+ Technology!

Exploring the future with modern information technology

2011-05-07T00:49:00.000+01:00

European researchers are seeking to create a global computer model named FuturICT, a collective analysis platform for a better understanding of the world. The visionary idea is to design this knowledge accelerator in order to make better predictions about imminent techno-socio-economic crises and suggestions on how to alleviate or even prevent them.

Among other things, the 'FuturICT' project is looking to model what impact political decisions have globally on society, the environment and the economy (image source: www.futurict.eu)

Never before has mankind faced challenges as great as those of today. Climate change, destruction of the environment, conflicts, crises on the financial markets, and many more, are all problems linked to human behaviour. They are not isolated from each other, but interconnected with one another and interdependent in a complicated way. No human being can entirely comprehend this complexity, and much less foresee the consequences that social or economic activities will have elsewhere in the world.

A group of researchers, led by complexity scientist Dirk Helbing from ETH Zurich, has now proposed a visionary project, FuturICT, with which they want to address these big challenges. The project will develop a platform – the “Living Earth Simulator” – that allows techno-commercial-sociological-ecological systems to be simulated and analysed, to investigate, for example, how political or economic decisions affect our world. The computer model is planned to be capable of simulating systems on a global scale, considering interactions between up to 10 billion individuals.

A knowledge accelerator is needed

Scientific project coordinator Dirk Helbing says, “We need this knowledge accelerator to enable better informed decisions that are to be made in a techno-socio-economic-ecological context.” The “Living Earth Platform” is designed, amongst other things, to help minimise, or even prevent, unwanted side effects. For example, bio-fuel production has unexpectedly led to food price increases by competing with the conventional use of cultivated acreages. The consequence was, and still is, social unrest in various parts of the world.

The fact that the time is ripe for this project is illustrated by the financial crisis, which caused dramatic losses within a very short time period and would have ruined whole nations without global intervention and the European rescue system stepping in. It shows that economists and financial specialists failed to recognise the imminent dangers early enough, and were unable to keep the risks sufficiently under control. This is also why voices calling for better models, particularly models of systemic risks, are becoming louder.

However, FuturICT aims not only to recognise imminent financial or economic crises at an early stage, but also to link different areas together. Various “Crisis Observatories” dealing with financial markets, the real economy, epidemics, conflicts or environmental changes, will be integrated into one “Living Earth Platform”.

With EU flagships to new knowledge horizons

The initiative still exists only as a research proposal submitted to the EU Research Commission. FuturICT currently stands in first place among the 26 submitted projects. It is planned that the winning project will receive one billion euros over ten years. The Commission will make the final choice in 2012. Until then, the researchers have time to work out their applications in detail, for which the EU Commission has provided 1.5 million euros.

One billion euros sounds like a lot of money. However, major projects in physics (CERN, ITER), the engineering sciences (Galileo) or biology (Human Genome Project) are often ten times as expensive, and up to now, the financial crisis has cost more than a thousand times as much. The duration and size of the project also put this figure into perspective: hundreds of researchers are taking part in FuturICT to fill the serious knowledge gaps about our techno-socio-economic systems, as quickly as possible.

A perfect example of interdisciplinarity

The project’s alignment will be exceptionally interdisciplinary and will combine a broad spectrum of scientific expertise to overcome specialisation and ivory tower thinking. Computer scientists, ICT experts, and complexity scientists are needed, as well as economists, sociologists, and experts in sustainability and systemic risks. The purpose of this collaboration is firstly, to lead to a new renaissance of the social and economic sciences and secondly, to lead to a harmonious, sustainable “co-evolution” of technology and society through the development of information and communication systems that adapt to their users’ needs.

Success in this venture needs, in particular, a modern platform that can record and analyse gigantic amounts of data, transfer them into computer simulations and make them usable by everyone. That is also why the term ICT, which stands for “Information and Communication Technologies”, appears in the project title. Operating the Living Earth Simulator needs data sets collected in real time, as well as new approaches to data mining.

The data sources can be population statistics, for example, as well as freely accessible Internet data. This also shows one of the difficulties that the researchers must deal with: how much and which data does this kind of model really need? Helbing assures that “we don’t collect just all the data that is available, otherwise one would drown in a sea of data.”

Big Science, not Big Brother Science

FuturICT is definitely not intended to be a citizen surveillance instrument either, he explains. Quite the opposite: the scientists want to use this project to point out new pathways and solutions to enable better privacy protection in the digital age. Helbing says, “we have no interest in what individuals are doing, the aim is to understand the bigger picture.”

For example, FuturICT could inform us about the effects of the Japanese earthquake on the global supply and production network or on social cohesion. Social upheavals, migration, conflicts – there’s a certain interconnection between all of them. Dirk Helbing says, “We want to use FuturICT to gain a better understanding of these relationships to enable better, more sustainable decisions in the future, because global interdependencies have increased enormously. Had we understood them, it is unlikely that a financial crisis of this magnitude would have emerged.”

The ETH Zurich professor and the research community behind FuturICT also aim to use the project and the planned participatory platforms to strengthen democracy. “Most of all, technological development should not endanger democracy”, he says. That is why FuturICT will, among other things, be concerned with how data that is freely available on the Internet can and should be handled. “There is still no consensus between the economy and society here.” He does not at all share the opinion that privacy is an obsolete concept in the digital age. He says, “a society cannot function without the privacy of the individual. The public and private spheres are two sides of the same coin; the public domain is definable only by drawing a boundary between it and privacy.”

Privacy and individual participation taken seriously

Helbing points out the particular challenge is to develop new technical methods of data encryption, storage and processing that allow the kind of data mining that benefits individuals and society, but which also protects individual privacy and confidential commercial data. Nevertheless, it must remain possible to inspect data in a limited, democratically controlled way where this is necessary to combat corruption and terrorism. Until now there has been a lack of technical solutions that can satisfy all three requirements.

Furthermore, Helbing stresses “the main priority is to find ways of giving back control of personal data to the user”. The World Economic Forum is now making the same recommendation. He also emphasises that the research within the FuturICT project will have a strong emphasis on ethical questions and a clear code of values. He says, “FuturICT will give top priority to protecting sensitive data and will be fully transparent and democratically controlled. Among all the activities working with large volumes of data, this is the most transparent project. Without such a project it will hardly be possible to learn about the dangers of large data sets and to take effective action to protect society from these dangers”.

Finally, it is important to point out that FuturICT does not want to be a tool that is restricted to a number of privileged political or economic decision makers. Just like the Internet empowers individuals and small organizations with a global reach and unlimited access to information, the project intends to create a participatory platform allowing everyone to access and utilize the data and models developed by the project for their own purposes and applications.

One billion for EU flagship programme

Under its seventh Research Framework Programme, the EU tendered for major projects, so-called flagship initiatives, in the field of Future and Emerging Technologies (FET). With the FET flagships, the EU is looking to promote large-scale, ambitious research projects with a visionary goal in information and communications technology (ICT) by offering EUR one billion over a period of ten years. Twenty-six consortiums submitted projects. In March this year the six most promising candidates were nominated, including two projects with considerable ETH-Zurich involvement: ‘FuturICT’ and ‘Guardian Angels’. The finalists their projects publicly at the second FET conference and exhibition in Budapest on 4-6 May. The research groups will then have until May 2012 to put together a detailed proposal, which the final decision will be based upon. The successful consortiums will finally be able to start work in 2013.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

How Wearable Cameras Could Help Diagnose Dementia

2010-08-13T12:47:00.000+01:00

A new way to analyze the lifestream data from wearable cameras could lead to an objective measure of dementia.

