No Fluff News » Technology

Holograms become Tangible

rampage — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:31:53 +0000

“…Researchers from the University of Tokyo have developed 3D holograms that can be touched with bare hands. Generally, holograms can’t be felt because they’re made only of light. But the new technology adds tactile feedback to holograms hovering in 3D space.

Called the Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display, the hologram projector uses an ultrasound phenomenon called acoustic radiation pressure to create a pressure sensation on a user’s hands, which are tracked with two Nintendo Wiimotes. As the researchers explain, the method doesn’t use any direct contact and so doesn’t dilute the quality of the hologram. The researchers, led by Hiroyuki Shinoda, currently have the technology on display at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans…”

source: physorg.com

US Government’s Einstein 3 is Spying on You

rampage — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:02:25 +0000

“U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration needs to answer several questions about the privacy implications of a new version of a computer intrusion detection system that can reportedly read e-mail, a privacy and civil rights advocacy group said. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), in a report released Tuesday, called on the Obama administration to release information about the legal authority for the so-called Einstein intrusion detection system, a version of which has been rolled out at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.>br/>
The CDT report also asks the Obama administration to release information about the role of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in the development and operation of Einstein 3, a new version of the software reportedly being developed. The second version of Einstein is deployed at the DHS and is being rolled out to other U.S. agencies. While Einstein 2 is able to detect malicious code during predefined code signatures, Einstein 3 will also be able to read e-mail and other Internet traffic, according to recent press reports.

‘This raises serious privacy concerns,’ the CDT report says. ‘While its predecessor merely detected and reported malicious code, Einstein 3 is to have the capability of intercepting threatening Internet traffic before it reaches a government system, raising additional concerns. According to press accounts, Einstein 3 will operate inside the networks of the telecoms …’”

source: cio.com

UK Plans to Install CCTVs in 20,000 Brit’s Homes, for the Children…

rampage — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:38:50 +0000

“THOUSANDS of the worst families in England are to be put in “sin bins” in a bid to change their bad behaviour, Ed Balls announced yesterday. The Children’s Secretary set out £400million plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes. They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.

Private security guards will also be sent round to carry out home checks, while parents will be given help to combat drug and alcohol addiction. Around 2,000 families have gone through these Family Intervention Projects so far. But ministers want to target 20,000 more in the next two years, with each costing between £5,000 and £20,000 – a potential total bill of £400million. Ministers hope the move will reduce the number of youngsters who get drawn into crime because of their chaotic family lives, as portrayed in Channel 4 comedy drama Shameless. Sin bin projects operate in half of council areas already but Mr Balls wants every local authority to fund them…”

source: express.co.uk

For the next Lunar Landing…

rampage — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:02:27 +0000

“Engineers at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA, are developing a guidance, navigation, and control system for lunar landings that includes an onboard hazard-detection system able to spot craters, slopes, and rocks that could be dangerous to landing craft. In the Apollo missions of 40 years ago, astronauts steered the lander to a safe spot by looking out the window; the lander itself “had no eyes,” says Eldon Hall, a retired Draper engineer and one of the original electronics designers for Apollo’s navigation computer.

That meant there were some close calls with Apollo, says Tye Brady, the technical director for lunar landing at Draper, who demonstrated his team’s automated-landing and hazard-avoidance technology at last week’s celebration of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11…”

source: technologyreview.com

Technology Executives Itching for their Piece of the Iraq Pie

rampage — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:02:56 +0000

“As the CEO of MeetUp, Scott Heiferman usually spends his days meeting with staff and brainstorming product strategy. But today the 37-year-old New Yorker, wearing a combat helmet and armored vest over a black business suit, is crammed into a battered C-130 transport plane headed for Iraq. Military and diplomatic personnel aboard are warily eyeing him and the others in his party, all similarly attired, as the C-130 begins its steep, corkscrew descent into the Baghdad airport. And Heiferman is thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’

