Apple's Homekit Devices Are Available For Sale

Apple's revealed smart home technology known as Homekit which is a certified devices that allow to control lights with voice command and turn them off and on and adjust room temperature as well as other appliances from the iPads, iPhones and iPods.

These five devices are: Elgato is a device that controls temperature, humidity, air pressure water and energy consumption as well.Ecobee costs $ 250 which controls thermostate via WiFi connectivity.Lutron is available at $ 230 which is a smart bridge device allows users to control lighting system.iHome is a Wi-Fi connected plug that allows users to turn on and off home appliances.Insteon hub lets users control various home gadgets like door lock, switches and other light systems.

Apple announced Homekit software a year ago at Apple's developers conference.Google also announced that it is developing such software that controls gadgets in the home and in commercial settings, called Brillo.

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Microsoft App Judges Your Age From A Photo

Microsoft has launched a new website known as How Old.net that utilizes facial recognition software to determine your age based on a image.It is a website where users can upload a photo and API has to estimate how old is and also guess about gender.

Microsoft's demo app was released during build conference in San Francisco, a few days ago.Microsoft's Machine Learning APIs is a really fun tool which can detect faces in a picture and then guess the age of that person and their gender.

Two Microsoft engineers Corom Thompson and Santosh Balasubramanian said, "we sent e-mail to a group of several hundred people asking them to try the app demo for a moment and give us feedback.Estimating that at least 50 people would want to it a shot."We monitored our real time analytics dashboard to track usage and, within a few minutes, the number of people using the site vastly exceeded the number of people we had sent our email to.Within a few hours, more than 35,000 users had visited the web page from all over the world."

Age and gender recognition features are focal points for Microsoft and we want to improve this technology, a senior program manager at Microsoft Ryan Galgon said."Any usage of the app, even if it results in inaccurate renderings, is good usage, because Microsoft gets more data to improve its systems," VentureBeat's Jordan Novet said.

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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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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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Treehouse Building To Protect Residents From Noise And Air Pollution

Luciano Pia is an architect from Italy, has wonderfully designed a five story complex apartment which is located in Turin, Italy.A vertical potted forest includes trees and steel girders look like branches and allow residents to feel like they are living in a urban treehouse.This urban treehouse called 25 Verde means 25 Green.25 Verde protects its residents from noise pollution and reduces air pollution in the surrounding.

Lucuano Pia wrote on his website, "the building has been thought as a living forest, a house on the trees like the houses children dream of and sometimes build."

It contains 150 tall trees to absorb approximately 200,000 liters of carbon dioxide an hour and 50 more trees are planted in the courtyard of 63 units building.The seasonal change create perfect microclimate inside the building so temperature falling and rising remain steady in winter and summer.In summer plants foliage block sun rays and in winter allowing sun light to let in.

It is a special building because it is alive: it grows up, it breaths and it changes since 150 trees with tall trunks cover its terraces."

The building has many features such as sun protection, continuous insulation.He wrote the major aim of the project is the increase of the energetic efficiency, continuous insulation, sun protection, heating and cooling systems which make use of the geothermal energy with heat pumps and recycling of the falling rain to water the green.”

Species of plant has been chosen to get the best variety of colours and flowers."When all the green is fully blooming it gives the feeling of living in a tree house." “You can dream of a house or live in a dream!”

Its construction was started in 2007 and ended in 2012.

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"Analog Merory Desk" To Save Your Notes, Ideas And Sketches

Kristen Camara, who is a student at the Minnesota College of Art and Design, has made an Analog Merory Desk to record your past memories, notes, smart ideas and doodle.She wrote on his site, "this Memory Desk is a tool to record all the small items you write down once, but intend to forget tomorrow."

The desk is made of maple wood which features 1,100 yards of butcher paper rolls on the desk legs, which covers the desk surface.When the paper surface filled with notes, ideas and drawing, user will get new paper for work just rolls the crank at side of the table which fold up the used paper.

She explained that 1,100 yards of paper will record the lists, the phones numbers you call once, the pixel size of that box on that website, the street name of that business, and the long division you try to remember.

Kristen Camara's desk is not available for purchase but she released architectural designed blueprints with a creative commons license, so anyone can build their own.

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Vehicles Exposed To High Levels Of Air Pollution At Red Light, Study Found

Research has found that when stopped at red lights vehicles exposed to more pollutants.Researchers at the university of Surrey in the UK have discovered that where drivers take 2% time of their journey to cross the red lights, during this period of time contributes approximately 25% of exposure to these nanoparticles.

The team of researcher has mentioned some points where drivers exposed to air pollutants.Researchers found high levels of pollution at signals because of changes in driving conditions, pollutant particle concentration was found 29% higher than free moving conditions.Researchers also said, at signals when vehicles stopped closely increase the level of air pollution.

"Our time spent traveling in cars has remained same during the past 10 years despite the efforts to reduce it and with more cars than ever joining the roads, we are being exposed to increasing levels of air pollution as we undertake our daily commutes." said lead author Dr. Prashant Kumar.

