Twisted photons may give the speed of fiber optics with the conveniences of Wi-Fi

Why it matters to you

This new technology could make high-speed internet cheaper and more accessible.

Fiber optic lines are among the fastest and most efficient means of data transfer available to the consumer public. The main problem with fiber optic lines is the simple fact that running those lines can be expensive and difficult to implement. This has led to a situation where fiber optic internet is only available in a handful of cities, and even there can prove too expensive for many people with access to fiber optics.

Engadget reports that scientists may have found a way to remove those expensive cables while maintaining the high speeds that make fiber optics such an attractive option for so many people.  Researchers at Glasgow University have discovered a way to “twist” photons, allowing them to store large amounts of data while avoiding interference from the air. By passing the photons through a special hologram, similar to the ones found on credit cards, the researchers were able to give the photons “optical angular momentum,” which allows them to store information beyond ones and zeroes.

The team tested this new method by transferring data across 1.6 kilometers (about a mile) in Germany, making sure to test the technology in an urban setting, where buildings and other facets of city life could potentially interfere with the transfer of data. Previous studies had indicated this was possible, but it was unclear how they would work in an urban environment.

Dr. Martin Lavery, head of the Structured Photonics Research Group at University of Glasgow, said that he believes this method may lead to the creation of wireless transfer that “can potentially give us the bandwidth of fibre, but without the requirement for physical cabling.”

For now, however, there are plenty of questions that need to be answered before this becomes a commercially viable alternative to fiber optics. For starters, the team needs to ensure that the process can still function in inclement weather conditions such as snow or rain storms. Still, if it proves viable, then it could drastically reduce our dependency on fiber cables, allowing businesses and consumers to have high-quality internet speeds at lower prices than are currently available. Perhaps more importantly, it could serve as a way to provide high-speed internet access to rural areas, many of which are forced to rely on dial-up or other slow connections.

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Twisted photons may give the speed of fiber optics with the conveniences of Wi-Fi

Why it matters to you

This new technology could make high-speed internet cheaper and more accessible.

Fiber optic lines are among the fastest and most efficient means of data transfer available to the consumer public. The main problem with fiber optic lines is the simple fact that running those lines can be expensive and difficult to implement. This has led to a situation where fiber optic internet is only available in a handful of cities, and even there can prove too expensive for many people with access to fiber optics.

Engadget reports that scientists may have found a way to remove those expensive cables while maintaining the high speeds that make fiber optics such an attractive option for so many people.  Researchers at Glasgow University have discovered a way to “twist” photons, allowing them to store large amounts of data while avoiding interference from the air. By passing the photons through a special hologram, similar to the ones found on credit cards, the researchers were able to give the photons “optical angular momentum,” which allows them to store information beyond ones and zeroes.

The team tested this new method by transferring data across 1.6 kilometers (about a mile) in Germany, making sure to test the technology in an urban setting, where buildings and other facets of city life could potentially interfere with the transfer of data. Previous studies had indicated this was possible, but it was unclear how they would work in an urban environment.

Dr. Martin Lavery, head of the Structured Photonics Research Group at University of Glasgow, said that he believes this method may lead to the creation of wireless transfer that “can potentially give us the bandwidth of fibre, but without the requirement for physical cabling.”

For now, however, there are plenty of questions that need to be answered before this becomes a commercially viable alternative to fiber optics. For starters, the team needs to ensure that the process can still function in inclement weather conditions such as snow or rain storms. Still, if it proves viable, then it could drastically reduce our dependency on fiber cables, allowing businesses and consumers to have high-quality internet speeds at lower prices than are currently available. Perhaps more importantly, it could serve as a way to provide high-speed internet access to rural areas, many of which are forced to rely on dial-up or other slow connections.

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Baidu teams with ride-hailing service to fast track self-driving cars

If Chinese search giant Baidu is going to fulfill its dreams of building a self-driving car platform, it needs maps accurate enough that vehicles can safely get from point A to point B. Thankfully, it has a solution: the company has just forged a partnership with the state-backed ride-hailing service Shouqi. Baidu will supply Shouqi with the tools it needs for both its existing business and driverless cars, including map services, its Apollo autonomous platform and its conversational AI platform DuerOS. In return, Shouqi will supply Baidu with high-precision maps.

