Synopsis: Domenii:

#Scientists develop process to make inexpensive synthetic gas Synthetic gas would be much better for the environment.

We are still massively dependent on fossil fuels even though they are limited a resource. But, a team of scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago have figured out#a way to make synthetic gas inexpensively,

using carbon dioxide and carbon nanofibers.####The first step in the process of creating synthetic gas requires the conversion of carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide.

Many scientists have attempted this before, but previous experiments always required silver, along with an ionic liquid (like a salt solution), to trigger the reaction.

The use of silver is obviously too expensive to make synthetic gas a feasible option for commercial use,

so the scientists looked for another way to make it work. The new solution is called a##co-catalyst##system.

Researchers replaced the silver with carbon nanofibers, and paired those with nitrogen to convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide.

Not only did this work beautifully but it also surprised the scientists when they discovered that this new system worked even more efficiently than silver,

##showing substantial synergistic effects.####The scientists believe that using super-thin#graphene sheets could make the process even more efficient, making synthetic gas less of a concept and more of a reality.

This could even mean paying less at the pump than you are now for something that s much better for the environment.

Although this is just the first step in creating synthetic gas, it is a big one, and another leap forward in reducing our dependence on oil.

It s also certainly less smelly than powering our vehicles with#poop. Via Dvice Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat o

#Cyber Gym: Israeli hacking school that trains corporate cyber warriors Trainees work in front of their computers at the##Cyber Gym##center.

Israel s new state-of-the-art##Cyber Gym##is where IT and infrastructure company employees train to defend against cyber attacks.

The facility is a series of small buildings in the shadow of the looming Orot Rabin power station on Israel s northern coastline.

It was inaugurated this month by the Israel Electric Corp (IEC), which has experienced its fair share of cyber attacks.##

###Israel, we believe, is attacked the most country, ##Cyber Gym director Ofir Hason said.####And as the most-attacked civilian company in Israel,

this gives us the unique capabilities to train other companies around the world##to defend against system hacking.

IEC itself is subjected to some 10,000 attacks per hour, CEO Eli Glickman said, and the Cyber Gym s instructors are versed well in the art of cyber warfare.##

##We re a group of professionals from the army, security services and (straight) from university,##said an instructor who called himself##Mister

##and refused to show his face on camera. Mister launches simulated attacks against the computer systems of the trainees, who sit in an adjacent building.##

##It s a playground to simulate real cyber attacks, ##he said while seated in the##attack room##a computer nerd s paradise,

decorated with Star wars and Pac-Man murals and lines of code running off wall-mounted screens that show the hacking taking place live.

But the work is serious Cyber Gym s launch was attended by members of Israel s intelligence community

and is designed to put trainees under as much pressure as possible. Trainees mostly IT and systems workers from energy and infrastructure companies sit in the##defence room##experiencing the hacks in real time

and their progress is scrutinised by another instructor, who refers to himself only as##A##.Each attack is different,

so there s no way for the defence teams to cheat. There s no set scenario or scripted attack;

they re performed in a different way, live by the hackers next door, ##he said.####If the hackers succeed,

the lights go off and the system shuts down, ##he says, in what is a simulation of just one potential result of a successful attack.

Plunging the room into darkness is one of a number of ways the centre shows the practical outcome of a cyber attack,

when the fight is conducted in the ether.####An attack could end with damage to equipment,

##In the cyber arena, when you fail to protect your system, the influence could be physical damage to your system.##

Last month, the armed forces chief of staff painted a grim picture of a future war in which the Jewish state comes under simultaneous attack both on the ground and in cyber space.##

##It is possible that there will be a cyber attack on a site supplying the daily needs of Israeli citizens;

or the banks would be paralysed, ##Lieutenant general Benny Gantz told a security conference in October. Around the same time, the Israeli security services reportedly thwarted a cyber attack

and an attempt at industrial espionage that originated in China. And in June, Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused arch-enemy Iran of stepping up cyber attacks against Israel,

But Cyber Gym and IEC executives were tightlipped about where most of the attacks against their systems come from.

Energy Minister Silvan Shalom, who attended Cyber Gym s inauguration, was equally enigmatic.####We can t give you any specific details,

and fruit trees laden with unpicked oranges, on the front lines of a new battlefield. Asked whether Israel was concerned more about a physical or a virtual attack,

##I think the future battle will be in cyber space.####Via News. com. au Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat r

#RF Safe-Stop can shut down a vehicle s engine by blasting radio waves Will high-speed car chases become a thing of the past?

