Mechanical engraving machine / for metal / for plastics / compact M40ABC

Mechanical engraving machine / for metal / for plastics / compact
M40ABC

Description
Computerised engraving as simple as it gets. 
As simple as ABC.

The M40ABC is Gravograph’s easiest machine to operate yet. Operated via a TouchPad interface using a simplified, purpose designed engraving software. No PC required, no knowledge required. When it comes to engraving, the M40ABC is really a Solution in a Box.

Very compact, the M40ABC can be set up in any professional environment; Computerised engraving as simple as it gets. 
As simple as ABC.

Multi purpose, the M40ABC engraves on plastic and metallic material up to sizes 305x210mm.

This reliable and robust equipment includes everything that is necessary to start engraving: machine, design software, cutters.

The user interface is included in the solution, no computer is required. The M40ABC software is supported by a tactile screen allowing the design of plates with lines of text, logos and drawings. The files are saved on a SD card...


Pulsed fiber laser marking machine / bench-top / automatic / compact

Pulsed fiber laser marking machine / bench-top / automatic / compact:


Description 
The 10W Fiber100 is ideal for users  who want a personalized  machine, while the 20W Fiber200 is for those who  prefer a faster machine. Both machines are equipped with a galvanometric  system that guarantees high resolution marking. Their durable design is low  maintenance and can run up to 100,000 hours of high performance. They are suitable for long lasting marking on most metals and many plastic parts as well as coated  materials, ceramics and precious metals. 

The Fiber range comes in a simple and practical design with a counterbalanced door for easier transportation. It can  handle large objects up to 280 mm tall and 500 mm wide. It has an automatic and adjustable height and digital positional display, as well an alignment laser for precise marking and a secondary pointer for accurate focus.


CO2 laser cutting machine / engraving / marking / compact LS100Ex

CO2 laser cutting machine / engraving / marking / compact
LS100Ex
Description
The LS100Ex is a CO2 laser engraving  machine that is recommended for  engraving, cutting plastics, wood, acrylic, metals, glass and whatnots while it can run with speed ranges up to 2.54 m/sec.  This features a hassle-free set up which can be in the office, workshop and in the factory. It has an LCD control panel that lessens the costs of time because of its short-cuts applications. It also includes a Gravostyle software which enables you to put text, logos and images easily plus its red-pointer beam and auto-focus system. 

This Laser engraving has advanced functions namely bar code and matrix functions, rubber stamp wizards, dial and graduation  creation.



CO2 laser cutting machine / engraving / marking / automatic LS900XP

CO2 laser cutting machine / engraving / marking / automatic LS900XP 

Gravograph introduces LS900XP in the family of its engraving machines. Offers high productivity a nd durability  with engraving speeds of up to 4meters/sec (79in./sec) driven by servo motors and materials made of heavy duty chassis and gantry for intensive industrial lasering. Efficient job processing assured with red aiming beam laser, automatic  focal adjust, cycle time indicator and an end of job alarm that enhance optimization. With bigger dimension of 610x610x250mm platform for bulky objects and high power range of sources up to 80W for durable mark and high quality. It makes use of Gravostyle Graphic  software that makes laser engraving easier........



Hyperloop in the UAE

Hyperloop in the UAE



Hyperloop One is reinventing transportation to eliminate barriers of time and distance by using Hyperloop transport to move cargo and passengers immediately.

Hyperloop is a tradename and a registered trademark of the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation for the high speed transportation of passengers and goods in partially evacuated tubes..


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hyperloop elon musk,
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hyperloop competition,
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hyperloop las vegas,


5 best free apps for sexting 2016

5 best free apps for sexting 2016




Snapchat may  be most  folks' ephemeral messaging app of choice, but it's by no means the only one, or even the best. 

We've taken a look at five Snapchat alternatives for both iPhone and Android that offer a different way to send disappearing messages and vanishing photos.  

Get your flirt on — safely — with these five disappearing-message services:

1. Kaboom
Kaboom promises to give you control over what you share online, where you share it, and how long it lives. 

As a service that doesn't require the recipient to also have the app, creating a Kaboom message generates an HTTPS-protected web address that will work through SMS, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc. 

