#Apple is preparing Force Touch and haptic feedback technology for the next iphones Apple is currently working on building orce Touchtechnology and haptic feedback into the screens of its new iphones,
a source close to the company said. The new features are very likely to show up in the next iphone,
probably be called the iphone 6s, which will debut this fall. Force Touch debuted on the Apple Watch,
where it is used to change the watch face. When you press harder on the screen,
it senses the increased pressure by measuring the increased surface area occupied by the finger. The device then responds with haptic feedback a tap that gives you the illusion youe pressed down on a physical button.
It is built already into the trackpads of Apple new Macbooks and many people expect it to move to a number of other Apple devices,
including the iphone. On the larger screen of a phone, it could open up all kinds of possibilities.
For instance, you may be able to Force Touch on any word on the screen to bring up a definition.
Or you may be able to Force Touch on the screen to change the backdrop image or animation on the home screen.
The end result could be the reduction of clutter in ios. A function that was activated once by a button might
instead be activated by a Force Touch, so the button is needed no longer. The source said that Apple will also couple the Force Touch feature with haptic feedback engine that might verify to the user that the for gesture has activated a feature.
The aptic Feedbackengine, as Apple brands it, sits just below the touchscreen and causes the device to vibrate
in order to alert you to incoming messages or other notifications. Venturebeat information dovetails with numerous earlier rumors that Force Touch would be part of the new phones.
Patently Apple reports that Foxconn, the Chinese company that assembles the iphone, expects its touchscreen subsidiary to see handset pressure sensor shipments increase by 4. 8 times this year.
A spike that big could be from advance orders from Apple for the new iphone
#The Backed Pack: Moky hides a trackpad in the surface of a keyboard The keyboard is a popular accessory for mobile devices
because it often much easier to type with than the tiny one featured on a smartphone or tablet.
But they take up a fair amount of space, and their footprints are made even larger by the trackpads that they sometimes bring along with them.
Moky is a twist on the typical mobile keyboard, featuring a large, invisible touchpad that controlled by the user gestures.
An infrared laser sensor module provides a thin optical surface on the keyboard. The device communicates wirelessly with whatever mobile device is used with it via Bluetooth Low energy 4. 0 technology.
The keyboard cover meanwhile, doubles as a portable device stand. Moky costs $149 and will ship in October.
Its maker is hoping to raise $30, 000 by July 9. The core technology may have broader potential.
Moky seems like a neat accessory for compatible mobile devices, but that means only Android and Windows for now, according to the Indiegogo campaign.
Only the keyboard itself is supported on ios devices as Apple doesn support mice or trackpads in that operating system.
Synaptics, for one, recently has shown off Smartbar technology that turns a keyboard space bar into a pointing device complement
and Apple is rumored also to be working on similar technology, perhaps for the Mac. From the campaign video, it not easy to tell just how easy it is to use Moky,
but the ability to conserve the space taken up by a trackpad would surely have allure for some users e
#El Ni#o Finally Arrives May Lead to Average Rainfall In July 2014, climatologists had predicted a 70 percent chance of a weak to moderate El niño in last August
along with an 80 percent chance of its occurrence by November. The predictions turned out to be wrong last year but last month the National oceanic and atmospheric administration Climate Prediction Center (CPC) reported a weak El niño condition.
Sea surface temperature anomalies across the western and central equatorial Pacific is the primary driver of El niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO.
However, prior to the declaration of weak, moderate or strong El niño, the atmosphere must display signs of its response to the sea surface temperatures anomalies.
According to Jan Null, a former National Weather Service lead forecaster and PG&E meteorologist and an expert on El niños and La niñas and their relationship to California weather
In fact, climate models suggest that El niño conditions may continue into next winter. Historical evidences indicate that the prediction of the ENSO has always been very difficult.
#Researchers Develop Super-Hydrophobic Metal Surfaces Using Lasers Researchers have turned metal surfaces water repellent using femtosecond laser pulses.
Researchers from the University of Rochester have used femtosecond laser pulses to turn metals waterproof or super-hydrophobic.
Chunlei Guo, a physicist at the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester and the lead author of the study,
said, his is the first time that a multifunctional metal surface is created by lasers that is super-hydrophobic (water repelling),
The potential applications for anti-icing surfaces involve protection of aerofoils, protection of aerofoils, pipes of air conditioners and refrigerators, radar or telecommunication antennas,
titanium and brass to short bursts of lasers. These short burst lasted for only millionth of a billionth of a second.
which densely populated, lumpy nanostructures were formed. The optical and wetting properties of the surfaces of the three metals were altered by these nanostructures.
