Car-to-Car Communication System to Get a Massive Road Test

COMMUNICATIONS

Car-to-Car Communication System to Get a Massive Road Test

A trial involving thousands of cars could pave the way for technology aimed at cutting accidents and traffic jams.

• BY JULIE HALPERT

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Technology that would allow cars to talk to each other—to help prevent accidents and improve traffic flow—is about to get a real-world road test following new funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Many high-end cars already come with sensors capable of spotting a vehicle in a driver's blind spot, or warning that the car is drifting out of lane. However, these technologies, which use radar, laser, or video sensors, have a limited view. Car-to-car communications could provide even more sophisticated earlier warnings—for example, when a car several vehicles ahead brakes suddenly.

Last month, the DOT awarded $14.9 million to the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute to test the technology, known as vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. The system to be tested relies on dedicated short-range radio communication to allow cars to signal one another and receive messages from traffic equipment.

The DOT estimates that 80 per cent of serious crashes could be addressed by this technology. "This is the next major safety advancement, one that's comparable to seat belts, airbags, and electronic stability control," said Scott Belcher, president and CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, a nonprofit founded to promote advanced car technologies.

The technology will be tested in various situations; it will alert the driver when it is unsafe to pass and when someone is approaching an intersection at a speed that could cause a collision. Each car will be equipped with a radio that signals its speed and direction of travel to other cars, as determined by GPS. It will also send this information to suitably equipped traffic equipment.

The University of Michigan is partnering with eight automakers, several which began working collaboratively to develop a uniform platform for implementing the technology in 1995. These carmakers will provide 64 cars equipped with the radios, while an additional group of ordinary cars will be fit with devices so they can transmit signals, making up a total of roughly 3,000 vehicles. Drivers will be recruited from among the 20,000 employees of the university's medical center.

Peter Sweatman, director of the Transportation Research Institute, says Ann Arbor is an ideal test bed, since it's a concentrated area with only three central thoroughfares out of the city, making it likely that the equipped cars will regularly encounter each other. The driving portion will run for a year, and data will be collected and may be used by the DOT's National Highway Safety Traffic Administration to decide, by 2013, if the technology has enough benefits to be approved. If approved, the technology would be rolled out over 10 years, Sweatman says. 

"We believe this will happen shortly," says Nady Boules, director of the electric and controls integration research lab at General Motors.

Jim Keller, senior manager and engineer at Honda Research and Development, adds, "We see this technology as having huge potential in the future to affect safety."

The DOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration, overseeing the program, released the following statement on the project: "This technology has the potential to be a game changer for safety. Research from NHTSA found that combined vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure technologies can potentially address about 80 per cent of all unimpaired car crash scenarios."

Joe Stinnett, a research engineer in active safety for Ford, is similarly enthusiastic. He says that, in addition to preventing common accidents, the technology could avoid traffic backups by keeping cars in step with one another. But he says one key area that needs to be addressed is security. "People could hack into the system, sitting on a bridge with their laptop transmitting false information," he warns. So a major challenge will be ensuring that the network is secure and that misbehaviours can be identified, he says.

Europe is on a similar track. In January 2011, the European Commission launched a three-year pan-European field test in seven sites across Europe to ensure the interoperability of the system. The effort includes 40 carmakers, suppliers, electronics manufacturers, and research institutes.

As vehicle-to-vehicle communication goes mainstream, it could even pave the way for fully autonomous driving. Google has been testing its own self-driving cars in California. So far those cars have logged 160,000 miles, but they rely on costly sensors. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication could allow for autonomous driving that's far less expensive, Belcher says. He expects that some autonomous driving features could appear in commercial fleets within five years. But he doubts that fully autonomous driving will take hold in the foreseeable future for one key reason: "Americans like to control their own cars," he says.

Smart Phones Help Manage Chronic Illness

Health tracking: An app developed at the University of Toronto helps people monitor their blood pressure. It interfaces with a wireless blood-pressure monitor and reminds users to take readings.
Credit: University Health Network

BIOMEDICINE

Smart Phones Help Manage Chronic Illness

Apps that connect to medical monitors have been shown to improve the health of people with diabetes and hypertension—and could ease the burden on the health-care system.

• BY EMILY SINGER

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App stores are exploding with programs designed to help people monitor their health using a smart phone. But the majority of these apps merely make it easier for patients to record health measures, such as weight or blood pressure. It's unclear if they actually significantly improve health behavior.

