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When people talk about the next-generation of computers, they're usually referring to one of two things: quantum computers – devices that will have exponentially greater processing power thanks to the addition of quantum superposition to the binary code – and optical computers, which will beam data at the speed of light without generating all the heat and wasted energy of traditional electronic computers.


Scientists have discovered a material that could create quantum optical computers | techupz

Both of those have the power to revolutionise computing as we know it, and now scientists at the University of Technology, Sydney have discovered a material that has the potential to combine both of those abilities in one ridiculously powerful computer of the future. Just hold on for a second while we freak out over here.
The material is layered hexagonal boron nitride, which is a bit of a mouthful, but all you really need to know about it is that it's only one atom thick – just like graphene – and it has the ability to emit a single pulse of quantum light on demand at room temperature, making it ideal to help build a quantum optical computer chip.
Until now, room-temperature quantum emitters had only worked in a chunky, 3D material such as diamonds, which were never going to be easy to integrate onto computer chips. 
"This material – layered hexagonal boron nitride (boron and nitrogen atoms that are arranged in a honeycomb structure) – is rather unique," said one of the researchers, Mike Ford. "It is atomically thin and is traditionally used as a lubricant; however upon careful processing we discovered that it can emit quantised pulses of light – single photons that can carry information.
"That’s important because one of the big goals is to make optical computer chips that can operate based on light rather than electrons, therefore operating much faster with less heat generation," he added.
So how does a pulse of light work with quantum computing? In a traditional computer system, photons – particles of light – can be used to store information by being in either vertical or horizontal polarisation.
But they can also be turned into quantum bits (or qubits) by being put into superposition – a unique quantum state where they're in both vertical and horizontal polarisation at the same time. That's a big deal for security, and also processing power.
"You can create very secure communication systems using single photons,"explained team member Igor Aharonovich. "Each photon can be employed as a qubit (quantum bit, similarly to standard electronic bits), but because one cannot eavesdrop on single photons, the information is secure."
Best of all, the material just happens to also be cheap and easy to make, which means that it could be easily scaled up.
"This material is very easy to fabricate," said PhD student Trong Toan Tran. "It’s a much more viable option because it can be used at room temperature; it’s cheap, sustainable and is available in large quantities."
"Ultimately we want to build a 'plug and play' device that can generate single photons on demand, which will be used as a first prototype source for scalable quantum technologies that will pave the way to quantum computing with hexagonal boron nitride," he added.
The research has been published in Nature Nanotechnology. Now all we really want to know is whether the new material would also work with Li-Fi. If that's the case, our future is pretty much set.
UTS Science is a sponsor of ScienceAlert. Find out more about their research.