One of the problems with " life recorders", wearable video cameras that record your every movement, is making sense of the huge datasets they produce. Given a day's worth of inane footage--get up, wander into bathroom, brush teeth etc--what can you usefully do with it?

Various groups have proposed that such ameras could make excellent aide memoires, immediately locating lost car keys and remembering old faces. They'd also allow you to relive memories with otherwise forgotten detail--what was she wearing the day we met?

That's all well and good but there is a serious practical problem. How can a computer make sense of the endless stream of footage?

Scene change detection is relatively straight forward in many videos such as TV programs and movies because a scene change usually coincides with a change in the camera's perspective. All you have to do is look for theses changes, a task that is made easier if the images are well lit and have relatively little blur, as is the case in most professional recorded films.

Life stream videos are different. Here the camera's perspective is always the same while the individual frames are often blurred by movement, washed out in scenes with too much light or blacked out in scenes with too little. All of this makes the task of scene change recognition that much harder.

Today, Svebor Karaman et amis at the University of Bordeaux in France say they have taken a step towards solving this problem with a new way of categorising daily activities in footage taken from a shoulder-mounted camera.

They define a scene as a sequence of frames in which the camera is relatively still, which they can easily determine by measuring trajectory of the corners of the image. They then categorise each sequence according to the colours present in the frames, which remain relatively constant even when the individual frames are blurred or dim. Finally, they manually label these scense with titles such as "moving in the kitchen" or "moving in home office" .

A computer can then use this information to detect similar patterns elsewhere in the footage. The result is a reasonably accurate picture of the activities that an ordinary person caries out on a daily basis.

That has at least one important application. The motivating factor for Karaman and co is to find an objective way of studying the patterns of behaviour of people with dementia.

An objective measure would be hugely useful. Doctors usually rely on the accounts given by relatives or carers whose perception of whether a patient is better or worse can be coloured by all kinds of other factors. The data from a lifestreaming camera, on the other hand, can tell you exactly how many times a patient visited the kitchen on Wednesday, for example, and how that compared to the same period six months ago.

The hope, say Karaman and co, is that this kind of data can be an important tool in evaluating the onset of dementia and the way it is advancing.

But they will have their work cut out to make this technique useful. At the moment, their technique gives information about behaviour only on a relatively coarse scale and requires significant input from a human to help "train" the program to recognise places such as kitchens and home offices. All this is site specific and will have to be repeated in other home environments.

Unless they can find a way to automate this process or at least make it much easier and faster, this will limit the appeal of this software.

On the other hand, the software may be a hugely useful research tool. The detailed study of the behaviour of dementia patients could throw up other indicators that could be used in understanding the progression of the disease. And that could ultimately be its greatest value.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

Micromachines for a Safer World

2010-08-13T12:28:00.000+01:00

TAU researchers develop improved MEMS devices for sport, electronics and defense

Tiny sensors known as accelerometers are everywhere. The near-weightless technology can measure the impact of a dangerous tackle on a football player's helmet, control the flow of highway and runway traffic, analyze a golf pro's swing, orient the next generation of smart phones, and keeping fighter jets and missiles on target.

And as sensing devices improve, the possibilities for what they can measure are infinite. Teams of Tel Aviv University scientists are at the heart of the tiny world of MEMS — microelectromechanical systems — to make these systems even smaller, cheaper, and more sensitive by marrying old-school mechanics with advanced electrical engineering.

"The widespread penetration of miniature MEMS sensors into the devices surrounding us is transforming our way of life," says Dr. Slava Krylov of Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Engineering, where his theoretical and practical work is leading to applications that could transform multiple industries.

Adding mechanics to electronics

In a recent publication of the IEEE Sensors Journal, he and his doctoral student Assaf Ya'akobovitz outlined ways to improve the sensitivity of accelerometers by using an efficient yet simple and manufacturable design, which can be applied in sport, communication, transportation and defense.

Dr. Krylov and Ya'akobovitz showed, theoretically and experimentally, how amplification techniques developed at their lab can be used for improving the performance of micro-accelerometers. Instead of electronically amplifying the extremely small signals produced by the accelerometer, the researchers incorporated a mechanical amplification, a sort of a miniature clock hand, in order to generate a larger signal output, thereby reducing the devices' noise and improving their sensitivity.

Today, Dr. Krylov points out, almost every kind of machine used in transportation and communication relies on accelerometers. They are applied in high-end navigation devices for airplanes and missiles, and built into iPhones as motion sensors. His latest advances in sensitivity enhancement could be applied to all of these current uses, and in lucrative and untapped business applications as well, he says. In the car safety industry alone, the market is worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Keeping space missions on track

Dr. Krylov's device architecture uses a tiny electrode, a silicon chip, and a mechanical transformer coupled with an optical sensor to amplify the tiniest changes in motion and acceleration. Currently, the device is about 1 millimeter in diameter, but it can be manufactured at an even smaller size than that. "It's always better to be smaller," he says, explaining that the accuracy of the devices is especially critical on space missions, when a fraction of distance and time can alter the course of a space vehicle or satellite forever.

Designed to be created in mass numbers for the mass market, Dr. Krylov is also taking the core technology from his accelerometers to be applied in new mind-boggling directions — to harvesting clean energy and in novel medical applications. But these developments, he says, are farther in the future.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

The semantic web made easy

2010-07-23T17:44:00.000+01:00

A tool developed by computer scientists from the UPM and the UAM paves the way for the web of the future

In partnership with the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid’s Department of Informatics Engineering, researchers from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s Ontology Engineering Group, based at the Facultad de Informática, have developed a tool that simplifies the use of the semantic web. The new tool, called Fortunata, can be used by developers, graphic designers and end users without an in-depth knowledge of informatics.

The semantic web, or data web, is based on the idea of adding semantic information to the Internet contents. The goal is to improve the Internet by extending interoperability among software systems. The end result will be intelligent agents, that is, software programs capable of searching and interrelating information without human operators.

A developer untrained in semantic web technologies can use this tool to create web applications that use and generate semantic data. The web applications developed using this infrastructure are no different in appearance or functionality from traditional web applications, and application users are unaware that they are using or generating semantic information.

Early experiments show that users find the applications generated with this infrastructure to be very usable and satisfactory to use, irrespective of their knowledge of informatics.

Advanced knowledge

Advanced knowledge of web technologies and semantic technologies needs to be combined to develop web applications that exploit the semantic web. This calls for highly specialized developers. However, the new infrastructure simplifies the development of semantic web applications by chunking the development task across less demanding professional profiles, allocating specific tasks to each profile and minimizing interdependencies.

The process for applying this new tool is as follows. Firstly, the web designer is responsible for creating semantic templates, capable of rendering semantic data (data presentation templates) or gathering data from the user (data capture templates) that will be converted into semantic data. The experiments show that, with a little training and without any knowledge of semantic technologies, graphic designers can easily create attractive web templates using the tools provided.

