Archive for category Smart Technology

Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world

http://www.ted.com Researcher Hans Rosling uses his cool data tools to show how countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He demos Dollar Street, comparing households of varying income levels worldwide. Then he does something really amazing.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes — including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

Date: December 20th, 2011
Cate: Albert's Picks, Modern Technology, Smart Technology

The Chinese solar machine

China's production of solar cells is far outpacing everyone else's (credit: GTM research)

Source: Technology Review

China’s production of solar cells is far outpacing everyone else’s (credit: GTM research)

Chinese manufacturers make about 50 million solar panels a year — over half the world’s supply in 2010 — and include four of the world’s top five solar-panel manufacturers.

The industry elsewhere has been doubling in size every two years, and Chinese manufacturers have done even better, doubling their production roughly every year.

They have succeeded in large part because it’s faster and cheaper for them to build factories, thanks to inexpensive, efficient construction crews and China’s streamlined permitting process. The new factories have the latest, most efficient equipment, which helps cut costs. So do the efficiencies that come with size.

From now on, the best way for Chinese manufacturers to lower the cost per watt of solar power may not be by lowering manufacturing costs but, instead, by increasing the number of watts each panel generates.

In 2010, when the U.S. secretary of energy, Steven Chu, gave a speech to the National Press Club laying out his case that the United States was falling behind in advanced manufacturing, Suntech Power was his Exhibit A. He had toured its factory, and he was impressed by what he’d seen. “It’s a high-tech, automated factory,” he said. “It’s not succeeding because of cheap labor.” Not only that, he noted, but Suntech had developed a type of solar cell with world-record efficiencies.

Also see: Can We Build Tomorrow’s Breakthroughs? Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That’s bad news not just for the country’s economy but for the future of innovation.

Date: December 20th, 2011
Cate: Albert's Picks, Modern Technology, Smart Technology

AI to predict Sun’s next attack on Earth

Source: New Scientist

Solar flares (credit: SOHO/NASA/ESA)

Piet Martens of Montana State University and colleagues have developed 15 programs that use data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and image-processing techniques such as contour or edge recognition to automatically identify features on the sun’s surface.

To make the process generic, Martens’ team is using techniques developed to identify breast tumors. This involves splitting a 1.6-million-pixel image into 1024 blocks. For each block, the software calculates the values for various mathematical parameters, such as the entropy (a measure of the chaos in the image).

This turns the image into a series of numbers. In breast imaging, this technique highlights regions of breast tissue with specific values that are known to be characteristic of tumors. Martens’s team is doing this with SDO images, training the software to learn the defining characteristics of sunspots, filaments and other solar features.

Each program is looking for a different aspect of solar activity. This include flares and CMEs, as well as other features that might indicate that flares or eruptions are imminent, such as filaments, which are bundles of plasma held down by magnetic field lines, coronal loops and sunspots.

Solar storms can wreak havoc on Earth, but if we can predict them, vital infrastructure could be saved.

Ref.: David Pérez-Suárez et al., Automated Solar Feature Detection for Space Weather Applications,arxiv.org/abs/1109.6922

Date: December 16th, 2011
Cate: Albert's Picks, Modern Technology, Smart Technology

A super-memory smart drug?

suppressionofpkr

Could this be the “Limitless” breakthrough we’ve been looking for?

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) have discovered that when the activity of PKR — a molecule normally elevated during viral infections — is inhibited in the brain, mice learn and remember dramatically better.

“The molecule PKR (the double-stranded RNA-activated protein kinase) was originally described as a sensor of viral infections, but its function in the brain was totally unknown,” said Dr. Mauro Costa-Mattioli, assistant professor of neuroscience at BCM. But the activity of PKR is altered in a variety of cognitive disorders, so Costa-Mattioli and colleagues decided to take a closer look.

Super memory

“We found that when we genetically inhibited PKR, we increased the excitability of brain cells and enhanced learning and memory in a variety of behavioral tests,” said Costa-Mattioli.

For instance, they tested the mice ability to use visual cues for finding a hidden platform in a circular pool. Normal mice had to repeat the task multiple times over many days to remember the platform’s location. Mice lacking PKR learned the task after only one training session.

