Smart Phones Spot Tired Drivers

 

Smartphone App to Warn Tired Drivers

Thousands of unavoidable road accidents take place due to driver’s tiredness when theytend to feel drowsy on long journeys which could be as dangerous as drivers with alcohol consumption. Researchers have created a smartphone app which warns drivers if they tend to appear distracted or drowsy behind the wheel, with the help of a blinking light and noise alert to help them overcome this problem.

Smartphone technology is utilised by app to imitate fancier car safety systems by identifying troublesome signs which could lead to accidents. According to TechNewsDaily website it has been reported that most of the updated phones with cameras facing front as well as back enables the app to monitor the driver’s head pose, eyes and the blinking rate in detecting possible drowsiness or distractions, while keeping track on the road ahead.

Computer scientist at Dartmouth College, Andrew Campbell has commented that the distance can be determined between cars in front and whether a driver is changing lanes on the outside while detecting drowsiness and distraction inside. 

Mounted on Dashboard Holder As Hands-Free

The Smartphone is mounted on a dashboard holder as hands-free helper for the drivers and whenever the car safety app tends to identify any dangerous patterns in the behaviour of the driver or outside conditions, it signals the driver with a blinking light and noise alert.

The app developers’ team from Dartmouth College, Autonomous National University of Mexico, and Microsoft Research Asia together with the University of Bologna in Italy had to face big challenges in making their idea a reality. Smartphones do not have the potential ofprocessing video streams from both the front and the back camera at the same time.

Campbell together with his colleagues had to create intelligent algorithms which could switch quickly between the two cameras at the time of processing the data. Quick switching solution meant that the car safety app technically has a blind spot in the front or back at any particular point of time. This problem has been fixed by utilising the smartphone’s other sensors like the accelerometers and gyroscopes in order to find out what goes on in the blind spot either inside or outside the car at any point of time.

Vision Algorithms with Minimum Computing Power

Campbell has informed the website that when the phone camera is looking at the driver, the accelerometer sensor is used to detect if the car is weaving. The sensors are used to fill in when the camera is looking at the wrong place. The vision algorithms of the app has the potential of pushing the computing limits of prevailing smartphones and also slow down the image processing from the cameras.

Hence the developers have created vision algorithms with the minimum computing power essentials as they perform tests on smartphones. The focus of the team lies in completing road testing of the application with small pool of users in November or December. Around 20 people have been enlisted with three various car models though they admit that it would not be easy to push the limits of the app without the drivers almost falling off to sleep behind the wheels. Campbell comments that unless someone is up all night, it would be difficult to predict whether they will be tired or not.

Chevrolet to Roll out Tiny Air Conditioner for Overheated Smartphones

There is perhaps worse than the undesirable burning sensation that you experience when your skin touch the seat of your car on a scorching summer day. In such situation, you only can have the cool air of AC that is fitted inside the cabin of car. But, no one has thought of the ways through which the Smartphone can be kept cool.

Overheating Smartphone has now become a very common phenomenon. Keeping this fact on mind, the US based car maker Chevrolet has released small-sized air-conditioner system, which takes care of any overheated Smartphone models and enhance the life of its battery. The models, which are likely to be presented with the tiny air-conditioner systems, are 2016 Malibu, Cruze and also Volt sedans that include wireless charging facility.

Reasons for which Chevy introduced the technology

Though Chevrolet is mainly recognized as the car manufacturer, the Active Phone Cooling technology that is introduced by this company will surely help the Smartphone to last longer. It is expected that the now gadget will work in combination with the air conditioning system of a car. Chevy developed this technology when it found that the car owners’ mobiles do not charge while they become extremely hot. The overheating may also be caused due to other factors like games and intense apps, which put a stress on the processor of a handset.

It is the cold air outlet that calms down the phone while it is placed on a small tray, which below a dashboard. It is very helpful for those Smartphone users, who depend on their handsets to play songs and receive hands-free calls on highway.

From a reliable source, it is informed that Chevrolet has considered it as the industry-first technology, although the same type of effect may be attained by fashioning a tiny Smartphone hammock and then hanging this in front part of your vehicle’s regular air-conditioning path. But, the driver can get a neater solution with the Active Phone Cooling.