Secondly, the developer (web applications creator) uses these templates to create web applications that render and/or create semantic data. They can use these templates with any programming language and without any knowledge of semantic web technologies.

Even people with no more than a basic knowledge of web technologies can benefit from these semantic templates. A Google gadget has been developed that helps users to insert a template in any web page. This gadget is easy to configure by just specifying the location of the semantic data that are to be rendered and the template to be used.

Adaptation for mobile phones

In the future, semantic agents will be able to select the template best suited to each user and adapt to the user device (e.g. mobile phone, TV, PC), user interactive characteristics (e.g. low vision, colour blindness) or user aesthetic preferences.

The results of this research, developed by Oscar Corcho and Mariano Rico, of the UPM’s Ontology Engineering Group at the Facultad de Informática, and David Camacho, of the UAM’s Department of Informatics Engineering, was published in Intelligent Distributed Information Systems (Volume 180, Issue 10, 15 May 2010, Pages 1850-1864).

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

Self-sustaining robot has an artificial gut

2010-07-23T17:07:00.000+01:00

The robot, the Ecobot III, was developed by researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and will be presented at the Artificial Life conference in Denmark in August. The robot eats meals of partially processed sewage, using the nutrients within the mash for fuel and excreting the remains. It also drinks water to maintain power generation.

The robot navigates towards a dispenser filled with the nutrient-rich mixture and "eats" what it needs. The meal is then processed in the robot's body by bacteria held in a stack of two tiers, each with 24 microbial fuel cells (MFCs).

Undigested matter passes via a gravity feed to a central trough from which it is pumped back into the feeder tanks to be reprocessed in order to extract as much of the available energy as possible. The waste is then purged every 24 hours by a peristaltic pump that works like the colon, using pressure waves to expel the waste from the tube into a litter tray.

The bacteria in each MFC metabolize the mixture, producing hydrogen atoms in the process. The hydrogen electrons are drawn to the fuel cell anode where an electric current is generated. Meanwhile the hydrogen ions enter the cathode chamber via a proton-exchange membrane and combine with oxygen in the water in the chamber to produce more water. The robot drinks water to replace losses through evaporation.

Director of Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Chris Melhuish, said MFCs had been tried before but an artificial gut was needed to solve the problem of previous models, which was that humans had to clean up the waste left by bacterial digestion. Melhuish said the robot was called Ecobot III, but admitted “diarrhea-bot would be more appropriate, as it’s not exactly knocking out rabbit pellets.”

This is a picture of the EcoBot II - a predecessor of the EcoBot III.

The robot has maintained itself unaided for up to seven days, but is so far extremely inefficient, using only 1% of the energy available within the food. It moves slowly and shows some intelligent behaviors such as moving toward light.

The inefficiency and slowness may make the robot less attractive than autonomous robots designed to extract energy from biomass by burning it rather than using MFCs — such as the "Energetically Autonomous Tactile Robot" being developed by the US military — but the Bristol team point out that MFCs can process a greater range of foodstuffs, including hard-to-burn matter such as waste water.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

Researchers Launch iPhone App to Rescue Oiled Gulf Coast Wildlife

2010-06-30T23:39:00.000+01:00

Let's save the wild life in the Golf coast
University of Massachusetts Amherst Researchers Launch iPhone App to Rescue Oiled Gulf Coast Wildlife

AMHERST, Mass. – Starting today, iPhone users who come upon oiled birds and other wildlife in the Gulf Coast region can immediately transmit the location and a photo to animal rescue networks using a free new iPhone app, MoGO, for Mobile Gulf Observatory. It was developed by four University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers to make it easier for the public to help save wildlife exposed to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The UMass Amherst researchers hope the MoGO app will draw on the large network of “citizen scientists” who are as heartbroken as they are to witness the disaster for marine life and who are actively looking for ways to help save wildlife along the 14,000 miles of northern Gulf coastline.

Although rescue networks are in place and busy saving stranded wildlife, the task is enormous and trained staff too few. They just don’t have the people-power to cover all the territory from Louisiana to Florida. With over 400 wildlife species and 35 national wildlife refuges at risk, the Gulf is in crisis from the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

“That’s where citizen science comes in,” says UMass Amherst wildlife biologist Curt Griffin. As he explains, “The new app allows anyone who finds an oiled animal to be linked automatically by the phone to the Wildlife Hotline and also to contribute photos of the stranded animal and its GPS location coordinates to a database here on campus.”

Each report will alert wildlife stranding networks to deploy experts to rescue live animals for clean-up and medical treatment. Photos of oiled wildlife plus the GPS location will also be uploaded to MoGO’s comprehensive database for review by wildlife and fisheries experts using a Web browser. Users are also encouraged to upload their photos of dead marine and coastal wildlife, tar balls on beaches, oil slicks on water and oiled coastal habitats to the MoGO database.

The idea for the new app came to Charlie Schweik, associate director of the National Center for Digital Government, as he listened to yet another depressing story about the Gulf oil spill. Already working on invasive species mapping with computer scientist Deepak Ganesan, an expert in mobile phone and sensor systems, Schweik thought that experience might prove useful for inventorying damage in the Gulf. Smartphones such as the iPhone have several sensors including camera, GPS, audio and video, which can provide valuable data for such an application.

Schweik also turned to Griffin and Andy Danylchuk, a fisheries ecologist, his colleagues in UMass Amherst’s natural resources conservation department, to connect to the wildlife and fisheries community. Griffin and Danylchuk agreed that a mobile phone app in the hands of an army of “citizen scientists” would enhance recovery efforts by wildlife stranding networks. It could also increase the efficiency of state and federal efforts to monitor, assess and respond to the damage caused by the spill and engage the public to partner with natural resources agencies and researchers.

As Danylchuk points out, “The MoGO public database will help guide restoration efforts of vital coastal and marine habitats, and be used by scientists world-wide to assess the ecological impacts of the spill on the Gulf. The public database also allows scientists outside the Gulf region to participate in the assessment.”

The app takes advantage of “mobile crowdsourcing,” that is, the power of smart personal mobile devices to provide thousands of eyes and ears on the ground. Ganesan’s research group has designed a software framework called “mCrowd,” which simplifies the usual weeks- to months-long process of developing a new mobile crowdsourcing app. “It provides easy-to-use templates that can be tailored to a new application,” Ganesan explains. His mCrowd technology allowed the UMass Amherst team to create the MoGO app and infrastructure in a little more than a week.

Whether the project succeeds now rests on how well the word gets out to the public in the Gulf region, the researchers note. “Any person, on land or at sea, wishing to use the free app for their iPhone can go to www.savegulfwildlife.org for more information on how to get it on their iPhone,” Schweik says.

So if you've got an Iphone and you are where it's happening, go save some wildlife and let's all stay alive.
A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

LARGER STORAGE SPACE ON YOUR PC

2010-06-30T22:55:00.000+01:00

HERE'S THE BIG ONE

Nanospheres stretch limits of hard disk storage

A new magnetic recording medium made up of tiny nanospheres has been devised by European researchers. The technology may lead to hard disks able to store more than a thousand billion bits of information in a square inch.

