Technology Trends

IsraCast is a Jerusalem-based multimedia network and one of its reporters just wrote an article about a dream come true, “Like a Fish: Revolutionary Underwater Breathing System.” An Israeli inventor, Alan-Izhar Bodner, “has developed a breathing apparatus that will allow breathing underwater without the assistance of oxygen tanks.” This invention is based on how fish are breathing, picking the air which is dissolved in the water. Right now, a prototype has been built which uses rechargeable batteries and which will allow for one hour of diving time. But don’t run to your diving store yet, this system will only be available in a few years. Read more…

The author, Iddo Genuth, first looks at the limitations of current underwater breathing methods: the amount of time a diver can stay underwater; the dependence on oxygen refueling facilities; and the actual use of oxygen tanks underwater.

Of course, many engineers around the world have tried to design better and lighter systems. But now, Alan-Izhar Bodner, has developed his invention by looking at how fish are breathing, explains Genuth.

Fish do not perform chemical separation of oxygen from water; instead they use the dissolved air that exists in the water in order to breathe. In the ocean the wind, waves and underwater currents help spread small amounts of air inside the water. Studies have shown that in a depth of 200m below the sea there is still about 1.5% of dissolved air. This might not sound like much but it is enough to allow both small and large fish to breathe comfortably underwater. Bodner’s idea was to create an artificial system that will mimic the way fish use the air in the water thus allowing both smaller submarines and divers to get rid of the large, cumbersome oxygen tanks.

The idea really sounds neat, but how will it be exploited?

Bodner has already built and tested a laboratory model and he is on the path to building a full-scale prototype. Patents for the invention have already been granted in Europe and a similar one is currently pending examination in the U.S. Meetings have already been held with most major diving manufacturers as well as with the Israeli Navy. Initial financial support for the project has been given by Israel Ministry of Industry and Commerce and Bodner is currently looking for private investors to help complete his project.

This is a photograph of the prototype that the inventor sent to IsraCast (Credit: Alan-Izhar Bodner). As says Iddo Genuth, there is “not really much to look at” but it’s a first draft of the device. We’ll see how it goes in the coming years.

This method for breathing underwater was patented in Europe in 2002 and 2003. For more information, you can use the Online European Patent Register search engine. You just have to enter the application number “EP20010996491″ without quotes.

For a quicker access, here are the direct links to this patent, “Open-Circuit Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus,” referenced as WO0240343 (May 23, 2002) or EP1343683 (September 17, 2003).

Here is the abstract.

A self-contained open-circuit breathing apparatus for use within a body of water naturally containing dissolved air. The apparatus is adapted to provide breathable air. The apparatus comprises an inlet means for extracting a quantity of water from the body of water. It further comprises a separator for separating the dissolved air from the quantity of water, thereby obtaining the breathable air. The apparatus further comprises a first outlet means for expelling the separated water back into the body of water, and a second outlet means for removing the breathable air and supplying it for breathing. The air is supplied so as to enable it to be expelled back into the body of water after it has been breathed.

Finally, here is the conclusion of the IsraCast article.

If everything goes according to plan, in a few years the new tankless breathing system will be operational and will be attached to a diver in the form of a vest that will enable him to stay underwater for a period of many hours.

Sources: Iddo Genuth, IsraCast, May 31, 2005; and various websites

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If you are in Glasgow next week, be sure to visit the Garage, one of its largest clubs, and order a beer from the new assistant bartender. The Barhand vending machine will give you a bottle of beer with its electronic robotic hand. In “Young Scot set for share in millions from robot barman,” the Sunday Herald reports that Michael Bowes, a 23-year old entrepreneur, is installing the first robotic bartender, built by Japanese company Fuji. Bowes has exclusive rights to sell the robot and expects to generate sales of about $200 million within five years. Of course, some people are concerned that the Barhand could deliver beers to people already drunk, but Bowes insists that by reducing queues, people will only buy one drink at a time instead of picking several ones from a real bartender. Read more…

Here are the essential facts about the launch of the Barhand.

Orders have already been taken from bars and clubs across England and elsewhere in Europe. But the first unit will be installed in one of Glasgow’s largest clubs, The Garage.

It is being shipped over from Asia for a launch party on Wednesday. The product will then be launched in London at industry trade show bar.05 at Earls Court the following week.

The Barhand, a concept three and a half years in the making, is expected to generate sales of £100 million to £200m within the next five years. Michael Bowes, managing director of Bowes Enterprises, said he has also been approached by a large non-alcoholic drinks company about vending products that don’t fit into traditional units.

Here is a link to the current schedule for the Garage. And I’m sorry to tell you that the Zak Wylde’s Black Label Society gig has been cancelled on June 1, 2005.

Anyway, the Barhand has really been designed with U.K. pub rules.

The Barhand has been specially designed for licensed premises, with a timeclock that shuts the machine off after the “last orders” bell. The electronic arm inside the vending machine is meant to prevent bottles from crashing to the bottom of the dispensing slot and being damaged.

Of course, some people are worried by the fact that the Barhand could sell a beer to someone already drunk.

Patrick Browne, spokesman for the Scottish Beer and Pub Association, said Bowes Enterprises would have to address a number of crucial issues. He said: “One of the offences in licensing laws is allowing people to sell alcohol to someone who is drunk. How do you stop someone who is drunk from going and using the vending machine again?”

