Imagine a battery as flexible as paper—because it is made of paper. In August, a team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York unveiled a small sheet of black paper that can store and discharge electricity. In addition to being light and flexible, it can extract electrical energy from human blood and sweat, making the device potentially usable as a power source for tiny medical devices inside the human body.
The RPI team made the paper battery by first growing an array of carbon nanotubes on a silicon surface and then covering the array in dissolved cellulose (the main constituent of paper). The cellulose forms a flexible sheet studded with embedded nanotubes that can be peeled away from the substrate. The nanotubes make the sheet as black as coal, but only a small quantity is needed. “Ninety percent of the device is still normal paper you buy at the store,” says Pulickel Ajayan, one of the lead researchers and a materials scientist. “The best part about this is its versatility,” he continues. “It’s paper. We can wrap a device in paper that also works as the device’s power source. Or we can slide it into a tiny crevice—anywhere, really. It is vastly superior to a conventional battery. If you cut a normal battery in half, you break it; it’s useless. If you cut a paper battery in half, you just make two batteries that have half the power of the original.” Want more power? Stack sheets of the paper together. “It’s not just a paper battery; it’s the ultimate battery,” Ajayan says.
Kamis, 13 Maret 2008
Battery made of Paper
Science Technology Fiction- 20 things you don't know
1 Arguably the inspiration for much science fiction traces back to classical mythology. Think of it—Earthlings abducted by beings from the sky, humans morphing into strange creatures, and events that defy the laws of nature.
2 Birth of the (un)cool: In 1926 writer Hugo Gernsback founded Amazing Stories, the first true science-fiction magazine.
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3 Gernsback loved greenbacks. He tried to trademark the term science fiction, and he paid writers so little that H. P. Lovecraft later nicknamed him “Hugo the Rat.”
4 Rat’s revenge: The most famous sci-fi writing award is called the Hugo.
5 Writers for the early pulp magazines would often write under multiple pseudonyms so they could have more than one article per issue. Ray Bradbury—taking this practice to another level—used six different pen names.
6 Serious science-fiction heads say sci-fi carries schlocky, B-movie connotations. Many prefer the abbreviation SF.
7 Prominent physicists and space travel pioneers have (often secretly) contributed to SF lit. German rocket genius Wernher Von Braun wrote space fiction and was an adviser to sci-fi movies such as Conquest of Space.
8 During the 1960s, James Tiptree Jr. penned sci-fi classics like Houston, Houston, Do You Read? but was so secretive that people suspected he was a covert government operative.
9 At age 61, Tiptree was outed—not as a spy but as outspoken feminist Alice B. Sheldon.
10 One of the more famous works in the growing field of gay sci-fi is Judith Katz’s Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound, about a woman who bolts from her overbearing Jewish family to the mystical all-lesbian city of New Chelm.
11 Irony alert: Ray Bradbury, one of the world’s most influential SF writers, studiously avoids computers and ATMs and claims he has never driven a car.
12 Not to be outdone, sci-fi legend Isaac Asimov wrote about interstellar spaceflight but refused to board an airplane.
13 Neal Stephenson’s acclaimed 1992 novel Snow Crash has inspired two major online creations: Second Life (derived from Stephenson’s virtual Metaverse) and Google Earth (from the panoptic Earth application).
14 Meanwhile, in the humble brick-and-mortar world: Sci-fi author Gene Wolfe helped develop the machine that cooks Pringles, while Robert Heinlein conceived the first modern water bed.
15 Sexual liberation plays a big role in Heinlein’s books, which really puts the water-bed thing into perspective.
16 In Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001, the HAL 9000 computer discusses its feelings and Pan Am flies passenger shuttles to the moon. After the book’s release, Pan Am announced a real-life list of passengers waiting to go to the moon; Walter Cronkite, Ronald Reagan, and 80,000 others signed up.
17 Forty years later, computers can’t discuss printer drivers, let alone emotions, and Pan Am has been dead for 17 years.
18 When sci-fi visionary Philip K. Dick inadvertently re-created a Bible scene in his book Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, he became convinced that the spirit of the prophet Elijah had overcome him, kicking off a long bout of schizophrenia.
