A computer algorithm then creates a stack of thin layers that a radiologist can read, much like the pages of a book.
a researcher at Intel Labs who developed the technology while a Phd student at Dartmouth. f
or I could log into my PC or provide a means of access control, he said.
Given the boom in fitness monitors and other wearable gadgets tethered wirelessly to smartphones, the technology could also allow confirmation that data streaming from the device is coming from the right person,
says Carl Gunter, a computer scientist at the University of Illinois, who was not involved with the project.
however, it may also be creating a powerful new mobile search engine that could evolve into a simpler way to find all sorts of information on the fly.
During yesterday event in Seattle, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos introduced the Fire Phone black handset that runs a modified version of Google android system and looks pretty similar
70 million of the more than 100 million things Firefly can currently recognize are products like books and video games,
says Ramneek Bhasin, general manager of mobile and vice president of product for shopping search engine Thefind. Bhasin is interested in using Firefly to expand the Thefind search capabilities.
which often exceed the cost of the panels themselves, because fewer panels are needed to generate a given amount of power.
Silevo isn the only company to produce high-efficiency solar cells. A version made by Panasonic is just as efficient,
But Silevo claims it could make its panels as cheaply as conventional ones if it can scale up from its current production capacity of 32 megawatts to the factory Musk has planned,
Microsoft s Quantum Search for The next Transistor Microsoft is making a significant investment in creating a practical version of the basic component needed to build a quantum computer,
In an interview, he told MIT Technology Review that Microsoft had kept previously its quantum effort relatively quiet
Microsoft has dedicated a quantum computing research lab, known as Station Q, on the campus of University of California,
Microsoft is not currently attempting to build a quantum computer. Rather, its research effort is aimed at developing a reliable version of the qubit, the key building block of a quantum computer.
Just like a transistor in a conventional computer, a qubit can switch between states that represent either a 1 or 0 of digital data.
That would allow a quantum computer to process data many times faster than any conventional computer.
making them impractical for anyone hoping to build a computer of any size. e believe that current approaches will said never scale
Microsoft research focuses on a type of qubit known as a topological qubit that theory suggests would encode data in a much more robust way.
around four years ago, Microsoft researchers led work to pose a series of key tests that could show
Microsoft funded several labs around the world to work on those questions, says Lee. wo years ago the results started to come in positive.
Microsoft has developed specialized tools for quantum experiments and given them to the academic community. Those tools range from cloud simulation platforms for theoretical work to new types of electronics for use in the super-cooled temperatures of quantum hardware experiments.
Meanwhile Microsoft is already looking ahead to explore what could be done with a system of topological qubits once they are built. upposing that one day we have a quantum machine:
would it be good for anything? says Lee. oday we have clear ideas in classical computing about problems we can solve
Software engineers are currently working to make Facebook apps leaner in order to make them more practical for people who have scarce bandwidth
That effort has seen already the data use of Facebook main Android app drop by 50 percent.
Sitting alone at a computer seemingly connected to an entire world but lacking any physical contact with others in a real physical space,
or Skype them. The problem is real, and as our devices grow more and more capable, we had better do something about reversing this trend.
First Emotion-Reading Apps for Kids with Autism The first mobile apps that use emotion-reading software to help kids with autism are nearing release,
Affectiva grew out of emotion-detecting research at MIT Media Lab. The company software, called Affdex, analyzes images of faces to detect features such as smiles, frowns, raised eyebrows, furrowed brows, and smirks.
whether ads are effective (see tartup Gets Computers to Read Faces, Seeks Purpose Beyond Ads.
last year, the company released the software to app writers for ios, the operating system used in iphones and ipads.
And now the first apps are said coming el Kaliouby. utistic kids have trouble reading and understanding social and emotional cues,
The advertising work helped make the software more accurate by rainingit she added. After three years analyzing faces seen on webcams,
Affectiva database now holds more than a billion facial expressions
#A Simple Plan to Impede the NSA Is Taking hold A year after revelations first emerged from former National security agency contractor Edward Snowden about mass Internet surveillance,
if it gains access to an e-mail provider servers. Even here, though, the tide may be turning:
Stephen Farrell, a computer scientist at Trinity college in Dublin and a member of the Internet Engineering Task force, the group of engineers who maintain
says the Google data shows progress. ore e-mail is being encrypted between mail servers, he says. ne would hope that a general,
#Microsoft s 3-D Audio Gives Virtual Objects a Voice Just as a new generation of virtual reality goggles for video games are about to hit the market,
researchers at Microsoft have come up with what could be the perfect accompaniment way for ordinary headphones to create a realistic illusion of sound coming from specific locations in space.
