Now, an intelligent system to help the elderly avoid forgetting everyday tasks

Scientists at the University of Granada (UGR) have announced the creation of a system that uses Artificial Intelligence techniques to help elderly people, or those with special needs, avoid forgetting certain everyday tasks. The researchers have revealed that their system uses sensors distributed in the environment to detect people's actions, and mobile devices to remind them. Suppose, say the researchers, an elderly lady who is about to go to bed goes into her room, sits down on the bed, takes off her slippers, and turns off the light. According to them, before she gets into bed, a small alarm will go off, and a mobile device will remind her that she has forgotten to take her tablets. "It is a prototype which, in a non-intrusive manner, facilitates the control of the activity of people with special needs and increases their independence," said Maria Ros Izquierdo, from the Higher Technical School of Computer Engineering of the UGR. The system recognizes the everyday actions of the users by means of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) labels. These labels are discreetly placed on the objects that the individuals touch most often, in such a way that, when they do so, a signal is sent to a computer or mobile device situated in the house itself or at an assistance centre some distance away. To compile a list of actions-such as remembering to take the keys or the mobile phone before leaving home-the activities of the people are assessed with Artificial Intelligence techniques. "It is not necessary to use cameras or microphones, and the devices which are used do not entail any technological complications for users, nor do they modify their daily routines," said Ros. To evaluate the novel system, the university team have also designed an intelligent space called 'Tagged World', which simulates the rooms of a house, with sensors embedded in the environment helping to recognize the behaviour of its occupants. The researchers monitored each user so as to obtain an individualized database. They later verified with a test the reliability of the system and the degree of intrusion felt by the participants. "The system does not modify the life of the users, but does positively modify that of the people who look after them," indicated Ros, who recalled that elderly people or those with special needs often reject the aid of others and demand more independence. The researcher believes that the new system may help to achieve this objective. A research article describing the new system has been published in the Expert Systems with Applications magazine.

ESA investigates new methods of mapping tropical forests from space

The European Space agency (ESA) is investigating new methods of mapping tropical forests from space. Tropical forests play an important role in the terrestrial carbon budget by absorbing huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and sequestering it as biomass. These regions are, however, also subject to high rates of deforestation, which then releases the carbon back into the atmosphere. Tropical forest biomass and its distribution across the world are currently poorly known. Since tropical regions are often covered by clouds and therefore at times inaccessible to optical sensors, it is difficult to assess these carbon stocks from space. In addition, forests are highly complex in structure and the large trees and dense canopy greatly complicate the generation of biomass maps from satellite images. An airborne campaign, being carried out in South America, is showing how spaceborne radar could be an answer. Appropriately, how best to map tropical forest biomass from space using radar is the focus of ESA's Tropisar airborne campaign. The campaign is currently being carried out, in collaboration with French space agency CNES, in French Guiana, South America. By providing answers to this crucial question, the campaign is helping to address one of the key objectives of ESA's candidate Earth Explorer mission BIOMASS. The main objective of the BIOMASS mission is to provide consistent global estimates of forest biomass, its distribution and changes over time. In this manner, the mission is expected to greatly improve our knowledge of carbon stored in forests, and better quantify the carbon fluxes to and from the atmosphere from land. To reach this goal, the mission, if selected for implementation, would exploit the longest radar wavelength available to Earth observation - P-Band and its unique sensitivity to forest biomass. An airborne radar system called Sethi is central to the Tropisar campaign, and is flown on a Mystere-20 jet. According to Jerome Chave, a member of Ecologie des Forets de Guyane and expert in tropical forest biomass estimation, "French Guiana represents an ideal site for such a campaign because we can build on long-standing efforts in the region to measure forest properties with the help of the many different organisations here." In total, it is expected that approximately 3.5 million gigabytes of radar data will have been collected during the campaign. The last flight of the Tropisar campaign is planned for September 1. After this, the data will be processed by experts at ONERA in France and analysed by the Tropisar team.

The curious case of the 2,500-yr-old bizarre Nok people of Nigeria

A team of German archaeologists is looking for clues to explain the mysterious culture of the 2,500 years old Nok people in Nigeria. The Nok people left behind bizarre terracotta statues, broken pots, storage vessels, a clay lizard and fragments of clay faces with immense nostrils. The chipped head of a statue depicts an African man with a moustache, a fixed glare and hair piled high up on his head. He looks gloomy, almost sinister. Peter Breunig from the University of Frankfurt am Main runs an excavation near the Nigerian highlands of Jos, where the mysterious Nok culture once blossomed. Spanning more than 80,000 square kilometers (31,000 square miles), the tropical region they lived in was larger than Ireland. Its inhabitants lived in wooden huts and ate porridge made from pearl millet. Some women subjected themselves to bloody "scar ornaments" scratched into their breasts with knives. As archaeologists imagine it, smoke hung in the air as people fired masterly terracotta creations in kilns heated to 700 degrees Celsius (1,300 degrees Fahrenheit). The most astonishing fact about what Breunig calls "a society without writing" is its age. It dates from around 2,500 years ago, a time when a wave of change in belief systems washed over other continents. Nok sculptors were contemporaries of Solon, Buddha and the early Mayans. For years, people have believed that Africa was left behind at that time - but Breunig knows better. "Around 500 B.C., the population exploded," he said. People that had been living a Stone Age-like nomadic existence suddenly settled. Breunig speaks of a "cultural Big Bang." In their excavations, the team discovers shards of clay statues everywhere - on rock slopes, in ancient refuse pits and in open spaces. The largest of these impressive figures can stand up to one meter (3.3 feet) tall and resemble what might be kings or members of a social elite. Others wear horned helmets or carved-out gourds on their heads. A third of these figures are women. The clay figures are strangely uniform, almost as if they had been mass produced. The eyes are always triangular, the pupils are pierced, and the eyebrows are high and arched. They look sedate and immersed in their thoughts. Lightning-shaped tattoos adorn their cheeks.cientists are puzzled about who could have created this collection of curiosities. The German researchers have now used state-of-the-art analytical devices to examine this area. The project could finally shed some light on a phenomenon that is one of the biggest mysteries of early history.