It’s no secret as to why Baidu is signing a deal like this: it’s making a big bet on self-driving technology, and it doesn’t have much time to fulfill some of its promises. The company wants to start producing autonomous self-buses in 2018, and it expects mass production of Level 4 (that is, almost entirely self-driving) vehicles with BAIC Group in 2021. A transportation firm like Shouqi is effectively a shortcut: it already has the kind of real-world map data that would take Baidu months or years to collect. This collaboration won’t make a difference outside of China, of course, but Baidu only needs to serve its populous home market to become a heavyweight in the robotic vehicle business.

Via: Reuters

Source: Xinhuanet

TiVo’s revamped interface is available for existing DVRs

If you’ve been craving TiVo’s interface overhaul ever since it was unveiled last year, you now have an opportunity to try it without buying a brand new device. As of October 29th, you can visit TiVo’s website and request an upgrade to your Bolt, Mini or Roamio set-top box. It’ll take “2-3 hours” before you can force the download, but you don’t have to wait for TiVo to push the new design on its own. Think carefully before you make the leap, though: while the interface is a leap into the modern era, you may lose functionality in the process.

The interface treats streaming content as roughly on par with conventional TV, and introduces a more sophisticated prediction system that surfaces what it believes you’d be likely to watch, including online material. It’s more extensible too. However, Zats Not Funny notes that you lose the Live Guide in favor of a plain grid guide, and you can’t yet upload content from your PC. And when first-run TiVo Minis (the ones that have infrared-only remotes) don’t have a back button, navigating the new interface will be tricky.

All the same, this could be a breath of fresh air if you have a (slightly) older TiVo device. The revamped interface won’t suddenly turn your hardware into a cutting-edge media hub, but it may do enough that you won’t feel as much pressure to get a secondary device to play video from online services.

Via: Zatz Not Funny

Source: TiVo Community

NASA put together a playlist of spooky space sounds for Halloween

Why it matters to you

NASA’s creepy Halloween playlist is bound to get you into the Halloween mood.

It’s almost Halloween, and in order to help get us all into the holiday spirit, NASA has shared a SoundCloud playlist of creepy space sounds. The playlist consists of assorted sounds from the space agency’s many missions over the years such as Jupiter, Saturn, and other celestial bodies.

As Alien so famously put it, “In space no one can hear you scream,” but NASA has a clever workaround for this problem. The “sounds” transferred to Earth from NASA’s probes aren’t sound waves in the technical sense of the word, but rather electromagnetic emissions that scientists have converted into sound waves.

The entire file is well worth a listen and can add a bit of creepiness to your Halloween, but among the most interesting are the sounds of Saturn. NASA describes the planet as “a source of intense radio emissions, which were monitored by the Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet. These auroras are similar to Earth’s northern and southern lights.”

The sounds of Saturn are neat, but what if you need some actual music for your Halloween party or haunted house? Well, NASA has got you covered there as well. A group of physicists converted the data from the Saturn expedition into actual music.

Speaking of music, the Kepler spacecraft capture light emissions from the star KIC7671081B and, when converted into sound waves, it produced a “song” worthy of great movie villains such as Darth Vader or Micheal Myers.

The entries mentioned above are just a couple of the items on this list that we found the most interesting, but there are more than 20 tracks on this playlist. None of them are very long, so if you want something to get you in the Halloween mode, check it out. If you’re interested in space exploration or science, you’ll want to give this a listen regardless of the time of year, but for lovers of Halloween, this track is a perfect way to learn a bit more about our solar system and have some spooky fun.

The full playlist can be found below. And if you’re looking to get things started at your very own monster mash, check out our best Halloween songs playlist.

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Stop lying to your dentist about flossing and get the ToothShower

Why it matters to you

Who says showering and brushing your teeth have to be two steps? Not the ToothShower.

There’s no point in lying to your dentist — she knows you’re not always brushing twice a day, much less flossing. And while you care about your mouth’s health, sometimes, taking those extra two minutes at the beginning or end of the day can be tough. But now there’s a new oral care system that wants to make brushing more convenient and efficient than ever. Meet the ToothShower, heralded as the complete oral care solution you can find in your shower. Powered by the water in said shower, this system claims to clean 100 percent of your teeth surfaces, whereas traditional brushing cleans just 60 percent. 

