Sunday, April 29, 2012
Fast Train: really fast 350 mph
Really Fast Train: Rome - Ferrari
http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/latest-ferrari-tops-350mph-seats-450/?src=Outbrain
http://www.digitaltrends.com/international/latest-ferrari-tops-350mph-seats-450/?src=Outbrain
Solar Cell - Light Conversion - Full Spectrum
Jennifer Dionne, 29
Solar cells that see more light
Stanford University
Credit: Gabriela Hasbun
As it passes through a solution in a small vial, the green light from a laser pointer in Jennifer Dionne's hand turns into a sparkling blue beam. By making materials that perform a similar color conversion on sunlight, Dionne hopes to boost the output of solar cells and improve the economics of solar power.
Thirty percent of the sun's light is wasted in even the best of today's solar cells because this near-infrared light has too little energy to interact with materials in the cells. Other solar researchers have tried to do what Dionne is doing—"upconversion"—by combining two dyes that interact with each other to convert two low-energy photons into one high-energy photon. But Dionne is taking a new approach that could improve upconversion efficiencies by as much as 50 percent. She added metal nanoparticles to an existing combination of upconversion dyes; the particles shine more light on the dyes and get more converted light out of them.
It's an early demonstration, but solar-cell maker Bosch is working with Dionne to develop dyes that perform the upconversion. The technology could be incorporated into solar cells in seven to 10 years.—Katherine Bourzac
Super Accurate Traffic Flow Reports
Tracking Traffic with Cell Phones
A new project collects traffic data from GPS-enabled cell phones.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, hope that drivers with GPS-enabled smart phones will help them gather more-accurate and up-to-date traffic data. Starting Monday, volunteers in the San Francisco Bay Area and around Sacramento will be invited to participate in a pilot program by downloading software that tracks their movements and transmits this information, via the phone network, back to a server at the university. In return, the volunteers will receive personalized traffic information on their cell phones.
The idea is simple, says Alex Bayen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the university. "Smart phones with GPS collect data from a regular commute and send it to a central system," he says. "The system puts the data into a mathematical model that estimates traffic in real time and then broadcasts it back to the Internet and phones."
The researchers' model combines traffic data collected from static road sensors as well as from volunteers' cell phones. Participants will receive personalized information such as travel-time estimates and traffic speeds along relevant routes.
Traffic monitoring is nothing new. Companies such as Inrix and Navteq accumulate traffic data using sensors embedded in streets and in toll booths, and from GPS sensors on vehicles like FedEx delivery trucks and taxis. This information is fed to in-car navigation systems and used by websites such as Google Maps, Mapquest, and traffic.com to provide live traffic data.
But the problem with existing systems, says Bayen, is that they only account for certain roads. Road-based traffic sensors show highway traffic conditions well enough, he says, but do not show conditions on many side roads. The Berkeley project, calledMobile Millennium, will fuse static sensor data provided by Navteq with cell-phone data from (hopefully) thousands of drivers across the Bay Area. Part of the project's goal, explains Bayen, is to better understand how to use traffic data collected by cell phones--essentially a giant sensor network--for traffic prediction.
The Mobile Millennium software was released to the public at a press conference attended by Bayen and representatives from Nokia (which recently acquired Navteq), the California Center for Innovative Transportation, and the California and U.S. Departments of Transportation. The software runs on Java-enabled cell phones with a GPS chip. This includes Nokia's N95 handset and the BlackBerry Pearl 8110 but not, currently, Apple's iPhone. The researchers recommend that people who use the software have an unlimited data plan because large amounts of data need to be streamed from each phone.
VIDEO
For some users, privacy will be a more serious concern, and the researchers are aware that success depends on people feeling safe enough to participate. Bayen says that the software automatically strips out identifying information from data uploaded from each phone. Furthermore, instead of transmitting data constantly, devices only transmit data when they pass through preprogrammed GPS locations, which the researchers call virtual trip lines. This separates traffic-flow data from the identity of a driver or her vehicle without impairing the quality of data that is gathered, Bayen says.