3 bodies of 1,000-yr-old mysterious tribal group found in Alaska

Construction workers unearthed the remains of three humans in Kivalina, Alaska, who are believed to have been members of a mysterious tribal group from about 1,000 years ago. According to a report in The Arctic Sounder, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium was doing excavation for Kivalina's new wastewater treatment plant when they came across some old bones, which an onsite archeologist determined to be animal bones. Construction resumed until more bones were found - this time human. Three bodies were found close to each other, two together and one in what could have been a wooden house. Archeologists won't be certain how old the Kivalina remains are until radiocarbon dating is done, but they believe the bodies were members of the Ipiutak - a group that lived in Alaska from about 500 to 900 A.D. Artifacts found with the bodies show the elaborate, stylized engravings on ivory and artistic motifs that were characteristic of the group. The discovery shows that Kivalina was occupied by humans about a thousand years longer than historians previously knew. It also sheds light on a mysterious group whose range and numbers are only just coming to light. Ipiutak are culturally distinct from the western Thule, who were whale hunters that are more clearly ancestors of the modern Inupiaq. Ipiutak hunted seals and smaller mammals on the coast but don't seem to have hunted whale. Caribou bones and the use of wood suggest that they also used areas in the Interior. How the Ipiutak would have sustained a village of hundreds on the resources of the area, without evidence of whaling, is a puzzle to historians and archeologists, as is where the Ipiutak went. "It seems to be a prehistoric population that was functioning quite well on both the Siberian and the Alaskan side up until 900 AD," said Peter Bowers, principal archeologist with Northern Land Use Research, which is studying the site. "Finding out what happened after that is one of the mysteries we're trying to solve and the reason this (discovery) is important," he added. As for the bones unearthed in Kivalina,city administrator Janet Mitchell said that the remains are being kept by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium until the excavation was finished in case more bodies are found.

Indian defence establishment gears up to thwart cyber threat

Facing mounting attacks from the virtual world, the Indian defence establishment is now gearing up for cyber warfare. Officials working in South Block, where the Indian defence ministry is located, have been receiving mails from fake email identities (IDs) on a regular basis that is aimed at hacking into its computer systems. 'We regularly receive emails from fake IDs like from Chief of Army Staff Secretariat, director media, media cell etc. We know that it is from a fake ID so we do not open it lest it bugs our systems,' a senior Indian Army official working in the defence ministry official told IANS. He wished to remain anonymous as he was not authorised to speak to the media. Recently, mediapersons covering defence related matters received an email from the DPR (Defence Press Relations) ID outlining plans of the Pakistan Army against India. The defence ministry immediately took note of the email and swung into action. 'The email ID on Yahoo was used by the defence public relations office earlier. However, when an ID was created on gmail it was abandoned. Somebody apparently hacked the ID and sent the mail,' a defence ministry official said. 'The password of the abandoned email was immediately restored. The matter is currently being looked into,' the official added. There have been attempts in the past where Chinese hackers have broken into the computer network of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), prompting the government to fortify their systems. Earlier this year a number of computers were reportedly found to be compromised with a malicious spyware that had been sending copies of internal e-mail messages to a rogue address. During last year's Army Commanders' Conference it was decided to boost the 'cyber-security' of its information networks right down to the level of divisions, which are field formations with over 15,000 troops. Apart from creating cyber-security organisations down to the division-level to guard against cyber warfare and data thefts, the army top brass also underlined the urgent need for 'periodic cyber-security audits' by the Army Cyber Security Establishment. 'We have our cyber experts conducting cyber audit on our systems from time-to-time to check against possible bugs,' said an armed forces official. During the cyber audits, the experts check the password strength of the accounts. 'We are being advised to give an alpha-numeric password with characters in upper and lower case,' the official added. Generally the armed forces refrain from finding the sender's identity as it involves a long procedure of writing to the Google headquarters with proper authorisation. However, the Indian armed forces have also issued a set of 'do's and dont's' to contain the menace of cyber crime. 'We have been instructed to work on stand-alone computers with no internet connections. Moreover, we cannot keep any confidential data in our hard disks. Nobody is allowed to use a pen drive inside the South Block and the rule is strictly adhered to,' said another Indian Army official. Also the Indian Army had issued circular to its officials asking them not to post work-related information like ranks, place of posting etc on social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook. The circular had asked soldiers to remove such information from their networking profiles in case they had already posted it. The armed forces have also undertaken various measures to sensitise its officials on cyber usage.

Why is the sun hotter outside than inside?

