[breyn-i-keyn] Brainstorming on a Higher Level
Photo via MotorTrend
VW’s 2011 Touareg Hybrid
The 2010 Geneva Motor Show was filled with so many splashy auto announcements–Porsche’s first ever plug-in hybrid, a new Aud… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Image credit: Good
Times are tough for everyone—including municipal governments. One are that has suffered from diminished budgets is public transport. Across the country, transit workers are losing their jobs, making it that much harder to maintain the systems and schedules. Though there are some signs of economic recovery, more public transit jobs are expected to be lost before things get better…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
3-D TVs are finally going on sale–sans content. So some sets are claiming the ability to add a third dimension to your 2-D broadcasts
More than a year after the first consumer 3-D-ready HDTVs were demoed at CES, the next generation of sets are going on sale this week. But, aside from the new TVs, glasses, and Blu-ray players, the question of content remains. While there are already brand partnerships with networks like Discovery and ESPN, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As an alternative, the two companies with 3-D TVs but without major brand-name cable partners (Samsung and Toshiba) showed off sets that could convert 2-D video to 3-D in real time.
The converter chip on Toshiba’s Cell TV is part of their own platform co-created with Sony and IBM (yes, it’s the same brain inside the PS3). Other HDTV makers, though, can go to a third party to upgrade their sets to upconvert 2-D content to 3-D.
One such third party is chipmaker Quartics, who provides the graphics processing brains behind everything from netbooks to HDTVs and set-top boxes. And this year at CES they demoed their own 2-D to 3-D upconversion chip technology.
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How 3-D TV Works |
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Toshiba Cell TV Converts All Video to 3-D With Playstation 3's Processor |
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Samsung 9000 Series 3-D TV Is No Thicker Than a Pencil |
Gadgets, How It Works, Corinne Iozzio, 3d, CES, ces 2010, chips, HDTVs, panasonic, samsung, sony, Toshiba
Quartics CTO Mohammed Usman gave us a look at the guts behind converting 2-D video to 3-D. In essence, a series of algorithms on Quartics’ chip is watching the video along with you, and analyzing it on the fly. With virtually no delay, it can distinguish foreground from background and identify the subject of the shot as the object that needs added depth. The process is very similar to face recognition algorithms used by digital cameras and camcorders to autofocus on faces, and sometimes know whether or not they’re smiling.
To upgrade 2-D to 3-D, the software thinks of the colors it sees at the bottom of the screen as what’s closest to your eye, and what’s at the top as the farthest. This is how it establishes what the background of the scene looks like.
But what about the subject? The chip tracks the pixel color and light intensity of groups of pixels together; when it senses a sudden shift in light or color, it knows it’s encountered a new object. The chip also knows that moving clusters of color or light are likely to be the subject of the shot. Once it’s identified the objects, it finds a central point from which to draw lines of perspective–the same way we learned vanishing points and two-point perspective in elementary school art classes.
With on-the-fly conversions, however, you won’t see many effects that jump off the screen. Currently the algorithms are not fine-tuned enough to re-create the immersive depth needed without being distracting or gimmicky like old-school movie-theater 3-D.
Once the chip knows what objects on the screen to assign depth to, it can start the process of converting the image. The chip creates two separate images, one for each eye, which is flips back and forth at high frequency to trick your eyes into thinking you’re seeing both angles at once.
When paired with a set of 3-D glasses that isolate the left and right images from each other at the same frequency, the effect is impressive, but not as realistic as video shot with a two-lensed stereoscopic 3-D camera (or animated originally in 3-D).
At CES Quartics demoed nature videos and the trailer for Appoloosa, but Usman is confident their technique will work with just about any genre. Film with a lot of movement, though, is trickier and may require more sophisticated algorithms–or maybe you’ll have to wait for native 3-D footage before the Super Bowl in 3-D will be livable.
Samsung’s in-booth demo, for one, showed an upscaled football game. And, while the holographic effect did come across, a wide receiver dashing across the screen had a bit of a ghost trailing behind him–as predicted. Still, upconverting existing content to 3-D is better than waiting around for the first wave of Blu-ray discs or cable broadcasts. And, since the chips are no more costly than those on other 3-D sets, it’s the perfect stop-gap.
