AU Optronics Corp has unveiled a new LCD panel that doubles as a fingerprint scanner. Each pixel is equipped with 4 optical sensors, so a 320×240 screen would have a scanning resolution of 640×480. They have also experimented with different sensors, such as UV. You can see an LCD panel that detects and displays the UV index above. Why did they use a secondary display to show the data though?
Source: Gearlog
[nmarquardt] has put up an interesting instructable that covers building RFID tags. Most of them are constructed using adhesive copper tape on cardstock. The first version just has a cap and a low power LED to prove that the antenna is receiving power. The next iteration uses tilt switches so the tag is only active in certain orientations. The conclusion shows several different variations: different antenna lengths, conductive paint, light activated and more.
Italian scooter-maker Piaggio has unveiled a plug-in hybrid three-wheeler it says will get up to 141 mpg and could be on the road as early as next year.
The gas-electric version of Piaggio’s funky but fun MP3 scooter uses a parallel hybrid system much like that in the Toyota Prius but advances the technology by adding an electrical cord. Although Toyota, General Motors and several other automakers are developing cars that can be charged from a wall socket, Piaggio’s timeline, if met, would make it the first in the world to mass-produce a plug-in hybrid. (more…)
Yokogawa Electric has released the DXadvanced R3 data acquisition and display station for networks.
The product is an enhanced version of the Daqstation series of paperless recorders designed for more efficient monitoring of production lines.
The DXadvanced has a built-in panel and offers integrated display, recording and communication functions.
(more…)
In this season of specters and spooks, what could be scarier than a steel-winged robotic spy plane shaped like a bat? The aptly named COM-BATis a six-inch surveillance device that is powered by solar, wind, and vibrations. The concept was conceived by the US military as a means to gather real-time data for soldiers, and the Army has awarded the University of Michigan College of Engineering a five year $10-million dollar grant to develop it. (more…)
Company Intamac has launched its broadband home monitoring products and services with WoonVeilig in The Netherlands. The BT Home Monitor VP1000 is easy to install DIY wireless security alarm and monitoring system. First of all it’s a security system. So, VP1000 includes a security panel and various wireless sensors: motion, smoke and flood detectors. The security panel offers a few pre-defined mode for the home security and possibility to connect to the broadband Internet to have access from everywhere. Additionally wireless D-Link IP cameras can be connected to the system to allow monitor you home.
The price of BT Home Monitor VP1000 including Main Control Panel, 2 Wireless Movement Detectors, Wireless Door Contact and Remote Keyfob is £115.99. Additionally consumer should pay £5 per month for the access to his online account and includes the cost of all outbound voice call, sms text message and e-mail notifications from our monitoring service. Additionally £2.5 should be paid for monitoring 4 IP cameras.
The new Intamac security system looks very similar to AlertMe but offers more useful features then it. However, AlertMe is based on standard home automation protocol ZigBee which is much better that using some proprietary unique one (I couldn’t find any information aboutVP1000 protocol). In any case, those two systems show a new tendency in the DIY home security and monitoring systems.
Source: HomeToys News
Climate change is devastating the flowers of Walden Pond, picking off those species that cannot react to rising temperatures.
Comparing data meticulously gathered by Henry David Thoreau more than a century and a half ago with more recent observations, Harvard biologists report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that more than a quarter of Walden’s plant species have already been lost. And an additional 36 percent are in imminent danger, including lilacs, roses and buttercups.
“It had been thought that climate change would result in uniform shifts across plant species, but our work shows that plant species do not respond to climate change uniformly or randomly,” said co-author Charles Davis, a biologist at Harvard, in a release.
The Walden study shows that even small changes in temperature can have outsized impacts on plants that are evolutionarily adapted to fulfill ecological niches. Together with changes seen in other locations, like the unprecedented pine beetle damage in the West, the new work suggests that finely tuned biological systems are having a difficult time keeping up with the rapid pace of human-induced climate change.
The average temperature around Walden has risen by more than four degrees over the last century as increasing greenhouse gas concentrations from burning fossil fuels changed the earth’s climate.
But the warming is not just mowing the forest down, it’s shaping it as some plant species thrive under the new global conditions.
“Most strikingly, species with the ability to track short-term seasonal temperature variation have fared significantly better under recent warming trends,” the authors write.
Although the design of the Walden study is simple, it depends on the value of Thoreau’s rare pre-industrial data.
“Whenever you have an opportunity to get a dataset where someone who has made very careful efforts to observe things in a systematic way, it gives you a snapshot of a particular time period and lets you make comparisons,” said Mark Schwartz, a world expert in phenology, the field of seasonal changes in living things, at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
Unfortunately, very few ecosystems have been recorded in such excruciating detail.