Joseph Cafazzo, a biomedical engineer at the University Health Network, in Toronto, and collaborators have developed apps that do much more. Their apps interface wirelessly with medical devices—including a blood-pressure monitor and a blood-sugar monitor—and offer suggestions based on the readings. They found that people using the programs lowered their blood pressure and were more vigilant about monitoring and testing their blood sugar.

One of the most interesting findings was that doctors seemed to play no role in the change. "It was solely patients becoming responsible for their own care," says Cafazzo, who heads the university's Centre for Global eHealth Innovation.

Cafazzo's efforts were partly a result of the growing use of smart phones as medical tools, as well as an increase in remote and home monitoring devices that are moving medicine outside the doctor's office.

But unlike many existing monitoring systems, Cafazzo sees his work bringing greater responsibility to the patient. "The goal of classic home monitoring is to collect information and deliver it to the doctor, who has to analyze and act on it, then return that information to the patient," he says. "It's not really self-care."

In a yearlong clinical trial of the system involving 110 patients with diabetic hypertension, Cafazzo and colleagues had some people use the app and a home blood-pressure monitor, while others used only a monitor. Those who used the app had a drop in systolic blood pressure of 10 millimeters of mercury, on average, which would reduce the risk of cardiac events by about 25 percent. Those who used just the conventional pressure monitor saw no reduction in blood pressure.

Physicians didn't significantly alter patients' medication or treatment regimens during the course of the study, so researchers say any changes in health must have been solely due to the monitoring app and related changes in patient behavior, such as new eating patterns and better medication compliance. "Just giving the monitor isn't enough," says Cafazzo. "Active telemonitoring keeps patients engaged."Download: he app highlights trends in blood-pressure readings and detects when people forget to take their measurements, reminding them with an automated phone call. Giving patients self-monitoring tools makes them aware of their health stats on a daily basis, rather than just in the week before a doctor's appointment, says Cafazzo. This is especially relevant for hypertension, which doesn't usually have detectable symptoms.

A second project focused on adolescents with diabetes, a challenging population for doctors because teens are transitioning from being cared for by their parents to being responsible for their own care. Researchers worked with Apple to create an app that is compatible with a blood-sugar monitor. The app reminds users to check their blood sugar and rewards users with iTunes certificates for healthy behavior. If it detects a string of low measurements, it will ask users what they think caused the trend. Teens who used the app checked their blood sugar twice as often as those who didn't.

Cafazzo hopes self-monitoring tools like these will be instrumental in changing how chronic conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension, are managed. These conditions represent a huge financial burden on health-care systems. "Primary care isn't the best place for chronic disease management," says Cafazzo. "It should go back to nurses and the patients themselves."

For both apps, researchers won approval from Health Canada (similar to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) to run the clinical trials. As smart-phone apps become increasingly sophisticated, incorporating external sensors and intelligence to make recommendations to users, this type of approval will become more and more important. Cafazzo says they spent more money running the clinical trial than on developing the technology.

In July, the FDA announced its intentions to regulate smart-phone apps that are used as an accessory to a medical device already regulated by the FDA, or that use attachments, sensors, or other devices to transform the phone into a medical device.

Cafazzo's team plans to create a similar app for kids with asthma. He also hopes to collaborate with a company to commercialize the two existing apps. A limited version of the diabetes-monitoring app is currently available in the Apple app store; it doesn't include automated blood-sugar monitoring but encourages users to test themselves regularly.

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Researchers are developing hacking drones that could build a wireless botnet or track someone via cell phone.

Hacking on high: The SkyNet drone, built from a toy quadricopter and a small computer, can fly for up to 13 minutes, or land and then operate for nearly two hours.
Credit: Stevens Institute of Technology

COMPUTING

The Next Wave of Botnets Could Descend from the Skies

Researchers are developing hacking drones that could build a wireless botnet or track someone via cell phone.

• BY ROBERT LEMOS

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The buzz starts low and quickly gets louder as a toy quadricopter flies in low over the buildings. It might look like flight enthusiasts having fun, but it could be a future threat to computer networks.

In two separate presentations last month, researchers showed off remote-controlled aerial vehicles loaded with technology designed to automatically detect and compromise wireless networks. The projects demonstrated that such drones could be used to create an airborne botnet controller for a few hundred dollars.

