Kansas City Tech Guide

It’s not like DARPA hasn’t been trying to miniaturize unmanned aerial vehicles already, but its Nano Air Vehicle program is yet another attempt to find tiny, ultra-lightweight devices that could theoretically “perform indoor and outdoor military missions.” More specifically, it’s looking for something less than 7.5-centimeters and under 10-grams, and the overriding goal is to “explore novel, bio-inspired, conventional and unconventional configurations to provide the warfighter with unprecedented capability for urban mission operations.” Reportedly, AeroVironment already has an idea in mind for such a drone (pictured), but as these type things always go, we’ve no idea how soon we’ll see critters like these take to the skies with a thumb-sized American flag plastered on the side.

[Via BoingBoing]

You know that impossible-to-miss NASDAQ sign on Broadway at 43rd Street in New York City? Yeah, the one that’s 11,000-square feet in size. The Walgreen Company has set out to make that look like child’s play, as it aims to erect a 250,000-pound sign at a three-level emporium in Times Square. Said display will reportedly be used to “raise [the drugstore's] visibility in New York,” while doubling as a “focal point for it nationally.” This beast will be covered in 12 million LEDs — 17,000 square feet of them, to be exact — and you can only imagine the hardware that will be required behind the scenes to keep this thing up and running. If you just can’t wait until next fall to peep this in person, head southward to the read link and dig in.

[Thanks, Brock]

Ask yourself this: Are you a statistic or a specific example? That’s the question being raised in the aftermath of a study in which researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people to determine their movement patterns. Such studies are considered invasions of privacy — and illegal — in the United States, but this one was done in an undisclosed industrialized nation. The subjects were chosen at random out of a pool of 6 million from a mystery wireless provider and tracked based on cell tower triangulation and other “tracking devices.” Study co-author Cesar Hidalgo at Northeastern University promises that researchers didn’t know the individuals’ phone numbers or identities, and offers that the results are a major advance for science. The study found that people are homebodies — most stay within 20 miles of their home and are rather habitual. Scientists say the findings — to be published in Nature on Thursday — can help improve public transit systems and even fight contagious diseases.

[Thanks, Doug]

[Via MSNBC]

We can’t say we’re terribly saddened that this riveting caper has finally ended — after all, the poor crew needs a reliable place to unload, right? Shortly after the space shuttle Discovery delivered a new pump for the jury-rigged commode, Oleg Kononenko — who we hear is now widely regarded as a galactic hero — spent around two hours installing the hardware and running a trio of tests. After everything was tightened up and functioning as advertised, the crew presumably relieved themselves just before carrying on with the installation of the recently acquired Kibo lab. Crisis averted.

It looks like relative upstart Seegrid is doing its part to help robots snag a few more jobs normally reserved from us humans, with it now showing off its autonomous Industrial Mobile Robot system (or IMR), which promises to let self-navigating material handling vehicles work in environments that were previously not economically or technically feasible for them to serve. At the heart of the system is a beefed up “tugger” ordinarily used for pushing shopping carts around, which has been outfitted with four pairs of cheap CMOS cameras that are connected via plain old USB to the computer under the hood. That allows the bot to look around and build a 3D map of just about any area, which it can then follow to a tee over and over again. Head on past the break to check it out in action.

[Via Engineering TV]

We’ve already seen a number of attempts to more seamlessly integrate solar cells into everyday environments, but none have quite gone as far as this latest prototype from the folks at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Mitsubishi, and Tokki Corp. As you can see above, they’ve come up with a solution that shouldn’t look too out of place nestled in with some actual foliage, with a special protective film encapsulating each of the solar models to ensure they stand up to the outdoors. The institute (no stranger to unique concepts) apparently isn’t stopping there, however, saying that it also has plans to expand its use of organic thin-film solar cells into other areas where design is important, including walls, windows, clothing, and livingware, to name but a few.