You can select how long you'd like the message to stay online, e.g., 30 seconds, 10 minutes or 1 day, or how many times the message can be viewed before it self destructs. 

From privacy experts AnchorFree, the creators of Hotspot Shield, Kaboom is a clean, simple app that you can trust.

2. Confide

The Confide app helps you to "communicate digitally with the same level of privacy and security as the spoken word."

This confidential messenger service works with iMessage, texts, photos, documents and voice messages, boasting end-to-end encryption and disappearing messages. 

Confide's main selling point is screenshot protection with special technology meaning that screenshots are captured as grey blur on most platforms.

In addition, only a section of the message is revealed at a time, the sender's name is never visible from the message view and if a screenshot is attempted, the recipient is ejected from the message and the sender alerted.

3. Sobrr
4. Wickr
5. Dust

and much more..

Apple slashes prices of USB-C adapters for MacBook Pro 2016

Apple slashes prices of USB-C adapters for MacBook Pro 2016



Those MacBook Pro dongles  are now a lot cheaper.

Apple on Friday  cut the pricing for connectors for its MacBook Pro. The offer will run through the end of the year.

Apple also lowered  the price of the new LG displays announced last week by 25 percent. The LG UltraFine 5K display, will cost $974 when it becomes available in December, while the LG UltraFine 4K display will cost $524 through the end of the year.

The new MacBook Pros, unveiled last week, removed  the traditional USB and other ports in favor of USB-C. The move angered many power users and meant that people had to buy dongles to use their old equipment -- or even to plug their iPhone 7s into the new MacBooks.

The MacBook Pro update, which  also adds a Touch Bar instead of a touchscreen, was the first major design change made by Apple in over four years. Many creative professionals have long favored Macs for work, but Apple's changes to make its devices thinner and lighter  by ditching traditional connectors could cause it to  lose some  customers......

This Hifiman headphone may be the world's best 2016

This Hifiman headphone may be the world's best 2016


It was in 2009 when I reviewed my first Hifiman  headphone, the HE-5, and that headphone in some ways outshined the very best and much  more expensive Denon, Grado, Sennheiser and Ultrasone headphones of the time.

The Hifiman HE-5 also sounded different, probably  because its planar magnetic drivers were lower in distortion and much larger than the conventional drivers in the competitors' headphones, and that's still true today. Fun fact: the HE1000 V2's drivers aren't round or rectangular as they are in other headphones, the HE1000 V2's drivers are ear shaped.

The Hifiman HE1000 V2 headphones.
Steve Guttenberg/CNET
The HE1000 V2 is a reboot of the HE1000 from just a few years ago. They look similar, but there are significant differences between the two. First, the headband adjustments have been redesigned to allow the HE1000 V2 to accommodate a wider variety of head shapes and sizes, so the 'V2 feels more comfortable to me. It's also a little lighter, now weighing in at 14.8 ounces (420 grams). The original was 16.9 ounces (480 grams). The new headphone's ear cups are thinner, while the ear pads have become thicker. The headphone's cables are user-replaceable, and impedance is rated at 35 ohms.

The 'V2's look and feel are downright luxurious, but the price remains unchanged from the original HE1000, it's $2,999 in the US, £2,599 in the UK and AU$4,399 in Australia. The  headphone is available on Amazon.


Facebook tests Snapchat-style camera special effects with ephemeral sharing 2016

Facebook tests Snapchat-style camera special effects with ephemeral sharing 2016:



Facebook is overhauling its  in-app camera to  embrace the next era of augmented reality visual communication pioneered by Snapchat.  The new features include Snapchat-style animated selfie masks, overlaid graphics,  and geofilters; Prisma-esque fine art-themed style transfer filters; and  some innovative new “reactive” filters that respond to your body’s movements.

What Facebook is calling “the new camera” will be instantly accessible from the News Feed with a quick right swipe. And instead  of just News Feed broadcasting, you’ll be able to privately share the photos and videos you make in one-on-one threads through the new ephemeral Facebook Direct inbox.

Facebook will begin by testing these  features in Ireland today. But company tells me “We may test more variations of these before rolling this out globally”, so these will come to everyone  eventually....

