What? Scientists Charge Nokia Phone With Lightning?

As odd as this may sound, but I think its pretty. Imagine you charging your Nokia phone with lightening, but how long can you wait till lightening comes so that you'd charge your phone? I now it sounds like a fairy tale but its real. Read the full story below. Scientists from the University of Southampton have got together with Nokia and carried out a proof-of-concept experiment. It is hoped that by harnessing this natural power source, areas with a short electricity supply could use this as an alternative energy source.

The team used a transformer to recreate a lightning bolt in the laboratory by passing 200,000 volts across an 11-inch air gap.

“We were amazed to see that the Nokia circuitry somehow stabilized the noisy signal, allowing the battery to be charged,” said Neil Palmer, from the University of Southampton’s high voltage laboratory. “This discovery proves devices can be charged with a current that passes through the air, and is a huge step towards understanding a natural power like lightning and harnessing its energy." 

Warning! Don't try it at home.Credits~TechBeat

Robot vs Human: Superhuman Robots With Artificial Muscles

Talk about super humans and super robots. Hollywood is good at these topics, always wetting our appetite with imaginary robots and super human movies. Most of those movies showing stuff like super robots kicking humans ass and ripping their limbs off.

The big question is, are robots really stronger than humans? read on.

As it stands now, robots have a very distinct way of moving (think of the robot dance). Humans move in with a smooth fluid motion. The reason humans can maintain such control over our movements comes down to our muscles which produce force and motion. The longer a muscle stretches, the more weight it can support and the more control of movement it allows.

Artificial muscles have been developed, used and studied for many years now. The relationship between artificial muscles and prosthetic limbs is forever marching forward. However, scientists have only ever been able to develop an artificial muscle that stretches up to three times its original length. This poses serious problems when it comes to strength and control. The average robot can only lift objects half of its weight.

Another win for humans is our ability to react within a fraction of a second. Robots often take longer to react and then have to wait for a mechanism to kick in before they move. All in all, humans wouldn’t have anything to worry about in a hand to robot hand combat situation.

Next Generation Robots

Dr. Koh and his team at NUS have developed an artificial muscle that not only has several attributes that are closer to the human muscle than any other artificial substitute from the past:
Pliable – The polymer used as the muscle, which is based on a rubber material, is workable and moves very much like a human muscle.
Reaction – Electrical pulses cause the muscle to move, just as electrical pulses sent to our brains tell us to move our muscles. This means that the reaction time for the artificial muscle is nearly the same as a humans.
Energy – The team found that the polymer produces energy as a bi-product. It’s thought that this could mean the production of essentially environmentally friendly robots that can power themselves after a small amount of charging.

Superhuman Strength

So far, the team at NUS have developed a muscle that can stretch to 5 times its original length and is able to carry a weight up to 80 times heavier than itself. Although Koh is understandably proud of his team for their achievement, they estimated that the polymer actually has the potential to stretch up to 10 times its original length. This would enable it to lift loads up to 500 times its own weight.

The future robots that use this form of artificial muscle will be more human like than any of the transformer style robots we’ve seen in the past. And they will undoubtedly win any arm wrestling match on Earth. Credits~Tech Beat

Google is Producing it’s own Self-Driven Car

In some years back, Google one of the worlds leading search engine was just a site where you can search words, things, answers and etc. Now Google is far expanding, growing bigger than our wildest imaginations. It has been reported that Google is trying to design and produce a car that can drive itself. They have apparently been discussing building a vehicle to its own specifications with contract manufacturers. This news comes as Mountain View have still been unable to find a company that will incorporate its self-drive technology in a car.

 As well as producing self-driven cars, Google have also had the bright idea of providing a robo-taxi service, where autonomous cars would drive around, collecting passengers on request. So far it is not clear whether this would be run through Google or another company. The service would still require a human to be behind the wheel just in case the car needed starting in an emergency, but Google are still keen to look for ways to bring the auto-taxi service into the mainstream. Google have apparently been in talks with the auto parts maker Continental AG about the possibilities of producing a car but it has still not ruled out the option of finding a major car producer to partner with, in bringing the self-drive technology to the market. For now Google is keeping its options open. It could be that Google isn't the one who actually brings autonomous vehicles to the market, but at least by continuing discussions, it keeps the possibility at the forefront of car manufacturers minds. The Frankfurt Motor Show is due early in September, so keep an eye out just in case Google do make any announcements.

Source: TechRadar.com

Latest Brain Scanning Technique Can Read Minds

Wow! Is anyone thinking what I'm thinking?
So, with this latest tech, we can actually read minds of people and know what their thoughts are. I bet with this technique, we'll not be needing much evidence in a law court, as this can easily detect a criminal mind. It probably can tell who is cheating on who, in any relationship. Read on to learn more.
Scientists have discovered a new brain scanning technique which can bring the old mind-reading party trick closer to reality. With the help of a high resolution MRI and a mathematical model, Dutch researchers were able to convert brain activity into an actual image. The Radboud University’s team tested the technology on several subjects which had been shown various letters. The scanning technique helped researchers reconstruct an image of the brain in the process of recognizing the letters.

Scientists used a functional MRI(magnetic resonance imaging machine) to identify the parts of the brain that are active when someone is looking at a letter. The fMRI practically detects brain activity by identifying what parts of the brain have more blood flowing to them, a sign that that particular area is responding to stimuli. Basically the fMRI scanned the occipital lobe of subjects who were shown the letters B, R, A, I, N and S. The scan created a speckled image that was then interpreted and translated into an image of the letters, with the help of a specifically designed computational model. More specifically, the model was provided with previous knowledge of what the letters looked like and was therefore able to translate what seemed like a random fuzzy image as created by the MRI scan into a clear letter pattern.