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This article was written by Geoff Smith from the University of Bath. It was originally published by The Conversation.
This week, 14-year-old Lucas Etter set a new world record for solving the classic Rubik’s cube in Clarksville, Maryland, in the US, solving the scrambled cube in an astonishing 4.904 seconds. The maximum number of face turns needed to solve the classic Rubik’s cube - one that is segmented into squares laid out 3x3 on each face - is 20, and the maximum number of quarter turns is 26.
It took 30 years to discover these numbers, which were finally proved by Tomas Rokicki and Morley Davidson using a mixture of mathematics and computer calculation. The puzzle does have 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (43 times 1018, or 43 quintillion) possible configurations after all.
So how do the likes of Lucas Etter work out how to solve Rubik’s cube so quickly? They could read instructions, but that rather spoils the fun. If you want to work out how to do it yourself, you need to develop cube-solving tools. In this sense, a tool is a short sequence of turns which results in only a few of the individual squares on the cube’s faces changing position. When you have discovered and memorised enough tools, you can execute them one after the other in order as required to return the cube to its pristine, solved condition.
These tools require experimentation to discover. Here’s how I did it myself: go on holiday with a Rubik’s cube and a screwdriver. Do experiments to find tools. The trouble is that most experiments just scramble the cube horribly and you forget what you did so you cannot undo your moves.
Now you have a choice, either buy another Rubik’s cube, or take out your trusty screwdriver. Turn one face through 45 degrees, and place the screwdriver under a central piece of the rotated face. Using the screwdriver as a lever to gently prise it out, it’s then easy to take the cube apart completely and reassemble it in pristine form.
The final move of reassembly will be the reverse of the screwdriver trick: rotate one face 45 degrees and apply gentle pressure to put the final piece back in place.
It’s a common problem. tangi_bertin, CC BY-SA
Sequences of moves of a cube form something that mathematicians call a group. If A is a sequence of moves, then let A-1 (that’s “A inverse”) be the same sequence of moves performed in reverse. So if you perform A and then A-1, the cube will be in the same state as was it when you began. The same is true if you first perform A-1 followed by A.
Now suppose that B is another sequence of moves. Many tools have the form of what mathematicians call a commutator: do A, then B, then A-1 and finally B-1. If Aand B commute, so that performing A then B is the same as doing B then A, then the commutator does nothing. From a mathematical point of view, a commutator measures failure to commute, and is a key notion in group theory. When I had a Rubik’s cube in one hand, and a screwdriver in the other, it was natural to look at how commutators behave.
Think of the overall structure of the different configurations of a Rubik’s cube as a labyrinth, which has that many chambers, each of which contains a Rubik’s cube in the state which corresponds to that chamber. From each chamber there are 12 doors leading to other chambers, each door corresponding to a quarter turn of one of the six faces of a cube. The type of turn needed to pass through each door is written above it, so you know which door is which. Your job is to navigate your way from a particular chamber to the one where the cube on the table is in perfect condition.
The tools that you have discovered are ways of getting nearer to the goal. So you don’t need to plan your route in advance, you just execute the rotations of each tool so that you get steadily closer to and finally reach the winning chamber. The mathematical result in Rokicki and Davidson’s paper shows that, no matter where you are in the labyrinth, it’s possible to reach the winning chamber by passing through at most 26 doors - although the route you find using your tools is not likely to be that efficient.
How to put this to use to solve the cube in 5 seconds? Someone like young Lucas Etta who is interested in speed solutions will not only have memorised a large number of tools, they’ll also have practised them until they can perform it very quickly. This is mostly a matter of dexterity and practice, but it’s also important to have a high-quality cube that can be manipulated smoothly and with great precision.
Others, rather than going for speed, develop the skill of solving Rubik’s cube while blindfolded or with the cube held behind their back. In the competitive version of this variation, the solver is given a limited amount of time to study the scrambled cube and plan their solution, before they have to carry out their solution from memory without looking at the cube again.
In terms of our metaphor of a labyrinth, this corresponds to all the Rubik’s cubes in all the chambers being removed, except for the one on which you start. You can’t take that cube with you, but you can study it carefully and plan your whole route to the winning chamber in advance. Quite a feat of memory, and not for those with just a passing interest in the cube.
The ConversationGeoff Smith, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics, University of Bath.
This article was originally published by The Conversation. Read the original article.
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Self-destructing in 3…2…1. Boom!


A new technology can make computer chips self-destruct when remotely triggered. The new method uses silicon computer wafers attached to a piece of tempered glass that shatters into smithereens when heated in one spot.
The heat can be turned on via a remote, which in the future could conceivably be triggered by anything from Wi-Fi to a radiofrequency signal, said Gregory Whiting, a materials scientist and manager of the Novel Electronics Group that produced the chip at PARC, a Xerox company. The self-destructing chip was on display last month at DARPA's "Wait, What? Technology Forum" in St. Louis. [


