" t e c h s a v v y "

Computer-Aided Design Used for Breast Tissue Reconstruction

2011-09-11T04:43:00.001-07:00

A technology usually reserved for designing buildings, bridges and aircraft has now been used to aid breast tissue reconstruction in cancer patients.
In a study published Sept. 8 in IOP Publishing's journal Biofabrication, researchers used computer-aided design (CAD) to create an extremely accurate mould of a breast that was used as a visual aid to surgeons in tissue reconstruction operations.

Furthermore, CAD was used to design and produce patient-specific physical scaffolds that could potentially be used in conjunction with one of the most promising areas of medicine -- tissue engineering.

In theory, patients' own cells could be harnessed and grown onto the highly specific scaffold and then transferred to the affected area, avoiding the need to transfer tissue from other parts of the body which can cause large scars, result in considerable blood loss and require five to ten hours of anaesthesia.

Study co-author, Professor Dietmar Hutmacher, said, "We would take a laser scan of the healthy breast and use the CAD modeling process to design a patient-specific scaffold in silico. We would then produce a scaffold of very high porosity and load it with the patient's own cells in combination with a hydrogel. The construct would then be implanted."

CAD -- the use of computer technology in the process of design -- holds several advantages over traditional pen and paper approaches including the ability to work to full scale, examine the design from all angles and maintain absolute accuracy.

After informed consent, 3D laser scanning was performed on three female patients who suffered from breast cancer. The images were then fed into a piece of CAD-software which produced a single image representing the patient's breast and surrounding thorax region.

This image was then "printed" to form a 3D mould which was used as an operative aid for surgeons who performed autologous tissue reconstructions -- the transferring of tissue from another part of the patient's body -- on each of the patients.

After each of the operations, the surgeons observed a more perfect shape with a higher degree of symmetry between the breasts whilst, more importantly, the patients reported a higher satisfaction of the surgery outcomes than the control group, again with respect to shape and symmetry of their breasts.

The long-term aim of the study, however, was on the development of a material that could be used in tissue engineering and it showed that CAD could be an effective way of achieving this.

A function was created using the CAD software that enabled the creation of a mould for any scanned tissue with the ability to independently tailor the porosity and pore size -- a property that is essential to the seeding and diffusing of cells throughout the structure and something that limits modern technologies.

Professor Hutmacher continued, "The development of a clinically translatable method of engineering adipose tissue for soft tissue reconstruction requires investigation of several components.

"There must be coordination between all key aspects of the tissue engineering process, including the selection of cell source, scaffold material, cellular environment, and means of device delivery in order for the engineering of any tissue to be successful."

An Institute of Physics spokesperson said, "This advance offers hope to women who have undergone mastectomies. It's enlightening to see how a technique, first designed for the construction of buildings, bridges and aircraft, is now being used in medicine."

Courtesy Sciencedaily

Red Hat certifies Telstra's Cloud along with Ixonos

2011-08-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

Telstra has joined the likes of Amazon EC2, Fujitsu and IBM, receiving Red Hat certification for its public Cloud offering.
Telstra is one of seven Red Hat Cloud partners. Along with Ixonos and Savvis, it is recognised as a "certified provider" by Red Hat.
The certification represents Red Hat's blessing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployment in Telstra's cloud.
“Offering Red Hat Enterprise Linux in our Cloud computing environment offers our customers more choice, more flexibility and the opportunity for them to run more applications out of our Cloud," Telstra executive director, Philip Jones, said in a statement.
Red Hat launched its Cloud partner program in mid-2009
At the time Mike Evans, Red Hat's vice-president of corporate development, compared Cloud computing to the "wild West". "We're trying to bring some sanity and safety [to the market] and give customers more options," Evans said.

MapChat: The location-based instant messaging app for strangers

2011-08-25T07:06:00.000-07:00

Back in June, we ran a feature called Silicon Roundabout from a New York State of Mind, part of which constituted an interview with Rich Martell, the founder of Floxx Media Group, a company specializing in location-based social networking tools.

Martell was the guy behind FitFinder, a social networking website that was launched last year, causing a fair bit of controversy in the process. The site was ultimately forced offline by University College London (UCL), where he was a student at the time. In a nutshell, FitFinder gave students a platform to publicly (and anonymously) post messages about people they thought were ‘hot’ in specific locations, such as in the UCL library.

Floxx Media Group is a spin-off of that endeavor, and it has secured investment from Doug Richard (formerly of Dragons’ Den) and Silicon Valley money man Kevin Wall. Now, there’s a series of apps on the way, and the first of these is out now.

MapChat is what the company calls “the first location based instant messaging client”. That isn’t strictly true, but as we’ll see it does look like a pretty interesting concept.

Steve Jobs: From college dropout to tech visionary

2011-08-25T06:49:00.000-07:00

As Steve Jobs ends his career at Apple -- perhaps the world's most valuable and admired company -- business and tech pundits are showering him with superlatives: Innovator. Visionary. Genius.

Tracking Crime in Real Time

2011-08-19T01:01:00.000-07:00

Almost everything we do leaves a digital trace, whether we send an email to a friend or make a purchase online. That includes law-abiding citizens -- and criminals. And with digital information multiplying by the second, there are seemingly endless amounts of information for criminal investigators to gather and process.