Scott Sedlik, vice president of product marketing at Inrix, says that virtual trip lines are a clever solution to the issue of privacy. "From a technology perspective, we think they're doing a creative implementation," he says.
Sedlik believes that GPS-enabled phones will ultimately play an important role in acquiring more-useful traffic data, but he also foresees some challenges. He points out that some people will always be reluctant to upload their location information to a remote server. Another problem, he notes, is that "an app like this is a huge battery drain."
Bayen agrees that GPS can sap battery life quickly and recommends that volunteers plug in their phones while driving. Nonetheless, he hopes that the prospect of receiving much better traffic data will encourage many people to give the software a try.
Teenager Car Tracking
App Tracks Your Teenager's Driving Habits
The prototype could also monitor an elderly driver's aptitude over time.
Follow that car: This screenshot shows how a parent might track two teenage drivers in real time.
AT&T
AT&T
By merging data from cars' onboard computers and drivers' smart phones, AT&T researchers have created a system that reports on drivers' real-time behavior and long-term driving trends—and reveals whether a particular mistake might have been caused by phone use.
The company envisions the prototype system as a cloud-based chaperone for teen drivers. But it could rate any driver's abilities, and any change in those abilities, over time. "It allows you, as a parent, to monitor kids' driving behavior in real time. And if your kid is SMS-ing while driving, you will be able to log it—and even remotely disable the phone," says Raz Dar, business manager at AT&T's business incubator in Ra'anana, Israel. "The only thing he could do to prevent it is take out the unit from the car—unplug it—but we can detect that, too, and send an alert."
It works like this: a device plugged into a car's electronic diagnostic port inside the engine compartment beams out vehicle information such as speed, acceleration rate, steering, and braking—together with GPS coordinates. Meanwhile, an app on the phone beams out information on its usage.
Then, in an AT&T cloud, the two streams of information are analyzed, folding in additional information such as speed limits on the stretch of roadway involved. The result: alerts sent to the parent's phone describing where the kid is, whether he is exceeding the speed limit, whether he's wearing a seat belt, whether he has braked or steered abruptly, and whether he was talking or texting when those things happened.
The system is still a research project, and there is no announced timetable for commercialization. Ultimately, AT&T hopes to sell or license the system as a product, and also open up the cloud system for developers to create new apps such as tracking an elderly driver's aptitude over time, says Dar.
The company also envisions a day when insurance companies offer a discount to drivers who submit to the monitoring and show themselves to be good drivers who don't text while driving. Insurance companies have already started down this path. Progressive Insurance, for example, offers an optional Snapshot program that involves plugging a device into a car's onboard diagnostic computer. The device measures in real time when drivers use the car, how far they drive, and how hard they hit the brakes. Drivers can get a discount of up to 30 percent—or, in two states, a rate hike if the news is bad.
The AT&T technology is the result of a collaboration between AT&T and an Israeli startup, Traffilog, that already provides drivers and fleet managers with real-time alerts on unsafe driving as well as periodic reports aimed at improving driver behavior and vehicle maintenance.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Cufflinks for Spies
Cufflink WiFi Router/ USB Storage:
http://www.gizmag.com/wi-fi-usb-cufflinks/21232/
Mechanical Tooled Cufflinks - A Leatherman inside cufflinks
http://www.swisstime.ch/pgs/rwi-pgs-prod-lgs-en-idp-2093.html
http://www.gizmag.com/wi-fi-usb-cufflinks/21232/
Mechanical Tooled Cufflinks - A Leatherman inside cufflinks
http://www.swisstime.ch/pgs/rwi-pgs-prod-lgs-en-idp-2093.html
Skeleton Keys - Hand Vibrations (via Smartphone)
Wow...talk about "Keyless Entry" ....this is really cool.