With consumer PCs now being sold with hard disks of a terabyte or more – enough to record more than two years of music – storage capacity seems to be expanding without limit. But the limits are there and industry insiders know that they are approaching fast.
Present-day hard disks record information on a ferromagnetic layer. The layer is made up of grains about 7 nanometres across and each ‘bit’ of information is contained in a magnetised cell covering perhaps 60 to 80 grains. When the magnetic field is pointing one way a ‘1’ is stored and when it points the opposite way a ‘0’ is stored.
One way of packing information on to a disk would be to make the cells smaller. But with fewer grains per cell, the signal to noise ratio rises and with it the probability of a bit being misread.
The obvious answer is to use a recording medium with smaller grains, but then thermal stability problems arise. “Over time, if the thermal stability is not large enough, the magnetic orientation will flip to the opposite direction so it will lose its information,” says Manfred Albrecht of the Chemnitz University of Technology.

Nanospheres

He favours a completely new approach using techniques from nanotechnology to construct a ‘patterned’ recording surface made up not of irregular grains but of purpose-made magnetic cells. “The problem now is how can you produce these nanostructures on a large scale at low cost?”
Albrecht coordinated the EU-funded MAFIN project which sought to build regular arrays of cells from tiny magnetised nanospheres. The spheres are made of silica and are commercially available in a range of sizes. After testing many different sizes the MAFIN team settled on spheres 25 nanometres in diameter, bigger than conventional grains but smaller than normal storage cells.
The attraction of using nanospheres is that they will assemble themselves into a regular array. The nanospheres are mixed with an alcohol-based solution that is dropped on to the substrate. As the alcohol evaporates the spheres are left in a regular pattern.
“We then deposited a magnetic film on top of the particles to form a magnetic ‘cap’,” Albrecht explains. “And if you do it right then this magnetic cap acts as a single magnet, with a north and a south pole, and the array can be used as a storage device.”
Whether the cap is magnetised with a north or south pole upwards determines whether it is storing a ‘1’ or a ‘0’.

Iron-platinum alloy

The magnetic film is an iron-platinum alloy that has already attracted interest within the magnetic storage industry. It is coated on to the nanospheres by magnetron-sputter deposition. As silica itself is non-magnetic, each cap is isolated from its neighbours and can hold its magnetisation well.
Self-assembly of the nanospheres is guided by pre-patterning of the silicate substrate by x-ray lithography to create tiny pits for the spheres to settle into.
“I believe that self-assembly-based approaches have the largest potential because they are not expensive,” Albrecht says. “They are very low cost.”
A spacing of 25 nanometres between spheres is equivalent to a storage density of one terabit (1000 gigabits) per square inch. Using the same approach with smaller spheres researchers should be able to attain densities up to six times higher.
As well as looking at the recording medium, MAFIN researchers have also investigated recording techniques. Iron-platinum is harder to magnetise than conventional media, so modifications will be needed to allow information to be easily recorded and read.

Opportunities for industry

The team investigated using a probe with a fine magnetic tip to magnetise and read each of the nanospheres instead of a conventional recording head.
MAFIN finished in May 2009 but its work has carried over into a successor EU project, TERAMAGSTOR. While MAFIN was concerned with a proof of concept, the new project aims to demonstrate a hard disk with a storage density exceeding one terabit per square inch.
Albrecht sees opportunities for European industry to develop the manufacturing processes that new, nanostructured storage media will require. “In Europe we don't have a real industry that produces hard drives,” he says. “It's all in Asia and the USA. But we have manufacturers of deposition tools and expertise in sputter technology.”
The glass substrates of conventional hard disks will not be suitable for the high-temperature processes needed to deposit alloys, so European companies with know-how in ceramic materials may also have a role to play.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

GET SMART

2010-06-30T21:43:00.000+01:00

I have been away for while, but not because I had no info to share.. in fact there are new tech stuffs on the way and i am glad i could share it with all. Here's is the gist

Targeting Phone Security Flaw
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The exposure of prominent iPad users' email addresses and device IDs has underscored how security is becoming a bigger concern for mobile devices.

Consumers are snapping up gadgets like high-powered cellphones and Apple Inc.'s tablet computer, and the cellphone industry is counting on them to drive its growth. Meanwhile, the list of holes computer researchers are finding in the devices and their software is growing.

In 2009, security experts identified 30 security flaws in the software and operating systems of smartphones made by companies like Apple, Nokia Corp. and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd., up from 16 the previous year, according to a review of records in the National Vulnerability Database, a repository created in 2005 by an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Submissions are vetted and rated according to their severity.

And so far, there's little evidence malicious hackers have exploited such holes on a significant scale.
Yet last week's incident in which a group of computer programmers exploited a flaw in AT&T Inc.'s website to publicize a vulnerability shows the hacker subculture is starting to sniff around mobile devices.
Apple, which has a solid reputation when it comes to security, is drawing increased attention from researchers and hackers as it becomes a more powerful presence in mobile computing. It has sold more than 50 million iPhones.

In March, Vincenzo Iozzo of Politecnico di Milano and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann of the University of Luxembourg extracted an entire database of text messages from an iPhone, including those that had been deleted, using a corrupt website they controlled.

The exploit won them $15,000 in a hacking contest. They didn't reveal details of the attack, but said they were able to access the text message and address book databases, among others.
Apple patched that hole and others on June 7 in an update to its Safari Web browser, almost three months after it was reported, according to records on Apple's website.

"Apple takes security very seriously," a spokeswoman said, but declined to comment on specific vulnerabilities.

A growing number of vulnerabilities have also been uncovered in the networks and applications that run on mobile devices.

Last year, security researchers discovered 22 vulnerabilities on the mobile version of the Safari browser, up from five holes in 2008, according to a review of the National Vulnerability Database.
For example, a researcher posted a finding in September that a component of the Safari browser used in iPhones with operating systems older than 3.1 didn't remove usernames and passwords from messages sent by the device to websites.

Apple, like other companies, tries to patch holes by sending out security updates. Last September, the company quickly plugged the password hole and several others, according to records on the company's website.

It's a game of cat and mouse, and some holes stay open for months, and longer. "The real challenge here is response time," said John Hering, CEO of mobile security provider Lookout. "If companies don't act swiftly, it will be harder to deal with."

One way smartphone manufacturers try to keep out hackers is by a process called sandboxing, which prevents third-party applications from seeing each other or accessing specific data.
Nicolas Seriot, a Swiss software engineer, published a paper in February on iPhone security at a computer security conference showing the sandbox fencing isn't always perfect.

To expose the flaws, Mr. Seriot created a piece of software he called SpyPhone allowing him to access a range of private data on the iPhone, including the 20 most recent searches on the Safari mobile Web browser, a user's iPhone ID and email address, and a history of connections to a wireless server that reveals data about a user's location.

"Most of the personal data that a rogue application could harvest are still accessible," wrote Mr. Seriot in an email. Researchers expect Apple to release a new security update soon after the iPhone 4 is released later this month. Apple declined to comment.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

Innovative research reawakens human memories through intelligent textiles

2010-06-25T19:30:00.000+01:00

As part of the 2010 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, two teams of researchers led by Professor Barbara Layne of Concordia University, Montreal, and Professor Janis Jefferies at Goldsmiths, University of London, U.K., have brought research in intelligent textiles to a new level.

