Intel researchers are developing compact, sensor-equipped mobile devices that can measure environmental data such as air quality and enable people to share that data and impact real-world environmental action. With nearly everyone now carrying mobile devices wherever they go, a huge opportunity exists for anyone to collect environmental data. One feature of these sensors is the ability to measure particulate matter, a critical air pollutant. As part of this research, Intel is also exploring new communication paradigms that empower people to help communicate air quality from exact locations to help impact environmental change. Read more about this research and view the video: Common Sense Mobile Air Quality Sensors at Intel Research.
Archive for May, 2009
Innovation@Intel: Air Quality Measuring & Reporting
May 29th, 2009 |
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Climate change: Go on, guess
May 29th, 2009 |
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Seat-of-the-pants estimates won’t be enough to cool the world
THE human impact of climate change “is difficult to assess reliably”, say the authors of a new report from the Global Humanitarian Forum, a think-tank run by Kofi Annan, a former United Nations secretary-general, aided by a raft of eminent folk. But they make a stab, reaching the conclusion that 325m people around the world are seriously affected by climate change every year and that this number could more than double, to around 660m, by 2030.
As in so many reports of this kind, the trend looks plausible, but there seems little basis for the exact numbers. For example, the authors attribute two-fifths of an expected increase in weather-related disasters to climate change and use this as a basis for all their other sums. But they offer no convincing rationale for this approach, and admit with refreshing candour that “the real numbers may be significantly lower or higher.” …
Artifacts From the Future: Chewing Gum
May 29th, 2009 |
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Click on the thumbnails below for a closer look at gum from 2017.
We’ll continue to create a new artifact from the future in each upcoming issue of Wired magazine, but we’d like to see your prognostications, too. What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20, or 100 years? Each month, we’ll propose a scenario and ask for your help. Sketch out your vision, then return here to upload your ideas, see other submissions, and vote for your favorites. Check out this month’s challenge.
The concept for this Found page came from creative director Scott Dadich. Contributing Wired magazine designer Walter Baumann, contributor Steven Leckart, deputy photo editor Anna Goldman Alexander, senior editor Chris Baker, associate editor Catherine DiBenedetto, and production director Jeff Lysgaard helped create the image. Kudos go to readers BigFatChronic, jgombarcik, PRXstimulus, and Sparkus, who contributed to this Found Photoshop contest.
Photo: Daniel Salo; Face: Getty Images
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We imagine that Altoids® will branch out from its “Curiously Strong” line to create “Curiously Smart” chewing gum that temporarily boosts your intelligence.
Incredibly sour gums are all the rage today. In this Found, we predict that the gum of the future will be incredibly hot — so hot it’ll blow your mind.
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The product’s slogan plays on a line borrowed from Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben (“With great power comes great responsibility”).
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The gum is packed with stimulants that increase cognitive output. Aderall enhances concentration, and modafinil improves focus, pattern recognition, and short-term memory. RTX-451 adds the spice. We imagine it to be a milder derivative of the ultra-fiery chemical resiniferatoxin. (Pure RTX is 4 million times hotter than a jalapeño!)
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Curiously Smart gum super charges your brain. But once it wears off, you’re back to your normal self.
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The gum’s pungency can cause anything from sweating to hearing loss. But it’s the neuroenhancers that cause side effects like brain hemorrhaging and Tourette’s-like symptoms.
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Due to the drugs and the heat, minors will need adult supervision to chew Cherrybellum Explosion.
Tribal divide on Kenyan campus
May 28th, 2009 |
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Kenya’s ethnic divisions have become so entrenched, since a disputed election 18 months ago, that even student politics have been tainted by tribal rivalry as Will Ross discovered.
I stumbled across this story on my way to lunch.
Heading for a downtown cafe, I took a shortcut through the Nairobi University campus, passing the neatly trimmed lawns and the signboards announcing "Corruption free zone".
I was bombarded by immaculately dressed, wide-smiling, young Kenyans. Many were in sharp suits and had a look of "trust me" in their eyes.
These were the unbelievably glossy campaign posters for the student union elections.
"Where on earth would students get the money for such a glitzy campaign" I wondered.