The mystery of why temperatures in the sun's outer atmosphere soar to several million degrees, far hotter than temperatures near the sun's surface, has been solved. New observations made with instruments aboard Japan's Hinode satellite reveal the hotter outer atmosphere is due to nanoflares. Nanoflares are small, sudden bursts of heat and energy. 'They occur within tiny strands that are bundled together to form a magnetic tube called a coronal loop,' said James Klimchuk, an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Centre's Solar Physics Lab in Maryland. Coronal loops are the fundamental building blocks of the thin, translucent gas known as the sun's corona. Scientists previously thought steady heating explained the corona's million degree temperatures. Observations from the NASA-funded X-Ray Telescope (XRT) and Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) instruments aboard Hinode reveal that ultra-hot plasma is widespread in solar active regions. The XRT measured plasma at 10 million degrees Kelvin, and the EIS measured plasma at five million degrees Kelvin; 273 degrees Kelvin equal zero degree Celsius. 'These temperatures can only be produced by impulsive energy bursts,' said Klimchuk, who presented the findings at the International Astronomical Union General Assembly meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Cool Hand Of Technology

A young engineer slips a glove on his right hand and wiggles it around at the wrist, then curls in his fingers. A shiny, black robotic hand mounted upright on his desk whirs and clicks as it mirrors his "real" hand with rapid movements. Very cool. But ask any of the other engineers what they think this hand could be used for and they have one, enthusiastic response: "Everything." That's a problem for Shadow Robot, the tiny London company (2008 sales: 350,000 pounds or $577,000) that has been developing this robotic hand, considered one of the most dexterous in the world, for more than decade. It proudly counts NASA and the British defense department as clients, along with several universities. But the device has yet to be put to practical use or find itself a market, much less make a profit. Rich Walker, the company's 38-year-old managing director, wants to change that.

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Shadow Robot's hand is unique in its lifelike size and complexity. Its joints comprise 24 different degrees of freedom (or angles of independent movement) and are powered by "air muscles," which consist of tiny rubber tubes covered in a plastic mesh. When the tubes inflate, the mesh contracts, moving a tendon in a certain way. The technology is also easily compatible with other systems. Most other robotic hands, as developed by competitors like Barrett Technologies and Germany's Schunk Group, are simpler or larger. Barrett's hand has three fingers and is mainly used for manufacturing, while it also sells a robotic arm used for performing surgery. There are around 11 or 12 multinational companies in the world today selling 99% of the world's robotic arms, says Bill Townsend, the founder and CEO of Barrett. About 70% of them are used for making cars, and 30% are for other industrial manufacturing. But Shadow Robot's hand is so dexterous, Townsend notes, it is better suited to "emerging applications" that are more human friendly than his machines. "Emerging" describes it well. Over the course of a decade, Shadow Robot has sold about a dozen hands retailing at approximately 100,000 pounds ($165,830) each, but most of its clients have been so intrigued by its human-like qualities that they buy just to research it. NASA has been cagey about what it's doing with the hand, Walker says, but he knows the agency took it apart immediately after purchase. Britain's Ministry of Defense isn't doing such reverse surgery. It paid Shadow Robot 200,000 pounds ($331,660) to build and develop a robotic hand that could be integrated onto another robot used to defuse bombs, though it won't give the company much more information than that. This seems to be along the lines of where Walker, a Cambridge math graduate with dreadlocks down to his waist, wants to take the company: robots that can do things any human hand could, but shouldn't because it's too dangerous, including working with hazardous materials. He also imagines specialists using the hand to fix things from great distances--even many miles--with the help of a video camera. This is still years in the future, though. After a decade of struggling along with 250,000 pounds ($414,560) investment capital from founder Richard Greenhill and another director, Shadow Robot is currently at that difficult stage met by many high-tech companies, where the people behind it start to realize they cannot continue to just make cool-looking technology anymore--they have to make money too. Shadow Robot has never made a profit. Most years it has either booked a loss or broken even; it only started being funded by its own sales last year. Recently its accounts have started to show some promise. Shadow brought in revenues of 100,000 pounds ($164,880) in 2007, then 350,000 pounds ($577,089) in 2008 and is projecting sales of 700,000 pounds ($1.2 million) this year. A big chunk of that, or 200,000 pounds ($331,660), will come from the sale of a hand to Britain's Ministry of Defense, and another 150,000 pounds ($248,750) is the first installment of a four-year research contract with the European Union, via a lengthy grant application through Pierre et Marie Curie university in Paris. Shadow Robot is 50% owned by 66-year-old Greenhill, who was able to fund it until 2008 with money from a stock photography firm he started with his wife. The rest of the company is owned by its eight, full-time employees. Greenhill is the ultimate geek. He would happily continue tinkering with his robots for the remainder of his life and finds the notion of making money from them jarring and a "commercial pipe dream," according to Walker. One reason for his view may be the difficulty he had making money from robots in the past: he set up an educational robotics company in the early 1980s, which quickly folded. For many years Greenhill's anti-commercial stance bothered Walker and the company's main board member, Nick Singer, a banjo-playing design engineer who took care of about a third of Shadow's funding in the 1990s. After a number of heated discussions--"We provided hours of entertainment," Walker says of himself and Greenhill--he and Singer finally confronted the founder last year. "Greenhill didn't want to run a business. Singer and I felt that a commercial approach would enable us to get the company off the rocks financially, and Greenhill agreed to step back." The company's advisors recommended that Walker take over. It was a stark change in roles. Walker had first met Greenhill when he was just 15 and attending a summer camp devoted to computers. He became something of a protégé for the older inventor, and went on to spend his summers working with Greenhill and his small team of robot enthusiasts out of the attic of the founder's home in Islington, North London. (The company transferred to a store front just 400 yards away in 1993 after Greenhill bought the building. It remains there to this day.) While Walker has pulled away from robotics designing and started managing the office and accounts, Greenhill also pulled away geographically - he spends much of his time in the English mountains of Cumbria, hiking in remote areas with no mobile phone access. Occasionally he lends his advice to the company on research. This may be a good thing if Shadow is to succeed. "Richard is a visionary," says Walker. "And his long-term goal is building humanoid robots that will do everything." But while the protégé likes that long-term goal too, he wants to add "shorter goals and road maps and plans." With Greenhill having come up with the new ideas to prove people wrong, Walker wants to avoid reinventing the wheel. Whereas the founder avoided books, his energetic successor walks out of the library with 12 of them, all about business and marketing. "A few years ago we were focused inwards and assuming that people would find out about us. We thought that if you built a better mousetrap the world would beat a path to your door." Now Walker, a lover of metaphors, is the one knocking on doors and picking up the phone to companies or people he reads about in trade magazines. He tried hiring sales people, but found that research departments were put off by their pitches, so he stopped. Now Walker takes care of much of the selling himself, as well as of the grant applications; for three months out of the year he spends 75% of his time applying for grants. He's learned to spend as much of the rest of his time attending trade fairs, meeting potential customers, or reminding an engineer to drop a line to someone who could find their robotic hand useful. It's how they got that Ministry of Defense contract. "You sow bread on the water and eventually something bites." With the company now refocused, Walker is trying to find other markets to tap besides defense. The Defense gig has the potential to become much bigger, but until that is confirmed he's sniffing around in biomedicine, nuclear energy and hazardous waste. Gaining traction in those markets has been difficult, but Walker at least knows that Shadow Hand is a product that could one day minimize risk to humans, in war zones or with hazardous materials. More importantly, he's caught on to the basic principle behind running a business: "If you don't have somebody that's interested in what you're doing, there's not a lot of point doing it."

