iPad Refresh in March Likely as Apple Receives Certification for New Tablets in Eurasia

Apple has registered new tablets with the Eurasian Economic Commission this week, suggesting that an iPad refresh is likely on the horizon. The filings, uncovered by French website Consomac, are legally required for any devices with encryption sold in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia.

Two of the tablets have model numbers A1893 and A1954, which don’t correspond with any current iPad mini, iPad, or iPad Pro. There are also a handful of “sample” products listed that have model numbers starting with AA and CC, which is uncharacteristic, so it’s unclear what those listings may pertain to.

Recent rumors and logical guesswork suggest Apple could be planning an annual refresh of its lower-cost 9.7-inch iPad, introduced last March for $329 in the United States, while the iPad mini has also gone a few years without an update.

Eurasian Economic Commission listings via Consomac
A few months ago, supply chain informant DigiTimes claimed Apple is also planning to release an even cheaper 9.7-inch iPad for around $259 this year. The website also said Apple’s first new products of 2018 would be released in March, so next month is shaping up to see the arrival of at least one new budget iPad.

It’s unclear what changes the new 9.7-inch iPad would have, but given its price point, it will likely retain a classic design with top and bottom bezels and a home button with Touch ID, rather than Face ID. Any refresh is likely to be a relatively minor one, with a focus on performance improvements.

The current 9.7-inch iPad is powered by an Apple A9 chip, and features an 8-megapixel rear camera, 1.2-megapixel front camera, two speakers, Lightning connector, 3.5mm headphone jack, Touch ID, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.2. Unlike the iPad Pro, it lacks Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard support.

Given the 9.7-inch iPad is a niche product, a refresh could be announced via press release like last year. But with rumors swirling about a new iPhone SE, originally unveiled at a March 2016 event, perhaps Apple will have enough announcements on its docket to host a special event at Steve Jobs Theater.

Apple’s rumored iPad Pro with Face ID is more likely to be unveiled at WWDC 2018 in June, but the discontinued 9.7-inch iPad Pro debuted in March 2016, so there’s some precedence for an earlier introduction.

In the past, similar filings with the Eurasian Economic Commission have been submitted for the 10.5-inch iPad Pro and 12.9-inch iPad Pro, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, Apple Watch Series 2, AirPods, and MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models, all within one to two weeks before each product was released.

All in all, the listings suggest Apple will introduce new products of some kind in March for the fourth consecutive year.

Related Roundup: iPad (2017)Tag: Eurasian Economic CommissionBuyer’s Guide: iPad (Don’t Buy)
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Ride your backpack with the Movpak, an e-board that also stows your stuff

Two years ago, the folks behind Movpak managed to raise over $250,000 to bring their electric skateboard and backpack combination to life. Now, the team is ready to ship a new-and-improved version of the electric skateboard that takes portability to a whole new level to eager backers around the world.

You see, once you’re finished riding the Movpak, you won’t need to pick it up and tuck it under your arm. Rather, you’ll be able to simply fold it up into a backpack and go about your merry way. So whether you want to consider it a backpack you can ride or a skateboard you can wear, it seems like the perfect tool for your urban commute.

The backpack-board hybrid is ready to ship, and available for pre-order on the crowdfunding site. Of course, we still urge you to exercise caution when it comes to backing crowdfunding projects, but it does seem as though the Movpak is ready to make good on its delivery pledges. The Movpak that will be shipping now boasts a larger bag capacity than promised in the original campaign — at 35 liters, you’ll basically be able to transport the whole contents of your office to and fro should you so choose. Be warned, however, the Movpak is pretty heavy already — after all, it contains an e-board — weighing in at 16 pounds. So despite the roominess of the bag, you’ll probably want to pack light. 

Riding the Movpak is as easy as pulling a dedicated handle. From there, the board easily slides out, and using a companion remote, you’ll be able to control your speed and braking as you cruise down streets. In order to recharge the Movpak, just plug the charger into any standard outlet for a couple hours. The deck of the eboard is constructed with a combination of wood, metal, and Kevlar compounds, which promises to make the board simultaneously strong and flexible.

The Movpak is capable of traversing six miles on a single charge, at a top speed of 15 miles per hour, but thanks to new swappable batteries, you can double the range for longer commutes. There’s also an iOS and Android companion app that can help you track your Movpak in case it’s stolen. Built-in Bluetooth speakers will let you listen to your favorite playlist from any streaming service. so you can keep yourself entertained on your ride.