While JAYS’ q-JAYS claimed to be the “smallest earphones on the market” just days ago, we doubt Klipsch would be willing to agree. Turns out, the firm’s IMAGE earbuds are also proclaiming that they are the “world’s smallest and lightest in-ear earphones,” and while we haven’t seen the ruler busted out just yet, we fear it may be needed to settle this obvious conflict. Regardless, these ‘buds utilize patent-pending Contour Ear Gels, KG926 balanced micro-armatures, aluminum bodies that are finished in anodized copper, and come with 50-inch long vinyl cables. Ready for a November release, the IMAGE earphones will ring up at $349 and will arrive with a carrying case and pouch, a 1/4-inch / airline adapter, five sets of ear gels, and a cleaning tool to boot. Click on for a literal hands-on shot.

Live Wires creates some noise in the music market by selling custom headphones for hundreds less than its competitors

Live Wires is a new and unique company, which makes custom-molded in ear headphones for the consumer market. Launched in 2007, the goal was simple — create an affordable professional-grade version of this technology, typically reserved for rock stars, and bring it to end users.

At the time of the company’s product launch in February 2007, custom molded earbuds cost around $800 to $900, putting them out of the reach of most consumers. Live Wire headphones retail for a mere $249.

The design of Live Wires features dual balanced armature drivers, one tweeter and one woofer. This driver pair combines to help give the earphones much higher-end sound quality and better efficiency than single driver moving coil designs, typical in the earbud market. The drivers have a range of 20 Hz to 16 KHz, offer 126 dB/mW sensitivity at 1 KHz, and have a mere 22 ohms of impedance. They also provide 25-28 dB of noise isolation as, well making them well suited for noisy environments like airports or during motorcycle or bus rides.

By comparison, Shure sells what is considered a relatively good in-ear headphone model, which are not custom molded but retail for around $119. The Shure se110 features a higher impedance of 27 ohms (lower is better) and a lower sensitivity of 113 dB/mW. The isolation for these phones is only 90 percent of ambient noise, only around a 19.5 dB noise isolation (25-28 dB is around a 99.9985% noise reduction).

Another interesting feature of the headphones is that the wires are full rotatable, allowing any style of wear. This allows for up and over the ear wear, or a more casual “Y” style of wear, with the cords dangling downwards. The cables also feature a custom adapter, which guarantees in-phase signal.

Live Wires co-developer John Diles tells DailyTech, “The creative process for the product was a result of my close relationship with Earl Neal, Toby Keith’s monitor engineer. Our lengthy conversations abotu ear monitoring and what features we’d like to offer led us to the introduction of Live Wires.”

Diles claims his target audience is everyone “from Jon Herington of Steely Dan — who enthusiastically endorses us — to a 16 year audiophile who wants to extract every minute tone flowing from his portable rig. We feel there is too large a discrepancy between what professional artists demand in their ears and what consumers of music have to tolerate in their ears.”

Diles points out that while the headphones are much lower priced than competitive entries, the parts used are from “the most prestigious manufacturers in the industry,” such as Knowles, which makes the balanced armatures.

Despite the fact that it is targeted to consumers, Diles says 40 percent of the headphones’ sales are to music professionals. Steely Dan’s guitarist, Jon Herington is an avid supporter. All of Jimmie Kimmel’s band wear the product. Mr. Diles points to this acceptance as a sign of the company’s success, stating, “Our dual-driver design is very pleasing sonicaly as well, as is evidenced by our rapid acceptance into the touring world.”

Deaf Dancing With The Stars contestant Marlee Matlin uses the Live Wires earphones when she performans. Matlin, like many legally deaf people, has some hearing in her inner ear. The high level of isolation lets her hear the music to some extent, critical to her performance.

Researchers simulate childhood thought process, further blurring the line between artificial intelligence and biological intelligence

While some skeptics, such as Apple-cofounder Steve Wozniak, dismiss artificial intelligence insisting that robots will never be able to reach a human level of thinking process and behavior, the reality is that artificial intelligence is fast approaching human level thought process. Battlefield robots are making life and death decisions, and an international panel recently met to discuss whether robots could be tried for war crimes.

In vehicles, DailyTech witnessed firsthand the GM-sponsored DARPA robotic driver navigate a complicated course with efficiency matching or surpassing that of a human. Meanwhile, SRI National works to create DARPA funded robotic assistants which learn and organize thoughts in a human-like fashion.