Attackers bent on espionage could use such drones to find a weak spot in corporate and home Internet connections, says Sven Dietrich, an assistant professor in computer science at the Stevens Institute of Technology who led the development of one of the drones.

"You can bring the targeted attack to the location," says Dietrich. "[Our] drone can land close to the target and sit there—and if it has solar power, it can recharge—and continue to attack all the networks around it."

Dietrich and two students presented details of their drone, dubbed SkyNet, at the USENIX Security Conference in mid-August. They used a quadricopter—a toy that costs less than $400—to carry a lightweight computer loaded with wireless reconnaissance and attack software. They controlled the homemade drone with a 3G modem and two cameras that send video back to the attacker. It cost less than $600 to build.

The researchers showed that the drone can even be used to create and control a botnet—a network of compromised computers. So instead of controlling a botnet via a command-and-control server on the Internet—a common technique that can lead investigators back to the operator—the hackers can issue commands via the drone. This method creates an "air gap"—the weak spot represented by a wireless network—that could prevent investigators from identifying those responsible for an attack.

In the past, others have demonstrated radio-controlled planes and model rockets capable of scanning for wireless networks. A pair of security consultants also unveiled a repurposed Army target drone at the Black Hat Security Briefings conference in August that could scan for and compromise wireless networks. Dubbed the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, or WASP, the drone flies fairly silently. It can find and track cell phones, illustrating another use of the devices, said one of the presenters, Richard Perkins, a security consultant to financial institutions.

"We could identify a target by his cell phone and follow them home and then focus on attacking their less secure home network," he says.

In both cases, the drone attacks are designed to get around the heavily guarded "front door" of information networks—the main connection to the Internet. Wireless networks are typically less secure.

"People see the threat coming from the Internet," Dietrich says. "What they are forgetting is that behind their back, there is that wireless network that may not be properly protected."

The best defense against wireless attacks is to be aware of what's happening on internal networks, says Tom Kellerman, chief technology officer of the wireless security firm AirPatrol. "If you are a Fortune 1,000, you should be concerned, because competitive intelligence has evolved," he says. "It has taken on a whole new arsenal of capabilities due to cyber and wireless."

Companies should have technology to detect rogue devices on their networks and lock down their existing wireless access points, he says.

Novel method for increasing antibiotic discovered

A novel way of increasing the amounts of antibiotics produced by bacteria has been discovered that could markedly improve the yields of these important compounds in commercial production. It could also be valuable in helping to discover new compounds. With the ever-growing threat from antibiotic resistance, these tools will be very useful in ensuring that we have enough of these useful compounds in the future.

Posted by Biomechanism 

Bacteria are single-celled microorganisms, and most bacterial species are either spherical (called cocci) or rod-shaped (called bacilli). The 3D rendering on the left shows bacilli bacteria. Antibiotics are natural substances secreted by bacteria and fungi to kill other bacteria that are competing for limited nutrients. (The antibiotics used to treat people today are typically derivatives of these natural products.)

The majority of antibiotics we know of today are produced naturally by a group of soil bacteria called Streptomyces. For commercial production of these antibiotics for clinical use, it is necessary to increase the yield. This has typically been achieved by randomly inducing mutations and screening for strains that show increased production, a process that takes many years. When technology had progressed sufficiently to analyse how this had been achieved scientists found that, in some cases, the increase in yield was due to repeated copies of the genes needed for antibiotic production.

In almost all cases, the genes needed to produce these antibiotics are clustered together in the bacterial genome. In work carried out initially at the John Innes Centre, which is strategically funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Professor Mervyn Bibb and collaborator Dr Koji Yanai from a Japanse laboratory discovered 36 repeating copies of one gene cluster in a strain of Streptomyces that had been repeatedly selected to over-produce the antibiotic kanamycin.

“This suggested to us that controlled and stable amplification of antibiotic gene clusters might be possible, and that if it was, it would be a valuable tool for engineering high yielding commercial strains of bacteria,” said Prof Bibb. The researchers then went on to identify the components within Streptomyces responsible for creating the 36 repeating clusters that led to kanamycin overproduction. These consist of two DNA sequences that flank the gene cluster, and a protein, known as ZouA, that recognises the two sequences and replicates them.