The research teams have developed a highly sophisticated concept of interactive clothing whereby the body’s physical and emotional state triggers the transfer of personalized memory back to the wearer.

The project, titled Wearable Absence, uses a system of wearable devices never before seen in the expanding field of intelligent textiles. Combining uniquely engineered adaptors and soft cabling systems with fashionable clothing designs, the prototype garments incorporate wireless technologies and bio-sensing devices to activate a rich database of image and sound, creating a narrative, or string of messages, from an ‘absent’ person.
Wireless sensors and bio-sensing devices are embedded into garments that record the wearer’s temperature, heart rate, galvanic skin response (moisture) and rate of respiration. The data is sent via the Internet to a sophisticated database which in turns sends back messages to the clothing. The messages, which evoke memories of an absent person, may take the form of voice recordings or songs broadcast from speakers sewn into a hood or shoulder seams, or scrolling text on a LED array woven into fabric, or video and photographic imagery.

To give an example, a person might be experiencing a certain emotional state such as stress, grief or despair. The bio-sensors would prompt the person’s clothing to receive a range of messages such as photos, texts and sound recordings to provide comfort.

This unique combination of textile arts, emotional mapping and responsive technologies can enhance human experience, with enormous potential for the fields of health care and well-being.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

Student-built app allows Paris riders to use smartphones to get directions

2010-06-25T19:18:00.000+01:00

Research from tech-savvy students at Ryerson University is helping disabled passengers navigate a subway line halfway around the world.

Their work, part of a push by the Toronto campus to tap student know-how to create new digital products, is allowing riders on one line of the Paris Metro to use their smartphones to get directions, plan their trip and ask for assistance from transit staff. Closer to home, the group is hoping to test the student-developed application on the GO train’s Lakeshore and Richmond Hill lines this fall.

“This is just one of 26 projects that are now under development, most with plans to commercialize,” said Hossein Rahnama, a Ryerson post-graduate student and leader of the mobile phone project, a team that includes four undergraduate and three graduate computer-science students.

Mr. Rahnama said his group has spoken with TTC officials and, although the application would work on buses and streetcars, it could not run on the subway’s existing communications platform. Airports also would be an ideal use for the application, he said.

The new application is one of the first products to be launched from the school’s Digital Media Zone, a project that began this spring and brings together students from various fields of study to develop their ideas under the guidance of staff and business advisers.

In the case of the new transit application, Mr. Rahnama got involved in the venture as a graduate student in partnership with a group of European researchers. Ryerson became the only North American school involved in the initiative because of his work.

The new “mobile transit companion,” is a free download available to all transit users, but with features tailored specifically to users with special needs. Depending on user preferences, it can receive commands through simple gestures on a touch screen or voice commends and can respond with written or verbal messages. It also can use vibrations to send alerts, such as when a visually impaired user is nearing their stop. There also is an option that allows users to let transit staff or family track their location.

At a special demonstration Tuesday at Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone – a sparse office space jammed with computer equipment overlooking Dundas Square – Mala Naraine used her index finger to trace a lower-case “h” on a mobile phone screen. A voice message tells her that assistance is coming and asks her to remain in her current location. Another sweep of her finger and the application, which plots the user’s location in real time, gives her directions to the nearest elevator.

Having the application available for the TTC “would be like a dream come true,” said Ms. Naraine, a Ryerson post-doctoral student who has limited vision and relies on public transit.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

Artificial Intelligence Laboratory soon to arrive in Ghana

2010-06-25T19:11:00.001+01:00

Ghana launches an initiative to set up a laboratory in Artificial Intelligence Laboratory as the result of a collaboration between the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE) and the EU Pascal2 Network of Excellence represented by the Jozef Stefan Institute (JSI).

The partnership is to enhance learning and research in artificial intelligence. The laboratory will focus on research in the field of Robotics, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Neural Networks among others.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a computer application system by which machines are empowered to mimic the actions and behaviour of human beings. Being the first of its kind in Ghana, the main idea behind the establishment of the laboratory, is to provide a hands-on experience for students in the various tertiary institutions offering courses in this area of study. The main purpose of the laboratory will be to provide support and enhance the learning skills as well as the professional development of students, lecturers and anyone interested in the field of artificial intelligence.

The Pascal2 Network of Excellence will be conducting a series of boot camps on Artificial Intelligence research areas. Five scholarships have already been offered to the universities in Ghana to enable them to participate in a boot camp to take place in Marseille, France in July 2010. The research area to be addressed is machine learning which is an exciting field of study under AI where researchers search for and describe patterns based on a given set of data, in the hope that this would help them make better forecasts.

The boot camp would be facilitated by seasoned researchers affiliated to Pascal 2 Network of Excellence in Europe. Recorded versions of the camp will form part of video lectures also sponsored by the Network. These will be made available online at videolectures.net website.

The Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence in ICT is committed to ensure that this laboratory will serve as a hub for learning and also for innovative research work in the field of artificial intelligence.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World.

Part-Human, Part-Machine Transistor Devised

2010-06-22T14:06:00.000+01:00

Scientists embedded a biologically powered transistor inside a cell membrane.
The device is the most intimate binding of man and machine yet achieved.
The research could lead to new man-machine interfaces.

Man and machine can now be linked more intimately than ever, according to a new article in the journal ACS Nano Letters. Scientists have embedded a nano-sized transistor inside a cell-like membrane and powered it using the cell's own fuel.

The research could lead to new types of man-machine interactions where embedded devices could relay information about the inner workings of disease-related proteins inside the cell membrane, and eventually lead to new ways to read, and even influence, brain or nerve cells.

"This device is as close to the seamless marriage of biological and electronic structures as anything else that people did before," said Aleksandr Noy, a scientist at the University of California, Merced who is a co-author on the recent ACS Nano Letters. "We can take proteins, real biological machines, and make them part of a working microelectronic circuit."

To create the implanted circuit, the UC scientists began with a simple transistor, an electronic device that is the heart of nearly every cell phone and computer on the planet. Instead of using silicon, the most common material used in transistors, the scientists used a next generation material known as a carbon nanotube, a tiny straw-shaped material made from a single curved layer of carbon atoms arranged like the panels of a soccer ball.

The scientists then coated the carbon nanotube transistor with a lipid bilayer, basically a double wall of oil molecules that cells use to separate their insides from their environment. The scientists didn't use an actual cell membrane, however.To this basic cellular structure the UC scientists added an ion pump, a biological device that pumps charged atoms of calcium, potassium, and other elements into and out of the cell. Then they added a solution of adenosine tri-phosphate, or ATP, which fuels the ion pump.

The ion pump changes the electrical charge inside the cell, which then changes the electrical charge going through the transistor, which the scientists could measure and monitor.

In their initial device the biological pump powered the artificial transistor. Future devices could work just the opposite, where an outside electrical current could power the pump and alter how quickly ions are pumped into or out of a cell. That could have dramatic effects.

For instance, instead of using drugs to block the release or uptake of various drugs or neurotransmitters, scientists could change the electricity regulating the ion pump, which would then change the amount of the drug or molecule inside, or outside, the cell.

