Celebrity tracker ‘app’ for Android smartphones

San Francisco: Startup Scoopler was inviting owners of Android-powered smartphones to install an application that promises to alert them every time a celebrity is sighted nearby.

The free JustSpotted software was available online at the Android Market.

“There is no other application that gives you real-time alerts like this with thousands of spottings on our website every day,” Scoopler co-founder AJ Asver told AFP in an email.

“If you are in a metropolitan area, you are going to be pleasantly surprised by how close you are to the celebrity world.”

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Supercomputer solves gamma-ray burst mystery

Washington: A German supercomputer simulation has shown that colliding two neutron stars can naturally produce magnetic structures thought to power the high-speed particle jets associated with short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).
The study provides the most detailed glimpse of the forces driving some of the universe’s most energetic explosions.

GRBs are among the brightest events known, emitting as much energy in a few seconds as our entire galaxy does in a year and most of it in the form of Gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light.

A state-of-the-art simulation running for nearly seven weeks on the Damiana computer cluster at the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany, traces events that unfold in just 35 milliseconds — about three times faster than the blink of an eye, according to a NASA study.

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Iranian students design solar-powered car

Tehran: Students from an Iranian university have designed a car that runs entirely on solar energy, state-run Press TV reported.

The students from the vehicular research department at the University of Qazvin designed the vehicle named “Havin” which means “shining sun”.

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Android to capture 49% of market by 2012

New York: Google’s Android will become the most popular smartphone operating system and will account for 49 percent of the market by 2012, a research firm has said.

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Now, a credit card that talks to you!

London: Imagine your credit card talking to you and displaying your balance, while doubling as a reward card. Well, your imagination will soon turn into a reality.

Dynamics Inc is developing such cards — due to be introduced in the US later this year — which will have wafer- thin microprocessors and would run on batteries that can last up to three years.

However, the credit cards will only display personal information after a security code is entered.
Citibank has released the new 2G card, which has a programmable magnetic strip and buttons on the front for users to choose to use it as a credit card or just to spend reward points, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.
A trial is currently ongoing and, if successful, it could roll out across the country.

Even Mastercard has just released a card that has a small LCD screen which displays a one-time code which the customer can use to make an online purchase. It means even if someone’s credit card details are stolen, they will be useless to buy anything with without the one-off code.

Jeff Mullen, the CEO of Dynamics Inc which is working on several other high-tech cards, explained that the end of the magnetic strip has been mooted for years, but is still the dominant payment system in the world.

He said: “Magnetic stripe readers are being placed in more places than ever before — like vending machines, movie theater kiosks and taxicabs.
“Even in Japan, where the infrastructure is in place and phones (which can make payments) have been distributed for seven years, the volume of phone payments is significantly less than one per cent share of transactions.

“European chip cards comprise only about 10 per cent of cards in world.”
PTI

Microsoft’s Kinect is fastest-selling tech gadget

San Francisco: Microsoft’s Kinect has been named the fastest-selling tech gadget of all time after racking up sales of 10 million units since its launch in November.
The unit is the first mass-produced device that allows for motion and voice control of a video game console without the need to hold any controller. Microsoft said the device’s success staked it a spot in the Guinness Book of Records by beating the previous sales record set by Apple’s iPad.
“The sales figures here speak for themselves,” said Gaz Deaves, editor of Guinness World Records 2011 Gamer’s Edition, according to a Microsoft statement.
“We can confirm that no other consumer electronics device sold faster within a 60-day time span, an incredible achievement considering the strength of the sector,” Deaves said.
Guinness said that Microsoft sold eight million of the devices in its first two months on the market, for an average daily volume of 133,333.