For more information, you should read the April 2005 issue of enterprisinglasgow (PDF format, 16 pages, 2.35 MB). The image above comes from “A Helping Barhand” on page 2 (Credit: enterprisinglasgow).

In this column, Bowes replies to the critics mentioned above and says that the Barhand will help people to reduce their drink consumption.

“What the vending machine enables people to do is purchase drinks in an easy and controlled manner but it also has other advantages in that it can help to prevent binge drinking by decreasing a person’s rate of consumption.”

“In developing my product I conducted research amongst drinkers and one of the questions I asked was — would you purchase multiple drinks if the bar was busy? A staggering 75% of the 500 people canvassed said yes. In essence people are buying multiple rounds of drinks, not because they want them, but because they want to avoid queuing.

As I haven’t found a single picture of the Barhand on the Web, I have no idea if it looks like a traditional vending machine or if it has a futuristic robotic design. So, if you go to the Garage on June 1st, please take some pictures and send them to me.

And of course, don’t drink too much…

Sources: Julia Fields, Sunday Herald, UK, May 29, 2005; and various websites

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Many announcements related to nanotechnology have been made last week, so I just want to make a quick summary. A team of chemists have found that buckyballs could have a negative impact on our environment while other researchers used nanotechnology to find tumors before they are visible in conventional MRI. A team at CMU could revolutionize nanoelectronics manufacturing by making ordered nanocarbons while a chemist at New York University thinks that DNA molecules could lead to the smallest computing devices ever built. Cornell University researchers have designed a nanoscale switch linking electronics to photonics and others at the University of Leeds, U.K., have identified antimicrobial nanoparticles for safer food packaging. In the commercial sector, Dimatix is developing nano-printing technologies which could lead to human skin cells, and Accelrys is using molecular modeling and simulation software tools to design potential new materials. Read more…

Please read all the articles or news releases mentioned above to find more information about these new discoveries. Here I just want to focus — briefly — on three of them.

Let’s first look briefly at this new use of nanotechnology to find tumors.

Biomedical engineers have used nanotechnology to find human melanoma tumors in mice while the growths are still invisible to conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Earlier detection can potentially increase the effectiveness of treatment. This is especially true with melanoma, which begins as a highly curable disorder, then progresses into an aggressive and deadly disease.

A second benefit of the approach is that the same nanoparticles used to find the tumors could potentially deliver stronger doses of anti-cancer drugs directly to the tumor site with fewer side effects.

Now, here is a short description of the nano-printing technologies developed by Dimatix.

Dimatix currently employs about 50 people in its Santa Clara offices, where it is developing ink-jet printing technologies for a wide range of possible uses. Some futuristic uses of Dimatix’s super-small ink jets could include making semiconductor interconnects, or electronic screen displays so thin and flexible they wrap around a column in a department store.

Dimatix is developing a new generation of print heads that can deposit microscopic droplets of conductive ink, or even droplets of organic materials. They call these nano-particle inks, because they are at the atomic level in size, or smaller than a virus.

In the future, Dimatix expects its printing technologies to be used in the life sciences, where scientists could re-create human cells by layering down DNA substrates.

Finally, it’s time to look at the modeling software tools developed by Accelrys.

Here is the introduction of the article.

As electronics companies find themselves increasingly needing to characterise their materials at nanometre length scales, they are resorting to modelling software packages that until recently were seen as pure research tools.

Cambridge-based molecular modelling and simulation specialist Accelrys says its products, which are built on quantum mechanical descriptions of particular systems, are now being employed for real-world applications, rather than simply in more blue skies research.

Accelrys’ tools are typically applied in the fields of chemistry and fundamental materials science. They are used to address questions of what is happening at the molecular and atomic scales, and below, and enable the modelling of properties such as the electronic behaviour of solids, molecules, interfaces, and molecules on surfaces.

And here is the conclusion from Stephen Warde, European director of marketing for Accelrys.

“What our technology can help you do today is make smarter decisions about materials designs, and understand the materials science issues in more depth… I think it’s fair to say that we’re at the beginning of making those sorts of connections.”

And for more information about the involvement of Accelrys in this field, please read this page about Life Science Modeling.

Sources: American Chemical Society, May 9, 2005; The Whitaker Foundation, May 18, 2005; Carnegie Mellon press release, May 6, 2005; Spencer Reiss, Technology Review, June 2005; Cornell University news release, May 19, 2005; Food Production Daily, May 13, 2005; Therese Poletti, Mercury News, May. 16, 2005; Harry Yeates, ElectronicsWeekly.com, May 19, 2005; and various websites

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Based on ideas taken from Wikipedia and dodgeball, Cellphedia allows its members to broadcast questions to its community and receive answers, using SMS text messaging on cell phones. Here is how it works, according to “Cellphedia Melds Facts with Mobile Smart Mobs” from E-Commerce Times. First, you register for free on the site and you indicate what are your subjects of interest. If you want to ask a question, it is sent to all the members who expressed interest in this particular subject. Finally, the first answer received by Cellphedia is sent back to you. This means that later answers, which could have been more accurate, are discarded. But this service is still very young and its creator is working hard to improve it. Read more…

Here is a general description of this service, created by Limor Garcia as part of her thesis while at New York University.

Inspired by Wikipedia, the all-volunteer, online community encyclopedia, and Dodgeball, a cell phone-based social networking service, Cellphedia allows its members to broadcast questions to its community and receive answers, all through a mobile phone.