Memory-enhancing drug

The BCM researchers also found that this process could be mimicked by a PKR inhibitor — a small molecule that blocks PKR activity and thus acts as a “memory-enhancing drug.” The next step is to use what we have learned in mice and to try to improve brain function in people suffering from memory loss, said Costa-Mattioli.

There are roughly 6 million Americans and 35 million people world-wide with Alzheimer’s disease and more than 70 million Americans over the age of 60 who may suffer from aged-associated impairment of memory. (Not counting the millions who just want to be smarter, which would be just about everybody.)

Unfortunately, there’s a secret government conspiracy to keep this drug out of your hands. OK, I made that part up.

But note the figure above: in mice that have been genetically engineering to inhibit PKR (right), the result is to lower GABA release. We know that GABA, the brain’s major inhibitory neurotransmitter, has an anti-anxiety or calming effect, which is why tranquilizers increase GABA production. So could using the PKR inhibitor drug also lead to increased anxiety?

Also, PKR is not just elevated during viral infections. PKR is thought to be a key player in cellular response to different kinds of stress: PKR activation leads to inhibited protein synthesis and transcription of genes involved in an inflammatory response. So you get smarter, but also get sicker if you have the flu or some other stressor? Or maybe just take it when you’re not under stress?

I have an email into Dr. Costa-Mattioli find out more.

Ref.: Ping Jun Zhu et al. Suppression of PKR Promotes Network Excitability and Enhanced Cognition by Interferon-γ-Mediated Disinhibition, Cell, 2011 [DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2011.11.029]

Date: December 16th, 2011
Cate: Albert's Picks, Modern Technology, Smart Technology

Google’s Majel Voice Recognition Technology

Google's Majel

A couple days ago we posted about Majel, and now some more tips are starting to come in. We compared Majel to Apple’s Siri voice assistant because that’s how it was described to us, but the project could be much larger than we initially imagined. Read on for new details and some interesting quotes from Google employees.

First we had a tip from “Ted,” who described his experience with an early release of Majel on an Android tablet. Even though this tip was sent from an anonymous IP, we believe it to be accurate since it matched an earlier description we received.

Ted wrote: “It’s definitely as good, or better, than Siri. At least on the tablet you can sort through different answers with these swipe-able trays. Like, if you say “show me the Statue of Liberty” it’ll automatically take you to Google Image results, but another tray beneath it might be its location on Google Maps and then another tray might have a Wikipedia page. It’s also pretty good at giving you succinct answers if you ask it a question. The UI is definitely more powerful than Siri’s, even if a little harder to navigate.

At least at one phase of the development you would activate it by saying “Computer…” It was hard not to use a Jean Luc Piccard accent when doing it!”

As you can see, the first release of Majel might be rather simple and focus solely on natural language questions with answers from Google Search.

Next up we have some comments posted to Reddit from an ex-employee of Google who claims to have worked at the secret Google X Lab.

The anonymous Googler wrote: “This is in total violation of the NDA, but I don’t care anymore. Sue me.

The central focus of Google X for the past few years has been a highly advanced artificial intelligence robot that leverages the underlying technology of many popular Google programs. As of October (the last time I was around the project), the artificial intelligence had passed the Turing Test 93% of the time via an hour long IM style conversation. IM was chosen to isolate the AI from the speech synthesizer and physical packaging of the robot.

The robot itself isn’t particularly advanced because the focus was not on mechanics, but rather the software. It is basically a robotish looking thing on wheels. Speech recognition is somewhat better than what you would get with normal speech input, mostly because of the use of high quality microphones and lip-reading assistance.

I have had the chance to interact with the robot personally and it is honestly the most amazing thing that I have ever seen. I like to think of it like Stephen Hawking because it is extremely smart and you can interact with it naturally, but it is incapable of physically doing much. There is a planned phase two for development of an advanced robotics platform.“

This sounds more along the lines of the shoot-for-the-stars ideas that the NYTimesdescribed when they wrote about Google X. Obviously, Google has been working on artificial intelligence for many years.

Moving along, we return to some comments from Mike Cohen, Google’s Manager of Speech Technology and co-founder of Nuance Communications (the company that powers some of the technology behind Siri).