“I know my patients’ challenges all too well, having been a dental hygienist for more than 25 years,” said Lisa Guenst, inventor of ToothShower. “Patients often complain that flossing is a struggle and not something they do often. Others who have tried water flossing find it too cumbersome because it makes a mess, requires constant water refills, and takes up too much space on the counter. I know there had to be an easier but more effective method of care.”

Enter ToothShower, a three-in-one brushing solution. It starts with the base that attaches to your shower wall, but the real magic lies in the three attachments that promise “optimum oral care.” There’s the dual-headed toothbrush, which is said to hit both the front and backs of your teeth simultaneously. And thanks to silicone bristles on the back of the brush head, you can also clean the chewing surfaces of your teeth, or your tongue.

Then, there’s an irrigating tip, which will actually allow you to skip your flossing step. Behaving as a water flosser (without the mess, as you’re already in the shower) this attachment is meant especially for folks with braces or retainers, and can pinpoint areas of your mouth that are difficult to reach with brushes.

Finally, there’s the irrigating gum massager, which leverages seven jets of water to “stimulate important blood flow in your gums and remove debris from between your teeth.” And because you’re doing all of this while you’re showering, you can’t even begin to suggest you don’t have the time to take care of your teeth.

You can pre-order the ToothShower from Kickstarter for $79, with an estimated delivery date of May 2018.

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Make the perfect cup of coffee even in the middle of nowhere with Leverpresso

Why it matters to you

The light and portable espresso maker can rival your local barista’s skills.

If you’re out on a camping trip, you can’t expect to find a coffee shop at the top of a mountain. What’s a dedicated java junkie to do? Just wrapping up a successful Kickstarter campaign, the Leverpresso All-in-One portable espresso maker is a coffee maker for those who are as the key to making great coffee, even in the great outdoors. It can create a consistent and stable force of 6 to 9 atmospheres when pressing the water through the coffee.

There are quite a few portable espresso makers to choose from, but Leverpresso emphasizes its dual-lever design as the key to making great coffee, especially when you’re out in the wilderness. It can create a consistent and stable force of 6 to 9 atmospheres when pressing the water through the coffee.

Constructed of stainless steel and aluminum, the Leverpresso has an elegant design and weighs less than a pound. It’s small enough to be easily stored for camping or just a trip to the park. The double-shot capacity will keep you wired wherever you are. The basic kit includes a 50mm stainless steel filter and an integrated cup. It’s available in four colors.

As any expert barista will tell you, the ability to control the speed and pressure of the extraction is what lets you make your coffee exactly how you like it. The normal extraction is about 30 seconds – if you do it quicker, you’ll get a more sour taste and slower extraction tends to produce a sweeter mixture.

As the company explains at its site, “You can achieve maximum pressure with little force. Leverpresso can reach up to 9 bars of pressure, even with its small size. You’ll be able to change the taste of the coffee based on the pressure, amount of water, time of extraction, and all of these aspects can be controlled directly by you!”

If you love your coffee and demand it just so, this might be the portable coffee maker you’ve been looking for. Leverpresso has already blown way past their initial funding goal, and it’s now accepting pre-orders at its Kickstarter page. The basic set is $69 (a regular retail price of $99), and you can expect delivery in January 2018.

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Modified silk could be used to repair damaged spinal cords.

Why it matters to you

Spinal injuries affect thousands of people around the world, but researchers may have the beginnings of a cure.

Spinal injuries, even when they don’t result in paralysis, are painful, expensive, and often life-changing events. There is no way to cure serious spinal trauma, though scientists are working on new treatments for spinal injuries. The difficulty in treatment is due, in part, to the fact that spinal nerves are unable to cross the cavity that forms in the aftermath of a serious spinal injury. However, researchers at the Unversity of Aberdeen, working in conjunction with Oxford Biomaterials Ltd, discovered an unlikely solution in the form of sterilized silk obtained from Antheraea pernyi, more commonly known as silkworms.

The researchers discovered that silk could be used to bridge the gap in a damaged spinal cord, allowing nerves to grow in the damaged area of the spin. The team determined that silkworm silk had several properties that made it ideal for use in spinal injuries.

