Drink up that beer -- another will soon be whisked to the table thanks to a hi-tech pint glass that tells bar staff when it needs refilling.Developed by a Japanese electronics company, the intelligent glass is fitted with a radio-frequency coil in its base and emits a signal to a receiver set in the table when it's empty, New Scientist magazine reported Thursday.
The iGlassware system works by coating each glass with a clear, conducting material, enabling it to measure exactly how much liquid has been sipped or guzzled.
When empty, the glass sends an electronic cry for more beer from the table to waiters equipped with hand-held computers on frequencies similar to those used by mobile phones.
A team from the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories working in Cambridge, Massachusetts has made the first prototypes, but may find it hard to sell the idea to Britons.
"It sounds like a fun idea, but I don't think it would work in our pubs," said a spokesman for J.D. Wetherspoon, which runs over 500 pubs in Britain.
"The tradition in Britain is to get up and go to the bar for a round of drinks, not to have a waiter bring beers to the table, no matter how quickly," he said
2008年5月18日星期日
New Secret Weapon -- the Indestructible Sandwich
Picnics and packed school lunches may never be the same again, thanks to the latest breakthrough by military science -- the non-soggy sandwich.
Spurred on by rather unappetizing U.S. battlefield food known as Meals Ready to Eat, scientists at the Army Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts have devised a vacuum-sealed sandwich that stays edible for up to three years.
"The water activity of the different sandwich components needs to complement each other," project officer Michelle Richardson told New Scientist magazine. "If the water activity of the meat is too high you might get soggy bread."
Using an array of chemicals to seal the meat and inhibit bacterial growth, the scientists already have produced pepperoni and barbecue chicken indestructible sandwiches, which have been given a cautious welcome by soldiers who agreed to try them.
Inspired by their apparent breakthrough, the scientists are now experimenting with pizzas, bagels, burritos and even the staple peanut butter sandwich.
Spurred on by rather unappetizing U.S. battlefield food known as Meals Ready to Eat, scientists at the Army Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts have devised a vacuum-sealed sandwich that stays edible for up to three years.
"The water activity of the different sandwich components needs to complement each other," project officer Michelle Richardson told New Scientist magazine. "If the water activity of the meat is too high you might get soggy bread."
Using an array of chemicals to seal the meat and inhibit bacterial growth, the scientists already have produced pepperoni and barbecue chicken indestructible sandwiches, which have been given a cautious welcome by soldiers who agreed to try them.
Inspired by their apparent breakthrough, the scientists are now experimenting with pizzas, bagels, burritos and even the staple peanut butter sandwich.
Noise From Phone Can Chase Mosquitoes
South Korea's largest mobile phone operator said Thursday that it will offer cell phone users a new noise service that it says will repel mosquitoes.
SK Telecom Co. said subscribers can pay 3,000 won (US.50) to download a sound wave that is inaudible to human ears but annoys mosquitoes within a range of three feet. Customers can then play the sound by hitting a few buttons on their mobile phones.
The company claimed that the service worked during tests.
The service, which begins Monday, has one drawback: it consumes as much battery power as normal cell phone rings.
SK Telecom has 17 million subscribers and controls a little over 50 percent of the domestic market.
SK Telecom Co. said subscribers can pay 3,000 won (US.50) to download a sound wave that is inaudible to human ears but annoys mosquitoes within a range of three feet. Customers can then play the sound by hitting a few buttons on their mobile phones.
The company claimed that the service worked during tests.
The service, which begins Monday, has one drawback: it consumes as much battery power as normal cell phone rings.
SK Telecom has 17 million subscribers and controls a little over 50 percent of the domestic market.
Getting lost in the translation
Relying on online translation tools can be a risky business, especially if you expect too much of it. For the time being, might translation be something best left to the humans?Earlier this month the small German town of Homberg-an-der-Efze, north of Frankfurt, had to pulp an entire print run of its English-language tourism brochure - after officials used an internet translating tool to translate the German text.
According to one report, the brochure was "rendered meaningless" by the online tool.
Martin Wagner, mayor of Homberg-an-der-Efze, admits that the town made a "blunder". As a result of officials trying to save money by getting the Internet to do a translator's job, a total of 7500 brochures had to be binned.
This story highlights some of the pitfalls of translating online. There are many instant translation tools on the web - but they are best used for individual words and short phrases, rather than for brochures, books or anything complex.
For example, one of the joys of the web is that it grants you access to an array of foreign news sources. Yet if you were to use a translation tool to try to make sense of such reports, you could end up with a rather skewed and surreal view of the world.
Why is foreign text "rendered meaningless" when passed through an online translation tool? According to Sabine Reul, who runs a Frankfurt-based translation company, translation tools have limited uses - and problems arise when web users expect too much from them.
"A translation tool works for some things," says Reul. "Say a British company wants to order a box of screws from a German supplier. A sentence like 'We need one box of a certain type of screw' is something that a machine could translate reasonably accurately - though primitively."
Yet when it comes to translating blocks of text - words and sentences that convey thoughts and sentiments - online tools are bound to fail, she adds. "Beyond simple sentences, the online process simply doesn't work because machines don't understand grammar and semantics, never mind idiom and style."
"Language is not a system of signs in the mechanical sense of the word", says Reul. "It is a living medium that is used to convey thought. And that is where machines fail. Human input is indispensable as long as computers cannot think."
Reul and other translators look forward to the day when clever computers might help to ease their workload - but that time has not arrived yet.
"It would be nice if computers could do the job. And certainly the quest for machine translation has prompted a lot of linguistic research that may prove valuable in unforeseen ways. But experience to date confirms that even the most subtle computer program doesn't think - and you need to be able to think in order to translate."
Until the dawn of thinking computers, online translation tools are best reserved for words, basic sentences and useful holiday phrases. For tourism brochures, newspaper reports and the rest, you will have to rely on some old-fashioned "human input".
According to one report, the brochure was "rendered meaningless" by the online tool.
Martin Wagner, mayor of Homberg-an-der-Efze, admits that the town made a "blunder". As a result of officials trying to save money by getting the Internet to do a translator's job, a total of 7500 brochures had to be binned.
This story highlights some of the pitfalls of translating online. There are many instant translation tools on the web - but they are best used for individual words and short phrases, rather than for brochures, books or anything complex.
For example, one of the joys of the web is that it grants you access to an array of foreign news sources. Yet if you were to use a translation tool to try to make sense of such reports, you could end up with a rather skewed and surreal view of the world.
Why is foreign text "rendered meaningless" when passed through an online translation tool? According to Sabine Reul, who runs a Frankfurt-based translation company, translation tools have limited uses - and problems arise when web users expect too much from them.
"A translation tool works for some things," says Reul. "Say a British company wants to order a box of screws from a German supplier. A sentence like 'We need one box of a certain type of screw' is something that a machine could translate reasonably accurately - though primitively."
Yet when it comes to translating blocks of text - words and sentences that convey thoughts and sentiments - online tools are bound to fail, she adds. "Beyond simple sentences, the online process simply doesn't work because machines don't understand grammar and semantics, never mind idiom and style."
"Language is not a system of signs in the mechanical sense of the word", says Reul. "It is a living medium that is used to convey thought. And that is where machines fail. Human input is indispensable as long as computers cannot think."
Reul and other translators look forward to the day when clever computers might help to ease their workload - but that time has not arrived yet.
"It would be nice if computers could do the job. And certainly the quest for machine translation has prompted a lot of linguistic research that may prove valuable in unforeseen ways. But experience to date confirms that even the most subtle computer program doesn't think - and you need to be able to think in order to translate."
Until the dawn of thinking computers, online translation tools are best reserved for words, basic sentences and useful holiday phrases. For tourism brochures, newspaper reports and the rest, you will have to rely on some old-fashioned "human input".
Search for 'human computer'
A Northern Ireland team is leading the search for a thinking computer which can sense a user's mood.
Researchers at Queen's University in Belfast hope to complete the 10m euro project for an emotion-sensitive computer within four years.
The aim is to enable computers to think and behave more like humans.
The European-wide project is being coordinated from the university's School of Psychology and involves 160 researchers from 27 institutions.
The university's researchers developed the proposal and negotiated the contract with the European Commission.
The academics said the work would build upon attempts to create "multi-modal interfaces" which allow machines to sense and respond to the moods of the user.
Programme coordinator Professor Roddy Cowie said while it sounded like science fiction, computers which responded to human emotion would emerge.
"At the moment, our use of computers is limited by the fact that we need a keyboard and a screen to access them," he said.
"It would make an enormous difference if we could interact with them by speaking normally - perhaps through a microphone and a transmitter in a 'Star Trek' badge.
"But emotion is part of normal speech, and experience has shown that most users are deeply uncomfortable with speech interfaces that ignore it - too uncomfortable to use them very much.
"If we can make computers more intuitive and expressive, and also less challenging to use, there is enormous potential to let people make fuller use of information technology."
The emotion-sensitive computer would have its own "personality" and establish a social relationship with the user.
"It's a fair bet that in 30 years' time, emotion-sensitive interfaces will be as much part of life as windows and mouse interfaces are now," said Professor Cowie.
The project team believes such computers would play a major role in teaching and learning
Researchers at Queen's University in Belfast hope to complete the 10m euro project for an emotion-sensitive computer within four years.
The aim is to enable computers to think and behave more like humans.
The European-wide project is being coordinated from the university's School of Psychology and involves 160 researchers from 27 institutions.
The university's researchers developed the proposal and negotiated the contract with the European Commission.
The academics said the work would build upon attempts to create "multi-modal interfaces" which allow machines to sense and respond to the moods of the user.
Programme coordinator Professor Roddy Cowie said while it sounded like science fiction, computers which responded to human emotion would emerge.
"At the moment, our use of computers is limited by the fact that we need a keyboard and a screen to access them," he said.
"It would make an enormous difference if we could interact with them by speaking normally - perhaps through a microphone and a transmitter in a 'Star Trek' badge.
"But emotion is part of normal speech, and experience has shown that most users are deeply uncomfortable with speech interfaces that ignore it - too uncomfortable to use them very much.
"If we can make computers more intuitive and expressive, and also less challenging to use, there is enormous potential to let people make fuller use of information technology."
The emotion-sensitive computer would have its own "personality" and establish a social relationship with the user.
"It's a fair bet that in 30 years' time, emotion-sensitive interfaces will be as much part of life as windows and mouse interfaces are now," said Professor Cowie.
The project team believes such computers would play a major role in teaching and learning
Blog reading explodes in America
Americans are becoming avid blog readers, with 32 million getting hooked in 2004, according to new research.
The survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, showed that blog readership has shot up by 58% in the last year.
Some of this growth is attributable to political blogs written and read during the US presidential campaign.
Despite the explosive growth, more than 60% of online Americans have still never heard of blogs, the survey found.
Blogs, or web logs, are online spaces in which people can publish their thoughts, opinions or spread news events in their own words.
Companies such as Google and Microsoft provide users with the tools to publish their own blogs.
Reading blogs remains far more popular than writing them, the survey found.
Only 7% of the 120 million US adults who use the internet had created a blog or web-based diary.
Getting involved is becoming more popular though, with 12% saying they had posted material or comments on other people's blogs. Just under one in 10 of the US's internet users read political blogs such as the Daily Kos or Instapundit during the US presidential campaign.
Kerry voters were slightly more likely to read them than Bush voters.
Blog creators were likely to be young, well-educated, net-savvy males with good incomes and college educations, the survey found.
This was also true of the average blog reader, although the survey found there was a greater than average growth in blog readership among women and those in minorities.
The survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, showed that blog readership has shot up by 58% in the last year.
Some of this growth is attributable to political blogs written and read during the US presidential campaign.
Despite the explosive growth, more than 60% of online Americans have still never heard of blogs, the survey found.
Blogs, or web logs, are online spaces in which people can publish their thoughts, opinions or spread news events in their own words.
Companies such as Google and Microsoft provide users with the tools to publish their own blogs.
Reading blogs remains far more popular than writing them, the survey found.
Only 7% of the 120 million US adults who use the internet had created a blog or web-based diary.
Getting involved is becoming more popular though, with 12% saying they had posted material or comments on other people's blogs. Just under one in 10 of the US's internet users read political blogs such as the Daily Kos or Instapundit during the US presidential campaign.
Kerry voters were slightly more likely to read them than Bush voters.
Blog creators were likely to be young, well-educated, net-savvy males with good incomes and college educations, the survey found.
This was also true of the average blog reader, although the survey found there was a greater than average growth in blog readership among women and those in minorities.
'Robot soldiers' bound for Iraq
The US military is planning to deploy robots armed with machine-guns to wage war against insurgents in Iraq.
Eighteen of the 1m-high robots, equipped with cameras and operated by remote control, are going to Iraq this spring.
The machine is based on a robot already used by the military to disable bombs.
Officials say the robot warrior is fast, accurate and will track and attack the enemy with relatively little risk to the lives of US soldiers.
Unlike its human counterparts, the armed robot does not require food, clothing, training, motivation or a pension.
When not needed in war, it can be mothballed in a warehouse.
However, the robot will rely on its human operator, remotely studying footage from its cameras, for the order to open fire.
According to Bob Quinn, a manager with Foster-Miller, the US-based company which worked with the military to develop the robot, the only difference for a soldier is that "his weapon is not at his shoulder, it's up to half a mile away".
The robot fighter has been christened Swords, after the acronym for Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems.
It is based on the Talon robot, which is widely used by the military to disarm bombs.
A US officer who helped test the robot said it was a more accurate shot than the average soldier because it is mounted on a stable platform and takes aim electronically.
Eighteen of the 1m-high robots, equipped with cameras and operated by remote control, are going to Iraq this spring.
The machine is based on a robot already used by the military to disable bombs.
Officials say the robot warrior is fast, accurate and will track and attack the enemy with relatively little risk to the lives of US soldiers.
Unlike its human counterparts, the armed robot does not require food, clothing, training, motivation or a pension.
When not needed in war, it can be mothballed in a warehouse.
However, the robot will rely on its human operator, remotely studying footage from its cameras, for the order to open fire.
According to Bob Quinn, a manager with Foster-Miller, the US-based company which worked with the military to develop the robot, the only difference for a soldier is that "his weapon is not at his shoulder, it's up to half a mile away".
The robot fighter has been christened Swords, after the acronym for Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems.
It is based on the Talon robot, which is widely used by the military to disarm bombs.
A US officer who helped test the robot said it was a more accurate shot than the average soldier because it is mounted on a stable platform and takes aim electronically.
Switches and Fuses
An electric switch is often on a wall near the door of a room. Two wires lead to the lamp in the room. The switch is fixed in one of them. The switch can cause a break in this wire, and then the light goes. The switch can also join the two parts of the wire again, then we get a light.
Switch can control many different things. Small switches control lamps and radio sets because these do not take a large current, larger switches control electric fires. Other switches can control electric motors.
Good switches move quickly. They have to stop the current suddenly. If they move slowly, an electric spark appears. It jumps across the space between the two ends of the wire. This is unsafe and it heats the switch. Very big switches are sometimes placed in oil, Sparks do not easily jump through oil, and so the oil makes the switch safer.
A large current makes a wire hot. If the wire is very thin, even a small current makes it hot. This happens in an electric lamp.
The electric wires in a house are covered with some kind of insulation. No current can flow through the insulation, so the current can never flow straight from one wire to the other, but the insulation on old wires is often broken, then the copper of the two wires can touch. A large current may flow, and if this happens, the wires will get very hot. Then the house may catch fire.
Fuses can stop this trouble. A fuse is only a thin wire which is easily melted. It is fixed in a fuse-holderThe fuse-holder is made of some material which cannot burn. A large current makes the fuse hot and then it melts away. We say that the fuse "blowsThe wire is broken and no current can flow. So the house does not catch fire, but all the lights and electric fires go out because there is no current.
When a fuse blows, something is wrong. We must find the fault first. Perhaps two wires are touching. We must cover them with new insulation of some kind. Then we must find the blown fuse and repair it. We put a new piece of fuse- wire in the holder. (Sometimes we can find the right fuse- holder because it is rather warm, but the others are cold.) If we do not repair the fault first, the new fuse will blow immediately.
Some men get angry when a fuse blow. So they put a thick copper wire in the fuse-holder! Of course this does not easily melt; if the current rises suddenly, nothing stops it. The thick wire easily carries it. Then the wires of the house may get very hot and the house may catch fire. Some of the people in it may not be able to escape. They may lose their lives. So it is always best to use proper fuse-wire. This will keep everyone and everything in the house safe.
Switch can control many different things. Small switches control lamps and radio sets because these do not take a large current, larger switches control electric fires. Other switches can control electric motors.
Good switches move quickly. They have to stop the current suddenly. If they move slowly, an electric spark appears. It jumps across the space between the two ends of the wire. This is unsafe and it heats the switch. Very big switches are sometimes placed in oil, Sparks do not easily jump through oil, and so the oil makes the switch safer.
A large current makes a wire hot. If the wire is very thin, even a small current makes it hot. This happens in an electric lamp.
The electric wires in a house are covered with some kind of insulation. No current can flow through the insulation, so the current can never flow straight from one wire to the other, but the insulation on old wires is often broken, then the copper of the two wires can touch. A large current may flow, and if this happens, the wires will get very hot. Then the house may catch fire.
Fuses can stop this trouble. A fuse is only a thin wire which is easily melted. It is fixed in a fuse-holderThe fuse-holder is made of some material which cannot burn. A large current makes the fuse hot and then it melts away. We say that the fuse "blowsThe wire is broken and no current can flow. So the house does not catch fire, but all the lights and electric fires go out because there is no current.
When a fuse blows, something is wrong. We must find the fault first. Perhaps two wires are touching. We must cover them with new insulation of some kind. Then we must find the blown fuse and repair it. We put a new piece of fuse- wire in the holder. (Sometimes we can find the right fuse- holder because it is rather warm, but the others are cold.) If we do not repair the fault first, the new fuse will blow immediately.
Some men get angry when a fuse blow. So they put a thick copper wire in the fuse-holder! Of course this does not easily melt; if the current rises suddenly, nothing stops it. The thick wire easily carries it. Then the wires of the house may get very hot and the house may catch fire. Some of the people in it may not be able to escape. They may lose their lives. So it is always best to use proper fuse-wire. This will keep everyone and everything in the house safe.
Human Fossils Dated to 195,000 Years
A new analysis of bones unearthed nearly 40 years ago in Ethiopia has pushed the fossil record of modern humans back to nearly 200,000 years ago perhaps close to the dawn of the species.