Sherlock Holmes goes digital
Like digital files, people are always on the move, Prof. Ben-Gal says. It's not enough to process the information you have and assume the output will remain relevant. "If the object is moving, modelling and eventually catching it is mathematically complex," he says. Prof. Ben-Gal and his fellow researchers work with leading companies in homeland security on how to establish patterns of terrorist or criminal activity using mostly communication files. New pieces of information are automatically plugged in to existing data, and the algorithm's analysis of the criminal's movement or pattern is reformatted.
The algorithm works like a computerized sleuth, taking pieces of information such as phone calls, emails, or credit card interactions and reducing them to a set of random variables for further analysis. All of these communications are actually pieces of one long message waiting to be decoded, explains Prof. Ben-Gal. In a single telephone call, for example, there are several variables to consider -- the recipient of the call, its length, the location of the caller himself. Once all this is known, the algorithm not only assesses patterns of crime to predict future movements, but also creates a probability map displaying the possible locations of the person or group of interest.
Like a topographical map, the probability map is divided into zones where the subject (a criminal, a terrorist organization or a drug dealing ring) is likely operating. Each zone is assigned a statistical level of probability that the subject is there. Although refining the programming of the original algorithm could take some hours, each new piece of information afterwards can be processed in a matter of milliseconds, and the analysis can be used instantly.
Our algorithms can help officials to use the available information wisely, Prof. Ben-Gal says. If they have one shot at obtaining a suspect, the location of highest probability is a good bet. Zones of lower probability can be ruled out and attention can be focused in increasingly specific areas. With more time to spare, it's an adaptive searching game -- lower probability zones can sometimes yield more information.
A gathering cloud of big data
According to Prof. Ben-Gal, these algorithms are designed to deal with the phenomenon of "big data," the ever-growing amount of information available to crime fighters in the technological environment. But beyond tracking the bad guys, they offer solutions for our more legitimate world -- from marketing to computer file sharing.
Prof. Ben-Gal points to companies such as Amazon, IBM and Apple, which have effectively put similar algorithms to use. Amazon, for example, generates purchasing suggestions based on books, music or products you have already purchased or browsed. Apple's forthcoming iCloud, a service that wirelessly stores digital content, will need algorithms to locate moving files when they are needed and deliver them to various devices.
Prof. Ben-Gal says that this research can also lead to near-future consumer enhancements such as location-based marketing, which targets consumers based on their location, notifying them on their mobile devices of deals in their local area

Courtesy ScienceDaily

A Mobile Guide for Buses and Trains

2011-07-11T05:46:00.000-07:00

If people had access to a fully-fledged system to help them navigate public transport, it could persuade many drivers to switch to their local trains, buses and trams. Researchers in Germany are busy developing an application that will enable passengers to use a cell phone to navigate their way through the public transport network.

Drivers were freed from their dependence on maps a long time ago -- nowadays they rely on their navigation device to get them to destinations in unfamiliar areas. But this luxury has so far remained elusive for users of local public transport systems. A personal guide -- similar to a car's navigation system -- designed to show them the way to their destination and help avoid hold-ups and out-of-service lines would be a tremendous help. Commuters and locals could switch to alternative routes if their bus or train was late and tourists would be able to find the quickest route to their hotel or to the main city sights. Now it seems there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon for public transport users: Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems IVI in Dresden are working with eight partners from industry and the research community on the "SMART-WAY" project, which aims to develop a personal guide which would offer a whole lot more than just timetable information.

This mobile guide is being developed in the form of a navigation application for cell phones and smartphones. The goal is to make the app available from 2012 to help people find their way through the labyrinths of trains, buses and trams that criss-cross Europe's cities. "All you will need to do is to launch our SMART-WAY app on your cell phone and enter your destination. SMART-WAY will then guide you to the nearest station or bus stop and tell you where you need to change and what lines you need to take to get there," explains Andreas Küster, the researcher responsible for coordinating the project at the IVI. The application displays multiple alternative routes on a map which shows all the stops, connections, modes of transport, directions, arrival and departure times. Users also have the option of breaking off their journey, switching to different forms of transport or entering a new destination at any point they wish: By constantly tracking the user's current location, SMART-WAY is able to respond in real-time by simply re-calculating the route. The same applies in the event of traffic jams, delays or early arrivals -- whenever new developments affect your chosen route, the app immediately suggests alternatives. A useful touch is the vibration alert that tells you when you have reached your destination or missed a stop.

But how exactly does the SMART-WAY app calculate a user's current position and respond in real time? "As well as providing support for satellite navigation with GPS and -- in the future -- Galileo, our navigation system also dovetails with the location-finding systems the public transport companies use to keep track of their vehicles," says Küster. "These positioning systems are supplemented by inertial sensors which register whether a vehicle is accelerating or braking in order to decide whether it is in motion or waiting at a stop. All the information on timetables, connections and hold-ups in the network are supplied by the transport companies in real time and imported into the app." A prototype of SMART-WAY has already been completed and the researchers hope to have a final version of the application ready to roll out across Europe by 2012. The first field tests are scheduled to be run in September 2011 in Dresden and Turin in cooperation with the local public transport operators.

To demonstrate how SMART-WAY works, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern developed a software program which simulates a virtual city and a virtual public transport operator including all the timetable information. "The software gives us a real feel for how the application would work in real life. It even lets us play around with situations that only occur sporadically, such as traffic hold-ups and similar problems. And we can also use it to demonstrate our real-time navigation system at trade fairs and conferences and to show public transport operators how the system works," says Dr. Michael Schröder from the ITWM. SMART-WAY has been developed for Android smartphones. The question of whether versions will also be made available for other mobile platforms depends on the public transport companies who choose to offer users the application. "We hope to see as many public transport operators as possible offering this application to their customers from 2012 onwards," Küster says.

Courtesy : ScieneDaily

Ubuntu Developer Week -Kicks Off

2011-07-11T05:45:00.000-07:00

In just five years, Ubuntu has become the most popular Linux distribution in the world with millions of users. Ever wondered how Ubuntu development works? How to get involved yourself? Find out from July 11th 2011 to July 15th 2011!

Ubuntu Developer Week is a series of online workshops where you can:

learn about different packaging techniques
find out more about different development teams
check out the efforts of the world-wide Development Community
participate in open Q&A sessions with Ubuntu developers

much more...

For more info

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek

Important Step in Next Generation of Computing: Vital Insight Into Spintronics

2011-07-06T07:31:00.001-07:00

Scientists have taken one step closer to the next generation of computers. Research from the Cavendish Laboratory, the University of Cambridge's Department of Physics, provides new insight into spintronics, which has been hailed as the successor to the transistor.

Spintronics, which exploits the electron's tiny magnetic moment, or 'spin', could radically change computing due to its potential of high-speed, high-density and low-power consumption. The new research sheds light on how to make 'spin' more efficient.