Registration for the service is free at the Cellphedia Web site. After registering, members choose areas that they’re interested in — art, architecture, food, music, etc. A member can ask a question in any area, but the questions go to people who have chosen the area as one that interests them.

Questions and answers are sent and received using SMS on your cell phone. And as I wrote above, only the first answer received by CellPhedia is sent back to the person who asked a question.

Unlike Wikipedia, answers to questions via Cellphedia aren’t subjected to community review to assess their accuracy. And while multiple members might answer a question, only the first answer received by the system is forwarded to an inquirer.

Garcia noted that group editing of answers is her next priority for the service. “I’m going to open it up for people to correct answers as well,” she said.

Interviewed for this article, Howard Rheingold, from Smart Mobs, said that Cellphedia was another example of the convergence between technologies such as cell phone, computers and Internet.

“The phone gives you instant communication wherever you are,” he explained. “And the Internet enables you to connect with people who share an interest. Combining that gives you the ability to create something like Wikipedia with a social network.”

“It remains a question about whether she’s going to get a sufficient critical mass,” he noted. “Wikipedia works because there’s a sufficient number of people working on it.”

Now, let’s look at some examples of questions and answers stored on the Cellphedia central server. As you can see, there are all kinds of requests.

• Short question, short answer
  Q: age new pope
  A: 78
  


• Short question, long answer
  Q: what’s a phreak
  A: a phreak is someone who is highly skilled in the use of phone systems. phreaksare considered a subset of hackers.
  


• Long question, short answer
  Q: does someone know how to install osx tiger on to an ipod for later installation on an ibook?
  A: not possible
  


• A question without answer
  Q: where can i find info on time travel?
  

For another point of view about this service, you can read this article from Wired News, “Put Some Wisdom in Your Pocket.”

And please keep in mind that the service is still young, so it remains to be seen if it can reach a ‘critical mass’ and become a hit.

Sources: John P. Mello Jr., E-Commerce Times, May 19, 2005; and various websites

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This is the time of the year when pollens give you hay fever and your nose is running like crazy. But now, a new photon-based anti-hay-fever technology is available to help, at least if you live in Central Europe. A small Hungarian company, Rhinolight, has developed a new technology using light cannons to help you. Its special lamps, which illuminate your nose with high energy light, have been installed in about 20 medical centers. After two weeks or about six sessions, the company says that you have a 80% chance to be cured — at least for the current year. But as I haven’t read any reports about the efficiency of this method, don’t book a flight to Budapest before talking to your physician and read more… Update (September 8, 2005): László PÁPAI, the Area Manager from Rhinolight Ltd. sent me new information, and allowed me to publish it. You’ll find it at the bottom of this post.

Let’s start with a warning. All the quotes below come from the Rhinolight website, and I really don’t know if some of their claims are true, even if they’re backed with several scientific publications.

Here is a scary description of hay fever impact today.

Hay fever (allergic fever, allergic rhinitis) is a kind of inflammation of nasal mucosa and nasal sinuses mucosa induced by an allergic reaction.

Allergic rhinitis is the most frequent disease, affecting 10-20% of the population. The frequency of this disease was increasing during last years especially in developed countries. Therefore this century is used to call as the century of allergy.

Hay fever is not a serious disease but troublesome symptoms lower the overall quality of patient’s life. Besides nasal symptoms asthmatic symptoms also develop in 20% of all cases.

Of course, antiallergic drugs exist, but aren’t always efficient or can’t even be used. So (drumroll please!), Rhinolight has developed a new treatment to fight hay fever.

The research group of the Department of Dermatology and Allergology, University of Szeged has evolved the Rhinolight phototherapeutical apparatus, which is suitable for the treatment of the nasal mucosa of patients suffering from allergic rhinitis. The research group has proved that Rhinolight treatment significantly reduces the severity of the clinical symptoms of allergic rhinitis.

What kind of light is used by this device? The company doesn’t give too many details in the page mentioned above.

Rhinolight phototherapy significantly suppresses the symptoms of allergic rhinitis in patients who don’t respond to conventional treatments. The spectrum range of the emitted light is mainly visible light, so it doesn’t have any harmful effects on the nasal mucosa. The ultraviolet range of the emitted light mainly contains ultraviolet A light, which is applicable safely. The UVB spectrum is only 2% of the emitted light, so it has less harmful effects than sunlight. So high energy light source — which contains visible light in 84% — has not been used so far in the treatment of allergic rhinitis.

I’m not sure to understand the above paragraph.

Anyway, be careful before using this device. The idea of having a light cannon pointed to my running nose leaves me somewhat skeptical.

    I am writing as area manager of Rhinolight Ltd., Hungary. I have read Your article on our company and product, and would have a few comments to add.

