty much what other companies working in the area have been promising to deliver, but one that relates to TV control is quite unique to GestureTek.

"We're working on face recognition that will be used to identify each member of the family and bring up custom interfaces as part of a next generation 'smart TV' interface," says Mr MacDougall.

To achieve that, the firm is turning to optical solutions, similar to those used by XTR3D - the standard forward-facing 2D camera and in some cases a stereo set-up - two standard 2D camera sensors spaced a small distance apart to calculate the 3D location of any features in the scene.

However the companies around the world are doing it - with regular or infrared cameras, or with ultrasound sensors, one thing is certain, says Mr MacDougall.

"Gesture is definitely heating up!"

(Source Credit:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology/)

Bare bones Raspberry Pi PC gets ready to launch

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 14:43:00 +0000

Many developers are keen to get their hands
on the bare bones Raspberry Pi computer.

The eagerly anticipated Raspberry Pi home computer is about to go into production.

The $25 (£16) machine is being created in the hope that it will inspire a new generation of technology whizz kids.

The Pi uses an Arm chip similar to that found in mobile phones and is intended to run a version of the Linux open source operating system.

Test versions of finished devices are being checked and if all is well volume production will start in January.

The idea for Raspberry Pi came from video game veteran David Braben who was searching for a way to inspire young people to start a career in technology.

Mr Braben got his start in games thanks to the BBC Micro on which he, and school friend Ian Bell, created pioneering computer game Elite.

Raspberry Pi is being developed in Cambridgeshire and every update has been watched closely by those keen to get working with the gadget. Raspberry Pi took to its blog on 23 December to report that the first finished circuit boards had arrived.

The batch of bare bones circuit boards are the first to be populated with all the components making up the finished device. The batch is undergoing electrical, software and hardware testing to ensure all is well in the production process.

"Once we're happy that this test run is fine, we'll be pushing the button immediately on full-scale manufacture in more than one factory," wrote Liz Upton on the blog.

The finished device will be sold in two configurations. A Model A for $25 (£16) which lacks a network connector and a Model B for $35 (£22) which does have an Ethernet socket.

Ms Upton said if the tests go well the first batch of 10 boards will be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Raspberry Pi initially intended to finish its machine by the end of 2011. However, it said, delays in development meant it was now about three weeks behind schedule.

Despite this, it anticipates that people will be able to place orders for the gadgets in early January. No pre-orders have been taken because the organisation said it did not want to take anyone's cash without having something to hand over in return.

Using Photons to Manage Data

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 04:12:00 +0000

U of A Engineering professor Zubin Jacob wants to refine the
optical transmission of information by using a single photon, to
allow unprecedented applications in optical information
transfer. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Alberta)

Managing light to carry computer data, such as text, audio and video, is possible today with laser light beams that are guided along a fibre-optic cable.
These waves consist of countless billions of photons, which carry information down the fibre across continents.

A research team at the University of Alberta wants to refine the optical transmission of information by using a single photon, the fundamental building block of light that can allow unprecedented applications in optical information transfer.

Zubin Jacob, a U of A electrical and computer engineering researcher, says that rather than spreading data over waves of light, the goal is to use single particles of light, photons.

"Unfortunately, the efficient generation of single photons for practical applications is a serious engineering challenge," said Jacob.

Jacob and his research team are looking into metamaterials to tackle this problem. A metamaterial is a medium that has designer nanostructures in it, giving it technical capabilities beyond any materials we currently have. "The metamaterial would efficiently collect single photons of light and allow their transmission," said Jacob.

At other universities, researchers are looking at attaching single photons to waves of electrons. The electrons and photons combine to form a plasmon wave that can be transmitted on a metal nanowire.

Jacob says the benefit of working with single photons for transmitting computer data is the ability to encode much more complex information on an individual particle of light. "A single photon could carry encryption codes, which are far more complex than the security password information we currently use to protect sensitive data."

Jacob says that this technology is at least 10 years away and the products are not aimed at general consumers. "This technology is destined for markets such as the military that requires extremely high levels of data encryption."

The development in this field of research combining nanophotonics and quantum technologies was published Oct. 27 in the journal Science.