Researchers determined that the specimens are around 195,000 years old. Previously, the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens were Ethiopian skulls dated to about 160,000 years ago.
Genetic studies estimate that Homo sapiens arose about 200,000 years ago, so the new research brings the fossil record more in line with that, said John Fleagle of Stony Brook University in New York, an author of the study.
The fossils were found in 1967 near the Omo River in southwestern Ethiopia. One location yielded Omo I, which includes part of a skull plus skeletal bones. Another site produced Omo II, which has more of a skull but no skeletal bones. Neither specimen has a complete face.
Although Omo II shows more primitive characteristics than Omo I, scientists called both specimens Homo sapiens and assigned a tentative age of 130,000 years.
Now, after visiting the discovery sites, analyzing their geology and testing rock samples with more modern dating techniques, Fleagle and colleagues report in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature that both specimens are 195,000 years old, give or take 5,000 years.
Fleagle said the more primitive traits of Omo II may mean the two specimens came from different but overlapping Homo sapiens populations, or that they just represent natural variation within a single population.
To find the age of the skulls, the researchers determined that volcanic rock lying just below the sediment that contained the fossils was about 196,000 years old. They then found evidence that the fossil-bearing sediment was deposited soon after that time.
Paul Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center, which specializes in dating rocks, said the researchers made "a reasonably good argument" to support their dating of the fossils.
"It's more likely than not," he said, calling the work "very exciting and important."
Researchers determined that the specimens are around 195,000 years old. Previously, the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens were Ethiopian skulls dated to about 160,000 years ago.
Genetic studies estimate that Homo sapiens arose about 200,000 years ago, so the new research brings the fossil record more in line with that, said John Fleagle of Stony Brook University in New York, an author of the study.
The fossils were found in 1967 near the Omo River in southwestern Ethiopia. One location yielded Omo I, which includes part of a skull plus skeletal bones. Another site produced Omo II, which has more of a skull but no skeletal bones. Neither specimen has a complete face.
Although Omo II shows more primitive characteristics than Omo I, scientists called both specimens Homo sapiens and assigned a tentative age of 130,000 years.
Now, after visiting the discovery sites, analyzing their geology and testing rock samples with more modern dating techniques, Fleagle and colleagues report in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature that both specimens are 195,000 years old, give or take 5,000 years.
Fleagle said the more primitive traits of Omo II may mean the two specimens came from different but overlapping Homo sapiens populations, or that they just represent natural variation within a single population.
To find the age of the skulls, the researchers determined that volcanic rock lying just below the sediment that contained the fossils was about 196,000 years old. They then found evidence that the fossil-bearing sediment was deposited soon after that time.
Paul Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center, which specializes in dating rocks, said the researchers made "a reasonably good argument" to support their dating of the fossils.
"It's more likely than not," he said, calling the work "very exciting and important."
Wearable Computers You Can Slip Into
Gauri Nanda sees a wearable computer as a...handbag -- one that's built out of four-inch squares and triangles of fabric, with tiny computer chips embedded in it.
Assembled together with Velcro that conducts electricity, these pieces form a bag that looks, feels, and weighs like your typical leather purse.
That's where the similarities end: This bag can wirelessly keep tabs on your belongings and remind you, just as you're about to leave the house, to take your wallet. It can review the weather report and suggest that you grab an umbrella -- or your sunshades. This purse can even upload your favorite songs onto your scarf.
Sure, a computing purse and scarf set may seem like the stuff of science fiction. But these devices, part of next generation of wearable computers, could become commonplace within a few years. Unit shipments of such wearable computers -- purses, watches, shirts -- should rise from 261,000 last year to 1.39 million in 2008, according to the tech research firm IDC.
Powering this market are advancements in design and in fabric-embedded electronics. Over the last two years, DuPont (DD ) created new fibers called Aracon, made of Kevlar, that are superstrong, can conduct electricity, and can be woven into ordinary-looking clothes. And chipmaker Infineon (IFX ) developed chip packaging allowing wearable computers to be washed, even in the heavy-duty cycle.
As a result, these new wearables are a far cry from the clunky and downright silly versions of the recent past, which often required users to be wrapped in wires, type on their stomachs, and sport an unseemly display on their foreheads. "Cyborg computing was very clunky, very bulky machines that people didn't want to carry around," says Nanda, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. "Our bags feel and look like bags."
Unlike their predecessors, these new wearable computers also make economic sense. When her bag becomes commercially available in two to three years, Nanda expects it will cost around $150, which is the price of an average leather purse. Only "it's fun, you can rip apart and put together a computer," she says.
Here's how the bag works: You place a special radio-signal-transmitting chip onto your wallet. A similar radio in your purse picks up the signal and notifies you that you've forgotten to take your wallet. In turn, sensors on your purse's handles will notify the computer that you've picked up the purse and are ready to go.
Such unobtrusive, inconspicuous, and fun devices should grab more than 80% of the total wearable computing market by 2008, while cyborgian wearable PCs will remain a niche, says IDC analyst Kevin Burden. Already, these new kinds of wearables are being adopted for use in markets like auto repair, emergency services, medical monitoring -- and even, increasingly, for consumers at large.
Wearables are also slowly making their way into the auto-repair market. A company called Microvision (MVIS ) recently introduced its Nomad head-mounted display. It covers one eye, but it's see-through, allowing auto technicians to examine the innards of a car and check them against on-screen computer drawings at the same time. It comes as a baseball cap clip-on, to be more unobtrusive.
So far, it's a hit: At Jim Fisher Volvo dealership in Portland, Ore., which has been testing the system for about seven months, productivity of technicians went up 10% to 20%, says Service Manager John Prosser. Better yet, customers talking to technicians who are wearing these contraptions also are more likely to agree to repairs, pushing revenue up 15% to 18%. Says Prosser: "This makes [technicians] want to get involved and to cross this bridge of reluctance" in using a new technology.
Indeed, many more people will want to cross that bridge in the coming years -- making for a booming market for wearable computers that don't look like something out of an old Star Trek episode.
Assembled together with Velcro that conducts electricity, these pieces form a bag that looks, feels, and weighs like your typical leather purse.
That's where the similarities end: This bag can wirelessly keep tabs on your belongings and remind you, just as you're about to leave the house, to take your wallet. It can review the weather report and suggest that you grab an umbrella -- or your sunshades. This purse can even upload your favorite songs onto your scarf.
Sure, a computing purse and scarf set may seem like the stuff of science fiction. But these devices, part of next generation of wearable computers, could become commonplace within a few years. Unit shipments of such wearable computers -- purses, watches, shirts -- should rise from 261,000 last year to 1.39 million in 2008, according to the tech research firm IDC.
Powering this market are advancements in design and in fabric-embedded electronics. Over the last two years, DuPont (DD ) created new fibers called Aracon, made of Kevlar, that are superstrong, can conduct electricity, and can be woven into ordinary-looking clothes. And chipmaker Infineon (IFX ) developed chip packaging allowing wearable computers to be washed, even in the heavy-duty cycle.
As a result, these new wearables are a far cry from the clunky and downright silly versions of the recent past, which often required users to be wrapped in wires, type on their stomachs, and sport an unseemly display on their foreheads. "Cyborg computing was very clunky, very bulky machines that people didn't want to carry around," says Nanda, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. "Our bags feel and look like bags."
Unlike their predecessors, these new wearable computers also make economic sense. When her bag becomes commercially available in two to three years, Nanda expects it will cost around $150, which is the price of an average leather purse. Only "it's fun, you can rip apart and put together a computer," she says.
Here's how the bag works: You place a special radio-signal-transmitting chip onto your wallet. A similar radio in your purse picks up the signal and notifies you that you've forgotten to take your wallet. In turn, sensors on your purse's handles will notify the computer that you've picked up the purse and are ready to go.
Such unobtrusive, inconspicuous, and fun devices should grab more than 80% of the total wearable computing market by 2008, while cyborgian wearable PCs will remain a niche, says IDC analyst Kevin Burden. Already, these new kinds of wearables are being adopted for use in markets like auto repair, emergency services, medical monitoring -- and even, increasingly, for consumers at large.
Wearables are also slowly making their way into the auto-repair market. A company called Microvision (MVIS ) recently introduced its Nomad head-mounted display. It covers one eye, but it's see-through, allowing auto technicians to examine the innards of a car and check them against on-screen computer drawings at the same time. It comes as a baseball cap clip-on, to be more unobtrusive.
So far, it's a hit: At Jim Fisher Volvo dealership in Portland, Ore., which has been testing the system for about seven months, productivity of technicians went up 10% to 20%, says Service Manager John Prosser. Better yet, customers talking to technicians who are wearing these contraptions also are more likely to agree to repairs, pushing revenue up 15% to 18%. Says Prosser: "This makes [technicians] want to get involved and to cross this bridge of reluctance" in using a new technology.
Indeed, many more people will want to cross that bridge in the coming years -- making for a booming market for wearable computers that don't look like something out of an old Star Trek episode.
New Fingerprint Technology Developed
Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists are using a new technique to see fingerprints on surfaces that typically make them invisible.
The method uses a technology called mini-X-ray fluorescence to detect chemical elements in fingerprints without altering them, said Christopher Worley, a scientist on the project.
"The conventional methods are meant to bring out fingerprint patterns with regular light and they have to treat those with powder, which alters them," Worley said. "With this you don't have to alter it or treat it at all. We can determine the elements in a fingerprint and get a pattern at the same time."
The technology focuses a tight beam of X-rays on surfaces with fingerprints and creates a computer picture out of those scans.
The equipment costs about $175,000.
For big labs, the method could be a great way to bring out prints that can't be seen any other way, said Vahid Majidi, another lab scientist.
"The technique fills a unique niche," Majidi said. "These are prints that would otherwise be useless. If you have prints on a dark surface, for example, they really don't develop well using normal techniques. If you have prints from an adolescent or child, the chemicals in the fingertips are different and don't stick around long enough for traditional methods."
The new method might also be able to tell if the person that left them handled certain types of bomb-making materials, said George Havrilla, another lab scientist.
"This is a new approach to fingerprint visualization," Havrilla said. "We're lifting prints, but instead of looking at the finger's natural oils and organic residues we're looking at elemental features left behind."
The technology for scanning the prints is widely available. What's new is the method the lab has created to see them which includes computer software and ways of manipulating the machinery, Worley said.
But the technique isn't for everyone.
"We've already had some negative comments on it," Havrilla said with a laugh. "One reviewer told us it's just not practical. But the goal of our work was to demonstrate that it was feasible to see these things."
The method uses a technology called mini-X-ray fluorescence to detect chemical elements in fingerprints without altering them, said Christopher Worley, a scientist on the project.
"The conventional methods are meant to bring out fingerprint patterns with regular light and they have to treat those with powder, which alters them," Worley said. "With this you don't have to alter it or treat it at all. We can determine the elements in a fingerprint and get a pattern at the same time."
The technology focuses a tight beam of X-rays on surfaces with fingerprints and creates a computer picture out of those scans.
The equipment costs about $175,000.
For big labs, the method could be a great way to bring out prints that can't be seen any other way, said Vahid Majidi, another lab scientist.
"The technique fills a unique niche," Majidi said. "These are prints that would otherwise be useless. If you have prints on a dark surface, for example, they really don't develop well using normal techniques. If you have prints from an adolescent or child, the chemicals in the fingertips are different and don't stick around long enough for traditional methods."
The new method might also be able to tell if the person that left them handled certain types of bomb-making materials, said George Havrilla, another lab scientist.
"This is a new approach to fingerprint visualization," Havrilla said. "We're lifting prints, but instead of looking at the finger's natural oils and organic residues we're looking at elemental features left behind."
The technology for scanning the prints is widely available. What's new is the method the lab has created to see them which includes computer software and ways of manipulating the machinery, Worley said.
But the technique isn't for everyone.
"We've already had some negative comments on it," Havrilla said with a laugh. "One reviewer told us it's just not practical. But the goal of our work was to demonstrate that it was feasible to see these things."
If you want to win in sports, wear red
If winning is everything, British anthropologists have some advice: Wear red. Their survey of four sports at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens shows competitors were more likely to win their contests if they wore red uniforms or red body armor.
"Across a range of sports, we find that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning," report Russell A. Hill and Robert A. Barton of the University of Durham in England. Their findings are in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Red coloration is associated with aggression in many animals. Often it is sexually selected so that scarlet markings signal male dominance.
Just think of the red stripes on the scowling face of the male Mandrill, Africa's largest monkey species. But red is not exclusively a male trait. It's the female black widow spider that is venomous and displays a menacing red dot on her abdomen.
Similarly, the color's effect also may subconsciously intimidate opponents in athletic contests, especially when the athletes are equal in skill and strength, the researchers suggest.
In their survey, the anthropologists analyzed the results of four combat sports at the summer games: boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling.
In those events, the athletes were randomly assigned red protective gear and other sportwear.
Athletes wearing red gear won more often in 16 of 21 rounds of competition in all four events.
The effect was the same regardless of weight classes, too: 19 of 29 classes had more red winners, and only four rounds had more blue winners.
The red effect also might come into play in team sports.
The anthropologists made a preliminary analysis of the Euro 2004 international soccer tournament, in which teams wore jerseys of different colors in different matches. They found that five teams scored more goals and won more often when they wore shirts that were predominantly red, as opposed to blue or white jerseys.
Scientists don't precisely known how wearing red might give athletes an advantage. But the color delivers implicit messages of vigor and danger. When people get angry, their faces turn red. It's also a reason why stop signs are red. So are most Ferraris.
"Across a range of sports, we find that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning," report Russell A. Hill and Robert A. Barton of the University of Durham in England. Their findings are in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Red coloration is associated with aggression in many animals. Often it is sexually selected so that scarlet markings signal male dominance.
Just think of the red stripes on the scowling face of the male Mandrill, Africa's largest monkey species. But red is not exclusively a male trait. It's the female black widow spider that is venomous and displays a menacing red dot on her abdomen.
Similarly, the color's effect also may subconsciously intimidate opponents in athletic contests, especially when the athletes are equal in skill and strength, the researchers suggest.
In their survey, the anthropologists analyzed the results of four combat sports at the summer games: boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling.
In those events, the athletes were randomly assigned red protective gear and other sportwear.
Athletes wearing red gear won more often in 16 of 21 rounds of competition in all four events.
The effect was the same regardless of weight classes, too: 19 of 29 classes had more red winners, and only four rounds had more blue winners.
The red effect also might come into play in team sports.
The anthropologists made a preliminary analysis of the Euro 2004 international soccer tournament, in which teams wore jerseys of different colors in different matches. They found that five teams scored more goals and won more often when they wore shirts that were predominantly red, as opposed to blue or white jerseys.
Scientists don't precisely known how wearing red might give athletes an advantage. But the color delivers implicit messages of vigor and danger. When people get angry, their faces turn red. It's also a reason why stop signs are red. So are most Ferraris.
South Korean scientists clone first dog
South Korea's pioneering stem cell scientist has cloned a dog, smashing another biological barrier and reigniting a fierce ethical debate - while producing a perky, lovable puppy.
The researchers, led by Hwang Woo-suk, insist they cloned an Afghan hound, a resplendent supermodel in a world of mutts, only to help investigate human disease, including the possibility of cloning stem cells for treatment purposes.
But others immediately renewed calls for a global ban on human reproductive cloning before the technology moves any farther.
"Successful cloning of an increasing number of species confirms the general impression that it would be possible to clone any mammalian species, including humans," said Ian Wilmut, a reproductive biologist at the University of Edinburgh who produced the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, from an adult cell nearly a decade ago.
Researchers have since cloned cats, goats, cows, mice, pigs, rabbits, horses, deer, mules and gaur, a large wild ox of Southeast Asia. So far, efforts to clone a monkey or another primate with the same techniques have failed.
Uncertainties about the health and life span of cloned animals persist; Dolly died prematurely in 2003 after developing cancer and arthritis.
Wilmut and others complimented Hwang's achievement, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature. But they said politicians and scientists must face the larger and more delicate issue - how to extend research without crossing the moral boundary of duplicating human life in the lab.
"The ability to use the underlying technology in developing research models and eventually therapies is incredibly promising," said Robert Schenken, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. "However, the paper also points out that in dogs as in most species, cloning for reproductive purposes is unsafe."
The cloned puppy was the lone success from more than 100 dogs implanted with more than 1,000 cloned embryos.
In a news conference in Seoul, the cloning team also condemned the reproductive cloning of humans as "unsafe and inefficient." Human reproductive cloning already is banned in South Korea. Other nations, including the United States, are split over whether to ban just human cloning or cloning of all kinds, including the production of stem cells.
The researchers, led by Hwang Woo-suk, insist they cloned an Afghan hound, a resplendent supermodel in a world of mutts, only to help investigate human disease, including the possibility of cloning stem cells for treatment purposes.
But others immediately renewed calls for a global ban on human reproductive cloning before the technology moves any farther.
"Successful cloning of an increasing number of species confirms the general impression that it would be possible to clone any mammalian species, including humans," said Ian Wilmut, a reproductive biologist at the University of Edinburgh who produced the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, from an adult cell nearly a decade ago.
Researchers have since cloned cats, goats, cows, mice, pigs, rabbits, horses, deer, mules and gaur, a large wild ox of Southeast Asia. So far, efforts to clone a monkey or another primate with the same techniques have failed.
Uncertainties about the health and life span of cloned animals persist; Dolly died prematurely in 2003 after developing cancer and arthritis.
Wilmut and others complimented Hwang's achievement, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature. But they said politicians and scientists must face the larger and more delicate issue - how to extend research without crossing the moral boundary of duplicating human life in the lab.
"The ability to use the underlying technology in developing research models and eventually therapies is incredibly promising," said Robert Schenken, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. "However, the paper also points out that in dogs as in most species, cloning for reproductive purposes is unsafe."
The cloned puppy was the lone success from more than 100 dogs implanted with more than 1,000 cloned embryos.
In a news conference in Seoul, the cloning team also condemned the reproductive cloning of humans as "unsafe and inefficient." Human reproductive cloning already is banned in South Korea. Other nations, including the United States, are split over whether to ban just human cloning or cloning of all kinds, including the production of stem cells.
Robot Home Guard
Worried about leaving your house empty while on holiday? Japan has the answer: a robot house-sitter.