Hope it comes to market. This tech could be applied to cars in customizing settings on individual drivers as they get into/approach a car and customize settings automatically to each driver's liking.....lots of ideas from this tech.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-04/unlocking-doors-signals-sent-your-smartphone-door-through-your-skeleton
But it’s not just the raw acoustic signal that the door is analyzing. The brains behind this prototype key have found that different skeletons--different bone densities and lengths, etc.--degrade the acoustic signals in different ways. That means that in future iterations of their system, only the right combination of signal and skeleton would open the door. In other words, someone couldn’t just steal your phone and use it to open your car door or your apartment--without your unique skeletal fingerprint added to the signal, the door would remain closed. And it might text or email you to let you know someone tried to gain entry without the right key.
Hope it comes to market. This tech could be applied to cars in customizing settings on individual drivers as they get into/approach a car and customize settings automatically to each driver's liking.....lots of ideas from this tech.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-04/unlocking-doors-signals-sent-your-smartphone-door-through-your-skeleton
Posted 04.23.2012 at 4:02 pm11 Comments
It gives the term skeleton key a whole new meaning: a prototype system from AT&T Labs that beams a unique vibration through a user’s bones to be picked up by a receiver in a door handle, automatically unlocking the door at the touch of the handle. Using piezoelectric transducers, the system could someday be embedded in smartphones or wristwatches to create doors that automatically unlock when the right person touches them and stay firmly dead-bolted when anyone else tries to gain entry.
In the future, in other words, you are your own set of keys. According to InnovationNewsDaily, the system works via frequencies that humans can’t feel but could hear in a very quiet room. These acoustic signals travel from one piezoelectric transducer through human bones much the way sound waves vibrate through the skull and inner ear to enable our sense of hearing. The vibration travels straight through the body including through the hand, which can impart the signal to anything it touches. Put another piezoelectric transducer in the door handle, and the door can identify the person touching the handle and grant entry appropriately.
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TAGS
Technology, Clay Dillow, AT&T, military,piezoelectrics, security, smartphones
All that is pretty neat, especially considering that the applications for this wouldn’t have to stop at door locks. Other individual-specific implements could be rigged to recognize different people, so a car shared by a family could automatically adjust the driver’s seat and mirrors when a new person stepped into the car, or a computer could switch to the right parental settings depending on whether Dad or Junior is touching the keyboard. More about this over at InnovationNewsDaily.
NEW YORK, NY — Brian Amento gripped the deadbolted door handle on the display next to him and with a click, the door unlocked at his touch. In his other hand, he was pinching a small metal disk called a piezoelectric transducer — like the ones used in guitar pickups — that was wired to his smartphone. The phone sent a digital key, identifying Amento as the homeowner, through his body and into the door.
Amento is a computer scientist at AT&T Labs. He talked with InnovationNewsDaily this morning (April 19) at a research fair AT&T held for reporters. Though for this display, the piezoelectric transducer connected to Amento's phone with a large wire, eventually such sensors would be embedded directly in phones or perhaps wristwatches, Amento said. People's smartphones would become their door keys, too.
Brian Amento's phone, with a piezoelectric transducer wired to it.
CREDIT: TechMediaNetwork
CREDIT: TechMediaNetwork
In this prototype, Amento's phone produced several frequencies of vibrations that humans can't feel, but can hear, if the room is very quiet. In other words, as Amento said, "It's an acoustic signal."
The frequencies travel from the phone and through the skeleton, in the way that sound waves vibrate bones in the skull and inner ear. At the other end, the door handle has another piezoelectric transducer to detect the vibrations coming through a person's hand. If this technology comes to market, different phones and door handles would have different vibration signatures that need to match for the door to unlock.
Amento switched the settings on his phone, demonstrating that his demo door would also open for the vibrations from a friend's phone. On the other hand, it would send an alert to the homeowner if a stranger touched the door handle.