Chalk up another technological victory for Big Brother. Japanese phone maker KDDI has developed a mobile phone that analyzes users’ movements, beaming that information back to the corporate office/Party headquarters/the Ministry of Love for review. Specialized software can identify several distinct movements, including walking, stair-climbing, and even cleaning. On-the-job slackers, the jig is up.
The system employs the accelerometers that are now standard in many mobile handsets to determine what sort of tasks workers are performing. And it doesn’t just identify broad categories of movements; the software can identify if a cleaning worker is scrubbing, sweeping, or even bending and lifting to empty a trash bin.
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Robotic Office Stand-In |
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Big Brother is Watching You Wash Your Hands |
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Big Brother is Listening |
Gadgets, Clay Dillow, big brother, cell phones, japan, KDDI, privacy, surveillance, workplace
KDDI intends to sell the technology to employment agencies and corporate clients that want to keep a better watch on employee efficiency. But naturally, the idea has met resistance from those who feel a mobile phone that reports on its user is decidedly Orwellian.
The company claims it could be a boon for telemedicine and similar services that users opt into, and KDDI encourages companies using the tech to enter into strict agreements with workers regarding its usage. Japanese culture is certainly more open to such intrusions: since GPS was introduced in phones there nearly a decade ago, employers have kept tabs on company drivers and sales people via mobile handsets.
Whether or not that kind of acceptance of the boss looking over every shoulder will catch on elsewhere — well, we’re skeptical about that. A cell phone that monitors employees’ every move seems like too much of a technological intrusion, even for people very comfortable with high-tech gadgetry pervading their day-to-day lives. Besides, don’t most people use their cell phones to distract themselves while at work? Perhaps rather than giving people mobile phones to keep tabs on their progress we’d get better results by taking the mobile phones away.
[BBC]
DARPA envisions a future in which U.S. Special Forces or spooks have to assault underground bases. And the Pentagon agency wants to give those warriors an underground navigation system that works on lightning bolts, The Register reports.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) has transformed how both the military and civilians get around, courtesy of a satellite network that can triangulate a person’s position on an interactive navigation map. But such a system only works on the Earth’s surface, and so it’s useless for military or intelligence operatives who need to infiltrate underground lairs.
That dilemma prompted DARPA to launch its “Sferics-Based Underground Geolocation” project, known more colloquially as S-BUG. The idea involves harnessing low-frequency radio signals or pulses created naturally by lightning strikes, because such signals can penetrate deep underground.
An underground receiver carried by warfighters or spooks might receive info on lightning strikes from a surface base station, and then calculate its own position based on strikes coming from several directions. Maybe it’s just pure coincidence that DARPA also started a separate initiative recently aimed at controlling lightning.
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Out of the Blue, DARPA Seeks Means to Manipulate Lightning |
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Teen Inventor's Cave Radio Could Save Lives Deep Underground |
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U.S. Air Force Urgently Seeks Alternatives to GPS |
A U.S. teen inventor applied the same idea to create a cave radio capable of communicating with the surface from deep underground. That sort of device might also prove handy for underground special ops.
DARPA began the S-BUG investigation last year, and now plans to hold a secretive conference with tech firms interested in tackling the project. Given that the U.S. Air Force has also recently voiced an urgent need for GPS alternatives, we wouldn’t be surprised if some Air Force brass at least show up to take notes.
[via The Register]
Never content to let a paradigm remain a paradigm, DARPA has issued a broad agency announcement seeking the development of super-low-power, non-volatile logic integrated circuits that retain their computational states as well as their data even after their power supplies have been removed. Focusing on magnetic-moment-based approaches, the agency wants a new breed of portable electronics, sensors and UAVs that can compute even when the lights go out.
What DARPA is really seeking is better “digital/computation throughput per watt dissipated” (read: better power efficiency) to a degree that current technologies just can’t accommodate. Conventional semiconductor circuits move an electrical charge through chips under the influence of electric fields, and while we’re constantly tinkering with transistor gate materials and the geometry of our silicon chips, DARPA wants efficiency beyond the physical limitations of that technology.