Google's federation computer

Mike Cohen wrote: “In Star Trek, they don’t spend a lot of time typing things on keyboards—they just speak to their computers, and the computers speak back. It’s a more natural way to communicate, but getting there requires chipping away at a range of hard research problems.

We’ve recently made some strides with speech technologies and tools that take voice input. But what about when the computer speaks to you—in other words, voice output?

That’s why we’re pleased to announce we’ve acquired Phonetic Arts, a speech synthesis company based in Cambridge, England. Phonetic Arts’ team of researchers and engineers work at the cutting edge of speech synthesis, delivering technology that generates natural computer speech from small samples of recorded voice.

We are excited about their technology, and while we don’t have plans to share yet, we’re confident that together we’ll move a little faster towards that Star Trek future.”

Many readers joked in the comments of our previous article that they wish Majel Barrett-Roddenberry’s voice could be used for Google’s project, and it turns out they have the technology to do it. They would still need to license the rights to Majel’s voice samples, but Google could essentially replicate any voice they want.

Keeping with the Star Trek theme, we have more comments from Google’s Amit Singhal found in The Evolution of search video posted in November.

Amit Singhal says: “My dream has always been to build the Star Trek computer, and in my ideal world, I would be able to walk up to a computer, and say, ‘Hey, what is the best time for me to sow seeds in India, given that monsoon was early this year?’ And once we can answer that question (which we don’t today), people will be looking for answers to even more complex questions. These are all genuine information needs. Genuine questions that if we – Google – can answer, our users will become more knowledgeable and they will be more satisfied in their quest for knowledge.”

Finally, we have the comments of Matias Duarte, the computer-interface designer and user-experience lead for Android, from an interview with The Daily Beast.

Matias Duarte said: “Voice is absolutely going to be an essential part of user interfaces. I mean Google and Android have been working on Voice for years. Even in Ice Cream Sandwich we released significant improvements to the way Voice dication works. What I think is going to be interesting about Voice is trying to treat Voice as something that is universally accessible in every application and not confine it to just a gimmick or something you only use when you are in the car or on the go.

I really want computers to be multimodal. When you watch a science fiction show like Star Trek, someone walks up to a wall and starts touching things and speaking to a computer at the same time. That’s the way that I think our interfaces need to evolve. You need to be able to start using email, touching things on screen, speak to it, touch more things, and not really have to think about ‘am I using Voice now or not using Voice.’ You just use the computer input that is most natural at that time.”

That sounds a little more advanced than how we described the first release of Majel, but Matias said they were already working on the user interface for the next version of Android, codenamed Jelly Bean, and the next version after that.

We’re just in the early stages of comprehending how large a project Majel has become, but we still expect some kind of release on Android devices early next year. Google engineers are already testing a version of Majel that might be released as an upgrade to Google’s Voice Actions application, but we fully expect it will be a core part of Android’s next major release.

Hopefully, we will have some concrete details to share in the coming weeks.

Date: November 29th, 2011
Cate: Albert's Picks, Smart Technology

Free software activists to take on Google with new free search engine

Source: Network World

YaCy, a new free, open-source search engine, takes a distributed approach to search. Its search results come from a network of independent “peers” — users who have downloaded the YaCy software.

No single entity gets to decide what gets listed, or in which order results appear. The network does not store user search requests and it is not possible for anyone to censor the content of the shared index. More at Network World.

Search demo (actual search is done on your own computer)

Open Source Search Engine

Date: November 29th, 2011
Cate: Albert's Picks, Smart Technology

Educational robots to introduce children to robotics, physics, programming

Thymio II robot (credit: EPFL)

EPFL scientists have developed an educational robot called Thymio II, designed to introduce children to technology in school and priced inexpensively (about 99 francs, or $110 U.S.).

Thymio II has sensors and associated LEDs, and can exhibit a wide range of behaviors that can be used in teaching physics and other subjects. Sensors include proximity sensors, ground-directed sensors (it can detect the edge of a table around which it’s circulating, or a line to follow), accelerometers, microphone, and temperature sensor. It also has a memory card for recording sound.

Basic behavior modes include “friend” (follows an object in front of it), “explorer” (avoids obstacles), “coward” (detects impacts and empty space), and “investigator” (follows a line on the ground). By hooking it up to a computer via USB cable, users can invent and program other behaviors, using open-source EPFL-developed software called Aseba .