I later found David – one of the two men vying for the top position of chair of the union – and with the election just hours away, it was hard to tear him away from T-shirt clad campaigners and his phone.
"I know one day I’ll be president of Kenya," he declared and then led me to his election poster which I suggested looked a little like a gospel singer’s album cover.
"Well I am a gospel singer and I’ve made an album," he replied. "Cynics said I was too moral to be a leader, too straight to head this organisation which is so corrupt, but we want to prove them wrong."
Financial incentives
While digesting this claim to virtue, I quickly learnt that there was an ugly side to this election. Tribal divisions.
David is from the Luo tribe and he was up against a Kikuyu.
It was a similar face-off 18 months ago, during Kenya’s disputed presidential elections.
Goaded on by some of the power hungry politicians, Kenya’s deep-rooted tribal divisions erupted and more than 1,000 people were killed.
"It’s worrying. Many students would only vote for somebody from their own tribe and the top politicians have encouraged this," a student called Isaac told me.
Seeing as Isaac was studying economics, I wondered what he made of the election funding.
He said ministers and MPs had backed their favourites with cash and lamented, that for a small fee, a candidate could hire some men known as "goons" to sabotage a rival’s campaign.
On her way to a lecture, another student, Maureen, told me she had just returned from a trip around town shouting and singing for several candidates, not because she supported their ideas but because she had been promised some money.
Access to influence
At another campus I started chatting to a young man in a baseball cap.
"There’s going to be violence. I’m telling you there’s so much at stake," he said.
He introduced himself as Patrick, but quickly added that his street name was "the virus".
I chose to call him Patrick. He said he had sponsored a candidate running for a junior position, giving him the equivalent of £250 ($160).
"Kenyan MP’s are among the best paid in the world with a package equivalent to at least £80,000 a year""I know he’ll win and then he’ll pay me back several times over and let me run one of the campus tuck shops," he predicted.
The election, it seemed, was about power and access to resources and when tens of thousands of students pay their subs to the union, the kitty gets quite fat.
There are parallels with the clamber to support parliamentary candidates during the last election.
The hope for many then was: "If we can get our man or our woman into power then we’ll be within arms length of the money."
And there is plenty of it. Kenyan MPs are among the best paid in the world with a package equivalent to at least £80,000 a year, most of which is untaxed.
Ignoring the past
A few hackles may have been raised in Britain, as news leaked of MP’s moats being cleaned and duck houses being built, but you should hear the "mwananchi" or "man on the street" in Nairobi getting worked up over the somewhat unaccountable politicians here.
Inside one of the fairly dilapidated halls of residence, mini-rallies were under way in several bedsits.
Fuelled by alcohol, bought incidentally by the candidates, young men were competing with rap music as they shouted slurred slogans which usually included the words "comrades" and "power".
"Worryingly the next generation of well educated Kenyans seems to have learnt few lessons from the country’s violent, tribal implosion 18 months ago"The next day, after the results, students were dotted around the campus in huddles.
"This was the fairest election ever held at Nairobi University," young Valentine told me before quietly adding that he had just secured a position in the Union.
Patrick, aka "the virus", was nursing a few cuts to the head after fighting with a supporter from a rival camp.
A disgruntled student proclaimed: "How could this black man possibly have been voted in" referring to the fact that the new Union chair was darker than his choice of candidate.
Worryingly, the next generation of well-educated Kenyans seems to have learnt few lessons from the country’s violent, tribal implosion 18 months ago.
I later received a text message from Maureen. It seems the candidates did not cough up after hiring her cheering voice for the rallies.
The message read: "Politicians being sick individuals with no purpose – they haven’t given me squat. I’m as dry as a city council fire engine."
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This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Amnesty International : Taking on the sins of the world
May 28th, 2009 |
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No state or system has a monopoly on curbing liberty, as Amnesty (perhaps a tad grudgingly) agrees
FOR an organisation that has tried to broaden the definition of human rights, Amnesty International has a lot to say about violations of the old-fashioned sort. Its latest report on the state of civil liberties round the world is a ghastly tale of torture, state terror, the suppression of free speech and the curtailing of due process, under regimes of every ideological stripe.