19 After Dick’s death, fans built an android likeness of him that mimicked his mannerisms and quoted his writings.
20 In 2005, the Dickbot was misplaced by a baggage handler. It remains at large.
The Latest Weapon Against Global Warming: Your Fridge
Is your refrigerator the solution for greener energy? Not entirely, but giving your fridge the ability to think for itself is an excellent first step when it comes to preventing future power blackouts, according to results from a pilot project led by the Department of Energy and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
In the project, called GridWise, everyday appliances like washers and dryers were equipped with small electronic circuit boards and installed in more than 200 homes in Washington and Oregon. These circuit boards are programmed to detect changes in the alternating-current frequency coming into the appliance. When the device senses a lower frequency, signaling less available electricity on the grid, it reacts by turning off certain functions of the appliance: a dryer might keep tumbling clothes but switch the heating coil off; a fridge light could stay on while the cooling motor took a break. These responses happen in less than half a second, last for only around 10 seconds, and are nearly undetectable by homeowners.
The autonomous appliance reaction lowers the demand on the grid system for about 5 minutes, allowing secondary response systems to kick in. “Think of your fridge or stove as an initial shock absorber,” says Rob Pratt program manager for the GridWise program.
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While powering down the appliances in one home would not do much, if every home in New York or Los Angeles were equipped with the GridWise system, it could be enough prevent serious blackouts like the one in 2003 that paralyzed the Northeast, says Pratt. The key is that the circuit board can react to conditions on the grid instantaneously—something humans cannot do.
Along with clever appliances, some homes in the GridWise project received computer systems to monitor the real-time price of power and limit consumption when the price spiked. Pratt describes the system as a mini energy marketplace in the home that works as a second buffer when the grid is overloaded. When demand for energy is high, he notes, so is the price. Homeowners can program their thermostats, for instance, to automatically take a break if the price of energy skyrockets. The real-time price of electricity is updated and processed in homes every five minutes.
In the case of an impending blackout, a dryer and refrigerator respond first, quickly shutting off and temporarily decreasing power consumption. Then the second-tier price-driven system kicks in. That allows time for power suppliers to react to the overload by turning on backup generators or redistributing power throughout the grid—the final step in the process.
Fewer blackouts and money savings aside, equipping homes with smart energy systems could allow electric companies to switch to using more energy from renewable sources like wind and solar. Today, wind and solar power are considered too unreliable to be used on a mass scale, unable to supply energy when the sun sets or the wind stops. In a price-responsive system, however, rainy days could mean slightly higher energy prices, which could cause homeowners to scale back on energy consumption, says Ron Ambrosio of IBM *Research, a branch of the company researching new energy strategies
There are no technical hurdles; Ambrosio says policy and market acceptance are the biggest roadblocks to adoption of smart appliances. His estimation for widespread use of this type of energy system: 10 to 15 years, if manufacturers, consumers, and governments get behind the idea.
*Correction February 20, 2008: this originally stated IBM Energy.
Using X-Rays To Do Cruelty-Free Dissection
For such a small, dainty fish, a sea horse eats like a high-powered Hoover, sucking up water through its snout, its head expanding in less than one-hundredth of a second to accommodate the influx. To probe this specialized feeding system, Dominique Adriaens, director of the Evolutionary Morphology of Vertebrates group at Ghent University in Belgium, turned to a technology that a growing number of researchers are taking advantage of—high-resolution X-ray computed tomography. This “virtual dissection” machine works like a hospital CAT scan, but instead of the equipment’s taking tens to thousands of X-rays from different vantage points as it rotates around a still patient, the X-ray beam is still and the specimen is rotated in front of it. Just like many CAT scans, the multiple two-dimensional images are assembled to create a three-dimensional image that can be rotated, sliced, and put back together—with up to 1,000 times the detail of a typical hospital CAT scan.
Virtual dissection has been used to find air bubbles trapped in concrete, to spot grains of gold locked in rock, to identify writing on crusty rolls of papyrus, and to dissect the Kennewick man. And the demand for this technology is on the rise. Scientists with objects too precious or difficult to cut apart are waiting weeks for time with the scanners at the handful of universities that have the million-dollar machines.
Emerging Technology
Some technological revolutions arrive as revelation. You hear a human voice wafting out from a rotating plastic disk or see a moving train projected onto a screen, and you sense instantly that the world has changed. For many of us, our first encounter with the World Wide Web a decade ago was one of those transformative experiences: You clicked on a word on the screen, and instantly you were transported to some other page that was served up from a computer located somewhere else, across the planet perhaps. After you followed that first hyperlink, you knew the universe of information would never be the same.