Crucial Advances in 'Brain Reading' Demonstrated

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 04:08:00 +0000

An innovative machine learning method anticipates neurocognitive
changes, similar to predictive text-entry for cell phones,
Internet search engines. (Credit: © ktsdesign / Fotolia)

At UCLA's Laboratory of Integrative Neuroimaging Technology, researchers use functional MRI brain scans to observe brain signal changes that take place during mental activity.
They then employ computerized machine learning (ML) methods to study these patterns and identify the cognitive state -- or sometimes the thought process -- of human subjects. The technique is called "brain reading" or "brain decoding."

This technique is called "brain reading" or "brain decoding."

In a new study, the UCLA research team describes several crucial advances in this field, using fMRI and machine learning methods to perform "brain reading" on smokers experiencing nicotine cravings.

The research, presented last week at the Neural Information Processing Systems' Machine Learning and Interpretation in Neuroimaging workshop in Spain, was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is interested in using these method to help people control drug cravings.

In this study on addiction and cravings, the team classified data taken from cigarette smokers who were scanned while watching videos meant to induce nicotine cravings. The aim was to understand in detail which regions of the brain and which neural networks are responsible for resisting nicotine addiction specifically, and cravings in general, said Dr. Ariana Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow in the Integrative Neuroimaging Technology lab and the study's lead author.

"We are interested in exploring the relationships between structure and function in the human brain, particularly as related to higher-level cognition, such as mental imagery," Anderson said. "The lab is engaged in the active exploration of modern data-analysis approaches, such as machine learning, with special attention to methods that reveal systems-level neural organization."

For the study, smokers sometimes watched videos meant to induce cravings, sometimes watched "neutral" videos and at sometimes watched no video at all. They were instructed to attempt to fight nicotine cravings when they arose.

The data from fMRI scans taken of the study participants was then analyzed. Traditional machine learning methods were augmented by Markov processes, which use past history to predict future states. By measuring the brain networks active over time during the scans, the resulting machine learning algorithms were able to anticipate changes in subjects' underlying neurocognitive structure, predicting with a high degree of accuracy (90 percent for some of the models tested) what they were watching and, as far as cravings were concerned, how they were reacting to what they viewed.

"We detected whether people were watching and resisting cravings, indulging in them, or watching videos that were unrelated to smoking or cravings," said Anderson, who completed her Ph.D. in statistics at UCLA. "Essentially, we were predicting and detecting what kind of videos people were watching and whether they were resisting their cravings."

In essence, the algorithm was able to complete or "predict" the subjects' mental states and thought processes in much the same way that Internet search engines or texting programs on cell phones anticipate and complete a sentence or request before the user is finished typing. And this machine learning method based on Markov processes demonstrated a large improvement in accuracy over traditional approaches, the researchers said.

Machine learning methods, in general, create a "decision layer" -- essentially a boundary separating the different classes one needs to distinguish. For example, values on one side of the boundary might indicate that a subject believes various test statements and, on the other, that a subject disbelieves these statements. Researchers have found they can detect these believe-disbelieve differences with high accuracy, in effect creating a lie detector. An innovation described in the new study is a means of making these boundaries interpretable by neuroscientists, rather than an often obscure boundary created by more traditional methods, like support vector machine learning.

"In our study, these boundaries are designed to reflect the contributed activity of a variety of brain sub-systems or networks whose functions are identifiable -- for example, a visual network, an emotional-regulation network or a conflict-monitoring network," said study co-author Mark S. Cohen, a professor of neurology, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA's Staglin Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and a researcher at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

"By projecting our problem of isolating specific networks associated with cravings into the domain of neurology, the technique does more than classify brain states -- it actually helps us to better understand the way the brain resists cravings," added Cohen, who also directs UCLA's Neuroengineering Training Program.

Remarkably, by placing this problem into neurological terms, the decoding process becomes significantly more reliable and accurate, the researchers said. This is especially significant, they said, because it is unusual to use prior outcomes and states in order to inform the machine learning algorithms, and it is particularly challenging in the brain because so much is unknown about how the brain works.