Can video games boost memory, thinking skills in the elderly

Whether video games can boost memory and thinking skills in the elderly is being investigated as part of a new study, funded by the National Science Foundation in the US. Having received a 1.2million-dollar grant for the study as part of the federal stimulus package, researchers at North Carolina State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology now hope that their findings will eventually pave the way for a prototype video game that will be helpful in boosting thinking skills among old people. The researchers have revealed that their research will run in two phases. In phase one, they will ascertain whether certain qualities that can be found in video games result in improved cognitive functioning in older adults. Cognitive functioning refers to memory, problem-solving, critical thinking and other mental skills. Dr. Anne McLaughlin, assistant professor of Psychology at NC State and the principal investigator (PI) for the grant, explains that the first phase asks: "What qualities does a game need to contain to improve cognition? We want to determine the components an effective game should have." The second phase will begin after the researchers have determined which qualities result in the most significant improvements, and it will focus on the development of a set of guidelines that can be used to design a new class of video game for older adults, as well as a prototype video game that follows those guidelines. McLaughlin says previous research suggests three qualities in video games may foster improved cognitive functioning: attentional demand, novelty and social interaction. Attentional demand is the degree to which an individual has to focus attention on a task in order to complete it successfully. Novelty, or exposure to a task one has not encountered before, "may also be relevant," McLaughlin says, "because existing research shows that novelty is a catalyst for learning." According to McLaughlin, social interaction should also encourage players to devote more attention and effort to the game. The researchers have revealed that they will test the cognitive functioning of participants, men and women 65 years old and older to establish a baseline, and then have participants play BOOM BLOX or BOOM BLOX(tm) Bash Party, Wii(tm) video games developed by Electronic Arts, before testing the participants' cognitive functioning again. BOOM BLOX and BOOM BLOX Bash Party are games in which novelty, attentional demand and social interaction may be manipulated by the researchers. "For example, if we find that novelty and attentional demand improve cognition, we'll then develop a game that focuses on that," McLaughlin says. Co-principal investigator Dr. Jason Allaire, an assistant professor of psychology at NC State, believes that a game that highlights the qualities that seemed to have the greatest impact on cognitive functioning "will allow us to see if we can get greater benefits that might transfer to real-world outcomes such as remembering to take medication." McLaughlin and Allaire will be working with Georgia Tech Research Scientist Maribeth Gandy to develop the prototype game based on their research findings.

Microsoft's Windows 7 to debut on Oct 22

Microsoft said Tuesday that it will debut its new operating system Oct 22 as it seeks to block a growing challenge from Google, Apple, and the open-source Linux operating system. The world's largest software company is releasing Windows 7 just 33 months after launching Windows Vista which has been widely panned for its demanding hardware requirements and slow response time. No price has been named for Windows 7 but the release date is seen as good news for the computer industry which will now be able to offer machines running the new software to customers for the crucial holiday season. Microsoft also said that it will offer upgrades to the new program to customers who bought Windows Vista from July onwards. Microsoft's announcement came as reports emerged that two Taiwanese computer makers Asus and Acer would both begin offering laptops running Google's Android operating system that was originally developed for mobile phones. Though Windows operating systems still run an estimated 90 percent of the world's personal computers, rival programs from Apple and from vendors of the open source Linux operating system are steadily growing in prominence.