 

    Firstly, please be advised that the source You have used for preparing your article is out of date, and has not been updated for 2 years. We will soon eliminate this site. By the way, had You clicked on any other links within the site or tried www.rhinolight.hu, You would have seen that there is a web page totally different from that of the one cited in Your article. I am of the opinion that such inaccuracy questions the seriousness of the content any contribution relating to Rhinolight.
    Therefore, contrary to what You have stated, let me set out in particular the issues You have, for yome reason, been mistaken:
1. We have over 60 centers in Hungary, almost 100 including the ones internationally.
2. You claim You have not read anything about efficacy - please do have a look at the list of publications, moreover, read them one by one. Also, You can find the results of a double-bind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical study on the web page (and in the articles, too). Likewise, we have ongoing studies in Hungary and Switzerland. I assume You have no reason to doubt the trustworthiness of JACI and other prestigious journals, in which we have published these studies.
3. You argue there are not much details specified about the device, then You enlist details. This can also be found on the web-site. However, beyond a certain extent, clearly enough, I suppose, we can not disclose information about the device, it being protected by a patent.
4. You warn your readers to be careful with the “light cannon”. I definitely object to this kind of labelling the Rhinolight III phototherapeutical device - it is engined by a high-discharge tube. Using the word “cannon” suggests something of harmful nature, and anyways, this is not mentioned on the web page. If You have concerns about efficacy and safety, feel free to ask us. We would be happy to provide You with information on the long-term effects - there aren’t any. This is proven by the studies and a comet assay.

 

    I do hope You will consider the abovementioned.

I don’t know how many of you are willing to pay $1,000 for a bottle of wine, but I’m sure you would like to know if this 50-year old bottle of Bordeaux is still good before purchasing it. Now, you don’t need to open the bottle to discover it. You can get some high-tech help from a wine scanner using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), the same technology used in hospital MRI scans. In “Ultimate wine snob,” the Record, from New Jersey, tells us that you can purchase such a scanner for $50,000. Or you can visit the Crystal Springs Country Club, also in New Jersey, where the first NMR wine scanner has been installed, and ask nicely the owner to scan your bottle. If he accepts, you’ll know if the wine has turned into vinegar and if the seal or the cork of the bottle have been altered. But it will not tell you if the wine is really good and deserves its high price. Read more…

Here is a description of this wine scanner, which only can handle one bottle.

The scanner, built last summer and installed in the fall, looks like a shining chrome water heater with a series of pipes and tubes protruding from the top that connect to computer and electronic gear, as well as tanks of liquid nitrogen and liquid helium.

Inside, a series of coils are super-cooled, a strong magnetic field is created, and the apparatus sends radio frequencies through the glass that can pick up the levels of acetic acid, or vinegar, and acid aldehyde, another compound that can make wine taste foul. A program tweaked to read the spectroscopy analysis runs on a desktop computer hooked up to the device.

This wine scanner is based on wine research done at the Augustine Research Group of chemists at the University of California at Davis.

The Record tells us more about this scanner works.

“It’s basically an MRI for a wine bottle,” says Matt Augustine, the UC-Davis professor who came up with the idea and now acts as operations manager for the [Wine Scanner, Inc.] Morristown start-up.

Scans show distinct peaks for certain elements and compounds in the wine and can detect acetic acid at less than one-tenth the amount that would spoil wine, Augustine says.

Eugene Mulvihill, the New Jersey developer who licensed the technology from UC-Davis and built the first scanner in his Crystal Springs Country Club to check his multimillion-dollar wine cellar, thinks that other people might be interested in this $50,000 wine scanner.

Mulvihill believes auction houses or people with large private collections might want to use his scanner. “You’re not talking an $8 bottle of wine; you’re talking a $1,000 bottle of wine, and you want it to be perfect,” said Mulvihill, who has demonstrated the machine’s findings at tastings in Manhattan.

It’s not yet clear whether a potential market exists for the wine scanner. Mulvihill’s hopeful but says he’s not in a rush.

If you’re interested by the research work behind this wine scanner, a paper has been published by the Journal of Magnetic Resonance (Volume 161, Issue 1, Pages 91-98, March 2003) under the name “Using NMR to study full intact wine bottles.”

Here is a link to the abstract.

A nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) probe and spectrometer capable of investigating full intact wine bottles is described and used to study a series of Cabernet Sauvignons with high resolution ¹H NMR spectroscopy. Selected examples of full bottle ¹³C NMR spectra are also provided. The application of this full bottle NMR method to the measurement of acetic acid content, the detection of complex sugars, phenols, and trace elements in wine is discussed.

And in the full paper (PDF format, 8 pages, 407 KB), you’ll find a diagram of the experimental setup used to obtain the NMR spectrum of full intact wine bottles.

Finally, if you happen to visit the Crystal Springs Country Club and its Restaurant Latour, you’ll be able to know if one of its 50 vintages of Chateau Latour is still good before pocketing $2,000 or more. Enjoy your dinner!

Sources: Martha McKay, The Record, Hackensack, New Jersey, May 12, 2005; and various websites

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You all know that security measures have been dramatically reinforced in U.S. airports since September 11, 2001. In particular, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has a long list of objects you cannot carry on board. So what to do if your gold lighter is to be confiscated by security or airline personnel? ReturnKey Systems Inc. has a solution. The company has deployed Automated Mailing Kiosks (AMKs) in several airports. These AMKs look like ATM machines. Using a touch screen, you enter your personal information and a description of the object. If your address is valid and if the object is not included in the list of prohibited items by the US Postal Service, you pay and you send the item. And international shipping is also available since mid-April. Read more…

Before going further, let’s look at one of these kiosks.

A short article in CIO Magazine, “Send Your Cattle Prods Ahead,” gives more details about the mailing process.

The AMKs look much like ATMs. There’s a touch screen where users can enter information and access directions, along with a mail slot for sending packages. To use the system, a user first enters personal information, such as a name and address, which is verified against United States Postal Service records. (If the information doesn’t match up, the user cannot proceed.)