As robots become more and more human-like, we face the duality of the result. On the one hand, in creating something that is human-like we learn more about what makes us human; on the other hand, by creating a replica of man, the line between human and machine becomes more blurry. As we enter the future, reality in the virtual world and real world is merging into one. Scientists already demonstrated the first “mixed reality” systems — systems in which a virtual and a real world device were indistinguishable.

Continuing along the path of convergence between biology and the digital world, researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) are developing complex artificial intelligence to control characters in the popular online game Second Life. These characters will be able to have beliefs, distinguish human and AI characters’ beliefs, and manipulate the behaviors of human and AI characters based on these beliefs.

The team unveiled their first creation, a 4-year old child avatar dubbed “Eddie”, at an AI conference. The avatar not only follows the aforementioned intelligence goals, developing beliefs, but also behaves psychologically like a human child. Researcher Selmer Bringsjord explains the creation process, stating, “Current avatars in massively multiplayer online worlds — such as Second Life — are directly tethered to a user’s keystrokes and only give the illusion of mentality. Truly convincing autonomous synthetic characters must possess memories; believe things, want things, remember things.”

You won’t be seeing a character like Eddie walking around on the street for a little while explains Bringsjord — Eddie’s complex behavior requires the processing power of a supercomputer. The processing power is leverage to combine traditional logic-based artificial intelligence with computational cognitive modeling techniques.

Understanding, predicting, and being capable of manipulating the behavior of humans is one benchmark of intelligence, and the principles behind how this works in the human mind is known appropriately as the “theory of mind”. The RPI team’s research marks one of the largest efforts to date to engineer based on the principles of the theory of mind. The researchers, implementing the part logic and part math theory, impart on the AI-controlled avatars an understanding of such “human” concepts as betrayal, revenge, and evil.

Similarly, they employ human-like stages of cognitive development. For example, Eddie behaves correctly in a false-belief test. In a typical false belief test a person observers an object, in this case a virtual teddy bear. When the person leaves the room, another person moves the object to a different location. Upon the return of the first person to the room, the adult observer expects them to look in the old location of the object, knowing that they don’t have knowledge of the move. However, a child four years old or younger will think that they will look in the new location, not understanding that they couldn’t see the move. In an example of a case where it’s right to be wrong, Eddie correctly believed in the “false” location, the proper “human” behavior for a child.

Eddie can also be digitally switched to have adult-like reasoning and make the correct decision. The reasoning is accomplished by an automated theorem prover. An interface takes conversational English in Second Life and turns it into formal logic, which is processed by the prover. A video clip of Eddie in action can be viewed here.

The RPI research is sponsored by IBM. The RPI team’s final goal is to place humans in a Star Trek-like holodeck filled with projected virtual characters with human-like behavior. The researchers say that they could accomplish such a simulation in theory by leveraging the processing power of RPI’s Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI) and the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC).

With over 100 teraflops of computing power, the CCNI is the most powerful university supercomputer in the world. It is composed of massively parallel Blue Gene supercomputers, POWER-based Linux clusters, and AMD Opteron processor-based clusters. And soon, it may be thinking, just like humans, if the RPI team continues in its success.

USAF wants 300 PlayStation 3s for “research”

Sony, Toshiba and IBM have long touted the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) to be supercomputer material. The designers of the Cell/B.E. said many times that the processor may be used in a variety of applications, ranging from entertainment to industrial.

Now, the U.S. Air Force is planning to put the Cell/B.E. to the test, and oddly enough, it plans to procure its processor samples by purchasing 300 PlayStation 3 consoles.

As written in its presolicitation notice posted late February, “The Air Force Research Laboratory is conducting a technology assessment of certain cell processors.”

While there are many other ways to obtain a Cell/B.E., some of which more capable than the one offered for videogames, but even the U.S. Air Force has a budget.

“The processors in the Sony PlayStation 3 are the only brand on the market that utilizes the specific cell processor characteristics needed for this program at an acceptable cost,” detailed the notice.