World's smallest laser unveiled

The world's smallest laser, contained in a silica sphere just 44 nanometres across, and about 10 times smaller than the wavelength of light, has been unveiled. According to a report in Nature News, the laser has been named as the 'spaser'. Whereas a laser amplifies light, using a mirrored cavity to intensify it, a spaser amplifies surface plasmons - tiny oscillations in the density of free electrons on the surface of metals, which, in turn, produce light waves. The spaser could be used as a light source for scanning near-field optical microscopes, which can resolve details beyond the reach of standard light microscopy, and in nanolithography, to etch patterns much smaller than the width of a human hair. The device also opens the door to nanoscale circuits that could process information thousands of times faster than the microelectronic chips inside today's computers. "This work has utmost significance," said Mark Stockman of Georgia State University in Atlanta, who with David Bergman of Tel Aviv University in Israel proposed the spaser concept in 2003. "The spaser is the smallest possible quantum amplifier and generator of optical fields on the nanoscale - without it, nanoplasmonics is like microelectronics would have been without a transistor," he added. According to Nikolay Zheludev, a physicist at the Optoelectronics Research Centre at Southampton University, UK, "I can think of applications in tagging large biochemical assays and in security marking, where the spaser's narrow spectral output gives better tagging capacity than existing semiconductor quantum dot emitters." Such applications are not far off, according to the US team. But, Noginov thinks that the spaser's ability to generate coherent surface plasmons may be even more important than its uses as a nanolaser, and could herald a new generation of ultrafast nanoelectronics. So far, researchers have made plasmonic circuit elements that serve as wires, resistors and capacitors, but the spaser should enable the development of amplifiers and generators. For the spaser to have realistic applications in computing, however, researchers need to find a way to make it work electrically using a semiconductor, rather than using light to pump an organic dye. That would allow the spaser to be integrated with photonic nanocircuitry. According to Stockman, such devices are about a year away. "There is already a nanolaser with electrical pumping, and its extension to the spaser is very realistic," he said.

Scientists find evidence of high-speed planet smash-up

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star, in the form of vaporized rock and massive plumes of hot lava in space. Astronomers say that two rocky bodies, one as least as big as our moon and the other at least as big as Mercury, slammed into each other within the last few thousand years or so. The impact destroyed the smaller body, vaporizing huge amounts of rock and flinging massive plumes of hot lava into space. Spitzer's infrared detectors were able to pick up the signatures of the vaporized rock, along with pieces of refrozen lava, called tektites. "This collision had to be huge and incredibly high-speed for rock to have been vaporized and melted," said Carey M. Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland. "This is a really rare and short-lived event, critical in the formation of Earth-like planets and moons. We're lucky to have witnessed one not long after it happened," he added. Lisse and his team observed a star called HD 172555, which is about 12 million years old and located about 100 light-years away in the far southern constellation Pavo, or the Peacock. The astronomers used an instrument on Spitzer, called a spectrograph, to break apart the star's light and look for fingerprints of chemicals, in what is called a spectrum. What they found was very strange. "I had never seen anything like this before. The spectrum was very unusual," said Lisse. After careful analysis, the researchers identified lots of amorphous silica, or essentially melted glass. Silica can be found on Earth in obsidian rocks and tektites. Obsidian is black, shiny volcanic glass. Tektites are hardened chunks of lava that are thought to form when meteorites hit Earth. Large quantities of orbiting silicon monoxide gas were also detected, created when much of the rock was vaporized. In addition, the astronomers found rocky rubble that was probably flung out from the planetary wreck. The mass of the dust and gas observed suggests the combined mass of the two charging bodies was more than twice that of our moon. Their speed must have been tremendous as well. The two bodies would have to have been traveling at a velocity relative to each other of at least 10 kilometers per second (about 22,400 miles per hour) before the collision.

Archaeologists discover oldest map in Western Europe

Researchers at the University of Zaragoza have unearthed what they believe is man's earliest map, dating from almost 14,000 years ago. The research team, led by archaeologist Pilar Utrilla, discovered a stone tablet in a cave in Abauntz in the Navarra region of northern Spain in 1993 but it has taken them 15 years to disentangle the mess of etched lines. The artefact found during excavation of the cave is believed to contain the earliest known representation of a landscape. Engravings on the stone, which measures less than seven inches by five inches, and is less than an inch thick, appear to depict mountains, meandering rivers and areas of good foraging and hunting. "We can say with certainty that it is a sketch, a map of the surrounding area," the Telegraph quoted Utrilla as saying. "Whoever made it sought to capture in stone the flow of the watercourses, the mountains outside the cave and the animals found in the area. "The landscape depicted corresponds exactly to the surrounding geography. Complete with herds of ibex marked on one of the mountains visible from the cave itself," she added. The research adds to further understanding of early modern human capacities of spatial awareness, planning and organised hunting. "We can't be sure what was intended in the making of the tablet but it was clearly important to those who populated the cave 13,660 years ago. Maybe it was to record areas rich in mushrooms, birds' eggs, or flint used for making tools," Utrilla said. According to the researchers, it may also have been used as a storytelling device or to plan a hunting expedition. "Nothing like this has been discovered elsewhere in western Europe," she said. The research has been published in the latest edition of the Journal of Human Evolution.