Tempered glass
The team was initially inspired to make self-destructing electronics that could be built with off-the-shelf products, Whiting said. The researchers considered a number of methods of destruction, from vaporization to dissolving, but "we approached this from the idea of, 'Could we take an off-the-shelf chip, if you like, and, without doing too much to it, could we make it become transient?'" Whiting told Live Science.
The team came upon the idea of tempered glass, an extra strength material also known as safety glass. Normally, people temper glass by cooling the edges: The glass exterior shrinks, putting the exterior into compression while the warmer interior maintains incredible tensile stress.
Though the glass is stronger than normal, "if you break a piece ofsafety glass, it kind of explodes, shatters explosively into little pieces," Whiting said.
Because glass is a poor temperature conductor, the heat-tempering process only works with pieces of glass that are at least 0.03 inches (1 millimeter) thick, whereas producing tiny particles requires thinner materials.
As such, the team used a different method, called ion exchange, to temper the glass. The researchers started with a thin piece of glass that was rich in sodium ions, or atoms of sodium with one electron stripped off. They then put the glass into a hot bath of potassium nitrate. Potassium ions then try to swap places with the sodium ions, but because the heftier potassium ions must squeeze into place within thesilicon matrix, this creates enormous tension in the glass, Whiting said.
The new method allows people to either attach silicon wafers directly to the glass, or fabricate the two together. (The final chip looks like a piece of glass with some metal lines drawn all over it.)
To induce chip suicide, the team triggers the chip with a tiny heating element, which causes a thermal shock that creates a fracture that spreads throughout the glass. The current demonstration uses a piece of glass that is 250 micrometers thick, but theoretically, any size glass could be used, Whiting said. (For comparison, an average strand of human hair is about 80 to 100 micrometers thick.)
In addition, anything from Wi-Fi to radio waves could send the kill signal to the chip, Whiting said.
Remote destruction
Of course, many might wonder: Why not take the old-fashioned route and take a sledgehammer to the electronic device?
"You can throw your phone into some boiling water, or you can smash it on the floor, you can even apply a high-current pulse to try and burn up the memory," Whiting said.
But even though all those methods may be more low-tech (and potentially more therapeutic) than a self-destructing computer chip, they can't be implemented from afar.
And, barring using an acid to dissolve the object, it's actually pretty hard to completely destroy information on an electronic device using most methods, Whiting said.
"People are pretty strongly able to recover that information, becausethe bits are still in order," Whiting said, referring to the base unit of information on a silicon chip.
By contrast, the self-destructing glass chip shatters into such tiny pieces that the method "doesn't just wipe the data, it sort of rearranges the bits," Whiting said. Some of the debris is so tiny that it destroys many of the bits altogether. Reconstructing the data would require putting all those tiny particles back together, he added.
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The samurai of old are widely regarded as being among the best warriors that ever lived, and with good reason. Although those days are long gone, the Japanese people are still keeping their traditions alive to some extent, which is why you can still see sword masters wielding katanas even today. However, times are quickly changing and it seems that even the most skilled human swordsmen around have a hard time competing against the samurai robot built by Yaskawa. If you’ve been paying attention to the latest technological advancements you probably already know that highly advanced humanoid robots are still several years away, however, the samurai robot in question doesn’t actually need a full body because it can apparently outperform a sword master with just one arm.



In what the company calls the Yaskawa Bushido Project, Machii went through a number of traditional Iaijutsu challenges as a sensor-studded suit tracked his movements. The MH24 Motoman manufacturing robot monitored and copied every bit of his posture, form, and gesturing, from his arm and sword placement to his head and leg position..
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What you didn’t know about your brain?

We all know, that brain is one of the most important things that we have in our body. Without brain we won’t be able to breath and live. The brain is an organthat serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and mostinvertebrate animals. Only a few invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, adult sea squirts and starfish do not have a brain; diffuse or localized nerve nets are instead of brain.These are facts that are well known, but what about the tings that are not so well known?

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We gathered 15 awesome facts about brain, that you had no idea about!


1. Lack of oxygen in your brain for 5-10 minutes leads to permanent damage of the brain.

2. Brain grows till the age of 40.

3. Every time you make a memory, a new neuron connections are created.

4. Brain uses up to 20% of all oxygen and all blood in your body.

5. There is a virus that can attack your DNA and it will make you less intelligent. It also affects ability to learn and memory.



Parts of the human brain

6. When you are awake, you brain can create enough electricity to light up small bulb.

7. Violence has the same effect on children’s brain as soldiers who are in war.

8. 60% of brain is fat.

9. Strict diet can cause brain to be hungry and it will start “eating” itself.

10. Brain has got similar consistency to tofu.

11. Forgetting things is very good. If you forget unnecessary things you help your brain be better form.

12. Alcohol causes your brain to lose ability to create memories and thoughts.

13. Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia – that is the science term for “ice-cream headache”.