Amento and his colleagues think they can add another layer of security to the smartphone key, too — one that's based on the unique properties of people's skeletons. Because of differences in bone lengths and density, people's skeletons should carry vibrations differently, they think. "If the signal goes through my body, it degrades in a different way than if it goes through your body," Amento said. Among the five people he has tested, all of their skeletons transmitted vibrations differently. Of course, he'll have to test more people to check if everyone is unique, but if that's true, then the smartphone key will only work when the right person is using it.
The key is still in its prototype stage, Amento said, so he couldn't say when people might be able to unlock their front doors with their own unique cell phone vibes. Once such systems work, however, people could start transmitting much more than their door keys through their bones. Amento and his colleagues are also working to see if people can exchange contact information just by shaking hands. The data would flow from one phone, through one person's skeleton, into the next person's and finally, into the recipient's phone.
They also think a person's unique vibes might help other smart devices identify them. A piezoelectric couch, for example, could sense who's sitting there and offer her favorite channels. A piezoelectric car driver's seat could identify the driver and adjust the mirrors accordingly.
You can follow InnovationNewsDaily staff writer Francie Diep on Twitter @franciediep. Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @News_Innovation, or on Facebook.
Super Water Proof Coating for Clothes
Sweet:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-04/super-nano-waterproof-coating-actively-shrugs-water-grease-and-would-be-stains
American Chemical Society: article write-up on this tech
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/la300281q
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-04/super-nano-waterproof-coating-actively-shrugs-water-grease-and-would-be-stains
American Chemical Society: article write-up on this tech
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/la300281q
Tech University
From Silicon Valley, A New Approach To Education
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/04/18/150846845/from-silicon-valley-a-new-approach-to-education
April 18, 2012
by STEVE HENN
EnlargeiStockphoto.com
Four major universities are joining forces with Coursera, a Silicon Valley startup, to offer free online classes in more than three-dozen subjects.
Last year when Andrew Ng, a computer science professor at Stanford University, put his machine-learning class online and opened enrollment to the world, more than 100,000 students signed up.
"I think all of us were surprised," he says.
Ng had posted lectures online before, but this class was different.
"This was actually a class where you can participate as a student and get homework and assessments," he said.
The class was interactive. There were quizzes and online forums where teaching assistants, fellow students and Ng answered questions. In the end, tens of thousands of students did all the same work and took the same tests that Stanford students took; thousands passed.
"Stanford has always been a place where we were not afraid to try bold new things, often without knowing exactly what the consequences were going to be," said Jim Plummer, the dean of engineering. "And this is an instance of that."
Now Ng and Daphne Koller, a Stanford colleague, are launching a company called Coursera to bring more classes from elite universities to students around the world for free online.
"By providing what is a truly high-quality educational experience to so many students for free, I think we can really change many, many people's lives," Koller says.
Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan will join Stanford. Two Venture capitalists are investing more than $15 million in the company.
Koller says she believes online classes could bring university classes to millions of people who are now effectively cut off.
But to do this, these classes have to be effective at teaching more than just computer science. How will they teach hundreds of thousands of students to write?
"You've asked the right question," asks Al Filreis, a poetry professor at the University of Pennsylvania, "which is: You are really going to try to do a poetry course?"
They are. In fact, Filreis is the guy they have roped into doing just that. He will teach modern and contemporary American poetry online for free starting in the fall. He says he knows he's not going to be able to grade thousands of essays.
But "I am really, really game and open to other ways of understanding whether people are getting it because my university has decided to let me free," he says.
Filreis isn't looking for correct answers. He wants people to think about the poems he's teaching and engage one another.
"Poetry is really good in this setting because you can read it alone and get so much out of it, and be perfectly fine with it, but the next step was [to] hang out with some intuitively smart people and collectively — together, collaboratively — let's read the poem together," he says.
In his class this fall, Filreis will discuss poetry with a small group of students while potentially thousands make comments online. Coursera is building a system like Yelp that will let these students value each others comments; the most valued and respected will rise to the top.
Will all this work? Is this a way to teach poetry or anything else? Filreis isn't sure, but he's excited to give it a try. And it's possible this fall he could reach more students with poetry than he has in his entire career.
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