New Intel Core I5 Chip Surfaces on Retailer's Web Site

Details of an upcoming Core i5 processor from Intel have surfaced on a retailer's Web site.

The Core i5-570 processor will run at 2.66GHz and include 8MB of cache, according to FadFusion. The chip, targeted at mainstream desktops, is priced at US$233.

The processor belongs to the new Core i5 line of processors, which are rumored to launch next month. Intel already offers quad-core Core i7 chips for high-end desktops, and is later expected to launch Core i3 chips for low-end desktops.

The number of cores on the processor weren't specified in the retail listing. However, according to Intel's road map, the Core i5 chips might be quad-core processors. Observers are associating upcoming Core i5 chips with quad-core chips code-named Lynnfield, but Intel hasn't made that official. Intel is also developing dual-core chips code-named Clarkdale, which could be reserved for the Core i3 processors.

Intel declined comment on existence of the chip, but said that Lynnfield and Clarkdale chips were on track for production in the second half of this year. A campus computer store at the University of Maine, Computer Connection, is also carrying the Core i5-570 chip at a price of $244.

Some supporting hardware for Core i5 processors has already been announced, including motherboards from Gigabyte and Asustek.

Benchmarks for another Core i5 processor, Core i5-750, have been posted on multiple Web sites like PC Games Hardware. The quad-core chip has similar specifications as the Core i5-570, running at 2.67GHz, with 8MB of cache, and it draws about 95 watts of power.

Based on Intel's latest Nehalem microarchitecture, Core i5 chips will improve system performance. Nehalem integrates a memory controller inside a processor, creating a faster communication channel between the processor and memory.

Send e-mails via mobile phone just by writing in the sky

Duke University engineering students have come up with a cell phone application that can enable users to remember things just by writing short notes in the air with their handsets, which will be automatically sent to their e-mail address. The researchers say their PhonePoint Pen application uses the built-in accelerometers in cell phones to recognize human writing. Accelerometers are the devices in phones that not only keep track of the phone's movements, but make it possible for the display screens to rotate from landscape to portrait modes depending on how the phone is rotated. These devices are always "on," so there is no additional burden on the phone to use this new application. "We developed an application that uses the built-in accelerometers in cell phones to recognize human writing," said Sandip Agrawal, electrical and computer engineering senior at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, who with Duke graduate student Ionut Constandache developed the PhonePoint Pen. "By holding the phone like a pen, you can write short messages or draw simple diagrams in the air. Constandache said: "The accelerometer converts the gestures to images, which can be sent to any e-mail address for future reference." "Also, say you're in a class and there is an interesting slide on the screen. We foresee being able to take a photo of the slide and write a quick note on it for future reference. The potential uses are practically limitless. That this prototype works validates the feasibility of such a pen," Constandache added.

Best Laptops For Business Travelers

No matter how adept they might be at typing on a BlackBerry, there are times when business travelers require much greater computing power at their fingertips. Finding the right laptop for adventures outside the office is a balancing act that requires attention to a number of important factors.

Unfortunately, these factors can often work against one another. Travel laptops must be small and lightweight but durable enough to withstand the abuse they are sure to encounter on the road--everything from dropped bags to spilled coffee. They must have powerful processors capable of supporting heavy workloads while not squandering valuable battery life when electrical outlets are unavailable. Most importantly, they must be built with security in mind, so valuable data isn't vulnerable to corruption or theft.

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While it would be nice to find a laptop that can fulfill each of these requirements, it's likely that a consumer will have to settle for just a few at a time. The search for the right business travel laptop should start by weighing the importance of four primary factors--performance, durability, longevity and security. Obviously, the needs of a business-class passenger on a cross-country flight will be different from those of a contractor overseeing a construction site. The former will prefer a laptop that has the longest battery life, the latter a heavy-duty notebook resistant to damage from dust and debris. The one feature everyone requires, however, is performance. It's no fun to have to struggle with sluggish performance when all you want to do is get things done. If you value speed and power above all else, you're going to want a laptop equipped with a powerful processor. Both the Lenovo ThinkPad SL400 and the Asus P30A notebooks are outfitted with Intel Core 2 Duo processors--burly, high-powered CPUs that can blaze through difficult tasks. They are also excellent options for those looking to take a multimedia show on the road, with high-definition features that will add spark to any presentation. The SL400 and P30A both have integrated HDMI outputs, allowing users to directly connect their laptops and media to high-definition televisions and monitors through the best-quality connection available. The SL400 can be specifically tailored to your needs on Lenovo's Web site, which allows shoppers to attain a configuration that suits their needs. A remarkably robust model explicitly designed to resist spills and drops, an SL400 base model costs around $600. The downside is that the SL400 is relatively heavy, weighing 5.5 pounds. The P30A weighs only 3.3 pounds. In exchange for the lighter load, the P30A user must settle for a slightly slower processor powered by a four-cell battery. Durability comes in many forms, not all of them what you may expect. Consider the Sony Vaio Z series notebooks. At a mere 3.4 pounds, these sleek, portable laptops are very lightweight. The attractive design of the Z series might lead one to believe that Sony chose style over strength, but that's not the case. The Z series laptops are encased in carbon-fiber and aluminum armor, which protects the display and body from scratches or impacts. They also contain Sony's G-Sensor shock protection, which detects sharp or sudden movements and locks the hard disk so its moving parts aren't damaged while in use. You could also do away with the hard-disk drive altogether and opt for a solid-state drive, which uses no moving parts. The Z series notebooks are all-around winners, but they don't come cheap. The base model starts at nearly $1,800 and any upgrades will drive the price up further. While strength and speed are nice to have, neither of them matter if your battery isn't full. Battery longevity is of paramount concern to travelers who need to get work done but are unable to plug in. Longevity depends on how much power the laptop consumes during operation and how capacious its battery is. For example, the Lenovo ThinkPad SL400 and the Acer Aspire Timeline AS3810T both have six-cell lithium-ion batteries. However, due to differences in power consumption and efficiency, the Acer can squeeze nine hours out of its battery, the Lenovo just over three. If you're paranoid about the data on your hard drive falling into the wrong hands, you might be interested in a feature that ensures that only your hands can access it: a fingerprint scanner, which uses biometric security to lock down your device. It's a fairly common feature, though it requires an upgrade and is usually not included with standard configurations. Lenovo, Asus, Hewlett-Packard and Dell all have fingerprint scanner options, so if you keep your fingers with you at all times, your important files and documents will be off-limits to others. Once you're certain of your priorities, finding the right laptop for business travel need not be exasperating. Simply imagine the situation you'd least like to be in while in transit--being bogged down by a slow processor or watching your screen flicker off as the battery dies--and keep that in mind when you make your final decision