In combination with a virtual reality device like the Oculus Rift, the new system could be used to make objects
Microsoft researchers refer to the technology as 3-D audio. In a demonstration of the technology at Microsoft Silicon valley lab,
I put on a pair of wireless headphones that made nearby objects suddenly burst into life. A voice appeared to emanate from a cardboard model of a portable radio.
Software built a 3-D model of my head and shoulders and then used that model to calculate a personalized filter that made it possible to fool my auditory senses.
or software, says Ivan Tashev, the researcher at Microsoft Redmond labs working on the project with colleague David Johnston. ou can use this for virtual reality and augmented reality,
he says. To work properly, Tashev system also needs data on the position of the headphones as a person moves his head
but that isn practical outside a lab. Video game developers create spatial audio effects using average HRTFS,
his software generates an approximation of that subject HRTF that seems good enough to produce unusually accurate spatial audio. ssentially we can predict how you will hear from the way you look,
The software that does that was created by capturing accurate HRTFS for 250 people and then comparing them with 3-D scans of their heads.
Mark Billinghurst, a professor and leader of the Human Interface Lab at the University of Canterbury, New zealand, says that the approach developed by Microsoft could have a broad impact
#Military Funds Brain-Computer Interfaces to Control Feelings Researcher Jose Carmena has worked for years training macaque monkeys to move computer cursors and robotic limbs with their minds.
He does so by implanting electrodes into their brains to monitor neural activity. Now, as part of a sweeping $70 million program funded by the U s. military,
including small, implantable computers. Under its program, Mass General will work with Draper Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
The new line of research has been dubbed ffective brain-computer interfacesby some, meaning electronic devices that alter feelings,
#10-4, Good Computer: Automated System Lets Trucks Convoy as One A recent demonstration involving two trucks tethered by computer control shows how automation
and vehicle-to-vehicle communication are creeping onto the roads. A pair of trucks convoying 10 meters apart on Interstate 80 just outside Reno,
the computer controlled the gas and brakes to pull to within 10 meters (roughly three car lengths) of the truck ahead.
The computer then kept the two trucks paired at this precise distance, as if linked by some invisible cable,
and computers connected to each truck central computer. Video screens in both cabs show the drivers views of blind spots around the two vehicles.
Joshua Switkes, CEO of Peloton Tech, says the fuel savings are 4. 5 percent for the front truck and 10 percent for the rear truck.
The prospect of two trucks driving so close together under computer control may raise concerns among other drivers,
a company that is developing technology called Wattup that will allow you to charge smartphones, tablets,
so you can easily power your ipad while sitting on the couch browsing Instagram, or top off your phone while buying a coffee or playing Candy Crush in an airport.
Holmes picks up an ipad running a Wattup app that shows the two devices that are enabled for chargingine,
if we didn have so many wires and gadgets to plug in. Yet many of the wireless charging products that have come to market have relied on special charging mats that juice up devices at a short distance,
Its patents are at the heart of a new standard called Rezence that is supported by companies including Intel, Qualcomm, and Samsung.
The technology is called a haptic stylus gadget connected to mechanical apparatus that gives force-feedback sensations to let artists eelwhat theye doing as they sculpt a 3-D image on the screen
Haptic styluses and similar hardware have been used for years for niche applications and for high-end 3-D design and medical trainingor example,
technologies that add physical sensations a common feature in products like computer mouses that vibrate and game joysticks that shake,
and even touch screens that vibrate, making you feel like there a sharp edge on a flat surface.
and printing for a variety of applications (see hat Yoda Taught Me About 3-D Printingand he Difference Between Makers and Manufacturers. 3d Systems,
for example, makes many 3-D printers and recently launched a sub-$1, 000 home model called Cube and a $400 handheld scanner that can, in a couple of minutes, generate a realistic 3-D drawing of a human head that as good as the ones produced by existing stationary systems
or a facial feature that you really can get just using a regular mouse. As a practical matter, it will also offer museum restoration artists
#Microsoft Readies a Virtual Assistant for the Corporate World Microsoft reputation for innovation has suffered in recent years despite the company undeniable prowess in research and engineering.
and ipad apps for Microsoft office was word of a new app that could put the company at the forefront of productivity software again.