For the past fifty years, progress in electronics has relied heavily on the downsizing of the transistor through the semiconductor industry in order to provide the technology for the small, powerful computers that are the basis of our modern information society. In a 1965 paper, Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore described how the number of transistors that could be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit had doubled every year between 1958 and 1965, predicting that the trend would continue for at least ten more years.

That prediction, now known as Moore's Law, effectively described a trend that has continued ever since, but the end of that trend -- the moment when transistors are as small as atoms, and cannot be shrunk any further -- is expected as early as 2015. At the moment, researchers are seeking new concepts of electronics that sustain the growth of computing power.

Spintronics research attempts to develop a spin-based electronic technology that will replace the charge-based technology of semiconductors. Scientists have already begun to develop new spin-based electronics, beginning with the discovery in 1988 of giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect. The discovery of GMR effect brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disk drives and was also key in the development of portable electronic devices such as the iPod.

While conventional technology relies on harnessing the charge of electrons, the field of spintronics depends instead on the manipulation of electrons' spin. One of the unique properties in spintronics is that spins can be transferred without the flow of electric charge currents. This is called "spin current" and unlike other concepts of harnessing electrons, the spin current can transfer information without generating heat in electric devices. The major remaining obstacle to a viable spin current technology is the difficulty of creating a volume of spin current large enough to support current and future electronic devices.

However, the new Cambridge researchers in close collaboration with Professor Sergej Demokritov group at the University of Muenster, Germany, have, in part, addressed this issue. In order to create enhanced spin currents, the researchers used the collective motion of spins called spin waves (the wave property of spins). By bringing spin waves into interaction, they have demonstrated a new, more efficient way of generating spin current.

Dr Hidekazu Kurebayashi, from the Microelectronics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, said: "You can find lots of different waves in nature, and one of the fascinating things is that waves often interact with each other. Likewise, there are a number of different interactions in spin waves. Our idea was to use such spin wave interactions for generating efficient spin currents."

According to their findings, one of the spin wave interactions (called three-magnon splitting) generates spin current ten times more efficiently than using pre-interacting spin-waves. Additionally, the findings link the two major research fields in spintronics, namely the spin current and the spin wave interaction.

Courtesy:sciencedaily

Smartphone App Helps You Find Friends in a Crowd

2011-06-28T02:12:00.000-07:00

The software, called eShadow, makes its debut at the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS) on June 23 in Minneapolis.

It uses nearby wireless networks and smartphones' wireless communication technologies to alert users that a friend who also uses the software is in the area -- and gives directions to that friend's location.

Dong Xuan, associate professor of computer science and engineering at Ohio State University, hopes that his research group's software will also build bridges between strangers who share personal or professional interests.

At a business meeting such as ICDCS, for example, the software could remind a user of a forgotten acquaintance's name, or help him or her make new professional contacts in the same area of research.

Since it enables face-to-face meetings, eShadow is a complement to online social networks such as Facebook, which excel at connecting people who are far apart, Xuan said.

"Today, online social networking has advanced dramatically, but our ability to meet people face-to-face hasn't gotten any easier," he said. "We want eShadow to close social gaps and connect people in meaningful ways, while keeping the technology non-intrusive and protecting privacy."

The name eShadow comes from the idea that users input their interests into the software, and their smartphone broadcasts those interests to certain other users of the software -- but only within 50 yards of the phone. So as users move, the broadcast follows them around like a shadow.

As to users' safety, Xuan feels that, at least for some situations, meeting someone in person is safer than meeting them online.

"Online, people can steal others' identity, or lie easily without detection. It's much harder to pull off a masquerade in person," he said.

Plus, users only share information which they want to share, and can observe potential friends at a distance before deciding whether to introduce themselves. Young people, Xuan pointed out, are especially comfortable with putting personal information online, and could readily adapt to using the software.

That said, people can be selective about who they wish to receive their eShadow signals. Users can select individuals from their phone's contact list, and specifically de-select people as well.

"Say I'm from Ohio State, and someone else is from the University of Michigan, so I don't want to talk to them. I just tell the software to ignore anyone who says they're from Michigan," Xuan laughed.

The researchers' biggest challenges concerned efficient use of wireless communication, explained doctoral student Jin Teng. He and his colleagues wrote algorithms that let smartphones send and receive eShadow signals quickly, but without overwhelming a network.

In outdoor tests on the Ohio State campus, they measured how fast the software could detect users who were 20, 30, and 50 yards apart. They tested different numbers of users, from two to seven.

In all cases, the software was able to connect people within about half a minute -- an average of 25 seconds for two users, and 35 seconds for seven.

Xuan noted that eShadow's algorithms could be useful beyond socializing. Soldiers could use something akin to eShadow to locate each other on the battlefield.

Presently, the software works best when people move infrequently. Xuan and his research group are enhancing it to better accommodate motion. They are also extending it from Windows Mobile to support multiple smartphone platforms such as Android, and exploring opportunities for publicly releasing the software in the near future.

Other engineers on Xuan's team include Xiaole Bai, an assistant professor of computer and information science at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, and Boying Zhang, Xinfeng Li, and Adam C. Champion, all doctoral students at Ohio State.

This research was funded by Xuan's National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, an NSF Computer and Network Systems grant, and an Army Research Office grant.

Motorola Unveils The Android Powered Motorola Triumph

2011-06-10T00:46:00.001-07:00

Motorola recently announced a new Android powered Motorola Triumph smartphone. This handset runs on the old Android 2.2 (Froyo) Operating System and it will be available exclusively to Virgin Mobile customers in the US. The Motorola Triumph comes with a 4.1 inch WVGA display, 1 GHz processor, 5 megapixel camera with HD (720p) video recording, 32 GB expandable memory and more.

WebOS-Based HP TouchPad Tablet Coming July 1

2011-06-09T07:07:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Stan Schroeder of Mashable

Hoping to try out a tablet that’s not iOS or Android based? A new alternative is hitting the market: HP’s WebOS-based tablet, the TouchPad, will be shipping in the U.S. on July 1.

The Wi-Fi version of the device can be pre-ordered in North America and Europe on June 19. It’s coming to the U.S. on July 1, and will arrive in the UK, Ireland, France and Germany a few days later. Canadians can expect the TouchPad in mid-July.