Other revolutions creep up with more subtlety, built of tweaks and minor advances, not radical breakthroughs. E-mail took decades to gestate, but now many of us can’t imagine life without it. There’s a comparable quiet revolution under way right now, one that is likely to fundamentally transform the way we use the Web in the coming years. The changes are technical and involve thousands of individual programmers, dozens of start-ups, and a few of the largest software companies in the world. The result is the equivalent of a massive software upgrade for the entire Web, what some commentators have taken to calling Web 2.0. Essentially, the Web is shifting from an international library of interlinked pages to an information ecosystem, where data circulate like nutrients in a rain forest.
Part of the beauty and power of the original Web lay in its simplicity: Web sites were made up of pages, each of which could contain text and images. Those pages were able to connect to other information on the Web through links. If you were maintaining a Web site about poodles and stumbled across a promising breeder’s home page, you could link to the information on that page by inserting a few simple lines of code. From that point on, your site was connected to that other page, and subsequent visitors to your site could follow that connection with a single mouse click. In some basic sense, those two pages of data were interacting with each other, but the exchange between them was rudimentary.
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Now consider how a group of poodle experts might use the Web 2.0. One of them subscribes to a virtual clipping service offered by Google News; she instructs the service to scan thousands of news outlets for any articles that mention the word poodle and to send her an e-mail alert when one of them comes down the wire. One morning, she finds a link to a review of a new book about miniature poodles in her in-box. She follows the link to the original article, and using a standard blogging tool like TypePad or Blogger, she posts a quick summary of the review and links to the Amazon page for the book from her blog.
Within a few hours of her publishing the note about the new book, a service called Technorati scans her Web site and notices that she has added a link to a book listed on Amazon. You can think of Technorati as the Google of the blog world, constantly analyzing the latest blog posts for interesting new developments. One of the features it offers is a frequently updated list of the most talked-about books in the blog world. If Technorati stumbles across another handful of links to that same poodle book within a few hours, the poodle book itself might show up on the hot books list.
After our poodle expert posts her blog entry, she takes another few seconds to categorize it, using an ingenious service called del.icio.us, which tags it with her content-specific title, like “miniature poodles,” or “dog breeding.” She does this for her own personal use—del.icio.us lets her see in a glance all the pages she has classified with a specific tag—but the service also has a broader social function; tags are visible to other users as well. Our poodle expert can also see all the pages that other users have associated with dog breeding. It’s a little like creating a manila folder for a particular topic, and every time you pick it up, you find new articles supplied by strangers all across the Web.
Del.icio.us’s creators call the program a social bookmarking service, and one of its key functions is to connect people as readily as it connects data. When our poodle lover checks in on the dog-breeding tag, she notices that another del.icio.us user has been adding interesting links to the category over the past few months. She drops him an e-mail and invites him to join a small community of poodle lovers using Yahoo’s My Web service. From that point on, anytime she discovers a new poodle-related page, he’ll immediately receive a notification about it, along with the rest of her poodle community, either via e-mail or instant message.
Now stop and think about how different this chain of events is from the traditional Web mode of following simple links between static pages. One small piece of new information—a review of a book about poodles—flows through an entire system of reuse and appropriation within hours. The initial information value of the review remains: It’s an assessment of a new book, no different from the reviews that appear in traditional publications. But as it ventures through the food chain of the new Web, it takes on new forms of value: One service uses it to help evaluate the books with the most buzz; another uses it to build a classification schema for the entire Web; another uses it as a way of forming new communities of like-minded people. Some of this information exchange happens on traditional Web pages, but it also leaks out into other applications: e-mail clients, instant-messenger programs.
The difference between this Web 2.0 model and the previous one is directly equivalent to the difference between a rain forest and a desert. One of the primary reasons we value tropical rain forests is because they waste so little of the energy supplied by the sun while running massive nutrient cycles. Most of the solar energy that saturates desert environments gets lost, assimilated by the few plants that can survive in such a hostile climate. Those plants pass on enough energy to sustain a limited number of insects, which in turn supply food for the occasional reptile or bird, all of which ultimately feed the bacteria. But most of the energy is lost.
A rain forest, on the other hand, is such an efficient system for using energy because there are so many organisms exploiting every tiny niche of the nutrient cycle. We value the diversity of the ecosystem not just as a quaint case of biological multiculturalism but because the system itself does a brilliant job of capturing the energy that flows through it. Efficiency is one of the reasons that clearing rain forests is shortsighted: The nutrient cycles in rain forest ecosystems are so tight that the soil is usually very poor for farming. All the available energy has been captured on the way down to the earth.