Samsung’s new startups include a wearable 360 cam and a humming app 2016

Samsung’s new startups include a wearable 360 cam and a humming app 2016:



Samsung continues its in-house startup incubator program, called “C-Lab,” which encourages employees to build their own business and spin them out as startups on occasion. Previous C-Lab standouts include the Welt, a smart belt with health tracking features, and a new  crop of six C-Lab projects  includes similarly out-there concepts.

This batch includes Hum On!, a music app for the musically challenged, letting you simply hum into your phone to compose music. The app detects your humming, and converts it into actual musical notation, which can then be used to write music for basically any real instrument out there. It’s useful for actual musical people, too, of course, as an easy musician’s notebook for tracking ideas that strike you no matter where you are. Even if the real-world use cases of this seem quite limited, the tech behind it is impressive if effective...



Braven 705 Bluetooth Speaker 2016

Braven 705 Bluetooth Speaker 2016

$49.99 $99.99 50% off  Free Shipping

Your music will be  as durable as you  when you have a Braven 705 Bluetooth Speaker. This lightweight, portable speaker comes with custom high-fidelity audio drivers to fill any room or outdoor space with great sound quality. It's completely wireless, so all you have to do is turn on, sync with your phone or sound system, and play. You can even pair any two Braven 7-series speakers together for a more complete  surround sound with Braven's highly acclaimed TrueWireless Technology. 

*Named a Top 10 Bluetooth  Speaker Under $100 by Android Headlines* 

Shock-absorbent thermoplastic  exterior & IPX5 water resistance make this one tough speaker
Built-in mic & speakerphone let you accept & end calls right from the speaker's controls
Internal power bank allows you to charge mobile devices w/ the speaker on the go
Works as a wireless Bluetooth bridge w/ your home audio system
TrueWireless Technology allows you  to pair two Braven 7-series speakers together for a fuller audio experience
Two drivers deliver powerful sound in a  portable package...........






Water-Resistant Dual-USB Solar Charger 2016

Water-Resistant Dual-USB Solar Charger 2016

$19.99 $29.00 31% off free shipping



When you're out  on an adventure, there's no wall outlet guarantee. So whether you're out for the  day or out in the woods, this charger could save the day. It charges via solar energy or USB and packs 5000mAh of reserve battery power. You can charge any USB-compatible device including your phone, camera, and tablet, and you can charge in the dark thanks to its LED light. Best of all, this device is water and dust resistant so you won't have to worry about it not keeping up.
Perfect for long flights, road trips, hiking, camping, beach, or anywhere you need to charge your  devices
Charges 2 devices at  once
Made w/ a compact, portable & stylish design
Easily fits into your bag
Features an anti-skid, durable design
Designed to be water & dust resistant
Features a Grade A cell, built-in 5000mAh Lithium Polymer battery
Allows for simultaneous charging of your devices at high speed w/ 2.1A output
Includes an LED flashlight that works perfectly in darkness
Recharges via solar power or  USB cable............




Robotic tutors for primary school children 2016

Robotic tutors for primary school children 2016:


The use of robotic tutors in primary school classrooms is one step closer according to research recently published in the open access journal Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience.
Dr Imbernòn Cuadrado and his co-workers at the Department of Artificial Intelligence in Madrid have developed an integrated computational architecture (ARTIE) for use with software applications in schools.
"The main goal of our work was to design a system that can detect the emotional state of primary school children interacting with educational software and make pedagogic interventions with a robot tutor that can ultimately improve the learning experience," says Luis Imbernòn Cuadrado.
Online educational resources are becoming increasingly common in the classroom, although they have not taken into sufficient account that the learning ability of primary school children is particularly sensitive to their emotional state. This is perhaps where robot tutors can step in to assist teachers.
Rather than focusing on specific emotions, the researchers first identified three cognitive states (concentrating, distracted and inactive) known to influence the course of learning. Keyboard strokes and mouse actions of children using educational software were used to predict which of these cognitive states the child is experiencing and subsequently linked to an algorithm that chooses the correct form of pedagogic intervention. These could be words and gestures of encouragement or attempts to raise interest and motivation for a specific learning objective, all of which can be delivered by a robot tutor.


