2018 March 09 | AIVAnet

Mar

British Airways expands its biometric boarding gate trials in the US

British Airways is expanding its biometric boarding gate tests in the US. Last November, it began testing self-service boarding gates in Los Angeles Airport that don’t require customers to produce either their boarding pass or their passport. Instead, passengers only need to look into a camera, wait for their biometric data to be checked against their passport, visa or immigration photos and then walk onto the plane once their identity has been verified. So far, the US tests have been limited to those flying out of LAX on British Airways flights to Heathrow. But now, the self-service gates are also being tested in Orlando International Airport with customers flying to Gatwick as well as in New York’s JFK airport and Miami International Airport with passengers flying in to the US from Heathrow.

Passengers still have to produce their boarding pass and passport when going through check-in and security, but the biometric boarding gates eliminate the need to use the documents when boarding. British Airways says that in Los Angeles, the gates have allowed 400 passengers to board in 22 minutes, which is less than half of the time it typically takes. The company says that the technology, produced by SITA, uses facial identification systems similar to those on smartphones.

British Airways is far from the only company developing biometric systems for airports. JetBlue is running a similar trial that allows passengers to self-board without travel documents on flights from Boston to Aruba. And last year, Delta began trying out facial recognition systems for checking luggage and using fingerprints instead of boarding passes. Dubai International Airport is working on a tunnel equipped with facial recognition cameras and iris scanners that would eliminate the need for travel documents and both Australia and the US are interested in wider applications of biometric systems in airports.

“Our latest trial with SITA in Orlando is helping us to reduce the time it takes to board our aircraft, and early indications are that using biometrics for arrivals has huge potential too,” Carolina Martinoli, British Airways’ director of brand and customer experience, said in a statement. “These trials will help us to evolve the technology and processes we use to best suits the needs of our customers.”

Source: British Airways

Mar

August’s smart doorbells now include 24 hours of video recording

Video doorbells are great for spotting visitors, but their live footage only goes so far. What if you don’t pay extra for cloud storage and miss an important guest, or (perish the thought) a burglar? With August, at least, that shouldn’t be an issue — it’s giving 24 hours of free cloud video to Doorbell Cam and Doorbell Cam Pro owners. This won’t help much if you go on a vacation or need to keep footage for evidence’s sake, but it could help you catch a lazy courier or give police a snapshot to work with.

Naturally, August is hoping you’ll pay for a Premium Video Recording subscription ($5 per month or $50 per year) if you want more than a day’s worth of archival clips.

There’s no question that this is a competitive move. Amazon just acquired Ring, whose smart doorbells require $3 per month if you want to save any video in the cloud (albeit for a longer 60-day window). August is betting that it can fight its newly strengthened rival by giving you a freebie that might lead to a subscription down the road. Not that there’s too much reason to complain — this gives you at least some kind of buffer even if you can’t justify a recurring fee.

Source: August

Mar

‘Octopath Traveler’ heads to Nintendo Switch on July 13th

Square Enix’s gorgeous new game, Octopath Traveler, is arriving on the Nintendo Switch very soon. Nintendo has revealed at today’s Direct stream that the game developed by the same people behind the critically acclaimed RPG series Bravely Default will be available on July 13th. The game giant has also introduced two new characters you can play as in the epic RPG: a merchant named Tressa, who can acquire new items from just about anyone, and Alfyn the apothecary, who has the ability to dig for more information than any of the other characters can.

Nintendo has also revealed that a special “Wayfarer” edition will be available at launch along with the regular edition. Like all other special edition releases, Wayfarer will come with some extra goodies, including a soundtrack CD, a pop-up book, a cloth map of the game world and a replica of the coin used in the game. Octopath Traveler features hand-drawn, pixel art and CGI elements and looks sort of like an upgraded PS1 era RPG with more shadows and depth. Square Enix calls the art style “HD-2D,” and you can see it for yourself in the video above.

Source: Nintendo

Mar

Lawmakers discussing proposal that would allow cops to take over drones

Should law enforcement have the authority to disable a drone that’s breaking the law or posing a security threat? That’s the question Washington is considering with potential legislation, Bloomberg reports.

The proposal is not yet complete, but Michael Kratsios, a U.S. technology officer inside the Trump administration, said that a proposal is currently in progress. The bill is focused on security as drone technology continues to progress. The proposal would address civilian drones. Another official, who chose to remain unnamed, says that several groups are working on the legislation, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.

While few details are available until the discussion creates an actual bill, the legislation would likely address laws already on the books. Laws that prohibit wiretapping, for example, prevent law enforcement from using existing technology such as signal jammers to take over a drone’s controls or land the UAV. Another possibility is allowing those same groups to use drone monitoring programs. The discussion is said to include both law enforcement agencies and security companies.

The discussion isn’t the first to look into safety and security as the drone market expands — Bloomberg says a similar proposal was suggested last year but nothing came of the plan. Since then, a helicopter reportedly had to make a crash landing after veering to avoid a drone and hitting a tree. The FAA confirmed the accident but did not confirm if a drone was involved in the incident earlier this year.

The FAA is also working on drone safety legislation, including a proposal that would require consumer drones to broadcast their positions, allowing law enforcement to track drones.

Currently, drone owners are required to register their UAV with the FAA, while stricter guidelines for commercial flights require testing and certification. Existing drone laws also create no-fly zones, including airports.

The bill is one of several suggestions presented as drone use continues to grow. Drone giant DJI itself has proposed an “invisible” license plate system that allows law enforcement to access the drone’s information. Because the program uses numbers rather than names, the idea would offer some privacy in keeping that data away from average citizens. The number would be transmitted using radio controls that are already built into most drones.