A study author, Dr Prashant Kumar said,"Recently air pollution was placed in the top ten health risks faced by human.According to the World Health Organization, every year seven million people die due to air pollution".

"It is not possible to eliminate air pollution but we can decrease its level by awareness.Some of the best ways to reduce exposure is to keep windows shut, fans off and keep more distance as much as possible between you and the vehicle just in front of you.Pedestrians should find other routes less depend on traffic lights.Transport agencies could help by introducing signals free tracks and also by reducing signals waiting time.

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Sea Snake Survives Without Water To Drink, Research

Researchers have discovered the yellow-bellied sea snake can live out in the ocean because it can survive extreme dehydration, according to study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

“These snakes refuse to drink salt water, even when dehydrated, they need fresh water to survive,” Lillywhite said.

To see this how sea snake survive without fresh water, researchers captured 500 yellow-bellied sea snakes on the Guanacaste coast off of Costa Rica and tested them in lab to found how they live without fresh water.

The yellow-bellied sea snake does not drink sea water because it is not able to filter out all the salt like sea turtles.In order to survive the sea snake is totally dependent on fresh water from rainfall.The researchers noticed that several specimens lost up to 18 percent weight when there is no fresh water for drink.

The researchers also found that snakes have glands that make it possible for snakes to remove salt from the foods they eat and also allow to drink saltwater.Snakes skin also help prevent salt from being absorbed.

Lillywhite said, "if global climate change causes drought conditions to worsen, sea snakes and other marine vertebrates that depend on rainfall for fresh water could be hurt.“
Lillywhite also said that understanding the water requirements and drinking behaviors of marine vertebrates could help with conservation efforts. In areas of intensifying drought, they will need to move or die out.”

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Ancient Masks Go On Exhibition In Jerusalem

The oldest mildstone masks have discovered and have displayed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.These stone masks have been discovered in near the Jerusalem's Judean desert and hills.

The 9,000-year-old limestone masks think to be the world's oldest mildstone masks.They have been made to look like the spirits of dead ancestors and it is possible that they were used in religious or traditionals ceremonies.The masks have round gaps displays of noses, eyes and teeth.

The 9,000 year old masks have found near Jerusalem and offer a rare glimpse of some of civilisation's first communal rituals.They were found in the range of about 20-mile in Jerusalem where the Judean hills meet the Judean desert.Each mask stone weights about one or two kg.

James Snyder, said all of the masks were discovered near Jerusalem."It's quite exciting," said James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum, which is hosting the seven-month exhibit."When you go back to objects that are this old, that are so much before the theology that becomes Judaism, Christianity and then Islam, to feel that there is a kind of a connection, that this is all part of a continuous story, is something that is pretty thrilling."

"The masks dated back to the creators of civilisation",Debby Hershman said, the exhibition's curator.Hershman also said that the people who created the masks were the creators of civilization and were first farmers."

It took 10 years of carbon-14 testing for experts to decide origin of the collection, the Associated Press news agency reports.

The Face to Face exhibition opens for public from March 11 to September 13 at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

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New Apps Analyzation For Malicious Behavior Have Discovered

 In July 2013 the Russian software company "Doctor Web" discovered malicious apps in the app store "Google Play".Doctor Web, comes with its own terms and conditions, informed Google, the apps were still available for download for several days.Doctor Web estimates that in this way approximately 25,000 smartphones were used in order to cheat and make money illegally.

Computer scientists have made software which helps to discover malicious apps in the app store, from the German Saarland University.This software notice where the app gains sensitive data and where data is going from the smartphones and if software finds any link between source and sink then it gives information about suspect behavior or reports about that.

"Your address book is read, hundreds of instructions later and without your permission an SMS is sent or a website is visited", said Erik Derr.

The computer scientists from Saarbrucken use new technique to recognize a link between source and sink and give suspicious combinations as input.
Erik Derr said, "So far we have tested up to 3000 apps with it. The software analyzes them fast enough that the approach can also be used in practice."

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4 To 6 Years Old Nursery Kids Can Solve Algebra

Solving algebraic equations is not so much easy for every student, but most nursery kids and kindergarteners can solve algebraic questions before becoming a part of maths class.

Recently published study in the journal Developmental Science, reseachers find that most nursery students and kindergarteners, children between four and six, can solve basic algebra and study lead by author and post-doctoral fellow Melissa Kibbe and Lisa Feigenson, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

Post-doctoral fellow Melissa Kibbe said, "these are very young children, some of whom are just learning to count, and few of whom have even gone to school yet, are solving basic algebra with little effort." "They do it by using their "Approximate Number System" their inborn sense of quantity and number."

The "Approximate Number System" is also known as "number sense" and helps humans and animals to size up the quantity of objects.