Roborior is a watermelon-sized eyeball on wheels which glows purple, blue and orange and is armed with a digital camera, infrared sensors and a videophone.
When not on duty, Roborior can function as interior decor. But in its owner's absence, it is a virtual guard dog - detecting break-ins using infrared sensors, calling its master or mistress on their cellular phone, and sending cell phone videos from its digital camera. The robot went on display in half a dozen shops this week to much interest, but since supplies are limited many more shops are having to take orders.
"We've had robots before that were just toys, but the Roborior can actually be put to practical use in the home," said Takako Sakataof the department store chain Takashimaya.
Takashimaya will sell the machines, developed by Japanese robot maker Tmsuk and Sanyo, for ?1,400 each. "We received a lot of inquiries," Ms Sakata said. "Our initial plan is to sell 2,000."
Roborior is a watermelon-sized eyeball on wheels which glows purple, blue and orange and is armed with a digital camera, infrared sensors and a videophone.
When not on duty, Roborior can function as interior decor. But in its owner's absence, it is a virtual guard dog - detecting break-ins using infrared sensors, calling its master or mistress on their cellular phone, and sending cell phone videos from its digital camera. The robot went on display in half a dozen shops this week to much interest, but since supplies are limited many more shops are having to take orders.
"We've had robots before that were just toys, but the Roborior can actually be put to practical use in the home," said Takako Sakataof the department store chain Takashimaya.
Takashimaya will sell the machines, developed by Japanese robot maker Tmsuk and Sanyo, for ?1,400 each. "We received a lot of inquiries," Ms Sakata said. "Our initial plan is to sell 2,000."
New Gadget to Make Theft of Mobile Phones Harder
Finnish scientists have invented a device to make it harder to steal mobile phones and laptops by enabling them to detect changes in their owner's walking style and then freeze to prevent unauthorized use.
The VTT Technical Research Center of Finland said the device, which is has patented but has yet to sell, could prevent millions of portable appliances being stolen every year.
"A device is equipped with sensors that measure certain characteristics of the user's gait. When the device is used for the first time, these measurements are saved in its memory," VTT said in a statement.
The gadget would monitor the user's walking style and check it against the saved information. If the values differ, the user would have to enter a password.
"Compared with passwords and traditional bio-identification, the new method is simple: confirmation of identity takes place as a background process without any need for user's intervention," the researchers said.
The VTT Technical Research Center of Finland said the device, which is has patented but has yet to sell, could prevent millions of portable appliances being stolen every year.
"A device is equipped with sensors that measure certain characteristics of the user's gait. When the device is used for the first time, these measurements are saved in its memory," VTT said in a statement.
The gadget would monitor the user's walking style and check it against the saved information. If the values differ, the user would have to enter a password.
"Compared with passwords and traditional bio-identification, the new method is simple: confirmation of identity takes place as a background process without any need for user's intervention," the researchers said.
Sex Under the Microscope
Are Our Sexual Brains From the Stone Age?
Men aren't the only ones with cheating hearts, and scientists do not believe that there is any such thing as a battle of the sexes either, according to a new book that takes a scientific look at sex.
In her new book, Sex: A Natural History, science reporter Joann Rodgers debunks some previous sexual theories, as she explores the biology and psychology of what drives our sexual behavior, from why we find Hollywood star Brad Pitt attractive, to why we sometimes cheat on our mates.
The findings: Sex is a lot more scientific than you might think. Though often influenced by culture, Rodgers found that human sexual behavior, including flirting and courtship, is also determined by biology — and certain rituals are the same now as they were in the era of cavemen.
"A lot of sexual behavior — including what we're attracted to — is hardwired into our brains," Rodgers said. "A lot of it is conditioned by the way evolution formed our brains. Basically, our sexual brains are from the stone age."
The Mating Dance
Culture also plays a role, which leads to variation in sexual behavior among various people and varying ideals of beauty. But there are basic similarities that remain the same.
"Certain kinds of behavior are so universal that they appear to be biologically programmed," Rodgers said. "There is a mating dance."
When scientists studied flirting couples at a hotel bar, they saw some of the same things again and again - gestures that are part of our "brain chemistry," Rodgers said.
A couple that was "connecting" would look into each other's eyes. When they sat down together, the man would lean forward, thrusting out his chest, while the woman would start twirling her hair.
"The man makes the first touch, say pretending to brush something off the woman's blouse," Rogers said. The hands would eventually touch each other, and eventually, the couple heads off to one of the rooms, researchers found.
No Battle of the Sexes
Rodgers also concluded that there isn't really a "battle of the sexes" and that the "Men are from Mars, Women Are From Venus" theory is a misleading one, Rodgers said.
"Battles always have a winner and a loser," Rodgers said. "But in the so-called battle of the sexes both sides have to win or else everyone loses … Scientists will tell you there is no battle."
The ultimate goal of sexual relationships is cooperation and reproduction, despite the different strategies and behaviors employed by each of the sexes to reach it, Rodgers said. A woman for example might "play hard to get," a courtship ritual that her ancestors used, too.
"These are behaviors that have evolved over millions of years, as the ways males and females size each other up," she said. "Men and women aren't different species. Ultimately, the male and female get together and have children - and that's a win-win situation."
Many people believe that infidelity is more of a male trait - something that is part of their makeup, based on the theory that men have needed to spread their sperm, far and wide in the name of evolution. But that doesn't explain why women cheat too, or whom the men are cheating with, Rodgers said. "Until the advent of paternity testing, men just didn't have a reliable way of finding out," she said. "Women are probably more like men in this respect than we'd like to think."
Why Women Love Brad Pitt
Among cultures there are different preferences in terms of what is attractive. In the West, there is a lot of emphasis on female breasts, while in Oriental cultures, for instance, there is more of a preoccupation with a woman's neck. Some cultures prefer heavier women.
But the kinds of body types we are attracted to is also linked to another part of our anatomy - our stomachs.
If Arnold Schwarzenegger walked onto a stone age plateau looking as buff as he did when he starred as Conan the Barbarian, women would think "he'll take a whole lot more to feed" than the other men, Rodgers said.
"Our sexual brains evolved at a time when there wasn't that much to eat," Rodgers said. "Arnold probably would have had a hard time finding a mate. People are programmed to be suspicious of extremes - extreme fatness, thinness, or muscularity."
Studies show that even now, most women are not particularly attracted to body builder types. But a moderately muscular guy like actor Brad Pitt, who is also blessed with symmetrical features, is a hit with the ladies. Elizabeth Taylor, Denzel Washington and ancient Egypt's Nefertiti are universally recognized as being full of sex appeal, for the same reason, Rodgers said.
"The first thing we look for is symmetry. Symmetry is a sign of health," Rodgers said. A new study released last week, which found that asymmetrical people are more jealous than others, fits into the theory. Asymmetrical people are less attractive, and therefore more fearful of losing their mates.
Sex and Death
Sex plays a role in our lives until the day we die - and in fact, sex and death are intimately connected, Rodgers found.
"Scientists say that sex and death are intimately related. Bacteria, for example, never die," she said. "They just keep on reproducing - splitting - forever."
Humans are more complex organisms, and when we evolved and started exchanging genetic material, things got more complicated. With bacteria, its whole makeup - just one cell - is devoted to reproduction, and that's all it does.
But with humans, only our sex cells are involved in reproduction, and the rest of our cells, including those that make up our skins and organs, cannot reproduce indefinitely. Sex - or the lack thereof - leads to our demise.
"Our other cells can only divide a certain number of times, and then they die, which is why we die," Rodgers said.
Men aren't the only ones with cheating hearts, and scientists do not believe that there is any such thing as a battle of the sexes either, according to a new book that takes a scientific look at sex.
In her new book, Sex: A Natural History, science reporter Joann Rodgers debunks some previous sexual theories, as she explores the biology and psychology of what drives our sexual behavior, from why we find Hollywood star Brad Pitt attractive, to why we sometimes cheat on our mates.
The findings: Sex is a lot more scientific than you might think. Though often influenced by culture, Rodgers found that human sexual behavior, including flirting and courtship, is also determined by biology — and certain rituals are the same now as they were in the era of cavemen.
"A lot of sexual behavior — including what we're attracted to — is hardwired into our brains," Rodgers said. "A lot of it is conditioned by the way evolution formed our brains. Basically, our sexual brains are from the stone age."
The Mating Dance
Culture also plays a role, which leads to variation in sexual behavior among various people and varying ideals of beauty. But there are basic similarities that remain the same.
"Certain kinds of behavior are so universal that they appear to be biologically programmed," Rodgers said. "There is a mating dance."
When scientists studied flirting couples at a hotel bar, they saw some of the same things again and again - gestures that are part of our "brain chemistry," Rodgers said.
A couple that was "connecting" would look into each other's eyes. When they sat down together, the man would lean forward, thrusting out his chest, while the woman would start twirling her hair.
"The man makes the first touch, say pretending to brush something off the woman's blouse," Rogers said. The hands would eventually touch each other, and eventually, the couple heads off to one of the rooms, researchers found.
No Battle of the Sexes
Rodgers also concluded that there isn't really a "battle of the sexes" and that the "Men are from Mars, Women Are From Venus" theory is a misleading one, Rodgers said.
"Battles always have a winner and a loser," Rodgers said. "But in the so-called battle of the sexes both sides have to win or else everyone loses … Scientists will tell you there is no battle."
The ultimate goal of sexual relationships is cooperation and reproduction, despite the different strategies and behaviors employed by each of the sexes to reach it, Rodgers said. A woman for example might "play hard to get," a courtship ritual that her ancestors used, too.
"These are behaviors that have evolved over millions of years, as the ways males and females size each other up," she said. "Men and women aren't different species. Ultimately, the male and female get together and have children - and that's a win-win situation."
Many people believe that infidelity is more of a male trait - something that is part of their makeup, based on the theory that men have needed to spread their sperm, far and wide in the name of evolution. But that doesn't explain why women cheat too, or whom the men are cheating with, Rodgers said. "Until the advent of paternity testing, men just didn't have a reliable way of finding out," she said. "Women are probably more like men in this respect than we'd like to think."
Why Women Love Brad Pitt
Among cultures there are different preferences in terms of what is attractive. In the West, there is a lot of emphasis on female breasts, while in Oriental cultures, for instance, there is more of a preoccupation with a woman's neck. Some cultures prefer heavier women.
But the kinds of body types we are attracted to is also linked to another part of our anatomy - our stomachs.
If Arnold Schwarzenegger walked onto a stone age plateau looking as buff as he did when he starred as Conan the Barbarian, women would think "he'll take a whole lot more to feed" than the other men, Rodgers said.
"Our sexual brains evolved at a time when there wasn't that much to eat," Rodgers said. "Arnold probably would have had a hard time finding a mate. People are programmed to be suspicious of extremes - extreme fatness, thinness, or muscularity."
Studies show that even now, most women are not particularly attracted to body builder types. But a moderately muscular guy like actor Brad Pitt, who is also blessed with symmetrical features, is a hit with the ladies. Elizabeth Taylor, Denzel Washington and ancient Egypt's Nefertiti are universally recognized as being full of sex appeal, for the same reason, Rodgers said.
"The first thing we look for is symmetry. Symmetry is a sign of health," Rodgers said. A new study released last week, which found that asymmetrical people are more jealous than others, fits into the theory. Asymmetrical people are less attractive, and therefore more fearful of losing their mates.
Sex and Death
Sex plays a role in our lives until the day we die - and in fact, sex and death are intimately connected, Rodgers found.
"Scientists say that sex and death are intimately related. Bacteria, for example, never die," she said. "They just keep on reproducing - splitting - forever."
Humans are more complex organisms, and when we evolved and started exchanging genetic material, things got more complicated. With bacteria, its whole makeup - just one cell - is devoted to reproduction, and that's all it does.
But with humans, only our sex cells are involved in reproduction, and the rest of our cells, including those that make up our skins and organs, cannot reproduce indefinitely. Sex - or the lack thereof - leads to our demise.
"Our other cells can only divide a certain number of times, and then they die, which is why we die," Rodgers said.
What is Rubber?
Rubber is a sticky, elastic solid produced from a milky liquid called "latex(胶乳，乳液)," which has different properties than the sap found in trees. Although latex is found in the bark, roots, and stems, branches, leaves, and fruit of over 400 different plants and trees, the bulk is found, and extracted, from the inner bark of the branches, and from the trunk, of the rubber tree. Quite simply, it would not be cost-effective to extract the latex from rubber producing plants, such as the dandelion(蒲公英), the milkweed, and the sagebrush. Just visualize some poor soul laboring over one of these with a syringe!
Rubber, derived from the gum of a tree, has existed since prehistoric times. For example, fossils of rubber-producing plants date back almost 3,000,000 years. Crude rubber balls, discovered in ruins of ancient Incan and Mayan civilizations(印加和玛雅文化) in Central and in South America, are, at very least, 900 years old. Natives of Southeastern Asia used rubber, prepared from the "juice" of trees to waterproof their baskets and jars. Even Columbus, on his second voyage to the New World, observed Haitian natives playing with balls made from "the gum of a tree."
Latex consists of tiny particles of liquid, solid, or semi-fluid material, that appears in the form of a watery liquor, not to be drunk! The breakdown on this watery liquid is only about 33% rubber, with the remainder being, not surprisingly, water! When the rubber particles in the latex join together, they form a ball of rubber.
Rubber producing plants grow best within 10 degrees of the Equator, where the climate is hot and moist, and the soil is deep and rich. For this reason, the area of about 700 miles on each side of the Equator is known as the "Rubber Belt." Brazil, from whence the best, and top-producing rubber tree hails, is firmly planted within the Rubber Belt. This Latino tree with a Latin name, Hevea brasiliensis(橡胶树), produces approximately 96% of the world's supply of natural rubber, and now is cultivated in other Rubber Belt countries.
Most likely, the French, prior to the 1800s, were the first white men to take advantage of rubbers' elasticity. They manufactured "rubber bands" for use with their garters and their suspenders, to help to keep their pants up. Rubber belts did not exist at that time.
Rubber, derived from the gum of a tree, has existed since prehistoric times. For example, fossils of rubber-producing plants date back almost 3,000,000 years. Crude rubber balls, discovered in ruins of ancient Incan and Mayan civilizations(印加和玛雅文化) in Central and in South America, are, at very least, 900 years old. Natives of Southeastern Asia used rubber, prepared from the "juice" of trees to waterproof their baskets and jars. Even Columbus, on his second voyage to the New World, observed Haitian natives playing with balls made from "the gum of a tree."
Latex consists of tiny particles of liquid, solid, or semi-fluid material, that appears in the form of a watery liquor, not to be drunk! The breakdown on this watery liquid is only about 33% rubber, with the remainder being, not surprisingly, water! When the rubber particles in the latex join together, they form a ball of rubber.
Rubber producing plants grow best within 10 degrees of the Equator, where the climate is hot and moist, and the soil is deep and rich. For this reason, the area of about 700 miles on each side of the Equator is known as the "Rubber Belt." Brazil, from whence the best, and top-producing rubber tree hails, is firmly planted within the Rubber Belt. This Latino tree with a Latin name, Hevea brasiliensis(橡胶树), produces approximately 96% of the world's supply of natural rubber, and now is cultivated in other Rubber Belt countries.
Most likely, the French, prior to the 1800s, were the first white men to take advantage of rubbers' elasticity. They manufactured "rubber bands" for use with their garters and their suspenders, to help to keep their pants up. Rubber belts did not exist at that time.
Hackers attack UK student's web site
A Web site that earned an enterprising British student, named Alex Tew, $1 million suffered a crippling attack by ransom-seeking hackers.
Alex Tew, 21, said that his Million Dollar Homepage was targeted after he publicized how it had helped him raise money for his university studies.
Tew had sold 10,000 small squares of advertising space on the Web site for $100 each, achieving his target in four months. His initiative spawned several copycat sites.
But Tew said that on Jan. 7, he received a threat from an organization calling itself "The Dark Group," demanding that he pay them $50,000 within 72 hours or face having his site taken down.
"It was written in poor English, but the hackers asked for $50,000, saying that it was just 5 percent of what I had made," Tew said. "I did not reply to the e-mail. I had no intention of paying."
Tew ignored the threat. Hackers then initiated a so-called distributed denial of service, in which attackers take command of third-party computers, through a virus or other security vulnerability, and instruct them to send junk data to the target site, overwhelming servers and causing the site to crash or perform poorly.
Tew said the site now works normally.
Tew, from Wiltshire, a county in southern England, said he informed the FBI because his site is hosted in the United States.
FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the agency was investigating.
Such extortion cases targeting Web sites are occurring with greater frequency.
Alex Tew, 21, said that his Million Dollar Homepage was targeted after he publicized how it had helped him raise money for his university studies.
Tew had sold 10,000 small squares of advertising space on the Web site for $100 each, achieving his target in four months. His initiative spawned several copycat sites.
But Tew said that on Jan. 7, he received a threat from an organization calling itself "The Dark Group," demanding that he pay them $50,000 within 72 hours or face having his site taken down.
"It was written in poor English, but the hackers asked for $50,000, saying that it was just 5 percent of what I had made," Tew said. "I did not reply to the e-mail. I had no intention of paying."
Tew ignored the threat. Hackers then initiated a so-called distributed denial of service, in which attackers take command of third-party computers, through a virus or other security vulnerability, and instruct them to send junk data to the target site, overwhelming servers and causing the site to crash or perform poorly.
Tew said the site now works normally.
Tew, from Wiltshire, a county in southern England, said he informed the FBI because his site is hosted in the United States.
FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the agency was investigating.
Such extortion cases targeting Web sites are occurring with greater frequency.
2008年5月17日星期六
Is test-tube baby risky?