Think of information as the energy of the Web’s ecosystem. Those Web 1.0 pages with their crude hyperlinks are like the sun’s rays falling on a desert. A few stragglers are lucky enough to stumble across them, and thus some of that information might get reused if one then decides to e-mail the URL to a friend or to quote from it on another page. But most of the information goes to waste. In the Web 2.0 model, we have thousands of services scrutinizing each new piece of information online, grabbing interesting bits, remixing them in new ways, and passing them along to other services. Each new addition to the mix can be exploited in countless new ways, both by human bloggers and by the software programs that track changes in the overall state of the Web. Information in this new model is analyzed, repackaged, digested, and passed on down to the next link in the chain. It flows.
This is good news whether we love poodles or not, but it’s also good news economically because the diversity of the ecosystem makes it a fertile environment for small players. You don’t have to dominate the food chain to get by in the Web world; you can find a productive niche and thrive, partially because you’re building on the information value created by the rest of the Web. Technorati and del.icio.us both began as small projects created by single programmers. They don’t need huge staffs because they’re capturing the information supplied by the countless number of surfers who use their services, and they’re building on other tools created by other people, whether they work in a home office or in a vast international corporation like Google. All of which makes this the most exciting time to be on the Web since the glory days in the mid-1990s. And the revelations aren’t about to stop. As we figure out new ways to expand the complex information food chains of Web 2.0, we will see even more innovation in the coming years. Welcome to the jungle.
iPhones For Freshmen At ACU
iPhones or iPod Touches will be issued to incoming freshmen at Abilene Christian University (ACU) this fall. The intent is to provide what amounts to a "campus lifeline" that lets students check on every aspect of their campus life with a single, pocket-sized device.
According to ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts, more than 15 web applications have already been developed. See this ACU iPhone application video for more details.
(iPhones at ACU video)
The video is really an interesting piece of near-future science fiction itsef; it shows how a fully deployed mobile learning environment might look like. However, everything in the video is easily doable with an iPhone or iPod Touch:
Receive podcasts with class lectures
Find classes on map application
Visual walk-through of campus
Change class section or drop classes
Text messages from profs re classes
More pilot projects like this are being done with Apple's participation; more projects like this one are expected at universities like Harvard, MIT and Stanford.
Frankly, they'd better hurry up. The enormous number of unlocked iPhones has created a robust application development group; they are going to have all the necessary apps written by fall, at the rate they're going.
The iPhone used in this way reminds me very strongly of multi-function pocket-sized devices like the pocket computer from Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye or the joymaker from Pohl's The Age of the Pussyfoot.
See part two of the ACU iPhones on campus video. Via MacRumors. Scroll down for more stories in the same category.
Mars Phoenix Lander On Wide World Of Mars
When I was a kid growing up in the 1960's, one of the most amazing things to me was the live coverage from multiple cameras of world events, like the Winter Olympics. When they talked about "spanning the globe" to bring you a "Wide World of Sports," they weren't kidding around.
NASA's Phoenix Lander is going to get a similar treatment from the many correspondents on Mars. Correspondents on Mars? That's right - the three orbiters, NASA's Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Europe's Mars Express are all getting themselves into position.
Even better, NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been helping out by simulating transmissions from Phoenix to rehearse the orbiters' operations.
Phoenix will enter the Martian atmosphere at a speed of 20,519 kph.
On that day, Odyssey will turn its robotic eyes from the heavens to point an ultrahigh- frequency antenna towards the descending Phoenix. A high-gain antenna will stream information back to Earth as Odyssey watches Phoenix slow itself through heat-shield friction, a parachute, and then firing descent rockets. That allows the lander to hit the Martian surface on three legs at just 5.4 miles per hour (2.4 m/s).
MRO and Mars Express will start recording Phoenix transmissions as backup data "about 10 minutes before landing," according to Ben Jai, mission manager at JPL for MRO.
Sooner or later, the world's planetary explorers will realize that we need a rock-solid, high-capacity data network for the solar system. George O. Smith, an engineer by trade and sf writer by avocation, wrote about this idea in an excellent set of stories in the early 1940's.
The Venus Equilateral Relay Station was a modern miracle of engineering if you liked to believe the books. Actually, Venus Equilateral was an asteroid that had been shoved into its orbit about the Sun, forming a practical demonstration of he equilateral triangle solution of the Three Moving Bodies. It was a long cylinder, about three miles in length by about a mile in diameter...
This was the center of Interplanetary Communications. This was the main office. It was the heart of the Solar System's communication line, and as such, it was well manned. Orders for everything emanated from Venus Equilateral.