With its cautious, empirical approach to researching abuse, “The State of the World’s Human Rights” is a tome with moral power—as useful a work of reference as the American State Department’s annual reports (on human rights and more specific matters like human trafficking and religious freedom) and those of fellow NGOs like Freedom House and Human Rights Watch. …
The digital age of rights
May 26th, 2009 |
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The digitally deprived have rights too, says regular columnist Bill Thompson
"President Sarkozy of France recently managed to get his Création et Internet law passed by the National Assembly, and if all goes well in the Senate then French internet users will soon find their activities being supervised by HADOPI, the grandly named ‘Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet.’
The rights it is concerned with are not those of ordinary net users but of copyright owners, and especially the large entertainment companies that have lobbied so hard and so successfully for the power to force internet service providers to terminate the accounts of those accused of downloading unlicensed copies of music, films and software.
Once HADOPI is up and running rights holders will be able to go to it with evidence of illegal downloading, and it will issue banning orders to ISPs without any need for tiresome court proceedings.
The agency is deeply controversial, and may in fact be illegal under European law as proposed changes to EU telecommunications regulations seem likely to require the involvement of the courts in any disconnection.
But even if it is legal, it is still a bad idea and must be one of the most foolish, regressive and potentially damaging moves by a government that claims to want to capitalise on the internet’s potential to transform society.
"It’s not that computers matter more than water, food, shelter and healthcare, but that the network and PCs can be used to ensure that those other things are available"Bill Thompson
The new law treats the internet as if it was simply a conduit for delivering the sort of mindless entertainment provided by most films, TV programmes and popular music and proposes to cut people off because their actions might damage the business model of one tiny sector of the economy.
But the net is far more than television with added e-mail. As digital rights campaigner Cory Doctorow put it in an impassioned article on this issue in The Guardian last year:
"The internet is only that wire that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press in a single connection. It’s only vital to the livelihood, social lives, health, civic engagement, education and leisure of hundreds of millions of people (and growing every day)."
Cory is not alone in believing that net access is too important to be regulated solely in the interests of the entertainment industry.
Earlier this month Vivian Reding, the European Commissioner responsible for Information Society and Media, spoke of "a right to Internet access" and pointed out that the EU’s new telecommunications rules "recognise explicitly that Internet access is a fundamental right such as the freedom of expression and the freedom to access information".
BILL’S LINKS HADOPI on Wikipedia Cory Doctorow on net access Cnet: Is net access a human rightBut if the argument against extra-judicial disconnection is so strong then surely a policy that lets network service providers keep millions of people from having a usable, fast and reliable connection to the internet must also be morally indefensible
If it is unacceptable to cut people off from the network because their actions are commercially damaging to the record companies, why is it acceptable to offer them poor or no access to broadband and mobile internet just because providing the service is commercially unattractive to ISPs or network operators
BROADBAND WORLD MAP: BBC reporters talk broadband
And if we are to be encouraged to think of access to the internet as a fundamental human right, a prerequisite of having freedom of expression, should we not be prosecuting ISPs over the ‘notspots’ in their mobile or wi-fi coverage, the communities with no access to ADSL because of the telephone network was repaired with aluminium instead of copper, or the areas bypassed by the cable providers
As a long-time contributor to Digital Planet, the BBC World Service programme about the impact of digital technology on people’s lives, I’ve seen the growing awareness within the developing world that computers and connectivity matter and can be useful. It’s not that computers matter more than water, food, shelter and healthcare, but that the network and PCs can be used to ensure that those other things are available.
Satellite imagery sent to a local computer can help villages find fresh water, mobile phones can tell farmers the prices at market so they know when to harvest.
The same arguments apply in the UK, but those of use who have easy, affordable and fast connectivity tend not to think of the plight of those who can’t get online, just as we so often fail to notice the homeless people in our towns or let our eyes glide over deprived housing estates as we sit on the train.
Of course once the kids on the local council estate start using their new-found power to create mash-ups of their favourite bands or add soundtracks to the videos they upload onto the web we’re sure to hear calls for their net access to be restricted in some way.
But at least they’ll be able to organise a Facebook campaign for themselves, and get some attention from the rest of us. At the moment the offline masses lack a voice as well as an internet connection.