It’s only been a few weeks since he got an email from a State Department policy planner named Jared Cohen inviting him to join the first tech delegation to post-invasion Iraq. Now he’s strapped in with eight other Silicon Valley executives, mostly in their thirties, from Google, Twitter, YouTube, Blue State Digital, WordPress, Howcast, and AT&T. When Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey got his invitation, ‘I just said yes,’ he recalls. YouTube’s director of product management, Hunter Walk, had to go down to his basement to find a suit to wear, because Cohen insisted that the group dress like diplomats to show respect for their hosts. Others worked their spouses for approval, repeating Cohen’s assurances that the security situation in Baghdad was much improved. Howcast CEO Jason Liebman’s mother thinks he’s on a trip to LA…”

source: wired.com

Generating Electricity from Artificial Leaves

rampage — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:02:24 +0000

“Artificial photosynthesis has yet to be cracked, but electrical engineers in the US think that synthetic leaves could be used to generate electricity in a different way – by sweating. Natural leaves constantly lose water through evaporation in a process called transpiration, which draws water from the roots to the very top of even the tallest trees. The new synthetic leaves also lose water through evaporation to create that mechanical water pump effect, and use it to generate power…

Michel Maharbiz at the University of California, Berkeley, working with colleagues at the University of Michigan and MIT, built their leaves from glass wafers shot through with a branching network of tiny water-filled channels arranged like the veins of a leaf. The smaller channels extend to the edge of the plate and have open ends that allow water to evaporate, drawing fluid along the leaf’s central stem at a rate of 1.5 centimetres per second.The researchers added metal plates to the walls of the central stem and connected them to a circuit. The charged plates and the water within the stem create a sandwich of two conducting layers separated by an insulating layer – in effect, a capacitor.The leaf is transformed into a source of power by periodically interrupting the water flowing into the leaf with air bubbles. Thanks to the different electrical properties of air and water, every time a bubble passes between the plates the capacitance of the device changes and a small electric current is generated, which passes to an external circuit where it’s used to pump up the voltage on a storage capacitor. ‘We use the mechanical energy in the liquid flow to change the capacitance and add energy to the capacitor,’ says Maharbiz…”

source: newscienties.com

The Vulnerabilities of State Imposed Smart Grids

rampage — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:56:26 +0000

“The city of Miami and several commercial partners plan to rollout a “smart grid” citywide electrical infrastructure by the year 2011. This rollout was
announced on the heels of news that foreign agents have infiltrated our existing electrical infrastructure and that recent penetration tests have uncovered numerous vulnerabilities in the proposed technologies. Simultaneously, the National Institute for Standards in Technology (“NIST”) has recently released a roadmap for producing smart grid standards. In this whitepaper, I will discuss the flaws with the current guidelines and map them to the criticisms of similar regulatory mandates, including the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (“PCI DSS”), that rely heavily on organizations policing themselves…

As of the writing of this white paper, NIST has released a draft framework for review that includes some of the proposed standards. While there are several security standards listed in the framework, NIST appears to be making the same mistakes of previous regulatory mandate governing bodies. For example, the PCI DSS standards have been criticized for not requiring a high-level of security in environments that process cardholder data. Specifically, one of the major criticisms is the “self policing” aspect of these standards. The credit card companies (American Express, Discover
Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa Inc.) are responsible for ensuring that relevant companies are compliant with the standards. If a company is deemed non-compliant, then the credit card companies issue what they consider to be the appropriate punishment…”

source: blackhat.com

Technological Singularity Weighing Heavily on the Minds of Scientists

rampage — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 02:00:24 +0000

“An invasion led by artificially intelligent machines. Conscious computers. A smartphone virus so smart that it can start mimicking you. You might think that such scenarios are laughably futuristic, but some of the world’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) researchers are concerned enough about the potential impact of advances in AI that they have been discussing the risks over the past year. Now they have revealed their conclusions.

Until now, research in artificial intelligence has been mainly occupied by myriad basic challenges that have turned out to be very complex, such as teaching machines to distinguish between everyday objects. Human-level artificial intelligence or self-evolving machines were seen as long-term, abstract goals not yet ready for serious consideration.