Next the user identifies the article he wishes to send, which the system then checks against an extensive list of items prohibited by the postal service. If the item is accepted for mail delivery, the system takes a picture of the user that gets sent to an offsite location for storage and scans the user’s credit card for payment. Finally, the user inserts the item into a depository.

CIO Magazine adds that it will cost you between $6 and $22 to send an item depending on its size and weight. But as the article was written before international shipping becomes available, chances are high that it will cost you more than that to mail something from Houston to London for example.

ReturnKey has started a new service — probably for the last smokers — which allow you to send your lighter. I like the distinction between full and empty lighters.

ReturnKey Systems can process FULL lighters through special permitting by the USPS. All full lighters will be sent via surface transportation to the end destination and will not require forfeiture to TSA. ReturnKey Systems will continue to process empty lighters by standard First Class, Priority, or Express Mail.

The company has already installed AMKs in Houston, Newark, La Guardia and Dulles airports and plans to add more in the months to come.

For more information about what the TSA allows you to carry or not on a plane, please read this page about Travel Tips and print this list of Permitted and Prohibited Items (PDF format, 5 pages, 132 KB). I guess you will not be surprised that you can’t introduce dynamite, fireworks or hand grenades in a plane.

Sources: Al Sacco, CIO Magazine, May 1, 2005 Issue; and various websites

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What a week in the robotic world! All the media wrote about the robots used as camel riders in Qatar, but other exotic machines were also announced, such as robo-matadors in Spain or the future Picasso, the ART Painter in Hartford, Connecticut. In the medical area, robo-masseurs are helping U.S. golfers, tiny needle-driving robots are developed in Israel while future mobile ‘trauma pods’ studied in California are still 10 years away. Elsewhere, a robot that could think for itself and solve real-world problems was unveiled in Wales. But my preferred robot this week is TerraMax, a self-navigating robotic truck built in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and which might participate in the second DARPA Grand Challenge in October 2005. Read more…

Below is a photograph of the TerraMax robotic truck in action (Credit: Oshkosh Truck Corporation). You’ll find other high-definition pictures of the TerraMax in this photo gallery.

Here are some facts taken from the press release mentioned above.

Oshkosh Truck Corporation announced [on April 12, 2005] that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has chosen the company’s TerraMaxTM robotic vehicle for evaluation for the DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 — a 175-mile, off-road race in the Mojave Desert for completely autonomous vehicles. Of 195 teams originally submitting race entries, DARPA, a part of the Department of Defense, chose 118 for further review based on vehicle designs and capabilities.

DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 is a field test of autonomous (driverless) ground vehicles to promote the advance of autonomous vehicle technology. Teams vying to compete in the Grand Challenge develop their vehicles without government funding. By 2015, the Pentagon hopes that using autonomous military vehicles such as TerraMax will help save the lives of military personnel.

For more information about this robotic race, please visit the official DARPA Grand Challenge website. Below are quick facts about the race.

The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge will be held on October 8, 2005 in the desert Southwest. The team that develops an autonomous ground vehicle that finishes the designated route most quickly within 10 hours will receive $2 million. The route will be no more than 175 miles over desert terrain featuring natural and man-made obstacles. The exact route will not be revealed until two hours before the event begins.

And don’t forget to check the TerraMax home page, which gives some details about the origins of the truck.

The TerraMax vehicle is based on Oshkosh’s Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR) defense truck platform. The MTVR was designed for the US Marine Corps with a 70% off-road mission profile.

All-wheel drive, TAK-4™ independent suspension, and central tire inflation make rocks, dips, holes and crevasses easier to handle. And the truck can handle 60% grades and 30% side slopes. A 425-hp Cat C-12 engine powers the truck.

But the site doesn’t give any details about the computer systems which will control its path. I guess these details will be available after the race, around the end of the year. Anyway, good luck, TerraMax!

Sources: Various websites

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Even if researchers are routinely building all kinds of nanodevices in their labs, the current production process of nanowires or nanosensors is similar to the car manufacturing process before Henry Ford. These nanostructures are almost handmade. Now, researchers at University of California Davis (UC Davis) have adapted a technology developed for Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. And they came with two new ways to massively produce nanowires of precise length. Their ‘nanobridges’ and ‘nanocolonnades’ are totally compatible with existing microelectronics fabrication processes. This opens the way for to a wide range of industrial-strength applications, such as bio-chemical sensing, nanoelectronics, nanophotonics, memory and logic devices for future computing. Read more…

First, let’s look at how most nanostructures are produced today.

Nanotechnology, the ability to create and work with structures and materials on an atomic scale, holds the promise of extreme miniaturization for electronics, chemical sensors and medical devices. But while researchers have created tiny silicon wires and connected them together one at a time, these methods cannot easily be scaled up.

“It takes weeks to make one or two, and you end up with different sizes and characteristics,” said M. Saif Islam, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, who joined UC Davis from Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in 2004.

Saif Islam and his Integrated Nanodevices and Systems Research (inano) group decided to adapt a technology developed for Hewlett-Packard.

While working at the Quantum Science Research group of Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Islam and colleagues came up with a new approach. Silicon wafers used for building microcircuits are usually polished at one specific angle to the atomic planes of silicon. Instead, the group used a wafer that was polished at a different angle, changing the orientation of silicon atomic planes to the surface. Using a chemical vapor deposition technique, they could then grow identical, perpendicular columns of silicon.