Promising to be airport friendly, the Movpak should fit into most overhead compartments on commercial flights, and also satisfies battery size limit restrictions. Thanks to its pull-out handle, you can easily roll the Movpak through an airport (or any other environment). We should point out, however, that while the Movpak is suitable for light rains or humid terrains, you shouldn’t ride it in heavy storms. The backpack itself is water repellent, so the contents of your Movpak should be quite safe.

The Movpak will set you back $899 on Indiegogo, and will begin shipping immediately. Once the campaign ends, the Movpak will retail for $1,190.

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Blink to click? Nanotube-coated tissue paper sensor can track eyeball movement

Dennis R. Wise/University of Washington

Engineers at the University of Washington have successfully created a new type of wearable sensor out of tissue paper, similar to toilet tissue, that’s capable of detecting a person’s pulse, the blink of an eye, and other human movements. The Band Aid-sized sensors are light, flexible, inexpensive — and demonstrate just how far removed today’s smart sensors are from the expensive bulky sensors that were needed to do the same job just a few years back.

“When tissue paper coated with carbon nanotubes is stretched by a designed length, the cellulose fibers coated with nanotubes are fractured and reoriented to form crossbar junctions near a crack,” Jinyuan Zhang, a graduate student who worked on the project, told Digital Trends. “The junctions create highly sensitive resistive and capacitive sensors. The resistive sensors can be used to measure strain, force, and pressure. The capacitive sensors can be used to measure force, pressure, and non-contact displacement. The sensors can [also] be used to measure heart beats, finger movement, eyeball movement, and other human behavior.”

The sensors change their functionality based on where they are placed on the body. To trace eye movement, for example, they can be attached to a user’s glasses.

Zhang said that they could be used in various applications, ranging from healthcare to gaming. In the case of healthcare, for instance, the team’s sensors could help diagnose brain damage by tracking functions like walking. The wearable sensors could also be used as input devices linked to specific functions — such as an eye blink being used as a remote control. In gaming, meanwhile, the sensor could be used to creative more intuitive input controls. For example, it would be possible to arrange it so that different signals are produced depending on how hard a person squeezes a controller. This could then trigger different effects, such as how far the ball is kicked in a soccer game.

“The next step of the research is to discover the potential of a tissue paper sensor in physical, chemical, and biological sensing, to develop prototypes for a gait sensor or an eyeball monitoring sensor, and to find a niche market where this sensor can be launched,” Zhang said. “My research group is currently working with Comotion at University of Washington to find a commercialization opportunity.”

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies.

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Infrasound microphones could predict volcano eruptions before they strike

Sound recording equipment is getting better all the time. Researchers from Boise State University, Stanford University, and Chile’s University of Concepcion have just found a new, very specific application for low-frequency microphones, however, potentially helping to predict the eruption of certain volcanoes around the world.

Their technology involves monitoring inaudible low frequencies, called infrasound, which are produced by a type of active volcano such as the Villarrica volcano in southern Chile.

“Many volcanoes produce energetic infrasound — not ultrasound — which is low-frequency sound that travels long distances through the atmosphere and can be recorded with specialized microphophones,” Jeffrey Johnson, an associate professor of geophysics at Boise State, told Digital Trends. “Although humans can’t perceive infrasound, it can be incredibly energetic.”

In the leadup to Villarrica’s March 3, 2015 eruption, which caused the evacuation of around 4,000 people from their homes, Johnson notes that the volcano was kicking out as much as 100,000 watts of acoustic power 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This infrasound was produced by the lava lake at the bottom of the crater, but its sound tone and quality were influenced by the shape of the crater, which acted like a giant musical horn. As the lava lake began to rise within the crater, the shape of this horn changed and, as a result, the character of the sound it produced.

Tracking this infrasound in real-time, using microphones similar to the ones custom-built and calibrated by the team at Boise State’s infrasound laboratory could help serve as a valuable early warning tool for potentially deadly eruptions. This monitoring might be carried out using tools such as machine-learning algorithms. It could be added to the existing volcano forecasting models, which analyze readings from seismometers, satellite remote sensing, and gas sensors. Similar volcanoes to Villarrica are located in Hawaii, South Pacific, Italy, Africa, and Central America.