It called Microsoft Oslo, and it acts like a kind of virtual assistant. It draws on online content and a company internal data to offer important information, context,
will be included in Office 365, Microsoft subscription-based productivity software for PCS and mobile devices, in the second half of 2014.
general manager of the Microsoft office suite. y work is no longer about who sent me e-mail most recently;
which Microsoft acquired in 2009. The Office Graph gathers information from the spectrum of Microsoft enterprise products (purportedly taking care to distinguish between public and private information)
and uses machine-learning algorithms to identify useful patterns. Oslo looks like a corporate manager answer to Google Now,
which runs in the background on Android devices, waiting for the moment to pop up with timely information about traffic patterns
It also has similarities to Microsoft recently unveiled mobile assistant Cortana (see icrosoft Wants You to Educate Its Virtual Assistant.
Microsoft is struggling to compete not only with Google search, Google docs, Google Drive, and Android but with Google ability to leverage big data.
With Oslo, the company is trying to take advantage of the information that its customers have poured into various products,
in areas including search (Bing), e-mail (Outlook), social media (Yammer), document creation (Office), and content distribution (Sharepoint).
Between these products, Microsoft arguably has access to more proprietary information than any other service provider On earth.
Moreover, applying similar technology to Microsoft products aimed at, say, customer relationship management could give the company an advantage over competitors like Oracle, Salesforce, and SAP.
Satya Nadella, who spent the last three years running Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise group. Where his predecessor Steve Ballmer clutched the fading Windows operating system like a frayed security blankethe ios version of Office appeared four years after the iphone debutadella has acknowledged the company need to move on,
emphasizing a strategy he calls obile first, cloud first. And although Oslo was in the works before he took the helm,
and centerhe kind of thing Microsoft will need to do if it going to move back into the forefront of digital life g
and a cartoonish face shown on a touch-screen display, is very easy and safe to work with.
New sensors and software allow these machines to predict collisions and avoid them as humans go about their work.
visit Dweet. io with your computer or mobile phone, click ry it now, and youl see raw data from your device itself:
its GPS coordinates and even the position of your computer mouse. The data is now on a public Web page and available for analysis and aggregation;
and Openremote (see ree Software Ties the Internet of things Together, with different business models and levels of complexity.
Big companies like General electric are developing factory-monitoring software platforms. Yet Freeboard stands out among the various platforms because t the easiest to use, says Venkatesh Prasad, group and technical leader for vehicle design and infotronics at Ford motor.
#Shape-Shifting Touch screen Buttons Head to Market As they peck out text on the featureless glass surface of their phone or tablet,
some people still mourn the passing of the physical keyboard. Now technology is heading to mass production that can offer the best of both worlds:
and elastic blisters to make buttons rise up from a device screen and then disappear without trace when theye no longer needed.
Electronics manufacturing giant Wistron has modified now equipment at one of its factories in China to produce touch-screen panels with the shape-shifting technology inside.
it made devices for brands including Blackberry, Apple, and Acer. The company also recently became an investor in Tactus.
The first fruit of the tie-up will go on sale later this year in the form of a protective case with Tactus technology inside for Apple ipad Mini.
The design includes a transparent screen protector that covers the front of the device. However, sliding a mechanical control on the side of the case raises up a transparent set of buttons
or guides on the screen protector, over the touch keyboard, to make typing easier. Sliding the control back will cause those buttons to melt away
leaving a clear, smooth pane of glass. sers will still type on the screens as they do today,
But it did let MIT Technology Review try out an internal prototype case for the ipad Mini with the same basic design.
Sliding the control on the left pushed fluid into a set of guides that rose up between keys on the virtual keyboard.