The researchers have used this method to grow “nanobridges” across a gap between two vertical silicon electrodes. The nanobridges are strong, chemically stable and show better electrical properties than previous approaches, Islam said. They could be used for nanosized transistors, chemical sensors or lasers.

The research work about these ‘nanobridges’ has been published by Applied Physics A, in a special issue on nanotechnology. Here is a link to the abstract of this paper named “A novel interconnection technique for manufacturing nanowire devices” (Volume 80, Number 6, Pages 1133-1140, March 2005).

This paper reviews a novel bridging technique that connects a large number of highly directional metal-catalyzed nanowires between pre-fabricated electrodes and extends the technique to an electrically isolated structure that allows conduction through the nanowires to be measured.

Two opposing vertical and electrically isolated semiconductor surfaces are fabricated using coarse optical lithography, along with wet and dry etching. Lateral nanowires are then grown from one surface by metal-catalyst-assisted chemical vapor deposition; nanowires connect to the other vertical surface during growth, forming mechanically robust nanobridges.

By forming the structure on a silicon-on-insulator substrate, electrical isolation is achieved. Electrical measurements indicate that dopant added during nanowire growth is electrically active and of the same magnitude as in planar epitaxial layers.

Meanwhile, the research about ‘nanocolonnades’ was presented at the spring meeting of the Materials Research Society in San Francisco on April 1, 2005 under the name “Nano-Colonnades: A Novel Technique for Integration of Nanowire Devices.” Here is a link to the program of the symposium where this technology was described.

Finally, I was unable to find any pictures of these ‘nanobridges’ or ‘nanocolonnades.’ If anyone knows about such images, please send me a pointer and I’ll update this entry. Thank you in advance.

Sources: UC Davis News, April 7, 2005; and various websites

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It took almost thirty years to get decent speech recognition programs on our computers. But if they’re good enough to translate our words into characters, they can’t engage in a conversation with us (I must say that some humans can’t do either). But according to this article from Technology Research News, things are changing. Computer scientists from Scotland and California have designed a multithreaded system which can anticipate what you’re going to say and are also able to switch context when you jump from a topic to another. This approach, which could be used in a wide range of applications, is welcome. Unfortunately, these researchers have selected the name “Conversational Interface Architecture” for their system, which leads to the worrisome acronym CIA. Anyway, the first commercial applications should be available within two years. Read more…

Here is a general description of this dialogue management system.

Researchers from Edinburgh University in Scotland and Stanford University have built a dialogue management system that promises to improve verbal communication with computers by giving the machine a sense of the type of phrase a person is likely to say next.

The Conversational Interface Architecture goes beyond the slot-filling dialogue systems commonly used for airline ticket booking systems by tracking multiple conversation threads, said Oliver Lemon, a senior research fellow at Edinburgh University. Slot-filling dialogue systems prompt users to provide topic-specific information and listen for keywords that determine the system’s response to the user.

And here ere are some details on how this dialogue management works.

The software follows multithreaded conversations — those that switch back and forth between several topics — without having to be programmed, regulates particular topics, and uses this information to improve speech recognition rates, according to the researchers. It also recognizes corrective fragments — phrases that correct something a user has just said — and it allows users to initiate, extend and correct dialogue threads at any time.

The system accomplishes this by tracking different types of utterances, including yes or no answers; who, what, where answers; and corrections like “I meant the office” and “not the tree.”

[Note: An utterance is a complete unit of talk, bounded by silence.]

I’s interesting to note that, by using this analysis of utterances, the system can work with any speech recognition system.

What could we do with such a software?

The approach could be used in a wide variety of speech recognition systems including telephone-based information systems, interactive entertainment devices, robots, computer interfaces for the visually impaired, in-car dialogue applications, and speech interfaces for personal computers.

Another question remains: when will such systems be available?

The context-sensitive component of the researchers’ system could be applied to practical applications now, said Lemon. Multithreaded dialogue management could be used practically within two years, he said.

This research work has been presented at the ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) conference last year and published in its September 2004 issue (Volume 11, Issue 3, Pages 241 - 267).

Here is a link to the abstract of this paper named “Multithreaded context for robust conversational interfaces: Context-sensitive speech recognition and interpretation of corrective fragments.” Here is a summary of their results.

In an evaluation of a dialogue system built using this architecture we found that 87.9 percent of recognized utterances were recognized using a context-specific language model, resulting in an 11.5 percent reduction in the overall utterance recognition error rate, and a 13.4 percent reduction in concept error rate. Thus we show that by using context-sensitive recognition based on the predicted type of the user’s next dialogue move, a more flexible dialogue system can also exhibit an improvement in speech recognition performance.

Sources: Eric Smalley, Technology Research News, April 6/13, 2005; and various websites

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Two recent short articles from BBC News Online (”City toilets rise to the occasion“) and the Register (”Rise of the man-eating cyberloo“) are pointing at the installation of futuristic retractable urinals in the center of Aberdeen, Scotland. The City Council considers that there are not enough public toilets, especially at night and that these 6 feet retractable toilets will prevent men to urinate in the streets. These Urilifts will be remotely controlled by city employees and can welcome three men simultaneously. There is also a version for women, called Urilady, but apparently the City Council is not considering such an installation for the moment. Read more…

Here are some details given by BBC News Online.

Aberdeen City Council officials said there were not enough toilets available at night when revellers pack the city centre bars and restaurants.

It is considering installing two 6ft Urilift retractable cubicles which look like manhole covers until hydraulic cylinders bring them from the pavement.