In the study, children sat one by one with an examiner who told them about the two characters, each of whom had a cup filled with an unknown quantity of items.They saw the pile before it was added to, and after, so they had to decide how many objects Gator's cup and Cheetah's cup kept.

At the end, the examiner mixed up the cups, and asked the children select whose cup it was.Mostly the children knew whose cup it was.Director of Johns Hopkins Laboratory for Child Development, Feigenson said , "What was in the cup was the x and y variable, and children nailed it." "Gator's cup was the x variable and Cheetah's cup had y variable. We found that young children are very good at this. It appears that they are harnessing their gut level number sense to solve this task."

Algebra is difficult for teenagers because "One possibility is that formal algebra relies on memorized rules and symbols that seem to trip many people up," Feigenson said.The ANS helps in solving basic algebra and are needed to master the complex algebra problems that are taught later in the school age years.The study find that an ANS ability does not follow gender boys versus girls, both have equal proportions in solving algebra.Feigenson said, "we see no evidence for gender differences in our work on basic number sense."

Feigenson said, "We find links at all ages between the precision of people's Approximate Number System and their formal math ability." "But this does not necessarily mean that children with poorer precision grow up to be bad at math. For example,children with poorer number sense may need to rely on other strategies, besides their gut sense of number, to solve math problems. But this is an area where much future research is needed."

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"Tribo-Electric" Which Converts Movement Into Power,Human Movement as well

Researchers had built a prototype device which changes movement into power, at the Georgia Institute of Technology.Scientists in the United States said Tuesday it lies within reach, thanks to a smart way to harvest energy called tribo-electricity.

A professor of materials science and engineering, Zhong Lin Wang described the invention a "breakthrough." He told AFP by email, "Our technology can be used for large-scale energy harvesting, so that the energy we have wasted for centuries will be useful."

"Tribo-electric" is a modern device with previous rules from the Greek word for "rub."The device generates electricity from friction between two things that cause a charge of electrons travel from one to the other like walking on nylon carpet with plastic-soled shoes.The device has ability to generates 1.5 watts.

In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, Wang's team said they had overcome key hurdles to converting a haphazardly-generated electrical charge into current.

There are two circular sheets, an electron "donor" and the other an electron "receiver" moved together by rotary movement.An electrical charge isolate would use if the sheets are separated.It has one more disc with electrodes, work as a bridges the gap and allows the current to flow at a top speed of 3,000 revolutions per minute.

Wang said, "It can run on a gentle wind or tap water, or "random jerky motions," including human movement, to provide the rotation.""As long as there is mechanical action, there is power that can be generated."

Wang also said, "the prototype used copper for the rotator and gold for the electrodes in lab tests, but these could easily be substituted for low-cost synthetics."

The team of researchers is still working to harvest power from the ocean.

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Google Launches the Google Maps Gallery

Google has launched the Google Maps Gallery, which enables organizations to share and publish their data on a map to discovered by people using Google Maps, Google Earth and search engines.In other words the Google Maps Gallery helps to “unlock the world’s maps”.Maps Gallery works like an interactive, digital atlas where you can find historic city plans, climate trends, deforestation changes and up-to-date evacuation routes.

Google Maps product manager Jordan Breckenridge said, "As the Gallery grows, it'll be easier to find out where we've been, where we are, and where we're going, giving us a new way to look at the world around us."

The Google Maps Gallery includes several maps, they are National Geographic Society,World Bank Group, United States Geological Survey, Florida Emergency Management agency, and City of Edmonton and many more.

With the Google Maps Gallery, governments, nonprofits and businesses can publish maps and manage their content with personal sitting that enable control over maps branding, styling and licensing.Organizations can apply to submit their request to join the Map Gallery.The gallery can browse at: http://maps.google.com/gallery/.

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Million year Old Footprints Have discovered In Britain

Scientists have discovered human footprints in England that are at least 800,000 years old.These footprints have been discovered when heavy seas washed sand off a beach in Happisburgh, Norfolk.

The footprints were discovered by a team of the British Museum, the Natural History Museum and Queen Mary University of London.

British Museum archaeologist Dr. Nick Ashton said published in the journal PLOS ONE "a tangible link to our earliest human relatives."

There are five different types of footprints.The footprints indicating adults, males and children walked through the beach.They are the earliest evidence of human ancestors and belong to first ever Britains.

The scientists and researchers believe the human who left the prints may have been related to ancestor known as Homo antecessor, or "Pioneer Man".

Natural History Museum archaeologist Chris Stringer said that 800,000 or 900,000 years ago Britain was "the edge of the inhabited world."

There are three sites in the world where older footprints found, 3.5 million years old in Tanzania and 1.5 million years old in Kenya, which are in Africa.

Isabelle De Groote, a specialist in ancient human remains at Liverpool John Moores University who worked on the find, said that "These individuals traveling together, may be that they were somehow related," and also said about the pattern of the prints.

The footprint will be a part of an exhibition, "Britain: One Million Years of the Human Story," open at the Natural History Museum on 13 February.

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