Strangely, the 40GB PlayStation 3 model requested by the U.S. Air Force specifies the inclusion of four USB ports – twice as many on the retail 40GB PS3 – and slots for Memory Stick/SD/Compact Flash, which are only available on the 60GB and 80GB machines.

New research into nuclear’s feasibility shows that it simply does not make for a sole fossil fuel replacement.

The death knells of the Earth’s dwindling fossil fuel supply have helped to prompt a growing push for alternative fuels. Whether it be cellulosic ethanol powering the next generation of hybrid vehicles or microbial hydrogen driving advanced fuel cells, America’s top technology corporations are making massive investments in alternative energy. Basically, alternative energy advocates remain split about what is the best solution — solar power, wind power, biofuels, hydrogen, and nuclear power are seen as the best bets.

Not holding out much hope for an exotic solution, many have turned in the last few years to seriously considering nuclear as a potential replacement to fossil fuel demand. The result has been resurgence in nuclear efforts. In the U.S. an application has been filed by NRG Energy for the first new nuclear plant in 30 years. In Canada, a nuclear research reactor taken temporarily offline was quickly brought online after swift legislative action.

However, despite the growing enthusiasm there has already been one major hiccup. The record drought that has been plaguing the U.S. Southeast is threatening to cripple the nuclear industry in this region, as many of the plants require large amounts of water.

Now, a new research study, conducted by Physicist Joshua Pearce of Clarion University of Pennsylvania puts another dent in nuclear efforts. Professor Pearce’s research, published in Inderscience’s International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology, indicates that while nuclear research and small-scale growth remain promising, large scale growth remains non-viable.

Professor Pearce is actually an advocate for nuclear power. He warns that his research should not be misinterpreted. Professor Pearce suggests that the nuclear power industry focuses its efforts on improving efficiency. He gives two easy ways to accomplish this. The first is to utilize only the highest grade ores, saving on refining energy costs. Secondly, he suggests the industry adopt gas centrifuge technology for ore enrichment, which is considerably more efficient than the currently used gaseous diffusion methods.

Professor Pearce feels that plants must also adopt technology for capturing and distributing their waste heat. He points out that nuclear plants dump large amounts of heat into their surroundings, a practice which both wastes energy and can cause significant harm to the environment. Professor Pearce believes that current nuclear weapon stockpiles worldwide should be dismantled and their nuclear fuel “down-blended”. He points out that this could produce a bounty of nuclear fuel.

The not-so-good news which Professor Pearce points out is that nuclear is simply not a viable candidate for large-scale growth. In order for nuclear power to maintain growing future power demands and the shrinking fossil fuel power supplies, between 2010 and 2050 a growth rate of over 10 percent a year would be necessary according to Professor Pearce. This, he says, is simply not possible.

Professor Pearce points out that such a growth program would simply cannibalize older plant’s power output to provide the power needed to maintain the processes involved with building the new plants and refining ore for them, leaving no power for human needs. Large-scale growth would require massive power investment in terms of plant construction, plant operation, mining infrastructure expansion, and energy investments to refine ore. Professor Pearce says the books simply don’t balance — these power needs could not be met by the energy produced from the refined ore.

He points to a significant problem with large scale growth. Large-scale growth, barring the discovery of new reserves would necessitate the use of lower grade uranium. This sets an additional limit on growth. As Professor Pearce points out, “The limit of uranium ore grade to offset greenhouse gas emissions is significantly higher than the purely thermodynamic limit set by the energy payback time.”

Professor Pearce also points out to environmentalists and global warming skeptics alike that nuclear power is hardly an “emission-free panacea”, as he puts it. All aspects of plant operation, including plant construction, mining/milling of uranium ores, fuel conversion, enrichment, fabrication, operation, decommissioning, and long-term and short-term waste disposal, require massive amounts of energy provided by fossil fuels. The burning of these fossil fuels will create large amounts of greenhouse emissions, a criticism oft-leveled against the solar and wind power industries by nuclear advocates.