HP says the TouchPad will reach Australia, Hong Kong, Italy, New Zealand, Singapore and Spain “later this year.”

The HP TouchPad is a 13.7 mm thin, 9.7-inch tablet with a dual-core 1.2 Ghz Snapdragon processor, 16 or 32GB of storage, 1 GB of RAM, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a 1.3-megapixel camera for video calls.The 16 GB version of the device costs $499.99, while the 32 GB version costs $599.99.

MyCare -- The 'Card' That Could Save Your Life

2011-06-09T02:23:00.000-07:00

The MyCare Card stores personal medical data (e.g. information on existing medical conditions, allergies and medication being taken) and plugs into a laptop's USB port, enabling the data to be accessed in just a few moments.

It is the first device of its type to have been trialled in the UK.

This working prototype has been developed by City University London and Coventry University, with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

If the card's owner is taken ill or involved in an accident, paramedics can simply retrieve the card from their pocket or handbag and use the data to gain instant access to their full medical history.

As well as using the data to inform their on-the-spot decisions, paramedics can phone key information ahead to a hospital if necessary.

Initial trials have been successful and the development team now hopes to work with organisations in the healthcare sector to undertake a full-scale pilot programme. If that programme is also completed successfully, the system could be available for patient use within around 3-4 years.

"When dealing with a medical emergency, patients may be unconscious or unable to communicate with paramedics for some other reason," says Professor Panicos Kyriacou of City University, "our device makes potentially life-saving data easily accessible. For example, it's vital to know whether a patient is allergic to latex. If they are, use of latex gloves by a paramedic might be fatal."

The MyCare Card is designed for voluntary use by patients. All data would be held on the card securely so that it could not be accessed if the card were lost.

A patient would keep the card in their possession and add or alter a range of personal information (e.g. on next of kin) on their home PCs. A plug embedded in the card is simply slid out and inserted into a computer; bespoke software then automatically runs from the card. This personal medical data-browsing software was also developed as part of the project.

When treated at a surgery, clinic or hospital, the patient would hand the card over to the medical professionals and the medical information on the card would be updated.

Card updates could also be made at pharmacies when collecting prescription medicines. The patient themselves would be able to view but not alter any of this medical data.

Although patient-held electronic health record cards have been trialled in some parts of the world, the MyCare Card has a number of unique features:

The software underlying the system is written in a portable way using Python programming language, meaning it can be ported easily between different computers and different computer operating systems.

The software is very modular and easy to extend, which means it is simple to add new features and database record types.

The MyCare system has been developed on an open-source basis, enabling a wide range of people to be involved in reviewing and contributing to the development process.

As part of the project, detailed surveys have been undertaken by Coventry University, led by Professor Andree Woodcock, to assess attitudes to the MyCare Card among health professionals and the public, including those with and without computer skills. These surveys have highlighted the need for a full pilot-scale study to enable all the key issues to be examined in detail (e.g. would GPs be happy to use such a system?).

"The MyCare Card has specifically been designed to be easy to use regardless of your level of computer literacy," says Professor Kyriacou.

The 3-year 'NHS MyCare' project received total EPSRC funding of just over £260,000.

Access to information stored on the card is secured using user authentication protection similar to online banking. The card prototypes were developed at Coventry University, where the user surveys were also organised; the system's underlying software was developed at City University London.

More information is available at: www.myc2.org

Courtesy ScienceDaily

Clonezilla - An open Source way of disk partitioning

2011-06-09T02:16:00.001-07:00

Clonezilla (http://www.clonezilla.org/) is a partition or disk cloning tool similar to Symantec Ghost. It saves and restores only blocks in use on the hard drive if the file system is supported. For unsupported file systems, dd is used instead. It has been used to clone a 5 GB system to 40 clients in about 10 minutes.

Examining the Brain as a Neural Information Super-Highway

2011-06-06T23:49:00.001-07:00

The brain functions as a complex system of regions that must communicate with each other to enable everyday activities such as perception and cognition. This need for networked computation is a challenge common to multiple types of communication systems. Thus, important questions about how information is routed and emitted from individual brain regions may be addressed by drawing parallels with other well-known types of communication systems, such as the Internet.

The authors, from the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Centre, Toronto, Canada, showed that -- similar to other communication networks -- the timing pattern of information emission is highly indicative of information traffic flow through the network. In this study the output of information was sensitive to subtle differences between individual subjects, cognitive states and brain regions.

The researchers recorded electrical activity from the brain and used signal processing techniques to precisely determine exactly when units of information get emitted from different regions. They then showed that the times between successive departures are distributed according to a specific distribution. For instance, when research study participants were asked to open their eyes in order to allow visual input, emission times became significantly more variable in parts of the brain responsible for visual processing, reflecting and indicating increased neural "traffic" through the underlying brain regions.

This method can be broadly applied in neuroscience and may potentially be used to study the effects of neural development and aging, as well as neurodegenerative disease, where traffic flow would be compromised by the loss of certain nodes or disintegration of pathways.

This research was funded by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Santa Fe Institute Consortium to TP and a J.S. McDonnel Foundation grant to ARM.

Courtesy ScienceDaily

Virtual Shopping in 3D

2011-06-06T23:47:00.000-07:00

Courtesy Businessweek.

Linda Smith walked on stage at the Spring 2011 Demo Conference in Palm Desert, Calif., on Feb. 28 and tried on clothes. Looking at herself in an interactive mirror, she tested out virtual dresses, handbags, and jewelry. The interactive "fitting room," called Swivel, is a mix of software created by her company, FaceCake Marketing Technologies of Calabasas, Calif., and a hacked 3D camera from Microsoft's (MSFT) Kinect gaming console.

Kinect started out as a controller-free gaming system, but developers such as FaceCake are writing new applications for the system's 3D camera. Kinect cameras essentially transform computers into two-way mirrors whose system can see users. One potential use of Kinect is making accurate 3D models of people to help them purchase everything from swimsuits to jeans online.