(Read more about the Venus Equilateral Relay Station)
Via Mars Orbiters Prepare to Watch Phoenix Landing. Scroll down for more stories in the same category.
Nokia Morph Cell Phone Concept
The Nokia Morph cell phone concept is currently featured in The Museum of Modern Art “Design and The Elastic Mind” exhibition.
(Nokia Morph cell phone concept)
Nokia is thinking at least a decade ahead, as far as consumer offerings are concerned - according to Nokia. According to the marketplace, that might be too long, because some of these features are already available.
For example, in terms of "morphing," Nokia engineers imagine that the cell phone could start out with a normal phone factor, but then unfold into a larger screen.
Check out these pictures of the Readius cell phone with a five-inch foldable display. They don't call it "morphing," but it's pretty cool.
Any way, as far as cell phone "concepts" are concerned, I've always liked some of the early sf descriptions, like the pocket phone from Heinlein's 1953 novella Assignment in Eternity, and the polycarbon phone screen from Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero.
Via Nokia Morph concept - this futuristic gadget is all you’ll need; thanks to Moira for the tip. Scroll down for more stories in the same category.
ReadyBot Robot Ready To Clean Your Kitchen
Trik untuk meningkatkan kecepatan internet
March 17th, 2007
Secara default Windows (Win XP Pro dan 2000) sebenarnya juga mengurangi bandtwith kita sebesar 20%, 20% ini digunakan window untuk mendownload update untuk window. Berikut langkah untuk menghilangkan pengurangan bandwidth tersebut :
Klik Start->Run->ketik"gpedit.msc" (tanpa tanda ") Ini akan memunculkan tampilan "Windows Policy". Kemudian masuk ke : Local Computer Policy–>Computer Configuration–>Administrative Templates–>Network–>QOS Packet Scheduler kemudian di tampilan kanan pilih "Limit Reservable Bandwidth", disitu tertulis "Not Configured" -> doubel klik (ada tampilan baru, "Limit reservable bandwidth Properties").
Jika ingin tahu keterangannya buka di bagian "Explain". Di situ tertulis keterangan windows secara default menggunakan 20% bandwidth kita. Kembali ke "Setting" dan pilih "Enabled" lalu ganti 20 % menjadi 0%.
Matsushita Mechanorg-New Porter Robot
Matsushita is demonstrating it's porter robot; at 130 cm in height and 60 cm wide, it is able to carry about 20 kilograms of cargo.
The cool thing about this robot is that the user carries a small transponder that tells the porter robot where its user is at all times. The porter robot lets you place your baggage on its shelf, and then will follow you where ever you go.
Here's the research abstract:
;We are considering safe and reliable life-assist robots to coexist with human. First of all, we decided to develop a tool type robot that carry out a single task, and call it "Mechanorg" that is a coined word of "Mechanical" and "Organism". And we developed "Porter Robot" as one of the Mechanorg concept robots. It can carry baggage with following its user and avoiding obstacles safely at the airports...
The robot detects user's position by the supersonic wave, and knows the shape and distance of obstacle by infrared ray sensor and supersonic wave sensor. The robot calculates the best motion in environment, so the robot can follow safely without losing sight of user.
The porter robot has an omnidirectional camera and other sensors for measuring range, determining the best way around obstacles, and collision avoidance. The nickel hydride batter provides about an hour of use.
Regular technovelgy readers know of my fascination with the autoporter robot from John Brunner's wonderful 1975 novel Shockwave Rider. It won't be long before you'll be able to rent something like this at any airport.
Matsushita has some competition; check these bots out:
- TMSUK Robot Carries Your Bags
- Porter 'Robots' For Baggage, If Not People
- Russian Robot Suitcase
- RoboPorter Carries Your Baggage, Guides You
Via RobotWatch; the site also has some videos you can download showing the porter robot in action. Scroll down for more stories in the same category.
China May Issue A Billion RFID-Based ID Cards
At RFID World last month, a speaker representing China's radio frequency identification (RFID) initiative said he expected China to issue over a billion identification cards - one to every citizen. An example ID badge from Intermec Technologies, currently used for expedited border crossings between the U.S. and Candada, is shown below.
Rocky Shih, representing the government of China, also stated that three million handheld RFID scanners would be issued, one for every police officer in China. When Mr. Shih was asked if perhaps this might bring up concerns about RFID and privacy, he said that the government does not need to respond to such concerns.