“Our goal is to promote improved eruption forecasting, but not for commercial ends,” Johnson said. “This type of science is not driven for monetary profit, but for the goal of seeing science applied to issue timely warnings and — hopefully — mitigate the human impacts of eruptions.”

A paper describing the work, titled “Forecasting the eruption of an open-vent volcano using resonant infrasound tones,” was recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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All-female engineering team builds a solar-powered tent for the homeless

Leave it to the ladies to solve one of the most pressing issues in our society today — housing the homeless. An all-female team of high-school engineers from San Fernando High School in California have designed and created a solar-powered tent meant to protect the state’s homeless population from the elements.

The 12 remarkable young women were brought together by DIY Girls, a nonprofit that trains ladies from low-income communities in engineering, math, and science. While none of them had ever coded, soldered, sewn, or 3D printed before deciding to embark upon a mission to create this solar-powered tent, they quickly learned the necessary skills, and were awarded a $10,000 grant from the Lemelson-MIT Program to develop their invention. And this summer, the team will have the opportunity to present its tent at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as part of the university’s young inventors conference.

Thus far, there have been two prototypes of the tent made. The first has been completely destroyed, as the team tested it thoroughly to ensure that it was tough enough to withstand the great outdoors. The dozen budding engineers took turns tearing at it with a knife, pouring water on it, and stomping on it. The women have spent six days of every week working on their project, even during school breaks, and as Mashable reports, “They often come home after hours of sewing to find loose needles falling off their clothes.”

But to these 12 team members, the hours of work are well worth it. The homeless population in San Fernando has burgeoned by 36 percent in one year alone, and there are now over 7,000 people living in the streets of the Los Angeles suburb. “Because we come from low-income families ourselves, we can’t give them money,” Daniela Orozco, a high school senior and team member told Mashable. But now, Orozco and her friends may be offering something even better than a few dollars.

But aside from its potential to help the homeless, the tent has also opened new doors of possibility for the young engineers. “You’re learning new things you’ve never even heard of or even thought of,” Chelly Chavez, who learned the C++ programming language to improve the tent told Mashable. And as Paola Valtierra noted, “[There are] only two junior girls in our AP calculus class, which has way more guys than girls. But we’re gonna change that.”

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LED-studded ‘electronic skin’ monitors your health, makes you look like a cyborg

In many ways, the future of healthcare will depend on “self care,” or patients caring for their own health using all technologies at their disposal. That might mean scouring the internet for nutrition facts about a meal, strapping a fitness tracker to your wrist before a jog, or reviewing a doctor’s recommendations based on a DNA test. Either way, people who take hold of their health will tend to live healthier lives.

Around the world, researchers are developing wearables to put power in patients’ hands and help them monitor physiological conditions, from heart rate to blood alcohol level.

This “electronic skin” display uses nanomesh electrodes to pick up on electrical signals from the heart.

Now, a team of engineers from the University of Tokyo has developed an ultrathin, breathable, and stretchable display that can be worn directly on the skin. This “electronic skin” display uses nanomesh electrodes to pick up on electrical signals from the heart, allowing it to monitor cardiovascular health and display data for the patient to view in real time via micro LEDs. The data can also be transferred wirelessly to a smartphone.

“Global aging is widely perceived as one of the most significant risks to global prosperity,” Takao Someya, an engineer and head of the University of Tokyo’s Someya Research Group, who developed the display, told Digital Trends. “In order to find the possible solutions to this pressing issue, home healthcare system in which people are responsible for their own health is getting more and more important. To build a home healthcare system, we need to foster age-friendly accessibility to information.”

Many of these wearable sensors are either relatively narrow in their ability to collect biometric data or else a bit bulky to wear, but the goal is to develop these wearable sensors to be broad in scope and practically unnoticeable to wear. The displays developed by the Someya Research Group fits into the “narrow but not bulky” category, in that it serves as an electrocardiogram but attaches unobtrusively to the skin.

2018 Takao Someya Research Group

2018 Takao Someya Research Group

“Our skin display can be nicely fitted on the skin due to its stretchability,” Someya said. “It exhibits simple graphics with motion including an electrocardiogram waveform measured with our skin sensors. It is the first stretchable display to achieve superior durability and stability in air. We have combined skin sensors with skin displays. Skin sensors realize comfortable, accurate, and safe data collections, [while] skin displays achieve natural, intuitive, and safe feedback.”