“We don’t have a large number of datasets of this sort,” Schwartz said. “Most of them are concentrated in Europe and in Asia. There are very few in North America.”
For example, Isabelle Chuine at France’s Center for Evolutionary and Functional Ecology, published a paper in Nature using detailed grape harvest records in Burgundy dating from as far back as 1370. Schwartz also noted that many European weather services record phenological data along with their weather measurements, while American weather stations do not. As a result, Americans know less about when our plants bloom than many other countries.
But Schwartz is trying to change that by empowering Americans to contribute their own Thoreau-style data. He’s the chair of the National Phenology Network, a new organization attempting to incorporate data from ecological stations, citizen scientists and other types of fieldwork.
Already, one of the NPN’s efforts — Project BudBurst — has marshaled several thousand people to track the timing of plant flowerings in their backyards as they shift due to climate change.
Their data could not only benefit scientists of the present and future, but could aid in providing Americans with direct evidence of climate change, helping to create the political will necessary to address the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“When someone asks me about climate change, I say, ‘You can go observe it in your own backyard,’” Schwartz said. “If you want to see what’s happening, start taking records and see for yourself.”
Citation: “Phylogenetic patterns of species loss in Thoreau’s woods are driven by climate change” http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0806446105
Image: A specimen from Harvard University’s Herbaria :: Rosaceae Pyrus bretschneideri Rehder
GainSpan has a chip that can curb energy consumption in the home, and notify your doctor if you’re about to have a heart attack.
The company has produced an energy efficient WiFi chip that it hopes to install in dryers, electrical meters and other devices in the home. The idea is that utilities and consumers will shut off and/or power down appliances with wireless signals remotely to curb electricity consumption.
GainSpan is currently working with manufacturers to insert its chip into cold storage units, meters and other devices. Hitachi Plant Technologies, the industrial technology arm of the Japanese giant, makes sensors incorporating GainSpan’s chips. The company was spun out of Intel.
Source: GreenTechMedia
Recently Mercedes Benz revealed images of its stunning Formula Zero Racer, a futuristic foray into the next generation of racing. Incorporating elements from luge, yacht, and Formula One vehicles, the zero-emissions racer is propelled by a wind-catching sail in addition to electric motors that are powered by renewable resources. The concept is a tribute to a future where cars will win races based not just upon their speed, but on how energy efficient they are. Read the rest of the story: link
With millions of GPS-based navigation devices on the road today, it is time someone considered the question: What if there’s an attack on the GPS network itself?
Researchers at Virginia Tech and Cornell University spent more than a year building equipment that can transmit fake GPS signals capable of fooling receivers.
“GPS is woven into our technology infrastructure, just like the power grid or the water system,” said Paul Kintner, electrical and computer engineering professor and director of the Cornell GPS Laboratory in a statement. “If it were attacked, there would be a serious impact.”
GPS is a U.S. government-built navigation system of more than 30 satellites circling earth twice a day in specific orbits. The satellites transmit signals to receivers on land, sea and in air. Based on the signals received from the satellites, devices are able to triangulate their exact positions on the globe. But if those satellite signals were wrong — or were spoofed — a GPS device might come up with the wrong location based on the signals it was receiving.
The researchers started by programming a briefcase-size GPS receiver used in the research of the uppermost part of the Earth’s atmosphere, known as ionospheric research, to send out fake signals. The phony receiver was placed in the proximity of a navigation device, where it anticipated the signal being transmitted from the GPS satellite. Almost instantly, the reprogrammed receiver sent out a false signal that the GPS-based navigation device took for the real thing.
The experiments to show the vulnerability of GPS receivers to spoofing could help devise methods to guard against such attacks, says Brent Ledvina, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Virginia Tech, and will be detailed in a research paper to be released Thursday.
“It’s almost like someone nearby is spoofing your favorite radio station by transmitting at the same frequency but higher power fooling your receiver into believing it is getting the right station,” says Ledvina.
The idea of GPS receiver spoofing has already been considered by federal authorities. In a December 2003 report, the Department of Homeland Security detailed seven countermeasures including monitoring the absolute and relative GPS signal strength, monitoring the satellite identification codes and the number of signals received and checking the time intervals between the received signals to guard against spoofs.
Still those fall short and would not have successfully fended off the signals produced by a reprogrammed receiver, said the researchers.
Instead they have suggested a few countermeasures that involve both hardware and software changes. “We have two patent applications which include a software algorithm to help make changes to how receivers react to signals,” says Ledvina.
The other patent is around the spoofer tool used, he says. “The idea is to help government and other companies use it to potentially make better receivers,” says Ledvina.
Photo: NASA
Links: HomeLandSecurity, wired