14. It is myth that both, left and right, hemispheres don’t work together. They are connected.

15. Half of human brain can be taken out without any permanent damage on personality and memory.
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Pledging allegiance to the international flag of Earth could become worldwide practice.





Oskar Pernefeld, a soon-to-be-graduate from Beckmans College of Designin Stockholm, started a new project, where he designed the official flag ofEarth. He places it in scenes from around the world and of course, even beyond.






The design of the flag of Earth is very simple. It was created from 7 rings on a deep sea blue background. The rings form a flower in the middle. Simple, yet effective, the flag represents the natural beauty of the Earth.



On his official website, Oskar said that the blue background representswater. And we all know that water is essential for life and also ocean covers most of out planet’s surface. The outside of the flower is also a circle. This could represent a symbol of the Earth and the blue could also representuniverse.
If you cannot imagine flag of earth in use, Oskar created some pictures with the flag of the Earth inside. The flag could be part of an astronaut’s space suit, waved at sporting events or even displayed outside of your house.








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Fighter jets may soon take enemies out of the sky using laser weapons. “That day is a lot closer than I think a lot of people think it is,” said U.S. Air Force General Hawk Carlisle at this week’s 2015 Air Force Association Air & Space conference.






Speaking at a presentation about what Carlisle calls “Fifth-Generation Warfare,” he told Ars Technica that the Air Force is looking for something like a laser cannon that can be mounted on fighter aircraft and other manned planes within the next five years. These “directed-energy pods” placed on aircraft could, ideally, stop enemy aircraft, drones, and missiles at a lower “cost per shot” than current missiles and guns.


Not to be outdone, the U.S. Navy’s Laser Weapon System (LaWS) was shown off to the world at the end of last year. It uses a “directed energy weapon” to defend ships from drones, small boats, and submarines. Once locked on, the 30-kilowatt blast beam that’s about 2-3 nanometers in diameter burns up the target quickly.


Lockheed Martin also showed off its laser weapon earlier this year in a demonstration that burned through the running engine of a small truck in just seconds.

The Air Force’s laser weapon will likely be based on HELLADS, a 150-plus-kilowatt system in development by General Atomics and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Air Force leaders think the system, now in ground-based testing, could yield field-ready weapons by 2020.

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While there is no “official” word from Samsung about the company working on a smartphone with a folding display, new rumours keep piling up month after month. Indeed, this indicates that the Korean smartphone maker is cooking up something that could be ready just in time for the Mobile World Congress next year.

Yes, news coming from a leakster via his Weibo account claims that Samsung is indeed working on a folding smartphone with a display that actually folds to change its form. The same source also mentions that the smartphone will be ready by January 2016 as well.

Dubbed ‘Project V’ or Project Valley, the smartphone has been showing up time and again, in the rumour mill since June this year.






What’s more is that the leaker actually has some more details about this device.

According to him, Samsung is testing the smartphone using both the Snapdragon 620 and the Snapdragon 820. We still do not know whether there will be two models, but the smartphone is said to come with 3 GB of RAM. The display of course is expected to be one of those bendable OLED displays (like the one below) that Samsung has been showing off for years.






Looks like folding displays are finally ready for show time. However, coming up with unique hardware ideas isn’t enough these days. We are pretty sure that Samsung’s UX team is scratching their heads to figure out how they can make the best use of the folding display.
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Indian government is finally set to launch the latest version of its own operating system dubbed as the Bharat Operating System Solutions, also known as BOSS.




The operating system which was originally developed in 2007 by National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software is now said to have been developed along with Gujarat Technical University, DRDO and a few private computer geeks being involved.

However, the latest version of BOSS which is developed by C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) will be unveiled this week.


Certified by the Linux Foundation, the new operating system is said to come with powerful security features and will be able to protect from countless attacks by hackers.


Along with this, the new OS also comes in line with the Digital India movement and Make in India initiatives.

It is being said that the new OS comes with a virtual keyboard on the display screen itself and a bulk file converter which ensures a safe and speedy transfer of data.


Also, it is being said that new OS was able to withstand the activities by Army Intelligence who tried to break it but in vein.


The new OS comes with almost all the features of Microsoft Windows and at the same time is completely secured and easy to use.