The nanostructures created by the lasers are intrinsic to the metal surface. According to the researchers, properties they provide to the metal will not deteriorate.
The super-hydrophobic properties of the laser-patterned metals are similar to the famous nonstick coating.
The project was financed by The Bill & Melissa Gates Foundation and Air force Office of Scientific research and is published in the Journal of Applied Physics y
#Superabsorbent Polymer Blows Up Brain Samples To Give a Better View Researchers have come up with an inexpensive technique for enlarging brain samples
and studying them more closely. Researchers from the Massachusetts institute of technology (MIT) have developed a new method that expands brain tissue
so that nanoscale structures can be seen with an ordinary light microscope. This new technique uses commonly available chemicals to help experts increase the size of tissue samples effortlessly.
By doing this the researchers are left with high resolution images. The new technique is called xpansion Microscopy Interestingly,
it uses the same technology that makes diapers extremely absorbent. The researchers added that the new method is not only inexpensive
Ed Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, and the lead author of the study,
said, nstead of acquiring a new microscope to take images with nanoscale resolution, you can take the images on a regular microscope.
They want to find more substances that can expand the specimens even more. ne thing we want to do is figure out how to expand the polymers even more.
Another priority for us is to build stronger polymers, or find a way of reinforcing them in the expanded state,
In 2010 Bachelet was criticized widely for her response to an earthquake. The emergency services agency known as the Onemi was reorganized then
and is now coordinated by a former army general, Ricardo Toro, who for years managed international humanitarian operations in Haiti.
Considered one of Latin america most active volcanoes, Villarica has erupted on average once every 10 years. A major eruption in 1971 created a cloud of poisonous gases that killed approximately a dozen people.
#Princeton Researchers Develop Rice Sized Laser Princeton university researchers have built a rice sized laser powered by single electrons tunneling through artificial atoms known as quantum dots.
Quantum dots are nanocrystals, which are made of semiconductor materials that are small enough to exhibit quantum mechanical properties.
Jacob Taylor, an adjunct assistant professor at the Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland-National Institute of Standards and Technology and one of the researchers, said,
he device uses about one-billionth of the power needed to run a hair dryer and represents a major step in efforts to build quantum computing systems.
I consider this to be a really important result for our long-term goal which is entanglement between quantum bits in semiconductor-based devices.
However, the researchers weren trying to build a mini-maser. A maser is a device that produces coherent electromagnetic waves through amplification by stimulated emission.
icrowave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation The researchers wanted to explore the use of double quantum dots,
Researchers stated that the goal was to get to double quantum dots to communicate with each other. They used extremely thin nanowires that were made of indium arsenide to fabricate the quantum dots.
The placed the qubits 6 mm apart in a cavity that was made from niobium at a temperature near absolute zero(-459 degrees Fahrenheit.
which emitted photons in the microwave region of the light spectrum. The photons bounced off mirrors on either side of the cavity,
creating a beam of microwave light. e designed dots to emit photons when single electrons jump from a higher to a lower energy level across the double dot.
These double quantum dots are zero-dimensional as far as the electrons are concerned they are trapped in all three spatial dimensions
explained Jason Petta, an associate professor of physics at Princeton university and leader of the study. The findings were published in the Science journal e
while investigating the use of semiconductor material fragments as components for quantum computing. The study was started to explore the quantum dots,
and not lasers. Quantum dots act like single atoms, as components for quantum computers. The maser is a tiny,
rice grain sized laser that is powered by a single electron from the artificial atoms called quantum dots.
Jason Petta an associate professor of physics at Princeton and the lead author of the study,
said, t is basically as small as you can go with these single-electron devices. The discovery will boost the ongoing efforts of scientists across the world to use semiconductor materials to build quantum computing systems. consider this to be a really important result for our long-term goal,
which is entanglement between quantum bits in semiconductor-based devices, said Jacob Taylor, an adjunct assistant professor at the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland-National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The researcher added that they were interested initially in exploring the use of quantum dots together. That means two quantum dots joined together as quantum bits or qubits.
