More than 260 arrests in Copenhagen during a demonstration of "Solidarity with Ungomshuset"

September 25, 2006

Over 260 people are arrested so far in Copenhagen, during a solidarity demonstration for Ungdomshuset, a an autonomous cultural centre. Around 800 people took part in the manifestation, which started out as a 'Reclaim the Streets' party in support for the squatted space, which is threatened with eviction.
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Datastrip adds camera to DSVII Mobile biometric ID readers

September 26, 2006

Datastrip has added a camera option to its DSVII mobile biometric ID terminals that will, among its many uses, allow law enforcement to take crime scene photos. It will also help police identify suspects via real-time facial recognition by comparing the live image to an image stored on the DSVII or a back-end Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) database.
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TETRAGATE links biometric facial recognition and RFID

September 26, 2006

TETRAGATE, a new technology from American Barcode and RFID, combines RFID technology with biometric facial recognition and can recognize people as far as 60-feet away. It can, according to its creators, read up to 60,000 faces. Secondary identification is then made as individuals' RFID credentials are read and matched to biometric records as they enter the building.
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Saving Your Life on a Hard Drive

June 19, 2006

If humans may be viewed as the sum total of their memories, then at our doorstep may be a life changing revolution: the ability to store one’s entire life experiences on an accessible and easily searchable file. In this article, we examine this idea, as well as some of the problems involved in its application, and present a unique project towards this end being carried out at Microsoft's research laboratories.

Who doesn't wish to keep a record of a beautiful sunset that particularly impressed us in childhood, our first kiss or, for that matter, an important conversation with the boss that took place a few months back? One of our shortcomings is a constant struggle to remember. How difficult it can be sometimes to recall the name of the person you need to meet in an hour, the important phone number your secretary just read you on the phone, or that very important item your wife told you not to forget to bring home this evening. But what if you had a magical device that would allow you to rewind reality and see exactly what happened? A few years back I began thinking about what could bring this dream closer to reality.
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Online campaign against data retention started in Germany

September 27, 2006

n 25 September, the German Working Group against Data Retention (Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung) started an online campaign against the mandatory storage of all communications data. Through a special web portal, concerned citizens can send electronic open letters to all 448 parliamentarians of the ruling grand coalition and raise their concern and protest against data retention. The letters are also anonymized and published on the portal website. There is no pre-defined text for the letters that the senders have to write themselves, so such a letter could not be considered spam. The working group is only giving advice on its main website on how to frame the arguments in the letter.
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EU Green paper on surveillance technology

September 23, 2006

The European Commission (EC) has adopted a green paper on surveillance technology used by the civil society in the fight against terrorism, that will be open for public consultation until the end of this year.

The green paper, resulted from a public conference (Public-Private Security Dialogue: Detection Technologies and Associated Technologies in the Fight against Terrorism) that took place in November 2005, is meant to find the best technologies to be used "in the service of the security of its citizens" as was stated by European Commission Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security.

Some of the issues on which the green paper is focused are: standardisation, certification of tools, integration of detecting systems for various substances into a sole system, the improvement of the protection of mass events.
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German experts think search engines should be monitored

5 July, 2006

During the workshop "The Rising Power of Search-Engines on the Internet: Impacts on Users, Media Policy, and Media Business" that took place in Berlin on 26-27 June 2006, the experts expressed the opinion that the search engines should be more regulated.
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The end of privacy as we know it

What will Tony Blair be remembered for? The post-war debacle in Iraq? Billions largely wasted on unreformed public services? Half-baked constitutional reforms that have threatened the integrity of the United Kingdom?
How about the erosion of privacy and the transformation of Britain into the most snooped-on country in the world this side of Pyongyang? We have more CCTV cameras than the rest of Europe put together. We have thousands of speed cameras linked to numberplate recognition databases. We await with trepidation the arrival of the national identity database from 2008, entry on to which will make it an offence, for the first time, not to inform the “authorities” when we move home.

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How To Be Human

September 20, 2006

If this year's winner of the Loebner Prize is on the right track, call-center data could be what's needed to achieve the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence (AI): creating a computer program smart enough to hold a natural conversation.

A self-trained enthusiast with no formal academic background in AI, Rollo Carpenter created the winning program, which learns by analyzing its conversations with people as they "chat" with it online. Regardless of the language, his program analyzes every utterance it witnesses, using what Carpenter calls contextual pattern-recognition techniques. Then, when a user asks the program a question, a database is combed for the best response, statistically speaking.
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Nanotubes Trigger Neurons

August 31, 2006

Researchers at Stanford University have used electrodes made of bundles of multiwalled carbon nanotubes to stimulate rat neurons. In a Nano Letters paper published online this week, the researchers describe making arrays of the 50-micrometer electrodes on a silicon substrate and growing the neurons on the arrays. The neurons responded consistently to the electrical signals from the electrodes.

