Half a million volunteers to join disease experiment

August 21, 2006

A project to collect DNA samples from half a million Britons to unpick the genetic basis of killer diseases including cancer got the go-ahead on Tuesday, marking the start of the world's biggest medical experiment.
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U.S. supercomputer upgrades performance

August 25, 2006

An upgrade to the Cray XT3 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has increased the system's computing power to 54 teraflops, or 54 trillion mathematical calculations per second, making the Cray among the most powerful open scientific systems in the world.
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shocking Einstein robot

200 riot police break up illegal rave

August 28, 2006

Two hundred riot police from five counties used CS gas, dogs and batons to disperse 1,000 ravers at an illegal party in Essex on Saturday night. Riots broke out in a corn field next to the village of Ickleton, near Saffron Walden, as partygoers clashed with police in scenes reminiscent of the zenith of the free party movement in the late 1980s.

The violence, which flared up sporadically until early yesterday, was sparked when a small delegation of officers tried to negotiate the break-up of the party but met "unprecedented and ferocious" resistance, police said. A police car was set on fire and nine officers were wounded during the clashes, with injuries to police including a suspected broken collarbone and a severed finger. At least two revellers were also injured.
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Cloned Beef: It's What's For Dinner

What if you could carve off a chunk of the most succulent slab of steak you’ve ever eaten, clone a bull from it, then produce weeks of identically delectable dinners? Irina Polejaeva, chief embryologist at ViaGen, a livestock-cloning lab in Austin, Texas, aims to bring cloned beef to the American dinner table within the next few years. Since 2005, ViaGen has cloned half a dozen cows from strips of beef, a procedure that enables the company to test the quality of the meat before bringing it back to life. Clones would head to a breeder, and their offspring would go into a chain of feedlots, slaughterhouses and, finally, your burger. But first, the Food and Drug Administration must rule on the safety of cloned meat, a decision that could make or break the most controversial idea in the food industry since the transgenic tomato.
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Googling Your TV

August 24, 2006

Google probably already knows what search terms you use, what Web pages you're viewing, and what you write about in your e-mail -- after all, that's how it serves up the text ads targeted to the Web content on your screen.

Pretty soon, Google may also know what TV programs you watch -- and could use that information to send you more advertising, leavened with information pertinent to a show.
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Nanowires Listen In on Neurons

August 25, 2006

Creating a tool with unmatched sensitivity, Harvard University researchers have made silicon nanowires that can precisely measure multiple electric signals within a neuron. These ultrasmall silicon wires could help brain scientists understand the underpinnings of learning and memory. They could also be used in neural prosthetics, providing electrodes far more sensitive than those currently used.
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Innovative 3D-laser scanner - The vision of an autonomous forklift truck

Although driverless transport systems have been used to automate processes since the 1960s, the utilization of these systems is greatly restricted when compared to conventional forklift trucks with human drivers. In order to improve the situation, a co-operation between the company STILL GmbH and the L3S/ Institute for Systems Engineering of the University of Hannover was set up with the objective of developing an autonomous forklift truck to facilitate flexible navigation and material handling. The forklift trucks developed within by the co-operation enable the machine to recognize palettes, to lift these up and to move them to another location autonomously.
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Fighting fire with robots

August 23, 2006

A firefighter in a blazing building becomes disoriented, his eyes stinging and his throat burning from acrid smoke.

Fortunately, four helpers are on the scene to radio for assistance, having pinpointed the location of their fallen comrade on a real-time electronic map.

For the helpers, smoke is no deterrent. They are robots.

The boxy, three-wheeled machines are likely a few years away from being used in real fires, but they performed flawlessly last week in a simulation at a University of Pennsylvania robotics conference.
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Bob Dylan: Technology Sucks

August 22, 2006

ob Dylan says the quality of modern recordings is "atrocious," and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc.

"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
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Ever-happy mice may hold key to new treatment of depression

August 22, 2006

A new breed of permanently 'cheerful' mouse is providing hope of a new treatment for clinical depression. TREK-1 is a gene that can affect transmission of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is known to play an important role in mood, sleep and sexuality. By breeding mice with an absence of TREK-1, researchers were able create a depression-resistant strain. The details of this research, which involved an international collaboration with scientists from the University of Nice, France, are published in Nature Neuroscience this week.
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CMU promises to fix speech recognition with a chip

August 22, 2006

Hot Chips Speech technology ranks right down there with flying cars, robots and Windows as the grandest of disappointments in geekdom. Thankfully, the horrid state of the technology hasn't broken the will of all researchers in the speech field.

In fact, one team at Carnegie Mellon University optimistically thinks they may have solved the speech recognition conundrum with a new chip.
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3-D TV That Actually Works

August 22, 2006

I entered a conference room in Manhattan and a woman on the TV tossed a handful of rose petals out of the screen, where they floated in the air before my eyes.

At least, that's what I saw. In truth, the image resided on a perfectly flat, 42-inch LCD screen. But the 3-D illusion was fully believable, and I didn't have to wear a dorky set of polarizing glasses.