Smallest Transistor Ever 2016

Smallest Transistor Ever 2016



Engineers have been eyeing the finish line in the race to shrink the size of components in integrated circuits. Now, a team of researchers has succeeded in creating a transistor with a working 1-nanometer gate. For comparison, a strand of human hair is about 50,000 nanometers thick.
For more than a decade, engineers have been eyeing the finish line in the race to shrink the size of components in integrated circuits. They knew that the laws of physics had set a 5-nanometer threshold on the size of transistor gates among conventional semiconductors, about one-quarter the size of high-end 20-nanometer-gate transistors now on the market.
Some laws are made to be broken, or at least challenged.
A research team led by faculty scientist Ali Javey at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has done just that by creating a transistor with a working 1-nanometer gate. For comparison, a strand of human hair is about 50,000 nanometers thick.
"We made the smallest transistor reported to date," said Javey, lead principal investigator of the Electronic Materials program in Berkeley Lab's Materials Science Division. "The gate length is considered a defining dimension of the transistor. We demonstrated a 1-nanometer-gate transistor, showing that with the choice of proper materials, there is a lot more room to shrink our electronics."
The key was to use carbon nanotubes and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), an engine lubricant commonly sold in auto parts shops. MoS2 is part of a family of materials with immense potential for applications in LEDs, lasers, nanoscale transistors, solar cells, and more.

Soft robots that mimic human muscles 2016

Soft robots that mimic human muscles 2016



Robots are usually expected to be  rigid, fast and efficient. But researchers at EPFL's Reconfigurable Robotics Lab (RRL) have turned that notion on its head with their soft robots.

Soft robots, powered  by muscle-like  actuators, are designed to be used on the human body in order to help people move. They are made of elastomers, including silicon and rubber, and so they are inherently safe. They are controlled by changing the air pressure in specially designed 'soft balloons', which also serve as the robot's body. A predictive model that can be used to carefully control the mechanical behavior of the robots' various modules has just been published in Scientific Reports.

Potential applications  for these robots include patient rehabilitation, handling fragile objects, biomimetic systems and home care. "Our robot designs focus largely on safety," said Jamie Paik, the director of the RRL. "There's very little risk of getting hurt if you're wearing an exoskeleton made up of soft materials, for example" she added.

A model for controlling the actuators

In their article, the researchers showed that their model could accurately predict how a series of modules -- composed of compartments and sandwiched chambers -- moves. The cucumber-shaped actuators can stretch up to around five or six times their normal length and bend in two directions, depending on the model.

"We conducted numerous  simulations and developed a model for predicting how the actuators deform as a function of their shape, thickness and the materials they're made of," said Gunjan Agarwal, the article's lead author.

One of the variants consists of  covering the actuator in a thick paper shell made by origami. This test showed that different materials could be used. "Elastomer structures are highly resilient but difficult to control. We need to be able to predict how, and in which direction, they deform. And because these soft robots are easy to produce but difficult to model, our step-by-step design tools are now available online for roboticists and students.

Static electricity can control nanoballoons

Static electricity can control nanoballoons:



Date:
October 13, 2016
Source:
Umeå University
Summary:
Molecular sized machines could in the future be used to control important mechanisms in the body. In a recent study, researchers show how a nanoballoon comprising a single carbon molecule ten thousand times thinner than a human hair can be controlled electrostatically to switch between an inflated and a collapsed state.

Schematic drawing  f two  carbon nanotubes, one in inflated state (cylindrical tube to the right) and one in collapsed  state (flattened tube to the left). The transition between the two states can be controlled by applying a small voltage which charges the tube electrostatically  and thereby changes the state from a collapsed state to an inflated. The applied voltage is visualized by two tip contacts touching each tube. In the image the tubes are connected to two pistons to envision that the phase change of  the tubes could set an imaginary nanomachine in motion.