Other groups have tried to mix man and machine before, said Itamar Willner, a scientist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but none have achieved this level of intimacy.
"Previous students used enzymes that were not incorporated into membranes in the transistors," said Willner. "In this case, an enzyme that usually works in the membrane was linked to carbon nanotubes."
The new enzyme-transistor link could help eventually monitor and even treat diseases and conditions, said Willner.

Some of the most obvious medical conditions the embedded transistor could help study, or alleviate, are toxins and poisons. Many of these chemicals puncture cell membranes and cause the cell's inner fluid, or cytoplasm, to leak out, essentially bleeding the cell to death. Other toxins create ion imbalances inside the cells, which can cause paralysis and other conditions.

If the cells could be encouraged to pump the necessary ions into or out of the cell that could help treat a specific condition. Though any actual treatment based on this technology is still years away, said Willner.
"We don't want to just sense things, we also want to treat them," said Willner. Clinical applications may still be years away, but the new research is the most intimate link between life and machines that has yet been created.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

Robots now therapists and playmates to autistic children

2010-06-22T13:37:00.000+01:00

In a small, sparsely furnished room, a young boy in a black T-shirt backs himself into a corner. He’s cautious. Cameras capture his movements, and microphones record every sound. But this doesn’t intimidate him; he doesn’t even seem aware that he’s being observed.

Brian is autistic, and he’s staring across the room at a two-wheeled, gray, humanoid robot with big, cartoonish eyes. The machine, Bandit, is roughly Brian’s size, and it has been trying to engage him by slowly rolling toward him.

Bandit uses infrared sensing and cameras to calculate Brian’s position. Seeing that the boy is backing away, the robot tries a different approach. It stops moving and makes a “come-here” gesture, waving him closer. It works. Brian approaches and then stands alongside Bandit, shoulder-to-plastic-shoulder. Bandit stops moving, and Brian backs off. The boy is like a boxer sizing up an opponent.

Finally, emboldened, Brian steps up to the robot and leans his face toward it, curious and confident.
For the researchers observing the interaction through a two-way mirror in an adjoining room, this small gesture is an encouraging sign. The boy is warming up to the machine, and that’s the point.

‘SYMPATHETIC’ ROBOTS
This unusual pair is part of a research initiative at the University of Southern California to build robots sympathetic and sensitive enough to serve as both therapists and playmates to kids with autism.
Bandit is programmed to perform simple facial expressions and movements, and researchers are working to give the robot the ability to make complex decisions in response to the child’s behavior.
This way, Bandit and robots like it could draw socially detached kids into simple games, like Simon Says or hide-and-seek and, ultimately, social activities with people. As USC computer scientist and project leader Maja Matari´c explains, “The robot is a catalyst for social interaction.”
In its current form, Bandit has only rudimentary social skills. For instance, it cannot yet understand speech; a researcher in the other room must command the robot to respond if the child speaks to it.
But early results are encouraging. Matari´c’s team has conducted experiments similar to the interaction between Bandit and Brian with 14 other autistic children, most between five and nine years old.
Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, the director of the Autism Research Center at the University of Cambridge in England, along with other autism experts, believes that robots, computers and electronic gadgets may be appealing because they are predictable, unlike people.

HELP WANTED
Automated therapists would not only increase the amount of available therapy but would also make it available wherever a family happened to live. They could customize them, adjusting the facial expressions and body language depending on the needs or comfort level of the child.
Or the robot could adjust itself, gradually becoming less predictable to slowly increase a child’s tolerance for the uncertainty of real social situations.
To that end, MIT electrical engineer Rosalind Picard has co-founded a company called Affectiva to develop sensor wristbands that record movement, temperature and perspiration. Incorporated into child-robot therapy sessions, the wristbands could pick up hidden physiological cues and inform robots if the child might be getting anxious.
Likewise, a ’bot could begin recording audio and video anytime the child’s vitals began to change, and flag that clip for analysis.
Later, a therapist or parent could study the videos to see if there was anything in particular that might have caused the child to grow uncomfortable.

UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL
Ten years might sound like a long time to perfect a robot that’s already interacting with kids. Indeed, Matari´c says they could probably make a consumer version of Bandit in far less time, but it would cost thousands of dollars, and that would subvert one of their central goals. Bandit needs to be affordable, costing no more than $1,000, Matari´c says, because families with autistic children already have enough expenses.
For now, the USC team is busy trying to broaden Bandit’s social skills and enhance its ability to read and react to a child’s mood. The group will begin a larger study, after which the researchers will have a much clearer picture of exactly how effective the robot can be in helping children with autism.
Matari´c is cautiously optimistic — as a mother herself, she doesn’t want to give false hope to parents of autistic children — but she does occasionally drop her reserve.

She recalls one child, a high-functioning nine-year-old autistic boy who struggled to communicate and interact with others. Bandit seemed to change that. Playing with the robot, the boy was more chatty and interactive with his mother. But as he tried to involve Bandit in a game of tag, he became frustrated. The robot didn’t understand him — the scientists hadn’t programmed in the ability to play this game. When the boy realized that Bandit wasn’t going to comply, he stunned the observers by saying, “Now I know how my teachers feel.”
Matari´c was astonished. This was totally unexpected behavior. Even the boy’s mother was surprised. Empathy is one of those skills autistic children typically lack; this boy wasn’t supposed to be aware of his teachers’ frustration.

“That’s a profound level of self-understanding and introspection, and if these kids have it, it’s not coming out in their interactions with other people and other kids,” Matari´c says later. “To have it come out with the robot is fantastic. It’s unlocking all this great potential that the kids have.”

source: popsci.com

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

DETECTING A CRIME BEFORE IT HAPPENS (Ifunra)

2010-06-20T12:09:00.000+01:00

A team of scientist lead by Bob Burns are researching whether video game boards, biometric sensors and other high-tech devices can be used to detect distinct nonverbal cues from people who harbor "mal-intent," or malicious intent.

"We're looking pre-event," said Burns, the No. 2 at the Homeland Security Advanced Research Project Agency, a counterpart of the fabled Pentagon agency that developed Stealth aircraft and the Internet.

"We're trying to detect a crime before it has occurred."

OK, roll the sci-fi thriller "Minority Report," in which Tom Cruise and other "pre-crime" cops use psychic visions to arrest murderers before they kill. Or maybe "The Men Who Stare at Goats," a George Clooney comedy inspired by real military experiments with supposedly psychic soldiers.

The work on mal-intent, which has cost $20 million so far, represents the future in screening: trying to find the bomber, not just the bomb.

"Sometimes people look at our projects and say, 'This is crazy,' " conceded Burns, a former submarine weapons officer.

If Burns' group is delving into the mind of terrorists, another Homeland Security agency is studying its face.

The human factors division has spent nearly $20 million to experiment with micro-expressions, or super-quick flickers of facial muscles, that may — or may not — indicate hostile intent.

Researchers are studying 275 videos of test interviews — frame by painstaking frame, 30 frames a second, each video up to 10 minutes long — so analysts can catalog "micro-facial emotional leakages."

"We are breaking new ground here," said Larry Willis, the project director.

The need for improvement is clear. Security teams trained to spot suspicious behavior have pulled 152,000 people out of airport lines in recent years, according to a report this month from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

That led to about 1,100 arrests, mostly for immigration violations and outstanding warrants. No one was charged with terrorism.

