Remote Technology That Detects Human Life With Cameras

Two Iraqi students Laith Al-Shimaysawee and Ali Al-Dabbagh are studing at Adelaide's Flinder University have developed a technology which can be utilized for detecting human life using remote cameras, which could be used for rescue operations.These two students are from Najaf, south of Baghdad and studying their masters on Iraqi Government scholarships.

These two have created a new algorithm for detecting people through thermal and colour cameras which is much faster than any other available technology that needs several samples to be processed before a person can be detected.

Al-Dabbagh said,"the technology that we developed used less samples than any other present technology that sometime use 500 or may use up to 1000 samples.The latest technology that we developed uses only eight samples.Due to fewer samples this system works much faster as well as made human detection much faster.

"You could put it on a robot, or rescue team workers can put it on a helmet to detect people in difficult scenarios, unstable structures or collapsed buildings and report back to the rescue team," Dr Nasser Asgari said.

This system has potential to detect people up to 50 metres with thermal cameras and up to 30 metres with colour cameras.Its detecting range can be increased by adding lenses to the camera.Their work will be published at an international robotics conference in Dubai next month.

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Clever Shoes That Grow 5 Sizes In 5 Year To Help Poor Children

The shoes invented by Kenton Lee that grow and can adjust its size as the foot grows.The shoes come with only two sizes, small and large.Each size can grow five sizes and last at least five years.

Kenton Lee was in Nairobi, Kenya in 2007.One day he saw a girl wearing shoes that were very small for her feet.Then he thinked about a shoe that could adjust and expand.He said, "there are over 300 million children who do not have shoes. And countless more with shoes that do not fit.Some children receive shoes donations but within a year their feet grow and they outgrow donated shoes."

The shoes are made with high quality materials such as compressed rubber, leather, buckles, a few buttons and snaps.No mechanical parts of gears to break and it is easy to use as well as easy to clean.The shoe can grow from the front which is adjustable toe, from the sides through snaps to expand shoe size and the back which has expandable heel strap.

The Shoe That Grows team said, "footwear for poor rural populations around the world is an extremely important resource to help ward off parasitic diseases transmitted from the soil and in environments with inadequate sanitation resources. In addition to infections from the soil, mere cuts and scrapes can also make the skin vulnerable to infections. "And being sick = struggling. Kids miss school, can't help their families, suffer with pain. Many of these diseases and parasites get into the body because people don't have shoes."

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Gamers Feel Virtual Objects with Omni Gloves

Engineering students are making a glove that allows a gamer to feel objects in a virtual space.The glove introduced by engineers at Rice University is called Omni glove which allows a user to interact with virtual objects in the world.The glove revealed during the George R. Brown School of Engineering Design Showcase and built up with a Houton gaming company (Virtuix), is purposed to leave force feedback to the fingertips as players touch, press or grip objects in the virtual world.

The glove utilized air to expand bladders under your fingers, so user can hook this up to a video game and when user touch out and take hold of a practical object, it feels as you are grabbing that object," mechanical engineering Thor Walker said.

The right handed only glove is designed to be unnoticeable as possible and is without wire to let the user a full range of movement.The glove is light sufficient to prevent the user from noting it, even after a while and it weighs about 350 grams."We had a constraints based on testing to decide the quantity of detectable weight that could be strapped to your legs, fingers, arms and limbs, the utmost weight that is obvious to users and we went up with 660 grams on the forearm and often less than that on the back of a palm or on the fingers," Koch said.

"We needed as much mass as far back on a palm as possible, and that's precisely what we are doing," he said."The user will just know it's there."

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Mammals Can Tell The Time Of Day Via Colour

Scientists from the University of Manchester have unveiled that the colour of light has a big impacts on brain clock.The colour of light has play a big role in how animals measure what time of day it is and the physiology and behaviour change according to light's colour.

The Study was published in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology which explains that the mammal's internal clock could be affected by the change in light at dawn and dusk.Light intensity changes with the sun sets and rises, the scientists discovered that light is bluer in the twilight than during the day time.Then the scientists got electrical activity of mice's brain clock, as the mice were shown several visual stimuli.They found that their neurons were more sensitive to changes in colour between blue to yellow than respond to changes in brightness.