Do infertility treatments damage babies'genes? Doctors used to think not．Now they are not so sure．
In the 24 years since the birth of Louise Brown，the world's first test－tube baby，thousands of would－be parents have been assure that as far as scientists knew there was no extra risk of genetic damage associated with in－vitro fertilization，or IVF．No matter how sperm meets egg--whether in a woman's body or in a Petri dish（and even if the sperm needs some help getting inside the egg）--nature is equally vigilant about preventing serious genetic mishaps from coming to term．With those assurances，test－tube births have soared from a few hundred a year in the early 1980s to tens of thousands today．
But according to a pair of reports in last week's New England Journal of Medicine，that conventional wisdom may be wrong．In the first study，doctors in Britain and Australia found that infants conceived with both straightforward test－tube methods and a more invasive technique called intra－cytoplasmic sperm in jection，in which sperm is injected directly into the egg，have an 8.6% risk of major birth defects--including heart and kidney abnormalities，cleft palate and undescended testicles -- compared with the 4.2% rate in babies made the old－fashioned way．The second study，conducted by the U．S．Centers for Disease Control and Prevention（CDC），reported that babies conceived through what doctors call assisted reproductive technologies（ART）have 2.6 times the risk of low or very low birth weight --a significant risk factor for cardiac and cognitive problems．
There are plenty of reasons to take both studies seriously．In the low－birth－weight study，for example，the researchers allowed for the fact that parents who use assisted reproduction tend to be older than average and to have more multiple births--twins，triplets and so on．Even when they corrected for these factors，the disparity between babies conceived through ART and those conceived normally remained．
But there's no need to panic．Independent experts are quick to point out that the reports are hardly definitive．Couples who seek reproductive help are not just older；they are also--though it may seem like stating the obvious--infertile．"You're comparing two different groups of patients here，"says Dr．William Schoolcraft，director of the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine．"You have women with the disease of infertility，and you're comparing them with women who don't have the disease．"
Some of the same caveats apply to the birth－defects study，say experts．Here，too，earlier research had found no significant differences between test－tube babies and convention－ally conceived kids．And here，again，the new study didn't correct for the fact that women who get reproductive assistance often have something wrong with their reproductive system in the first place．
Even if these new studies are borne out by later research--already under way in infertility programs in Australia and the U．S．--the risks to kids conceived by assisted reproduction remain reassuringly small．And even if the danger is twice what doctors previously believed，91% of ART babies would still be born perfectly healthy．Says Dr．Zev Rosenwaks，director of New York Presbyterian Hospital's infertility program："If you ask a couple if they would rather not have a child at all or try to have a child that over 90% of the time will be normal，I think they will choose to have the child．"
In the 24 years since the birth of Louise Brown，the world's first test－tube baby，thousands of would－be parents have been assure that as far as scientists knew there was no extra risk of genetic damage associated with in－vitro fertilization，or IVF．No matter how sperm meets egg--whether in a woman's body or in a Petri dish（and even if the sperm needs some help getting inside the egg）--nature is equally vigilant about preventing serious genetic mishaps from coming to term．With those assurances，test－tube births have soared from a few hundred a year in the early 1980s to tens of thousands today．
But according to a pair of reports in last week's New England Journal of Medicine，that conventional wisdom may be wrong．In the first study，doctors in Britain and Australia found that infants conceived with both straightforward test－tube methods and a more invasive technique called intra－cytoplasmic sperm in jection，in which sperm is injected directly into the egg，have an 8.6% risk of major birth defects--including heart and kidney abnormalities，cleft palate and undescended testicles -- compared with the 4.2% rate in babies made the old－fashioned way．The second study，conducted by the U．S．Centers for Disease Control and Prevention（CDC），reported that babies conceived through what doctors call assisted reproductive technologies（ART）have 2.6 times the risk of low or very low birth weight --a significant risk factor for cardiac and cognitive problems．
There are plenty of reasons to take both studies seriously．In the low－birth－weight study，for example，the researchers allowed for the fact that parents who use assisted reproduction tend to be older than average and to have more multiple births--twins，triplets and so on．Even when they corrected for these factors，the disparity between babies conceived through ART and those conceived normally remained．
But there's no need to panic．Independent experts are quick to point out that the reports are hardly definitive．Couples who seek reproductive help are not just older；they are also--though it may seem like stating the obvious--infertile．"You're comparing two different groups of patients here，"says Dr．William Schoolcraft，director of the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine．"You have women with the disease of infertility，and you're comparing them with women who don't have the disease．"
Some of the same caveats apply to the birth－defects study，say experts．Here，too，earlier research had found no significant differences between test－tube babies and convention－ally conceived kids．And here，again，the new study didn't correct for the fact that women who get reproductive assistance often have something wrong with their reproductive system in the first place．
Even if these new studies are borne out by later research--already under way in infertility programs in Australia and the U．S．--the risks to kids conceived by assisted reproduction remain reassuringly small．And even if the danger is twice what doctors previously believed，91% of ART babies would still be born perfectly healthy．Says Dr．Zev Rosenwaks，director of New York Presbyterian Hospital's infertility program："If you ask a couple if they would rather not have a child at all or try to have a child that over 90% of the time will be normal，I think they will choose to have the child．"
A New Chip Design May Lead to New Sight
For decades, scientists and eye doctors have been trying to develop artificial eyes that would return the sense of sight to blind and visually impaired people. And the thought of the "bionic eye" may not be too far fetched. Many companies, such as Optobionics in Wheaton, Ill., have taken the first steps with tiny microchips that can mimic certain parts and function of the human eye; such as the rods and cones, sensors that convert light into electrical impulses at the retina located at the back of the eye. But scientists at the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va., believe they are on the path to a chip that could truly mimic the entire nerve system of the retina back of the human eye. At the heart of their potential artificial eye is a well-known chip design called a cellular nonlinear network, or CNN. In the chip, individual computer circuits are connected to each other in a checkerboard array. Each connection can be given a mathematical "weight" that "describes" the relationship of each circuit to each other. When the chip is exposed to image data, each pixel or point of light in the picture is sent to a specific cell in the chip. Mathematical algorithms can then manipulate each connection's weight to produce different resulting images. One set of algorithms could help find the edges of an object in the image. Another set of algorithm could then find corners, while another set define contours.
Larry Cooper, the program manager at Office of Naval Research who specializes in nanoelectronics, says the CNN chip has multiple advantages that make it ideal for use in an artificial retina. For one, the connections between each circuit are parallel, or "non-linear." That means, the calculation for each circuit is happening almost simultaneously and allows for very rapid image processing. "The time it takes a chip to [process a function] is about a microsecond," says Cooper.
Another advantage: The chip is an analog processor. Common microprocessors, such as those used in desktop PC are digital; dealing with values of "1" and "0." But the CNN chip can perform its calculations using image values that aren't as exacting; which is the same way our brain processes information.
Would It Work?
How the CNN chip could be used as an artificial eye, however, is still fairly theoretical, says Frank Werblin, a professor of neurobiology at the University of California at Berkeley. Werblin, who has conducted his own research in CNN chips, says the ideal use would be to create a three-dimensional array where each layer of CNNs would mimic a specific layer of sensors in the human eye. One layer, for example, would be able to pick out edges, while another picks out color. And while the algorithms for doing such CNN calculations are well known, Werblin says the problem is figuring out how to connect it all with the human brain. "You have a million optic nerve fibers leaving your eyes, and each goes to specific part of the brain's cortex," says Werblin. But he says no one knows just how many or exactly which ones are needed to produce an image that could be understood by the brain.
And there's still the question of how to connect silicon chips to human nerve cells，a process that's just being tried out with much simpler chips such as Optobionic's artificial light sensors. David McComb, chief information officer with Optobionics, says the company has successfully implanted the microchips into the retinas of six patients under a clinical trial approved by the Food and Drug Administration. However, actual results of how well the chips are working probably won't be released for review by other scientists until later this year.
And according to both Werblin and Cooper, it will still be quite some time before CNN chips could be implanted in humans - if ever. Right now, most CNN chips are just too big - about 1 or 2 square inches ; and require too much power to be embedded in an eye. Still, the potential prospects of ending blindness through artificial eyes grows brighter every day.
" Couple of years ago, every one thought this was pie-in-the-sky, Star Wars stuff," says Dr. Gerald Chader, an ophthalmologist and chief science officer for the Foundation Fighting Blindness. But with more clinical trials and research, Chader says it's quite possible that some form of chip implants will be helping to improve failing eyes in five to 10 years. "In the last couple of years there has been progress," he says, "We have a great deal of hope that there will be positive outcomes."
Larry Cooper, the program manager at Office of Naval Research who specializes in nanoelectronics, says the CNN chip has multiple advantages that make it ideal for use in an artificial retina. For one, the connections between each circuit are parallel, or "non-linear." That means, the calculation for each circuit is happening almost simultaneously and allows for very rapid image processing. "The time it takes a chip to [process a function] is about a microsecond," says Cooper.
Another advantage: The chip is an analog processor. Common microprocessors, such as those used in desktop PC are digital; dealing with values of "1" and "0." But the CNN chip can perform its calculations using image values that aren't as exacting; which is the same way our brain processes information.
Would It Work?
How the CNN chip could be used as an artificial eye, however, is still fairly theoretical, says Frank Werblin, a professor of neurobiology at the University of California at Berkeley. Werblin, who has conducted his own research in CNN chips, says the ideal use would be to create a three-dimensional array where each layer of CNNs would mimic a specific layer of sensors in the human eye. One layer, for example, would be able to pick out edges, while another picks out color. And while the algorithms for doing such CNN calculations are well known, Werblin says the problem is figuring out how to connect it all with the human brain. "You have a million optic nerve fibers leaving your eyes, and each goes to specific part of the brain's cortex," says Werblin. But he says no one knows just how many or exactly which ones are needed to produce an image that could be understood by the brain.
And there's still the question of how to connect silicon chips to human nerve cells，a process that's just being tried out with much simpler chips such as Optobionic's artificial light sensors. David McComb, chief information officer with Optobionics, says the company has successfully implanted the microchips into the retinas of six patients under a clinical trial approved by the Food and Drug Administration. However, actual results of how well the chips are working probably won't be released for review by other scientists until later this year.
And according to both Werblin and Cooper, it will still be quite some time before CNN chips could be implanted in humans - if ever. Right now, most CNN chips are just too big - about 1 or 2 square inches ; and require too much power to be embedded in an eye. Still, the potential prospects of ending blindness through artificial eyes grows brighter every day.
" Couple of years ago, every one thought this was pie-in-the-sky, Star Wars stuff," says Dr. Gerald Chader, an ophthalmologist and chief science officer for the Foundation Fighting Blindness. But with more clinical trials and research, Chader says it's quite possible that some form of chip implants will be helping to improve failing eyes in five to 10 years. "In the last couple of years there has been progress," he says, "We have a great deal of hope that there will be positive outcomes."
Telepathy－－mind to mind contact
Telepathy is the ability to communicate without the use of the five senses（sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste）．It is an instinct, and although quite dormant in many of us, we are often capable of tapping into our latent abilities in times of emergency or need．
Where this instinct lies is uncertain．Some say that it is located in the huge area of our brains that are wholly unused, whereas others argue that instinct existed before the brain evolved and must therefore lie else－where in the body．
When we intuitively know that something is happening, or about to happen, our instinct has kicked in．We are drawing upon resources within the unconscious mind．When the resources of two unconscious minds link together into the same frequency, we call it Telepathy．
Telepathy can be either projective or perceptive, we either send or receive．If you know who is calling before you answer the ringing phone, you are probably a good receiver．If you think of a person, and they call you, you are most likely better at sending．
You can easily put your abilities to the test．Think of somebody and will them to contact you．Be patient, the other person may not be a good receiver, but they should contact you much earlier than would normally be expected．Or whenever the phone rings, try "feeling"who's contacting you．Don't guess, try to feel the vibrations．However, if neither of these work for you, that doesn't mean that you are not capable of telepathy．As mentioned earlier, telepathy is most likely to kick in under circumstances of emergency．
Telepathic Dreams Dreams often contain telepathic messages．Two people may both dream of the other, and find that their dreams had a distinct connection．These people are probably mutually linking to the unconscious mind．A projection of the mind－－a form of astral projection？
Telepathy＆Relationships The more people spend time together, the more likely they are to be able to link up to the others mind, especially when separated．There are two reasons for this．One is that they understand the others, mind through time spent together；the other is that there is usually a strong desire to communicate．
A mother will often sense that her child is in danger．This is due to the child desperately wanting his/her mother, knowing that this is the person who would always want to be there for them, and the mothers deep desire to protect her child from harm．
Where this instinct lies is uncertain．Some say that it is located in the huge area of our brains that are wholly unused, whereas others argue that instinct existed before the brain evolved and must therefore lie else－where in the body．
When we intuitively know that something is happening, or about to happen, our instinct has kicked in．We are drawing upon resources within the unconscious mind．When the resources of two unconscious minds link together into the same frequency, we call it Telepathy．
Telepathy can be either projective or perceptive, we either send or receive．If you know who is calling before you answer the ringing phone, you are probably a good receiver．If you think of a person, and they call you, you are most likely better at sending．
You can easily put your abilities to the test．Think of somebody and will them to contact you．Be patient, the other person may not be a good receiver, but they should contact you much earlier than would normally be expected．Or whenever the phone rings, try "feeling"who's contacting you．Don't guess, try to feel the vibrations．However, if neither of these work for you, that doesn't mean that you are not capable of telepathy．As mentioned earlier, telepathy is most likely to kick in under circumstances of emergency．
Telepathic Dreams Dreams often contain telepathic messages．Two people may both dream of the other, and find that their dreams had a distinct connection．These people are probably mutually linking to the unconscious mind．A projection of the mind－－a form of astral projection？
Telepathy＆Relationships The more people spend time together, the more likely they are to be able to link up to the others mind, especially when separated．There are two reasons for this．One is that they understand the others, mind through time spent together；the other is that there is usually a strong desire to communicate．
A mother will often sense that her child is in danger．This is due to the child desperately wanting his/her mother, knowing that this is the person who would always want to be there for them, and the mothers deep desire to protect her child from harm．
Software aims to put your life on a disk
Engineers are working on software to load every photo you take, every letter you write — in fact your every memory and experience— into a surrogate brain that never forgets anything, New Scientist can reveal. It is part of a curious venture dubbed the MyLifeBits project, in which engineers at Microsoft’s Media Presence lab in San Francisco are aiming to build multimedia databases that chronicle people’s life events and make them searchable. “Imagine being able to run a googly-like search on your life,”says Gordon Bell, one of the developers.
The motivation? Microsoft argues that our memories often deceive us: experiences get exaggerated, we muddle the timing of events and simply forget stuff. Much better, says the firm, to junk such unreliable interpretations and instead build a faithful memory on that most reliable of entities, the PC.
Bell and his colleagues developed MyLifeBits as a surrogate brain to solve what they call the “giant shoebox problem”.“In a giant shoebox full of photos, it’s hard to find what you are looking for,”says Microsoft’s Jim Gemmell. Add to this the reels of home movies, videotapes, bundles of letters and documents we file away, and remembering what we have, let alone finding it, becomes a major headache.
Logging life
By the time he speaks at December's Association for Computing Machinery Multimedia conference in Juan Les Pins, France, Bell says he will have logged everything he possibly can onto his MyLifeBits database.
Apart from official documents like his passport, he will post everything from letters and photos to home videos and work documents. All his email is automatically saved on the system, as is anything he reads or buys online. He has also started recording phone conversations and meetings to store as audio files. The privacy and corporate security risks are clear.
Of course the system takes up a huge amount of memory. But Bell's group calculates that within five years, a 1000-gigabyte hard drive will cost less than $300 - and that is enough to store four hours of video every day for a year.
Each media file saved in MyLifeBits can be tagged with a written or spoken commentary and linked to other files. Spoken annotations are also converted into text, so the speech is searchable, too.
To recall a period in his past, Bell just types in the dates he is interested in. MyLifeBits then calls up a timeline of phone and email conversations, things he has read and any images he recorded. The system can also be used to build narratives involving other people, events or places. Searching for the name of a friend would bring together a chronological set of files describing when you both did things together, for instance.
Meet the ancestors
Although MyLifeBits is essentially a large database, it could gradually become a repository for many of our experiences. Now that many mobile devices contain photomessaging cameras, you could save everyday events onto the system. “Users will eventually be able to keep every document they read, every picture they view, all the audio they hear and a good portion of what they see,”says Gemmell.
Bell believes that for some people, especially those with memory problems, MyLifeBits will become a surrogate memory that is able to recall past experiences in a way not possible with the familiar but disparate records like photo albums and scrapbooks. “You'll begin to rely on it more and more,”he believes.
A really accurate, searchable store of events could also help us preserve our experiences more vividly for posterity. Doug de Groot, who works on computer-generated beings called avatars and other types of digital “life” at Leiden University in the Netherlands, says Bell’s system could eventually form the basis for “meet the ancestor” style educational tools, where people will quiz their ancestors on what happened in their lifetimes.
A system like MyLifeBits was first suggested in 1945, when presidential technology adviser Vannevar Bush hatched the then farsighted idea of an infinite personal archive based on the emerging digital computer. His ideas also inspired the Internet archive website.
The motivation? Microsoft argues that our memories often deceive us: experiences get exaggerated, we muddle the timing of events and simply forget stuff. Much better, says the firm, to junk such unreliable interpretations and instead build a faithful memory on that most reliable of entities, the PC.
Bell and his colleagues developed MyLifeBits as a surrogate brain to solve what they call the “giant shoebox problem”.“In a giant shoebox full of photos, it’s hard to find what you are looking for,”says Microsoft’s Jim Gemmell. Add to this the reels of home movies, videotapes, bundles of letters and documents we file away, and remembering what we have, let alone finding it, becomes a major headache.
Logging life
By the time he speaks at December's Association for Computing Machinery Multimedia conference in Juan Les Pins, France, Bell says he will have logged everything he possibly can onto his MyLifeBits database.
Apart from official documents like his passport, he will post everything from letters and photos to home videos and work documents. All his email is automatically saved on the system, as is anything he reads or buys online. He has also started recording phone conversations and meetings to store as audio files. The privacy and corporate security risks are clear.
Of course the system takes up a huge amount of memory. But Bell's group calculates that within five years, a 1000-gigabyte hard drive will cost less than $300 - and that is enough to store four hours of video every day for a year.
Each media file saved in MyLifeBits can be tagged with a written or spoken commentary and linked to other files. Spoken annotations are also converted into text, so the speech is searchable, too.
To recall a period in his past, Bell just types in the dates he is interested in. MyLifeBits then calls up a timeline of phone and email conversations, things he has read and any images he recorded. The system can also be used to build narratives involving other people, events or places. Searching for the name of a friend would bring together a chronological set of files describing when you both did things together, for instance.
Meet the ancestors
Although MyLifeBits is essentially a large database, it could gradually become a repository for many of our experiences. Now that many mobile devices contain photomessaging cameras, you could save everyday events onto the system. “Users will eventually be able to keep every document they read, every picture they view, all the audio they hear and a good portion of what they see,”says Gemmell.