Now, for the first time, a panel of 25 AI scientists, roboticists, and ethical and legal scholars has been convened to address these issues, under the auspices of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in Menlo Park, California. It looked at the feasibility and ramifications of seemingly far-fetched ideas, such as the possibility of the internet becoming self-aware…”

source: newscientist.com

Solar Cell Progress

rampage — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:55:51 +0000

“The laboratory for photovoltaics of the University of Luxembourg has produced its first thin film solar cells made from compound semiconductors, already reaching a 12 percent efficiency.

Thin film solar cells are considered the next generation of solar cells and are expected to be considerably cheaper because they need much less material and energy in their production than today’s photovoltaic modules.

Researchers around the globe are racing to develop efficient thin film solar cells. The solar cells made in Luxembourg are based on a semiconductor made of copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS) and made by a process with the potential for highest performance. Furthermore, the scientists of the University of Luxembourg produced another solar cell based on a new cheaper material, which does not contain the costly indium, and made by a low cost galvanic process. This solar cell has reached an efficiency of 3.2 percent. This is already close to the world record: the worldwide best cell based on this new material and prepared by a similar low cost process shows an efficiency of 3.4 percent…”

source: compoundsemi.com

Associated Press Trying to Lace Their Articles with DRM but Will Fail

rampage — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:41:23 +0000

“The Associated Press last week rolled out its brave new plan to “apply protective format to news.” The AP’s news registry will “tag and track all AP content online to assure compliance with terms of use,” and it will provide a “platform for protect, point, and pay.” That’s a lot of “p”-prefaced jargon, but it boils down to a sort of DRM for news—”enforcement,” in AP-speak…But how could that possibly work?It was good enough for music…

Turns out that it won’t, not really, not if the goal is to exercise control over AP content by those not voluntarily disposed to play by the AP’s rules. First, let’s try to make sense of what’s being proposed. According to the AP’s announcement, the news registry it plans to set up relies on a new ‘microformat’…”

source: arstechnica.com

Water on Enceladus?

rampage — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:50:29 +0000

“A liquid plume is spewing from Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus — but is it coming from heated ice on the surface, or a liquid ocean underneath?

Analysis of the plume’s chemistry, detailed in the Cassini (CICLOPS) image above and reported in Nature this week, may put the debate to rest.

Lead author Jack Hunter (J.H.) Waite, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas and his colleagues say ammonia detected in the jets from Enceladus’ south pole provides the strongest evidence yet for the existence of liquid water beneath the surface.

A previous paper led by Frank Postberg of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, published in Nature just last month, reported the discovery of salts in E-ring particles derived from the plume, also suggestive of a liquid reservoir.”

source: universetoday.com

Gene Therapy Just Got Easier

rampage — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:36:13 +0000

“A new genetic engineering technique could make it as easy to rewrite a genome as it is to read it.

Using the process, which grafts pieces of synthetic DNA into the genomes of dividing cells, researchers generated 15 billion different genomic patterns in just three days. The process would normally take years, and could eventually be used to produce industrial chemicals, drugs, fuel and anything else that comes out of bacteria.

‘Automated sequencing really advanced the way we can read genetic information. We hope automated genome engineering will advance the way we write genetic information,’ said Harris Wang, a Harvard University biophysicist.

Earlier methods of manipulating genomes involved a painstaking biological cut-and-paste process, with target genes removed, tweaked and reinserted, one at a time. Alternatively, bioengineers could use a mutagen that turned genomes to hash.

But Wang and George Church — a co-author of the study, and a pioneer in DNA synthesis, genome sequencing and all-purpose biotechnological wizardry — want to speed that process up.

Their technique, known as Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering, or MAGE, starts with single-stranded pieces of DNA, custom synthesized to fit on target sections of a genome. In a microscopic remix of the famous Dr. Frankenstein movie scene, a target cell is then jolted with energy, opening holes in its membrane. The DNA flows inside. When the cell divides, it uses the new DNA in copying itself.”

source: wired.com

Month Trip to Mars Within Reach?

rampage — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:21:27 +0000

“There’s a growing chorus of calls to send astronauts to Mars rather than the moon, but critics point out that such trips would be long and gruelling, taking about six months to reach the Red Planet. But now, researchers are testing a powerful new ion engine that could one day shorten the journey to just 39 days.

Traditional rockets burn chemical fuel to produce thrust. Most of that fuel is used up in the initial push off the Earth’s surface, so the rockets tend to coast most of the time they’re in space.

