Saturday, 14 May 2016

Survive a Military Grade Bio Attack by Sitting in Your Car

Car

Tesla’s The High Efficiency Particulate Air Filtration


According to the company, those intending to buy a Tesla should add the capability of surviving a biochemical attack to the `pro’ column. It is said that Tesla has been examining a new in-car filter to `scrub’ the air inside as well as outside the vehicle in an attempt to fight the increasing issue of air pollution afflicting major cities. Air pollution has an important as well as a prevalent influence on public health.

As per World Health Organization, it is considered as the world’s largest single environmental health risk where over three million people tend to die due to this which is more than twice the number of people that die in vehicle accidents every year. Health and safety is of great importance to us. The HEPA filtration – High Efficiency Particulate Air, had been motivated by technology utilised in hospitals as well as the space industry. As per a blog post by Tesla, it has the capabilities of stripping the outside air of pollen, bacteria as well as pollution, before the driver enters and systematically scrubs the air within the cabin to eradicate traces of such kind of particles.

Air Pollution more Injurious than Car Accidents


Air pollution, statistically speaking, is more probably to be injurious to the world’s motorists than car accidents, considering the huge number of people residing in cities with the dangerous levels of air pollution which is beinga hindrance to health. The company of Elon Musk is tarnished for tackling some of the major challenges facing humanity; hence the latest feature of the Tesla Model S and Model X should not be surprising.

Irrespective of the outside state of air, drivers will be sitting in an unspoiled oxygen environment. The company has mentioned that the filter system tends to undergo rigorous testing by being placed in what amounted to a bubble full of pollution. The blog post explained that `a Model X was placed in a large bubble contaminated with extreme levels of pollution. The falcon doors were then closed and activated Bioweapon Defence Mode. Within a span of two minutes, it had cleaned the air inside the Model X to enable Tesla workers to sit safely inside the vehicle.

Filter System Very Effective


During the following minutes, the filtration system started cleaning the air outside the car eliminating the number of unwanted particles by around 40%. The company has stated that Bioweapon Defence Mode is not a marketing statement, but is real and one can exactly survive a military grade bio attack by sitting in the car. Revealed first by Musk last year, the mode utilises an extreme level of air filtration to eliminate harmful toxins from the air.

Tesla stated that it was almost 200 times more toxic than the world’s present highest levels recorded in Beijing. The company, in fact claim that their filter systems are so effective that it can even clean the air outside the car. Tesla will tend to continue in improving the micro-geometry as well as chemical passivation defences in the primary and the secondary filters that can be replaced easily and it will get better the long one tends to own their car.

Emoji Feminism

<Emoji Feminism

Emojis Designed to Represent Women Better in Workplace


A set of 13 emojis have been designed by Google engineers and according to them represent women better in the world of work. The designs have been presented to the Unicode consortium which is a body that tends to approve and standardise emojis. The team have mentioned that they hope the samples would empower young women, the substantial emoji users and reflect better the fundamental roles that women seem to play in the world and include healthcare workers, scientists as well as businesswomen.

 Emojis are considered to be icons which are being utilised in mobile and web messaging in order to help tell a story. The terms which means picture (e) and character (moji) in Japanese had been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013. A group of four Google employees mentioned a New York Time op-ed known as `Emoji Feminism’ as the inspiration for its new design. Amy Butcher commented that `they were told that they are the new generation of American women, no longer a minority and that they in fact, are the majority of breadwinners in American homes and yet the best that they can get is the flamenco – dancer’.

Search Engine for Emojis – Emojipedia


Research done by Procter & Gamble indicated that 82% of girls in the age group of 16 – 24 tend to use emojis daily. More than half of those who had been surveyed were of the opinion that female emojis were stereotypical. The designs of Google comprise of women in technology, construction, farming as well as the food industry. Female musician emoji includes homage to the late David Bowie with a pink zigzag on her face.

Users have the option of choosing from various skin tone and as well as the generic yellow on some of the devices. A search engine for emojis, Emojipedia, had recently proposed that one should also be able to choose the colour of hair and specify gender. All the emojis should be approved by Unicode to ensure that they are displayed properly on the various platforms.

But emojis could look quite different on competing platforms, where a dancer emoji for instance shows up as a ballerina on LG phones, a man disco-dancing on Samsung devices, a yellow blob with its arm raised on Android and a flamenco dancer on iOS. The next set of emoji candidates is said to be released mid-year though it is not known whether the designs of Google will be approved in time to be included in this.