Machine learning typically involves two steps: a "training phase" in which the computer evaluates a set of known outcomes -- say, a bunch of trials in which a subject indicated belief or disbelief -- and a second, "prediction" phase in which the computer builds a boundary based on that knowledge.

In future research, the neuroscientists said, they will be using these machine learning methods in a biofeedback context, showing subjects real-time brain readouts to let them know when they are experiencing cravings and how intense those cravings are, in the hopes of training them to control and suppress those cravings.

But since this clearly changes the process and cognitive state for the subject, the researchers said, they may face special challenges in trying to decode a "moving target" and in separating the "training" phase from the "prediction" phase.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Los Angeles. The original article was written by Jennifer Marcus.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

___________________________________________________________________________________

More Powerful Supercomputers?

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 04:01:00 +0000

This illustration shows a new "all-silicon passive
optical diode," a device small enough to fit millions
on a computer chip that could lead to faster, more
powerful information processing and supercomputers.
The device has been developed
by Purdue University researchers. (Credit:
Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University)

Researchers have created a new type of optical device small enough to fit millions on a computer chip that could lead to faster, more powerful information processing and supercomputers.

The "passive optical diode" is made from two tiny silicon rings measuring 10 microns in diameter, or about one-tenth the width of a human hair. Unlike other optical diodes, it does not require external assistance to transmit signals and can be readily integrated into computer chips.

The diode is capable of "nonreciprocal transmission," meaning it transmits signals in only one direction, making it capable of information processing, said Minghao Qi (pronounced Chee), an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University.

"This one-way transmission is the most fundamental part of a logic circuit, so our diodes open the door to optical information processing," said Qi, working with a team also led by Andrew Weiner, Purdue's Scifres Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The diodes are described in a paper to be published online Dec. 22 in the journal Science. The paper was written by graduate students Li Fan, Jian Wang, Leo Varghese, Hao Shen and Ben Niu, research associate Yi Xuan, and Weiner and Qi.

Although fiberoptic cables are instrumental in transmitting large quantities of data across oceans and continents, information processing is slowed and the data are susceptible to cyberattack when optical signals must be translated into electronic signals for use in computers, and vice versa.

"This translation requires expensive equipment," Wang said. "What you'd rather be able to do is plug the fiber directly into computers with no translation needed, and then you get a lot of bandwidth and security."

Electronic diodes constitute critical junctions in transistors and help enable integrated circuits to switch on and off and to process information. The new optical diodes are compatible with industry manufacturing processes for complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors, or CMOS, used to produce computer chips, Fan said.

"These diodes are very compact, and they have other attributes that make them attractive as a potential component for future photonic information processing chips," she said.

The new optical diodes could make for faster and more secure information processing by eliminating the need for this translation. The devices, which are nearly ready for commercialization, also could lead to faster, more powerful supercomputers by using them to connect numerous processors together.

"The major factor limiting supercomputers today is the speed and bandwidth of communication between the individual superchips in the system," Varghese said. "Our optical diode may be a component in optical interconnect systems that could eliminate such a bottleneck."

Infrared light from a laser at telecommunication wavelength goes through an optical fiber and is guided by a microstructure called a waveguide. It then passes sequentially through two silicon rings and undergoes "nonlinear interaction" while inside the tiny rings. Depending on which ring the light enters first, it will either pass in the forward direction or be dissipated in the backward direction, making for one-way transmission. The rings can be tuned by heating them using a "microheater," which changes the wavelengths at which they transmit, making it possible to handle a broad frequency range.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Purdue University. The original article was written by Emil Venere.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

______________________________________________________________________________

View Your Life in a Parallel Universe With the Press of a Button

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:42:00 +0000

The designer, Patrick Stevenson-Keating, hopes that project serves to
“raise questions and provoke thoughts about the nature
of our reality and our lives,” as well as being a
useful tool to communicate modern theories in physics.

The Quantum Parallelograph is more than just an art design
You simply tune the search intensity and the device will use online sources to print out a short statement about your alternate realities.Click here to see the video

The Quantum Parallelograph from Patrick Stevenson-Keating on Vimeo.

The Quantum Parallelograph is more than just an art design. It’s a tool that allows you to get a glimpse of your lives in different parallel universes. You simply tune the search intensity and the device will use online sources to print out a short statement about your alternate realities.