A company in the U k. has developed a prototype that could stop cars in their tracks by blasting electromagnetic waves.##

##E2v s#RF Safe-Stop#can stall the engine of a vehicle by confusing its electronic systems with radio frequency.

The technology has piqued the interest of the military and police, reports the#BBC. In demonstrations seen by the BBC, a car drove towards the device at about 15mph (24km/h). As the vehicle entered the range of the RF Safe-Stop,

its dashboard warning lights and dials behaved erratically, the engine stopped, and the car rolled gently to a halt.

Digital audio and video recording devices in the vehicle were affected also. There are concerns about the technology s effects on electronic braking and steering systems

but EV2 says the risks are low. Because RF Safe-Stop works on electronic systems, it can also be effective on boats.

However, it s likely useless against older cars. Photo credit: Tony s Blasphemous Bologna Via Fast Company Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati swfobject. embedswf (http://www. youtube. com/v/yr2pwblcydc&

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#UPS researching drones to compete with Amazon Prime Air UPS researching delivery drones. Amazon made headlines

when it announced it was working on small drones that could deliver customers packages in half an hour or less someday.

But the e-commerce giant isn t the only company researching how to harness the potential of small unmanned aircraft:

the#world s largest parcel service, UPS, has been experimenting with its own version of flying parcel carriers.#

and evaluating different approaches to drone delivery. Asked for a comment, a company spokesman said that,

##The commercial use of drones is an interesting technology and we ll continue to evaluate it.

##In some ways, say industry experts, this is no surprise.####I would be shocked if a company like UPS wasn t considering this,

a law professor specializing in drones and robotics.####If you want to compete in logistics and delivery,

drones and unmanned robots have to be part of the conversation about where things are headed.####So far UPS has kept quiet about its plans,

perhaps because any drone delivery project is years away from being legal and operational. For Jeff Bezos, on the other hand##who admitted that his#drone fleet probably won t be available for some time##the news was timed perfectly to hit on Cyber Monday, driving tons of free publicity to Amazon on the biggest online shopping day of the year.

UPS has a number of different ways it might utilize drones. It could offer something similar to Amazon s Prime Air,

or it might use them to help move packages around its own warehouses. Calo was skeptical of the video offered up by Amazon

where a drone drops off a package in a family s suburban driveway.####I think from both a tech

and a policy perspective, delivering to consumers in residential areas is going to be tough thing to accomplish any time soon,

##says Calo.####But a company like UPS could use drones to bring packages quickly and cheaply from a major airport or city to pick-up centers in more remote locations, speeding up delivery for a lot of customers.##

##Others in the industry are more bullish on how quickly a drone delivery service could be up and running.

According to Colin Guinn, the North american CEO for the drone manufacturer DJI,##A company like Amazon or UPS could have a safe, operational fleet in 18-24 months,##he tellsthe Verge.##

##What we need in terms of tech is improved object detection and avoidance, because GPS coordinates alone won t cut it

if you got a car or some kids in the driveway.####Fedex founder Fred Smith has spoken repeatedly about his desire to#move to a fleet of unmanned aircraft,

something he believes could generate major cost savings. The impediment so far has been regulators.####We have all this stuff working in the lab right now,

#When algorithms grow accustomed to your face Face-reading technology raises many questions about privacy and surveillance.

Now, computer software is using frame-by-frame video analysis to read subtle muscular changes that flash across our faces in milliseconds, signaling emotions like happiness, sadness and disgust.##

##With face-reading software, a computer s webcam might spot the confused expression of an online student

Or computer-based games with built-in cameras could register how people are reacting to each move in the game

Now computers can be programmed to make those distinctions, too. Companies in this field include#Affectiva, based in Waltham, Mass.,

and#Emotient, based in San diego. Affectiva used webcams over two and a half years to accumulate

These recordings served as a database to create the company s face-reading software, which it will offer to mobile software developers starting in Mid-january.

The company strongly believes that people should give their consent to be filmed, and it will approve

and control all of the apps that emerge from its algorithms, Dr. Kaliouby said. Face-reading technology may one day be paired with programs that have complementary ways of recognizing emotion,

#such as software that analyzes people s voices, said#Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster. If computers reach the point where they can combine facial coding,

voice sensing, gesture tracking and gaze tracking, he said, a less stilted way of interacting with machines will ensue.

And Affectiva is aware that its face-reading software could stir privacy concerns. But Dr. Kaliouby said that none of the coming apps using its software could record video of people s faces.##

##The software uses its algorithms to read your expressions, ##she said, ##but it doesn t store the frames.##

##So far, the company s algorithms have been used mainly to monitor people s expressions as a way to test ads, movie trailers and television shows in advance.