A new line of 3-D televisions by Philips uses the familiar trick of sending slightly different images to the left and right eyes -- mimicking our stereoscopic view of the real world. But where old-fashioned 3-D movies rely on the special glasses to block images meant for the other eye, Philips' WOWvx technology places tiny lenses over each of the millions of red, green and blue sub pixels that make up an LCD or plasma screen. The lenses cause each sub pixel to project light at one of nine angles fanning out in front of the display.
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The Robots Are Coming!

August 18, 2006

The robots are on the move--leaping, scrambling, rolling, flying, climbing. They are figuring out how to get here on their own. They come to help us, protect us, amuse us--and some even do floors.

Since Czech playwright Karel Capek popularized the term ("robota" means "forced labor" in Czech) in 1921, we have imagined what robots could do. But reality fell short of our plans: Honda Motor (nyse: HMC - news - people ) trotted out its Asimo in 2000, but for now it's been relegated to temping as a receptionist at Honda and doing eight shows a week at Disneyland. The majority of the world's robots are bolted to a spot on a factory floor, sentenced to a repetitive choreography of welding, stamping and cutting.
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War Games

August 17, 2006

In Iraq and other conflict zones with unfamiliar cultures, U.S. soldiers can find it hard to identify threats and targets amid the hubbub of everyday life. Yet their interactions with locals yield far more information than intelligence officers could collect on their own -- hence the emerging military doctrine that "every soldier is a sensor."

Now the U.S. Army Research and Development Command's Simulation and Training Technology Center in Orlando, FL, has translated that doctrine into a video game. The purpose: to help soldiers learn to recognize signs of danger or opportunity in the field. Teaching through video games is nothing new for the army. Full Spectrum Warrior, a "first-person shooter" for PCs and video game consoles, was originally developed as an army training aid. But the Every Soldier a Sensor Simulation (ES3) is heavier on social skills than on combat. "In our environment of asymmetric warfare, you're trying to win the hearts and minds of people," says Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Compton, director of military operations at the Orlando center. "The last thing you want to do is to pull your trigger."
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A Massive Search for Autism Genes Begins

August 19, 2006

The hunt for the genetic basis of autism may soon be closing in on its elusive target. Scientists at 11 Boston-area institutions, including MIT and the Broad Institute, will use new tools to analyze DNA samples from thousands of autistic people and their families. It is expected to be the largest search to date for the genetic causes of autism and may yield candidate genes in as little as six months.
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The new study will use a chip developed by Affymetrix, a DNA-analysis company based in Santa Clara, CA, that searches for 500,000 specific genetic variations, or SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), in a single experiment. Scientists will analyze the DNA of 3,700 autistic people and their families for SNPs that appear more frequently in those with the disorder, compared with nonaffected participants in the study.
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Ocean-Built Homes

September 1, 1997

A cargo ship drops anchor in choppy water 300 miles off the coast of North Africa. With practiced efficiency, its crew deploys the ship's crane and begins hauling house-size wire frames and reels of thick electrical cable from the hold. As quickly as this cargo appears topside, it is flung overboard, disappearing into the gray, swirling sea. When the decks are finally clear, the crew begins assembling floating solar panels that look like adult-size tinkertoys. The ship's engines rumble as the first of these ungainly structures is hoisted skyward and carefully deposited alongside. The activity continues until they form a vast spiral that dips below the horizon as the ship steams away. Five years later, a luxury cruise liner drops anchor at precisely the same place. Instead of finding bobbing rafts, the passengers lining its decks see the thriving island of Autopia Ampere. With a population of 50,000, it is the newest destination for "eco-tourists," an honor befitting its stature as the first city to rise from the sea.
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The Day You Discard Your Body

Let me make this more personal. Take a moment to think about your own human body. Look down at your hands, for example. Look at your legs. Look at your face in a mirror. You inhabit a human body right now, just like we all do. We take our bodies completely for granted. We consider our bodies to be essential -- so essential that, even in our most imaginative and far-reaching science fiction stories, we cannot envision our lives without human bodies.

But that is a primitive way of thinking. In the near future you will discard your body -- you will literally throw it in the trash -- because you will neither want it nor need it. You will discard your biological body gladly, like you would discard an old pair of shoes today. You will be quite grateful to be rid of it.
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No sex please, robot, just clean the floor

June 18, 2006

THE race is on to keep humans one step ahead of robots: an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a “code of ethics” for machines as they become more and more sophisticated.
Although the nightmare vision of a Terminator world controlled by machines may seem fanciful, scientists believe the boundaries for human-robot interaction must be set now — before super-intelligent robots develop beyond our control.

“There are two levels of priority,” said Gianmarco Verruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, northern Italy, and chief architect of the guide, to be published next month. “We have to manage the ethics of the scientists making the robots and the artificial ethics inside the robots.”