While carrying out the tests, the engineers of Chevrolet subjected their cars to extreme temperatures to know whether the subsystems worked appropriately. And while checking the wireless charging quality of a Smartphone, they observed that some handsets would delay charging or also shut off after just a few minutes in the hot temperatures inside the cabin of car. And, thus it has planned to insert the feature of Active Phone Cooling to it’s the different models that are already mentioned.

How the system works

The system sends cold air to help in lowering the phone's hotness and Active Phone Cooling works only when HVAC structure is switched on by the car chauffeur.

After connecting their compatible Smartphone with the accessible MyLink radio, the users can access the features of the phone. In a press release, Dan Lascu, who is an engineer of Impala said that innovation never indicate reinventing a wheel. He also added that sometimes simplicity provides the most preferable solution to a difficulty. However, Chevy claims that other auto manufacturers do not have any response for this feature.

Neutrinos Found To Switch To Elusive ‘Tau’ Flavour

First Direct Proof of Metamorphosis

Physicist have found the first direct proof of a metamorphosis between two of the known forms of neutrinos by utilising a beam shot through the Earth’s crust, which are known as `muon’ and `tau’ of basic particles.Oscillation Project with Emulsion tracking Apparatus – OPERA conducted an experiment, at the Gran Sasso underground lab in central Italy made headlines in the year 2011 after its announcement that it had identified neutrinos travelling faster than light, against Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

 However, the claim was later proved false when the researcher found various probable sources of error in the measurements. The OPERA association declared on June 15 that it had now achieved the original goal of observing the switch in neutrino flavours. According to a neutrino physicist at the University of Genoa, Marco Pallavicini, who is not a member of the OPERA collaboration, states that `it was an extremely difficult measurement that no one had done before.Three known forms of flavours, neutrino, electron, muon and tau and the particles name refer to the fact that on unusual occasion when neutrino tend to interact with protons or neutrons, they create electrons, muons or tau leptons.

T2K – First Direct Evidence of Appearance of Different Flavour

Scientists have been suspecting that neutrinos could transform from one flavour to another and various previous experiments conducted which had used known sources of certain type of neutrino have detected fewer neutrinos than what could be expected if particles had not changed flavour. The T2K experiment carried out in July 2013 envisaged the first direct evidence of the appearance of a different flavour rather than the disappearance of the original one and discovered electron neutrinos in a beam which was originally made of muon neutrinos. In the span of 2008 and 2012, a beam of muon neutrinos was shot from Europe’s particle physics lab – CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, to the base of the Gran Sasso massif some 730 km towards the southeast where the Italian lab is carved in the rock. Some of the muon neutrinos had changed into tan neutrinos by the time the neutrinos had arrived at Gran Sasso and when these hit the lead targets in the OPERA detector, they created tau lepton according to the latest result.

Discovered 5th Tau Lepton – Experiment 

Giovanni De Lellis, a physicist at the University of Naples, also an OPERA spokesperson informed that the leptons tend to decay in just one-trillionth of a second. Although it tends to travel at almost the same speed of light, the tau lepton only runs for less than a millimetre. The short lived particles with an array of 150,000 bricks, each of which weighs around 8 kg containing 57 stacked emulsion plates, was detected by OPERA.

With the set-up having 110,000 square metres of surface area, researchers have set up an automated system in order to search the plates for microscopic streaks which could signal the fleeting presence of tau leptons. In the incomplete result which was announced last year, OPERA collaboration calculated four probable tau lepton findings not adequate in claiming a success as per the severe detection criteria of particle physics. However, the physicists have now discovered a fifth tau lepton adequate for the experiment to be considered as successful.

Superconductivity Record Bolstered By Magnetic Data

Germany Scientist Identified Superconducting – 203 K

The quest for a material which could conduct electricity excluding the resistance of room temperature has motivated scientists in Germany and they have identified a common molecule hydrogen sulphide superconducting at a record breaking 203 kelvin when the same is exposed to very high pressure.

 The outcome approves initial observations which were released by the researchers late last year. It has alsobeen verified from data collected from various other groups though some of the physicist had asked to be cautious. According to Ivan Schuller from the University of California in San Diego, he states that `the results seems to be promising but are not yet watertight.

However, Antonio Bianconi, director of the Rome International Centre for Materials Science Superstripes – RICMASS, is of the opinion that the evidence is compelling. He has described the finding as – main breakthrough, in quest for a room temperature superconductor since the discovery of 1986 superconductivity in cuprates, exotic ceramic compounds which display the phenomenon up to 164 K. Mikhail Eremets together with two other physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz reported last December, that they had found hydrogen sulfide superconducting below 190 K.