Mobile battery life could last months thanks to nanotechnology

Washington: Have you ever dreamt of owning mobile devices that run for months rather than days without charging? Well, your wish may soon be granted — thanks to nanotechnology.
Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed an ultra-low-power digital memory that is faster and uses 100 times less energy than currently used memory modules.
They believe the technology would significantly enhance battery life of portable devices, including mobile phones.
“I think anyone who is dealing with a lot of chargers and plugging things in every night can relate to wanting a cell phone or laptop whose batteries can last for weeks or months,” said lead author and electrical and computer engineering professor Eric Pop.
The flash memory used in mobile devices currently stores bits as charge, which requires high programming voltages and is relatively slow.
Pop and his team lowered the power per bit to 100 times less than existing phase-change materials (PCM) memory by focusing on the size.
Rather than the metal wires standard in industry, they used carbon nanotubes – tiny tubes 10,000 times smaller than a human hair.
“The energy consumption is essentially scaled with the volume of the memory bit,” said graduate student Feng Xiong, the first author of the paper.
“By using nanoscale contacts, we are able to achieve much smaller power consumption,” he added.
To create a bit, the researchers placed a small amount of PCM in a nanoscale gap formed in the middle of a carbon nanotube. They can switch the bit ‘on’ and ‘off’ by passing small currents through the nanotube.
“Carbon nanotubes are the smallest known electronic conductors. They are better than any metal at delivering a little jolt of electricity to zap the PCM bit,” said Pop.
Nanotubes also boast an extraordinary stability, as they are not susceptible to the degradation that can plague metal wires.
Pop believes that the nanotube PCM memory could increase an iPhone’s energy efficiency so it could run for a longer time on a smaller battery or even to the point where it could run simply by harvesting its own thermal, mechanical or solar energy – no battery required.
And device junkies will not be the only beneficiaries.
“This is also important for anything that has to operate on a battery, such as satellites, telecommunications equipment in remote locations, or any number of scientific and military applications,” said Pop.
The results has been published online in the March 10 Science Express and will appear in an upcoming issue of Science magazine.
ANI

Now, a ‘molecular robot’ to follow instructions

Washington: A programmable ‘molecular robot’, a sub-microscopic molecular machine made of synthetic DNA that moves between track locations separated by 6nm, has been developed by researchers.

The robot, a short strand of DNA, follows instructions programmed into a set of fuel molecules determining its destination, for example, to turn left or right at a junction in the track.The work represents a step toward futuristic nanomachines and nanofactories.Andrew Turberfield and colleagues point out that other scientists have developed similar DNA-based robots, which move autonomously.

Some of these use a biped design and move by alternately attaching and detaching themselves from anchor points along the DNA track, foot over foot, when fuel is added.

Scientists would like to program DNA robots to autonomously walk in different directions to move in a programmable pattern, a key to harnessing their potential as cargo-carrying molecular machines.

They describe an advance toward this goal — a robot that can be programmed to choose among different branches of a molecular track, rather than just move in a straight line.

The key to this specialized movement is a so-called “fuel hairpin,” a molecule that serves as both a chemical energy source for propelling the robot along the track and as a routing instruction.

The instructions tell the robot which point is should move to next, allowing the selection between the left or right branches of a junction in the track, precisely controlling the route of the robot — which could potentially allow the transport of pharmaceuticals or other materials.

The study appears in ACS’s Nano Letters.

ANI

‘Magic cap’ that helps you spell words with your mind!

Washington: How great would it be if you could do away with a keyboard forever and simply type using your mind?

Now, that’s possible using intendiX – a device that spells words based on brain waves.

Developed by Austrian company Guger Technologies, it’s essentially a skullcap, covered in electroencephalographic (EEG) electrodes, with a computer interface, reports Discovery News.

The wearer stares at a computer screen, which flashes highlights over different rows in a matrix of letters and symbols set up like a keyboard on the screen. Simply by paying attention to the desired letter for a few seconds, the program can determine what the user intended to pick.

The ‘magic cap’ could be a blessing for those with spinal injuries or other conditions that impair use of the arms or vocal cords.

According to Guger Technologies, most people become competent thought-communicators after 10 minutes of training on the system and are able to spell out five to 10 characters a minute.

The user can also make it read the message out loud in digitized prose, print the text, or send it in email or via another electronic messaging system — intendiX is Bluetooth-ready.

The only ability needed to use the system, besides a few seconds of concentration, is eyesight.

Making human-like robots for easier interaction with people

Washington: Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have found that when robots move in a more human-like fashion, people find it easier to interact with them and mimic them. 

“It’s important to build robots that meet people’s social expectations because we think that will make it easier for people to understand how to approach them and how to interact with them,” said Andrea Thomaz. 

For the study, Thomaz and student Michael Gielniak asked how easily people could recognize what a robot called Simon was doing by watching its movements.

“Robot motion is typically characterized by jerky movements, with a lot of stops and starts, unlike human movement which is more fluid and dynamic,” said Gielniak.

“We want humans to interact with robots just as they might interact with other humans, so that it’s intuitive.”

They asked humans to perform the movements they saw Simon making.

“We found that this optimization we do to create more life-like motion allows people to identify the motion more easily and mimic it more exactly,” said Thomaz.

In future work, the pair plan on looking at how to get Simon to perform the same movements in various ways.

“So, instead of having the robot move the exact same way every single time you want the robot to perform a similar action like waving, you always want to see a different wave so that people forget that this is a robot they’re interacting with,” said Gielniak.

The research was presented at the Human-Robot Interaction conference in Lausanne, Switzerland.

ANI