Verruggio and his colleagues have identified key areas that include: ensuring human control of robots; preventing illegal use; protecting data acquired by robots; and establishing clear identification and traceability of the machines.

“Scientists must start analysing these kinds of questions and seeing if laws or regulations are needed to protect the citizen,” said Verruggio. “Robots will develop strong intelligence, and in some ways it will be better than human intelligence.
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Subliminal Search

August 16, 2006

The number of images recorded by security cameras each day vastly exceeds human analysts' ability to examine them. "Computer vision" systems aren't much help: they're still far too primitive to tell a prowler from a postman. But researchers say the human brain can subconsciously register an anomaly in a scene -- say, a shadow where there shouldn't be one -- much faster than a person can visually and verbally identify it. If computers could somehow monitor the brain and flag these "aha" moments, surveillance analysts might be able to scan many times more images per hour.

That's what Paul Sajda, a bioengineer at Columbia University's Laboratory for Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing, hopes to enable with his "cortically coupled computer vision" system, or "C3Vision." Sajda's prototype, built with a grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, includes a bonnet of electrodes that is placed on a subject's head, where it monitors changes in the brain's electrical activity. A computer scrutinizes those changes for the neural signatures of interesting events and images, as the subject watches a video running at 10 times its normal speed. The flagged images are picked out for a more intensive examination.
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RFID to track inmates

August 15, 2006

THE contract will be awarded this week for the construction of the first prison in Australasia to use radio frequency identification to track prisoners.

The ACT government has allocated $128.7 million for the establishment of ACT's first prison, the Alexander Maconochie Centre, named after the 19th century penal reformer.

The RFID system will provide real-time tracking of prisoners and prison officers, ACT Corrective Service senior manager Roger Holding says.
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Which Travelers Have 'Hostile Intent'? Biometric Device May Have the Answer

August 14, 2006

At airport security checkpoints in Knoxville, Tenn. this summer, scores of departing passengers were chosen to step behind a curtain, sit in a metallic oval booth and don headphones.

With one hand inserted into a sensor that monitors physical responses, the travelers used the other hand to answer questions on a touch screen about their plans. A machine measured biometric responses -- blood pressure, pulse and sweat levels -- that then were analyzed by software. The idea was to ferret out U.S. officials who were carrying out carefully constructed but make-believe terrorist missions.

The trial of the Israeli-developed system represents an effort by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to determine whether technology can spot passengers who have "hostile intent." In effect, the screening system attempts to mechanize Israel's vaunted airport-security process by using algorithms, artificial-intelligence software and polygraph principles.
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Cars to blow whistle on drunk drivers

August 15, 2006

NFRARED sensing, subdural blood alcohol concentration sensing through a steering wheel and algorithms that detect weaving are among promising systems expected to reduce drunken driving.

Researchers from around the world got together with representatives from police, insurance companies and car makers to discuss such possibilities at a recent symposium in the US, sponsored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Other technologies canvassed were ignition interlock programs for repeat offenders, alcohol detection sensors and anklets that test alcohol levels in skin.

MADD chief executive Chuck Hurley says emerging technology is one of the most promising and potentially effective approaches to eliminating drunken driving.

"These technologies may soon help us separate drunken drivers from their weapon - a vehicle," he says.

One of the best known technologies is the ignition interlock, which requires a driver with a record of drunken driving to breathe into a tube hooked to an alcohol sensor before the car will start.
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Beef tracking an udder success

August 15, 2006

A NATIONAL database that currently has details of about nine million cattle will ultimately store information about all livestock in Australia.

The success of the paddock-to-plate radio frequency identification system had also become something of a tourist attraction, with representatives from many countries visiting Australia to look at the system, Meat and Livestock Australia operations manager Rick Beasley said.

Overseas countries and local industries such as fisheries and fruit growers had shown interest in the system, he said.
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IIT-Kanpur develops software for biometric data bank

August 13, 2006

The Indian Institute of Technology- Kanpur has developed software which can create a biometric data bank comprising fingerprints, retinal scans and signatures that can be used by financial institutions and security agencies.

The software, developed with the help of the Union communication and IT ministry, has diverse uses -- from keeping records of terrorists and criminals to taking the attendence in classrooms with a large number of students.
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Call for skate park CCTV after broken glass cuts boy

August 11, 2006

The park, which cost £113,000 has attracted teenage drinkers who leave beer bottles on the site which can be a danger for skaters.

Stephen Farrar, who has often cleaned up at the skate park, is now demanding CCTV after his son Oliver was cut by discarded glass.

Mr Farrar, 38, of St Peter's Gate, Ossett, said: "I want to see CCTV. We need it to stop gangs hanging around the park and leaving rubbish. I am sick to death of it.
"My two-year-old son fell and cut himself the first time I took him along. I was so angry when he hurt himself.
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Parents scare kids off crime with police ID database

August 12, 2006

Police are collecting samples of children's finger and palm prints, in a desperate bid by parents to scare their children off crime.