The first useful property of the silk is that it has the correct rigidity. If the silk was too soft, the nerves simply would not be able to grow across it. If, on the other hand, it was too rigid, then the silk could actually cause further injury to the patient’s back.

In addition, the silk’s chemical compounds provide it with properties that are beneficial to nerve growth. The silk has a repeated “RGD” sequence, which encourages nerve growth by allowing the nerves to easily attach themselves to the silk.

In term’s of the body’s immune system, it was determined that the silk did not trigger a response from the spinal cord’s immune system cells, which cuts down the risk of inflammation. Lastly, the silk naturally degrades over time. Once the nerves have attached themselves to the silk, it will slowly dissolve. allowing those nerves to serve as a bridge for other nerves.

“Spinal injuries affect 250,000–500,000 people globally every year. It can have devastating effects for people who suffer them, including loss of motor and sensory function below the level of injury, and bladder, bowel, and sexual dysfunction,” Dr. Wenlong Huang of Aberdeen University said. “If we can work to find a solution, such as the use of AP silk, to improve their quality of life even slightly then it is beneficial. Intriguingly, AP silk may also have the potential to aid repair following brain injury. These are still early bench-based studies but they certainly seem to show that AP silk has fantastic properties, especially suitable for spinal repair, and we look forward to researching this further.”

As odd as it might seem, this is not the first time that silk made from insects and other creatures have provided medical benefits. Researchers found that artificial spider silk had a wide-range of medical and technological applications.

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The Internet of Food requires creating a common language around what we eat

In a classic Portlandia sketch, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein badger a waitress to find out about their chicken’s diet, the amount of acreage it had to roam around in, and whether it had other fowl to pal around with. But knowing more about your food’s origins has benefits even if you’re not a locavore.

Lange thinks the Internet of Food (IoF) can help everyone make better informed choices about what they eat.

While you might be able to learn if your chicken was named Colin, University of California, Davis, food scientist and informatician Dr. Matthew Lange thinks the Internet of Food (IoF) can help everyone make better informed choices about what they eat. Ahead of his appearance at the upcoming  reThink Food conference in Napa Valley, California, we asked Lange about the benefits of digitizing food.

Lange is the principal investigator at UC Davis’s IC-Foods. The organization is trying to develop standardized languages and ontologies (computable languages) around food. In order to digitize food effectively, everything from food processing plants to farms to grocery stores need to be part of the same ecosystem. The container of spinach in your fridge might say it’s organic, have the name of the distributor, and boast about being triple washed, but you still don’t know much about where it came from.

If we started tracking each leaf from farm to table, a label with a QR code might tell you something that influences what you buy. Maybe you could get a better sense of the company’s definition of free range or opt for the greens that came from the closest farm because it took less energy to get there. What if instead of a sell-by date, you could see exactly when the item was picked or packaged?

But the possibilities are bigger than that, according to Lange.

“Digitizing food enables unprecedented insights from a historical tracing (point of view), which also then enables remarkable predictive analytics about food,” he said.

A bit about blockchain

Blockchain is often described as a digital ledger, one that’s shared across a network. Transactions and changes are publically recorded as a “block.” That block is linked to the next transaction in the sequence, and as you go further down the line, you’ll be able to see the record of each individual transaction. Since it’s decentralized — no one owns it — it makes it easier for individuals in different companies to access shared information without having to doubt its authenticity.

“This area of research where food security meets internet security is a critical emerging field.”

It’s used for cryptocurrency transactions like Bitcoin but is also being considered for other applications such as health records. IBM, Nestlé, and Walmart are collaborating on a food blockchain. The World Health Organization estimates 420,000 people die of foodborne illnesses each year, and the three companies think blockchain technology could make it faster and easier to determine the source of contamination — in hours rather than weeks.

At each step in the supply chain, farmers, processors, distributors, and retailers would have access to the information that comes before and after them. In terms of the bigger picture, it could help pinpoint ways to reduce costs as well.

“As food languages become more standardized and blockchain technologies become more ubiquitous and/or interoperable,” Lange said, “we’ll begin to see a drop in the price for transactions to occur. We think that the combination of standardized terminologies, together with blockchain and robotics, allows businesses to compete and to be more traceable, transparent, and ultimately trustworthy.”