That they were ever there is discernable only by a close examination of the screen protector in the right light
But the panel feels noticeably less smooth to a finger swiping the surface. The guides provide physical feedback
when the fingers don directly hit a key, something that lacking on a typical touch screen.
The relationship with Wistron could lead morphing buttons to appear in tablets and other devices.
Tactus has demonstrated both a prototype seven-inch tablet with its technology fully integrated into its display
and an off-the-shelf tablet modified to include the technology. When the buttons are built into a device in that way their movements are driven by a small electric pump.
when the keyboard appears. e are only at the beginning of what we expect to be a multiyear partnership,
One project is a notebook-style device that has a second, morphing screen where the keyboard would usually be
#Microrobots, Working Together, Build with Metal, Glass, and Electronics Someone glancing through the door of Annjoe Wong-Foy lab at SRI International might think his equipment is infested by ants.
Wong-Foy has written software to do that, and used it to choreograph the movement of over 1, 000 tiny robots in a complex circulating pattern.
The software controlling the robots can also move the platform they are sitting On it moves the platform each time a new layer is complete so the robotsworking space stays the same as the structure theye building grows.
Much like 3-D printing technology, microrobots promise to be a more efficient way to make complex objects in small quantities than conventional mass-production technology,
Hobbyists and small companies working on electronics hardware today make few prototype circuit boards due to the time it takes to assemble them by hand
Lithium-ion batteries are just about everywherehey power almost all smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Yet Elon musk, CEO of Tesla motors, says he intends to build a factory in the United states three years from
Firechat makes use of a feature Apple introduced in the latest version of its ios mobile software ios7 called multipeer connectivity.
He hopes to enable many more Internet-optional apps with the upcoming release of software tools that will help developers build Firechat-style apps for iphone or for Android Mac and Windows devices.
However Open Garden s forthcoming software will extend the feature so that data can hop between two iphones out of range of one another via intermediary devices.
and North korea says Mattt Thompson a software engineer who writes the ios and Mac development blog NSHIPSTER.
Recent revelations about large-scale surveillance of online services and the constant litany of data breaches make this a good time for apps that don t rely on central servers he says.
Open Garden s main product is an app that allows Android devices to share their Internet connections (see Could You Spare Some Internet access?.
He argues that the spread of cheap Android phones across the world will make mesh networking feasible.
The Johns hopkins university-led team first designed the chromosome on a computer, streamlining the natural chromosome sequence
Backseat passengers could get streaming movies and fast Wi-fi connections to smart watches and tablets in (and near) the car.
cofounder of BT Software, based in San diego. He is one of a very few developers
Called Kaliki, BT Software app provides audio readings of storiesone by humans, not text-to-speech softwareulled from mainstream publications such as USA Today and TV Guide,
See fter Microsoft Deal, What Left of Nokia Will Bet on Internet of things. In Audi case, the service will cost $100 for up to five gigabytes of data over six months,
or calls by nationalists in Russia to block Skype, or an unfolding German plan to keep most e-mail traffic within its borders.
so that it keeps its best ideas on computers quarantined from the Internet. Retrograde technology is winning money and resources.
A half dozen boutique R&d houses, like Italy Hacking Team, develop computer vulnerabilities and openly market them to government attackers.
Criminals use common computer weaknesses to infect as many machines as possible. But governments assemble large research teams
and analysis for antivirus company Kaspersky Lab, says he logs on to his computer assuming he is not alone. operate under the principle that my computer is owned by at least three governments,
British spies scooped up millions of webcam images from Yahoo. In December, on Microsoft official blog, the company top lawyer, Brad Smith, said he had reason to view surreptitious overnment snoopingas no different from criminal malware.
Microsoft, along with Google and Yahoo, has responded by greatly widening its use of encryption. ee living in a very interesting time,
where companies are becoming unwilling pawns in cyberwarfare, says Menny Barzilay, a former Israeli intelligence officer now working in IT SECURITY for the Bank hapoalim Group,
After all, the Snowden documents suggest how vigorously the NSA worked to insert back doors in gear, software,
In this issue we travel to an old bunker in Switzerland that local entrepreneurs have turned into a server farm,
#First hidden, real-time, screen-camera communication created Such applications include smart glasses communicating with screens to realise augmented reality
information is encoded into a visual frame shown on a screen, and any camera-equipped device can turn to the screen
and immediately fetch the information, researchers said. Operating on the visible light spectrum band, screen-camera communication is free of electromagnetic interference, offering a promising alternative for acquiring short-range information.