But screeners failed to spot 16 travelers who later were linked to failed terrorist plots in New York and Virginia, jihadist training in Pakistan and lethal attacks in Somalia, Afghanistan and India.

The report didn't include the Nigerian accused of trying to light a bomb in his underwear on a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day, or the Pakistani American who was pulled off a plane in New York on charges of trying to explode a car bomb in Times Square.

According to the report, the Transportation Security Administration failed to validate the underlying science before deploying 3,000 behavior detection officers to 161 commercial airports, about a third of the nation's total.

"A scientific consensus does not exist on whether behavior detection principles can be reliably used for counter-terrorism purposes," the report said.

Paul Ekman, the nation's foremost researcher into nonverbal cues that indicate deceit, disputes that claim and argues that more human observers with better training are needed. He doubts that high-tech tools can do the job any better.

"I'm ambivalent [about mal-intent] because it's a very high-risk endeavor," said Ekman, a professor emeritus at UC San Francisco. "The odds are against it actually working in the field. But if you're going to try it, they're doing the best job that can be done."

Ekman dismissed Willis' work, however. "The research already shows that not every person intending harm shows micro-expression," he said. "So it's a waste of time."

Other senior researchers and academics say both research teams appear to be on the right track.

"I was very skeptical at first," said Gary Berntson, a professor of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics at Ohio State University. "But it's not voodoo science. It's cutting-edge."

Mark Frank, a psychologist who studies nonverbal behavior at the State University of New York at Buffalo, called the work worthwhile.

"If the science helps us make better guesses, I think that is very productive," Frank said. "Or at least it's the right approach."

David Matsumoto, director of the Culture and Emotion Research Laboratory at San Francisco State University, cautioned that people "want a silver bullet, a 100% foolproof system."

"That's never going to happen," he said. "But can they deploy something that's better than we have now? I think both programs are well on their way to doing that."

The mal-intent project began in 2007 and is based on the unproven premise that technology can identify and interpret physiological, behavioral and paralinguistic cues from someone with mayhem in mind.

Rather than using a Ouija board, researchers have linked high-resolution cameras, low-level lasers and other devices to measure fidgeting, pupil dilation, skin temperature, heart rate and other supposed clues.

"Let's be clear," said Dan Martin, the project's director of research. "There is no terrorist cue, no Pinocchio growing of the nose to indicate a plotting terrorist."

At least in theory, the sensors would record key data as each traveler moved down a security line. A computer algorithm then would analyze any shifts triggered by a guard's questions and raise an alert if necessary.

The network is supposed to disregard travelers stressed out from flight delays, screaming infants, indigestion or other hassles.

"Whether or not your grandmother is afraid of flying doesn't matter," Martin said. "The question is how your grandmother responds to specific stimuli, and that indicates whether she should be pulled out for secondary screening."

John Verrico, a Homeland Security spokesman, said operators also will watch for people who show no response "because you have to take into account there are people who train themselves not to reveal themselves."

Age affects responses more than gender, race or ethnicity, the research shows. Experiments have included only Americans so far, so the system's utility with visitors from other countries and cultures is unclear.

Burns will unveil the project Friday in Boston at a convention of the Assn. for Psychological Science, the nation's premier group of psychological researchers.

Privacy advocates, civil libertarians and some social scientists are incredulous.

"This is like eugenics 100 years ago when scientists said you could tell criminals by the shape of their eyes or the slope of their head," said Lillie Coney, associate director of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It was bogus science then and it's bogus science now."

Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the work "absurd on its face."

Bella DePaulo, visiting professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara, said she doubted researchers could ever simulate what a terrorist thinks or feels.

"Lots of people, myself included, have studied how you tell when people are lying or telling the truth," she said. "But they're telling little lies. They're not trying to blow up a bomb or fly a plane into a building. How do you test for that?"

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

Technology that will make election voting more efficient

2010-06-20T11:50:00.000+01:00

Time-consuming manual vote-counts and ballot boxes could soon be consigned to the history books, thanks to innovative new secure voting technology.

The system is being developed by computer scientists at the Universities of Surrey and Birmingham, with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and in collaboration with the University of Luxembourg.

Combining speed with total vote-counting accuracy, the system is unique because it will integrate state-of-the-art optical scanning, data processing and encryption with the tried-and-tested process of manually writing on a ballot paper.

No other voting system either in use or currently under development uses such a combination, which will enable the new system to avoid the major drawbacks associated with both purely manual and purely electronic voting methods.

As well as eliminating the need for laborious manual counts and recounts, which are complex and expensive to conduct, it will remove the possibility of ballot papers being miscounted, mislaid or marked (and thus invalidated) accidentally or deliberately during a manual vote-count.

Similarly, although electronic voting could offer an alternative to manual voting and vote-counting, and indeed has been tested in many countries, there are serious concerns over its reliability. Some voters have even claimed that the vote shown to have been registered on the voting screen did not tally with the button they pressed.*

The Surrey/Birmingham team’s solution to these problems will retain the use of a ballot paper that looks almost identical to those used today, with the list of candidates on the left and the voting boxes on the right. There will, however, be two key differences.

First, the order of the candidates’ names will be randomised, and will not be the same on every ballot paper as in current elections.

Second, a perforated line will run down the middle of the ballot paper, with the candidates’ names on the left and the voting boxes on the right hand side. Each person, after casting their vote, will use this perforation to tear the ballot paper in half. They will then use a shredder provided at the polling station to destroy the left-hand half containing the list of candidates.

The voter will then feed the right-hand half into an optical scanner which will immediately feed all the information to a central database which will keep a count of all votes cast.

Bespoke cryptographic software being developed by the project team will ensure all data remains completely anonymous and safely encrypted.

Once the polls have closed several computers will work together to identify candidate placings.

The new system will allow also the voter to keep the right-hand half of their ballot paper as evidence of where they marked their paper. They will then be able to check that their vote has not been tampered with by logging on to a bespoke website, entering a serial number unique to them, and viewing the scan of their ballot paper. They can therefore verify their vote without anyone else knowing how they have voted.

“Our system will combine the best of both worlds – providing secure electronic vote-counting that cuts the cost and complexity of running elections but doesn’t require big changes to the actual voting process,” says Dr James Heather of the University of Surrey. “This is vital as some people find touch-screen or push-button technology intimidating, and might even be deterred from voting as a result.”

Not only could the new system prove enormously valuable in elections in the UK and elsewhere in the developed world, preventing controversies and multiple recounts such as those in the 2000 US Presidential Election. It could also play a key role in elections in developing countries, helping to prevent election fraud and ballot-rigging.

“Overall, the new system aims to deliver a completely trustworthy, ‘right first time’ voting mechanism that voters are comfortable using and that delivers rapid results which everyone can have complete confidence in,” adds Professor Mark Ryan of the University of Birmingham. “Our objective is to develop the system to the point where it could be trialled in a local or mayoral election, for example, within about four years.”
Notes for Editors

The original concept for the new voting system was devised by Professor Peter Ryan, formerly of Newcastle University and currently of the University of Luxembourg.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

Visual system interprets sign languages

2010-06-18T21:08:00.000+01:00

The Computer Vision Centre has developed a visual system which interprets sign languages. The system will be incorporated into information points. It can clearly differentiate over twenty different signs from the Spanish sign language.