Detective Inspector Malcolm Johnston -- who is in charge of the South Island's crime prints and forensics team -- said police had been collecting voluntary samples from youths nationwide for a juvenile print database, The Press reported today.

"We do take a lot of voluntary juvenile fingerprints," he said.

"Feedback from parents is that it's a wake-up call for the youths, and crime prevention."
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Texting study to catch criminals

August 11, 2006

The individual styles of hundreds of people's text messages will be analysed in a study that aims to help police with criminal investigations.

Researchers will scrutinise volunteers' SMS messages to tease out patterns in the language and style of texts.

The University of Leicester team hopes the work will yield tools that allow identification of a text author.
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Spanish Military RFID Tagged

August 9, 2006

While U.S. retail giants have been slow to come around to radio frequency identification tags, RFID chips are now marching into the military—in Spain, said an RFID supplier Wednesday.

The Spanish Armed Forces has set up RFID technology developed by Sunnyvale, California-based Savi Technology, a unit of Lockheed Martin.

The RFID network and software for the Spanish military are interoperable with similar network applications used by NATO and other allied defense agencies.

“We believe the Savi project to be the largest RFID project in the world today—the longest-running with proof that it works with incredible benefits to the [U.S. military] organization,” said Jeff Woods, vice president at Gartner Research.

RFID chips, seen as the next productivity revolution in retail, have been slow to gain traction. Outside of the military, adoption among businesses is struggling as are many of the startup RFID companies.
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More spy cameras pop up in public

August 10, 2006

In an unprecedented proliferation of public spying, government is casting its watchful eye on millions of ordinary Americans through largely unregulated surveillance cameras trained on public spaces throughout the nation.
A Scripps Howard News Service tally found that at least 200 towns and cities in 37 states now employ video cameras -- or are in the process of doing so -- to watch sidewalks, parks, schools, buses, buildings and similar locales.
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Mysterious microsatellites in GEO

July 31, 2006

Right now, a pair of mysterious, highly-mobile microsatellites dubbed “MiTEx” is roaming about in geostationary orbit (GEO). Their mission and their capabilities are unknown; even their orbital position is classified. Lockheed Martin and Orbital Sciences Corporation each built one of the 225-kilogram microsatellites for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) built the upper stage.

The microsatellites are a part of the Microsatellite Demonstration Science and Technology Experiment Program (MiDSTEP), a joint effort between DARPA and the Air Force. In analyzing the budget justifications, the technologies to be demonstrated by MiDSTEP are consistent with some proposals for anti-satellite weapons. While the technologies can have other, more benign applications, there remains a serious concern about the United States developing anti-satellite capability when there has yet to be a full public discussion of the ramifications.
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Video cameras on the lookout for terrorists

August 7, 2006

Researchers at General Electric Co.'s sprawling research center, are creating new "smart video surveillance" systems that can detect explosives by recognizing the electromagnetic waves given off by objects, even under clothing.

Scientist Peter Tu and his team are also developing programs that can recognize faces, pinpoint distress in a crowd by honing in on erratic body movements and synthesize the views of several cameras into one bird's eye view, as part of a growing effort to thwart terrorism.
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CCTV helps spot illegal parking

August 7, 2006

Motorists parking illegally on some of the busiest roads in central London could now be caught using CCTV cameras.

About 20 cameras have been set up in the West End and elsewhere, to film cars parked on double yellow lines or causing an obstruction.

Drivers will then be sent a fine in the post - it is hoped firm evidence provided by the cameras will mean less tickets are challenged.
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Covert surveillance allowed in China law

August 6, 2006

Pro-Beijing lawmakers in Hong Kong have approved legislation granting authority to police to conduct covert surveillance.

Such surveillance includes wiretapping phones, bugging offices and residences and monitoring e-mail, The New York Times reported.
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Merkatum deploys facial recognition system for Florida's Department of Motor Vehicles

August 15, 2006

Miami-based Merkatum, a biometric ID management solutions provider, has deployed a facial recognition system for Florida's Department of Motor Vehicles to detect possible identity fraud and duplicate records in the agency's driver license database. The system is capable of comparing a person's facial image against 52 million others in three seconds.
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A gallery of unusual Chinese robots

August 14, 2006

Chinese engineers have unveiled a series of robots these days — without releasing lots of technical details about them. In the past two months, I've gathered pictures of robots which can act as waiters in restaurants in Hong Kong or pull rickshaws near Beijing. I've also found a four-finger robotic hand able to play organ, a female robot greeting tourists visiting the Sichuan Science Museum with 'ni hao' ('How are you?' in Mandarin — if my sources are correct), and even a robotic chimpanzee. Please visit my photo gallery.
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Seeing by Sound

August 16, 2006

Blind people traversing a city face a formidable challenge: quickly and safely navigating a complex environment. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology say their wearable computer provides the newest high-tech solution.