In 2011, 148.1 million shoppers, or about 83 percent of U.S. Internet users ages 14 and older, will make a purchase online, according to eMarketer. In the first quarter of 2011, retail e-commerce sales totaled $46 billion, according to the Census Bureau of the U.S. Commerce Dept. Yet almost 38 percent of women don't buy online, according to Forrester Research (FORR), because they want to be able to see and touch items before they hand over a credit card. Retailers have tried to help shoppers overcome reservations with new visualization tools such as augmented reality, which lets customers try on clothes virtually, according to eMarketer. "The more lifelike you can make your e-commerce experience, the better that experience will be," says Noah Elkin, principal analyst at eMarketer. "If you're a retailer, it will make your site a more persuasive place to go to make that purchase."

Augmented Relality Applications

In the retail sector, companies have been experimenting with two-dimensional augmented-reality applications that let customers try on clothes virtually. Last Sept. 10, Macy's (M) installed a Magic Fitting Room in its Herald Square Store in New York. Within minutes, shoppers were trying on the most popular tops, dresses, and jackets, creating as many as 16 outfits that could be stored in a digital closet and then shared on Facebook and by e-mail. Over the next six weeks, more than 16,000 fitting sessions were completed, according to the maker of the Magic Fitting Room, digital marketing and technology agency LBI International (LBI:NA).

Similarly in April, Swiss watchmaker Tissot ran an interactive display in a Harrods window, inviting passersby to try on watches. Mobile apps also let EBay (EBAY) shoppers try on sunglasses or outfits superimposed on photos of themselves. Still, these efforts lack the depth of 3D images.

Nokia Promises Updates for Symbian till 2016

2011-05-30T01:58:00.000-07:00

Nokia’s move of switching over to Windows Phone 7 as it’s main platform caused quite a stir. People began questioning the support for Symbian devices.But there is good news for the users of Symbian devices.Stephen Elop (CEO of Nokia) stated in a video interview today that Nokia would continue supporting and updating Symbian till at least 2016. He said that although Nokia are in the transition period of moving from Symbian to Windows, the support for Symbian will continue.

Chameleon Magnets: Ability to Switch Magnets 'On' or 'Off' Could Revolutionize Computing

2011-05-30T01:44:00.002-07:00

What causes a magnet to be a magnet, and how can we control a magnet's behavior? These are the questions that University at Buffalo researcher Igor Zutic, a theoretical physicist, has been exploring over many years.

In a recent commentary in Science, Zutic and fellow UB physicist John Cerne, who studies magnetism experimentally, discuss an exciting advancement: A study by Japanese scientists showing that it is possible to turn a material's magnetism on and off at room temperature.

A material's magnetism is determined by a property all electrons possess: something called "spin." Electrons can have an "up" or "down" spin, and a material is magnetic when most of its electrons possess the same spin. Individual spins are akin to tiny bar magnets, which have north and south poles.

In the Japanese study, which also appears in the current issue of Science, a team led by researchers at Tohoku University added cobalt to titanium dioxide, a nonmagnetic semiconductor, to create a new material that, like a chameleon, can transform from a paramagnet (a nonmagnetic material) to a ferromagnet (a magnetic material) at room temperature.

To achieve change, the researchers applied an electric voltage to the material, exposing the material to extra electrons. As Zutic and Cerne explain in their commentary, these additional electrons -- called "carriers" -- are mobile and convey information between fixed cobalt ions that causes the spins of the cobalt electrons to align in one direction.

In an interview, Zutic calls the ability to switch a magnet "on" or "off" revolutionary. He explains the promise of magnet- or spin-based computing technology -- called "spintronics" -- by contrasting it with conventional electronics.

Modern, electronic gadgets record and read data as a blueprint of ones and zeros that are represented, in circuits, by the presence or absence of electrons. Processing information requires moving electrons, which consumes energy and produces heat.

Spintronic gadgets, in contrast, store and process data by exploiting electrons' "up" and "down" spins, which can stand for the ones and zeros devices read. Future energy-saving improvements in data processing could include devices that process information by "flipping" spin instead of shuttling electrons around.

In their Science commentary, Zutic and Cerne write that chameleon magnets could "help us make more versatile transistors and bring us closer to the seamless integration of memory and logic by providing smart hardware that can be dynamically reprogrammed for optimal performance of a specific task."

"Large applied magnetic fields can enforce the spin alignment in semiconductor transistors," they write. "With chameleon magnets, such alignment would be tunable and would require no magnetic field and could revolutionize the role ferromagnets play in technology."

In an interview, Zutic says that applying an electric voltage to a semiconductor injected with cobalt or other magnetic impurities may be just one way of creating a chameleon magnet.

Applying heat or light to such a material could have a similar effect, freeing electrons that can then convey information about spin alignment between ions, he says.

The so-far elusive heat-based chameleon magnets were first proposed by Zutic in 2002. With his colleagues, Andre Petukhov of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and Steven Erwin of the Naval Research Laboratory, he elucidated the behavior of such magnets in a 2007 paper.

The concept of nonmagnetic materials becoming magnetic as they heat up is counterintuitive, Zutic says. Scientists had long assumed that orderly, magnetic materials would lose their neat, spin alignments when heated -- just as orderly, crystalline ice melts into disorderly water as temperatures rise.

The carrier electrons, however, are the key. Because heating a material introduces additional carriers that can cause nearby electrons to adopt aligned spins, heating chameleon materials -- up to a certain temperature -- should actually cause them to become magnetic, Zutic explains. His research on magnetism is funded by the Department of Energy, Office of Naval Research, Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

Courtesy:ScienceDaily

Computer Scientists Work Toward Improving Robots’ Ability to Plan and Perform Complex Actions, Domestically and Elsewhere

2011-05-27T04:12:00.000-07:00

This may have been a domestic dream a half-century ago, when the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence first captured public imagination. However, it quickly became clear that even "simple" human actions are extremely difficult to replicate in robots. Now, MIT computer scientists are tackling the problem with a hierarchical, progressive algorithm that has the potential to greatly reduce the computational cost associated with performing complex actions.