It is much cheaper to use a program to analyze faces than to hire people who have been trained in face-reading.

Affectiva s clients include Unilever, Mars and Coca-cola. The advertising research agency Millward Brown#says it has used Affectiva s technology to test about 3, 000 ads for clients.

Face-reading software is unlikely to infer precise emotions 100 percent of the time, said Tadas Baltrusaitis,

a Ph d. candidate at the University of Cambridge#who has written papers#on the automatic analysis of facial expressions.

The algorithms have improved, but##they are not perfect, and probably never will be said,##he. Apps that can respond to facial cues may find wide use in education

gaming, medicine and advertising, said#Winslow Burleson, an assistant professor of human computer interaction at Arizona State university.####Once we can package this facial analysis in small devices

and connect to the cloud, ##he said, ##we can provide justin-time information that will help individuals, moment to moment throughout their lives.##

##People with autism, who can have a hard time reading facial expressions, may be among the beneficiaries, Dr. Burleson said.

By wearing Google glass or other Internet-connected goggles with cameras, they could get clues to the reactions of the people with

whom they were talking##clues that could come via an earpiece as the program translates facial expressions.

as long as people agreed in advance to have webcams watch and analyze the emotions reflected in their faces.##

#Powerup 3. 0 A paper airplane controlled by your smartphone Powerup 3. 0 Scientists have spent so much time making amazing airplanes,

for all that great work, there s been surprisingly little work in the creation of better paper airplanes.

##or##total lack of control over its flight path##then this innovation is for you. Basically, Powerup 3. 0 allows you to control a paper airplane with your smartphone.

Exactly what we ve all been waiting for ever since the first man got bored in class

Here s how it works: take a piece of construction paper and make the paper airplane of your choice.

slide the carbon fiber frame thought the paper s cleave and attach the crash-proof bumper/battery pack to the front.

That front piece also has Bluetooth capabilities, so turn on your iphone and go nuts controlling your paper airplane.

The battery charges via mini USB and lasts for 10 minutes of continuous flight. The app itself gives you a pilot s view, complete with a range indicator, a thrust level indicator,

and a magnetic compass. To ascend or descend the plane use the throttle level. To turn it,

tilt your iphone in the direction you d like the paper plane to head. Real talk for a moment:

It s somewhat depressing that we re now controlling our paper airplanes with iphones. I feel like

I m supposed to think that, and in some dark recess of my tech-loving heart, I do.

But mostly? I can t freaking wait to play with this thing, so you people better pledge enough to keep this off the ground.

Spiderfab 3-D robotic printer Since the 1970##s, space-based solar power has been a futuristic fantasy

but the advent of 21st#century 3-D printing may bring it a step closer to reality.

Video)##The overall vision is to create a satellite chrysalis with compact, durable software DNA assembly instructions,

and the ability to fabricate space system components on-orbit instead of building them on the ground,

Inc. TUI has won two rounds of funding for its Spiderfab 3-D robotic printer from the#NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts#(NIAC) program.

##3-D printing and robotic construction of components on-orbit would allow a smaller, less expensive launch rocket that will##improve performance per cost by orders of magnitude,

Once#in space, TUI s Trusselator, the first step in the Spiderfab architecture, would use 3-D printing techniques

It would##enable construction of large support structures for systems such as multi-hundred-kilowatt solar arrays, large solar sails,

and football-field sized antennas.####For#space-based solar power (SBSP), there would be two basic steps,

First, the 3-D printer would build a carbon fiber truss structure that would act as a frame for the system.

But a just-completed design analysis for a 300-kilowatt orbital solar array verified that Spiderfab can provide the projected tenfold decrease in stowed volume

TUI also developed a lab version of the device that would fabricate the truss structure in that analysis.##Geostationary solar could produce baseload electricity for 99 percent of the hours of the year,

##explained NASA Apollo 11 lunar landing vehicle manager Hubert Davis, a member of#the Solar High Study Group#of nine former NASA and Apollo program scientists and retired

Terrestrial solar arrays have achieved grid parity Davis said, but without storage they cannot provide the baseload power utilities need.

And#the cost of storage#to provide that service will##double or triple our electricity rates.##

##The Solar High Group is working##to put together a consortium of government and industry, ##Davis said.

The first step would be funding to update the Boeing/North american Aviation studies done in the 1970s.

They looked at technology feasibility, environmental impact, land use, manpower needs, energy payback, and estimated costs and confirmed the concept was##technically feasible with no new science

With the reductions in volume and mass promised by 3-D printing, those launch costs could be reduced significantly,

The microwave transmission that would deliver SBSP s electricity from an orbiting antenna to terrestrial rectennas would be##2 million times the power of that produced by the microwave oven.##

##But the maximum radio frequency intensity of the transmission##is only one-fourth that of sunlight,##according to former NASA wireless power transmission engineer Richard Dickinson.