Bell believes that for some people, especially those with memory problems, MyLifeBits will become a surrogate memory that is able to recall past experiences in a way not possible with the familiar but disparate records like photo albums and scrapbooks. “You'll begin to rely on it more and more,”he believes.
A really accurate, searchable store of events could also help us preserve our experiences more vividly for posterity. Doug de Groot, who works on computer-generated beings called avatars and other types of digital “life” at Leiden University in the Netherlands, says Bell’s system could eventually form the basis for “meet the ancestor” style educational tools, where people will quiz their ancestors on what happened in their lifetimes.
A system like MyLifeBits was first suggested in 1945, when presidential technology adviser Vannevar Bush hatched the then farsighted idea of an infinite personal archive based on the emerging digital computer. His ideas also inspired the Internet archive website.
IBM to retake 'fastest computer' title
ASCI Purple will be used to simulate nuclear explosions in 3-D
Scientists will soon be able to observe the first instants after a nuclear warhead detonates. Fortunately, it will be a three-dimensional simulation, made possible by the world's fastest computer. IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy announced Tuesday the sale of a $290 million supercomputer, capable of performing 100 trillion calculations per second. Armed with that much computing firepower, a 3-D simulation of the first one-millionth of a second in a nuclear explosion will take eight weeks to calculate.
ASCI PURPLE, as the massive computer will be called, has a sobering task. Working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, the hefty computer will be dedicated to the task of monitoring the nation's nuclear missile stockpile.
Every year, the Department of Energy has to certify to the U.S. president that the missiles are safe and in working order. Computers are constantly running simulations to predict the likelihood of missile failure in a war, or the consequences of a missile mishap while still in peacetime.
Currently, the former world's No. 1 computer, ASCI White, did the job. But it can only run simulations on simple theoretical models, said lab spokesman David Schwoegler. ASCI Purple will do the first true-to-life, three-dimensional simulation of a detonation.
And testing the nuclear arsenal requires much more than simulating the behavior of the plutonium inside a bomb. In fact, everything inside the bomb must be tested because materials tend to act in unpredictable ways during a detonation. One thing the computer will be able to test, for example, is whether aging materials hold potential hazards.
In the process, the computer will also help scientists unmask some of the 20th century's great mysteries. Nuclear weapons, Schwoegler said, were built in the past "pragmatically, not scientifically." In other words - the bombs worked, but the scientists building them were basing their construction on theories, instead of observation.
"I've seen scientists look at materials calculations on ASCI White and say, I knew that happened, but I couldn't prove it," Schwoegler said.
ASCI Purple is as fast as 50,000 top-of-the-line PCs performing calculations simultaneously. Its operating memory is 400,000 times greater than that of the average PC, and it can store data equivalent to the U.S. Library of Congress - 30 times over. At 100 teraflops - or 100 trillion calculations per second - it will be about eight times faster than its predecessor, ASCI White, and about three times faster than the world's current No. 1 computer, The Earth Simulator in Yokohama, Japan. That NEC-built machine was installed earlier this year, knocking IBM out of the top spot.
THE POWER OF THE HUMAN BRAIN
Hans Moravec, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, says ASCI Purple represents an important milestone for the computing industry. Twenty years ago, he predicted that computers would require 100 terraflops of calculating power to simulate the activity of the human brain. Right on the schedule he predicted, that milestone has been reached.
"It seemed astronomically large back then," Moravec said. In fact, his predictions were first published in a science fiction magazine. "I'm glad somebody remembered." Moravec's approximation is based on some observed facts - namely, the amount of computing power required to simulate the activity of the retina, which is about 1 billion calculations per second. For an approximation, he then calculated that the retina is about 1/100,000th the size of the entire brain. So he simply multiplied 1 billion times 100,000.
The real trick for the industry, however, is to get the cost of ASCI Purple sized-computing power down from $290 million to about $1,000. At that point, he said, there will be robots which can act more or less like people. That kind of cost reduction might again sound like science fiction, but don't be fooled, said Moravec."I expect that in about 2020," he said.
Scientists will soon be able to observe the first instants after a nuclear warhead detonates. Fortunately, it will be a three-dimensional simulation, made possible by the world's fastest computer. IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy announced Tuesday the sale of a $290 million supercomputer, capable of performing 100 trillion calculations per second. Armed with that much computing firepower, a 3-D simulation of the first one-millionth of a second in a nuclear explosion will take eight weeks to calculate.
ASCI PURPLE, as the massive computer will be called, has a sobering task. Working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, the hefty computer will be dedicated to the task of monitoring the nation's nuclear missile stockpile.
Every year, the Department of Energy has to certify to the U.S. president that the missiles are safe and in working order. Computers are constantly running simulations to predict the likelihood of missile failure in a war, or the consequences of a missile mishap while still in peacetime.
Currently, the former world's No. 1 computer, ASCI White, did the job. But it can only run simulations on simple theoretical models, said lab spokesman David Schwoegler. ASCI Purple will do the first true-to-life, three-dimensional simulation of a detonation.
And testing the nuclear arsenal requires much more than simulating the behavior of the plutonium inside a bomb. In fact, everything inside the bomb must be tested because materials tend to act in unpredictable ways during a detonation. One thing the computer will be able to test, for example, is whether aging materials hold potential hazards.
In the process, the computer will also help scientists unmask some of the 20th century's great mysteries. Nuclear weapons, Schwoegler said, were built in the past "pragmatically, not scientifically." In other words - the bombs worked, but the scientists building them were basing their construction on theories, instead of observation.
"I've seen scientists look at materials calculations on ASCI White and say, I knew that happened, but I couldn't prove it," Schwoegler said.
ASCI Purple is as fast as 50,000 top-of-the-line PCs performing calculations simultaneously. Its operating memory is 400,000 times greater than that of the average PC, and it can store data equivalent to the U.S. Library of Congress - 30 times over. At 100 teraflops - or 100 trillion calculations per second - it will be about eight times faster than its predecessor, ASCI White, and about three times faster than the world's current No. 1 computer, The Earth Simulator in Yokohama, Japan. That NEC-built machine was installed earlier this year, knocking IBM out of the top spot.
THE POWER OF THE HUMAN BRAIN
Hans Moravec, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, says ASCI Purple represents an important milestone for the computing industry. Twenty years ago, he predicted that computers would require 100 terraflops of calculating power to simulate the activity of the human brain. Right on the schedule he predicted, that milestone has been reached.
"It seemed astronomically large back then," Moravec said. In fact, his predictions were first published in a science fiction magazine. "I'm glad somebody remembered." Moravec's approximation is based on some observed facts - namely, the amount of computing power required to simulate the activity of the retina, which is about 1 billion calculations per second. For an approximation, he then calculated that the retina is about 1/100,000th the size of the entire brain. So he simply multiplied 1 billion times 100,000.
The real trick for the industry, however, is to get the cost of ASCI Purple sized-computing power down from $290 million to about $1,000. At that point, he said, there will be robots which can act more or less like people. That kind of cost reduction might again sound like science fiction, but don't be fooled, said Moravec."I expect that in about 2020," he said.
Gender Detector
Rajeev Sharma has a new computer system in his lab at Pennsylvania State University that really separates the boys from the girls.
The computer uses pattern recognition software to decide whether an image is that of a male or female.
"It's a learning technique," says Sharma, an associate professor of computer science and engineering. By trial and error, the software has "learned" how to separate images by gender.
The system was fed 1,755 thumbnail images of human faces from a standard database and told to determine the gender of each by "looking at the geometry of the facial structures," Sharma says.
The images included only eyes, nose and mouth - eliminating such things as beards and hair - and the system initially did fairly well, learning which gender to assign each image just on the basis of visual cues.
One of the reasons the system succeeds, he says, is there is considerable difference in the geometrical structure of male and female facial features.
But it wasn't good enough. So Sharma and his team of researchers took it a step further and added an audio signal consisting of tiny snippets of male and female voices a fraction of a second long. And that, he says, puts the system way over the top. It gets it right nearly 100 percent of the time, he says, and that's significantly better that humans can do. We only get it right a little more than 90 percent of the time, given the same cues, he says.
So in one sense, at least, scientists have come up with a computer that's better at sex than we are.
"Fortunately, there is enough difference" for the system to get it right, just on the basis of facial cues, most of the time, he adds.
Of course, the purpose of the system is not just to tell the boys from the girls. It's part of a much broader research program, sponsored partly by the National Science Foundation, to develop all sorts of image recognition systems. Sharma's lab is also developing systems that can classify images by age group, and even recognize specific individuals.
There are many potential applications for such systems. Near the top of the list these days are computers that can screen faces to be sure that the person trying to enter a secured area - like an airport operations center, for example - is really who he or she claims to be.
By adding an audio signal to such a system, Sharma has demonstrated that its accuracy can be increased significantly. Some day, perhaps, an airline pilot may just say "hi" to a camera and be cleared to pass through the security gate without even so much as a pause. The system will recognize precisely who she or he is.
The computer uses pattern recognition software to decide whether an image is that of a male or female.
"It's a learning technique," says Sharma, an associate professor of computer science and engineering. By trial and error, the software has "learned" how to separate images by gender.
The system was fed 1,755 thumbnail images of human faces from a standard database and told to determine the gender of each by "looking at the geometry of the facial structures," Sharma says.
The images included only eyes, nose and mouth - eliminating such things as beards and hair - and the system initially did fairly well, learning which gender to assign each image just on the basis of visual cues.
One of the reasons the system succeeds, he says, is there is considerable difference in the geometrical structure of male and female facial features.
But it wasn't good enough. So Sharma and his team of researchers took it a step further and added an audio signal consisting of tiny snippets of male and female voices a fraction of a second long. And that, he says, puts the system way over the top. It gets it right nearly 100 percent of the time, he says, and that's significantly better that humans can do. We only get it right a little more than 90 percent of the time, given the same cues, he says.
So in one sense, at least, scientists have come up with a computer that's better at sex than we are.
"Fortunately, there is enough difference" for the system to get it right, just on the basis of facial cues, most of the time, he adds.
Of course, the purpose of the system is not just to tell the boys from the girls. It's part of a much broader research program, sponsored partly by the National Science Foundation, to develop all sorts of image recognition systems. Sharma's lab is also developing systems that can classify images by age group, and even recognize specific individuals.
There are many potential applications for such systems. Near the top of the list these days are computers that can screen faces to be sure that the person trying to enter a secured area - like an airport operations center, for example - is really who he or she claims to be.
By adding an audio signal to such a system, Sharma has demonstrated that its accuracy can be increased significantly. Some day, perhaps, an airline pilot may just say "hi" to a camera and be cleared to pass through the security gate without even so much as a pause. The system will recognize precisely who she or he is.
A Literal Dream Machine
Technology That May Help Control and Create Dreams
Michel Gringas is getting ready for bed, a ritual not complete until he straps on his NovaDreamer.
"It's the best form of virtual reality," said Gringas. "It's a reality in which you can do absolutely everything."
Gringas is one of thousands who swear by the new technology that reportedly lets users control and create dreams.
"Flying is the most classic example," said Gringas, a Web designer and videographer from Canada. "When you realize you're having a lucid dream, you just take off and fly!"
Realizing you're in a lucid dream is the key, and that's where technology developed in a Stanford University lab by world-renowned lucid dreaming expert Stephen LaBerge comes in.
"When you do something in a dream, to the brain it's as if you're actually doing it," LaBerge said.
Lucid dreaming simply means knowing that you're dreaming while you're sleeping. Think Nightmare on Elm Street, but in a good way.
Control Your Dreams
The NovaDreamer is a mask that senses when you drift into REM or deep sleep. Developed by LaBerge's Lucidity Institute in Palo Alto, the mask emits gentle lights and sounds to provide subconscious cues that tell you you're dreaming without waking you up.
If you're able to pick up on those cues - LaBerge says that with the right training, anyone can do it - you'll experience a lucid dream. You'll actually be able to control what happens to you during the dream itself.
"In ordinary dreams we don't know it's a dream until we wake up. And so we don't know the opportunities available there," LaBerge said. "If you know it's a dream, you can transcend the usual limitations."
The NovaDreamer sells for about $300 and comes with a workbook to help the budding lucid dreamer hone his or her skills. An accessory to the device is a port that can download information from the mask directly to a PC. The data includes how many REM episodes the user experienced during the night and at what times.
REM sleep is the key to lucid dreaming and LaBerge says people develop patterns for REM sleep. If you can pick up on those, he says, you can better coordinate when you might experience a lucid dream.
For Gringas, this dream machine is a dream come true.
"While sleeping I could be awake doing other things… flying around, meeting Einstein or Gandhi, or having sex with 15 partners feeding me grapes," he said. "It's a whole world that you create!"
Gringas has created a Web site devoted to capturing dreams by using video and computing technology to re-create his lucid dreams, so everyone who logs on to his site can see what he has seen.
Michel Gringas is getting ready for bed, a ritual not complete until he straps on his NovaDreamer.
"It's the best form of virtual reality," said Gringas. "It's a reality in which you can do absolutely everything."
Gringas is one of thousands who swear by the new technology that reportedly lets users control and create dreams.
"Flying is the most classic example," said Gringas, a Web designer and videographer from Canada. "When you realize you're having a lucid dream, you just take off and fly!"
Realizing you're in a lucid dream is the key, and that's where technology developed in a Stanford University lab by world-renowned lucid dreaming expert Stephen LaBerge comes in.
"When you do something in a dream, to the brain it's as if you're actually doing it," LaBerge said.
Lucid dreaming simply means knowing that you're dreaming while you're sleeping. Think Nightmare on Elm Street, but in a good way.
Control Your Dreams
The NovaDreamer is a mask that senses when you drift into REM or deep sleep. Developed by LaBerge's Lucidity Institute in Palo Alto, the mask emits gentle lights and sounds to provide subconscious cues that tell you you're dreaming without waking you up.
If you're able to pick up on those cues - LaBerge says that with the right training, anyone can do it - you'll experience a lucid dream. You'll actually be able to control what happens to you during the dream itself.
"In ordinary dreams we don't know it's a dream until we wake up. And so we don't know the opportunities available there," LaBerge said. "If you know it's a dream, you can transcend the usual limitations."
The NovaDreamer sells for about $300 and comes with a workbook to help the budding lucid dreamer hone his or her skills. An accessory to the device is a port that can download information from the mask directly to a PC. The data includes how many REM episodes the user experienced during the night and at what times.
REM sleep is the key to lucid dreaming and LaBerge says people develop patterns for REM sleep. If you can pick up on those, he says, you can better coordinate when you might experience a lucid dream.
For Gringas, this dream machine is a dream come true.
"While sleeping I could be awake doing other things… flying around, meeting Einstein or Gandhi, or having sex with 15 partners feeding me grapes," he said. "It's a whole world that you create!"
Gringas has created a Web site devoted to capturing dreams by using video and computing technology to re-create his lucid dreams, so everyone who logs on to his site can see what he has seen.
Cloned pigs -- the potential organ donors
Five cloned piglets, genetically modified so that their organs are much less likely to be rejected by a human donor recipient, have been born in the US.
More than 62,000 people in the US alone are waiting to receive donated hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys and pancreases. The number of human donors falls far short of demand. Pig organs are of a similar size to human organs, and some scientists hope they might be used to help meet the shortfall. But previous attempts to transplant unaltered pig tissue into humans have failed, due to immune rejection of the tissue.
The five piglets, born on Christmas Day, lack a gene for an enzyme that adds a sugar to the surface of pig cells. The sugar would trigger a patient's immune system into launching an immediate attack.
"This advance provides a near-time solution for overcoming the shortage of human organs for transplants, as well as insulin-producing cells to cure diabetes," says David Ayares, vice president of research at PPL Therapeutics, US division, where the pigs were created. " This is the key gene for overcoming the early stage of rejection."
However, scientists warn that much more work is necessary before organs from copies of the pigs could be transplanted into humans. Human genes will need to be added, to prevent rejection of the organ in the long-term. There are also conerns that pig viruses could infect organ recipients.
Cloning techniques were vital to the production of the pigs. Genes can only be knocked out in a single cell. Cloning of these single cells then allowed the creation of a whole animal in which the gene was knocked out in every cell. But the PPL researchers have succeeded in knocking out only one copy of the gene for the enzyme, called alpha 1，3 galactosyl transferase. The team will now attempt to knock out both copies of the gene.
"There will also be other genes we will incorporate into our program," Ayares says. "We don't think that one gene is going to produce an organ that's going to be the end-all for transplantation. We're going to have to add two to three human genes as well."
The team will also conduct tests to investigate whether so-called porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVS)from the pigs could infect human cells in culture. But Ayares hopes that organs created from PPL pigs could be transplanted into patients within five years.
"But although a lot of the stem cell work is very exciting, we're still very far off being able to grow an organ in a culture dish," says Julia Greenstein of Immerge Bio Therapeutics in Charlestown, US, who is working on creating similar knock-out pigs with researchers at the University of Missouri.
More than 62,000 people in the US alone are waiting to receive donated hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys and pancreases. The number of human donors falls far short of demand. Pig organs are of a similar size to human organs, and some scientists hope they might be used to help meet the shortfall. But previous attempts to transplant unaltered pig tissue into humans have failed, due to immune rejection of the tissue.
The five piglets, born on Christmas Day, lack a gene for an enzyme that adds a sugar to the surface of pig cells. The sugar would trigger a patient's immune system into launching an immediate attack.
"This advance provides a near-time solution for overcoming the shortage of human organs for transplants, as well as insulin-producing cells to cure diabetes," says David Ayares, vice president of research at PPL Therapeutics, US division, where the pigs were created. " This is the key gene for overcoming the early stage of rejection."
However, scientists warn that much more work is necessary before organs from copies of the pigs could be transplanted into humans. Human genes will need to be added, to prevent rejection of the organ in the long-term. There are also conerns that pig viruses could infect organ recipients.
Cloning techniques were vital to the production of the pigs. Genes can only be knocked out in a single cell. Cloning of these single cells then allowed the creation of a whole animal in which the gene was knocked out in every cell. But the PPL researchers have succeeded in knocking out only one copy of the gene for the enzyme, called alpha 1，3 galactosyl transferase. The team will now attempt to knock out both copies of the gene.
"There will also be other genes we will incorporate into our program," Ayares says. "We don't think that one gene is going to produce an organ that's going to be the end-all for transplantation. We're going to have to add two to three human genes as well."
The team will also conduct tests to investigate whether so-called porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVS)from the pigs could infect human cells in culture. But Ayares hopes that organs created from PPL pigs could be transplanted into patients within five years.