Yokogawa AQ1300 series gains ITU-T Y.1564 support

Yokogawa AQ1300 series gains ITU-T Y.1564 support:



Yokogawa has announced an upgrade to its lightweight AQ1300 series 1G/10G Ethernet multi-field tester.
This handheld device has been designed to provide comprehensive test functionality in a small and light format and, with the addition of ITU-T Y.1564 functionality, is now able to compliment the existing RFC2544 compatible network performance tests.
ITU-T Y.1564 mandates that standard tests like throughput, frame loss, latency and packet jitter are executed simultaneously, with multiple services running at the same time. This allows the measurement of the influence between services, which can affect the network’s ability to maintain Service Level Agreement (SLA) conformance, as well as reducing the time taken to test an Ethernet service.
Two different kinds of test are available to the AQ1300 series testers with ITU-T Y.1564 functionality: a configuration test mode for examining the speed and burst size per contracted service and performance test mode for measuring guaranteed bandwidth of multiple services.
In configuration test mode the AQ1300 performs either a ‘Ramp Test’, whereby the device outputs a gradually increasing volume of signals (ramp) and measures the guaranteed rate and the securing rate or a ‘Burst size’ test in which the device outputs burst of frame signals at regular intervals and measure the burst bandwidth guaranteed size and the burst bandwidth securing size.The AQ1300 provides PASS/FAIL judgement according to specified thresholds of the Information Rate (IR), Frame loss (FL), Frame transfer delay (FTD) and Frame delay variation (FDV)
In performance test mode, the AQ1300 sends frames within the committed information rate (CIR) of selected services at the same time to confirm whether all traffic is sent without being discarded.The test can evaluate the traffic quality for the same period for up to eight services.
Commenting Terry Marrinan, VP of sales and marketing at Yokogawa Europe BV, said; “Adding support for ITU-T Y.1564 is a logical step that ensures the AQ1300 continues to be the best choice for Ethernet installation and field maintenance testing.”

First quantum photonic circuit with an electrically driven light source

First quantum photonic circuit with an electrically driven light source:



Source:
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Summary:
Whether for use in safe data encryption, ultrafast calculation of huge data volumes or so-called quantum simulation of highly complex systems: Optical quantum computers are a source of hope for tomorrow's computer technology. For the first time, scientists now have succeeded in placing a complete quantum optical structure on a chip. This fulfills one condition for the use of photonic circuits in optical quantum computers.
Whether for use in safe data encryption, ultrafast calculation of huge data volumes or so-called quantum simulation of highly complex systems: Optical quantum computers are a source of hope for tomorrow's computer technology. For the first time, scientists now have succeeded in placing a complete quantum optical structure on a chip, as outlined in the Nature Photonics journal. This fulfills one condition for the use of photonic circuits in optical quantum computers.
"Experiments investigating the applicability of optical quantum technology so far have often claimed whole laboratory spaces," explains Professor Ralph Krupke of the KIT. "However, if this technology is to be employed meaningfully, it must be accommodated on a minimum of space." Participants in the study were scientists from Germany, Poland, and Russia under the leadership of Professors Wolfram Pernice of the Westphalian Wilhelm University of Münster (WWU) and Ralph Krupke, Manfred Kappes, and Carsten Rockstuhl of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
The light source for the quantum photonic circuit used by the scientists for the first time were special nanotubes made of carbon. They have a diameter 100,000 times smaller than a human hair, and they emit single light particles when excited by laser light. Light particles (photons) are also referred to as light quanta. Hence the term "quantum photonics."
That carbon tubes emit single photons makes them attractive as ultracompact light sources for optical quantum computers. "However, it is not easily possible to accommodate the laser technology on a scalable chip," admits physicist Wolfram Pernice. The scalability of a system, i.e. the possibility to miniaturize components so as to be able to increase their number, is a precondition for this technology to be used in powerful computers up to an optical quantum computer.
As all elements on the chip now developed are triggered electrically, no additional laser systems are required any more, which is a marked simplification over the optical excitation normally used. "The development of a scalable chip on which a single-photon source, detector, and waveguide are combined, is an important step for research," emphasizes Ralph Krupke, who conducts research at the KIT Institute for Nanotechnology and the Institute of Materials Science of the Darmstadt Technical University. "As we were able to show that single photons can be emitted also by electric excitation of the carbon nanotubes, we have overcome a limiting factor so far preventing potential applicability."
About the methodology: The scientists studied whether the flow of electricity through carbon nanotubes caused single light quanta to be emitted. For this purpose, they used carbon nanotubes as single-photon sources, superconducting nanowires as detectors, and nanophotonic waveguides. One single-photon source and two detectors each were connected with one waveguide. The structure was cooled with liquid helium to allow single light quanta to be counted. The chips were produced in an electron beam scribing device.
The scientists' work is fundamental research. It is not yet clear whether and when it will lead to practical applications. Wolfram Pernice and the first author, Svetlana Khasminskaya, were supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, Ralph Krupke was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation..