They would be operated by Aberdeen City Council staff using remote controls. Up to three men at a time can use the urinal facility.

The two pictures above show the Urilift — for men — and the Urilady — for women — which is not currently under consideration by the Aberdeen City Council.

You can find high-quality versions of these photos on this page, but please avoid the irritating parent site (Macromedia Flash format).

How do you think these Urilifts cost? You can find an answer in an Aberdeen city bulletin, “City may purchase new hi-tech toilets.” Two of these toilets, plus a more traditional Automatic Public Convenience (APC) will cost up to £125,000.

Now, let’s switch to the Register, which, as usual, uses quite an ironic tone. Here are two short paragraphs from the article.

Battalions of remote-controlled stealth cyberloos disguised as manhole covers but capable of rising from the pavement in seconds and devouring up to three urinating Scotsmen in one vicious attack.

We kid you not. Aberdeen City Council is considering installing two 6ft “Urilift” retractable cubicles in response to a reported lack of late-night toilet facilities. Naturally, it’s not enough to knock up a traditional, brick-built Caledonian crapper. Nope, what Aberdeen needs a is hydraulically-powered cyberbog operated by “council employees” from a remote command centre.

Now, for real fun, here is a link to a document prepared by the Aberdeen City Council about environment and infrastructure (PDF format, 14 pages, 240 KB).

Here is what the Council says about Justice Mill Lane.

This is a very busy nightspot with extensive associated street urination. We would suggest the installation of two urilifts on the routes out of the lane towards the taxi rank.

Finally, if you’re interested by this subject, you’ll find more details on the Urilift by reading this fact sheet (PDF format, 2 pages, 300 KB). This document states that this retractable urinal is “designed to counter the growing problem of indiscriminate urination.”

Sources: BBC News Online, March 18, 2005; Lester Haines, The Register, March 24, 2005; and various web pages

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Hugo Liu, a researcher at the MIT, thinks about using English as a programming language because it is much more concise than any traditional programming language, and eliminates the need to learn one in the first place. In “Tool turns English to code,” Technology Review writes that Liu and his colleague have written an English-to-code visualizer named Metafor. You type a story in plain English in one panel of the tool. In other panels, you can see the outputs of the parser and the debugger. Finally the fourth panel contains your story rendered as code — or the program “skeleton.” Here is an example taken from Liu’s research. ‘If I said, “Look in the bin and pick out just the red apples,” that’s the equivalent of programming: “map(Pick, filter(lambda apple: apple.color == red, bin.getApples())).”‘ Read more…

Here is the introduction of the Technology Review article.

Writing software has been relatively difficult since people began programming computers in the mid-1900s. Although programming a computer is eminently useful — it gives you fine control of a powerful tool — it requires learning a programming language.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are aiming to remove this requirement. They have taken a step toward that goal with a language-to-code visualizer dubbed Metafor.

The visualizer uses natural language instructions to sketch the outlines of a program. It can be used as a programming learning tool and to provide rough drafts of programming projects, and could lead to more complete programming-by-natural-language methods.

The illustration above shows you how the different panels of Metafor.

But how does this work?

The basic logic of the program Pacman, for instance, is revealed by talking about how it works, said Liu. “The basic ingredients for the program are there — the noun phrases are objects, the verbs are functions, [and] the adjectives are object properties.”

Metafor translates the description “Pacman is a character who eats dots” into a “Pacman object” that is a member of and can share traits, or functions, with a “character superclass” and has a character superclass member function of “eat dots”, said Liu.

Please read the full article for more details, but note that Metafor can ‘translate’ an English story in several programming languages, including Python, Lisp and Java.

But what can you do with such a tool?

The first goal is to help students to learn programming. This method could also be used as a programming teaching tool for kids or enhanced storytelling within three years.

For more information, you can read this technical paper, “Metafor: Visualizing Stories as Code” (PDF format, 3 pages, 723 KB), or this presentation, “english: the lightest weight programming language of them all” (PDF format, 22 slides, 2.34 MB). The illustration above comes from this presentation.

You also can watch this animated demo (QuickTime format, size unknown).

Sources: Kimberly Patch, Technology Research News, March 23/30, 2005; and various pages at MIT

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If the efforts currently underway at the Universities of Calgary and Alberta (U of A) are successful, you might soon be able to chat and have a real dinner with your spouse sitting in front of you even if you’re thousands of miles away from her. Pierre Boulanger, professor of computing science at U of A, has just received $1.7 million to develop new and inexpensive ‘telepresence’ tools to do just these kinds of tricks, and much more according to CBC News in Canada. “The technology could allow surgical instructors to transmit hand and scalpel movements thousands of kilometres across a computer network, where the movements would be recreated.” Or you’ll build a 3D model of the Earth core on your computer and a teammate will be able to reconstruct it and interact with it at the other end of the world. Read more…

Here are the opening paragraphs of the article.

New technologies could allow sweethearts separated by a long-distance relationship to talk over a meal, or medical students to learn surgical techniques in a virtual operating room, computer scientists say.

The University of Alberta’s new $2-million program will develop 3-D technology that allows people to interact with holographic images in virtual encounters, said Pierre Boulanger, a professor of computer science at U of A[, and director of the Advanced Man Machine Interface Laboratory].

In ‘telepresence,’ someone can speak to others in a virtual meeting, much like TV characters from Star Trek act out their fantasies on a holodeck that projects realistic, 3-D images of people and places.