An example of a concern that might be raised about such devices: suppose all citizens were required to produce an identification card on demand (as is the case when you are driving a car, for instance, in the U.S.). If you carried an active RFID tag with you at all times, you could be monitored by any organization or business with an appropriate detector. Every time you entered a mall, or passed through a turnstile, or drove past a toll booth your presence could be monitored and recorded.
Apparently, Walmart's plan to have an RFID device in most consumer items within the next year or two was of less concern to the Chinese government, despite the fact that many of the goods sold by Walmart are produced there.
SF writer John Brunner explored the issues surrounding the privacy of the individual in an age of universal computer access and cradle-to-grave monitoring in his classic 1975 novel Shockwave Rider. Brunner coined the term computer tapeworm in this novel.
See RFID in Colorado and China; thanks to Future Now for the story. Scroll down for more stories in the same category.
VeriChip RFID Tag Patient Implant Badges Now FDA Approved
The Food and Drug Administration has given final approval to Applied Digital Solutions to sell their VeriChip RFID tags for implantation into patients in hospitals. The intent is to provide immediate positive identification of patients both in hospitals and in emergencies. Doctors, emergency-room personnel and ambulance crews could get immediate identification without resorting to looking for wallets and purses for ID. If, for example, you had a pre-existing medical condition or allergy, this could be taken into account immediately.
The Federal Drug Administration has approved a final review process to determine whether hospitals can use VeriChip RFID tags to identify patients. The 11-millimeter RFID tags will be implanted in the fatty tissue of the upper arm. The estimated life of the tags is twenty years.
(From VeriChip)
The VeriChip is a radio frequency identification (RFID) device that is injected just below the skin; the subdermal RFID tag location is invisible to the naked eye. A unique verification number is transmitted to a suitable reader when the person is within range.
The FDA ruling is not to allow implantation in humans; this has already been established. The purpose of the review is to examine privacy issues.
Kevin Wiley, CEO of VeriChip Corporation, stated:
"We continue to market and sell VeriChip internationally primarily for the security application. As evidenced by the recent chipping of Mexico's Attorney General and his staff, the VeriChip technology provides first-of-a-kind tamper-proof and secure applications. These applications can also occur with medical records and medical device information. We look forward to the de novo process and the ultimate conclusion of the regulatory process."
(Medical Use of VeriChip)
SF fans may recall that in the world of The Computer Connection, written by Alfred Bester in 1974, most people have chips called skull bugs for identification and monitoring implanted at birth.
About one thousand of VeriChip RFID tags have been inserted into humans so far; most of the sales have been outside the U.S. See Baja Beach Club Implants VeriChip In Customers for more about implantation in humans; read more about this story at RFID tags may be implanted in patient's arms. (This story was originally posted on Aug-15-2004). Scroll down for more stories in the same category.
Electronic Number Plate RFID Keeps Tabs On Vehicles
A South African RFID design firm now offers Electronic Number Plate RFID technology. iPico Holdings says this technology is now being used in a pilot project in South America. (See What is RFID? to find out more about radio-frequency identification.)
(From RFID Journal)
The technology is being considered for electronic vehicle licensing, traffic and speed control, cross-border traffic control and other applications. The tags can be read at ordinary vehicle speeds.
This is a passive RFID tag, meaning that it does not need to carry batteries (and therefore will likely last for the life of the vehicle). The tag is attached to the windshield during the manufacturing process; any attempt to alter or remove the tag will damage it.
Science fiction fans may recall the Camden speedster, a car that not only went underwater, but would also alter it's license tag while in motion, in order to fool traffic control devices. Not a bad prediction for 1958, when Methuselah's Children was published (read the quote for traffic control camera). See the original story at Passive Tags Track Cars.
For another look at how people and objects can be tracked with RFID, see China May Issue A Billion RFID-Based ID Cards. Scroll down for more stories in the same category.
Tasers: the next generation
Andrew Chung
Staff Reporter
The Taser is going wireless.
Until now, the electric-shock gun consisted of two barbed darts attached to wires that shoot out and strike the victim, immobilizing the person with 50,000 volts of electricity, causing severe pain and intense muscle contraction.
But the wires could only extend a few metres. With the new "extended range electronic projectile," or XREP, the Taser has been turned into a kind of self-contained shotgun shell and can be fired, wire-free, from a standard shotgun, which police typically have in their arsenal already.
The first electrode hooks on to the target, the second electrode falls and makes contact elsewhere on the body, completing the circuit and activating the shock. It can blast someone as far as 30 metres away, and, unlike the current stun guns, whose shock lasts five seconds, the XREP lasts 20 seconds, enough time to "take the offender into custody without risking injury to officers."