And the transmitter would be immediately shut down if there was any interruption at the earth station.##

and tests have demonstrated that even the sensitive honeybee is unaffected, ##Davis said. The two##real reasons##nobody has moved ahead with SBSP,

##and Lobbyists who protect#other energy sources subsidies#who would be##out of their jobs###The term 3-D printing has become a catch-all for a number of purposes

Boeing and GE are developing the capability to 3-D print aircraft components, he said,

##But##on-orbit fabrication with Spiderfab,##a TUI presentation#promises,##will enable NASA to accomplish ten times more science per dollar.##

##Via Green Tech Media Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati swfobject. embedswf (http://www. youtube. com/v/3pywuyptboc&

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#Volocopter VC200 18-rotor electric helicopter takes flight Volocopter VC200 Greener transportation options have become a priority in the modern world.

Greener and more efficient vehicles of all types are eventually becoming the standard. Even helicopters are becoming greener.

One German company, E-volo, designed several electric helicopters, and one of its models, the Volocopter VC200, recently passed its first flight tests.

Video)##E-volo s#vehicle may look bizarre, but the concept is actually brilliant. It has 18 rotors,

along with 18 zero-emission motors powered by six battery packs. Its frame is created from carbon fiber to keep the aircraft lightweight and It seats two people.

The most clever aspect of the VC200, however, is that it maneuvers by using its multiple propellers

and changing the thrust of its motors, similar to that of a quadcopter. This makes the Volocopter VC200 easy to pilot.

In case of emergencies, though, the VC200 comes equipped with a parachute. Recently a prototype of the VC200 took to the skies for its first series of test flights.

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#Computer analyzes images to teach itself common sense At Carnegie mellon University computers are running a program that analyze images to learn common sense.

A computer program analyzes images 24 hours a day to try to learn common sense.##The aim is to see

if computers can learn, in the same way a human would, what links images, to help them better understand the visual world.##

##The Never Ending Image Learner (NEIL) program is being run at Carnegie mellon University in the United states. The work is being funded by the US Department of defense s Office of Naval Research and Google.

Since July, the#NEIL program#has looked at three million images. As a result it has managed to identify 1, 500 objects in half a million images and 1, 200 scenes in hundreds of thousands of images as well as making 2, 500 associations.

Computer programs can already identify and label objects using computer vision, which models what humans can see using hardware and software,

but the researchers hope that NEIL can bring extra analysis to the data.####Images are the best way to learn visual properties,

##said Abhinav Gupta, assistant research professor in Carnegie mellon s Robotics Institute.####They also include a lot of common sense information about the world.

People learn this by themselves and, with NEIL, we hope that computers will do so as well.##

##Examples of the links that NEIL has made include the facts that cars are found on roads

and that ducks can resemble geese. The program can also make mistakes, say the research team.

It may think that the search term##pink##relates to the pop star rather than the color

humans will need still to be part of the program s learning process, according to Abhinav Shrivastava, a Phd student working on the project.##

##People don t always know how or what to teach computers, ##he said.####But humans are good at telling computers

when they are wrong.####Another reason for NEIL to run is to create the world s largest visual knowledge database where objects, scenes, actions,

attributes and contextual relationships can be labelled and catalogued.####What we have learned in the last five to 10 years of computer vision research is that the more data you have,

the better computer vision becomes, ##Mr Gupta said. The program requires a vast amount of computer power to operate

and is being run on two clusters of computers that include 200 processing cores. The team plans to let NEIL run indefinitely.

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#Uber teams with GM and Toyota to help 100k drivers buy cars to get more Ubers on the road The expansion means hundreds of thousands more cars must come onto the Uber system.

To overcome its growing pains, Uber has come up with a brilliant new strategy. Uber is launching a pilot program to finance new cars.

The company is partnering with GM, Toyota, and financial institutions to offer 100,000 driversreduced monthly car payments, in an effort get more Uber drivers on the road.##

##CEO Travis Kalanick said in a blog post#that Uber is experiencing increased demand in existing markets,

as well as rapidly entering new ones. Its global growth is more than 20%per month in each of the last two months

and many cities are generating more than $100 million a year.####This kind of expansion means hundreds of thousands more cars must come onto the Uber system,

##he wrote.####Uber partner-drivers have a robust, reliable cash flow through the Uber platform every fully utilized car on the Uber system grosses over $100, 000/year.#

#That kind of cash flow lowers the risk of financing drivers and means better access to cheaper credit than otherwise available on the open market.##

##Uber started out as an on-demand service for black town cars and has taken the cab industry by storm.