The system's hardware includes two Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, a laptop, head and body compasses, a gyroscope-based tracker that measures the head's tilt, and four small cameras mounted on a helmet. For audio (the device uses a speech interface), users listen to "bone phones," which fit behind the ears and transmit sound by vibrating against the skull. A user's ears are thus free to listen to important ambient noise, such as city traffic. Weighing about three pounds in total, most parts tuck neatly into a backpack.

The device uses GPS and digital maps to guide the user to a destination. Outdoors, GPS pinpoints a user's location. Users verbally tell the device where they want to go, and the system wirelessly extracts an area map, which includes everything from businesses to bushes, from a remote Geographic Information System (GIS) database. Then, "sound beacons," soft tones emanating in stereo through the bone phones, guide the person to a destination.
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System helps blind navigate foreign environments

August 15, 2006

Imagine being blind and trying to find your way around a city you’ve never visited before — that can be challenging for a sighted person. Georgia Tech researchers are developing a wearable computing system called the System for Wearable Audio Navigation (SWAN) designed to help the visually impaired, firefighters, soldiers and others navigate their way in unknown territory, particularly when vision is obstructed or impaired.

The SWAN system, consisting of a small laptop, a proprietary tracking chip, and bone-conduction headphones, provides audio cues to guide the person from place to place, with or without vision.
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US gets RFID passports

August 15, 2006

The US Department of State has started issuing passports containing RFID chips and remains confident the technology "will take security and travel facilitation to a new level".

Despite the problems with the chips - that they can be read from a distance, potentially identifying US citizens, and that they can be copied - the Department of State is confident it has done enough to make them safe.
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China wants remote control for video sites

August 15, 2006

The Chinese regulator of broadcast services is looking to extend its patch to include web-based video services.
The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) is looking at new regulations to include online video sites.

Although technically covered by existing laws, changes are expected because SARFT is asking for feedback before any changes are made.
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Welcome to the Technate!

People do weird things in the name of science. For example, have you ever heard of the technocratic movement of the 1920’s and 30’s in the United States? As near as I can tell, sci-fi author H.G. Wells popularized the term “Technocracy” in his book The Shape of Things to Come. It is essentially a “government by experts,” or more broadly “a government or organizational system where decision makers are usually highly-skilled in fields of management or any other field.” Wikipedia summarizes Wells’ strange book:
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Amazon 'plans world's biggest personal data stash'

August 14, 2006

Amazon.com is investing in IP to create the largest database of personal information ever gathered by an online retailer, according to a report in its local paper.

The database would, the Seattle Post Intelligencer suggests, mingle information on sexual orientation and race, as well as purchasing habits.
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Vigilante targets mobile-abusing drivers

14 August, 2006

Hampshire police are investigating a spate of "vigilante" attacks on cars whose drivers were apparently seen chatting away on their mobiles while on the move, The Telegraph reports.

The "mobile slasher" is believed to make a note of an offender's registration, and then "somehow" tracks the vehicle to the owner's address before slashing the tyres and leaving a "blackmail" style note assembled from letters cut from newspapers on the windscreen. It reads: "Warning. You have been seen driving while using your mobile phone."
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Chipped Passports Coming Monday

Augusst 11, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Despite ongoing privacy concerns and legal disputes involving companies bidding on the project, the U.S. State Department plans to begin issuing smart chip-embedded passports to Americans as planned Monday.
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U.S. Soldiers Are Sick of It

August, 12, 2006

NEW YORK -- It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills -- morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves.

Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done.

Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil.

There is something massively wrong with Herbert Reed, though no one is sure what it is. He believes he knows the cause, but he cannot convince anyone caring for him that the military's new favorite weapon has made him terrifyingly sick.
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A Sentinel to Screen Phone Calls

August 14, 2006

A system for automatically screening phone calls has been developed by researchers at Microsoft. It works by analyzing characteristics of a caller's voice and word usage to figure out how urgent a call is and whether the caller is a friend, family member, colleague, or stranger. Then the call can be either put through or sent to voice mail.
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Remote control for human growth hormone gene expression

August 11, 2006

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine recently discovered a novel mechanism that works over an extensive genomic distance and controls the expression of human growth hormone (hGH) in the pituitary gland. This mechanism involves a newly discovered set of "non-coding RNAs" expressed in the vicinity of the hGH gene.

By examining the relationship between these non-coding RNAs and the hGH gene, researchers hope to understand how these remote regions impact hGH gene expression and dysfunction. Such insight may aid researchers in the development of therapeutics for growth hormone defects and lead to a greater understanding of the causes of other genetic disorders.
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Robot Balances on a Ball Instead of Legs or Wheels

August 12, 2006

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new type of mobile robot that balances on a ball instead of legs or wheels. "Ballbot" is a self-contained, battery-operated, omnidirectional robot that balances dynamically on a single urethane-coated metal sphere. It weighs 95 pounds and is the approximate height and width of a person. Because of its long, thin shape and ability to maneuver in tight spaces, it has the potential to function better than current robots can in environments with people.
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Public debate on electronic snooping

August 14, 2006

Privacy campaigners have called a public meeting to discuss laws drafted to give police access to peoples' encrypted data and communications records.