The Indian operating system will be supporting 18 languages including regional languages such as Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and Malayalam to name a few.

Having said this, the new OS is expected to replace Microsoft Windows for official use pretty soon and also in the near future, it is expected to partner with big institutions and companies to make this new OS available to every user.
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It might look like a kayak on its side, but that vehicle above has just broken the human-powered land speed record. The pilot, Todd Reichert, managed 85.71mph in his "Eta" speedbike on Thursday morning, comfortably besting the previous record of 83.13. Reichert is the pilot for team AeroVelo, and is competing in the World Human Powered Speed Challenge, taking place in Battle Mountain, NV this week. The WHPSC is basically where cyclists put their knees where their mouth is, and attempt to beat the record for pedal-powered speed. The 16th event of its kind, cyclists have a 5-mile run-up to gain speed, before hitting a 200 meter speed trap on a stretch of road hand-picked for its flatness. The magic 200 meter stretch was even specially repaved with the annual event in mind.

If you were to describe what the team at AeroVelo does, "human-powered world firsts" would be a fair answer. The team's Snowbird ornithopter (flapping wing craft) managed a world-first 19-second self sustained flight in 2010. In 2013, the crew would bag the coveted Sikorsky prize, which required a controlled human-powered helicopter to fly for one minute. The land speed record, therefore, was the next logical prize. The record may have been broken, but with the event running for two more days, Reichert and the other competitors aren't done yet -- there's still chance it might be broken again before the weekend is out. In the meantime, you can see the team's efforts from last year below.
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Golf courses, landfills, and parka pockets become unlikely power sources with the advent of smarter solar.



Solar installations like this one on Sakasamaike Pond in Kasai, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, are redefining the idea of what makes good real estate for sun power. 

Breathtaking desert expanses of panels and mirrors mark solar energy's growth, but renewables' next wave won't be confined to dusty no-man's-land. As researchers find new ways to make solar smaller, see-through, and sticky, virtually any surface under the sun is fair game for clean power.


Solar photovoltaic capacity is already expanding widely and expected to more than triple in the next 10 years, according to a recent report. (See surprising countries where wind and solar are booming.) Here are some of the less conventional ways this growth could happen.


Parkas and Other Wearables


In the future, you might not have to hunt for phone-charging power on the go; instead, you could be wearing it. Solar-powered watches have been around for decades. Now a number of companies are planting panels on everything from Swarovski-encrusted fitness trackers to this parka that debuted Friday, which features a solar pocket that Dutch designer Pauline van Dongen says can charge a smartphone within two hours. For now, at least, prototype designs like van Dongen's parkas are hard to come by, but solar backpack options abound.



A golf course in Japan, forced to close in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, is now the site of a solar array. 
PHOTOGRAPH BY THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, GETTY IMAGES


Obsolete Golf Courses



Waning interest in golf has forced many courses to close, but what's bad news for the sport is potentially good news for solar developers seeking open real estate in densely populated places such as Japan. There, at least four solar plants are planned on abandoned golf courses.


"Solar can provide a particularly productive and environmentally friendly use for defunct golf courses," the Kyoto-based solar system maker Kyocera says of one project on its website, noting the "expansive land mass, high sun exposure, and a low concentration of shade trees."



An Idaho couple poses in front of a prototype for their Solar Roadways concept. 
PHOTOGRAPH BY SOLAR ROADWAYS


Roads and Paths



The 2014 emergence of Solar Roadways, an Idaho couple's bid to replace asphalt with solar panels, drew massive attention—their promotional videohas 20 million views on YouTube—and no shortage of skepticism. While that concept remains in development, solar pavers are appearing elsewhere.



RECENT ENERGY NEWS


On the outskirts of Amsterdam, the 100-meter (328-foot) SolaRoad, covered partly in photovoltaic cells topped with tempered glass, generated 3,000 kilowatt hours of electricity between October 2014, when it opened, and May 2015. The amount is small—close to a third of what one average U.S. home would typically use in a year—but it's more than the company expected and signals promise for future applications.