Computer hackers can use power sockets to spy on what you're typing

Computer hackers can use power sockets to scout what people are typing, warn experts. Researchers Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco, of Inverse Path, have revealed that poor shielding on some keyboard cables can allow hackers to identify each character typed on a computer. According to the BBC, the information passed along cables connecting keyboards to desktop PCs is leaked onto power circuits. "Our goal is to show that information leaks in the most unexpected ways and can be retrieved," the Telegraph quoted the researchers as saying. During the study, the research focused on the cables used to connect a type of keyboard, called a PS/2, to desktop PCs. They found that six wires inside a PS/2 cable were typically "close to each other and poorly shielded", thus information travelling along the data wire, when a key is pressed, leaks onto the earth wire in the same cable. The study said that picking up the voltage changes, which identify each keystroke, was made easier because data travels along PS/2 cables one bit at a time.

Web addresses exceed world's population

Internet is growing in dimensions every second, so much so that there are more addresses than there are people on Earth, claims the team behind Microsoft's new search engine Bing. Bing has put the number of web pages at "over 1 trillion", while Google had earlier indexed more than one trillion discreet web addresses. The current global population stands at more than 6.7 billion, which means that there are about 150 web addresses per person in the world. And this could mean that if a person spent just one minute reading every website in existence, then he or she would be kept busy for 31,000 years, without any sleep. "An average person would need six hundred thousand decades of nonstop reading to read through the information," News.com.au quoted Bing as saying. Mark Higginson, director of analytics for Nielsen Online, said that the global online population had jumped 16 per cent since last year. "Approximately 1.46 billion people worldwide now use the internet which represents a solid 16 per cent increase from the previous year's estimate (1.26 billion in 2007)," he said. The largest Internet population belongs to China, with 338 million users online, which is more than there were people in the US. However InternetWorldStats.com (IWS), a website that combines multiple data sources, has claimed that China's online population is more like 298 million. "With the rates of India and China still quite low, there is ample room for growth in the coming decade," said Higginson. But, measuring the online population could be tricky-there are servers, users, per capita numbers, and penetration percentages to evaluate. And thus it is difficult to find a single figure to represent the world online population. IWS combined data from the UN's International Telecommunications Union, Nielsen Online, GfK and US Census Bureau, and its latest global figures puts the number of internet users in the world at 1,596,270,108. And this is just 23.8 per cent of the estimated 6,0706,993,152 people in the world. But it changes every day. "In terms of the future, we anticipate mobile to contribute significantly to internet usage," said Higginson. According to IWS, the top 5 countries with the most internet users are:

1 - China (298,000,000 users, or 22.4 percent of their population)

2 - US (227,190,989, or 74.7 percent)

3 - Japan (94,000,000, or 73.8 percent)

4 - India (81,000,000, or 71.5 percent)

5 - Brazil (67,510,400, or 34.4% percent)

Flying car successfully test-flown

If you enjoy flying but can't get enough of your car, then here's something to look forward to - a new flying car has been successfully test flown. Brainchild of the US firm Terrafugia, it was showcased at an experimental aircraft show this week as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The car is called Transition Roadable Aircraft. According to the Sentinel, its wings can retract in about 20 seconds making it possible to drive it on the road, reports The Courier Mail. The car's price is around 200,000 dollars.

US is number one 'spam nation'

The US leads the world in the sending of spam, according to a study. The study by IT security solutions provider Sophos showed that spam originating in Russia has dropped significantly. It also claimed that some 16.5 percent of all spam mails sent in the second quarter of this year came from the United States. Russian spammers - previously a highly active bunch - were only responsible for 3.2 percent of all spam sent, which puts them in ninth place on the list. Second place went to Brazil (11.1 percent), followed by Turkey (5.2) and India (5.0).