The Home Office consultations on as yet unimplemented portions of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000) conclude on 30 August. Members of the public have till then to give the government their tuppeny's on its proposals to give police access to people's encrypted data and a host of agencies access to peoples' communications records.
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In 2021, You'll Enjoy Total Recall

August 6, 2006

Humans naturally have the power to remember almost two bits of information per second, or a few hundred megabytes over a lifetime. Compared with a DVD movie, which holds up to 17 gigabytes, that's nothing. Worse, you might easily recall the 40-year-old dialogue from Hogan's Heroes yet forget your mom's birthday. Or memorize reams of sports stats while spacing out on work you completed just last week.

It's a problem that's been bothering Gordon Bell for almost as long as he can remember. In 1998 Bell, a senior researcher at Microsoft, began digitally capturing his entire life for a project he calls MyLifeBits. First, he scanned his old photographs, research documents and notes. He began recording his meetings and phone calls and cataloguing his new photos and movies he saw. Every e-mail exchange he had was digitally archived, and he started using the company's prototype SenseCam, which he wears around his neck, to automatically snap photos throughout the day.
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Cell Phones Automatically Monitored for Better Traffic Updates

August 8, 2006

A new service that measures radio signals beamed between your cell phone and cell phone towers could soon help speed up your commute.

IntelliOne Technologies, a company that specializes in using mobile phone network usage to measure roadway speeds, has launched a real-world test of its technology along the streets, freeways and highways of Tampa, Florida. Called Need4Speed, the test will run from Aug. 7 to 18.

The company's technology takes advantage of the fact that wireless devices in motion communicate constantly with multiple cell towers. Wireless carriers use this data to maintain and optimize their networks, but this information can also be converted into speed and travel time information for any roadway that has cell phone coverage.

The new service isn't the only example of a creative use for cell phone towers. In another recent study, scientists used dips in cell phone signals during storms to measure rainfall.
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Bomb Number Five, Salaam

August 10, 2006

The Israeli war of genocide, destruction and siege is now on Day 24, but for myself I lost count ...as if this is how I lived all my life. Only when the numbers of those who are killed day after day are mentioned in the media I realize that I was paralyzed or numbed... and I realize that the war has eaten up another day of people’s lives.

Till yesterday 955 were killed: 30% of them are children.
More than 3200 were injured: 40% of them are children.
The numbers of the displaced people - refugees - has reached a million.
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Welcoming our new robot overlords

August 08, 2006

The press release promises that he can bowl. Place the green plastic ball in his articulated fingers and the Robosapien V2 should grab it, wind up, and let the ball fly. He does grab the ball and he does wind up, and the first time you see it, you think your life might be about change. Now that robots can bowl, you think, it's only a matter of time before they can cook my breakfast, too.

But don't sign the Robosapien up for the PBA quite yet (and don't sell your skillet). Motors whirr, joints articulate. The robot twists his torso like a human would, then swings forward and releases the ball toward the three red pins set in a triangle only feet away. The miss, when it comes, is spectacular.
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Virtual Girlfriend and Boyfriend

We've all had the occasional pretend lover, haven't we? You remember, that drop-dead gorgeous one you bragged about in the pub; the one who couldn't get enough of you; the one who'd done a bit of modelling; the one who none of your mates ever met; the one who, er…didn't actually exist.

Don't despair, we've all told the odd relationship fib. But now, thanks to your matchmaking mates at Firebox, you can date a pretend partner to be proud of. In fact, with Virtual Girlfriend/Virtual Boyfriend you can date 8 different pocket-sized partners in quick fire succession without even changing your undercrackers.
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NASA thinks small for Mars trip Tiny robotlike brains would safeguard ship

April 10, 2006

If American astronauts fly to Mars in the next few decades, they might be chaperoned by NASA's version of "thinking machines" -- electronic brains that will run the spaceship largely without human aid and make lightning-fast decisions to guard the crew against danger.

These machines won't be lovable-looking, clankety-clank robots like Robbie in the 1956 film classic "Forbidden Planet" or his similar-looking, near-hysterical cousin ("Danger, Will Robinson!") in the 1960s TV show "Lost in Space."

Nor are the machines likely to look or sound like the red-eyed, suave-voiced Hal of the 1968 blockbuster "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Rather, these computerized "intelligent systems" could be near-invisible legions of microelectronic butlers and maids. Hidden inside the spaceship's computer circuits, they'll sleeplessly monitor the ship's sensors to ensure it isn't about to blow up, lose air pressure or veer off course.
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Researchers Find New Clues To Biochemistry Of ‘Anti-Aging

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found that sirtuins, a family of enzymes linked to a longer life span and healthier aging in humans, may orchestrate the activity of other enzymes involved in metabolic processes in the body.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study is the first to show that sirtuins directly control specific metabolic enzymes - called AceCSs - in mammalian cells.