While emissions are certainly troublesome, the simple energy requirements infeasibility, if accurate, would almost certainly nix the large scale expansion of nuclear power in its current form. If Professor Pearce’s research withstands the test of review then it offers little choice but to pursue his suggested strategies — develop more advanced nuclear power on a smaller scale and pursue other alternative energy solutions as a major source of capacity.

It turns out mom was right, when she told you to take your vitamins.

Bacteria have been a hot topic in research these days. It turns out that the little guys, oft vilified for their pathogenic brethren, can provide exciting solutions to many alternative energy and material purification problems. Researchers have used bacteria for everything from purifying water, to data storage, to microbial biofuel and hydrogen production.

Now researchers have made an exciting new microbiological breakthrough involving a very special type of bacteria. It has been known for some time that the bacteria, Shewanella, found commonly in water and soil, produces electricity when it digests organic matter. This led to researchers taking special interest in its potential as a natural generator. However, a major roadblock to such alternative energy plans was the fact that it was unknown until now is exactly how the bacteria accomplished its electrical generation, or whether the process could be governed.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have now discovered that the vitamin riboflavin (known commonly as vitamin B-2), provides the bacteria with much of its generating capabilities. The research was led by Daniel Bond and Jeffrey Gralnick, of the University of Minnesota’s BioTechnology Institute and Department of Microbiology.

Professor Bond explained the importance of their discovery, stating, “This is very exciting because it solves a fundamental biological puzzle. Scientists have known for years that Shewanella produce electricity. Now we know how they do it.”

Their research, which will be published in the March 3 issue of the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” opens the door to an exciting new chapter in alternative energy. By boosting the Shewanella bacteria’s riboflavin intake with vitamins, the bacteria’s electrical output dramatically increases. These bacteria can transform organic waste byproducts such as lactic acid into electricity, offering both a waste disposal and an alternative energy solution.

The research team discovered riboflavin’s effects when bacteria growing on their electrodes began to increase in electrical output. The team discovered that the increase was do to the accumulation of riboflavin on the electrodes, a substance the bacteria naturally produce. As the riboflavin built up, the bacteria’s electrical output increased to a maximum of 370 percent of the original levels.

Potential uses include waste water microbial fuel cells and, according to researchers, a natural fuel source for ocean floor probes. Professor Bond remarks, “Bacteria could help pay the bills for a wastewater treatment plant.”

The researchers do warn that in order for the technology to be cost-effective for home and business use or for transportation, significant biological and fuel cell design obstacles would have to be overcome. For now, the technology provides a great deal of niche potential for the waste water industry, they say.

For those curious of why Shewanella outputs electrical current, here’s why. The bacteria needs to digest certain soil metals such as iron to survive and thrive. In order to properly absorb them it directs electrons into the metals to change their properties, making them more digestible. Says Profesor Gralnick, “Bacteria have been changing the chemistry of the environment for billions of years. Their ability to make iron soluble is key to metal cycling in the environment and essential to most life on earth.”

Such bacteria could also be applied to ship surfaces and used in a reverse process to prevent corrosion by outputting iron. The U.S. Navy is interested enough in this application to provide the team with a grant to explore the technology further.

The research was primarily funded by the Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and Cargill. The University of Minnesota’s College of Biological Sciences and the Institute of Technology were also involved with the project.

The very useful Shewanella bacterium has also been found to produce carbon nanotubes under the proper conditions.

Yeah, the critics have already had their shot at the VUDU, but now that the latest software update has towed in support for HD streaming, Engadget HD figured it prudent to dedicate a review specifically to the high-definition capabilities of the movie set-top-box. Eager to see if it’s worthy of being connected to your HDTV? Come on over, the water’s fine.

Canon’s eye-based biometric photo watermarking system hits the Patent Office

Image attribution is big business on this tangled web of ours, but embedding digital watermarks into images is a costly and time-consuming procedure for most photographers — which is why this Canon patent application is so intriguing. The filing describes a “Registration” mode for digital cameras that embeds biometric data captured from your iris in the image automatically as a watermark — you simply set yourself as one of up to five users, look into the viewfinder for a moment so the camera can scan your eye, and start taking photos. The system embeds the metadata in batches to avoid slowing the camera down while you’re out in the field, and it sounds like the system can be modified to simply generate a verification code instead of a true watermark, preserving image quality. Of course, this is just a patent application, so there’s no word on when or where we might see this tech pop up, but you know photographers will be all over this when it finally hits.