Although the results are whimsical, vague and hypothetical, the project is actually based on research in quantum physics by Oxford University professors. The designer, Patrick Stevenson-Keating, hopes that project serves to “raise questions and provoke thoughts about the nature of our reality and our lives,” as well as being a useful tool to communicate modern theories in physics.

6 Crazy Tech Predictions for 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:40:00 +0000

We live in a world of absolutes: Here’s what happened. Even when we look to the future, our predictions are couched in the world’s sometimes difficult realities. It can, to be honest, take all the fun out of guess work. So, once a year I allow myself to go beyond the likely, beyond the possible and deep into the world of the implausible. What follows are my most ridiculous and unlikely predictions. Most are just nuts, but one is, to be honest, all too scarily possible. See if you can guess which prediction I’m talking about.

1. Facebook Buys Digg

Facebook’s 2012 will look a lot like its 2011: More growth, more change. Still, it hasn’t quite broken through on the content curation and voting side of things. With all the frictionless sharing people will be doing, they may no longer think about accumulating “likes.”Digg started using Facebook’s OpenGraph in 2011, which makes it easy to share what you’re reading on Digg to Facebook. As I see it, this is simply the first step on the road to a much deeper relationship. When Facebook buys Digg next year, users will get the ability to “Digg” not only profile pages, but people. That’s right, you could really “Digg” someone on Facebook. It’s so 1976, but also so cool.

I foresee another side to the Facebook universe where people, places and things are Dugg on a more generalized basis, but those Diggs bubble up to individual profile pages and appear alongside Likes, Readings, Watching, etc. There is an 85% chance that all of Digg’s existing audience will walk away from the service if this acquisition happens, but I’m not sure most of them will stay with the content curation destination anyway.

2. Scientists and Hollywood Develop New Way to End Movies

3D has pretty much flopped, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to get movie-goers into theaters. Scientists will partner with Hollywood studios to unveil a new technology known as “Fresh Ends.” Using CGI, Hollywood script writers, voice and context recognition and logic algorithms, Fresh Ends technology will generate new endings for some of the world’s most popular films. These slightly rewritten movies will be re-released to theaters — just like the 3D rereleases — and are expected to add 15- to 20% additional box office returns to each film. For now, Fresh Ends only works with movies shot digitally.

3. SOPA Becomes the Law of the land

Myopic congressman and a distracted president take the Stop Online Piracy Act and pass it into law. Designed, at least according to the bill, “To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes,” SOPA has an almost unprecedented chilling effect on the web. Thousands of U.S. sites shut down, other larger ones continue, but are now full of boring pap that could never be misconstrued as content piracy.

Content creators of all stripes are so unsure of what will be labeled piracy they struggle to create anything. By the end of 2012, however, an underground Internet (The UnderWebs) arises. It’s full of unfettered communication and content, and slowly but surely, millions of web surfers around the world begin using it instead of the government-policed Internet — a platform that dies a sad, quiet death in 2018.

4. Apple Intros a 5-inch Tablet Phone Hybrid

Sorry, no iPhone 5 or iPad 3. Unable to decide whether it should deliver a 7-inch iPad 3 or a 4.5-inch iPhone 5, Apple comes down squarely in the middle with a giant handheld that, naturally, makes calls and is almost large enough to be a usable tablet. The hidden bonus? It’s also a fully functional HDTV. Apple, however, will remain mum for most of the year on whether or not it plans on actually delivering a larger Apple iTV.

5. Google+ Takes Center Stage

Virtually unchanged for more than a decade, Google’s search page undergoes a subtle, yet important transformation. The search giant places a “+” sign right next to the “Google” Logo. But the change is more than logo-deep. If you hit your own “+” sign on your keyboard before typing in your search query, all results will feature Google+ search results on top. If you hit “+” twice, your search query can be used to launch a new Google+ post. You’ll still have to select which circles you want to share your search query with. Rumors will swirl throughout 2012 that Google wants to rename the entire company “Google+.”