No word if iOS and Android interfaces are planned, or about its availability in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Date: November 29th, 2011
Cate: Albert's Picks, Smart Technology

Ultrafast, nanoscale, energy-efficient data transmission

November 29, 2011 by Editor

nanoscale data transmission

A new ultrafast, nanoscale light-emitting diode (LED) device developed at Stanford’s School of Engineering transmits data at ultrafast rates while using 2,000 times less energy than laser-based systems in use today,” The nanophotonic device is a major step forward for on-chip data transmission, the researchers say.

The device can transmit data at 10 gigabits per second. The researchers say it is a major step forward in providing a practical ultrafast, low-power, room-temperature light source for on-chip data transmission.

The LED is a “single-mode LED,” a special type of diode that emits light more or less at a single wavelength, similar to a laser. Traditionally, engineers have thought only lasers can communicate at high data rates and ultralow power.

Nanophotonics is key to the technology. In the heart of their device, the engineers have inserted quantum dots using the light-emitting material indium arsenide, which, when pulsed with electricity, produce light. These quantum dots are surrounded by a photonic crystal — an array of tiny holes etched in a semiconductor. The photonic crystal serves as a mirror that bounces the light toward the center of the device, confining it inside the LED and forcing it to resonate at a single frequency.

Existing devices are actually two devices: a laser coupled with an external modulator. Both devices require electricity. The diode combines light transmission and modulation functions into one device, drastically reducing energy consumption.

Ref.: Gary Shambat et al., Ultrafast direct modulation of a single-mode photonic crystal nanocavity light-emitting diode,Nature Communications, 2011 [doi:10.1038/ncomms1543]

Date: November 28th, 2011
Cate: Albert's Picks, Smart Technology

~Bots gone wild~

Introducing random — a new, occasional blog thingie for stuff that’s way too weird for our regular weird posts. Like these wacky robot stories:

Wanna take a ride on a 15-foot-long inflatable walking robot named Ant-Roach (as in anteater-cockroach)? Um, maybe not, but hey, “human safe” bots are not a bad idea, especially if you plan to have one in your home, with kids. A future Disney attraction?

Robot prison guard prototype (credit: Yonhap)

OK, then, how about about “humane and friendly” robot prison guards that can identify “abnormal behavior”? A jail in South Korea plans to run a month-long trial with three of them, a $863,000 project. (How long will it take hacker inmates to convert them into Terminator bots?)

And then there’s OCCU(PI) Bot, carrying a sign that reads “if(justice) == 0 } occup(pi) = 1;” (get it?) — “the first in a promising line of tireless, unstoppable, robotic class warriors,” complete with a megaphone and optional Arduino — so you could, let’s say, control it via the Internet (“remote occupying”?).

Hmm, I wonder if it’s pepper-spray-resistant?

Meanwhile, the 1% will be happy to know that restaurants around the world will soon use new “DNA barcoding” technology to assure finicky patrons they are being served the genuine fish fillet they ordered, rather than inferior substitutes, AP reports. The biennial International Barcode of Life Conference is being held Monday to discuss compilation of a global reference library for the Earth’s 1.8 million known species; the Barcode of Life Database so far includes more than 167,000 species. (Could prevent illness too.)

Speaking of anarchy, in case you believe the end of the world is nigh, The Guardian has compiled a doomsday list of “Strange ways to go” and their signs, such as: “If the Earth exists in a region of space known as a false vacuum, it could collapse into a lower-energy state at any point….

Sign: it could happen half way through this…”

And New Scientist has its own list of cracks in reality, including the recent finding that mesons decay differently from their antimatter counterparts (that’s why we have more matter than antimatter), which would call into question the standard model of particle physics; and a now-accepted belief in the existence of multiple universes — maybe 10⁵⁰⁰of them, or maybe an infinite number. The answer could be hiding in the cosmic microwave background, currently being mapped at higher precision by the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite.

We now return you to our normal weird news.