Leslie Kaelbling, the Panasonic Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and Tomás Lozano-Pérez, the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Excellence and co-director of MIT's Center for Robotics, outline their approach in a paper titled "Hierarchical Task and Motion Planning in the Now," which they presented at the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation earlier this month in Shanghai.

Traditionally, programs that get robots to function autonomously have been split into two types: task planning and geometric motion planning. A task planner can decide that it needs to traverse the living room, but be unable to figure out a path around furniture and other obstacles. A geometric planner can figure out how to get to the phone, but not actually decide that a phone call needs to be made.

Of course, any robot that's going to be useful around the house must have a way to integrate these two types of planning. Kaelbling and Lozano-Pérez believe that the key is to break the computationally burdensome larger goal into smaller steps, then make a detailed plan for only the first few, leaving the exact mechanisms of subsequent steps for later. "We're introducing a hierarchy and being aggressive about breaking things up into manageable chunks," Lozano-Pérez says. Though the idea of a hierarchy is not new, the researchers are applying an incremental breakdown to create a timeline for their "in the now" approach, in which robots follow the age-old wisdom of "one step at a time."

The result is robots that are able to respond to environments that change over time due to external factors as well as their own actions. These robots "do the execution interleaved with the planning," Kaelbling says.

The trick is figuring out exactly which decisions need to be made in advance, and which can -- and should -- be put off until later.

Sometimes, procrastination is a good thing

Kaelbling compares this approach to the intuitive strategies humans use for complex activities. She cites flying from Boston to San Francisco as an example: You need an in-depth plan for arriving at Logan Airport on time, and perhaps you have some idea of how you will check in and board the plane. But you don't bother to plan your path through the terminal once you arrive in San Francisco, because you probably don't have advance knowledge of what the terminal looks like -- and even if you did, the locations of obstacles such as people or baggage are bound to change in the meantime. Therefore, it would be better -- necessary, even -- to wait for more information.

Why shouldn't robots use the same strategy? Until now, most robotics researchers have focused on constructing complete plans, with every step from start to finish detailed in advance before execution begins. This is a way to maximize optimality -- accomplishing the goal in the fewest number of movements -- and to ensure that a plan is actually achievable before initiating it.

But the researchers say that while this approach may work well in theory and in simulations, once it comes time to run the program in a robot, the computational burden and real-world variability make it impractical to consider the details of every step from the get-go. "You have to introduce an approximation to get some tractability. You have to say, 'Whichever way this works out, I'm going to be able to deal with it,'" Lozano-Pérez says.

Their approach extends not just to task planning, but also to geometric planning: Think of the computational cost associated with building a precise map of every object in a cluttered kitchen. In Kaelbling and Lozano-Pérez's "in the now" approach, the robot could construct a rough map of the area where it will start -- say, the countertop as a place for assembling ingredients. Later on in the plan -- if it becomes clear that the robot will need a detailed map of the fridge's middle shelf, to be able to reach for a jar of pickles, for example -- it will refine its model as necessary, using valuable computation power to model only those areas crucial to the task at hand.

Finding the 'sweet spot'

Kaelbling and Lozano-Pérez's method differs from the traditional start-to-finish approach in that it has the potential to introduce suboptimalities in behavior. For example, a robot may pick up object 'A' to move it to a location 'L,' only to arrive at L and realize another object, 'B,' is already there. The robot will then have to drop A and move B before re-grasping A and placing it in L. Perhaps, if the robot had been able to "think ahead" far enough to check L for obstacles before picking up A, a few extra movements could have been avoided.

But, ultimately, the robot still gets the job done. And the researchers believe sacrificing some degree of behavior optimality is worth it to be able to break an extremely complex problem into doable steps. "In computer science, the trade-offs are everything," Kaelbling says. "What we try to find is some kind of 'sweet spot' … where we're trading efficiency of the actions in the world for computational efficiency."

Citing the field's traditional emphasis on optimal behavior, Lozano-Pérez adds, "We're very consciously saying, 'No, if you insist on optimality then it's never going to be practical for real machines.'"

Stephen LaValle, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who was not affiliated with the work, says the approach is an attractive one. "Often in robotics, we have a tendency to be very analytical and engineering-oriented -- to want to specify every detail in advance and make sure everything is going to work out and be accounted for," he says. "[The researchers] take a more optimistic approach that we can figure out certain details later on in the pipeline," and in doing so, reap a "benefit of efficiency of computational load."

Looking to the future, the researchers plan to build in learning algorithms so robots will be better able to judge which steps are OK to put off, and which ones should be dealt with earlier in the process. To demonstrate this, Kaelbling returns to the travel example: "If you're going to rent a car in San Francisco, maybe that's something you do need to plan in advance," she says, because putting it off might present a problem down the road -- for instance, if you arrive to find the agencies have run out of rental cars.

Although "household helper" robots are an obvious -- and useful -- application for this kind of algorithm, the researchers say their approach could work in a number of situations, including supply depots, military operations and surveillance activities.

"So it's not strictly about getting a robot to do stuff in your kitchen," Kaelbling says. "Although that's the example we like to think about -- because everybody would be able to appreciate that."

Courtesy ScienceDaily

Android has a gaping network security hole

2011-05-17T16:01:00.000-07:00

A trio of German security researchers from the University of Ulm have looked into the question of whether “it was possible to launch an impersonation attack against Google services and started our own analysis. The short answer is: Yes, it is possible, and it is quite easy to do so. Further, the attack is not limited to Google Calendar and Contacts, but is theoretically feasible with all Google services using the ClientLogin authentication protocol for access to its data APIs (application programming interface).” In other words: We are so hosed.

The problem is in the way that applications which deal with Google services request authentication tokens . These tokens are sometimes not even encrypted themselves and are good, in some cases, for up to two weeks. All a hacker has to do is grab these off an open Wi-Fi connection and you have the “key” to someone’s Gmail account, their Google calendar, or what have you.

It’s not just limited to Android apps though. The researchers also report that “this vulnerability is not limited to standard Android apps but pertains to any Android apps and also desktop applications that make use of Google services via the ClientLogin protocol over HTTP rather than HTTPS.”

