RFID-Based Robots Come to the Rescue

The RFID Journal reports that German researchers have 'developed a system enabling robots and humans to use passive RFID tags to map out a disaster area and send information to a command center':

As teams of rescue workers moved throughout New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck that area in August 2005, they frequently wrote codes on buildings to inform groups arriving behind them of important information, or to help those disoriented by the rubble realize they had already been to a particular site. For instance, the codes revealed whether a building was dangerous, or safe or contained rubble. Researchers in Germany's Black Forest region have developed an RFID extension of this coding system. Their RFID-supported urban search-and-rescue concept features robots and humans working together in disaster zones to map an affected area and transmit information to a command center.

Read original article - 'RFID-Based Robots Come to the Rescue'
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A New Vision for Second Life

Popular and well-known virtual world Second Life (which I have often blogged about here) has announced that a new CEO - Mark Kingdon - will be taking over in mid-May. Here are extracts from a recent interview with TechReview:

Mark Kingdon: I'm spending a lot more time in-world now. I'm still in that place where I'm surveying the landscape, because it's pretty vast, and I'm collecting experiences that are amazing. It's just mind-blowing that this is all user-generated content. I haven't yet created anything myself other than clothing, but I think that's the next step for me because I like to make things.

TR: Creating things seems like a Second Life rite of passage.

MK: That's definitely the story of Second Life. Once you cross that magical "Aha!" place, it becomes very compelling.

TR: A lot of new users seem to have trouble getting to that place. They get confused by the controls, and aren't sure what to do inside the world. Do you have any thoughts about how to make it easier to get started?

MK: I've got a lot of background in the kind of user-centered design work that's going to be important for Second Life, especially as you look at the first-hour experience. I haven't come to any specific conclusions yet, but I think it starts with understanding what the resident needs in order to make a powerful experience, and looking at the kinds of people that you want to attract and bring in-world. The answers will emerge very clearly from that.

Read full article & interview - 'A New Vision for Second Life'
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Europe launches sat-nav tester

BBCNews writes on the latest developments to Europe's proposed Galileo satellite navigation system, which has just launched from Kazakhstan:

The Giove-B satellite was taken into space atop a Soyuz rocket which left Earth at 2216 GMT, Saturday. The demonstrator will test the key technologies which will eventually be built into the 30 operational platforms that form the Galileo network.

These include the atomic clocks which provide the precise timing that underpins all sat-nav applications.

Giove-B - a half-tonne, 2.4x1x1m box assembled by EADS Astrium and Thales Alenia Space - is the second demonstrator satellite to go into orbit following the launch of Giove-A in 2005. The first mission met international obligations to claim the frequencies Galileo will use to transmit its signals to receivers on the ground.

This second mission flies a spacecraft which is, to a large degree, a template for the 30 operational platforms that will follow.

Read article in full - 'Europe launches sat-nav tester'
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Galactic Spaceport in Europe

The town Kiruna in Northern Sweden has been chosen to be the future European base for Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic passenger space program:

Officials there are busy whipping the town into shape for Virgin's arrival -- evaluating their infrastructure, researching weather issues, and working out potential regulatory hurdles with Sweden and the European Union. Kiruna will join Spaceport America in New Mexico as a Virgin Galactic operating base, and hopes to see flights begin in 2010 or 2011...

...One of the town's major selling points is its stunning views of the Aurora Borealis, which could be viewed up close by passengers on board a spacecraft such as Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo.

Read more at 'Swedish City Gears Up For Virgin Galactic Spaceport'
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City road networks grow like biological systems

NewScientistTech has an interesting article discussing the similarity of road networks to biological networks:

French Atomic Energy Commission and Indiana University scientists have developed a simple mathematical model that can recreate the characteristic leaf-like patterns in city roads.

They say the patterns evolve thanks to similar local efforts, as people try to connect houses, businesses and other infrastructures to existing roads.

Likewise, evolution has ensured that local efficiency also drives the growth of transport networks in biology -- for example, in plant leaf veins and circulatory systems.

The approach could help city planners to better predict how some street networks will evolve and to plan accordingly.