Curiously, there are more details in this news release of U of A, “New virtual reality chair to explore frontier of ‘telepresence’.”

Imagine a world, for example, where professors of surgery transmit hand and scalpel movements, as well as what they see while operating, thousands of miles across a computer network, where it is recreated in an operating room.

“The student will actually look at that and actually feel what the doctor is doing,” said Boulanger. “On the other hand, the doctor can feel what the students are doing and give them a nudge in the right direction… It’s like being in virtual residence with doctors.”

You also can imagine what could happen with families when one member has to travel.

Families separated by travel will spend meals together through what is called ‘telepresence,’ said Boulanger. “You would wear special goggles — and we’re working on that – which would allow you to see your wife sitting in front of you, having a day-to-day conversation. In the future you will have virtual encounters like this, people you want to be part of a meeting sitting beside you virtually and having a conversation.”

Of course, this future low-cost technology would also be used for scientific usages.

At a press conference on campus Tuesday to celebrate his chair, and that of Dr. Christoph Sensen at the University of Calgary, Boulanger explained how scientists are now able to create and manipulate a model of the earth’s core by feeding computers highly sophisticated mathematical equations. Once recreated in 3D, the average person is fully capable of understanding such complex physical phenomena, he said. “People can actually interact with it, and say, “What happens if we have that instead of this?’”

For more information and links, please read this other news release from the University of Calgary, “Alberta building expertise in virtual reality computing.”

Sources: CBC News, March 16, 2005; and various websites

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A European Union project named Synface has permitted to develop prototype phones for moderately hearing impaired people. In this article, CNN says that you need a laptop with a special speech recognition software. When a user receives a call on his phone, he can see an animated head “speaking” the words being said over the telephone, which helps him to better understand the conversation. The project took more than three years for a total cost of about 1.4 million euros. And with about 80 million people in the EU alone suffering from some kind of hearing impairment, this could be potentially a huge market, even if the technology is not currently commercially available. Read more…

Let’s start with a couple of pictures to illustrate the concept behind Synface.

And now, here are some details about the current status of the project.

Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) head of product development Neil Thomas told CNN the software enabled the listener to lip-read what was being said, just as they would in face-to-face conversation.

“Most people, particularly those who are hard of hearing, lip-read to communicate. When you’re on the telephone this becomes difficult because you can’t see the person who is speaking to you.”

Prototypes of the software are currently in field trials in the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands. RNID is overseeing trials in the UK, and Thomas said results showed 100 percent support for the concept.

And here are some quick details about the technology works.

There is a delay of 200 milliseconds between the person on the other end of the phone speaking and the receiver hearing the words.

This gives the software time to “listen” and display the face on the screen, though the delay is not noticeable and does not interfere with the flow of conversation, Thomas said.

Similar technology already on the market includes video telephony, which required both telephone users to have the technology, whereas Synface required only the receiver to have the software, Thomas said.

For more information, please check the following resources:

• “Lipreadable telephones” at RNID
  


• The Synface project homepage at KTH, a Swedish university which was involved because of its speech recognition expertise
  


• A movie showing how the technology works, also at KTH (Windows Media Player format, 2 minutes and 8 seconds, 14.8 MB) and from where the two images above were extracted
  


• “Bringing down communication barriers for the hard of hearing” from IST Results, a service from the European Commission
  


• The Synface project fact sheet also from IST
  


• “Animated face helps deaf with phone chat,” published by New Scientist on August 2, 2004
  

Sources: Julie Clothier for CNN, March 17, 2005; and various websites

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A friend of mine who worked for free to help senior citizens to use computers once told me that the biggest hurdle was not technical — people can learn during all their lives — but physical. Many old people have trembling hands which prevent them to use a mouse to point and click on a small icon on a computer screen or a link on a browser page. Now, according to this article from ExtremeTech, IBM has unveiled a mouse adapter which treats these tremors as “noise” by filtering out the unintentional movements of the hand caused by a tremor. This new mouse will also help the ten million people which are affected by this genetic disorder every year, and who aren’t necessarily old. This adapter will be sold for about $100. Read more…

Let’s start with some pictures.

Here is how it works.

The new mouse treats the hand tremors as noise, and uses algorithms based on image-stabilization systems used in digital cameras.

[As you can see on the above pictures,] the mouse includes a physical dial to control the sensitivity of the mouse, as well as how quickly the user needs to double-click. Normally, these functions are handled by software controls — which require a mouse to adjust.

As I wrote above, this inability to precisely use a computer mouse doesn’t affect only the elderly.

Although tremors are usually associated with the elderly, a type of tremor called Essential Tremor is actually a genetic disorder that affects 10 million people per year, according to the International Essential Tremor Foundation (IETF).

This mouse adapter will be distributed by Montrose Secam, a British electronics company. You can buy it now for £67.50, 119.00 euros or $107.00, depending on where you live.

For more information, you can read these two articles from the Mercury News, “Algorithm box smoothes hand tremors on mouse,” and from the San Francisco Chronicle, “Helping hand for those with shaky hands.”

Finally, you might want to read this IBM press release, “Mouse adapter gives computer access to millions of hand tremor sufferers,” which offers additional details and links.

Sources: ExtremeTech Staff, March 14, 2005; Therese Poletti, Mercury News, March 14, 2005; Benjamin Pimentel, San Francisco Chronicle, March 14, 2005; and various websites

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