The experiment is an advance toward the long-term goal of using neural prosthetics, such as cochlear and retinal implants, to address individual neurons. Neural prosthetics that restore vision or hearing typically use implanted microelectrode arrays to send electrical signals to nerve cells or directly to the brain. While cochlear implants are already in use, scientists are in the process of developing artificial retinas. A retinal prosthetic, for instance, would have an array implanted near the retina, stimulating the nerve cells that send signals to the optic nerve.
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Watching a Single Thought Form in the Brain

September 06, 2006

One of the long-term goals of the field of neuro-imaging is to understand what a person is thinking just by looking at the pattern of his or her brain activity--in essence, reading the mind. While that feat is still a long way off, scientists at the University of New Mexico have taken an important step by refining neuro-imaging techniques to the point where they can reliably detect a single thought forming in an individual's brain.

The technique could be used to improve clinical applications of neuro-imaging, such as patient diagnosis, or to study cognitive processes that are fleeting or irreproducible, such as learning a new skill. "This could open up a whole new dimension of how fMRI could be used," says Peter Bandettini, director of the fMRI core facility at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD.
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Gene Chips for Cows

September 15, 2006

Steak fans may soon reap the benefits of the genomics revolution. A new project will help scientists create bovine breeds genetically selected to produce bountiful supplies of perfectly marbled steaks.

Scientists at several U.S. and Canadian research institutes are collaborating with Illumina, based in San Diego, CA, to develop a bovine gene chip, similar to those used to study the genetics of human disease. The DNA chips, expected to be on the market early next year, will dramatically speed the search for the genetic variants that underlie desired traits, such as the level of marbling in a cut of meat or the efficiency of a dairy cow's milk production.
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An Artificial Heart That Doesn't Beat

September 21, 2006

Earlier this month, the first fully implantable artificial heart was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It brings hope to patients who are near death from heart failure; yet some major problems remain with it--namely, its large size and relatively short lifespan.

A new concept for an artificial heart could solve some of those issues. But its innovative pulse-free architecture might also raise problems of its own.

Artificial hearts work by pumping deoxygenated blood from the body to the lungs. The device then pumps oxygenated blood through the body. The newly approved device, called AbioCor, made by Massachusetts-based Abiomed, uses an implanted hydraulic pumping system to simulate a natural heart beat. But an alternative design, conceived by O.H. "Bud" Frazier, a prominent heart surgeon and pioneer in the development of cardiac devices at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, pumps blood through the body continuously, rather than with the periodic beat of the normal heart.
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Will my kids be immortal?

September 18, 2006

I have four kids, ages 8, 6, 4 and 4, and the question is: will they die? Or will technology advance far enough, fast enough, to make them immortal?

Right now the typical lifespan of an American is something like 70 to 80 years. So the question boils down to this: what will the typical lifespan be in 2070? And, by that time, is medical science advancing so rapidly that we eventually figure out how to achieve immortality before they actually die?
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Bionic fiction becomes science fact

A highly dexterous, bio-inspired artificial hand and sensory system that could provide patients with active feeling, is being developed by a European project.

The CYBERHAND project aims to hard wire this hand into the nervous system, allowing sensory feedback from the hand to reach the brain, and instructions to come from the brain to control the hand, at least in part.

So far, the project is racking up an impressive list of achievements. It has a complete, fully sensitised five-fingered hand. The CYBERHAND prototype has 16 Degrees of Freedom (DoFs) made possible by the work of six tiny motors.

Each of the five fingers is articulated and has one motor dedicated to its joint flexing for autonomous control. It features that miracle of evolution, the opposable thumb, so the device can perform different grasping actions.
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Robots with synthetic muscles

Robots using artificial polymer “muscles” are real slowpokes, as the polymers react a hundred times slower than human muscle. But in the future, robots could run circles around humans, with synthetic muscles 1000 times faster than ours.

The possible breakthrough comes from work showing how the polymer muscles work at a fundamental level, and suggests a way of triggering them that could make the muscles less bulky and vastly quicker.

The polymers analysed by the researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US are called conjugated polymers. These conduct electricity and won their discoverers the Nobel prize for chemistry in 2000.
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Genetically engineered mice have no fear!

Could this explain what gave cartoon hero Mighty Mouse the courage to fight evil? Researchers have found that flesh-and-blood mice lacking a particular gene are unusually brazen, venturing into wide open spaces and onto narrow bridges that their genetically normal kin avoid. The mutant mice also appear to have weaker memories of scary encounters than normal mice do.
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Neuroscientists break code on sight

In the sci-fi movie “The Matrix,” a cable running from a computer into Neo’s brain writes in visual perceptions, and Neo’s brain can manipulate the computer-created world. In reality, scientists cannot interact directly with the brain because they do not understand enough about how it codes and decodes information.

Now, neuroscientists in the McGovern Institute at MIT have been able to decipher a part of the code involved in recognizing visual objects. Practically speaking, computer algorithms used in artificial vision systems might benefit from mimicking these newly uncovered codes.

