Electronics
'Smart' Buildings to Guide Future First Responders
Added: 11/18/05. Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
NIST researchers are studying how "intelligent" building systems can be used by firefighters, police and other first responders to accurately assess emergency conditions in real-time. NIST is working with industry to develop standards to allow manufacturers to create intelligent building systems that use various types of communication networks (including wireless networks) to assist first responders in assessing and mitigating emergencies. The systems would send information such as building floor plans and data from motion, heat, biochemical and other sensors and video cameras directly to fire and police dispatchers who then can communicate detailed information about the scene to first responders.
NIST recently released video presentations that demonstrate how an "Intelligent Building Response" program would work. The videos outline team efforts to create a system of interoperable data content and communications standards that would link first responders with "intelligent" building systems. Firefighters are shown using laptops to track the spread of a developing fire on a floor plan even before reaching the scene. Other real-time building sensor information includes status information concerning a specific building's mechanical systems, elevators, lighting, security system and fire systems, the locations of building occupants, and temperature and smoke conditions.
EU deal threatens end to US dominance of internet, US says No
Added: 9/30/05. Sources: CNN.com The Register (UK) Int'l Herald Tribune (Fr) World Peace Herald (DC) Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Following two years of global debate, delegates have been at PrepCom3, a two-week conference in Geneva, preparatory to the World Summit on the Information Society November 16-18 in Tunisia. While progress was made on issues such as e-mail spam and identity theft, control of the actual Internet itself has become a stalemated issue.
Two last minute surprises include a presentation by the UK, on behalf of the UN, of a "new co-operation model" that would not only oversee public policy matters but also create procedures for changing the internet's "root zone file", managers of country domains (such as .uk or .de), create a new arbitration service for the internet, and produce rules to cover the domain name system (DNS) -- creating, in essence, a new version of the current overseeing body ICANN and an end to the US government's overall control of the DNS.
The second surprise was formation of an impromptu coalition named the "Likeminded Group" composed of Brazil, South Africa, Iran, China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and others, seeking a more "democratic and inclusive mechanism of overview of certain functions" that ICANN now performs. Chinese ambassador Sha Zukang said, "This situation is very undemocratic, unfair and unreasonable." This week, China imposed new rules allowing only "healthy and civilized" news, as determined by their government, to be available to its 100 million Web users.
ICANN now controls the Internet's master directories, which tell Web browsers and e-mail programs how to direct traffic. Internet users around the world interact with them everyday. Thirteen root servers, in private hands, contain government-approved lists of the 260 or so Internet suffixes, such as ".com." In 1998 the US selected ICANN to control the net, indicating that the Dept. of Commerce would eventually relinquish control. Earlier this year that intention was reversed in the US Statement of Principles, which announced the US "will maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file."
The blog posting "US Drops ICANN/DNS Bombshell (on WSIS?)" 6/30/05 at Internet Law Archives gives a good summary background of this issue.
Spy agency taps undersea cable (details from Secrecy Power Sinks Patent Case)
Added: 9/23/05. Source: Wired News.
Outside experts say it's easy enough to guess the nature of the top-secret project the government is protecting. "It's all but self-evident that it has to do with the clandestine monitoring of fiber-optics communications cables on the ocean floor," says Aftergood. "They've been interested in it since the first fiber-optic cable was ever invented," says James Bamford, author of two books on the NSA. "It's clear that they have a major operation in terms of tapping into sea cables."
Fiber-optic cables were well on their way to supplanting less-secure communications technologies at the time that Lucent approached the Crater inventors, and it's been widely reported that the switch threatened to cut off the electronic spies at the NSA. "There's been this huge shift from using satellite communications, which is very easy to tap into, to using both terrestrial and transoceanic fiber-optic cables, and that's presented a major problem for NSA," says Bamford. To counter that problem, and keep the electronic intelligence flowing, NSA has reportedly developed sophisticated techniques for wiretapping undersea cables, relying on specially equipped Navy submarines, the most advanced of which is the newly recommissioned USS Jimmy Carter, fresh from a $1 billion upgrade that reportedly includes state-of-the-art technology for tapping into undersea fiber-optic communications.
Sophisticated Techniques - Spy agency taps into undersea cable published May 22, 2001 on TechNews at ZDNet.com:
For decades, the National Security Agency did most of its spying by plucking information out of thin air. With a global network of listening stations and satellites, the NSA eavesdropped on phone conversations in Saddam Hussein's bunker, snatched Soviet missile-launch secrets and once caught Brezhnev in his limousine chatting about his mistress.
The NSA's task was relatively simple then because most international phone-and-data traffic moved via satellites or microwave towers. The agency sucked up those signals and sorted through them with supercomputers. The NSA is undermined by advances in telecommunications technology. Information now travels in the form of light beams through fiber-optic cables crisscrossing continents and ocean floors. This forces the NSA to seek new ways to gather intelligence--including tapping undersea cables, a technologically daunting, physically dangerous and potentially illegal task.