Qubits are the basic unit of information in quantum computing. e designed dots to emit photons
when single electrons jump from a higher to a lower energy level across the double dot.
It is like a line of people crossing a wide stream by leaping onto a rock so small that it can only hold one person.
These double quantum dots are zero-dimensional as far as the electrons are concerned they are trapped in all three spatial dimensions,
A single electron trapped in a semiconductor nanostructure can form the most basic of building blocks for a quantum computer.
#Nvidia's Tegra X1 Powers Smart cars At the Consumer electronics Show (CES) last week, Nvidia released demos of two computing platforms, Drive CX and Drive PX, for cars.
These computing platforms are part of the venture called Nvidia Drive and are powered by the Tegra X1 mobile chip.
Nvidia Drive PX is for the actual driving side of the smart car equation, while Drive CX deals with digital systems on the dashboard and elsewhere in the vehicle.
Drive PX is an uto-pilotsystem, which aids in assisted parking and auto-valet feature.
It is an image processing platform and it will have the capability to work with inputs from up to 12 cameras.
All these cameras will work in tandem and provide improved accuracy in the autopilot function of the car.
Nvidia also released a recording of a demo drive of a car with Drive PX that was able to find a space in a parking garage traveling at a speed of 8 kmph.
Drive PX can also differentiate between vehicles and can also identify an ambulance from a van.
The famous graphics card manufacturer believes that this sort of situational awareness will help prevent accidents. Meanwhile Drive CX has been described as the digital cockpit computer,
and it will be the lifeline of a car infotainment system. It will facilitate digital instrument clusters
navigation, in-car entertainment and also monitor the driver. Using surround vision, it will provide the drivers a 360 degree view of the car in real time.
The digital smart mirrors will then be devoid of problems like blind spots. Drive CX will also be the lifeline of a car infotainment system.
It will be able to power four full-HD screens simultaneously or even two 4k screens.
Drive CX will also be able to recognize speech and faces of it users. Nvidia senior manager for CUDA Libraries and Algorithms Jonathan Cohen, said,
ecause this is a neural network, wee shown it lots of examples of these 40 mile-per-hour limited speed signs.
Somehow it has learned to recognize the speed sign even though it hasn seen these signs before. This is the power of neural networks and the power of deep learning. p
#Gogoro's Electric scooter Has Swappable Batteries Taiwanese company, Gogoro has come up with a smart electric scooter that runs on swappable electric batteries.
The new scooter is a state of the art vehicle as well as environment friendly, and was unveiled at the International Consumer electronics Show (CES) 2015.
The best quality about Gogoro electric scooter is that, it doesn need to be plugged into an electric source
in order to be charged, like with most electric devices. Instead, this electric scooter functions on batteries, which can easily be changed
when they are drained of power. The scooter was revealed first in San fransisco by Horace Luke CEO of Gogoro.
Luke is respected widely as a designer, and has worked with HTC, Microsoft, Nike, etc. Horace said,
ur products and business model will impact a variety of consumer areas to create a metropolitan ecosystem with better connectivity, easier access to energy,
and a more enjoyable urban living experience. The Gogoro electric scooter HAS LED headlights and taillights, which are programmable.
It also has Bluetooth connection. It can be connected through a smartphone app, through which a user can change settings on the scooter.
Like every modern machine the key is wireless. The scooter can cover about 60 miles on one battery with a Panasonic cell.
The Gogoro electric scooter can reach 50 km h in 4. 2 seconds. The top speed is 100 km h,
which can be compared to the popular Vespa scooter. The new Gogoro electric scooter is powered by the Gogoro G1 motor mounted on the Gogoro Aeroframe.
The scooter features 30 onboard sensors, applications for Android and ios, cloud connectivity. The Gogoro electric scooter does need not to be plugged in for charging it.
Instead, when the power runs low, the user can visit special stores that will be placed strategically around the city.
Gogoro calls these spots Gostations, where the drivers can change the old battery with a new one, in just a few moments.
The batteries include 25 sensors a NFC technology, and a 256-bit security. Gogoro designed the battery in collaboration with Panasonic
and it an 18650-size automotive grade lithium ion cell. el go in and deploy vending machines,
and our job will be to make sure there is always a battery ready. One station per mile is
what wee looking for, added Horace. The company has raised already $150 million to design and manufacture the smartscooter.