Date: November 28th, 2011
Cate: Albert's Picks, Smart Technology

Under Pressure, Pentagon Adopts New IT Strategy

nuclear disaster about to be avoided

The CIO of the Department of Defense has devised an ambitious IT plan that aims to help the military branches cope with billions of dollars in budget cuts.

pentagon

By John Foley InformationWeek

November 28, 2011 08:00 AM

The Department of Defense is staring at a classic enterprise IT challenge, only on a massive scale. Facing billions of dollars in budget cuts, the DOD must decide where to invest its IT dollars in order to save money across its operations, and where to pinch IT spending. But with national security on the line, the stakes are much higher–it must do so without compromising its IT infrastructure and applications.

The answer comes in the form of a new plan that aims to replace the military’s branch-specific systems and networks with a more efficient, and ultimately more capable, enterprise model. The strategy will require changes that go well beyond new IT systems. “This plan commits us to changing policies, cultural norms, and organizational processes to provide lasting results,” DOD CIO Teri Takai told Congress earlier this year.

The Pentagon has the biggest IT budget of any organization in the world: $38.4 billion in fiscal 2012. But that budget’s a moving target, as the DOD is under intense pressure to cut its overall spending by tens, potentially hundreds, of billions of dollars over the next five years.

The new IT Enterprise Strategy and Roadmap identifies 26 tech initiatives to be carried out over the next 10 years. The strategy, crafted by Takai along with CIOs of the military branches, was signed by the deputy secretary of defense in early October and is due for public release this month.

The DOD drew on best practices from the private sector in devising its plan, which is spelled out in a 48-page document. The strategy identifies networking services, computing services, end user services, application and data services, and business processes as areas of focus. It provides benchmarks for sought-after efficiencies, including a 30% reduction in servers and up to $3.5 billion in savings over five years. Supplementing the IT Enterprise Strategy is an “initial implementation plan” that identifies work to be done in fiscal years 2012 and 2013, with a focus on near-term gains.

Takai, in an interview with InformationWeek, says the objectives of the IT Enterprise Strategy go beyond efficiencies that translate into cost savings. The department also wants to improve cybersecurity and broaden information sharing across the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines.

Some of the projects are in their early stages, but most have yet to begin. “There’s some pretty aggressive items in there,” Takai says. But she adds: “I wouldn’t call them quick wins.”

Pending Reorg

As Takai has learned in her first year on the job, quick wins are hard to come by in the vast bureaucracy of the Pentagon, which at 6.5 million square feet is more than twice the size of the Empire State Building. Her IT strategy document, originally due at midyear, is arriving months later than planned. “I’m continually surprised at the steps that need to take place here,” she says.

A former CIO of California, Takai was appointed DOD CIO in October 2010, and she immediately walked into a restructuring of the CIO’s office (which formerly had the buttoned-up moniker of Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration) and the breakup of the Joint Forces Command (which had coordinated much of the IT work that cut across miliary branches).

A year later, the plan for reorganizing the CIO office has been nearly finalized but still awaits another bureaucratic step: approval by Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. It defines more clearly the authority of the CIO to include oversight of IT spending and implementation, as well as the CIO’s relationship with three critical units: U.S. Cyber Command, which is responsible for protecting DOD networks; the Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA, which provides IT services to the military branches; and the Office of Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. Takai’s organization will be renamed the Office of the DOD Chief Information Officer.

The CIO office reorg is part of a broad restructuring ordered last year by Robert Gates, the secretary of defense at the time, whose goal was to lower costs by eliminating redundant functions. Takai’s appointment was a surprise to nearly everyone. She had neither of the qualifications one would expect for the job: a military background or experience in the federal government’s senior executive service.

But Takai did have three years under her belt managing California’s not-insignificant IT operations ($4 billion budget and 10,000 people), where she is credited with driving efficiency and accountability. Before that, she was CIO of Michigan and had worked in the private sector for Ford, EDS, and auto parts supplier Federal-Mogul.

Takai has two senior advisers to show her the ropes–Chief of Staff Rear Admiral Janice Hamby and Principal Deputy CIO Robert Carey, who together have years of experience in what some call simply “the building.” In our interview, Takai says the size, structure, and culture of the DOD have taken some getting used to. “It’s been important to learn the way the Office of the Secretary of Defense works vis-a-vis the military and how the entire structure is laid out,” she says.