Taser International spokesperson Steve Tuttle says the XREP would be perfect in a standoff. "Here's someone you just don't want to get anywhere near," he says.
The XREP is one of two major new applications the Scottsdale, Ariz., company is preparing to field test, a prospect that makes Taser's critics anxious. They say more study is needed of the old products, let alone the new.
Tasers are sparking all sorts of questions and concerns these days.
Like death after Tasing. Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski died after the RCMP Tased him when he'd become agitated after spending 10 hours inside the secure area at the Vancouver airport.
Or questionable Tasing. University of Florida student Andrew Meyer was Tased even though a handful of officers had already piled on top of him after he refused to stop asking former presidential candidate John Kerry questions at the microphone. (He's the one who uttered that now infamous plea that has spawned bumper stickers and T-shirts: "Don't Tase me, bro!")
Tasers are now used by more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies in 44 countries. There are more than 428,000 Tasers in the field, not to mention the tens of thousands of Tasers that have been sold to civilians.
And the innovations keep coming.
Besides the XREP, the company has developed a device meant to keep someone from approaching a certain area – a tactic called "area denial." "What if you could drop everyone in a given area to the ground with the simple push of a button?" asks a dramatic promotional video for the "Shockwave."
Taser has turned its weapon into a connected series of six darts arranged in an arc. The company says the device can be extended in a chain or stacked "like Lego," depending on the needs of the user.
So an army platoon, for instance, could use it to prevent unwanted people from approaching their camp, and not have to risk getting close to their targets.
Amnesty International, which has raised concerns for years, says the Shockwave poses serious risks of inappropriate use. When you target an entire area, or a crowd, you can't distinguish between the individuals you're trying to restrain, says Hilary Homes, a security and human rights campaigner for Amnesty International Canada.
"It targets everybody to the same intensity or effect," Homes says. "With materials like that, you worry about ...arbitrary and indiscriminate use."
Tuttle says the technology will be used for military applications, "not for a riot in Toronto."
Amnesty says that between 2001 and Sept. 30, 2007, there were more than 290 deaths of individuals struck by police Tasers in North America, including 16 in Canada. It reports that only 25 of those electroshocked were armed, and none with firearms. It's calling for a moratorium on their use by police until a full, independent inquiry is held.
Homes says the new shotgun-style Taser doesn't pose any risks that aren't already there with the older weapon, except that "this allows more things to be done from a greater distance."
Mostly, it's the concern over the expansion of this technology even as there is heated debate over the devices' safety. "We'd prefer there weren't new variations until a study of the central technology was done," she says.
The safety concerns revolve around the growing number of deaths following Tasering and the increasing use of the term "excited delirium" by the company and other experts to explain the deaths, while denying the weapon any culpability.
Excited delirium is a catchall phrase to describe symptoms of extreme stress, such as disorientation, profuse sweating, paranoia, and superhuman strength.
When someone is in such a condition – heart racing, blood pressure bursting, fight-or-flight hormones like adrenalin coursing through their body – wouldn't a giant electrical jolt just make things worse?
"Show me the medical and mechanical reasons why it would make it worse when doctors are telling us, when someone is in that situation you should treat it as a medical emergency and get that person to a medical trauma centre in the quickest way," Tuttle says. "With no Taser, he's impervious to pain, agitated, slippery with sweat – you won't get control in five seconds. Maybe you'll use batons, which won't work, pepper spray, which is much more stressful, a bean-bag round, maybe deadly force because the situation spins out of control?"
Dr. David Evans, the Toronto regional supervising coroner for investigations, says that while there's no proof to say the shock could make things worse, "I agree potentially it could." But, he adds, "why aren't they dropping dead immediately?"
Evans says that it doesn't seem to make sense that the Taser is at fault in the deaths, because the deaths have not been instantaneous. "Normally you'd expect that if someone was going to die from electrocution related to electrical discharge, they'd die right there and then, within a few seconds," he says.
Tasering doesn't cause changes in the heart rhythm, or arrhythmia, which leads to death, he says.
It's a view that Ontario's deputy coroner, Dr. Jim Cairns, has used to help shape the Toronto Police Services Board policy toward allowing Toronto police to use Tasers. Cairns also spoke at a Taser tactical conference in Chicago last July about excited delirium.
Taser points out that the weapon has not been implicated in any of the deaths in Canada. "We're just repeating what the medical examiners are saying," says Tuttle. "The vast majority of those cases have been excited delirium or (drug) overdose."