The Meissner Effect

When the same was placed a 10 micrometre-wide sample of the material in a diamond anvil cell, subjected to a pressure of around 1.5 million atmospheres, it was found that its electrical resistance reduced more than a factor of 1,000 when it cooled below the threshold or critical temperature. However, at that point of time, the researchers were unable to demonstrate a second key characteristic of superconductivity which is known as Meissner effect, wherein samples tend to excel a magnetic field when the same is cooled below the critical temperature.

The authors in their latest work had got together along with two physicists from the University of Mainz for the purpose of building a non-magnetic cell to acquire a very sensitive form of magnetometer known as SQUID. They had placed 50 micrometre wide samples of hydrogen sulphide under pressure of up to 2 million atmospheres in an external magnetic field, gradually warming them, beginning from a few degrees above zero. They investigated the sign of the Meissner effect, a sudden increase in the magnetization signal of the sample, when the temperature had increased beyond 203 K.

Researchers Cynical on Results

The researchers measured a higher critical temperature than they did last year, to observe tiny variation in the samples’ crystal structure. Bianconi has stated that several superconductivity researchers were cynical on the results when in March, at the conference of the American Physical Society in San Antonio, Texas, they were presented.

A physicist at Osaka University in Japan, Katsuya Shimizu stated that he together with his colleagues had confirmed the 190 K electrical transition, utilising their own refrigerator in holding many samples and cells that were provided by Eremets. Sculler debates that the Mainz group could do some more investigations to ensure that they have not overlooked an uncontrolled artefact like the background noise selected during the subtle measurement of magnetization.

How To Check If Your PC Is Windows 10 Compatible

If you are still thinking that your PC or Laptop will run Windows 10 or not, so here is step by step guideline to check the compatibility of your system with upcoming Windows 10.

To get the genuine Windows 10 first you need to register for free upgrade through Windows 8.1 and Windows 7, but you need to understand that there is a list for potential upgrade issues and you need to deal with those issues. You also need to have Microsoft account and faster internet access to complete the installation process. There are more chances that if you are using Widows 8 or higher version on your machine, so it will also run Windows 10, but still if you are confused, so check for the following details;

Hardware requirements: 

Still there is no official information available about the hardware requirements of Windows 10, however; after witnessing the technical preview it’s clear that if your system can run Windows 8.1, so you are good to go. For Windows 10 TP (Technical Preview), the hardware requirements are following;

1.  RAM: 1 GB (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit). 
2.  Processor: 1 GHz or more 
3.  Graphics Card: WDDM driver with Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device 
4.  Free Space in Hard Disk: 16 GB or more 
5.  Display Resolution: 1024×768

Re-check for new Divers or upgrade the Drivers: 

If you are thinking about the hardware, which are connected with your PC such as; scanners, printers and other interface devices, so it is recommended to check the official website of hardware manufacturer for upgrade and new drivers, which are compatible with upcoming Windows 10.

Try to use Windows Compatibility Center: 

If still you are not finding yourself comfortable while checking the compatibility of your machine with Windows 10 and above list is making no sense for you so best option is to visit the Microsoft’s Windows Compatibility Center to get the clarity as Upgrade Assistant will provide the info to check whether users system is suitable for Windows 10 or not. Presently, Upgrade Assistant is only helping those users who are interested in an upgrade process of Windows 8.1. Before proceeding with check in Windows Compatibility Center make sure that your all hardware’s such as; mouse, USB devices, drives, printers, hard disk and other interface devices are connected with your computer because compatibility with all devices need to get verified.

Upgrade paths for Windows 10: 

1.   If you are currently using Windows 7 or 8.1 on your machine, so you will be able to access the free   upgrade of Windows 10 by using Windows Update. 
2.  You should make the update within the 12 months, after the release of Windows 10. 
3.  If you are using the retail version of Windows then you will not face any problem in upgrade process. Users who are using OEM version of the Windows they will not face any problem after assuming that they are still using the Windows on same machine. 
4.  If users have transferred the OEM version of Windows 8 or 8.1 or 7 on different computer, then still there is question for you that how you will upgrade your system as still you have to wait until Microsoft releases latest information.