Ion engines, on the other hand, accelerate electrically charged atoms, or ions, through an electric field, thereby pushing the spacecraft in the opposite direction. They provide much less thrust at a given moment than do chemical rockets, which means they can’t break free of the Earth’s gravity on their own.

But once in space, they can give a continuous push for years, like a steady breeze at the back of a sailboat, accelerating gradually until they’re moving faster than chemical rockets.

Several space missions have already used ion engines, including NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, which is en route to the asteroids Vesta and CeresMovie Camera, and Japan’s spacecraft Hayabusa, which rendezvoused with the asteroid Itokawa in 2005.”

source: newscientist.com

Down Under, Internet Filtering Trial Declared a Success

rampage — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:51:47 +0000

“Although not without controversy, the initial testing of the Australian government’s Internet filtering system has gone off fairly well, according to reports from some of the participating ISPs. Five of the nine ISPs testing the government’s filtering system reported few problems during testing, even though only 15 customers participated at one and a couple of customers at another were unable to access a completely legal porn site. The other four IPs have either yet to comment on the filter’s performance or have refused to talk publicly about the results.

Australia’s government first announced its intention to add a Great Barrier Reef of sorts around the nation’s virtual shores nearly two years ago, in August 2007. Initial testing began in the island state of Tasmania in February 2008, with cost estimates running as high as AUS$189 million (about US$154 million). The filters were originally intended to be on by default, with consumers able to opt out.

Much to the dismay of the program’s critics, things changed last October. As details about the country’s Cyber-Safety Plan emerged, we learned that all ‘illegal’ content would be blocked for everyone, with no possibility for individuals to opt out. The main government-supplied blacklist would be applied universally, while an “additional material” blacklist targeting age-appropriate content would be optional for users.”

source: arstechnica.com

Nanoparticles and Their Potential Medical Applications

rampage — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:37:58 +0000

“Nanoparticles are being developed to perform a wide range of medical uses – imaging tumors, carrying drugs, delivering pulses of heat. Rather than settling for just one of these, researchers at the University of Washington have combined two nanoparticles in one tiny package.

The result is the first structure that creates a multipurpose nanotechnology tool for medical imaging and therapy. The structure is described in a paper published online this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

‘This is the first time that a semiconductor and metal nanoparticles have been combined in a way that preserves the function of each individual component,’ said lead author Xiaohu Gao, a UW assistant professor of bioengineering.

The current focus is on medical applications, but the researchers said multifunctional nanoparticles could also be used in energy research, for example in solar cells…”

source: eurekalert.com

Ma Bell Becomes Big Brother by Blocking 4chan

rampage — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 05:41:51 +0000

“As if AT&T wasn’t already bad enough. In an act that is sure to spark internet rebellions everywhere, AT&T has apparently declared war on the extremely popular imageboard 4chan.org, blocking some of the site’s most popular message boards, including /r9k/ and the infamous /b/. moot, who started 4chan and continues to run the site, has posted a note to the 4chan status blog indicating that AT&T is in fact filtering/blocking the site for many of its customers (we’re still trying to confirm from AT&T’s side).

Reports of the blocking began to surface on reddit this afternoon, and a number of blogs are beginning to pick up on the story, though it doesn’t seem like any have managed to get a comment from AT&T (we’ve reached out to the company and will update once we hear back)… “

source: techcrunch.com

DOE Security has Developed a Virtual Neighborhood Watch to Protect its Interests

rampage — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:29:34 +0000

“Scientists at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory have devised a program that allows for Cyber Security defense systems to communicate when attacked and transmit that information to cyber systems at other institutions in the hopes of strengthening the overall cyber security posture of the complex.

‘The Federated Model for Cyber Security acts as a virtual neighborhood watch program. If one institution is attacked; secure and timely communication to others in the Federation will aide in protecting them from that same attack through active response,’ cyber security officer Michael Skwarek said.”

via sciencedaily.com

Testing Physical Phenomena Gets Easier

rampage — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:41:23 +0000

“Even Albert Einstein might have been impressed. His theory of general relativity, which describes how the gravity of a massive object, such as a star, can curve space and time, has been successfully used to predict such astronomical observations as the bending of starlight by the sun, small shifts in the orbit of the planet Mercury and the phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Now, however, it may soon be possible to study the effects of general relativity in bench-top laboratory experiments.