Moving forward, the researchers will work to refine the performance and reliability of their wearable, including increasing its resolution and aiming to make it full color. But, with these challenges complete, Someya sees devices like his ushering in more accessible and empowering healthcare.

Researchers want devices like these
to usher in a more accessible and empowering healthcare.

“Skin electronics will enhance information accessibility for the elderly people or people with disabilities, who tend to have difficulty operating and obtaining data from existing devices,” he said. “The current aging society requires user-friendly wearable sensors for monitoring patient vitals in order to reduce the burden on patients and family members providing nursing care. Our system could serve as one of the long-awaited solutions to fulfill this need, which will ultimately lead to improving the quality of life.”

Someday presented his findings last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.

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Physicists create a new type of light, and it’s heavier than before

Remember the whole bit in Ghostbuster about “crossing the streams” when two or more proton streams converge to form a new kind of beam? Well, it turns out that a not dissimilar effect can be created when it comes to crossing over beams of light under certain conditions. OK, so it won’t destroy Gozer, but it may just lead to a revolution in quantum computing.

Ordinarily, crossing light streams (such as shining two flashlights so that they converge) does nothing out of the ordinary. This is because the individual light particles, aka photons, do not interact with one another. However, physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University have found a way to change that by forcing groups of up to three photons to bound together in a way that forms a completely new kind of photonic matter.

“In a vacuum or in regular materials, photons do not interact with each other, and mostly just pass through one another,” Vladan Vuletic, the Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics at MIT, told Digital Trends. “Using a laser-cooled atomic gas we have created a medium where one photon interacts very strongly with another — so strongly that they can, in fact, bind together, and travel together at a speed 100,000 times smaller than the regular speed of light in vacuum. We have found that not only can two photons bind together, but also three. This is analogous to two oxygen molecules forming molecular diatomic oxygen (O2), but also ozone (O3). This can be thought of as forming tiny droplets of light.”

Inventing a whole new type of light is pretty cool in its own right, but it may have practical application, too: Potentially in quantum computing.

“Light is very good for transporting information over long distances through fibers, but without interactions, light can only transport information, not do anything more interesting like computing,” Vuletic continued. “So a prerequisite for quantum computing using light is to induce interactions between photons, which we have done.”

A more easily realizable short-term goal than quantum computing is to make “optical transistors,” transistors where light directly switches light. These transistors could be potentially faster than a conventional transistor and may dissipate less power. However, Vuletic notes that this is still early days and that even this feat is technologically challenging.

“So far, we have only made attractive interactions between photons, but in many respects, repulsive interactions, where photons bounce off each other like little hard balls, are more interesting,” he said. “We have made first progress in this direction. Then we will try to make a single-photon optical transistor where one photon switches on or off a stronger light beam.”

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal Science.

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Jeff Bezos is building a giant mechanical clock that will run for 10,000 years

You may know Jeff Bezos best for sitting at the helm of Amazon, the e-commerce giant that is slowly but surely establishing full control over the entire world. But in a few millennia, we may know Bezos for something else — his role in building a 10,000-year clock. The executive has invested $42 million in this project, and it’s now being built inside a mountain in West Texas.

Installation has begun—500 ft tall, all mechanical, powered by day/night thermal cycles, synchronized at solar noon, a symbol for long-term thinking—the #10000YearClock is coming together thx to the genius of Danny Hillis, Zander Rose & the whole Clock team! Enjoy the video. pic.twitter.com/FYIyaUIbdJ

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) February 20, 2018

Standing 500 feet tall and deriving its power from the Earth’s thermal cycles, the 10 millenium clock is meant as a “symbol for long-term thinking,” Bezos said in a tweet. And while installation of the impressive piece of hardware has only just begun, the concept is actually quite well-established. In fact, the project was initially conceptualized by Danny Hillis (the founder of Thinking Machines Corporation) in 1989, nearly three decades ago.

As Bezos wrote in a blog post, “[Hillis] wanted to build a clock that ticks once a year, where the century hand advances once every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. The vision was, and still is, to build a clock that will keep time for the next 10,000 years.” For the last six or so years, Bezos has been involved in the project, and considering that building a clock within a remote mountain is a “big task,” it’s quite lucky that one of the world’s wealthiest individuals is now involved.

“As I see it, humans are now technologically advanced enough that we can create not only extraordinary wonders but also civilization-scale problems,” Bezos continued in his blog post. “We’re likely to need more long-term thinking.”