Read original article here
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Blogging as the digital-era sweatshop

Now here's a subject I can sympathise with - the over-worked blogger! I mean, the digital 'always-on' environment has created a new work schedule, hasn't it??

There is a story about bloggers today in the New York Times in which part of the lede is the heart attack deaths in recent months of two bloggers. A main theme of the story is the pressure bloggers experience. Not everyone who blogs is under excessive pressure, but those are who fit this description of the blogger types the article covers:

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

There is a story about bloggers today in the New York Times in which part of the lede is the heart attack deaths in recent months of two bloggers. A main theme of the story is the pressure bloggers experience. Not everyone who blogs is under excessive pressure, but those are who fit this description

Read more via - 'A view of blogging as the digital-era sweatshop'

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Connecting with the Dead

Here's a new one - and another inventive use of technology from the Japanese:

A Japanese tombstone maker, Ishinokoe, has started putting the little square, black and white barcodes behind small, lockable doors on gravestones, allowing relatives of the deceased to access information and pictures about them, and even upload their own contributions. It will supposedly give people a way of staying “in touch” with the dead. Like a sort of gravestone based, family fueled, wiki of the dead.

The bar codes are not new in Japan, in fact, they’re regularly used to upload road maps to mobile phones, printed on the back of business cards, and even on restaurant brochures. But Ishinokoe wants to honour the dead by making their graves not just dreary, sad places containing the deceased’s remains, but a place where families can access good memories from when their loved one was alive.

Friends and relatives can use their mobiles to upload holiday snaps, poems, anecdotes and a whole host of information, that will then be accessible to others with authority to access the code.
The dead cool barcoded stones will be on sale from next month, but they don’t come cheap...

Read more at 'Barcodes on tombs to connect with the dead'
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The City is the Solution: The EcoCity World Summit

Worldchanging has some feedback from one of its representatives from the EcoCity World Summit:

The conference’s co-convener, Richard Register, President of EcoCity Builders, explains that cities are "directly connected to the state of the planet’s environment as well as to local problems and solutions, both ecological and economic."...

...Inspiration, energy, and a renewed sense of hope are running high as some of the world’s foremost leaders in the transformation toward sustainable urban development share their success stories, strategies, and insights. Richard Register framed the dialogue by asserting that cities could run on a fraction of the energy – and generate a fraction of the ecological impact – that they currently do if they were really well-designed, lean, and efficient. For Register, an essential question in fulfilling this mission is, "Where do innovative ideas come from?"

Last night’s keynote address was given by Jaime Lerner, former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, which is widely renowned as one of the most successful models for sustainable urban design and planning. For Lerner, innovation is simply starting.

Read more at 'The City is the Solution: The EcoCity World Summit'
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Border Agency plans Olympic identity card

The Register reports that the Border Agency is developing a 'pretty inclusive and far reaching' Olympic accreditation card for the 2012 games:

The card will provide access to both the county and to the venues, chief executive Lin Homer told the Secure Document World conference in London on 23 April 2008.

When asked by GC News about the extent of the card's use, Homer said the agency was "in the fairly early stages" of developing it. But she added: "To the extent that we can develop a system that ticks as many boxes as we can, we will do that.

"My hope it that it will be a pretty inclusive and far reaching offering, but we have still got a little bit of time and a lot of work," she added, describing the project as an opportunity to develop processes that can then be used permanently.

Homer said Project Semaphore, the forerunner of the e-Borders scheme which will eventually record extensive data on all international passenger movements, has led to 1,700 arrests. The agency will start procurement of e-Borders this summer.

The agency has no plans to verify the biometrics of everyone entering and leaving the UK. "I don't think as a key public service we would want to oblige (the use of) biometrics," she said.

Read in full - 'Border Agency plans Olympic identity card'
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Electric Cars Primer

TechReview has a piece on hybrids, plug-ins, and extended-range electric cars that are hitting the market and offers an interactive primer to learn how they work:

Hybrids such as Toyota's Prius have become a common sight. Now major automakers are proposing a next generation of hybrids that can be plugged in to extend their electric range and vastly improve fuel economy. This interactive graphic shows how conventional hybrids work, as well as how two versions of these proposed plug-in hybrids, one labeled "Plug-in Hybrid" and the other "Extended-Range Electric," work. Each of these plug-in hybrids operates differently when the battery is charged versus when it is largely depleted. Click on one of the five buttons above to view animations of how the vehicles operate under different driving conditions. Each vehicle operates during a stylized drive cycle, starting at low speeds, accelerating to highway speeds, and then decelerating to a stop. If at any time you'd like to pause the animation or select a different part of the drive cycle, click on the appropriate section of the graph at the bottom right of the graphic.