The researchers utilized an artificial sky that changes colour and brightness.When the mice were placed in the artificial sky for several days, their body temperatures were high, when it turned dark blue.It the brightness was changed, the mice were more active before dusk, without changing the colour.This experiment shows that the mice's body clock do not have right sync with the day and night cycle.

Dr Timothy Brown from the Faculty of Life Sciences, who led the research said, "this is the first time that we've been able to test the theory that colour affects our body clock in any mammal. It has always been very hard to separate the change in colour to the change in brightness but using new experimental tools and a psychophysics approach we were successful. What's exciting about our research is that the same findings can be applied to humans. So, in theory, colour could be used to manipulate our clock, which could be useful for shift workers or travellers wanting to minimise jet lag."

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Researchers Invent A Camera That Powers Itself

At Columbia a researcher Shree K. Nayar and T.C. Chang, Professor of Computer Science with his team has introduced a video camera that powers itself.In the prototype video camera reseacher designed a pixel that is able to measure incident light and convert incident light into electric power.

The camera is expected to make its way to wearable devices, sensor networks, smartphones and the internet of things.In the camera, the major component is the photodiode which produces an electric current when exposed to light.They utilized image sensor, a chip that houses the pixels of millions.They used photoconductive mode to measure the intensity of light falling on a pixel.

Nayar and his team utilized off-the-shelf components to fabricate a 30x40 pixels image sensor.It has two transistors.The camera first record and read the image and then to collect light to charge the sensor's power supply.When the camera is not in use, it can be utilized to produce power for other devices like a watch or a smartphone.Nayar said, the image sensor ables to use a rechargeable battery and charge it through harvesting capability.They used capacitor to store power energy.

Nayar explained, "even though we've used off-the-shelf components to demonstrate our design, our sensor architecture easily lends itself to a compact solid-state imaging chip. We believe our results are a significant step forward in developing an entirely new generation of cameras that can function for a very long duration—ideally, forever—without being externally powered."

The group of researcher is going to display its prototype self-powered camera at the the International Conference on Computational Photography at Rice University in Houston.

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Researchers Launch Coating That Protects Cotton From Flame And Water

In china a team of researchers have introduced a triple layer coating that makes cotton waterproof and fire resistant as well as self cleaning.The researchers Shanshan Chen , Xiang Li, Yang Li and Junqi Sun from Jilin University found a way to extend the life of fire retardants and hit on an idea to formed water resistant materials.

They dipped a strip of cotton into different chemicals such as a binding agent "polyethylenimine" to stuck the chemicals into the strip of cotton, then dipped into a fire retardants known as ammonium polyphosphate and at the end they dipped it into ethanol and silsesquioxane solution which work as a seal against water.

Then they exposed both strips, treated as well as untreated, to flame.The treated cotton released a gas that cut off the oxygen supply and blasts out fires in a few seconds.While the other strip burns up quickly.The first layer allows waterproofing that remain on cotton strip after 1000 times rubbing.The second layer of hydrophobic molecules act as a self-healing, fills the gaps where the first layer is damaged.

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Tesla Introduced New Model S 70D With All-Wheel Drive

Tesla has announced the new Model S 70D is an all- wheel drive electric sedan with a 70 kilowatt hour battery.Its name 70D indicates that the 70kWh bettery pack and the D means its dual motors.This car costs $75,000 a car and the new Model S 70D can be ordered online via the Tesla Motors website.The car can accelerate 0 to 60 mph in just 5.2 seconds.

The Model S 70D produces 329 horsepower and get 60 mph in 5.2 seconds.It gains a top speed of 140 miles per hour and can travel 240 miles at 65 mph.It is available in new three different colours that are Ocean Blue, Obsidian Black and Warm Silver.It comes with various features such as navigation system, autopilot hardware for self-driving, maps and blind spot detection.It also includes safety features, automatic brake in emergency, parking sensors.

It will also receive free software updates over the air which add some new features and functionality.The company said, "when the software updates are available, user will be notified to install or remind me later.The average updates could takes 45 minutes to install.

The new Model S 70D is $5,000 expensive than 60 model with 60 kilowatt hour battery, which range 208 miles.It cames without dual motor all wheel drive system.