“We want to know how the brain works to create intelligence,” said Poggio, the Eugene McDermott Professor in Brain Sciences and Human Behavior. “Our ability to recognize objects in the visual world is among the most complex problems the brain must solve. Computationally, it is much harder than reasoning.” Yet we take it for granted because it appears to happen automatically and almost unconsciously.
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Scientists find key to stem cell immortality

June 16, 2005

One of the medical marvels of stem cells is that they continue to divide and renew themselves when other cells would quit. But what is it that gives stem cells this kind of immortality. Researchers now report in the June 16, 2005 issue of the journal Nature that microRNAs — tiny snippets of genetic material that have now been linked to growth regulation in normal cells as well as cancer growth in abnormal cells — appear to shut off the “stop signals” or brakes that would normally tell cells to stop dividing.

“What we think we see is that there is a special mechanism to get rid of the brakes,” said University of Washington biochemist Hannele Ruohola-Baker, a leading member of the research team.

Stem cells have been the focus of intense research interest because of their role in regenerating all the body’s tissue types, from blood cells to brain cells. MicroRNAs could conceivably be harnessed to give a boost to aging stem cells, or even add some of the qualities of stem cells to more ordinary types of cells.
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Revolutionizing Football

August 31, 2006

A startup venture, EndGame Technologies, has designed novel computer modeling software to assist National Football League coaches with critical play-calling decisions--the kind that often determine the outcome of the game. Should a team punt on fourth down--or go for it? Or attempt a two-point conversion after a touchdown? The software, called ZEUS, is designed to answer such questions by calculating the consequences of each decision in a matter of seconds.
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Robot popularity contest! Shibuya gals tell all

August 28, 2006

I have here in my hands a copy of Robot Life, a new Japanese magazine hot off the press. Well, it came out earlier this month but it's still toasty warm. It's a glossy, colorful zine full of humanoid robot pics, the remote-controlled creations of Tomotaka Takahashi (his Manoi is on the cover), ads by robot makers, and a manga comic strip by Tachiaoi Honda about a rather pathetic-looking robot buffalo discovered in the trash.
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How Israel's Drones Fought the War

September 6, 2006

Israel pioneered the art of using drones in combat. So it's a little surprising that the robotic spy planes got so little play in the accounts of the Sabras' recent conflict with Hezbollah. Flight International tries to fix that, with a detail-rich report card on how the Israeli unmanned air force performed.
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Courts use computers to decide who should face death sentence

September 13, 2006

Criminals in China face being sent to the firing squad by a computer after the introduction of a software programme to help decide the sentences handed out by courts.

Judges are using computers equipped with a sophisticated legal database as an aid to determining punishments for 100 different crimes including robbery and rape by tapping in details of the crime and the mitigating circumstances.

The programme – nicknamed “penalty calculator” - then flashes up its recommended sentence on crimes including murder and stealing state secrets, which are punishable by death by firing squad in the communist nation.
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'Chatbot' king George looks for human friends on the internet

September 15, 2006

George, who is 39, single and light-hearted, is looking for friends on the Internet. He has gifts -- the ability to speak in 40 languages and with 2,000 people at the same time.
And one quirk: he doesn't really exist.

George is a piece of software, arguably the best of the speaking "chatbots" or talking robots, and he's recently received the Loebner prize in Britain, a scientific award recognising the machines best capable of matching the most realistic human dialogues with their own.

Seven years after being invented, George evolved a few months ago into what experts call an avatar, gaining a physical image, a voice and voice recognition software.
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Big Brother is shouting at you

September 16, 2006

Big Brother is not only watching you - now he's barking orders too. Britain's first 'talking' CCTV cameras have arrived, publicly berating bad behaviour and shaming offenders into acting more responsibly.

The system allows control room operators who spot any anti-social acts - from dropping litter to late-night brawls - to send out a verbal warning: 'We are watching you'.

Middlesbrough has fitted loudspeakers on seven of its 158 cameras in an experiment already being hailed as a success. Jack Bonner, who manages the system, said: 'It is one hell of a deterrent. It's one thing to know that there are CCTV cameras about, but it's quite another when they loudly point out what you have just done wrong.
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Experimental AI Powers Robot Army

September 14, 2006

Darpa's Grand Challenge may have looked tough, but it was a piece of cake compared to the challenge facing robots currently being developed by the U.S. Air Force.

Rather than maneuver driverless through miles of rough desert terrain, these will have to find their way into underground bunkers, map unknown facilities in three dimensions and identify what's in them while avoiding detection -- all without any human control.
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What if Bionics Were Better?

September 25, 2006

In 1993 at the age of 51, she underwent sex reassignment surgery. That was just the beginning of her quest for self-improvement. She followed the sex change with more modification: brow reduction, cheek implants, breast implants, lip augmentation and a face-lift. And she'd happily sign up for more, she says.

"I would be inclined to go through with some pretty radical conceptual self-improvement procedures," Garner said. "I think of cosmetic surgery as collaborative art.... And when I next have disposable income, I'll be back in the O.R."

Garner is part of a tiny population of early adopters eager to test bionics by choice rather than out of need. Any company that comes out with, say, a bio implant for Wi-Fi connectivity or devices that interact directly with the brain, can put Garner on the waiting list, she said.
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