This brain scanning technique may seem like just another trick, but Radboud scientists insist that the research is actually aimed at finding ways to model what our brains are experiencing, not just at reading our mind. The models obtained could be applied to subjective experiences such as dreams or even to working memories, researchers said. The next step in the experiment is of course using a more powerful magnetic resonance imaging machine. The fMRI used in the research was able to scan at a resolution of 1,200 voxels but the team hopes to increase that to 15,000 voxels. And instead of letters, scientists will attempt to reconstruct images of faces shown to the subjects. Even though it has a long way to go until developing into full mind reading capabilities, this brain scanning technology is nonetheless exciting. And scary at the same time.


Source: TechBeat.com

Facebook to Give Internet to 5 Billion People

Facebook  vision keeps growing wider.
Mark Zuckerberg has a dream. And if we've learned anything from the ‘Social Network’ is that what the Facebook founder wants, the Facebook founder gets. This time, Zuckerberg wants to give Internet to 5 billion people. Just imagine how many new Facebook users that means. Joking aside, and trying to ignore the profit such an enterprise could bring, Facebook has actually teamed up with several tech giants to set up Internet.org, an organization whose main target is to bring the WWW to those parts of the world that still don’t have access to it. Other founding members include Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung, among others.

 The organization names three major lines of action to reach their goals of offering widespread Internet access as a means to boost social, economic and political development and contribute to humankind progress, according to a UN Human Rights Council quote posted on the Internet.org website. The first step is to make Internet access more affordable, possibly by using high quality, yet lower cost smartphones. The second step is to use data in a more efficient manner; more specifically, to reduce the amount of data most Internet applications require, and one way to achieve this is by improving the infrastructure. And the third step would be to bring in businesses that would support the project by offering them incentives. One can’t ignore that this is quite an ambitious plan, even if it is far from being an altruistic one. All the companies involved, Facebook included, would benefit from bringing Internet to 5 billion people. According to the group, only a little over one third of the world’s population, 2.7 billion people have Internet access at the moment. In an interview with CNN, Zuckerberg insisted that connectivity is a human right and would offer people access to things such as healthcare and information about their country’s state of affairs, ultimately helping them decide what sort of government they want. Which is truly admirable, but it will take a lot of time until the plan can become reality, according to analysts. One of the major issues that the Internet.org initiative will have to overcome is the lack of a constant electricity supply in most developing countries that the program is targeting. Other problems include the lack of proper infrastructure, poverty and illiteracy. In other words, all those billions of new Facebook users won’t be able to share much and tag themselves in photos if they can’t read or only have enough electricity to check their feed only a couple of times per week. So overall, the Internet.org plan to bring Internet to 5 billion people is a good idea, but unlikely to happen any time soon.

Source: TechBeat.com

Pay Per Gaze

When it comes to online advertisement , I'm pretty sure that you are familiar with phrases like: Pay per click, pay per referral, e-mail pays you, pay to read e-mail, pay to send e-mail, pay per survey and etc. I bet you've not heard of pay per gaze, yes. Because its the newest way of paying, and earning money online through advertisement. Google has graciously made this available.


Google has filed and been granted a new set of patents which includes a proposal to use eye-tracking technology to create “pay-per-gaze” advertising.  The patent information shows a Google Glass-like device that registers when individuals look at an advert before charging the relevant company.  The technology, seen by The Verge via Phys.org,  could also detect individuals’ “inferred emotional state information” by measuring pupil dilation.

The original patent was actually filed back in 2011, but was only granted to the company last week.  “Under a pay per gaze advertising scheme advertisers are charged based upon whether a user actually viewed their advertisement…Pay per gaze advertising need not be limited to on-line advertisements, but rather can be extended to conventional advertisements and media including billboards, magazines, newspapers, and other forms of conventional print media.” reads the patent. Online advertising already works in a very similar fashion, companies are charged using a pay-per-click or cost-per click system.

Digital technology has radically increased the range of analytical services available to brands, as this aims to make advertisements as efficient and cost-effective as possible.  This particular patent outlines a system of “billing thresholds or scaling billing fees dependent upon whether the user looked directly at a given advertisement item, viewed the given advertisement item for one or more specified durations, and/or the inferred emotional state of the user while viewing a particular advertisement…Furthermore, the inferred emotional state information can be provided to an advertiser (maybe for a premium) so that the advertiser can gauge the success of their advertising campaign.”

The patent filed by Google also pre-empts any potential objections to the technology based on privacy issue concerns: “To protect individual privacy, personal identifying data may be removed from the data and provided to the advertisers as anonymous analytics…In one embodiment, users may be given opt-in or opt-out privileges to control the type of data being gathered, when the data is being gathered, or how the gathered data may be used or with whom it may be shared.”   As well as the “pay-per-gaze” system, the patent filing also detailed “latent pre-searches”: visual searching using Google Glass-style technology that activates when an object enters “the user’s peripheral view and without affirmative requests on a per search basis by the user”. This would be a passive system that is continually scanning the user’s environment, ready to pre-empt any Google searches and quickly serve up the info.

Google are not the only company exploring this avenue,. recently in May this year, a patent application from Microsoft detailed a system for the Xbox console that rewarded individuals for watching advertisements to “encourage a user to watch one or more particular items of video content”.

Source: TechBeat.com