6. Honda Releases Asimo to Consumers

Japanese auto manufacturer Honda shocks the world by unveiling a fully operational, $1,999 Honda Asimo Home Helper Robot. Like the Asimo we’ve seen in product demonstrations and on YouTube, “Home Asimo” can walk, run, jump, make coffee and sandwiches and, as we soon learn, clean toilets. Honda sells a stunning half million units before August, 2012. The most startling news, though, comes when one Home Honda robot in Dearborn, Michigan turns on its family’s computer and signs itself up for Twitter and Facebook. By December, more than 300,000 of the robots have been destroyed or returned.

Source Credit: Mashable.com

Facebook rejiggers platform to increase game usage

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:14:00 +0000

Facebook announced Thursday evening that it has made updates to its platform to improve game usage and discovery of new apps.

The social network said it made changes to the platform based on tests that showed it could drive re-engagement and discovery higher. The changes are part of constant tinkering that the company does to prompt users to return to their games or click on new titles. If they work, they could generate more usage and profits for game companies.

Facebook has now increased the number of bookmarks at the top of every canvas page (a page where you’re playing a game) from four icons to six. Those icons show you the notifications (pictured left) for each game you’re playing. Early results have shown that this has increased referrals from canvas bookmarks to games by 20 percent.

Facebook also updated bookmark counters on the home page to clear automatically once clicked, similar to how notifications behave. Facebook has also combined the Games and Apps dashboards into a single dashboard, called Apps and Games. That dashboard will let users see all their requests and invites on a single page, making it easier to find new games and the games friends are using most and have recommended.

Facebook has also begun testing aggregated game stories for mobile platform apps to drive traffic from mobile devices to games. Gamers and non-gamers will both see stories for the games their friends are playing the most. And Facebook published a Games Tutorial to help developers get started building social games. Earlier this month, Facebook hosted a Social Games Hack at its headquarters, and it has now provided tips for best practices in making games.

House of the Rising Sun, ancient computers version

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:06:00 +0000

The term “ancient” is relative and unfortunately I can remember using many of the machines in this video, but compared to what we have today, the various equipment used here are “older than the internet,” so to speak. It makes the end result, an equipment-generated variation of “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals, even more epic.

According to creator bd594, “My last couple of videos I built a couple of robot bands (yeah! machines that play actual instruments). These videos didn’t fair as well so I decided to go back to the basics and create a video staring my trusty old HP Scanner and a scrappy old hard drive which was converted into a robotic drum machine. For this video I recorded the audio separately soI could mix it down because the HP scanner isn’t very loud. No effects such as delay and reverb have been used. I was very pleased how the hard-drive drums turned out and they sound great. i will definitely use it in my next video.”

Watch and be inspired:

The World’s Smallest Digital Camera

noreply@blogger.com (Afaq) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 07:51:00 +0000

Canon 7D with battery pack and a Canon 24-70mm f2.8L that’s totally heavy without a speedlight, so when I stumble upon this claimed world’s smallest camera –in terms of size and being almost weightless I have to shake my head. Hammacher Schlemmer‘s world’s smallest camera boasts dimensions 1 1/8″ L x 1″ W x 1 1/16″ and weighing half an ounce but ultimately capable of taking pictures at a 2MP resolution (1600 x 1200), and video at 30 fps and 640 x 480. The tiny camera also features a 2 GB microSD card but supports up to 32 GB.

This is the world’s smallest digital camera, measuring just over one inch in all dimensions and weighing only half an ounce. Reminiscent of devices employed by Cold War-era operatives for intelligence gathering, the camera appears to require Lilliputian agility, yet its one-button operation provides easy picture taking. Providing automatic focus, it uses a 2 MP image sensor that takes still images at 1600 x 1200 resolution and captures video at 30 fps at 640 x 480 resolution. Images are taken as JPEGs and videos as AVIs, both saved onto an included 2 GB microSD card (supports up to 32 GB cards). Images and video can be viewed when connecting it to a computer running Windows 7, XP, or Vista using the included USB 2.0 cable. Rechargeable battery provides up to 30 minutes of operation from a one-hour charge via USB. Includes wrist lanyard. 1 1/8″ L x 1″ W x 1 1/16″ D. (1/2 oz.)