Xiang Zhang, a faculty scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and professor at the University of California Berkeley, lead a study in which it was determined that the interactions of light and matter with spacetime, as predicted by general relativity, can be studied using the new breed of artificial optical materials that feature extraordinary abilities to bend light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation…”

via sciencedaily.com

Germany Readies Internet Censorship

rampage — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:14:46 +0000

“Germany is on the verge of censoring its Internet: The government – a grand coalition between the German social democrats and conservative party – seems united in its decision: On Thursday the parliament is to vote on the erection of an internet censorship architecture.

The Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen kicked off and led the discussions within the German Federal Government to block Internet sites in order to fight child pornography. The general idea is to build a censorship architecture enabling the government to block content containing child pornography. The Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) is to administer the lists of sites to be blocked and the internet providers obliged to erect the secret censorship architecture for the government. “

via wikileaks.org

Raytheon to become Obama’s Internet Watchdog

rampage — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:25:04 +0000

“Defense and intelligence contractor Raytheon is moving into the lucrative realm of cyber warfare, and wants to hire hundreds of ‘cyber warriors’ to ‘play offense and defense,’ according to an advertisement on the company’s web site.

‘President Obama recently announced that cyber security is one of our country’s most urgent national security priorities,’ reads the ad. ‘Raytheon is answering that call by hiring more cyber warriors this year to help fight the digital cyber war.’

The ad says the company has 250 positions available in its Intelligence and Information Systems (IIS) division. The jobs are for, among others, reverse engineers, kernel developers, and vulnerability and intrusion detection engineers. Raytheon also has positions available for something called “media sanitation specialists.””

via wired.com

US Army, Can Now Murder more Efficiently

rampage — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:55:14 +0000

“Just a few years ago, the Army was so down on the Land Warrior high-tech soldier get-up that it officially canceled the project. Now, Land Warrior is back from the dead — and considered so valuable that even the Army’s commando elite want the wearable electronics suites.

According to InsideDefense.com, an Army Special Forces battalion will start training with an upgraded version of Land Warrior in 2010, before it deploys to Iraq later in the year.”

via wired.com

Do Asimov’s Laws Need to be Revamped?

rampage — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:18:17 +0000

“Two years ago, a military robot used in the South African army killed nine soldiers after a malfunction. Earlier this year, a Swedish factory was fined after a robot machine injured one of the workers (though part of the blame was assigned to the worker). Robots have been found guilty of other smaller offenses such as an incorrectly responding to a request…

For years, science fiction author Issac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics were regarded as sufficient for robotics enthusiasts. The laws, as first laid out in the short story “Runaround,” were simple: A robot may not injure a human being or allow one to come to harm; a robot must obey orders given by human beings; and a robot must protect its own existence. Each of the laws takes precedence over the ones following it, so that under Asimov’s rules, a robot cannot be ordered to kill a human, and it must obey orders even if that would result in its own destruction.

But as robots have become more sophisticated and more integrated into human lives, Asimov’s laws are just too simplistic, says Chien Hsun Chen, coauthor of a paper published in the International Journal of Social Robotics last month. The paper has sparked off a discussion among robot experts who say it is time for humans to get to work on these ethical dilemmas.”

via wired.com

Tech to Pull UK out of Recession?

rampage — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:17:50 +0000

“The UK’s technology industry can pull the country out of its debt hole and make up for the decline in manufacturing.

So reckons Micro Focus, which is launching a manifesto called Making BrITain Great Again. The group is promoting five policy moves backed by its panel of three parliamentarians – Tory Lord Young of Graffam, Labour’s Lord Harris of Haringey and for the LibDems Lord Razzall of Mortlake.

The group notes the long-term decline of UK manufacturing and the recent collapse of financial services shows the need for the UK to have some basis for sustainable growth in the future. The group calls for all political parties to embrace the same five point strategy as follows.”

via theregister.co.uk