Users can now hail actual taxis, black cars, lower cost Uberx drivers in regular cars,

or SUVS in the app. The company s success inspired a wave of startups such as Lyft, Sidecar, Instacab,

and Hailo looking to improve the experience of getting from point A to point B in urban areas.

The success of these companies is predicated on the availability of cars. The whole point is on-demand convenience,

and not having enough cars on the roads is a fast way to lose customers and curb growth.

Kalanick is known for being an aggressive and driven entrepreneur#who won t let anything get in the way of Uber s growth,

whether its competitors, regulatory battles, or a shortage of drivers. Uber raised a whopping $285 million in August 2013#to fuel its international expansion

and is now in 60 cities around the world. As mentioned above, Uber is also experiencing growth in existing markets##Kalanick said the San francisco business is growing at a##healthy double-digit month-over-month, clip.##

##But this kind of growth can come at a price.##Users began complaining#that the driver acceptance times were getting longer,

surge pricing was more frequent, and the service was poorer. Kalanick responded by saying that there are##significantly complex technology

and business model fixes to bring the Uber thunder.#####This means that we have to continue to get massive amounts of drivers on board as quickly as possible,

##Helping people buy cars is a smart way to get more Uberx drivers. Uber drivers can make good money

and by lowering the upfront cost of owning a car, Kalanick creates a larger pool of drivers to draw from.##

##This program is the first in a series of steps that will help Uber scale in existing and new cities,

##By streamlining capital investments for existing and would-be drivers, this program also brings the Uber opportunity of turnkey entrepreneurship within reach to even more drivers across the country.##

#How cars of the future will make better use of data they collect every time you drive The interior of the Tesla Model S offers a glimpse of the data-rich driving environments of tomorrow.

Cars will be big data collectors in the future. They will continuously monitoring the operation and function of the many moving parts of the vehicle and hopefully giving you a warning well in advance of pending failure.##

##In its new report,##Emerging Technologies: Big data in the Connected car,##researchers at#IHS Automotive#forecasts there will be 152 million actively connected cars on roads globally by 2020,

generating some 11.1 petabytes of data on an annual basis. That s about 30 terabytes a day.

What will be in that data? Four key items, said Mark Boyadjis, senior analyst of infotainment and Human-Machine Interface at IHS Automotive:

diagnostics, location, user experience (UX)/ feature tracking, and adaptive driver assistance systems (autonomy). He said all four of these areas will drive sales, value-added services,

and customer experience in the sector for years to Come to some degree, there already are connected cars on the road.

They track things like gas consumption, how many miles are left to be driven on the current tank of gas, tire pressure,

and radio and entertainment usage. Over the next few years, auto makers and suppliers will collect this datain a variety of ways:

for example, through a cell phone built into the car, Bluetooth transmissions to other devices, or when the car goes in for service.

Boyadjis#admits, ##no one knows what to do with the information at this point, ##but the eventual goal is to learn user habits to improve the interfaces of the car##for example,

how do they use the radio?####and to monitor auto systems and catch failures well in advance.

For instance, right now, we have maintenance intervals of every 5, 000 miles or so. We take the car in to a shop for an oil change

and some other checks while it s there and then get the bad news. Or the car just up and dies on us.

Big data sensors in cars should help eliminate any surprises.####The cr#me de la cr#me is making an autonomous car.

In the era of big data and the car, maintenance intervals don t exist any more because it s based on the condition of the car.

Right now we have diagnostic information but as they collect more and more info, that will become prognostics.

Will be we doing preventive maintenance on automobiles instead of repairs, ##said Boyadjis. There is a concern over privacy, however.

Car rental companies have used GPS SYSTEMS in their cars to#give customers a ticket #even though the police never caught them.

Boyadjis said the privacy debate is ongoing but feels the data belongs to car owners,

who have the choice of opting into any data research and gathering.####It s very important for auto makers to be transparent.

Transparency will lead to openness of information. I would say the end user owns all the data.

But, the automaker also can claim rights to anonymized data. If you got a system collecting bits of data where they wipe info that is traceable,

there s a lot of discussion that the auto maker owns that information, ##he said. All of these details need to be defined

and worked out. The first challenge, he said, is finding critical mass. Right now there are just too few vehicles collecting data

and most tend to be higher-end cars.####It s a challenge of finding a business model

and getting it on the market,##said Boyadjis. Photo credit: BBC Via Cite World Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat l

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