"But although a lot of the stem cell work is very exciting, we're still very far off being able to grow an organ in a culture dish," says Julia Greenstein of Immerge Bio Therapeutics in Charlestown, US, who is working on creating similar knock-out pigs with researchers at the University of Missouri.
Meet the Chipsons
Jeffrey, Leslie and their boy Derek will be America's first cyborg family. Are you ready to"Get Chipped"？
With his school uniform and his plump, pinchable cheeks, Derek Jacobs of Boca Raton, Fla. , looks like an ordinary youngster. But looks can deceive. When he was 12, Microsoft certified Derek as a qualified systems engineer, one of the youngest ever. At 13 he was running his own computer－consulting company. Now he's 14, and what's Derek doing for an encore？He 's becoming a cyborg--part man－child, part machine.
Derek, his mom Leslie and his dad Jeffrey are the first volunteer test subjects for a new, implantable computer device called VeriChip.
In some respects Derek is a regular eighth－grader. He's quiet and polite. He plays the drums. He used to be on the swim team before he quit to make time for his computer business. He remembers vividly when he first saw VeriChip on the Today show. "I thought it was great technology, "he says. "I wanted to be a part of it. "His mom Leslie Jacobs remembers, "He kept bugging me to call the company until I finally broke down.
"Leslie set up a lunch with Keith Bolton, vice pres－ident of Applied Digital Solutions, the company behind VeriChip. Since the first wave of VeriChip publicity, he has heard from roughly 2,500 would－be cyborgs. But the Jacobs family is particularly well suited to test VeriChip for use in medicine. If a patient with VeriChip were injured, the theory goes, a harried ER doc could quickly access the victim's medi cal back－ground by scanning the chip with a device that looks like a Palm handheld computer.
In the case of the Jacobses, that could be a lifesaver. Derek has allergies to common antibiotics,and Jeffrey is weakened from years of treatment for Hodgkin's disease. "The advantage of the chip is that the information is available at the time of need,"Jeffrey explains. "It would speak for me, when I can't. "
Applied Digital Solutions--which is trademarking the phrase"Get Chipped!"--has big plans for its little device. In the next few years, it wants to add sensors that will read your vital signs -- pulse, temperature, blood sugar and so on -- and a satellite receiver that can track where you are. The company makes a pager－like gadget called Digital Angel that does both those things, and its engineers are doing their darnedest to cram Digital Angel's functions into a package small enough to implant. Once they do, VeriChip will be very powerful indeed.
Security is part of the VeriChip business plan. The company has already signed a deal with the California department of corrections to track the movements of parolees using Digital Angel. Seelig believes VeriChip could function as a theft－proof, counterfeit－proof ID, like having a driver's license embedded under your skin. He suggests that airline crews could wear one to ensure that terrorists don't infiltrate the cockpit in disguise. The FDA is expected to approve the Jacobses'implants within two months, and there are other ways to speed up the evolution. Two weeks ago, Applied Digital Solutions signed a deal to distribute VeriChips in Brazil, where kidnapping has become epidemic, especially among the rich and powerful. Government officials hope that VeriChips implanted in people considered at high risk could be used to track victims via satellite.
With his school uniform and his plump, pinchable cheeks, Derek Jacobs of Boca Raton, Fla. , looks like an ordinary youngster. But looks can deceive. When he was 12, Microsoft certified Derek as a qualified systems engineer, one of the youngest ever. At 13 he was running his own computer－consulting company. Now he's 14, and what's Derek doing for an encore？He 's becoming a cyborg--part man－child, part machine.
Derek, his mom Leslie and his dad Jeffrey are the first volunteer test subjects for a new, implantable computer device called VeriChip.
In some respects Derek is a regular eighth－grader. He's quiet and polite. He plays the drums. He used to be on the swim team before he quit to make time for his computer business. He remembers vividly when he first saw VeriChip on the Today show. "I thought it was great technology, "he says. "I wanted to be a part of it. "His mom Leslie Jacobs remembers, "He kept bugging me to call the company until I finally broke down.
"Leslie set up a lunch with Keith Bolton, vice pres－ident of Applied Digital Solutions, the company behind VeriChip. Since the first wave of VeriChip publicity, he has heard from roughly 2,500 would－be cyborgs. But the Jacobs family is particularly well suited to test VeriChip for use in medicine. If a patient with VeriChip were injured, the theory goes, a harried ER doc could quickly access the victim's medi cal back－ground by scanning the chip with a device that looks like a Palm handheld computer.
In the case of the Jacobses, that could be a lifesaver. Derek has allergies to common antibiotics,and Jeffrey is weakened from years of treatment for Hodgkin's disease. "The advantage of the chip is that the information is available at the time of need,"Jeffrey explains. "It would speak for me, when I can't. "
Applied Digital Solutions--which is trademarking the phrase"Get Chipped!"--has big plans for its little device. In the next few years, it wants to add sensors that will read your vital signs -- pulse, temperature, blood sugar and so on -- and a satellite receiver that can track where you are. The company makes a pager－like gadget called Digital Angel that does both those things, and its engineers are doing their darnedest to cram Digital Angel's functions into a package small enough to implant. Once they do, VeriChip will be very powerful indeed.
Security is part of the VeriChip business plan. The company has already signed a deal with the California department of corrections to track the movements of parolees using Digital Angel. Seelig believes VeriChip could function as a theft－proof, counterfeit－proof ID, like having a driver's license embedded under your skin. He suggests that airline crews could wear one to ensure that terrorists don't infiltrate the cockpit in disguise. The FDA is expected to approve the Jacobses'implants within two months, and there are other ways to speed up the evolution. Two weeks ago, Applied Digital Solutions signed a deal to distribute VeriChips in Brazil, where kidnapping has become epidemic, especially among the rich and powerful. Government officials hope that VeriChips implanted in people considered at high risk could be used to track victims via satellite.
Father of the impossible children
Severino Antinori is a physician whose reputation among infertile couples is far overshadowed by his international fame as the man who wants to clone a human being.
Antinori was born 56 years ago to small landowners in a village of Abruzzi，a region of central-southern Italy. The young Severino would watch with fascination while his uncle，a veterinarian，would artificially inseminate cows on surrounding farms. After his family moved to Rome，Antinori signed up for medical studies，where he soon discovered his intolerance for，as he puts it，the"academic mafia that was ruling the university. "Still，he met Caterina Versaci there，and the two married shortly after they received their medical degrees. Specializing in gastroenterology and，later，in gynecology，Antinori worked in various posts around Italy before landing at Regina Elena，a public fertility hospital in Rome.
In 1986，he says，he oversaw the birth of the first Italian child to be conceived in a publicly funded clinic through in vitro fertilization（IVF）. But after clashing with some of his colleagues and hospital administrators，he resigned and，with his wife，set up the Associated Researchers for Human Reproduction（RAPRUI）clinic. Antinori made his mark in the late1980s，when he pioneered a technique called subzonal insemination（SUZI）to position sperm below the zona pellucida，the barrier around the egg，or oocyte. His work opened the way to intracytoplasmic sperm injection（ICSI），in which a single sperm is injected directly into the egg cell. He later introduced lasers to facilitate embryonic implantation. His résumélists a professorship of human reproduction at the University of Rome as well as about 40journal publications. In the past decade，however，he has become more involved with the judicial system than the peer-review one.
ICSI is routine today. It is the only option for mil lions of men who are subfertile--that is，men who have low-motility sperm. Indeed，according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention，more than９０percent of U. S. fertility labs offered the procedure in1999，although geneticists warn that the technique results in an alarming number of chromosomal abnormalities.
But ICSI is not enough to help all his patients. There are 100 million men who don't produce any sperm，and genetic reprogramming is the sole solution，he says. "Genetic reprogramming。"he emphasizes. "Not cloning. Cloning is a hollywood-style term. It makes you think that you'll get a series of identical individuals. That's idiocy. "Even if most of the clone's DNA comes from the donated nucleus，he argues，the oocyte still contributes a small percentage of genes from the mitochondria，meaning that cloning to produce two identical individuals is impossible.
he world glimpsed Antinori's flamboyance last August，when he，along with other would-be cloners，including Panayiotis Zavos and Brigitte Boisselier，took on the medical establishment at a colloquium organized by the National Academy of Sciences（NAS）in Washington，D. C. Most animal clones die before delivery or suffer from severe birth defects. Top experts，including the creator of Dolly the sheep，Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh，Scotland，revealed that human clones could meet the same fate. Antinori and the other proponents were un-fazed by such warnings. He dismissed the Dolly studies as"veterinary animal work. "
Antinori's determination to clone threatens his current livelihood. In September he was expelled from A PART，an international association of private fertility clinics of which he was once vice president；the reason，in part，was his"disreputable
Still，Antinori is not about to abandon reproductive cloning：about 600 infertile couples in Italy and more than06,00in the U. S. have already signed up for the procedure，he says. And the media buzz has so far helped his daily practice. "He is expensive，but we came here because they say he's the best，"explains a patient waiting anxiously while his wife undergoes an IVF procedure. The human imperative to procreate is sure to keep Antinori's waiting room filled--and cloned babies on the agenda.
Antinori was born 56 years ago to small landowners in a village of Abruzzi，a region of central-southern Italy. The young Severino would watch with fascination while his uncle，a veterinarian，would artificially inseminate cows on surrounding farms. After his family moved to Rome，Antinori signed up for medical studies，where he soon discovered his intolerance for，as he puts it，the"academic mafia that was ruling the university. "Still，he met Caterina Versaci there，and the two married shortly after they received their medical degrees. Specializing in gastroenterology and，later，in gynecology，Antinori worked in various posts around Italy before landing at Regina Elena，a public fertility hospital in Rome.
In 1986，he says，he oversaw the birth of the first Italian child to be conceived in a publicly funded clinic through in vitro fertilization（IVF）. But after clashing with some of his colleagues and hospital administrators，he resigned and，with his wife，set up the Associated Researchers for Human Reproduction（RAPRUI）clinic. Antinori made his mark in the late1980s，when he pioneered a technique called subzonal insemination（SUZI）to position sperm below the zona pellucida，the barrier around the egg，or oocyte. His work opened the way to intracytoplasmic sperm injection（ICSI），in which a single sperm is injected directly into the egg cell. He later introduced lasers to facilitate embryonic implantation. His résumélists a professorship of human reproduction at the University of Rome as well as about 40journal publications. In the past decade，however，he has become more involved with the judicial system than the peer-review one.
ICSI is routine today. It is the only option for mil lions of men who are subfertile--that is，men who have low-motility sperm. Indeed，according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention，more than９０percent of U. S. fertility labs offered the procedure in1999，although geneticists warn that the technique results in an alarming number of chromosomal abnormalities.
But ICSI is not enough to help all his patients. There are 100 million men who don't produce any sperm，and genetic reprogramming is the sole solution，he says. "Genetic reprogramming。"he emphasizes. "Not cloning. Cloning is a hollywood-style term. It makes you think that you'll get a series of identical individuals. That's idiocy. "Even if most of the clone's DNA comes from the donated nucleus，he argues，the oocyte still contributes a small percentage of genes from the mitochondria，meaning that cloning to produce two identical individuals is impossible.
he world glimpsed Antinori's flamboyance last August，when he，along with other would-be cloners，including Panayiotis Zavos and Brigitte Boisselier，took on the medical establishment at a colloquium organized by the National Academy of Sciences（NAS）in Washington，D. C. Most animal clones die before delivery or suffer from severe birth defects. Top experts，including the creator of Dolly the sheep，Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh，Scotland，revealed that human clones could meet the same fate. Antinori and the other proponents were un-fazed by such warnings. He dismissed the Dolly studies as"veterinary animal work. "
Antinori's determination to clone threatens his current livelihood. In September he was expelled from A PART，an international association of private fertility clinics of which he was once vice president；the reason，in part，was his"disreputable
Still，Antinori is not about to abandon reproductive cloning：about 600 infertile couples in Italy and more than06,00in the U. S. have already signed up for the procedure，he says. And the media buzz has so far helped his daily practice. "He is expensive，but we came here because they say he's the best，"explains a patient waiting anxiously while his wife undergoes an IVF procedure. The human imperative to procreate is sure to keep Antinori's waiting room filled--and cloned babies on the agenda.
Harbingers in the age of cloning
In the spring of 1999, ACT's new troika sat down to discuss just how to venture into what's arguably the most controversial area in medicine today." We knew that we would have to fend off attacks," recalls Lanza." But we never imagined all the insanity that would come." Over the course of the next two years, the men would be called" mad scientists," " baby killers," and " monsters" ;their names would be added to antiabortion " assassination" lists on the Web; the FBI would warn them of threats on their lives, and conservatives would push a bill through the House of Representatives declaring them federal criminals deserving of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
The source of the hysteria is a widespread misunderstanding of just what an early embryo is, according to West, Cibelli, and Lanza. " If you ask the average person, they will tell you it's a tiny little person with buggy eyes," says West. " But, in fact, these are just a few reproductive cells, not much different than eggs or sperm. They are the raw materials of life, but they are not a person."
All three men are adamant that they are following the most moral path. " Three thousand Americans die every day of diseases that therapeutic cloning could treat," says Lanza." It would be wrong of us to abandon those people because we're afraid of controversy." West is even more graphic about his beliefs. " I feel as if all my loved ones are trapped in a burning building, dying of diseases like diabetes and heart disease," he says. " I have the fire extinguisher -- the therapeutic cloning technology -- that can save them, but people are trying to take it out of my hands." And Cibelli is disgusted with the brouhaha. " Therapeutic cloning has to be done, and soon," he says. " Patients are all waiting for the public to get over the hype and fearfulness so that they have a chance to live."
Because of the hostile climate, it took nearly two years for Cibelli to even begin the experiments. During that time, the partners searched for members to serve on an ethics board and debated how to best go about getting donors for both body cells and human eggs. One major turning point came in late September of 1999, when Cibelli met with Harvard professor Ann Kiessling, who agreed to help set up a program to collect eggs from women. Another breakthrough came in mid-2000, when Dartmouth's Green agreed to head ACT's ethics advisory board. Under their leadership, very strict guidelines were set up for the collection of eggs and body cells, which finally began early this year.
With precious human eggs too few and far between, Cibelli spent his time between deliveries practicing the transfer of nuclear DNA from a half-dozen or so body cell donors into cow eggs just to perfect his technique.
On October 10, after removing the DNA from several human eggs, injecting them with DNA from body cells, and then tricking the eggs into thinking they had been fertilized so that they would begin the work of multiplying. But this time, Cibelli left the lab in a depressed mood. The eggs looked a little sickly, and he was convinced he had damaged them beyond repair. But when he called two days later from Michigan, his lab assistant gave him the news he had been wanting to hear for almost five years: The eggs were cleaving into the world's very first known human cloned embryos.
The ramifications They were only clusters of four and six cells, but in them ACT's scientists saw a revolution in medicine that will render many of today's drugs and treatments obsolete. Essentially, cells yielded from human research cloning are the same stem cells that President Bush decided are promising enough to fund, only better. Unlike existing stem cell lines, stem cells created through cloning would provide a patient with a fresh supply of cells with his or her own genetic code. Gone would be transplant failures and the need for immune-suppressing drugs. In the same way that antibiotics and vaccines rid the world of infectious plagues a half century ago, says Lanza, these cells could for the first time eradicate the chronic, degenerative diseases of our day, such as cancer, Alzheimer's, and heart disease.
Because body cells are rejuvenated by an egg's proteins, therapeutic cloning would also tackle aging itself, replenishing the body with younger, more vigorous cells than even the most healthy cells already in place. And because DNA removed from a body cell can be tinkered with before it is placed into an egg, Lanza hopes someday to add factors -- genes for immune cells, for example, that would make a patient resistant to AIDS.
It's still too early to say whether the United States will accept or reject therapeutic cloning. Cibelli and his colleagues still have mountains of work ahead of them. It takes not just an embryo but the nurturing of stem cells and the ability to transform those stem cells into specialized types before any clinical applications can be used in humans.
The source of the hysteria is a widespread misunderstanding of just what an early embryo is, according to West, Cibelli, and Lanza. " If you ask the average person, they will tell you it's a tiny little person with buggy eyes," says West. " But, in fact, these are just a few reproductive cells, not much different than eggs or sperm. They are the raw materials of life, but they are not a person."
All three men are adamant that they are following the most moral path. " Three thousand Americans die every day of diseases that therapeutic cloning could treat," says Lanza." It would be wrong of us to abandon those people because we're afraid of controversy." West is even more graphic about his beliefs. " I feel as if all my loved ones are trapped in a burning building, dying of diseases like diabetes and heart disease," he says. " I have the fire extinguisher -- the therapeutic cloning technology -- that can save them, but people are trying to take it out of my hands." And Cibelli is disgusted with the brouhaha. " Therapeutic cloning has to be done, and soon," he says. " Patients are all waiting for the public to get over the hype and fearfulness so that they have a chance to live."
Because of the hostile climate, it took nearly two years for Cibelli to even begin the experiments. During that time, the partners searched for members to serve on an ethics board and debated how to best go about getting donors for both body cells and human eggs. One major turning point came in late September of 1999, when Cibelli met with Harvard professor Ann Kiessling, who agreed to help set up a program to collect eggs from women. Another breakthrough came in mid-2000, when Dartmouth's Green agreed to head ACT's ethics advisory board. Under their leadership, very strict guidelines were set up for the collection of eggs and body cells, which finally began early this year.
With precious human eggs too few and far between, Cibelli spent his time between deliveries practicing the transfer of nuclear DNA from a half-dozen or so body cell donors into cow eggs just to perfect his technique.
On October 10, after removing the DNA from several human eggs, injecting them with DNA from body cells, and then tricking the eggs into thinking they had been fertilized so that they would begin the work of multiplying. But this time, Cibelli left the lab in a depressed mood. The eggs looked a little sickly, and he was convinced he had damaged them beyond repair. But when he called two days later from Michigan, his lab assistant gave him the news he had been wanting to hear for almost five years: The eggs were cleaving into the world's very first known human cloned embryos.
The ramifications They were only clusters of four and six cells, but in them ACT's scientists saw a revolution in medicine that will render many of today's drugs and treatments obsolete. Essentially, cells yielded from human research cloning are the same stem cells that President Bush decided are promising enough to fund, only better. Unlike existing stem cell lines, stem cells created through cloning would provide a patient with a fresh supply of cells with his or her own genetic code. Gone would be transplant failures and the need for immune-suppressing drugs. In the same way that antibiotics and vaccines rid the world of infectious plagues a half century ago, says Lanza, these cells could for the first time eradicate the chronic, degenerative diseases of our day, such as cancer, Alzheimer's, and heart disease.