The finding, which shines a spotlight on enzymes only recently thought to play a role in the biochemistry of “anti-aging,” has attracted the interest of biotechnology companies seeking to make drugs that delay the aging process and age-related diseases. The drugs could target the metabolic enzymes to produce health benefits.
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Singularities and Nightmares

March 27, 2006

In order to give you pleasant dreams tonight, let me offer a few possibilities about the days that lie ahead—changes that may occur within the next twenty or so years, roughly a single human generation. Possibilities that are taken seriously by some of today's best minds. Potential transformations of human life on Earth and, perhaps, even what it means to be human.

For example, what if biologists and organic chemists manage to do to their laboratories the same thing that cyberneticists did to computers? Shrinking their vast biochemical labs from building-sized behemoths down to units that are utterly compact, making them smaller, cheaper, and more powerful than anyone imagined. Isn't that what happened to those gigantic computers of yesteryear? Until, today, your pocket cell phone contains as much processing power and sophistication as NASA owned during the moon shots. People who foresaw this change were able to ride this technological wave. Some of them made a lot of money.

Biologists have come a long way already toward achieving a similar transformation. Take, for example, the Human Genome Project, which sped up the sequencing of DNA by so many orders of magnitude that much of it is now automated and miniaturized. Speed has skyrocketed, while prices plummet, promising that each of us may soon be able to have our own genetic mappings done, while-U-wait, for the same price as a simple EKG. Imagine extending this trend, by simple extrapolation, compressing a complete biochemical laboratory the size of a house down to something that fits cheaply on your desktop. A MolecuMac, if you will. The possibilities are both marvelous and frightening.
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Taxman wants power to fingerprint suspects

August 10, 2006

HM Revenue and Customs wants stronger powers to investigate tax crime including authority to take fingerprints to avoid delays in finding a police constable, the right to charge suspects, and simplified procedures for obtaining search warrants.

A consultation document setting out how the powers and accompanying safeguards used in the investigation of tax crime could be modernised was published by HMRC yesterday.

HMRC is responsible for investigating suspected criminal activity across the whole range of its responsibilities, including investigating tax credit fraud and VAT fraud, which can involve organised crime.
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Giant Robot Imprisons Parked Cars

August 8, 2006

The robot that parks cars at the Garden Street Garage in Hoboken, New Jersey, trapped hundreds of its wards last week for several days. But it wasn't the technology car owners had to curse, it was the terms of a software license.

The garage is owned by the city; the software, by Robotic Parking of Clearwater, Florida.

In the course of a contract dispute, the city of Hoboken had police escort the Robotic employees from the premises just a few days before the contract between both parties was set to expire. What the city didn't understand or perhaps concern itself with, is that they sent the company packing with its manuals and the intellectual property rights to the software that made the giant robotic parking structure work.
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Remote-Controlled Humans

August 08, 2006

It's a disturbing thought: being able to remotely control the way a person moves at the push of a button. But scientists have already managed to do just that -- although not with the same repertoire of complex movements as, say, a practiced nine-year-old controlling a toy race car.

Scientists in Australia, Japan, and the United States are trying to develop more refined ways of stimulating the brain's balance organ -- not just to influence movement, but also to create more realistic virtual reality simulations, as well as medical prosthetics to help people with balance disorders.
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Italian government plans to install surveillance cameras to fight Mafia in southern cities

August 4, 2006

Italian government is developing plans to install surveillance cameras in southern cities to fight Mafia, local media reported on Thursday.

In a TV interview to be aired on Sunday, Interior Minister Marco Minniti said that the government is developing a video- surveillance scheme across towns and cities in the south, where the Mafia is rife.

"If these areas under active surveillance then it becomes more difficult for Mafia representatives to go around asking for protection money," he said.

The new cameras should be up and running in the largest southern cities by the end of 2007, he said.

"The government's idea is to set up some kind of alliance between the state and anti-racketeering associations, and to provide greater security to those who testify against the Mafia", he said.
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New cameras to keep eye on bus riders

August 6, 2006

With each of their 122 buses now loaded with four digital cameras, Hinds County school officials expect top-notch behavior from students on buses this year.

The Clinton and Jackson school districts also will be switching to digital from videocassette systems.

The cameras should be more reliable tattletales of what happens during the commute. Hinds County is installing the cameras because bus discipline is one of the district's biggest challenges.

"It's definitely going to cut down on the discrepancy between the stories of kids that cause a ruckus," said Terry resident Mary Johnson, whose daughter is a 10th-grade bus rider at Raymond High School in Hinds County.

The old system provided no audio and was not on every bus in the Hinds County fleet. The new system has a clearer picture, records audio and holds three-months of data.
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Bus-ted! MTA will be watching you

August 3, 2006

The Transit Authority will soon start rigging buses with surveillance cameras that could eventually be used to give authorities live views of onboard emergencies, officials said yesterday.