In research to be published in the journal Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, Prof Bibb and colleagues Dr Takeshi Murakami and Prof Charles Thompson, working at the University of British Columbia, together with the same Japanese pharmaceutical laboratory, describe a system for the targeted amplification of gene clusters. The researchers were able to engineer these components into genetic ‘cassettes’ and then insert these into another strain of Streptomyces. They successfully used the system to make Streptomyces coelicolor overproduce actinorhodin, a blue-pigmented antibiotic. They believe the system will work equally as well for many other Streptomyces strains and antibiotics, and have also shown that it functions in an unrelated bacterium, Escherichia coli.

The system may also uncover new, undiscovered antibiotics. A number of Streptomyces species have had their entire genomes sequenced, and many more are expected. Researchers have been able to identify other gene clusters within these sequences with unknown products. It is likely that many of these ‘cryptic’ gene clusters produce potentially new antibiotics, but at an undetectable level, or only under specific environmental conditions. Using the gene cluster amplification system identified here, it will be possible to amplify these cryptic gene clusters, identify their products, and potentially discover new antibiotics for the battle against resistant superbugs.

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Reference: A novel system for the amplification of bacterial gene clusters multiplies antibiotic yield in Streptomyces coelicolor, Murakami et al, will be published by PNAS Online Early Edition the week of September 5-9, 2011 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1108124108

SHIRDI VALE SAIBABA,,KHEDBRAHMA

Hitler's Paintings

Background: Hitler often claimed to be something of a frustrated artist, and art was certainly one of his major interests throughout his life. He probably sold several thousand paintings and postcards during his stay in Vienna, some of which turn up even today. Hitler himself made no great claims to greatness as a painter (architecture was something else....). There was a thriving market for his paintings during the Third Reich — and even today, there are eager collectors.
The best book on the matter is Frederic Spotts’s Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, which takes Hitler’s artistic side seriously. Spotts comments: “He had a modicum of talent —— at least in sketching buildings —— but what technique he learned he picked up on his own. Like most amateurs, he began by painting simple landscapes. With neither innate originality nor professional training, he went on to imitate the watercolors and prints of the south German school and the postcard scenes —— everyday urban views —— that were popular at the time..... Moreover, he had to paint the sort of thing that an unknown and untalented amateur might be able to sell, and that was inexpensive reproductions of familiar places” (p. 125). Spotts’s book also has color reproductions of four of Hitler’s paintings.
These illustrations of Hitler’s art are taken from a coffee table book on Hitler published during the Third Reich, several million copies of which were printed. These are the examples of Hitler’s paintings one was likeliest to see during the Third Reich. One assumes these were thought the best of his work. It’s interesting that they are all from 1914-1917. By 1938, Hitler decided to prohibit reproductions of his paintings.
The source: Adolf Hitler: Bilder aus dem Leben des Führers (Hamburg: Cigaretten Bilderdienst Hamburg/Bahrenfeld, 1936).

இன்டர்நெட் தோற்றமும் பயன்பாடும்

 