Because body cells are rejuvenated by an egg's proteins, therapeutic cloning would also tackle aging itself, replenishing the body with younger, more vigorous cells than even the most healthy cells already in place. And because DNA removed from a body cell can be tinkered with before it is placed into an egg, Lanza hopes someday to add factors -- genes for immune cells, for example, that would make a patient resistant to AIDS.
It's still too early to say whether the United States will accept or reject therapeutic cloning. Cibelli and his colleagues still have mountains of work ahead of them. It takes not just an embryo but the nurturing of stem cells and the ability to transform those stem cells into specialized types before any clinical applications can be used in humans.
Lie-detector camera looks into your eyes
A new heat-detecting camera can catch a liar in the act - at least 75% of the time, according to a small scientific study out today.
If additional tests confirm its ability, the lie-detector camera might one day be used by airport security to apprehend terrorists before they get on an airplane, says researcher James Levine of the Mayo Clinic.
But one critic questions whether the camera would ever be reliable enough to be used on a large scale, or whether it could spot someone who plans to commit a crime.
Levine's group reported their early findings in today's Nature.
Levine and his colleagues enlisted 20 U.S. Army recruits to help test the camera, which records the heat patterns that are created when blood rushes to the human face. The researchers told eight of the recruits in the study to commit a mock crime. They were told to stab a mannequin, rob it of $20, then lie about the "crime." The remaining 12 people in the study knew nothing about the fake crime.
The researchers took all 20 people into an interrogation room. They asked them whether they had stolen $20 and then recorded their answers with a standard polygraph test and the new camera.
The camera caught six out of eight liars as they were lying - the same lie-detecting ability as the polygraph test. The camera also correctly identified 11 of the 12 people who were telling the truth - a slightly better rate than the polygraph.
The study is so small that it can't be used as proof of the camera's ability to catch a thief or a liar, Levine says. Still, he is hopeful that the camera is recording a subtle flushing of the face that may automatically occur when someone lies.
That flushing may not be caught by the naked eye, but the camera shows a bright red-orange-yellow zone that represents blood rushing to the eyes. "When someone lies, you get an instantaneous warming around the eyes," he says. Levine speculates that people who lie are afraid of getting caught. That fear triggers a primitive response to run away. Blood goes to the eyes so that the liar can more efficiently map out an escape route, he says.
Levine says it may take years before the camera would be ready for a test at a large U.S. airport.
Alan Zelicoff, a senior scientist at the Center for National Security and Arms Control at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, says that even if the camera works as well as it did in this study, it would mistakenly label lots of people as liars. At a busy U.S. airport, those mistakes could mean a thousand passengers a day who would get pulled aside by security - a move that would probably mean lots of missed flights and irate passengers, he says.
If additional tests confirm its ability, the lie-detector camera might one day be used by airport security to apprehend terrorists before they get on an airplane, says researcher James Levine of the Mayo Clinic.
But one critic questions whether the camera would ever be reliable enough to be used on a large scale, or whether it could spot someone who plans to commit a crime.
Levine's group reported their early findings in today's Nature.
Levine and his colleagues enlisted 20 U.S. Army recruits to help test the camera, which records the heat patterns that are created when blood rushes to the human face. The researchers told eight of the recruits in the study to commit a mock crime. They were told to stab a mannequin, rob it of $20, then lie about the "crime." The remaining 12 people in the study knew nothing about the fake crime.
The researchers took all 20 people into an interrogation room. They asked them whether they had stolen $20 and then recorded their answers with a standard polygraph test and the new camera.
The camera caught six out of eight liars as they were lying - the same lie-detecting ability as the polygraph test. The camera also correctly identified 11 of the 12 people who were telling the truth - a slightly better rate than the polygraph.
The study is so small that it can't be used as proof of the camera's ability to catch a thief or a liar, Levine says. Still, he is hopeful that the camera is recording a subtle flushing of the face that may automatically occur when someone lies.
That flushing may not be caught by the naked eye, but the camera shows a bright red-orange-yellow zone that represents blood rushing to the eyes. "When someone lies, you get an instantaneous warming around the eyes," he says. Levine speculates that people who lie are afraid of getting caught. That fear triggers a primitive response to run away. Blood goes to the eyes so that the liar can more efficiently map out an escape route, he says.
Levine says it may take years before the camera would be ready for a test at a large U.S. airport.
Alan Zelicoff, a senior scientist at the Center for National Security and Arms Control at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, says that even if the camera works as well as it did in this study, it would mistakenly label lots of people as liars. At a busy U.S. airport, those mistakes could mean a thousand passengers a day who would get pulled aside by security - a move that would probably mean lots of missed flights and irate passengers, he says.
Windows XP security bug very serious
A software glitch with Windows XP, Microsoft's new flagship operating system, leaves users in unprecedented danger according to the company's own security experts. Some older versions of Windows may also be affected.
The hole is in a service called Universal Plug and Play, which comes as standard with Windows XP. The bug allows a malicious hacker to gain complete control over a computer. UPnP is intended to allow a PC to control a broad range of hardware, including the latest home appliances. UPnP can also be added to Windows 98, 98SE and ME.
Microsoft representatives say that the fault poses an unprecedented risk because a user is vulnerable as soon as they connect to the internet - no other action is required. The company has recommended that all users running UPnP download and install a new patch immediately.
Microsoft touted Windows XP as its most secure operating system ever when the software was launched worldwide on 25 October. The company estimates that it has sold over seven million copies of the platform since then.
Spokesman Jim Desler said: "We are in the process of notifying our customers. We have mobilized all of our technical account managers worldwide who work with big clients and we have a very broad email list for email notification."
There are two sides to the UPnP flaw. The first could allow the hacker to break into a Windows system and run any programs or code they choose by sending a specially designed network message.
The second might enable the hacker to overload a Windows machine and prevent it from functioning properly. This can be achieved by sending similarly customised network messages repeatedly.
The hole was discovered by Riley Hassell of US security company eEye Digital Security. In his advisory, Hassell hints that there may be further problems with the UPnP service.
The US government-sponsored computer monitoring service, the Computer Emergency Response Team has also issued an open warning to computer users about the problem.
The hole is in a service called Universal Plug and Play, which comes as standard with Windows XP. The bug allows a malicious hacker to gain complete control over a computer. UPnP is intended to allow a PC to control a broad range of hardware, including the latest home appliances. UPnP can also be added to Windows 98, 98SE and ME.
Microsoft representatives say that the fault poses an unprecedented risk because a user is vulnerable as soon as they connect to the internet - no other action is required. The company has recommended that all users running UPnP download and install a new patch immediately.
Microsoft touted Windows XP as its most secure operating system ever when the software was launched worldwide on 25 October. The company estimates that it has sold over seven million copies of the platform since then.
Spokesman Jim Desler said: "We are in the process of notifying our customers. We have mobilized all of our technical account managers worldwide who work with big clients and we have a very broad email list for email notification."
There are two sides to the UPnP flaw. The first could allow the hacker to break into a Windows system and run any programs or code they choose by sending a specially designed network message.
The second might enable the hacker to overload a Windows machine and prevent it from functioning properly. This can be achieved by sending similarly customised network messages repeatedly.
The hole was discovered by Riley Hassell of US security company eEye Digital Security. In his advisory, Hassell hints that there may be further problems with the UPnP service.
The US government-sponsored computer monitoring service, the Computer Emergency Response Team has also issued an open warning to computer users about the problem.
Retailers test paying by fingerprint
Major retailers are putting in payment systems that let your finger do the paying. Paying for products with a fingerprint, rather than checks, cards or electronic devices, is among the newest cashless options at checkout.
Biometric access, as the process is called, might have a Big Brother feeling, but it is expected to speed customer checkout and cut identity fraud. In some ways, biometric access tests consumers' willingness to give up some privacy to gain convenience.
A customer signs up by having a finger scanned into a database by special machines and designating a credit or debit card to which purchases will be charged. To make a purchase, consumers have their finger read at checkout, often on a pad incorporated into a console that also reads swipe cards and provides for personal identification number (PIN) entry.
Though once only commonplace in legal situations, fingerprinting is being used more in commerce. Institutions from banks to pawnshops are fingerprinting to authenticate transactions. Transaction processing time is less than 30 seconds, compared with three minutes before using the technology.
The increase in interest in biometric access stems from an increase in fraud involving more money, as well as a decline in the cost of the technology. The system now costs about ＄ 10,000, experts say.
Biometric access, as the process is called, might have a Big Brother feeling, but it is expected to speed customer checkout and cut identity fraud. In some ways, biometric access tests consumers' willingness to give up some privacy to gain convenience.
A customer signs up by having a finger scanned into a database by special machines and designating a credit or debit card to which purchases will be charged. To make a purchase, consumers have their finger read at checkout, often on a pad incorporated into a console that also reads swipe cards and provides for personal identification number (PIN) entry.
Though once only commonplace in legal situations, fingerprinting is being used more in commerce. Institutions from banks to pawnshops are fingerprinting to authenticate transactions. Transaction processing time is less than 30 seconds, compared with three minutes before using the technology.
The increase in interest in biometric access stems from an increase in fraud involving more money, as well as a decline in the cost of the technology. The system now costs about ＄ 10,000, experts say.
2008年5月12日星期一
Building Better Ultralight Computers
The Holy Grail of mobile computing is a portable device that has the power of a desktop computer, lasts more than a day on a single battery charge, and weighs next to nothing.
Right now, such a computer is still a myth.
But computer makers are pushing the limits of weight and power.
Today's so-called ultralight computers, which retail from about $1,800 to more than $3,000, are less than an inch thick, weigh less than three pounds, and have the computing power of a typical year-old desktop.
Yet many of the smallest, lightest computers are studded with tradeoffs. They, for example, won't last more than a few hours on a single battery, don't come with built-in CD or DVD drives, and have less powerful processors than "normal" PCs.
"Right now, people do see that you have to compromise to get to the form factor," that is, the ideal size and weight, says Michael Abary, senior product marketing manager for Sony's Vaio line of notebook PCs. "But we're making plans to offset them [the compromises]."
One of the most promising new technologies to help achieve that goal is a new breed of low-powered microprocessors that can vary the speeds at which they operate.
During complex computing tasks - such as crunching a large amount of numerical data in a spreadsheet - the processors might run at their top rate, or "clock speed." But for less demanding tasks - running a word processor or playing music, for instance - the chip can slow way down.
The chief advantage of these processors, including Intel's Mobile Pentium III-M and Transmeta Corp.'s Crusoe, is the power they save. At slow speeds, for example, they typically require less than 1 watt, which means a computer's rechargeable batteries will last much longer between charges.
Meanwhile, labs are testing new battery technologies.
For now, most rechargeable batteries, made of lithium, provide portable computers about four or five hours before they need to be recharged. But research into different, lighter materials - such as zinc combined with air - could produce batteries with greater "energy densities." If more power can be packed into less space, portable computers can be made even lighter than the current crop of ultralights.
"Unfortunately, unlike a lot of electronic technology which sees a doubling in capabilities every 18 months, battery technology growth is only linear," says Tom Bernhard, director of product marketing for Fujitsu. By Bernhard's estimates, really interesting developments won't happen for another three to five years.
While they wait for the battery improvements, computer makers are touting a new type of portable computer called the tablet PC, which they hope to offer for sale by next year. Compaq, NEC and Toshiba all showed off models at this week's Comdex computer trade show in Las Vegas.
These computers - typically the size and shape of an 1.5-inch-thick stack of typing paper - feature a screen that users can "write" on using a plastic stylus. The software, a special version of Microsoft's new Windows XP operating system, can interpret those pen strokes. And, instead of using a computer mouse to click on icons, users will merely tap on the screen to access the Internet or start programs.
Ted Clark, vice president for Compaq's Tablet PC, says such pen-based computers will have all the power, memory and features of an ordinary notebook computer.
Such snazzy portables may not be as cheap as ordinary notebooks, however. Early tablet PCs were priced well above $3,000 because of expensive parts such as the touch-sensitive screen.
Right now, such a computer is still a myth.
But computer makers are pushing the limits of weight and power.
Today's so-called ultralight computers, which retail from about $1,800 to more than $3,000, are less than an inch thick, weigh less than three pounds, and have the computing power of a typical year-old desktop.
Yet many of the smallest, lightest computers are studded with tradeoffs. They, for example, won't last more than a few hours on a single battery, don't come with built-in CD or DVD drives, and have less powerful processors than "normal" PCs.
"Right now, people do see that you have to compromise to get to the form factor," that is, the ideal size and weight, says Michael Abary, senior product marketing manager for Sony's Vaio line of notebook PCs. "But we're making plans to offset them [the compromises]."
One of the most promising new technologies to help achieve that goal is a new breed of low-powered microprocessors that can vary the speeds at which they operate.
During complex computing tasks - such as crunching a large amount of numerical data in a spreadsheet - the processors might run at their top rate, or "clock speed." But for less demanding tasks - running a word processor or playing music, for instance - the chip can slow way down.
The chief advantage of these processors, including Intel's Mobile Pentium III-M and Transmeta Corp.'s Crusoe, is the power they save. At slow speeds, for example, they typically require less than 1 watt, which means a computer's rechargeable batteries will last much longer between charges.
Meanwhile, labs are testing new battery technologies.
For now, most rechargeable batteries, made of lithium, provide portable computers about four or five hours before they need to be recharged. But research into different, lighter materials - such as zinc combined with air - could produce batteries with greater "energy densities." If more power can be packed into less space, portable computers can be made even lighter than the current crop of ultralights.
"Unfortunately, unlike a lot of electronic technology which sees a doubling in capabilities every 18 months, battery technology growth is only linear," says Tom Bernhard, director of product marketing for Fujitsu. By Bernhard's estimates, really interesting developments won't happen for another three to five years.
While they wait for the battery improvements, computer makers are touting a new type of portable computer called the tablet PC, which they hope to offer for sale by next year. Compaq, NEC and Toshiba all showed off models at this week's Comdex computer trade show in Las Vegas.
These computers - typically the size and shape of an 1.5-inch-thick stack of typing paper - feature a screen that users can "write" on using a plastic stylus. The software, a special version of Microsoft's new Windows XP operating system, can interpret those pen strokes. And, instead of using a computer mouse to click on icons, users will merely tap on the screen to access the Internet or start programs.
Ted Clark, vice president for Compaq's Tablet PC, says such pen-based computers will have all the power, memory and features of an ordinary notebook computer.
Such snazzy portables may not be as cheap as ordinary notebooks, however. Early tablet PCs were priced well above $3,000 because of expensive parts such as the touch-sensitive screen.
Wanted: Anti-Terror Technology
Silicon Valley companies are being enlisted into the War on Terrorism.
As U.S. airports search for ways to implement the federal mandate for improved security, Congressman Michael Honda, who represents part of Silicon Valley, says he believes the technology industry must play a fundamental role.
A congressional coalition is working to forge a security alliance between the tech industry and the government. Honda says he wants to "make sure that the tools of high technology arelooked at and considered seriously."
He recently hosted a gathering of Silicon Valley CEOs in Washington, DC. Executives fromdozens of companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, Identix, and Sun Microsystems, searched for homeland security solutions.
"We truly believe it's a social responsibility of Silicon Valley companies who have the right technology to contribute to defining a platform," said Krish Panu, CEO of At Road, Inc., a company that develops systems to manage mobile workforces.
Some Silicon Valley CEOs say that technology such as At Road's system could help with national
At Road's system is based on a PDA-size black box that transmits vehicle position, direction, speed, and other information to allow real-time monitoring. The system's "geo-fencing" capabilities can set up invisible safety parameters and will notify security whenever a vehicle wanders into an area where it doesn't belong.
All of the information is encrypted, password-protected, and then sent to At Road's servers on the East and West coasts. The servers run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In terms of tightening national security, Honda says it is important to track potentially dangerous vehicles, especially high-load fuel trucks and outside catering trucks which currently travel unmonitored on airport property.
The company's system also could safeguard against bioterrorism and potentially dangerous ground shipments. "[The system] can be equipped on a vehicle that's transporting hazardous waste or chemicals," said Carey Fan, At Road project manager.
Honda and others say they believe that Silicon Valley can provide important security solutions with both existing and emerging technologies.
"It's a great opportunity to leverage all that entrepreneurial energy to create new technologies that would also enhance our homeland security," said J.D. Fay, At Road vice president of corporate affairs.
Proposed legislation would establish a pilot program to quickly test and evaluate existing, new, and emerging technologies to help reshape domestic security.
More than 40 security bills and amendments have been filed in Congress since Sept. 11, including the Bioterrorism Protection Act, which allocates $7 billion to deploy tech solutions for monitoring hazardous materials transportation.
The Air Travel Security and Technology legislation targets $24 billion for the 20 largest USairports to conduct pilot programs and deploy travel security technology.
Both bills are moving through the House of Representatives, each with more than 100 co-sponsors. However, Honda says he is concerned that unless the House acts on this legislation soon, opportunities to find new high tech solutions to security concerns could be lost as the drive for security languishes.
As U.S. airports search for ways to implement the federal mandate for improved security, Congressman Michael Honda, who represents part of Silicon Valley, says he believes the technology industry must play a fundamental role.
A congressional coalition is working to forge a security alliance between the tech industry and the government. Honda says he wants to "make sure that the tools of high technology arelooked at and considered seriously."
He recently hosted a gathering of Silicon Valley CEOs in Washington, DC. Executives fromdozens of companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, Identix, and Sun Microsystems, searched for homeland security solutions.
"We truly believe it's a social responsibility of Silicon Valley companies who have the right technology to contribute to defining a platform," said Krish Panu, CEO of At Road, Inc., a company that develops systems to manage mobile workforces.
Some Silicon Valley CEOs say that technology such as At Road's system could help with national
At Road's system is based on a PDA-size black box that transmits vehicle position, direction, speed, and other information to allow real-time monitoring. The system's "geo-fencing" capabilities can set up invisible safety parameters and will notify security whenever a vehicle wanders into an area where it doesn't belong.
All of the information is encrypted, password-protected, and then sent to At Road's servers on the East and West coasts. The servers run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In terms of tightening national security, Honda says it is important to track potentially dangerous vehicles, especially high-load fuel trucks and outside catering trucks which currently travel unmonitored on airport property.