On the Water


Panels can float, too. Installations sit atop wastewater at a treatment plant in southern Australia and a reservoir east of Tokyo, Japan. The latter array, which is set to be completed in spring of 2016 and will generate enough electricity to power nearly 5,000 households, is made up of panels designed to withstand corrosion. The panels also underwent tests simulating high wind conditions, in case extreme weather strikes. Read more about waterborne solar and the Japanese plant here.




Solar panels perch on 13 acres of landfill in Kearny, New Jersey. 
PHOTOGRAPH BY ARISTIDE ECONOMOPOULOS, STAR LEDGER, CORBIS


Brownfields and Landfills



Sites that once held garbage or toxic waste now have new potential as renewable energy powerhouses. The town of Bridgeport, Connecticut, for example, plans to put 9,000 solar panels on an old landfill, creating 2.2 megawatts of electric capacity. (Read about how this plan sparked a fight among environmentalists of different stripes.)


In New Jersey, a brownfield that was home to a gas plant is now a solar farm than can power 170 homes.
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Elon Musk is currently seeking governmentapproval to begin testing on a project tobroadcast the Internet from 4,000 satellitesorbiting the Earth. He claims he wants to beam high-speed Internet to all corners of the world.




The plan would transform SpaceX from a company based solely on rockets and spaceflight into an Internet provider to rival the likes of Comcast, Verizon, and other telecom companies in a worldwide market thought to be worth over $ 2.1 trillion annually. Musk's plan is to send his Falcon 9 rocket up into space, and then deploy a fleet of satellites around the planet. He announced his plan earlier in the year, but it has just been released that SpaceX has made a formal request for permission from the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to begin testing next year. 



Musk wants to find out if the current antenna on his satellites would be strong enough to send the signals back down to Earth. This isn’t the first time that a dot-com billionaire has dabbled in Internet satellites, and probably won’t be the last either. During the 1990s, a company founded by Bill Gates aspired to do something similar, but as costs spiraled out of control, the plan eventually collapsed.

Even the Internet giant of Facebook has scrapped plans for a $500 million satellite to spread the Internet to the far reaches of the world. But Musk is apparently fairly confident that he’ll be able to get 4,000 up and working. He claims that using lots of small machines that are both cheap and efficient will help his plans overcome previous problems of relying on larger satellites that are more difficult to replace if something were to go awry.

And by manufacturing them all at SpaceX, he hopes to keep costs down and solve supply issues. Grand as his scheme may be, and even if the FCC grant him permission to start his testing, the logistics of beaming high-speed Internet across the globe still make his chances of pulling this off fairly slim. Musk himself has already conceded that getting permission to operate in countries across the world would be “difficult, if not impossible.” 


Courtesy :Futurology Loaded
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You can buy a lot of things on Amazon.com and now a 'Bellini' will be one of them.

Amazon's OS 5 'Bellini' was introduced Thursday morning along with a major upgrade of the company's Amazon Fire product line.


The tech company said 'Bellini' is meant to be the best entertainment experience on any tablet, inspired by the high-quality layout style of magazines.

The company also launched new tablets, a new Fire TV and Fire TV Stick.


Source: Amazon Inc.
Amazon Free Time kids edition.


The upgraded Fire HD tablet is two times more durable than the latest iPad Air, the company said, with a 7.7mm width, and 128 GB of expandable storage via microSD. The tablet comes in 8-inch and 10.1-inch models, priced at $149.99 and $229.99, respectively. These tablets will also be the first to have Amazon Underground—Amazon's version of an app store—built in.

Amazon also introduced a lower-cost Fire tablet—retailing for $49.99—and an all-new Fire Kids Edition featuring a year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, a kid-proof case, and a two-year guarantee for a preorder-only price of $99.99.


Source: Amazon Inc.
Amazon TV with remote and controller.


Along with the updated tablets, the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV stick also received upgrades.

Updates on the Fire TV mainly include access to more 4K Ultra HD content, surround sound audio from Dolby and what the company claims to be 75 percent more processing power. It preorders at $99.99.

There's also the updated Fire TV Stick with Voice Remote (which allows for voice searching) for $49.99 as well as Amazon's all-new Fire TV Gaming Edition for $139.99. The new gaming edition comes with a new controller, 32GB microSD card, and two included games.