இன்றைய மனித இனத்தின் சிந்தனைப் போக்கை மாற்றியதில் இன்டர்நெட்டுக்கு முக்கிய பங்கு உண்டு என்றால் அது மிகையாகாது. தகவல் பரிமாற்றம், உருவாக்கி சேமித்தல் என்ற இரு பரிமாணங்களில் தினந்தோறும் புதிய மாற்றங்களைத் தந்து வரும் இந்த இன்றியமையாத சாதனம் உலகிற்கு வந்து 40 ஆண்டுகள் ஆகின்றன 1960ஆம் ஆண்டுவாக்கில், அமெரிக்காவின் டார்ட்மவுத் மற்றும் பெர்க்லீ பல்கலைக் கழகங்களில் ஐ.பி.எம். கம்ப்யூட்டர்களைப் பகிர்ந்து பயன்படுத்த எண்ணியபோது இன்டர்நெட் உருவானது. இந்தக் கட்டமைப்பை மக்களும் பயன்படுத்திக் கொள்ள அனுமதி தரப்பட்டது. இந்தக் கட்டமைப்பு ரஷ்யா 1957ல் ஏவிய ஸ்புட்னிக் சாட்டலைட்டையும் பயன்படுத்திக் கொண்டது. அமெரிக்க ஜனாதிபதி ஐசன்ஹோவர் ARPA என்னும் நெட்வொர்க் அமைப்பை கம்ப்யூட்டர் நெட்வொர்க்கிற்காகவும், தகவல் தொழில் நுட்ப தொடர்புகளுக்காகவும் உருவாக்கினார். இன்டர்நெட் 90களில் பிரபலமானது. 1993 ஆம் ஆண்டில் மிக வேகமாக இதன் பயன்பாடு பரவியது. 5 கோடிப் பேரை ரேடியோ சென்றடைய 38 ஆண்டுகள் ஆனது. தொலைக்காட்சி அதே அளவில் சென்றடைய 13 ஆண்டுகள் ஆனது. இன்டர்நெட் இந்த இலக்கை அடைய 5 ஆண்டுகளே ஆனது. இன்றைய நவீன உலகில் இன்டர்நெட் பல பயன்களை அளித்த போதும், அவை மற்றொரு இருளான பக்கத்தையும் கொண்டிருக்கின்றன. தினசரி, தாங்கள் வாங்கிய பொருட்களுக்குக் கட்டணம் கட்டுவதிலிருந்து பொழுதுபோக்கிற்காக விளையாடுவது வரை இன்டர்நெட்டில் எவ்வளவு நேரம் செலவழிக்கின்றோம் என்பதே தெரியாமல் இருப்பவர்களும் இருக்கத்தான் செய்கின்றனர். மன அழுத்தத்துக்கும் இன்டர்நெட்டில் அதிக நேரம் செலவழிப்பதற்கும் நெருங்கிய பிணைப்பு இருக்கிறது. செலவழிக்கும் நேரம் அதிகம் ஆக ஆக மன அழுத்தமும் அதிகமாகிறது. இவர்களில், 18 பேர் ஒரு நாளைக்கு மிக அதிக நேரம் இன்டர்நெட்டில் செலவழிக்கின்றனர். இவர்களை “இன்டர்நெட்டுக்கு அடிமையானவர்கள்’ என்று வகைப்படுத்தலாம். சாதாரண மக்களை விட இன்டர்நெட்டில் நேரம் அதிகமாக செலவழிப்பவர்களின் மன அழுத்தம் ஐந்து மடங்கு அதிகமாக இருக்கிறது சிகரெட், மது போல இன்டர்நெட்டும் ஒரு போதை என ஓர் ஆய்வு தெரிவிக்கிறது. ஒரு நாள் இன்டர்நெட் இணைப்பு இல்லாமல், அதனைப் பார்க்க முடியவில்லை என்றால், என்ன பதைபதைப்பு ஏற்படுகிறது. மெயில் பார்க்க முடியவில்லை, என் பேஸ்புக் நண்பர்களுடன் செய்தி பரிமாற முடியவில்லை என்று அத்தனை பேரும் பதற்றம் அடைகின்றனர். பித்துப் பிடித்தவர் போல மாறுகின்றனர். இங்கிலாந்தில் 18 முதல் 65 வயது வரை உள்ள ஆயிரம் பேரை இது குறித்து கருத்து கேட்ட போது, சிகரெட்டுக்கு எப்படி, அதனைப் பயன்படுத்துபவர்கள் அடிமையாகிறார்களோ, அதே போலத்தான் இன்டர் நெட்டுக்கும் என கருத்து தெரிவித்துள்ளனர். இன்டர்நெட் இணைப்பு இல்லை என்றால், ஒருவர், அது என் ஒரு கையை வெட்டியது போல இருக்கும் என்றார்.  இவர்களில் பெரும்பாலானவர்கள் பேஸ்புக், ட்விட்டர், மெயில் ஆகியனவற்றின் தொடர்பு கிடைக்காமல் போவதே இந்த மனநிலைக்குக் காரணம் என்று தெரிவித்துள்ளனர். இரவு படுக்கப் போகும்போது பேஸ்புக், ட்விட்டர் அப்டேட் செய்து படுக்கைக்குச் செல்வதைப் பழக்கமாகப் பலர் கொண்டுள்ளனர். எனவே இது தடைப்படுகையில், தூக்கம் வராமல் தவிக்கின்றனர். ஆனால், இந்தக் கணக்கெடுப்பில் 21% பேர், இன்டர்நெட் இல்லை என்றால், ஆஹா! இன்று விடுதலை; சுதந்திரமாக இருப்பேன் என்றும் கருத்து தெரிவித்துள்ளனர்.  அளவுக்கு மீறினால் அமிர்தமும் நஞ்சு என்பதை கருத்தில் கொண்டு இண்டர்நெட்டை பயன்படுத்துவது அனைவருக்கும் நல்லதுதானே?    இணையத் தளங்களின் தொகுப்பு :சாயி பாபா