Thus far, there have been a few prototypes of the enormous clock built, but this version — which Hillis is designing and Bezos is funding — will be the first that will be functional on a full scale. For the last few years, the team has been making the parts of the machine and drilling into the mountain in order to begin laying the groundwork. And now, installation of the hardware has actually begun.

Theoretically, once the clock is finished, curious visitors will be able to check out the landmark, though you’ll have to really want to see it. As the website notes: “The nearest airport is several hours away by car,” and you’ll then have to traverse a foot trail around 2,000 feet above the valley floor. But seeing as you have at least 10,000 years to see this clock in action, there’s really no rush.

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Whatever you do, don’t mess with Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini robot

If the robot uprising starts anywhere, it’s going to be in Boston Dynamics’ workshop in Waltham, Massachusetts. And looking at the latest video from the team, it may have already begun.

It shows SpotMini, a dog-like robot first shown off in 2016 and improved upon with a new design in November last year. Earlier this month, Boston Dynamics unveiled version 3, featuring an extendable arm first seen with the original SpotMini but removed for the second iteration. The arm rises up from the top of its torso and is agile enough to open doors, an ability that will look cute to some though extremely worrying to those with darker thoughts about where this could all be leading.

A new video posted on Tuesday shows how this impressive four-legged robot deals with what Boston Dynamics describes as “disturbances.” A disturbance could be something like a terrified human using Elon Musk’s flamethrower to take on SpotMini, though in this particular case involves a calm engineer prodding it with a stick.

In the video, we see SpotMini once again trying to open a door. Despite the engineer’s efforts to stop it, the unflappable dog-bot remains very much focused on grabbing the handle.

There’s a bizarre moment where the man suddenly pulls a leash from its butt, a feature that appears to be a sort of kill switch, though if it is, it didn’t work very well. For whatever reason, the man drops the leash and the robot effortlessly opens the door before entering the neighboring office to (possibly) wreak havoc. The video fades before we hear any screams.

Boston Dynamics has released few details about SpotMini, preferring instead to scare the bejeezus out of anxious types by posting a series of short videos instead.

But this week’s clip does offer a little insight into its latest robotic effort. SpotMini, you’ll be pleased to learn, isn’t entirely autonomous (yet), as the video had an off-camera human with a remote controller guiding the robot to the door. However, when it reaches it, SpotMini flips into autonomous mode.

“A camera in the hand finds the door handle, cameras on the body determine if the door is open or closed and help navigate through the doorway,” the team explains in a message accompanying the video. “Controllers provide locomotion, balance and adjust behavior when progress gets off track. The ability to tolerate and respond to disturbances like these improves successful operation of the robot.”

The message ends with: “This testing does not irritate or harm the robot.” We’re not sure whether to take this as an animal welfare quip or as an ominous reference to SpotMini’s remarkable abilities.

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Qualcomm announces new AI Engine ahead of MWC 2018

The Snapdragon gets smarter.

Mobile World Congress 2018 will soon be underway, but a few short days before the convention officially kicks off, Qualcomm has announced its latest venture – the Qualcomm Artificial Intelligence Engine.

Referred to as the simpler “AI Engine”, this is a new platform that combines both hardware and software tools for more impressive AI experiences on mobile devices. Qualcomm’s AI Engine will support the Snapdragon 660, 820, and 835. The company’s latest 845 chipset will also support the new engine, and it’ll do so in addition to its own on-device AI processing.

On the software side of things, the Qualcomm AI Engine is made possible thanks to the Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine, Android Neural Networks API, and the Hexagon Neural Network. Speaking about this, Qualcomm’s Director of Product Management, Gary Brotman, said:

On-device AI demands multiple hardware architectures, software tools, and frameworks to meet developer demand and performance thresholds for the myriad of AI-powered features and apps arriving on smartphones this year. The AI Engine capabilities of select Snapdragon mobile platforms have and will continue to fuel AI innovation among our OEMs and ecosystem partners, engineered to result in the accelerated development and delivery of rich, seamless and compelling features for consumers.

Companies like Xiaomi, Motorola, OnePlus, and others have already been tapping into certain parts of the AI Engine for their products, and this has resulted in things like face unlock, scene detection, and bokeh portrait shots with just a single camera.

During this year’s MWC, Qualcomm will be demoing its AI Engine tech with demonstrations from Deep Portrait, Inner Magic, Animoji from Face++, and more.

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