To get more out of each watt, the agency wants a whole new kind of computational state that doesn’t rely on free electric charge, and it’s even offering up an idea on how prospective bidders can pull this off. DARPA wants logic devices that compute via magnetic moment rather than standard electron charge; such ferromagnetic devices offer distinct advantages in that they are non-volatile - that is, they maintain their computational state even after power is removed - and they are, by nature, hardened against radiation.
Sensors, electronics, weapons systems and UAVs operating on guts made of such non-volatile logic would not only consume much less power when hooked into a power source, but they would retain their data and computational states should they lose power. And should we find ourselves operating in high radiation environments, our sensors and devices would be radiation-resistant.
Of course, as with all things DARPA, the agency doesn’t see this as simply a defense matter; rather, they’re looking to change the way we think about computing:
At the conclusion of the program, it is anticipated that the technology will have matured enough that the major risks inherent in the technology will have been mitigated and that a viable circuit technology will be available to enable new computational processing paradigms.
Of course, if you have a better idea that ferromagnetic logic to produce self-contained, low-power, non-volatile computing devices that require no external components and have better computational density than existing state-of-the-art circuits, DARPA is all ears.
My rocket is almost as big as your rocket
China’s new moon rocket design is in the class of the old Saturn V that once launched U.S. Apollo astronauts to the moon. The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology says that the proposed rocket would have a thrust of 3,000 metric tons, just shy of the 3,470 metric tons of thrust generated by the Saturn V’s first stage, Aviation Week reports.
The announcements through Xinhua and the China Daily come barely a month after the Obama administration decided to cancel NASA’s Constellation program and the Ares rockets that represented NASA’s successors to the mighty Saturn V — the proposed Ares V might have had a thrust of more than 4,000 metric tons. The Constellation program had long been criticized for being unrealistic in its goal and over-budget given NASA’s existing funding levels.
The U.S. space agency has since focused on developing technologies such as inflatable space stations, orbital refueling and new robotic missions. It has also reached out a hand to help the growing U.S. commercial space industry.
Technology, Jeremy Hsu, astronauts, china, long march rockets, lunar missions, moon, rockets, Saturn V, space, space stations, taikonauts
China’s latest rocket development was first reported by the Xinhua news agency and the China Daily. Besides the giant moon rocket in the class of the Saturn V, China is also working on a medium-lift Long March 7 rocket that will join the Long March 5 and 6 rockets.
Such lift power will help China launch its own full-fledged space station before 2020, as well as the first of perhaps several “Tiangong” space labs next year, Aviation Week notes.
Chinese officials also recently announced China’s second batch of astronauts that includes the first two women taikonauts, Xinhua reports. The candidates mainly come from a pool of fighter pilots and must undergo stringent health checks. You can’t have bad breath on the moon, you know.
Photo: Public domain
Other Truck Fleets, Pay Attention
Did you know that replacing a pre-1994 diesel truck (or at least the engine) with a 2004-2006 model could cut soot pollution by about 2/3, and reduce smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions by more than half? Post 2007 diesel trucks are even better, with a reduction of soot particles by about 95% and NOx by at least 3/4. That’s a pretty big difference (though it doesn’t solve CO2 emissions), and it esp… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Photo: Public domain
Other Truck Fleets, Pay Attention
Did you know that replacing a pre-1994 diesel truck (or at least the engine) with a 2004-2006 model could cut soot pollution by about 2/3, and reduce smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions by more than half? Post 2007 diesel trucks are even better, with a reduction of soot particles by about 95% and NOx by at least 3/4. That’s a pretty big difference (though it doesn’t solve CO2 emissions), and it esp… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Trinity College, Dublin
TreeHugger loves Product Service Systems, where you borrow and share instead of own. They are also called libraries, and Kris De Decker of No-Tech Magazine points us to a lovely post by Brian Kaller, a former newspaper reporter now living in rural Ireland. He loves his local library, but more importantly, writes about the principle beh… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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