Grabbing this information off the air is trivial. While it’s not as easy as using Firesheep to hi-jack a Web session, anyone with a lick of hacking talent and a network protocol analyzer such as WireShark can grab your tokens. With those in hand they can then change your Google passwords or do anything else they want with your various Google accounts.

Google, the Android smartphone and tablet makers, and the telecoms must fix this. Now.

While Android 3.x and Android 2.3.4 require the Google Calendar and Contacts apps to use the more secure HTTPS for their connections, your devices are very unlikely to currently have either one. The vendors must push out these updates sooner rather than later. In addition, Google needs to require all its ClientLogin requests to be made over secure connections. Developers should switch from ClientLogin to Oauth or some other more secure user authentication routine.

What can you do as an Android user? Well, as you wait for your vendor to update your device to Android 2.3.4, you can make a habit of not using any open Wi-Fi network.

That’s often easier to say than to do. In that case, I recommend that you either user your corporate VPN or look into setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to call your own. This used to be something only a network administrator should try, but lately it’s become much easier to set up a small business, or even home, VPN server.

Fortunately, you shouldn’t need to add any software to your Android device to get it to work with your VPN. Android comes with its own built-in VPN software. This software supports most of the common VPN protocols. You’ll find it on your Android device under Wireless and Network settings/VPN Settings/Add VPN.

There are also VPN Android programs, such as 1 VPN and NeoRouter for Android, but you should try using Android’s built-in VPN setup mechanisms first. If that proves a little too difficult for you, then try one of these programs.

The real answer, of course, needs to come from Google, the hardware vendors, and the telecoms. Google’s Android developers need to improve security in their latest operating systems and patch the older versions of Android to handle the tokens securely. In turn, the vendors and telecoms need to ship the latest versions of Android, with security patches, to users as soon as possible. Until they do, it’s only a matter of time before users start losing important information through this hole to data thieves.

Courtesy Zdnet

Hide Files Within Files for Better Data Security: Using Executable Program Files to Hide Data With Steganography

2011-05-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

A new approach to hiding data within executable computer program files could make it almost impossible to detect hidden documents, according to a report in the International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions.
Steganography is a form of security through obscurity in which information is hidden within an unusual medium. An artist might paint a coded message into a portrait, for instance, or an author embed words in the text. A traditional paper watermark is a well-known example of steganography in action. At first glance, there would appear to be nothing unusual about the work, but a recipient aware of the presence of the hidden message would be able to extract it easily. In the computer age, steganography has become more of a science than an art.

Those intent on hiding information from prying eyes can embed data in the many different file types that are ostensibly music files (mp3), images (jpeg), video (mpeg4) or word-processing documents. Unfortunately, there is a limit to how much hidden data can be embedded in such files without it becoming apparent that something is hidden because the file size increases beyond what one might expect to see for a common music or video file, for instance. A five minute music file in mp3 format and the widespread sampling rate of 128 kilobits per second, for instance, is expected to be about 5 megabytes in size. Much bigger and suspicions would be aroused as to the true nature of the file, examination with widely available mp3-tagging software would reveal something amiss with the file's contents. The same could be said for almost all other file types.

However, one group of files that vary enormously in size and are usually rather difficult to examine in detail because they comprise of compiled computer code are executable, or exe, files. These files tend to contain lots of what might be described as "junk data" of their own as well as internal programmer notes and identifiers, redundant sections of code and infuriatingly in some senses coding "bloat." All of this adds up to large and essentially random file sizes for exe files. As such, it might be possible to embed and hide large amounts of data in encoded form in an exe file without disrupting the file's ability to be executed, or run, as a program but crucially without anyone discovering that the exe file has a dual function.

Computer scientists Rajesh Kumar Tiwari of the GLNA Institute of Technology, in Mathura and G. Sahoo of the Birla Institute of Technology, in Mesra, Ranchi, India, have developed just such an algorithm for embedding hidden data in an executable file. They provide details in the International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions. The algorithm has been built into a program with graphical user interface that would take a conventional exe file and the data to be hidden as input and merge the two producing a viable exe file with a hidden payload. The technology could be used on smart phones, tablet PCs, portable media players and any other information device on which a user might wish to hide data.

Courtesy ScienceDaily

Applying Neuroscience to Robot Vision

2011-05-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

Scientists have attempted to replicate human attributes and abilities such as detailed vision, spatial perception and object grasping in robots.After three years of intense work, the members of EYESHOTS* have made progress in controlling the interaction between vision and movement, and as a result have designed an advanced three-dimensional visual system synchronized with robotic arms which could allow robots to observe and be aware of their surroundings and also remember the contents of those images in order to act accordingly.

For a humanoid robot to successfully interact with its environment and develop tasks without supervision, it is first necessary to refine these basic mechanisms that are still not completely resolved, says Spanish researcher Ángel Pasqual del Pobil, director of the Robotic Intelligence Laboratory of the Universitat Jaume I. His team has validated the members' findings with a system built at the University of Castellón (Spain) consisting of a robot head with moving eyes integrated into a torso with articulated arms.

To make the computer models the team started from the knowledge of animal and human biology, for which experts specialised in neuroscience, psychology, robotics and engineering worked together. The study began by recording monkeys' neurons engaged in visual-motor coordination, as humans share our way of perceiving the world with primates.

The first feature of our visual system that the members replicated artificially was our saccadic eye movement which is related to the dynamic change of attention. According to Dr. Pobil: "We constantly change the point of view through very fast eye movements, so fast that we are hardly aware of it. When the eyes are moving, the image is blurred and we can't see clearly. Therefore, the brain must integrate the fragments as if it were a puzzle to give the impression of a continuous and perfect image of our surroundings."

From the neural data, the experts developed computer models of the section of the brain that integrates images with movements of both eyes and arms. This integration is very different from that which is normally carried out by engineers and experts in robotics. The EYESHOTS consortium set out to prove that when we make a grasping movement towards an object, our brain does not previously have to calculate the coordinates.

As the Spanish researcher explains: "The truth is that the sequence is much more straightforward: our eyes look at a point and tell our arm where to go. Babies learn this progressively by connecting neurons." Therefore, these learning mechanisms have also been simulated in EYESHOTS through a neural network that allows robots to learn how to look, how to construct a representation of the environment, how to preserve the appropriate images, and use their memory to reach for objects even if these are out of their sight at that moment.