Read in full and go to interactive primer - 'Electric Cars Primer'
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Urban food deserts in major cities

This article examines the rise of food deserts in major cities - places in urban areas where people have low or no access to food shops:

Canadian researchers at the University of Western Ontario have studied the evolution of food deserts in urban areas. Food deserts are areas where people have low or no access to food shops. In other words, they are neighburhoods with low average home incomes and poor access to healthy food. As said the lead researcher, 'Poor people with no car can be severely adversely affected by living in food deserts and are more likely to suffer from bad health and low quality of life with diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.' But what is the major cause of food desertification? Supermarkets, because they are built in new suburbs while smaller food shops are disappearing from city centers. But read more...

Think how this situation will be exacerbated by the current rise in food prices, as well as falling supplies?


Read article - 'Urban food deserts in major cities'

From - Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends

Cars should plug-in to a new future

The WWF have just released a report that claims a 'dramatically expanded use of plug-in electric and hybrid vehicles would be a way to a transport future that doesn't risk climate catastrophe':

Such a move would also reduce the risk of conflict over less oil more and more concentrated in relatively unstable areas of the world.

Plugged In: The End of the Oil Age considers the future of a transport sector now 95 per cent dependent on liquid hydrocarbon fuels and examines the impacts and practicalities of electric, coal-to-liquid, gas-to-liquid, natural gas and hydrogen powered transport for the future

It finds that vehicles running solely or partly on grid-connected electricity are more efficient and less greenhouse gas intensive than all alternatives, even with most power now being generated using fossil fuels.

Go to main site

• Plugged-in: The end of the oil age - summary [pdf, 618 KB]
• Plugged-in: The end of the oil age - Full report [pdf, 1.90 MB]

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Face scans for air passengers to begin in UK

The Guardian newspaper has a revealing story on howface scans for air passengers are to begin in UK, with trials conducted this summer at UK airports:

From summer, unmanned clearance gates will be phased in to scan passengers' faces and match the image to the record on the computer chip in their biometric passports.

Border security officials believe the machines can do a better job than humans of screening passports and preventing identity fraud. The pilot project will be open to UK and EU citizens holding new biometric passports...

...The trials emerged at a conference in London this week of the international biometrics industry, top civil servants in border control, and police technology experts. Gary Murphy, head of operational design and development for the UK Border Agency, told one session: "We think a machine can do a better job [than manned passport inspections]. What will the public reaction be? Will they use it? We need to test and see how people react and how they deal with rejection. We hope to get the trial up and running by the summer.

Read in full - 'Face scans for air passengers to begin in UK'
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China becomes world's largest Internet population

Reuters have announced that China has now become the world's largest Internet population:

China has surpassed the United States to become the world's largest Internet-using population, reaching 221 million by the end of February, state media said on Thursday.

The number of Internet users in China was 210 million at the end of last year, only 5 million fewer than the U.S. Internet users then, Xinhua news agency said, quoting the China Internet Network Information Centre.

Read more - 'China becomes world's largest Internet population'
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US to spy on British motorists

The UK newspaper The Telegraph has a worrying article about how private data taken by roadside cameras in the UK may be sent abroad, specifically to the US for data-mining:

The discovery that images of cars captured on road-side cameras, and "personal data" derived from them, including number plates, can be sent overseas, has angered MPs and civil liberties groups concerned by the increasing use of "Big Brother" surveillance tactics.

	Images of private cars, as well as registration numbers, could be sent outside to countries such as the USA

Yesterday, politicians and civil liberties groups accused the Home Secretary of keeping the plans to export pictures secret from Parliament when she announced last year that British anti-terrorism police could access "real time" images from cameras used in the running of London's congestion charge.