[Via Photography Bay, thanks Eric]

Sure, there’s always the pukelight for good times around the house, but sometimes you’ve just got to do some damage — which is where The Torch from Wicked Lasers comes in. The 4100-lumen flashlight is being considered for the Guiness Book of World Records, and can ignite paper, light cigarettes, melt plastic, and even fry an egg — but only has a fifteen minute battery life. Check a video of The Torch taking out a pile of plastic bags after the break, and hit the read link for even more high-candlepower destruction.

[Via I4U News]

We’ve already seen nanoparticles put to use to help diagnose cancer (in mice), and it now looks like researchers have found another, potentially bigger use for ‘em — namely, to blast those cancer cells away altogether. That’s apparently possible by mixing two so-called nanothermite composites that act as a fuel and an oxidizer, which in turn generate combustion waves that can hit velocities ranging from 1,500 to 2,300 meters per second (or somewhere in the neighborhood of Mach 3). Being on the nano-scale, however, the researchers say the explosives can be used safely within the human body and, indeed, they say they have 99% success rate in tests on animal tissue. If all goes as planned (a relatively big “if”), the researchers say the technology could be ready for use in two to five years.

[Via Futurismic]

After waiting for what seems like ages, we can imagine just how excited one would be to finally receive that beautiful brown shipping container with their very own Pleo tucked within. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on perspective) for one particular German, an unspecified retailer sent out what appears to be a prototype dino, complete with a pieced together box that once held a fax machine. Interestingly, it seems the lucky recipient is rather perturbed by the incident, but being the optimistic crew that we are, we’d actually hang on to this thing for bragging rights or discover its true value courtesy of eBay. Hit the read link for a few more shots.

[Thanks, Jared C.]

We’ve definitely seen some outlandish attempts at improving or outright replacing the humble credit card, but South Koreans will soon be able pay for purchases using the most easy-to-lose system we’ve seen yet — by inserting a special USB flash drive into a slot. The system, which is being rolled out by Shinhan Card and VIsa, also lets users pay for online purchases by sticking the drive into their computers’ USB ports, and Shinhan is also rolling out new terminals that will enable contactless payments using the device as well. Of course, the drive itself is locked down tighter than a drum, but we still aren’t convinced a bulky flash drive is a better option than phone-based or biometric payment systems.

[Via The Raw Feed]

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about the much-hated Real ID unified RFID national identification card, but that doesn’t mean the Department of Homeland Security has been sitting still: New York, Arizona, Washington, and Vermont all agreed earlier this month to beef up the security of driver’s licenses to comply with DHS’ new Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. WHTI is the same fun law that requires US citizens carry a passport to travel to Canada and Mexico, and while it’s not clear if it requires RFID licenses for states to comply, eWeek is reporting that both New York and Washington are headed towards including the tags anyway. Given the immense backlash Real ID came under for similar schemes, it’ll be interesting to see how WHTI plays out — but you can bet we’re holding onto the janky laminated driver’s license we got in college as long as we can.

[Via Autoblog]

If you’ve been feeling like you didn’t already have enough zany and / or pointless Department of Transportation rules to abide by, you’re in luck! Starting January 1st, 2008, you can no longer pack “loose lithium batteries” into your checked luggage on flights. If your battery is attached to a device — or is packed into a plastic bag — you’re okay. According to the report, “Common consumer electronics such as travel cameras, cell phones, and most laptop computers are still allowed in carry-on and checked luggage,” though, “The rule limits individuals to bringing only two extended-life spare rechargeable lithium batteries, such as laptop and professional audio/video/camera equipment lithium batteries in carry-on baggage.” The new ban is related to lithium batteries’ propensity to explode, and not due to any terrorism concerns. We’re not sure what they’re getting at with that plastic bag rule, but this should make everyone’s already complicated travel plans just slightly more annoying.

[Via Gadling, image by rbrwr]