"Our findings can be applied to any future humanoid robot capable of moving its eyes and focusing on one point. These are priority issues for the other mechanisms to work correctly," points out the researcher.

EYESHOTS was funded by the European Union through the Seventh Framework Programme and coordinated by the University of Genoa (Italy).

* EYESHOTS (Heterogeneous 3-D Visual Perception Across Fragments)
Courtest:ScieneDaily

Two New SCAP Documents Help Improve Automating Computer Security Management

2011-03-20T07:03:00.001-07:00

It's increasingly difficult to keep up with all the vulnerabilities present in today's highly complex operating systems and applications. Attackers constantly search for and exploit these vulnerabilities to commit identity fraud, intellectual property theft and other attacks. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released two updated publications that help organizations to find and manage vulnerabilities more effectively, by standardizing the way vulnerabilities are identified, prioritized and reported.

Computer security departments work behind the scenes at government agencies and other organizations to keep computers and networks secure. A valuable tool for them is security automation software that uses NIST's Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP). Software based on SCAP can be used to automatically check individual computers to see if they have any known vulnerabilities and if they have the appropriate security configuration settings and patches in place. Security problems can be identified quickly and accurately, allowing them to be resolved before hackers can exploit them.

The first publication, The Technical Specifications for the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) Version 1.1 (NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-126 Revision 1) refines the protocol's requirements from the SCAP 1.0 version. SCAP itself is a suite of specifications for standardizing the format and nomenclature by which security software communicates to assess software flaws, security configurations and software inventories.

SP 800-126 Rev. 1 tightens the requirements of the individual specifications in the suite to support SCAP's functionality and ensure interoperability between SCAP tools. It also adds a new specification -- the Open Checklist Interactive Language (OCIL) -- that allows security experts to gather information that is not accessible by automated means. For example, OCIL could be used to ask users about their recent security awareness training or to prompt a system administrator to review security settings only available through a proprietary graphical user interface. Additionally, SCAP 1.1 calls for the use of the 5.8 version of the Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL).

NIST and others provide publicly accessible repositories of security information and standard security configurations in SCAP formats, which can be downloaded and used by any tool that complies with the SCAP protocol. For example, the NIST-run National Vulnerability Database (NVD) provides a unique identifier for each reported software vulnerability, an analysis of its potential damage and a severity score. The NVD has grown from 6,000 listings in 2002 to about 46,000 in early 2011. It is updated daily.

The second document, Guide to Using Vulnerability Naming Schemes (Special Publication 800-51 Revision 1), provides recommendations for naming schemes used in SCAP. Before these schemes were standardized, different organizations referred to vulnerabilities in different ways, which created confusion. These naming schemes "enable better synthesis of information about software vulnerabilities and misconfigurations," explained co-author David Waltermire, which minimizes confusion and can lead to faster security fixes. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) scheme identifies software flaws; the Common Configuration Enumeration (CCE) scheme classifies configuration issues.

SP 800-51 Rev.1 provides an introduction to both naming schemes and makes recommendations for using them. It also suggests how software and service vendors should use the vulnerability names and naming schemes in their products and service offerings.

Courtesy : ScienceDaily

Facebook Buys Feature Phone Developer "Snaptu" For Up To $70 Million

2011-03-20T07:02:00.001-07:00

Facebook has made one of its biggest moves yet in its strategy to dominate mobile services: the social network has acquired Snaptu, a developer of apps for feature phones, for a sum believed to be up to $70 million. The acquisition is Facebook’s first outside of the U.S. and enhances the work Facebook has already done to make its services accessible to more than just smartphone users in developed markets.

Spice Projector Phone

2011-03-20T07:01:00.001-07:00

Spice Mobiles has launched a new Projector phone called the PopKorn with the model number M-9000. The most unique feature of this phone is the Built-in projector which lets you watch movies and documents on a large screen.

The Popkorn also boasts of Analog TV which means you can watch some free-to-air TV channels . There is also mention of a Document Viewer and Laser Pointer. The document viewer supports Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Adobe PDF Files. Like most projector phones , this one suffers from poor battery life with a rated talk time of just 3.5 hours and we are not sure if that includes Projector usage. But the price point is certainly attractive and also Spice is airing ads during the Cricket World Cup for this handset which might help them selling a bunch of these.

Features

Quadband GSM Support 850/900/1800/2100 MHz

Colour Display with 320×240 pixel resolution

1200 mAh battery

Talktime : 3.5 hours

Standby Time : 300 hours

3.2 MP Camera with 15 FPS Video Recording

Memory : 87 MB inbuilt and Memory card that supports cards about 16GB

SMS, MMS, Email

Java

MP3 Player

Video Player

FM Radio with recording

WAP, GPRS , Bluetooth

WebCam

Remote Control PC via Bluetooth

Bomb Disposal Robot Getting Ready for Front-Line Action

2011-03-19T15:49:00.001-07:00

The University of Greenwich has joined forces with a Kent-based company in the design and manufacture of a bomb disposal robot for use by security forces, including the British Army.

The organisations have come together to create a lightweight, remote-operated vehicle, or robot, that can be controlled by a wireless device, not unlike a games console, from a distance of several hundred metres.

The innovative robot, which can climb stairs and even open doors, will be used by soldiers on bomb disposal missions in countries such as Afghanistan.

Experts from the Department of Computer & Communications Engineering, based within the university's School of Engineering, are working on the project alongside NIC Instruments Limited of Folkestone, manufacturers of security search and bomb disposal equipment.Much lighter and more flexible than traditional bomb disposal units, the robot is easier for soldiers to carry and use when out in the field. It has cameras on board, which relay images back to the operator via the hand-held control, and includes a versatile gripper which can carry and manipulate delicate items.

The robot also includes nuclear, biological and chemical weapons sensors.

Measuring just 72cm by 35cm, the robot weighs 48 kilogrammes and can move at speeds of up to eight miles per hour.

Courtesy ScienceDaily