Secure passwords can be sent through your body, instead of air 2016

Secure passwords can be sent through your body, instead of air 2016


Source:
University of Washington
Summary:
Engineers have devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body using smartphone fingerprint sensors and laptop touchpads -- rather than over the air where they're vulnerable to hacking.
Sending a password or secret code over airborne radio waves like WiFi or Bluetooth means anyone can eavesdrop, making those transmissions vulnerable to hackers who can attempt to break the encrypted code.
Now, University of Washington computer scientists and electrical engineers have devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body -- using benign, low-frequency transmissions generated by fingerprint sensors and touchpads on consumer devices.
"Fingerprint sensors have so far been used as an input device. What is cool is that we've shown for the first time that fingerprint sensors can be re-purposed to send out information that is confined to the body," said senior author Shyam Gollakota, UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering.
These "on-body" transmissions offer a more secure way to transmit authenticating information between devices that touch parts of your body -- such as a smart door lock or wearable medical device -- and a phone or device that confirms your identity by asking you to type in a password.
This new technique, which leverages the signals already generated by fingerprint sensors on smartphones and laptop touchpads to transmit data in new ways, is described in a paper presented in September at the 2016 Association for Computing Machinery's International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2016) in Germany.


Brain waves can be used to detect potentially harmful personal information

Brain waves can be used to detect potentially harmful personal information:


Source:
Texas Tech University
Summary:
A researcher is working to advance research to develop secure user authentication methods, by looking at using brain waves as individual identifiers. However, those brain waves can tell more about a person than just his or her identity, warns this expert.
Cyber security and authentication have been under attack in recent months as, seemingly every other day, a new report of hackers gaining access to private or sensitive information comes to light. Just recently, more than 500 million passwords were stolen when Yahoo revealed its security was compromised.
Securing systems has gone beyond simply coming up with a clever password that could prevent nefarious computer experts from hacking into your Facebook account. The more sophisticated the system, or the more critical, private information that system holds, the more advanced the identification system protecting it becomes.
Fingerprint scans and iris identification are just two types of authentication methods, once thought of as science fiction, that are in wide use by the most secure systems. But fingerprints can be stolen and iris scans can be replicated. Nothing has proven foolproof from being subject to computer hackers.
"The principal argument for behavioral, biometric authentication is that standard modes of authentication, like a password, authenticates you once before you access the service," said Abdul Serwadda a cybersecurity expert and assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Texas Tech University.
"Now, once you've accessed the service, there is no other way for the system to still know it is you. The system is blind as to who is using the service. So the area of behavioral authentication looks at other user-identifying patterns that can keep the system aware of the person who is using it. Through such patterns, the system can keep track of some confidence metric about who might be using it and immediately prompt for reentry of the password whenever the confidence metric falls below a certain threshold."
One of those patterns that is growing in popularity within the research community is the use of brain waves obtained from an electroencephalogram, or EEG. Several research groups around the country have recently showcased systems which use EEG to authenticate users with very high accuracy.
However, those brain waves can tell more about a person than just his or her identity. It could reveal medical, behavioral or emotional aspects of a person that, if brought to light, could be embarrassing or damaging to that person. And with EEG devices becoming much more affordable, accurate and portable and applications being designed that allows people to more readily read an EEG scan, the likelihood of that happening is dangerously high.
"The EEG has become a commodity application. For $100 you can buy an EEG device that fits on your head just like a pair of headphones," Serwadda said. "Now there are apps on the market, brain-sensing apps where you can buy the gadget, download the app on your phone and begin to interact with the app using your brain signals. That led us to think; now we have these brain signals that were traditionally accessed only by doctors being handled by regular people. Now anyone who can write an app can get access to users' brain signals and try to manipulate them to discover what is going on."
That's where Serwadda and graduate student Richard Matovu focused their attention: attempting to see if certain traits could be gleaned from a person's brain waves. They presented their findings recently to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Biometrics.
Brain waves and cybersecurity
Serwadda said the technology is still evolving in terms of being able to use a person's brain waves for authentication purposes. But it is a heavily researched field that has drawn the attention of several federal organizations. The National Science Foundation (NSF), funds a three-year project on which Serwadda and others from Syracuse University and the University of Alabama-Birmingham are exploring how several behavioral modalities, including EEG brain patterns, could be leveraged to augment traditional user authentication mechanisms.
"There are no installations yet, but a lot of research is going on to see if EEG patterns could be incorporated into standard behavioral authentication procedures," Serwadda said
Assuming a system uses EEG as the modality for user authentication, typically for such a system, all variables have been optimized to maximize authentication accuracy. A selection of such variables would include:
• The features used to build user templates.
• The signal frequency ranges from which features are extracted.
• The regions of the brain on which the electrodes are placed, among other variables.
Under this assumption of a finely tuned authentication system, Serwadda and his colleagues tackled the following questions: • If a malicious entity were to somehow access templates from this authentication-optimized system, would he or she be able to exploit these templates to infer non-authentication-centric information about the users with high accuracy? • In the event that such inferences are possible, which attributes of template design could reduce or increase the threat?
Turns out, they indeed found EEG authentication systems to give away non-authentication-centric information. Using an authentication system from UC-Berkeley and a variant of another from a team at Binghamton University and the University of Buffalo, Serwadda and Matovu tested their hypothesis, using alcoholism as the sensitive private information which an adversary might want to infer from EEG authentication templates.
In a study involving 25 formally diagnosed alcoholics and 25 non-alcoholic subjects, the lowest error rate obtained when identifying alcoholics was 25 percent, meaning a classification accuracy of approximately 75 percent.
When they tweaked the system and changed several variables, they found that the ability to detect alcoholic behavior could be tremendously reduced at the cost of slightly reducing the performance of the EEG authentication system.
Motivation for discovery
Serwadda's motivation for proving brain waves could be used to reveal potentially harmful personal information wasn't to improve the methods for obtaining that information. It's to prevent it.
To illustrate, he gives an analogy using fingerprint identification at an airport. Fingerprint scans read ridges and valleys on the finger to determine a person's unique identity, and that's it.
In a hypothetical scenario where such systems could only function accurately if the user's finger was pricked and some blood drawn from it, this would be problematic because the blood drawn by the prick could be used to infer things other than the user's identity, such as whether a person suffers from certain diseases, such as diabetes.
Given the amount of extra information that EEG authentication systems are able glean about the user, current EEG systems could be likened to the hypothetical fingerprint reader that pricks the user's finger. Serwadda wants to drive research that develops EEG authentication systems that perform the intended purpose while revealing minimal information about traits other than the user's identity in authentication terms.
Currently, in the vast majority of studies on the EEG authentication problem, researchers primarily seek to outdo each other in terms of the system error rates. They work with the central objective of designing a system having error rates which are much lower than the state-of-the-art. Whenever a research group develops or publishes an EEG authentication system that attains the lowest error rates, such a system is immediately installed as the reference point.
A critical question that has not seen much attention up to this point is how certain design attributes of these systems, in other words the kinds of features used to formulate the user template, might relate to their potential to leak sensitive personal information. If, for example, a system with the lowest authentication error rates comes with the added baggage of leaking a significantly higher amount of private information, then such a system might, in practice, not be as useful as its low error rates suggest. Users would only accept, and get the full utility of the system, if the potential privacy breaches associated with the system are well understood and appropriate mitigations undertaken.


Bendable electronic paper displays whole color range

Bendable electronic paper displays whole color range 


Source:
Chalmers University of Technology
Summary:
Less than a micrometer thin, bendable and giving all the colors that a regular LED display does, it still needs ten times less energy than a Kindle tablet. Sharing such a description, researchers announce that they have developed the basis for a new electronic "paper".