They believe that they will revolutionize the world of electric vehicles e
#Nvidia Unveils Tegrax1 Soc Drive CX And Drive PX Nvidia has unveiled a chip that can pump out the quality of a high gaming console on your smartphones.
Additionally, the famous graphics card manufacturer also released demos of two computing platforms, Drive CX and Drive PX, for cars.
The smartphone chip, Nvidia Tegra X1 Soc has an 8-core 64-bit CPU and a 256ore Maxwell-based GPU.
Nvidia claims that it is the first mobile chip that will provide a teraflop of processing power.
They also added that it is equivalent to the fastest supercomputer in the world in 2000.
The Tegra X1 is also much more efficient than the Tegra K1. Nvidia showed a demo of the Unreal Engine Elemental sequence to display the power and efficiency of the Tegra X1.
Jen-Hsun Huang, cofounder of Nvidia, said, ast year, when next generation game consoles were released,
they consumed 100 watts when running Unreal Engine Elemental demo. Now we can do it on Tegra X1 at 10 watts.
Nvidia believes that the first beneficiaries of the Soc will be cars. The Nvidia Drive CX is based on a single Tegra X1 platform
whereas the Driver PX is based on the dual Tegra X1s. Nvidia Drive CX will act as the digital cockpit computer,
and it will be the lifeline of a car infotainment system. It will also be able to power four full-HD screens simultaneously or even two 4k screens.
Drive CX will also be able to recognize speech and faces of it users. Meanwhile, Drive PX is an image processing platform
and it will have the capability to work with inputs from up to 12 cameras. All these cameras will work in tandem
and provide improved accuracy in the autopilot function of the car. Nvidia also released a recording of a demo drive of a car with Drive PX that was able to find a space in a parking garage traveling at a speed of 8 km h.
With these two platforms Nvidia hopes to revolutionize the dashboard and give a boost to the concept of driverless cars s
#Unprecedented Details on Precipitation Revealed by Satellites Techniques of monitoring all the precipitation throughout the globe within a short span of time were not effective previously.
However, the scenario has changed with the launch of the final piece of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission by NASA and the Japan aerospace exploration agency.
The mission includes a constellation of at least 12 satellites which provide an unprecedented view of global precipitation across the globe in near real time.
The first map developed by these satellites was released on Thursday by NASA. The satellites capture information every 30 minutes and the map shows the ripples
and eddies of little rain and snowstorms crossing the planet on an everyday basis. Large storms racing across the Southern ocean without any land impeding them can be identified.
The map also shows rain from tropical cyclones such as Hurricane Arthur and Typhoon Rammasun. Gail Skofronick-Jackson, GPM project scientist said n India they encounter monsoons.
In other regions, there snow. GPM can measure it all. Apart from the information about light rain, GPM delivers details on the monsoon and tropical storms
which provides a great assistance. GPM data is publically obtainable and NASA has collaborated with emergency managers to find out how the close to real-time view of precipitation can be utilized to strengthen emergency management.
The data obtained from GPM can also be used for updating climate and weather models as it provides a three dimensional view of precipitation.
Skofronick-Jackson mentioned limate forecast models and climate adjust models have a quite simplistic way of representing snow
and ice and water in vertical resolution so it can aid boost these models. The U s. is encountering a rise in heavy rainfall events
and the trend is expected to continue as an outcome of climate change. With the help of GPM data, scientists can obtain a greater estimate of how these events will possibly adjust in future.
It will also help them to provide an improved forecast. In the year 2014, NASA had launched 4 Earth-monitoring missions
and earlier this month it added one more to them. This was marked as its busiest science mission launch schedule in a decade.
Deputy Director of the NASA Earth science Division stated ee genuinely hunting forward to contributions these new projects will make for science and life On earth. i
#China Blocks Google's Gmail According to Google, their Gmail service is virtually inaccessible in Mainland china.
The search giants believe that this is the latest step in a steady ousting of its service from the nation.
After months of disruptions to its service, Google Gmail seems to have finally been blocked by the country reat firewall Large number of Chinese Gmail users said that they haven been able to access their emails for the past four days.
According to Greatfire. org, a China-based freedom of speech advocacy group, e think the government is just trying to further eliminate Google presence in China
and even weaken its market overseas. Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients.
Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail. Google Transparency Report, which shows real-time traffic to Google services,
displayed a sharp decline in the traffic to Gmail from China. The company stated that there is nothing wrong on their end.