The $5.2 million pilot project will outfit 400 Manhattan buses with advanced surveillance equipment, initially just to record images that can be saved and viewed later by law enforcement. That could provide investigators with solid leads should a crime, an accident or terror attack take place.
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'Brainbox' Computer Mimics Human Brain

August 2, 2006

A computer with thousands of microprocessors is being built to mimic and model the function of millions of nerve networks in the brain.

The Spinnaker — short for "spiking neural network architecture" — system will not only help scientists better understand the complex interactions of brain cells, but it could also lead to fault-tolerant computers that, like the brain, work despite malfunctions in tiny circuits.

"You lose one neuron per second during your adult life. As they die, there doesn't seem to be any gross underperformance in the brain," said Steve Furber of the University of Manchester in the U.K., leader of the Spinnaker project.
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1984: For the love of Big Brother

The novel 1984 has had a surprisingly large impact on the English language. Many of its concepts, such as “Big Brother”, “Room 101”, “thought police”, “doublethink” and “Newspeak”, have entered common usage in describing totalitarian frameworks. The adjective "Orwellian" is used to describe any real world scenario reminiscent of the novel. Is it divine irony that in recent years, people have chained themselves in front of their television screens to watch Big Brother, which is exactly what 1984 predicted… both inside and outside “the House” – including the apparently required booing of contestants coming out of the house, conform to the required “Two Minute Hate” of the novel.
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Was human skin really used in book binding?

August 4, 2006

The use of human skin to bind books would disgust us today, but it was fairly widely practiced up until about 200 years ago, particularly with medical books.

In centuries gone by, doctors who wrote medical books would sometimes specify that they be bound in human skin. Some doctors even participated in the preparation of human skin for use in book binding.

Dr John Hunter (1728-1793), the famous anatomist, father of British scientific surgery, and the person after whom the London Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England is named, reputedly commissioned a textbook on dermatology to be bound in human skin.

The skin used was often that of a flogged prisoner who was later executed, particularly a murderer.
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Mining the New York Times with machines

August 2, 2006

The discipline of text mining took a step forward recently as a team from the University of California-Irvine used a new technique called "topic modeling" to sift 330,000 articles from the New York Times archive (hardcore geeks can read one of the team's papers [PDF] for more information). The team's goal was to have their computers sort the stories by topic—without requiring any human training or intervention. Computers have trouble understanding large fields of unstructured text without guidance, but the new approach enables them to engage in some unsupervised learning that could soon pay huge dividends for academics, corporations, and government security programs alike.
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EU trying to push again biometrics on national ID cards

August 2, 2006

According to a EU document presented by Statewatch in July 2006, The Visa Working Party on 13-14 June 2006 proposed another approach on the issue of the biometrics to be introduced on national ID cards.

The issue had met resistance back in February when several members of the European Council have expressed doubts especially as Belgium and the Czech Republic opposed to the measures proposed by EU, without a public debate.

In December 2005 the two governments gave a statement by which expressed their view that the introduction of biometrics into the ID national cards involved discussions of private life protection, financial and organizational issues, besides the technical aspect.
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EU might fingerprint children even before 12 years old

August 2, 2006

The report from the EU Council Presidency meeting of 26 June 2006 proposes that all children in the European Union should be mandatory fingerprinted if they are over 12 years old. "If provided for by national legislation" this action could be extended to all children, even below 12 years of age.

The Council is putting under discussion fingerprints as compulsory for EU passports in order to prevent passport fraud. The decision will be taken in a secret meeting of a committee made of representatives of the 25 governments and chaired by the European Commission.

The text proposed by the EU Council says that a member state can establish the age limit as low as they want and after 12, this process is mandatory. It will mean taking a biometric identifier from children at an "enrolment centre".
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Underwater robots work together without human input

August 2, 2006

This August in Monterey Bay, Calif., an entire fleet of undersea robots will for the first time work together without the aid of humans to make detailed and efficient observations of the ocean.

The oceanographic test bed in Monterey is expected to yield rich information in particular about a periodic upwelling of cold water that occurs at this time of year near Point Año Nuevo, northwest of Monterey Bay.

But the project has potentially larger implications. It may lead to the development of robot fleets that forecast ocean conditions and better protect endangered marine animals, track oil spills, and guide military operations at sea. Moreover, the mathematical system that allows the undersea robots to self-choreograph their movements in response to their environment might one day power other robotic teams that -- without human supervision -- could explore not just oceans, but deserts, rain forests and even other planets.
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Grad students in San Diego build biometric vending machine

July 31, 2006

A group of grad students at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) are in the process of creating what one of the students calls the "most over-designed soda machine in the world."

Right now, the machine has attached to it a barcode scanner, a fingerprint reader, and a web cam for facial recognition. Want a Coke? Stick your thumb on the reader so the machine recognizes you as having an account, take out the drink, then walk way, never having had to reach into your pocket for change.

The project, called SodaVision (sodavision.com), is the brainchild of UCSD engineering associate professor Stefan Savage.
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