A statement by Miss Smith to Parliament on July 17, 2007, detailing the exemptions for police from the 1998 Data Protection Act, did not mention other changes that would permit material to be sent outside the European Economic Area (EEA) to the authorities in the US and elsewhere.

Her permission to do so was hidden away in an earlier "special certificate" signed by the Home Secretary on July 4.

Read in full - 'New anti-terrorism rules 'allow US to spy on British motorists''
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This week in 1960: Lancaster bypass

An anniversary for Lancaster! This short article reports how the Lancaster bypass was completed this week 60 years ago:

It Is hard to imagine a time when the UK wasn't criss-crossed with congested motorways.

But less than 50 years ago, if you wanted to travel the length and breadth of the country, you had to do so on single-carriageway roads.

Here The Engineer reported on the completion of the Lancaster Bypass, an 11.5-mile stretch of road by-passing the city of Lancaster, and forming a small part of what eventually became the UK's longest motorway, the M6. Further South, motorists were already able to sample the delights of 'motor-road' driving on the Preston bypass, an eight-mile stretch of road that was the first length of motorway in the country.

It was, reported the magazine, a considerable engineering challenge. 'the road climbs to a maximum height of about 300ft above sea level, with views over the sea and the Lakeland hills. The highest embankment is just over 40ft, and the deepest cut about 30ft. The total quantity of excavation was about 1.7 million cubic yards, including over 160,000 cubic yards of peat.'

Original article - 'This week in 1960: Lancaster bypass'
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Mobilities Journal

Recently there was the AAG reception for the Mobilities Journal (pictured) in Boston, US.

According to our accounts the journal had a good reception and picked up a few more subscribers. Mind you, the journal is always on the look-out for good and innovative papers.

Areas of Interest

Papers in the following areas would be considered for publication in Mobilities:

• Travel and communications
• Migration, diasporas & families
• Tourism and business travel
• Mobile risks
• New social networks
• Transportation & communication technologies
• Mobilities and new social exclusions

For more information contact Managing Editor Pennie Drinkall

VR study says 40% of us are paranoid

This post from Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends reports that:

UK researchers have recently used virtual reality (VR) to check if people had paranoid thoughts when using public transportation. Their VR tube ride experiment revealed that 40% of the participants experienced exaggerated fears about threats from others. Until now, researchers were relying on somewhat unreliable questionnaires to study paranoid thoughts which are often triggered by ambiguous events such as someone laughing behind their back. With the use of VR, psychiatrists and psychologists have a new tool which can reliably recreates social interactions. As said the lead researcher, VR 'is a uniquely powerful method to detect those liable to misinterpret other people.' But read more...

Read in full - 'VR study says 40% of us are paranoid'
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Social networking sites to go 3D

NewScientistTech reports on the potential move to make social networking sites go three-dimensional:

Start-up company Vivaty of Menlo Park, California, is creating a hybrid of conventional social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace and virtual worlds like Second Life. Rather than filling a web page with photos, a list of hobbies and their favourite software applications, as users of Facebook do today, Vivaty users will get access to a virtual room. They can adorn the walls with photos, watch a virtual television that plays YouTube or invite friends over to join them.

Instead of chatting by sending each other messages, Vivaty users will be able to speak "in person" via 3D avatars. Vivaty will be offered to Facebook users this year.

Read 'Social networking sites to go 3D' (subscription required)
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Belfast to get rapid transit network

BBCNews reports on how Belfast will become home to a new bus-based rapid transit network:

Belfast cannot justify the cost of a light rail system, like the Luas in Dublin, to ease traffic congestion, commuters are being told. Instead, a report by the Department for Regional Development, said a high class bus-based network could cut commuting times while costing significantly less.

Regional Development Minister Conor Murphy said a new bus network for Belfast was affordable and realistic. Northern Ireland taxpayers now look set to invest more than £100m...

...Three pilot routes are suggested, running from Dundonald in the east to the city centre, to one serving the development in Titanic Quarter and onwards to Queen's University and the City Hospital and thirdly one into the west from the city centre to the Royal Victoria Hospital and beyond into west Belfast.

Officials are stressing that the three routes represent a start. Further lines could be added in the future.

Read article - 'City to get rapid transit network'
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