The language of legumes

Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) brings together governmental and non-governmental organizations so they can share the wealth of data accumulated from Internet of Things and other technologies. Partners can use the information in countless ways, like developing an atlas based on local weather, soil, and crop systems. Scaling up can provide crop-yield estimates and identify new growing areas, which will become increasingly important for water-scarce regions.

“At the same time, we have very innovative companies who, through web scraping, AI, and even manual methods are creating or supporting the creation of languages that can drive their business models, whether it’s BeerXML for sharing beer recipes, or specific ways to represent recipes, meals food composition data, or food production growing conditions,” Lange said.

Part of IC-Foods’ mission, he said, is to create a standardized language that both industry and government will use. U.K.-based Whisk wants to create a food genome akin to Pandora, helping match users with meals they like. Innit wants to digitize food, not only by tracking food on its journey to your door, but helping you choose what to make once it’s in your fridge and bringing in smart appliances to make you a better cook, too.

When it comes to languages, consumers might increase their food vocabulary as well.

“What we haven’t seen yet is the food equivalent of the web browser”

“What we haven’t seen yet is the food equivalent of the web browser,” Lange said. “Every web browser understands HTML, and while most web surfers don’t know HTML, most do know what a font is.” Eventually, the nitty-gritty details will hide behind an interface, so people won’t necessarily have to see the code behind the crops.

“I do think that users will learn more about food though,” Lange said. “In the same way that users are familiar with fonts, jpegs, and a variety of digital materials.”

All about me

From Habit to DNAFit to Fitness Genes, there are lots of companies ready to supply tailored nutrition and fitness information based on your DNA. Results may vary, but Lange sees the IoF as having a role to play as the science progresses.

“On the personalization side, genetic testing is just one example of why we need IoF vocabularies to map across scientific domains,” he said. “More and more is being discovered every day about genetic interactions with nutrients, tastants (molecules responsible for taste experience), and odorants (molecules responsible for aroma/smell experience), and how these influence our experiences with food.”

Activity monitors will have their place in the IoF as well, he said, so one day your smart kitchen could recommend meals based on how hard you exercised that day.

If this all makes you a bit uncomfortable, Lange does admit there are potential downsides to the IoF.

“Another aspect of this is that we don’t fully understand the food-security implications of impregnating our food supply with internet devices like sensors, cameras, and robotics,” he said. “We witnessed several botnet attacks as the IoT was emerging, and security was a secondary concern. We know we don’t want botnet attacks on our food supply, so this area of research where food security meets internet security is a critical emerging field.”

Ultimately, though, Lange thinks the benefits will outweigh these risks, and it sounds like the future of food is connected whether we like it or not.

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HP lost key historical archives in California’s wildfires

There’s no question that California’s recent wildfires are ultimately a human tragedy, destroying homes and upturning lives. Please donate if you can. However, they’ve also represented a loss for technology history. The Press Democrat has learned that fire in Santa Rosa’s Fountaingrove region destroyed key archives of HP’s namesake founders, William Hewlett and David Packard, earlier in October. The blaze destroyed correspondence, writing and other artifacts held at the headquarters of Keysight Technologies, a company with HP origins that took ownership of the archives in 2014. While a large chunk of HP’s archives are stored elsewhere (such as with HP spinoff Agilent), this wiped out a significant amount of irreplaceable personal material.

There are also concerns that this could have been avoided. Keysight says it took “appropriate and responsible steps” to protect HP’s archives, putting material in toughened boxes with a sprinkler system. However, it also stored the archives in modular buildings, rather than in Keysight’s permanent offices (which survived the fires relatively unharmed). When HP and Agilent had ownership, they stored the archives in permanent, carefully controlled vaults with foam fire retardant and other protections. There’s a real chance the archives could have been safe if they’d been kept in a similar location after 2014.

Whether or not the damage could have been prevented, there’s no question that this is a significant blow for anyone interested in early tech culture. Hewlett and Packard are widely considered the founding fathers of Silicon Valley, and losing some of their writing amounts to losing a piece of the tech world’s roots.

Source: The Press Democrat