Amazon said depending on the product, they'll begin shipping as early as Sept. 30 until Oct. 22.


Courtesy : CNBC
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You can't quite talk to your car like Knight Rider's KITT, but with Ford's updated apps, you can keep tabs on your vehicle from your wrist.
                       

                          


Thursday updated its MyFord apps for iOS and Android with support for the Apple Watch and Android Wear smartwatches. The watch app works with the Ford C-MAX Energi, Ford Focus Electric, and Ford Fusion Energi, letting owners access their battery charge status, lock and unlock their doors, and check their vehicle mileage right from their wrist.

"The app gives drivers the ability to quickly check important data like available range before leaving on a journey — without having to access the mobile application on their smartphone," Ford's Manager of connected vehicles and services, David Hatton, said in a statement. "The app can also notify users when their car is fully charged, helping a driver be courteous to other electric vehicle owners so they can free up the charging spot or avoid fees applied at some charging stations when you overrun your time after the charge is complete."

Another cool feature: the app will give you walking or driving directions back to your parked car, which should be helpful for those times you're walking out of Walmart with a cart full of stuff and have a mini panic attack because you forgot where you parked.

It will also show you a summary of your last trip, including miles per gallon or miles per gallon equivalent, trip miles, and braking and driving efficiency.

Ford said it designed the new watch apps for ease of use and to fit with smartwatch displays. The app's rounded gauges will, for instance, match the look of round watch faces like the new Moto 360. Those with an Apple Watch can use the Glances feature to quickly launch the Ford app with a simple swipe up on the watch interface.

Courtesy : PC
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The video game industry is a global phenomenon. There are more than 1.2 billion gamers across the planet, with sales projected soon to pass $100bn (£65bn) per year.

The games frequently stand accused of causing violence and addiction. Yet three decades of research have failed to produce consensus among scientists.

In laboratory studies, some researchers have found an increase of about 4% in gamers' levels of aggression after playing violent games.

Image captionA growing body of evidence suggests video games can affect the brain's development

But other research groups have concluded factors such as family background, mental health or simply being male are more significant in determining levels of aggression.

What is certain is that science has failed to find a causal link between video games and real-world acts of violence.

But away from the controversy, a growing body of work is beginning to show these games in a different light.

In the game, players must guide a child and her pet robot out of a mine.

But this is no ordinary game. Dr Hoedemaker is a keyhole surgeon, and Underground is designed to hone the skills of his profession.

Players use adapted controllers that mimic the tools used in surgery - and those who perform well in the game also do better in tests of their surgical skills.
Visual abilities

Around the world, other researchers are investigating the potential hidden benefits in video games.

At the University of Geneva, Prof Daphne Bavelier has compared the visual abilities of gamers and non-gamers.

In one test, subjects must try to keep track of the position of multiple moving objects.

She has found that individuals who play action video games perform markedly better than those who do not.

Prof Bavelier's theory is that fast action games require the player constantly to switch their attention from one part of the screen to another while also staying vigilant for other events in the environment.


Image captionProf Bavelier found action video gamers were better than other people at remembering which smiley faces in an experiment were blue

This challenges the brain, making it process incoming visual information more efficiently.
Brain growth

At the Max-Planck Institute of Human Behaviour, in Berlin, Prof Simone Kuhn also researches the effects of the video games on the brain.

In one study, she used fMRI (functional MRI) technology to study the brains of subjects as they played Super Mario 64 DS, over a period of two months.

Remarkably, she found that three areas of the brain had grown - the prefrontal cortex, right hippocampus and cerebellum - all involved in navigation and fine motor control.

Image copyrightNintendoImage captionVolunteers had their brains scanned to study how they were affected by playing Super Mario


The visual layout of this game is distinctive: a 3D view on the top screen and a 2D map view on the bottom.

Prof Kuhn believes having to navigate simultaneously in different ways may be what stimulates brain growth.
Keeping sharp

Arguably the most exciting field of research is exploring the potential of video games to tackle mental decline in old age.

While electronic "brain training" games have long had enormous popular appeal, there is no hard evidence playing them has any effect beyond improving your score

But at the University of California, San Francisco, Prof Adam Gazzaley and a team of video game designers have created a game with a difference: Neuroracer.