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Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Innovation@Intel: Paving the Way for Moore’s Law for Decades to Come
May 26th, 2009 |
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Future microprocessor chips will scale by adding new cores rather than increasing frequency. Programmers need an easier way of exploiting parallel processing than the current dominant parallel processing paradigms. As part of Intel’s collaboration with UC Berkeley and Microsoft at the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center in Berkeley, Calif., researchers are designing and building a new parallel language with two distinguishing features: deterministic execution and efficient use of high-performance parallel libraries and frameworks; resulting in easier, faster, and more cost-effective programming. For more on Deterministic Parallel Programming Language and other research, see the Intel Research Berkeley website.
Sotomayor’s confirmation
May 26th, 2009 |
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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings have begun. Senators are sure to ask her tough questions about statements and decisions she has made in the past.
What do you think should be the standard for confirming her? Should members of the Senate Judiciary Committee look at her qualifications to serve as a Supreme Court justice, or should her political views also be considered? Is it fair to ask her about statements she has made or views she has held in the past?
Share your views on video with the iReport.com community.
HD Video
May 22nd, 2009 |
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Here’s my first shot with the HD Video Camera, a Canon Vixia HD30. It was a classic software project – I got the camera, but I had to update to iMovie ‘09 so the file format would be recognized, and I had to update to Leopard to be able to upgrade iMovie. Two weeks later… [...]
Buying farmland abroad: Outsourcing’s third wave
May 21st, 2009 |
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Rich food importers are acquiring vast tracts of poor countries’ farmland. Is this beneficial foreign investment or neocolonialism?
EARLY this year, the king of Saudi Arabia held a ceremony to receive a batch of rice, part of the first crop to be produced under something called the King Abdullah initiative for Saudi agricultural investment abroad. It had been grown in Ethiopia, where a group of Saudi investors is spending $100m to raise wheat, barley and rice on land leased to them by the government. The investors are exempt from tax in the first few years and may export the entire crop back home. Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) is spending almost the same amount as the investors ($116m) providing 230,000 tonnes of food aid between 2007 and 2011 to the 4.6m Ethiopians it thinks are threatened by hunger and malnutrition.
The Saudi programme is an example of a powerful but contentious trend sweeping the poor world: countries that export capital but import food are outsourcing farm production to countries that need capital but have land to spare. Instead of buying food on world markets, governments and politically influential companies buy or lease farmland abroad, grow the crops there and ship them back. …
Innovation@Intel: Paving the Way for Moore’s Law for Decades to Come
May 20th, 2009 |
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Hundreds of research institutions around the world are looking into emerging devices that could someday replace charge-based CMOS, which forms the basis for today’s computer chips. There have been predictions that as CMOS transistors continue to shrink, a point will eventually be reached at which quantum mechanical effects make them unusable or their power dissipation becomes prohibitive. Intel is actively involved in the International Planning Working Group for Nanoelectronics (IPWGN), which collects and publishes data to stimulate and enhance inter-regional research cooperation in nanoelectronics. Among other things, the IPWGN tracks publicly funded research activities in three major regions – US, Europe, Japan. Some of the research topics include non-Boolean logic devices, metrology and characterization, modeling and simulation, and environmentally benign manufacturing. As part of the IPWGN, Intel is reporting out at the International Nanotechnology Conference (INC) today in Los Angeles. The IPWGN is reporting that a great deal of progress is being made but no clear path beyond scaled CMOS has yet emerged. The IPWGN did identify numerous examples of inter-regional collaboration that could lead to a new path for Moore’s Law, thereby ensuring the benefits of more computing capability at a lower cost per function.
Prestigio ships a new office PC with OS and office software for only 169 euro end user price
May 20th, 2009 |
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Press-release: Prestigio began shipments to Europe, Middle East and Africa of a new PC for office use with a recommended end-user price of 169 € for entry level configuration (plus VAT).
Who is John Wall?
May 20th, 2009 |
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My wife’s friend is a teacher and she has a sign that says “You are special and unique, just like everyone else”. So for the record, I am unique as the only John J. M. Wall III and in fact, the M. has never really been made public and even the Goog doesn’t have it [...]