The communist government of China maintains a tight control over the nation internet. It is always quick to act against any signs of dissent or criticism of its party leadership.
The country also has the world most sophisticated internet censorship mechanism. Tech experts call it reat Firewall of China.
This year, which also marked the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations,
has seen heavy censorship of the foreign media by the Chinese authorities. Google has been facing problems in the country,
since June this year. However, its users could still access email downloads via protocols like Imap, SMTP and Pop3,
which let people communicate using Gmail on apps like the Apple iphone Mail and Microsoft Outlook.
Meanwhile, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying, said, e do not know anything about Google being blocked.
China has had consistently a welcoming and supportive attitude towards foreign investors doing legitimate business here. We will,
as always, provide an open, transparent and good environment for foreign companies in China. Tech experts have said that using VPN (Virtual Private Network) seems to be the only answer against Chinese internet censorship.
The VPN allows unhindered access to blocked sites and services
#Google's Algorithm Masters Video games Google has stated that they have developed the first computer program capable of learning a wide variety of tasks independently, in
what has been hailed as a significant step towards true artificial intelligence. According to the engineers at Google, the program (or agent as its developers call it) learnt to play 49 different retro computer games,
and came up with its own strategies for winning. They added that in the future, the same approach could be used to power self-driving cars, personal assistants in smartphones or conduct scientific research in fields from climate change to cosmology.
The research was carried out by Deepmind which is a British company that was bought by Google last year for $500 million,
whose stated aim is to build mart machines The team of engineers stated that a total of 49 classic Atari arcade games from the 1980 were utilized as part of the experiment.
These games were used because they are simple enough for an AI system to learn quickly,
but complex enough where winning was not trivial. They found that the agent performed at 75%of the level of a professional games tester or better on half of the games tested,
which ranged from side-scrolling shooters to boxing to 3d car racing. On some games such as Space Invaders, Pong and Breakout, the algorithm significantly outperformed humans,
while on others it fared far worse. The team stated that this was mostly because the algorithm has no real memory.
It is, therefore, unable to commit to long-term strategies that require planning. They also stated that with some of the games,
the agent got stuck in a rut, where it had learnt one basic way to score a few points,
but never really grasped the game overall objective. The team added that it is now trying to build in a memory component to the system
and apply it to more realistic 3d computer games. Demis Hassabis founder of Deepmind, said, his is the first significant rung of the ladder towards proving a general learning system can work.
It can work on a challenging task that even humans find difficult. It the very first baby step towards that grander goal,
but an important one. n
#Flights Cancelled Due to Volcanic eruption in Japan According to the reports of the Japan Meteorological Agency Mount Aso blasted out lava debris along with plumes of ash shot into the sky up to
a kilometer height. Mount Aso is one of the largest volcanoes of the world located about 1000 kilometers southwest of Tokyo on Kyushu Island.
Although in the late August earthquakes and seismic activities were marked the increase in the scale of eruption was expected not by the observatory y
#Mirror Created By Stanford Scientists Could Replace Air conditioning Researchers in Stanford have created a mirror, that not only reflects 97%of light,
but also radiates heat into the cold depths of the universe and which could become an alternative to air-conditioning units.
Presently in US air-conditioning in buildings accounts for 15%energy consumption of the total energy consumption of those premises.
Places like big building complexes and shopping centers use heavy amounts of electricity for their giant cooling systems.
But researchers from Stanford university, California have created a mirror that could slash that consumption. The mirror when placed on surfaces of buildings was found to create 9f cooler temperatures around it.
Currently roofs of buildings with black painted surface reach temperatures of close to 140f degree more than the ambient temperature
while aluminum roofed building surface becomes 104f hotter than the ambient temperature. Instead the mirror was found to decrease the temperature
and also reflected 97%of the light that fell on it. f you cover significant parts of the roof with this mirror,
you can see how much power it can save. You can significantly offset the electricity used for air conditioning,
said Shanhui Fan, an expert in photonics at Stanford university who led the development of the mirror. n some situations the computations say you can completely offset the air conditioning.
Various things heat up the building temperatures. Warm air comes through the windows and doors. Visible light and infrared lights pass heat through the building surfaces.
To make things cool again, engineers believe that the surfaces should have ways in which they can dump the heat they get.
and can annually save 100mwh of electricity and will be soon available for commercial use r
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