In the mid-1990s, the NSA installed one such tap, say former intelligence officials familiar with the covert project. Using a special spy submarine, they say, agency personnel descended hundreds of feet into one of the oceans and sliced into a fiber-optic cable. The mixed results of the experiment -- particularly the agency's inability to make sense of the vast flood of data unleashed by the tap -- show that America's pre-eminent spy service has huge challenges to overcome if it hopes to keep from going deaf in the digital age.
Undersea taps would pose tricky legal issues for the agency, too. For example, U.S. law forbids the NSA to intentionally intercept and process the phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens without court approval. Such communications make up a sizable slice of undersea cable traffic.
Solar-Powered Underwater Autonomous Robots
Added: 9/13/05. Source: California Computer News Magazine (CCN)
Government-funded researchers are "working collaboratively with other researchers to develop a network of distributed sensing devices and water-monitoring robots," including the Solar-powered Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (SAUV) which will be presented at a "leading-edge robotics workshop" held at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.
The device "will allow better observation and monitoring of complex aquatic systems," as well as "support advances in basic environmental science, applications to environmental management, and security and defense programs. They will be able to detect chemical and biological trends to improve water quality.
Current autonomous underwater devices must have their batteries changed frequently. They network with each other in real time, but this new generation will have "integrated sensor microsystems, pervasive computing, wireless communications, and sensor mobility with robotics." The U.S. Navy is already interested in evaluating their use for coastal surveillance applications.
Field testing will continue in Lake George, NY "to determine communication, interaction, and maneuvering capabilities in testing dissolved oxygen levels." Collaborators in development of the SAUV include the Autonomous Undersea Systems Institute, Falmouth Scientific Inc., the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, and Technology Systems Inc. The 9/16/05 workshop is sponsored by NSF, NASA, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Robot In Touch with Its Emotions
Added: 9/13/05. Source: Discovery News.
"..Kansei is able to frown or smile according to a flow of artificial consciousness." This humanoid robot "contains speech recognition software, a speaker to vocalize, and motors that contort artificial skin on its face into expressions."
The Kansei project leader is Junichi Takeno, a professor at the Robot and Science Institute of Meiji University in Japan. The article includes a link to allow viewers to see the different facial expressons.
Kansei is a "comprehensive" human interface design that includes sensibility, sensitivity, feeling and emotion. Research is underway to help make robot expressions unique from one another. "So not only will the robots be able to express their feelings, they will also begin to exhibit personal taste."
Gadget Tells Kids in Greece, NY, When School Bus Is Near
Added: 9/13/05. Source: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (NY)
In a pilot program, one school bus has been equipped with a wireless device that will allow 10 students to safely wait indoors until a handheld alarm sounds. When the bus is a half-mile away, the device beeps. In the afternoons, parents are alerted by the beep as the bus returns. Parents must rent or purchase the device to participate in the program. If all goes smoothly, nearly all buses will be similarly outfitted by winter.
This project is one of many changes designed to enhance student safety. The bus drivers have been trained to be more aware of their environment, and look for terrorist threats on and around each bus. Also, 25 new buses purchased recently are equipped with digital security cameras; 35 older buses have the old camcorder-style models. For the 2005 school year, 60 out of 205 buses will have video recorders.
Teeny Phones for Tweety Birds
Added: 9/13/05. Source: Wired News
Research underway at Oregon State University plans to strap tiny mobile phones to songbirds and monitor the birds' migration with unprecedented accuracy. Unique ID numbers will be transmitted to cell towers as the birds fly past. Creating the stripped-down cell phone may take years. The devices will switch on at times that scientists believe the birds will be near a tower. It is hoped that unlocking the mystery of where the birds go when they migrate might assist in keeping them off endangered lists.
Backpack generates a powerful punch
Added: 9/13/05. Source: NewScientist.com
A backpack has been developed at the University of Pennsylvania, able to generate up to 7 watts of electricity as its wearer strolls along. That is more than enough to power cellphones with power-draining functions like colour widescreens or Wi-Fi and GPS connections. After abandoning a power-generating boot heel when it failed to generate enough juice, a method to capture expended energy was devised using an upside-down pendulum.
The backpack is suspended on a cushioned frame. Testing revealed the backpack’s power output increased with walking speed and with the weight of the load in the pack. The suspended-load backpack will hopefully be a "particular boon for troops, field scientists, explorers and disaster relief workers in remote locations." The goal of the research, funded by the US Office of Naval Research, was to relieve soldiers already carrying 36-kilogram backpacks of the need to carry many spare batteries to power their GPS, communications and night-vision devices.
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