The company's system also could safeguard against bioterrorism and potentially dangerous ground shipments. "[The system] can be equipped on a vehicle that's transporting hazardous waste or chemicals," said Carey Fan, At Road project manager.
Honda and others say they believe that Silicon Valley can provide important security solutions with both existing and emerging technologies.
"It's a great opportunity to leverage all that entrepreneurial energy to create new technologies that would also enhance our homeland security," said J.D. Fay, At Road vice president of corporate affairs.
Proposed legislation would establish a pilot program to quickly test and evaluate existing, new, and emerging technologies to help reshape domestic security.
More than 40 security bills and amendments have been filed in Congress since Sept. 11, including the Bioterrorism Protection Act, which allocates $7 billion to deploy tech solutions for monitoring hazardous materials transportation.
The Air Travel Security and Technology legislation targets $24 billion for the 20 largest USairports to conduct pilot programs and deploy travel security technology.
Both bills are moving through the House of Representatives, each with more than 100 co-sponsors. However, Honda says he is concerned that unless the House acts on this legislation soon, opportunities to find new high tech solutions to security concerns could be lost as the drive for security languishes.
A new LED design
A new LED design employs a handy combination of light and phosphors to produce light whose color spectrum is not so different from that of sunlight.
Light emitting diodes (LEDs) convert electricity into light very efficiently, and are increasingly the preferred design for niche applications like traffic and automobile brake lights. To really make an impression in the lighting world, however, a device must be able to produce room light. And to do this one needs a softer, whiter, more color balanced illumination.
The advent of blue-light LEDs, used in conjunction with red and green LEDs, helped a lot. But producing LED light efficiently at blue, red, and yellow wavelengths is still relatively expensive, and an alternative approach is to use phosphors to artificially achieve the desired balance, by turning blue into yellow light. Scientists at the National Institute for Materials Science and at the Sharp Corporation, in Japan, have now achieved a highly efficient, tunable white light with an improved yellow-producing phosphor . Their light yield is 55 lumens per watt, about twice as bright as commercially available products operating in the same degree of whiteness.
Light emitting diodes (LEDs) convert electricity into light very efficiently, and are increasingly the preferred design for niche applications like traffic and automobile brake lights. To really make an impression in the lighting world, however, a device must be able to produce room light. And to do this one needs a softer, whiter, more color balanced illumination.
The advent of blue-light LEDs, used in conjunction with red and green LEDs, helped a lot. But producing LED light efficiently at blue, red, and yellow wavelengths is still relatively expensive, and an alternative approach is to use phosphors to artificially achieve the desired balance, by turning blue into yellow light. Scientists at the National Institute for Materials Science and at the Sharp Corporation, in Japan, have now achieved a highly efficient, tunable white light with an improved yellow-producing phosphor . Their light yield is 55 lumens per watt, about twice as bright as commercially available products operating in the same degree of whiteness.
Clean Energy
Clean energies are forms of energy which do not pollute the air, the ground, or the sea.Clean energies include:Solar powerSolar power describes a number of methods of harnessing energy from the light of the Sun. It has been present in many traditional building methods for centuries, but has become of increasing interest in developed countries as the environmental costs and limited supply of other power sources such as fossil fuels are realized. It is already in widespread use where other supplies of power are absent such as in remote locations and in space.As the Earth orbits the Sun, it receives approximately 1,400 W / m² of energy, as measured upon a surface kept normal (at a right angle) to the Sun (this number is referred to as the solar constant). Of the energy received, roughly 19% is absorbed by the atmosphere, while clouds on average reflect a further 35% of the total energy. The generally accepted standard is 1020 watts per square meter at sea level.After passing through the Earth's atmosphere, most of the sun's energy is in the form of visible and ultraviolet light. Plants use solar energy to create chemical energy through photosynthesis. We use this energy when we burn wood or fossil fuels or when we consume the plants as a source of food.Wind power Wind power is the kinetic energy of wind, or the extraction of this energy by wind turbines. This article deals mainly with the intricacies of large-scale deployment of wind turbines to generate electricity.Wave power Wave power refers to the capture of ocean surface wave energy to do useful work including electricity generation, desalination, and filling a reservoir with water. Wave power is a form of renewable energy. Though often co-mingled, wave power is physiologically distinct from the diurnal flux of tidal power and the steady gyre of ocean currents which are powered by the earth's rotation. Wave power generation is not a widely employed technology with only a few experimental sites in existence.Salinity gradient powerSalinity Gradient is a technology that takes advantage of the osmotic pressure differences between salt and fresh water.If we place a semipermeable membrane (like that in a reverse osmosis filter) between sealed bodies of salt water and fresh water, the fresh water will gradually travel through the filter by osmosis. By exploiting the pressure difference between these two bodies of water we can extract energy commensurate to the difference in pressure. Tidal power Tidal power is a means of electricity generation achieved by capturing the energy contained in moving water mass due to tides. Two types of tidal energy can be extracted: kinetic energy of currents due the tides and potential energy from the difference in height (or head) between high and low tides.Geothermal power Geothermal power is electricity generated by utilizing naturally occurring geological heat sources. It is a form of renewable energy.Some renewable energies are not clean energies - for example:Biofuels because they release NOX and particulates into the environment. Hydroelectric power because it destroys the river basin and has a negative effect on fish migration. (Source: wikipedia)
A future vehicle
A future vehicle
While many technological advances occur in an evolutionary manner, occasionally a revolutionary technological appears on the horizon that creates startling new conditions and profound changes. Such is the case with the privately developed Moller Skycar, which is named after its inventor. With his permission, I would like to discuss the military potential of this vehicle. The ruggedized Moller Skycar variant the military is evaluating is called the light aerial multipurpose vehicle, or LAMV (pronounced "lam-vee").
The LAMV is a vertical take-off and landing aircraft that can fly in a quick, quiet, and agile manner. It is a new type of vehicle that combines the speed of an airplane and the vertical take-off capability of a helicopter with some characteristics of a ground vehicle, but without the limitations of any of those existing modes of transportation.
。The LAMV is not operated like traditional fixed -- or rotary-wing aircraft. It has only two hand-operator uses to direct the redundant computer control twists to select the desired operating altitude and moves fore and aft to select the rate of climb. The right-hand control twists to select the vehicle's direction and moves side-to-side to provide transverse (crosswise) movement during the hover and early-transition-to-flight phases of operation; it also moves fore and aft to control speed and braking. Simply put, the LAMV is user friendly.
The LAMV of the future will be 18 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 6 feet high and weight 2,200 pounds. It will hold four passengers and a payload of 875 pounds (including fuel). The vehicle will have a maximum rate of climb of 6,400 feet per minute and an operational ceiling of 30,000 feet. It will attain a top speed of 390 miles per hour at an altitude of 6,000feet and a cruising speed of 350 miles per hour at 25,000 feet, and it will have a maximum range of 900 miles at 80 passenger miles per gallon. The LAMV also will be quiet enough to function as an acoustic "stealth" plane at 500 feet. It will have a vertical take-off and landing capability and emergency airframe parachutes, and it will be capable of using various fuels.
。Safety, of course, is most important. The LAMV design incorporates a number of safety features. For starters, the LAMV has multiple engines. Unlike any light helicopter or airplane, the LAMV has multiple engine nacelles, each with two computer-controlled Rotapower engines. These engines operate independently and allow for a vertical controlled landing should either fail.
The LAMV features redundant, independent computer systems for flight management, stability, and control. Two airframe parachutes can be deployed in the event of the vehicle's catastrophic failure. These parachutes ensure that the LAMV and the operator and soldiers it carries can land safely. The Wankel-type rotary engines are very reliable because of their simplicity. The three moving parts in a two-rotor Rotapower engines are approximately seven percent of the number of parts in a four-cylinder piston engine. Each nacelle fully encloses the engines and fans, greatly reducing the possibility of injury to soldiers who might be near the vehicle in the event of an engine fire or explosion. Multiple systems check fuel for quality and quantity and provide appropriate warnings. The LAMV can land on virtually any solid surface.
The LAMV is aerodynamically stable. In the unlikely event that sufficient power is not available to land vertically, the LAMV's stability and good glide slope allow the operator to maneuver to a safe area before using the airframe parachutes. Since computers control the LAMV's flight during hover and transition, the only operator input is to control speed and direction. Undesirable movements caused by wind gusts are prevented automatically
The potential economic advantages of the LAMV are worth mentioning. Its fuel-efficient engines and ability to operate on various fuels will low fuel costs. The LAMV uses one-fourth of the fuel per passenger mile used by the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey or high performance helicopters. The LAMV's acquisition cost also will be a significant factor in its favor. The LAMV's purchase price per passenger seat is projected to be approximately eight percent of that for the 30-passenger Osprey.The LAMV's potential military uses will be numerous. They include aerial medical evacuation, aerial reconnaissance, command and control, search and rescue, insertion of special operations forces, air assault operations, airborne operations, forcible-entry operations, military police mobility and maneuver support, communications retransmission, battlefield distribution for unit resupply, transport of individual and crew replacements, weapons platform, noncombatant evacuation operations, battlefield contractor transport, and battle damage assessment
Consider the LAMV's use in contingency operations. An adversary observing a LAMV would have great difficult determining the type of force approaching and that force's destination and intention. If the adversary did realize our intentions, the senior enemy commander would not have time to react. Imagine a forcible entry and early entry force package based in the continental United States that self-deployed overseas in LAMV's. With short halts along the way at seaborne resupply vessels or land-based refueling sites, the force package would reach its objective within hours. This concept would reduce dramatically the Army's dependence on the US Transportation Command for strategic airlift and on the geographical commander in chief for intratheater airlift support. The overall speed of force closure would improve greatly. This would enhance the senior commander's ability to conduct multiple, simultaneous operations in his battle space with an accelerated operational tempo that precludes the adversary from achieving his goals. Dependence on air and sea ports of debarkation would be reduced
LAMV will benefit the Army's battlefield distribution concepts tremendously because it will be able to move commodities rapidly when and where they are needed across a widely dispersed battle space. Both air and ground main supply routes (MSR's) would exist throughout the battle space. The MSR's in the air would change as missions and situations dictate. Eventually, small, multi-commodity shipping containers could be designed for transport by either a LAMV or an even more futuristic medium or heavy aerial distribution; many types of land mines used to block convoy movements today would become less of a concern for logisticians and engineers since they could use MSR's in the sky. Or consider moving contractors around the battle space in LAMV's to perform their tasks. Basically, the LAMV concept promotes a smaller, more agile, and more effective sustainment presence within a supported battle space
Consider the LAMV working in unison with the Army's Future Combat System (FCS). The LAMV could become an integral component of the overall concept for employing the FCS. The operator of thee LAMV actually could be a member of the FCS crew or unit. In this role, the LAMV would provide multiple benefits – reconnaissance, resupply, medical evacuation, and maintenance supply. Perhaps the AMV itself could become a future combat weapon system platform. Perhaps this innovative technology could force major changes in joint and Army doctrine, training, leader development, organizations, material, and soldier programsOf course, the LAMV brings with it some obvious challenges. Its limited payload will be a negative factor. Its use will complicate Army airspace command and control. How the LAMV will be used in conjunction with forces under the joint force air component commander will have to be determined. LAMV support issues also require resolution. For example, operator selection and training, leader training, employment doctrine, LAMV basis-of-issue plans, and LAMV life-cycle management all require the Army's attention.
However, once the LAMV technology matures, its military possibilities are startling. We in the Army combat service support "futures" arena are encouraged by the developments so far and hope that the LAMV will be ready for Army fielding around 2010. The LAMV can become a reality in our Army and possibility in the other armed services as well. Without any doubt, this technological innovation will succeed internationally inn the private, commercial, and military sectors. I hope that the US Army will be the first army in the world to embrace and exploit this technology. But sooner rather than later, this aerial vehicle technology will affect all of our lives. It is just over the horizon
While many technological advances occur in an evolutionary manner, occasionally a revolutionary technological appears on the horizon that creates startling new conditions and profound changes. Such is the case with the privately developed Moller Skycar, which is named after its inventor. With his permission, I would like to discuss the military potential of this vehicle. The ruggedized Moller Skycar variant the military is evaluating is called the light aerial multipurpose vehicle, or LAMV (pronounced "lam-vee").
The LAMV is a vertical take-off and landing aircraft that can fly in a quick, quiet, and agile manner. It is a new type of vehicle that combines the speed of an airplane and the vertical take-off capability of a helicopter with some characteristics of a ground vehicle, but without the limitations of any of those existing modes of transportation.
。The LAMV is not operated like traditional fixed -- or rotary-wing aircraft. It has only two hand-operator uses to direct the redundant computer control twists to select the desired operating altitude and moves fore and aft to select the rate of climb. The right-hand control twists to select the vehicle's direction and moves side-to-side to provide transverse (crosswise) movement during the hover and early-transition-to-flight phases of operation; it also moves fore and aft to control speed and braking. Simply put, the LAMV is user friendly.
The LAMV of the future will be 18 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 6 feet high and weight 2,200 pounds. It will hold four passengers and a payload of 875 pounds (including fuel). The vehicle will have a maximum rate of climb of 6,400 feet per minute and an operational ceiling of 30,000 feet. It will attain a top speed of 390 miles per hour at an altitude of 6,000feet and a cruising speed of 350 miles per hour at 25,000 feet, and it will have a maximum range of 900 miles at 80 passenger miles per gallon. The LAMV also will be quiet enough to function as an acoustic "stealth" plane at 500 feet. It will have a vertical take-off and landing capability and emergency airframe parachutes, and it will be capable of using various fuels.
。Safety, of course, is most important. The LAMV design incorporates a number of safety features. For starters, the LAMV has multiple engines. Unlike any light helicopter or airplane, the LAMV has multiple engine nacelles, each with two computer-controlled Rotapower engines. These engines operate independently and allow for a vertical controlled landing should either fail.
The LAMV features redundant, independent computer systems for flight management, stability, and control. Two airframe parachutes can be deployed in the event of the vehicle's catastrophic failure. These parachutes ensure that the LAMV and the operator and soldiers it carries can land safely. The Wankel-type rotary engines are very reliable because of their simplicity. The three moving parts in a two-rotor Rotapower engines are approximately seven percent of the number of parts in a four-cylinder piston engine. Each nacelle fully encloses the engines and fans, greatly reducing the possibility of injury to soldiers who might be near the vehicle in the event of an engine fire or explosion. Multiple systems check fuel for quality and quantity and provide appropriate warnings. The LAMV can land on virtually any solid surface.
The LAMV is aerodynamically stable. In the unlikely event that sufficient power is not available to land vertically, the LAMV's stability and good glide slope allow the operator to maneuver to a safe area before using the airframe parachutes. Since computers control the LAMV's flight during hover and transition, the only operator input is to control speed and direction. Undesirable movements caused by wind gusts are prevented automatically
The potential economic advantages of the LAMV are worth mentioning. Its fuel-efficient engines and ability to operate on various fuels will low fuel costs. The LAMV uses one-fourth of the fuel per passenger mile used by the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey or high performance helicopters. The LAMV's acquisition cost also will be a significant factor in its favor. The LAMV's purchase price per passenger seat is projected to be approximately eight percent of that for the 30-passenger Osprey.The LAMV's potential military uses will be numerous. They include aerial medical evacuation, aerial reconnaissance, command and control, search and rescue, insertion of special operations forces, air assault operations, airborne operations, forcible-entry operations, military police mobility and maneuver support, communications retransmission, battlefield distribution for unit resupply, transport of individual and crew replacements, weapons platform, noncombatant evacuation operations, battlefield contractor transport, and battle damage assessment
Consider the LAMV's use in contingency operations. An adversary observing a LAMV would have great difficult determining the type of force approaching and that force's destination and intention. If the adversary did realize our intentions, the senior enemy commander would not have time to react. Imagine a forcible entry and early entry force package based in the continental United States that self-deployed overseas in LAMV's. With short halts along the way at seaborne resupply vessels or land-based refueling sites, the force package would reach its objective within hours. This concept would reduce dramatically the Army's dependence on the US Transportation Command for strategic airlift and on the geographical commander in chief for intratheater airlift support. The overall speed of force closure would improve greatly. This would enhance the senior commander's ability to conduct multiple, simultaneous operations in his battle space with an accelerated operational tempo that precludes the adversary from achieving his goals. Dependence on air and sea ports of debarkation would be reduced
LAMV will benefit the Army's battlefield distribution concepts tremendously because it will be able to move commodities rapidly when and where they are needed across a widely dispersed battle space. Both air and ground main supply routes (MSR's) would exist throughout the battle space. The MSR's in the air would change as missions and situations dictate. Eventually, small, multi-commodity shipping containers could be designed for transport by either a LAMV or an even more futuristic medium or heavy aerial distribution; many types of land mines used to block convoy movements today would become less of a concern for logisticians and engineers since they could use MSR's in the sky. Or consider moving contractors around the battle space in LAMV's to perform their tasks. Basically, the LAMV concept promotes a smaller, more agile, and more effective sustainment presence within a supported battle space
Consider the LAMV working in unison with the Army's Future Combat System (FCS). The LAMV could become an integral component of the overall concept for employing the FCS. The operator of thee LAMV actually could be a member of the FCS crew or unit. In this role, the LAMV would provide multiple benefits – reconnaissance, resupply, medical evacuation, and maintenance supply. Perhaps the AMV itself could become a future combat weapon system platform. Perhaps this innovative technology could force major changes in joint and Army doctrine, training, leader development, organizations, material, and soldier programsOf course, the LAMV brings with it some obvious challenges. Its limited payload will be a negative factor. Its use will complicate Army airspace command and control. How the LAMV will be used in conjunction with forces under the joint force air component commander will have to be determined. LAMV support issues also require resolution. For example, operator selection and training, leader training, employment doctrine, LAMV basis-of-issue plans, and LAMV life-cycle management all require the Army's attention.
However, once the LAMV technology matures, its military possibilities are startling. We in the Army combat service support "futures" arena are encouraged by the developments so far and hope that the LAMV will be ready for Army fielding around 2010. The LAMV can become a reality in our Army and possibility in the other armed services as well. Without any doubt, this technological innovation will succeed internationally inn the private, commercial, and military sectors. I hope that the US Army will be the first army in the world to embrace and exploit this technology. But sooner rather than later, this aerial vehicle technology will affect all of our lives. It is just over the horizon
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