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Mar

Vision-improving nanoparticle eyedrops could end the need for glasses

Eric Audras/Getty Images

Could the development of eyesight-improving eyedrops help eliminate the need for glasses? Quite possibly, suggests new research coming out of Israel’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Bar-Ilan University. A team of ophthalmologists at these institutes have invented and tested “nanodrops” which, combined with a laser process, reportedly results in improvements in both short- and long-sightedness. Clinical testing in humans is set to take place later in 2018.

“The invention includes three parts,” Zeev Zalevsky, professor of electrical engineering and nanophotonics at Bar-Ilan University, who worked on the project, told Digital Trends.

The first of these steps involves an app on the patient’s smartphone or mobile device which measures their eye refraction. A laser pattern is then created and projected onto the corneal surface of the eyes. This surgical procedure takes less than one second. Finally, the patient uses eyedrops containing what Zalevsky describes as “special nanoparticles.”

“These nanoparticles go into the shallow ablated patterns generated on the surface of the cornea,” he explained. “They change the refraction index inside of those patterns. This corrects the visual problem the user has. The process of correction can be done at home without the need of a medical doctor.”

Zalevsky said that the treatment differs substantially from regular laser eye surgery, which removes a significant portion of the cornea, the transparent layer which forms the front of the eye. In the new process, only the upper part of the cornea is affected. The benefit of this approach is that, not only does it mean that the treatment can be safely carried out in a patient’s home without medical supervision, but that it should prove effective for far more patients.

The downside of the approach is that, because it is a milder treatment, the eye will gradually heal itself, which means that the improvements will subside. As a result, patients would need to repeat the process every one to two months in order to maintain their superior eyesight.

So far, the team has carried out ex-vivo experiments on pig eyes. These tests demonstrated improvements for both myopia and presbyopia, meaning short and long-sightedness. “We showed that … the nanoparticles went into the surface patterns and that without them no correction is obtained,” Zalevsky said. “We are now raising funds in order to commercialize this technology from Bar-Ilan University. We intend to finish in-vivo tests within one year and I hope that within two years the product may be available [on] the market.”

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Mar

Genetic engineering innovation makes plants more efficient at using water

Somnuk Krobkum/Getty Images

The world population is growing rapidly, and that signals big challenges when it comes to how best to feed and fuel everyone our planet has to support. Already agriculture uses 90 percent of the world’s freshwater supply, but this will need to be stretched even further as Earth’s population increases. Fortunately, genetic engineering may be able to help. In work aided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with other institutions, researchers have been able to improve the efficiency of how crops use water by 25 percent — without compromising their yield in the process.

“Although large improvements have been [made] genetically in the yield potential of crops and their drought tolerance, breeding has not improved the amount of water required to make a ton of a given crop,” Stephen Long, director of the RIPE (Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency) project, told Digital Trends. “More productivity has meant more water use, putting ever increasing demands on water use in irrigation, demands that will grow with increasing productivity.”

As Long points out, this balancing act is playing out around the world, including in California’s Central Valley, where in many years a choice has to be made between allowing production of crops on farms and providing sufficient water for the needs of the state’s cities. An even more notable example may be Cape Town, South Africa, a city which has this year come within weeks of running out of water.

The genetic engineering process the researchers employed involved up-regulating the amount of photosynthetic protein produced by a specific gene in the plant by integrating additional copies of the gene into its DNA. This essentially “tricked” the plant into partially closing its stomata, referring to the microscopic pores in the leaf which release water.

In their study, the team tested this hypothesis using tobacco crops, since these are easier to modify and quicker to test than other crops. However, because the gene being altered is found in every plant, this discovery could be applicable to a vast number of crops.

“A unique feature of this work is that we showed it to work in a crop in real-world trials on farmland, not just in the laboratory,” Long continued. “The next step will be to place this in the crops that the Gates Foundation, Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research, and U.K. Aid care about: cowpea, the largest vegetable protein source in sub-Saharan Africa, soybean, cassava and rice – and test these crops.”

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Mar

Guard your Galaxy with the best Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus screen protectors

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus represent the pinnacle of what Samsung has been building toward for the better part of a decade. They combine stunning design with equally stunning specs and a display to die for. Everything that was wrong with the Galaxy S8 has been fixed — and a brand new, incredible camera thrown into the bargain.

But for all that, there’s little doubt that they’ll both come off worse if they hit a sidewalk too hard. That’s why we’ve found you the tools to make sure your new Galaxy smartphone can survive its innings. We’ve already compiled the best S9 cases and S9 Plus cases to keep your phone safe, but what about your display? We’ve found the best Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus screen protectors to make sure that your huge AMOLED screen stays free of cracks and scratches. So whether you’re looking for a soft film or hard tempered glass, we’ve found some of the best options for you.

Spigen Neo Flex Film Screen Protector — Twin Pack ($9)

Where better to start this round-up than with one of Spigen‘s film screen protectors? This film protector applies wet to the screen, reducing the chance of a rainbow effect or trapped bubbles, and it bends around the curved screen on the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus to ensure thorough coverage. It’s fully case compatible, so if you’re combining this with one of Spigen’s cases then you don’t need to worry about the edges being lifted off, and the self-healing properties will allow it to heal from any minor impacts. It’s not glass, so it’s not the hardest of protection, but it will resist scratches, and make sure dirt stays away from your screen. Even better — it’s a twin pack, so you can easily replace the first if it gets mucky.