Even though "excited delirium" isn't an accepted medical diagnosis, it may be listed as a "contributory factor" in police-custody deaths, Evans says, but not as the primary cause.
Taser isn't the only company developing electrical stun weapons. Indiana-based Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems has, in a prototype phase, a futuristic weapon that sends out a streak of lightning, apparently by projecting an ionized gas or ionizing the air itself with a laser, which conducts the electricity forward. The technology could potentially also be used to disable vehicles and, in the future, to help militaries neutralize incoming rocket propelled grenades.
Taser expects its new products to be available by mid-2008.
Information Technology Ecosystem Health and Performance
An IT ecosystem is "the network of organizations that drives the creation and delivery of information technology products and services." To understand the health and well being of the IT industry in the context of an ecosystem, the authors looked at three crucial IT ecosystem metrics: productivity, robustness, and innovation. Key concepts include:
The IT ecosystem is strong in all three of the most important sectors of hardware, software, and services.
Since the recession and retrenchment several years ago, the IT ecosystem has regained its health, competitiveness, and productivity.
There are currently significant levels of innovation from both new market entrants as well as incumbent market leaders.
Astronauts to Work on Giant Robot
HOUSTON -
After linking up with the international space station, Endeavour's astronauts got right to work Thursday unloading the parts they'll need to build a giant robot that will help maintain the orbiting outpost.
Astronauts Robert Behnken and Gregory Johnson were using the station's robotic arm to pull a pallet containing the Canadian robot, named Dextre, from Endeavour's cargo bay and install it temporarily on a station girder.
Dextre - short for dexterous and pronounced like Dexter - is designed to assist spacewalking astronauts and, ultimately, to take over some of their dangerous outdoor work.
Spacewalkers Richard Linnehan and Garrett Reisman will begin assembling the robot late Thursday night during the first of five outings planned for Endeavour's busy 16-day mission.
Before pulling up to the space station, Endeavour's commander, Dominic Gorie, guided the shuttle through a 360-degree backflip to allow for full photographic surveillance.
It's one of the many safety-related procedures put in place following the Columbia tragedy in 2003.
The space station crew used cameras with high-powered zoom lenses to photograph Endeavour from nose to tail, especially all the thermal tiles on its belly. The pictures - as many as 300 - will be scrutinized by engineers on the ground to see whether the shuttle suffered any damage during Tuesday's launch and ascent.
The crew had already used a 100-foot laser-tipped boom to inspect Endeavour's wings and nose, and flight director Mike Moses said engineers haven't spotted any problems.
"Everything looked really good," he said.
In fact, he said, engineers were able to determine that whatever appeared to have struck Endeavour's nose nine or 10 seconds after liftoff actually missed the ship.
It will take several days for NASA to analyze all the data and determine whether Endeavour will be able to re-enter safely at the end of its 16-day flight, the longest space station mission ever by a shuttle.
The shuttle's seven astronauts exchanged hugs and handshakes with space station commander Peggy Whitson and her two-man crew after the hatches between the two ships were opened.
"You guys look marvelous," Mission Control radioed the joint crew, as Gorie and Whitson hugged.
After a quick safety briefing, the crew got right to work unloading Dextre and preparing for the upcoming spacewalk.
Reisman also formally exchanged spacecraft seats with Leopold Eyharts, making him an official member of the space station crew. Eyharts will return to Earth aboard Endeavour after spending a little over a month on the station. Reisman is set to return to Earth in June.
In addition to the Canadian robot, Endeavour also delivered the first piece of Japan's new space station lab, Kibo, which is Japanese for "hope." The storage compartment will be attached to the orbiting complex on Friday; it's a temporary location until the lab arrives in May.
Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
Rabu, 12 Maret 2008
The 10 Emerging Technologies of 2008 Technology Review presents its annual list of the 10 most exciting technologies.
Each year, Technology Review publishes its list of 10 emerging technologies that its editors believe will be particularly important over the next few years. This is work ready to emerge from the lab, in a broad range of areas: energy, computer hardware and software, biological imaging, and more. Two of the technologies--cellulolytic enzymes and atomic magnetometers--are efforts by leading scientists to solve critical problems, while five--surprise modeling, connectomics, probabilistic CMOS, reality mining, and offline Web applications--represent whole new ways of looking at problems. And three--graphene transistors, nanoradio, and wireless power--are amazing feats of engineering that have created something entirely new.
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