Image captionProf Gazzaley believes pensioners can improve their ability to multitask if they play the right kind of video games


Aimed at older players, it requires individuals to steer a car while at the same time performing other tasks.

After playing the game for 12 hours, Prof Gazzaley found pensioners had improved their performance so much they were beating 20-year-olds playing it for the first time.

He also measured improvements in their working memory and attention span.

Crucially, this showed that skills improved through playing the game were transferable into the real world.

Image copyrightNeuroracerImage captionNeuroracer players had to steer a vehicle and react to different signs at the same time

To test whether off-the-shelf games might bring similar benefits to elderly players, the BBC's Horizon programme recruited a small group of older volunteers from a sheltered housing complex in Glasgow.

They learned to play a popular karting game, clocking up about 15 hours each over five weeks. Their working memory and attention spans were tested before and after.

On average, both these scores increased by about 30%.

Although this was only a small test, larger scientific studies will continue to explore the effects of playing video games.

Image captionHorizon challenged some pensioners to play a Sonic the Hedgehog karting game


Prof Gazzaley believes we are only just beginning to tap their potential.

"I'm intrigued with the idea that in the future a psychiatrist or neurologist might pull out their pad and instead of writing down a drug, writes down a tablet game times two months, and uses that as a therapy, as a digital medicine," he says.

Horizon: Are Video games Really That Bad? will be shown at 16 September at 20:00 BST on BBC Two and will be on iPlayer afterwards.

Courtesy : BBC
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Disney researchers have demonstrated that light bulbs can do more that just illuminate our rooms – they could communicate with each other, with objects and with the Internet, to create ‘smart’ environments. Transmitting signals via light is nothing new; Alexander Graham Bell showed that speech could be conveyed with light in the 1880s, years before speech was first transmitted via radio. The Disney researchers, however, have created networking technology that makes it possible for LED lights not only to communicate with each other, but to do so in a way that is compatible with the Internet and its technical protocols. Read the full paper here. Stefan Mangold, who heads Disney Research’s wireless research group, said these advances could give Visible Light Communication (VLC) an important role in the growing Internet of Things – the idea that objects can communicate with each other and share information to create smart environments.

Disney researchers have demonstrated that light bulbs can do more that just illuminate our rooms – they could communicate with each other, with objects and with the Internet, to create ‘smart’ environments.


Transmitting signals via light is nothing new; Alexander Graham Bell showed that speech could be conveyed with light in the 1880s, years before speech was first transmitted via radio.

The Disney researchers, however, have created networking technology that makes it possible for LED lights not only to communicate with each other, but to do so in a way that is compatible with the Internet and its technical protocols. Read the full paper here.

Stefan Mangold, who heads Disney Research’s wireless research group, said these advances could give Visible Light Communication (VLC) an important role in the growing Internet of Things – the idea that objects can communicate with each other and share information to create smart environments.camera


“Communication with light enables a true Internet of Things as consumer devices that are equipped with LEDs but not radio links could be transformed into interactive communication nodes,” Mangold said.



“We’re not just talking about sensors, smartphones and appliances. This easily could include toys that have LEDs, creating an Internet of Toys in which toys can be accessed, monitored and acted on remotely,” Mangold said.

The researchers used off-the-shelf commercial LED light bulbs that they then modified so that they could send and receive visible light signals.

These modifications included a System-on-a-Chip running the Linux operating system, a VLC controller module with the protocol software and an additional power supply for the added electronics.

The researchers created software that makes the signals transmitted through this hardware compatible with Internet protocols. They were thus able to create networks with a throughput of up to 1 kilobit per second.

These VLC-enabled bulbs could be used to broadcast beacons making it possible to detect the location of objects, linked into a network to route signal traffic or could be used to communicate with objects, researchers said.

“The ubiquitous presence of LED-based light bulbs that can be enhanced with VLC functionality, and the availability of LED-equipped devices, unleashes a wide range of opportunities and applications,” Mangold said.


Courtesy :                                                                                
See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/science/disney-working-on-linux-based-leds-that-communicate-with-each-other-toys/#sthash.nnA5g5cY.dpuf
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