Spanish sign language is used by over 100,000 people with hearing impairments and is made up of hundreds of signs. Researchers of Universitat de Barcelona attached to CVC-UAB Sergio Escalera, Petia Radeva and Jordi Vitrià selected over twenty of these signs to develop a new visual interpretation system which allows deaf people to carry out consultations in the language they commonly use.

Signs can vary slightly depending on each user. Project researchers took this into account during the trials carried out with different people to help the system "become familiarised" with this variability. The signs recognised by the system were programmed to allow deaf people to maintain a basic conversation, including asking for help or directions. "For them it is a non artificial way of communicating and at the same time they can engage with people who do not speak sign language since the system translates the symbols into words in real time," Sergio Escalera said.

The hardware includes a video camera which records image sequences when it detects the presence of a user wanting to make a consultation. A computer vision and automatic learning system detects face, hand and arm movements, as well as any screen scrolling, and incorporates these into a classification system which identifies each movement with the word associated with the sign.

One of the aspects worth highlighting is the ability to adapt the system to any other sign language, since the methodology used is general. The system would only need to be reprogrammed with the signs used in that specific language. The amount of signs the system can recognise is also scalable, although researchers do admit that new data will increase the difficulty in differentiating them.

Applications such this require extreme precision in the identification phase and are very difficult to configure given that the surroundings in which they will be used include changes in light and shadow, different physiognomies and speeds at which the signs are formed.

Other similar projects have been developed in the past. However, most of them failed or were not reliable enough because of the high complexity of variabilities in uncontrolled surroundings. For this project to succeed it was necessary to establish a fixed point in which individuals formed the signs and avoid having different focus points when recording.

The system was recently presented as a prototype in the final phase of a Spanish project and researchers are already working on new project phases, such as using two cameras with the aim of recognising even more complex signs and complementing information with facial characteristics.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

Innovative research reawakens human memories through intelligent textiles

2010-06-18T21:04:00.000+01:00

The research teams have developed a highly sophisticated concept of interactive clothing whereby the body’s physical and emotional state triggers the transfer of personalized memory back to the wearer.

The project, titled Wearable Absence, uses a system of wearable devices never before seen in the expanding field of intelligent textiles. Combining uniquely engineered adaptors and soft cabling systems with fashionable clothing designs, the prototype garments incorporate wireless technologies and bio-sensing devices to activate a rich database of image and sound, creating a narrative, or string of messages, from an ‘absent’ person.

Wireless sensors and bio-sensing devices are embedded into garments that record the wearer’s temperature, heart rate, galvanic skin response (moisture) and rate of respiration. The data is sent via the Internet to a sophisticated database which in turns sends back messages to the clothing. The messages, which evoke memories of an absent person, may take the form of voice recordings or songs broadcast from speakers sewn into a hood or shoulder seams, or scrolling text on a LED array woven into fabric, or video and photographic imagery.

To give an example, a person might be experiencing a certain emotional state such as stress, grief or despair. The bio-sensors would prompt the person’s clothing to receive a range of messages such as photos, texts and sound recordings to provide comfort.

This unique combination of textile arts, emotional mapping and responsive technologies can enhance human experience, with enormous potential for the fields of health care and well-being.

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

* Psychology & Psychiatry * Research * Medications * Cancer * Genetics * HIV & AIDS * Diseases * Other * Health * Neuroscience New device enables early detection of cancerous skin tumors

2010-06-16T21:05:00.000+01:00

During initial testing, the OSPI instrument (Optical Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging) revealed new textures of lesions that have never been seen before - including melanoma in patients who were diagnosed with various skin lesions and were awaiting surgery for their removal. The instrument diagnosed 73 types of lesions, some of them cancerous.

Dermatologists and plastic surgeons typically diagnose skin tumors by their appearance with the naked eye and only rarely using a dermatoscope - a magnifying tool that allows tumors to be examined in detail.

The OSPI biosensor uses safe, infrared wavelengths and LC devices to measure tumor characteristics, including contours and spread.

"This is an exciting preliminary development since the initial testing shows that we can now identify microscopic tumors in the biological layers of the skin," explains Prof. Abdulahim, who is head of the BGU Electro-Optical Unit in the Faculty of Engineering Sciences and is leading the research group. As we continue to develop the OSPI, we also see an opportunity to use this technology for detecting other types of cancerous growths."

Cancerous mole detection is usually done by looking for one or more telltale visible symptoms: if the mole is asymmetrical; if its outline is blurred or irregular; if it has multiple colors; if it is larger than five millimeters in diameter; and if stands up above the skin.

According to the American Cancer Society, more than one million cases of skin cancer are diagnosed yearly in the United States. Melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer, will account for about 8,650 of the 11,590 deaths due to skin cancer in 2009.

Israel has also seen a rise in skin cancer cases in recent years.

According to the Health Ministry, one of every 39 men and one of every 50 women in Israel will be affected with melanoma in their lifetime

A Whole New Technology for A Whole New World

Students develop device to help blind manuever

2010-06-16T20:53:00.000+01:00

Students at Gurion University of the Negev have developed an innovative optical radar system that helps blind people maneuver around obstacles.

The radar system incorporates a computer, two video cameras and a scanning light source to warn the blind of obstacles with audible alerts. The system detects obstacles -- even those overhead -- by scanning the depth of its surroundings, taken from two different angles - similar to that of the human eye.
Developed by two engineering students, Elad Kuperberg and Einav Tasa, under the supervision of Professor Shlomi Arnon, the system was shown for the first time last week as part of the annual conference of projects in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The number of vision-impaired people worldwide is estimated to be between 40 and 45 million. Many types of assistance "devices", such as seeing-eye dogs and sticks equipped with sensors are available to help the blind avoid obstacles so they can move around "freely."
"Each system has its disadvantages," according to Prof. Arnon. A seeing-eye dog needs extensive and expensive training, and can only work for an average of seven years. There is also a severe shortage of guide dogs. Additionally, the sensor sticks cannot identify barriers above floor level and their use requires many skills. All of these systems restrict the use of one hand.
"This optical radar device is not only user friendly, but unlike the other solutions it allows the blind to have the use of both of their hands."
Approximately 90 projects developed by 155 BGU engineering students were presented at the conference; some were theoretical and others practical, in the fields of electrical circuits and supply, microelectronics, control, communications, signal processing, computers, electro-magnetics and electro-optics.
"Several of the projects have been carried out in cooperation with private industry, giving students the possibility of easily finding work after graduation," said Prof. Dan Sadot, head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. BGU produces 45 percent of Israel's engineers, and its annual project day is well attended by industry recruiters and venture capitalists.

Provided by American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
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Artificial Intelligence Laboratory soon to arrive in Ghana

Part-Human, Part-Machine Transistor Devised

Robots now therapists and playmates to autistic children

DETECTING A CRIME BEFORE IT HAPPENS (Ifunra)

Technology that will make election voting more efficient

Visual system interprets sign languages

Innovative research reawakens human memories through intelligent textiles

* Psychology & Psychiatry * Research * Medications * Cancer * Genetics * HIV & AIDS * Diseases * Other * Health * Neuroscience New device enables early detection of cancerous skin tumors

Students develop device to help blind manuever