Innovation@Intel: Ultra Low Voltage Video Encoding Accelerator
May 18th, 2009 |
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In order to improve performance/watt in future processors, Intel researchers are exploring circuits to accelerate key algorithms. Researchers have developed an ultra low voltage special-purpose video encoding accelerator implemented in 65nm CMOS. This accelerator circuit could make video compression and encoding almost 10x more energy-efficient than today.
Death Star Canteen
May 16th, 2009 |
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I saw Eddie Izzard on The Graham Norton show and I couldn’t stop laughing about this for the next hour. Aside from a few f-bombs it’s safe for work.
Innovation@Intel: UbiFit Garden – Technology for Physical Fitness
May 14th, 2009 |
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Intel researchers are developing concept technology, “UbiFit Garden,” which uses self-monitoring and positive feedback to encourage people to be more physically active. As a user performs physical activities, a garden blooms on the background screen of their mobile phone. Activities are detected automatically by a wearable sensing device, then manually added and edited through a journal on the mobile phone. If the user is more active, more flowers bloom in their virtual garden. Different flowers represent different types of activities, e.g., cardio, strength, flexibility and walking. A butterfly indicates that the user attained their weekly goal. For more information on the project see the Intel Research Seattle web page on Everyday Behavioral Monitoring and University of Washington web page on Human-Computer Interaction & Design.
Pope Benedict: A chapter of accidents
May 14th, 2009 |
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The pope’s visit to the Holy Land adds another public-relations disaster to the string that already exists. Why should this be?
TO UNDERSTAND the personal baggage that Pope Benedict XVI brought to the Holy Land this week, it is worth looking at his most accessible book, “Jesus of Nazareth”, published two years ago. With a mixture of intense piety and arcane scholarship, he reflects on the Jewish origins of Christianity’s dogmas and rites in a way that shows deep interest in the religion of ancient Israel—yet total conviction that the older faith’s true meaning is to be found only in Christ. Both in its rigour and in its devotion, the pope’s writing reflects the enclosed places in which he has spent most of his 82 years. First, the formal atmosphere of German academia, where charisma is a dirty word; and then the upper echelons of the Vatican, a world whose ethos, reasoning and vocabulary are utterly remote from the lives of most lay Catholics, let alone everyone else.
No surprise, then, that he lacked the street sense to send the right signals on a trip to the front line: the Middle Eastern confrontation zone of the three monotheistic faiths, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, a region that tests the skills of the savviest statesman. In the event, he deeply upset his Israeli hosts, and to a much milder extent his Palestinian ones too, both mainly through sins of omission. …
The view from Brazil: An unruly bunch
May 14th, 2009 |
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How the church is faring in the world’s biggest Catholic country
THOUGH Pope Benedict’s tenure has not had much effect on Catholicism in Brazil so far, it has entrenched an old conflict. The previous pope’s reign saw a “decapitation of the progressive parts of the church in Latin America and particularly in Brazil,” says Antonio Pierucci of Sao Paulo University. This war against the progressives was promoted by Benedict when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Its price has been a loss of political influence for the church hierarchy, whereas the liberation theologians whom the bosses shunned continue to have the ear of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party. Pope John Paul’s charisma partly compensated for this loss of influence. Pope Benedict does not have that to fall back on.
Even so, there is little evidence that problems at the top are affecting Catholic worship in Brazil. The census provides data on religious belief stretching back to 1872. The share of Brazilians who described themselves as Catholic fell from 99.7% in the first census to 73.9% in 2000. Almost two-thirds of this reduction happened in the 1980s and 1990s, when Catholics were apparently drawn away to new Pentecostal churches. …
Inside Baseball for Everything
May 14th, 2009 |
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SugarCRM is an open source CRM system, kind of a David to Salesforce.com’s Goliath. It’s been doing very well, but there was a surprise last week as the Co-Founder and CEO stepped down.
Check out this post: Never before has news been gathered and spread so fast. Is it any wonder that trade magazines are doomed [...]
Asbis Bulgaria gets Microsoft rights
May 12th, 2009 |
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Press-release: ASBIS has signed an OEM Distributor Channel Agreement with Microsoft. The new agreement licenses ASBIS to distribute Microsoft software products to channel partners in Bulgaria.