Scientists secretly fear AI robot-machines may soon outsmart men

A robot that can open doors. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Advances in the scientific world promise many benefits, but scientists are secretly panicking over the thought that artificially intelligent machines could outsmart humans. While at a conference, held in Monterey Bay, California, leading experts warned that mankind might not be able to control computer-based systems that carry out a growing share of society's workload, reports The Times. "These are powerful technologies that could be used in good ways or scary ways," warned Eric Horvitz, principal researcher at Microsoft who organised the conference on behalf of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Alan Winfield, a professor at the University of the West of England, believes that boffins spend too much time developing artificial intelligence and too little on robot safety. "We're rapidly approaching the time when new robots should undergo tests, similar to ethical and clinical trials for new drugs, before they can be introduced," he said. The scientists who presented their findings at the International Joint Conference for Artificial Intelligence in Pasadena, California, last month fear that nightmare scenarios, which have until now been limited to science fiction films, such as the Terminator series, The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Minority Report, could come true. A more realistic short-term concern is the possibility of malware that can mimic the digital behavior of humans. According to the panel, identity thieves might feasibly plant a virus on a person's smartphone that would silently monitor their text messages, email, voice, diary and bank details. The virus could then use these to impersonate that individual with little or no external guidance from the thieves.

First quantum computer could threaten security and data, warns expert

A Tel Aviv University researcher has claimed that the first quantum computer could overnight threaten our security and our data. Dr. Julia Kempe, of Tel Aviv University's Blavatnik School of Computer Science, says that these new computers, still in the theoretical stage, will be many times more powerful than the computers that protect our data now. Thus, in a bid to keep governments, companies and individuals safe, Kempe is working to understand the power of quantum computers by designing algorithms that fit them. At the same time, she is figuring out the limits of quantum computers, something especially important so that we can build safety systems against quantum hackers. "If a very rich person worked secretly to fund the building of a quantum computer, there is no reason in principle that it couldn't be used for malevolent power within the next decade. Governments, large corporations, entrepreneurs and common everyday people will have no ability to protect themselves. So we have to plan ahead," she said. "If we know what quantum computers will not be able to do, we can find 'windows' of protection for data," she added. Kempe is now working on future programs that could keep data in quantum computers safe. Quantum mechanics allows a computer built on these principles, a so-called quantum computer, to perform tasks that are currently thought impossible to do efficiently on a normal computer, such as breaking current encryption standards. Although the most powerful quantum computer today barely has the computational capacity of a 4-bit calculator, it's just a matter of time until they are as powerful as physicists and mathematicians suspect they can be, she said. Currently computer operates by manipulating 0s and 1s - which means that a piece of data can be in one state or the other, but cannot be in both states simultaneously. However, in quantum computing, photons can be in the states 0 and 1 at the same time. This will give people and institutions phenomenally more computing power, but at the same time leave their data held in binary computers vulnerable to attack. "Today if you use a credit card it's encrypted. No matter who intercepts the data it would take forever to decode the numbers - even if all the computers we have today were wired together for the job," said Kempe. On the other hand, a quantum computer could crack the code quickly and efficiently. "My basic research helps us better plan for the future when quantum computing is a reality," said Kempe. Kempe's papers were recently published in Computational Complexity, the SIAM Journal on Computing and Communications in Mathematical Physics.

Rare Buddhist treasures unearthed in Gobi Desert

A joint Austrian-Mongolian treasure hunt team has unearthed rare Buddhist treasures, not seen for more than 70 years, in the Gobi Desert. The relics, which include statues, artwork, manuscripts and personal belongings of a famous 19th Century Buddhist master, were buried in the 1930s during Mongolia's Communist purge, when hundreds of monasteries were looted and destroyed. Michael Eisenriegler, leader of the search team, told the BBC World Service they were filled with "the most amazing Buddhist art objects". The expert said: "It is of tremendous value for Mongolian culture because Buddhism was almost extinct in the Communist times, especially in the 1930s. "I'm totally exhausted right now but I'm also totally impressed with what I've seen." The finds will be put on show at the Danzan Ravjaa Museum in Sainshand, 400km (450 miles) south of the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator. About 20 boxes remain hidden in the desert.

Sahara desert becoming green due to climate change

Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall, all thanks to the rising temperatures due to climate change. According to a report in National Geographic News, if sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities. This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago. The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers). Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences. The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan. he transition may be occurring because hotter air has more capacity to hold moisture, which in turn creates more rain, according to Martin Claussen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. "The water-holding capacity of the air is the main driving force," Claussen said. While satellite images can't distinguish temporary plants like grasses that come and go with the rains, ground surveys suggest recent vegetation change is firmly rooted. Throughout North Africa, new trees, such as acacias, are flourishing, according to Stefan Kropelin, a climate scientist at the University of Cologne's Africa Research Unit in Germany. "Shrubs are coming up and growing into big shrubs. This is completely different from having a bit more tiny grass," he said. In 2008, Kropelin visited Western Sahara, a disputed territory controlled by Morocco. "The nomads there told me there was never as much rainfall as in the past few years," he said. "They have never seen so much grazing land," he added. He explained it's a similar story in the eastern Sahara area of southwestern Egypt and northern Sudan, a remote desert region that he has studied for two decades. "Before, there was not a single scorpion, not a single blade of grass," Kropelin said. "Now, you have people grazing their camels in areas which may not have been used for hundreds or even thousands of years. You see birds, ostriches, gazelles coming back, even sorts of amphibians coming back," he said. According to Reindert Haarsma of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in De Bilt, the Netherlands, satellite data shows "that indeed during the last decade, the Sahel is becoming more green."