But these efforts commonly require displaying visible coded images, which interfere with the content the screen is playing
and create unpleasant viewing experiences. The team at Dartmouth College studied how to enable screens
and cameras to communicate without the need to show any coded images like QR code,
In the Hilight system, screens display content as they normally do and the content can change as users interact with the screens.
At the same time, screens transmit dynamic data instantaneously to any devices equipped with cameras behind the scene, unobtrusively, in real time.
Hilight supports communication atop any screen content, such as an image, movie, video clip, game, web page or any other application window,
so that camera-equipped devices can fetch the data by turning their cameras to the screen.
Hilight leverages the alpha channel, a well-known concept in computer graphics to encode bits into the pixel translucency change.
It decouples communication and screen content image layers.""Our work provides an additional way for devices to communicate with one another without sacrificing their original functionality,
Existing screen-camera work either requires showing coded images obtrusively or cannot support arbitrary screen content that can be generated on the fly.
Our work advances the state-of-the-art by pushing screen-camera communication to the maximal flexibility, "said Zhou u
#Antioxidant helps to diagnose Alzheimer: Experts find proof In a major medical breakthrough, scientists at the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC) have reported clinical evidence supporting the role of a novel biomarker in diagnosing Alzheimer's disease.
but this often sacrifices peripheral and night vision, according to the researchers at the Johns hopkins university and the University of Maryland.
but this often sacrifices peripheral and night vision, according to the researchers at the Johns hopkins university and the University of Maryland.
This is an important step for the future production of large numbers of these cells for use in cell transplantation therapies or large-scale drug screens, researchers from the Molecular Medicine Institute in Lisbon,
The team applied this simpler approach to mouse embryonic stem cells in a dish, which have the potential to become any cell type.
Thync connects to the smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth. It can be controlled with an app,
which could soon produce self-healing nail polish and a cure for cracked mobile phone screens. A team at the University of Bristol has been quietly developing the technology for the past three years.
or 10 years we're going to see things like mobile phone screens that can heal themselves
which could soon produce self-healing nail polish and a cure for cracked mobile phone screens. A team at the University of Bristol has been quietly developing the technology for the past three years.
or 10 years we're going to see things like mobile phone screens that can heal themselves
"Printing an intricate, ornate metal bridge for a special location to show what our robots and software engineers,
By printing multiple lines, the printer will be able to create a strong, complex structure that spans the canal-printing its own supports along the way
"Printing an intricate, ornate metal bridge for a special location to show what our robots and software engineers,
By printing multiple lines, the printer will be able to create a strong, complex structure that spans the canal-printing its own supports along the way
the miracle material that promises to transform everything from smartphones and computers to cars, buildings and satellites.
The discovery could be used as the basis of a new kind of switching device for future optical computers that use pulses of light rather than electricity to process
It is the first time that scientists have been able to create a computer chip which has its own visible light source,
and will pave the way towards the realisation of atomically thin, flexible and transparent displays,
Creating such small light sources on the surface of a computer chip is considered essential for developing the fully integrated"photonic"circuits of optical computers,
which will in theory outperform the processing and speed of conventional silicon chips in today's computers,
graphene could be perfect for the new generation of touchscreens. Rust-free cars Graphene repels water
the miracle material that promises to transform everything from smartphones and computers to cars, buildings and satellites.
The discovery could be used as the basis of a new kind of switching device for future optical computers that use pulses of light rather than electricity to process
It is the first time that scientists have been able to create a computer chip which has its own visible light source,
and will pave the way towards the realisation of atomically thin, flexible and transparent displays,
Creating such small light sources on the surface of a computer chip is considered essential for developing the fully integrated"photonic"circuits of optical computers,
which will in theory outperform the processing and speed of conventional silicon chips in today's computers,
graphene could be perfect for the new generation of touchscreens. Rust-free cars Graphene repels water
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