Less than a micrometre thin, bendable and giving all the colours that a regular LED display does, it still needs ten times less energy than a Kindle tablet. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have developed the basis for a new electronic "paper." Their results were recently published in the journal Advanced Materials.
When Chalmers researcher Andreas Dahlin and his PhD student Kunli Xiong were working on placing conductive polymers on nanostructures, they discovered that the combination would be perfectly suited to creating electronic displays as thin as paper. A year later the results were ready for publication. A material that is less than a micrometre thin, flexible and giving all the colours that a standard LED display does.
"The 'paper' is similar to the Kindle tablet," says Andreas Dahlin. "It isn't lit up like a standard display, but rather reflects the external light which illuminates it. Therefore it works very well where there is bright light, such as out in the sun, in contrast to standard LED displays that work best in darkness. At the same time it needs only a tenth of the energy that a Kindle tablet uses, which itself uses much less energy than a tablet LED display."
It all depends on the polymers' ability to control how light is absorbed and reflected. The polymers that cover the whole surface lead the electric signals throughout the full display and create images in high resolution. The material is not yet ready for application, but the basis is there. The team has tested and built a few pixels. These use the same red, green and blue (RGB) colours that together can create all the colours in standard LED displays. The results so far have been positive, what remains now is to build pixels that cover an area as large as a display.
"We are working at a fundamental level but even so, the step to manufacturing a product out of it shouldn't be too far away. What we need now are engineers."
One obstacle today is that there is gold and silver in the display, which makes the manufacturing expensive.

Scientists create 'floating pixels' using soundwaves and force fields 2016

Scientists create 'floating pixels' using soundwaves and force fields 2016


A mid-air display of 'floating pixels' has been created by scientists.
Researchers at the Universities of Sussex and Bristol have used soundwaves to lift many tiny objects at once before spinning and flipping them using electric force fields.
The technology -- called JOLED -- effectively turns tiny, multi-coloured spheres into real-life pixels, which can form into floating displays or bring computer game characters to life as physical objects.
To be presented next week at a future technologies conference in Japan, the research opens up new possibilities for mobile and game designers, giving them a new way of representing digital information in a physical space.

Full-circle viewing: 360-degree electronic holographic display 2016

Full-circle viewing: 360-degree electronic holographic display 2016


Princess Leia, your Star Wars hologram moment may be redeemed.
In the original 'Star Wars' movie, the inviting but grainy special effects hologram might soon be a true full-color, full-size holographic image, due to advances by a South Korean research team refining 3-D holographic displays.
The team described a novel tabletop display system that allows multiple viewers to simultaneously view a hologram showing a full 3-D image as they walk around the tabletop, giving complete 360-degree access. The paper was published this week in the journal Optics Express, from The Optical Society (OSA).
To be commercially feasible in a range of applications -- from medicine to gaming to media -- the hologram challenge is daunting. It involves scaling an electronic device to a size small enough to fit on a table top, while making it robust enough to render immense amounts of data needed to create a full-surround 3-D viewing experience from every angle -- without the need for special glasses or other viewing aids.
"In the past, researchers interested in holographic display systems proposed or focused on methods for overcoming limitations in the combined spatial resolution and speed of commercially available, spatial light modulators. Representative techniques included space-division multiplexing (SDM), time-division multiplexing (TDM) and combination of those two techniques," explained Yongjun Lim, of the 5G Giga Communication Research Laboratory, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, South Korea. Lim and his team took a different approach. They devised and added a novel viewing window design.

Next-generation smartphone battery inspired by the gut 2016

Next-generation smartphone battery inspired by the gut 2016


A new prototype of a lithium-sulphur battery -- which could have five times the energy density of a typical lithium-ion battery -- overcomes one of the key hurdles preventing their commercial development by mimicking the structure of the cells which allow us to absorb nutrients.
Researchers have developed a prototype of a next-generation lithium-sulphur battery which takes its inspiration in part from the cells lining the human intestine. The batteries, if commercially developed, would have five times the energy density of the lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones and other electronics.
The new design, by researchers from the University of Cambridge, overcomes one of the key technical problems hindering the commercial development of lithium-sulphur batteries, by preventing the degradation of the battery caused by the loss of material within it. The results are reported in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.



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