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LG Launched 5.5 Inch QHD LCD Display For Phones

A Korian based company LG has revealed that it is going to lunch a 5.5-inch QHD (Quad High Definition) LCD display that will feature in its coming flagship phone to be announced on 28 April.The QHD represents a quantum jump in color gamut, thinness, brightness, touch function and power consumption.

The company used high color gamut technology by joining a blue LED chip with green and red phosphors which provide more accurate colors in red and green instead of combining the blue LED chip with a yellow phosphor.This 5.5 inch LCD display has a resolution of 1,440 x 2,560 and density of pixels per inch is 538 PPI.It also features a 120 percent color gamut, 50 percent increase in contrast and 30 percent in brightness.

Touch sensitivity is another feature LG introduced for smartphones.This is a technology called Advanced In Cell Touch technology (AIT) improves the touch functions.According to LG's team the touch sensor is embedded within the LCD, which leads to slimmer design and greater touch sensivity." One of the significant changes is that it enables one to touch the screen even with gloves on, said Chief Research Engineer Hong-Chul Kim in that report.

LG did not mention the name of its upcoming flagship smartphone to be launch on April 28.

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Quick Charging Hybrid Supercapacitors That Can Charge In Seconds

Researchers have created energy storage device at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute by joining two nanomaterials.They combines the best qualities of batteries and supercapacitors.The resaerchers used supercapacitors unlike batteries because they are electrochemical components which can charge in seconds and can be used for 1 million recharge cycles.

This hybrid supercapacitor has enough capacity to store large amount of energy as well as quickly recharges.The scientists from CNSI created very small capacitor to fit in wearable devices that is known as "microsupercapacitor".Microsupercapacitor's thickness is 1/50th of a paper sheet and has potential to store more than twice charge.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and led by Richard Kaner, who is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and materials science and engineering, and Maher El-Kady, a postdoctoral scholar.

El-Kady said that the microsupercapacitor is a new evolving configuration, a very small rechargeable power source with a much higher capacity than previous lithium thin-film microbatteries.

The scientists used combination of two new laser scribed graphene or LSG components with manganese dioxide that are very conductive and charges and recharges in short time.Manganese dioxide is inexpensive and able to holds more charge which is used in alkaline batteries.

Kaner said that the microsupercapacitor is very thin you could out it inside the adhesive bandage to supply the current.You could also recharge it quickly and use it for a very long time.

"The LSG–manganese-dioxide capacitors can store as much electrical charge as a lead acid battery, yet can be recharged in seconds, and they store about six times the capacity of state-of-the-art commercially available supercapacitors," Kaner said. "This scalable approach for fabricating compact, reliable, energy-dense supercapacitors shows a great deal of promise in real-world applications, and we're very excited about the possibilities for greatly improving personal electronics technology in the near future."

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Colombian Woman Made Houses From Old Tires

A 35 year old woman, Alexandra Posada has made houses with old tires in Colombia.Alexandra Posada is a environmental activist and sports a cowboy hat and jeans.She is working on various houses in the mountains of Choachi.She made bricks from old tires that weigh about 200 to 300 kilograms a brick.

"I get these tires for free because it's a huge problem for people to get rid of them," she told AFP."They take thousands of years to decompose—which we've transformed from a problem into an opportunity," she said. "If you use them as construction materials, they become virtually eternal bricks."

She used different kind of tires in large chimney to make round structures that is work as a insulator and resist anainst the earthquakes.She and her team uses round cement and steel ceiling over the kitchen and bedrooms.They utilized wood ceiling over the living and dining room.Then rooms are covered by tire layers.She used vertically glass bottles in the ceiling to let in skylights.She build the roofs, walls, terraces of "igloos" from 9000 old tires.

"These houses are made with reused materials, but they're also beautiful, airy, with more indirect light," she said.

According to the offical figures more than 5.3 million tires are throwing out by colombians in a year which pollute the environment.Francisco Gomez, who heads the environment ministry's response to the issue said, "it's a huge problem in terms of the public space, the environment and the landscape."In Colombia importers and manufacturers are needed 35% tires of the country's total to recycle.

William Clavijo who is working with her, a 57 year old mason, said the job has taught him a lesson in "valuing things.""People usually just throw this stuff away. Now you see that it can be put to good use," he said as he slapped layers of mortar across a wall of tires, hiding its past as rubbery waste abandoned on the streets of Bogota.

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