Empower Girls Everywhere


According to its proposal, the objective of Google is to have these emojis in steady use on smartphone and computers towards the end of the year in order to empower girls everywhere. Presently, there are more than 1,000 standardized emojis that are utilised globally depicting everything from ice-cream to dragon to police cars.

But the current emoji selection feels subtly chauvinist, portraying men running and policing while women dance and cut their hair. Google had mentioned in its proposal that `considering the fact the women seem to be the most regular emojis users and they span a wide professional spectrum which is not yet reflected in the present emojis, we want to help address this pressing matter of equality’.

It is a good gesture though there is yet a long way to go in putting women on equal footing in the workplace. According to the latest data from the National Committee on Pay Equity, women in the U.S. tend to make around 79 cents for every dollar earned by men. The gender pay gap is closing since the early 60s though the change has been quite slow.

Friday, 13 May 2016

New LG Tech Hides Fingerprint Sensors Away

LG

LG’s Fingerprint Sensor in Glass Front Panel


Fingerprint sensors seem to be the norm on modern smartphone though they are assimilated with a button of some type. Intending to create smoother and simpler devices, LG Innotek, the division of the company which produces components and materials has integrated a fingerprint sensor in the glass front panel but from beneath the sheet instead of in front or on top. It means that it is totally hidden away; more resistant to damage though crucially tends to have the same level of accuracy expected from a regular exposed fingerprint sensor.

The new fingerprint sensor enables users to only place their finger on the glass of their phone screen and the sensor beneath tends to identify the print. The benefit of this is that in view of LG, is the capability for waterproof of phone as well as better prevention of scratches. LG has crafted a small 0.01 groove on the underside of a glass screen cover to lodge the fingerprint module, as proof of the idea. Having the sensor hidden away on the inner side, phone designers would need to think productively on how to reveal its location. LG states that the module tends to have an accuracy of 99.998% which means that it will only falsely recognize someone else’s print 0.002% of the time.

Fingerprint Sensors on Phones – Immediately Obvious


Fingerprint sensors on most of the phones tend to be immediately obvious since it is being fitted inside button on the front such as the iPhone or Galaxy S7 or in recessed square or circular cut-outs towards the back of a phone such as in most Huawei devices or the LG G5.LG Innotek flipped the glass front panel around, fixed out a piece just 0.3 mm thick, placing the fingerprint sensor inside.

On turning the glass over and there is nothing there to indicate a fingerprint sensor is hidden away, giving a sleeker, less cluttered design and opportunities marking out where to place a finger or thumb utilising subtle graphics or markings. The sensor is protected from water damage while the surface is less likely to be scratched without using sapphire crystal cover such as those used on the Touch ID button of iPhone. Moreover has also dropped a 130 gram steel ball from a height of 20 cm to prove that the thin glass is tough.

Invisible Sensor – False Acceptance Rating – FAR 0.002%


LG asserts that the invisible sensor has a false acceptance rating – FAR of 0.002% which is a possibility of it accepting someone’s fingerprint as your own. Though it is great for our own security, it is an essential if LG prefers to use the new fingerprint sensor on Android phones. According to Googles’ documentation, a FAR rating not greater that 0.002% seems to be a requirement for sensors utilised with Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

While the new under glass fingerprint sensor has been announced, with LG Innotek developing a special adhesive in order to stick the sensor to the underside of the panel, there is no sign of when it would go into mass production, ready for the use on a real phone. The G5 had been revealed by LG recently but some have been expecting it to show off a sequel to the V10 later in the year.

AI Patient App Launched at Alder Hey Hospital

Alder Hey

Alder Hey in Partnership with Watson for AI App


The staffs at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool has teamed up with IBM Watson in order to create an app which would be helpful for patients and doctors to work better together. The app would be answering any queries that parents as well as children tend to have regarding their hospital stay. Moreover it will also enable children to create a profile so that clinician will be aware of things like their favourite colour. Later on it could be utilised to provide insights into treatments.

Watson is said to be an AI platform which has been advising doctors on treatment in a dozen cancer hospitals in the US, searching through data and it can read 40 million documents in a matter of 15 seconds and would be offering insights into probable treatment.

It could ultimately do similar things at Alder Hey though has started with more simple patient/doctor app, which has been designed to make the hospital visits function more smoothly. The hospital has been working with the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Councils’- STFCHartree Centre to develop the app.

Helping Patients/Families before Coming to Hospital


Hundreds of Alder Hey patients together with their parents will be asked a range of questions on everything from parking, to what they would like to eat, to their favourite games and films and what they want their bedroom to look like, for the next few months.

Besides this, they would also be asked what questions they have regarding clinical procedures, general anaesthetic as well as surgery. A team of experts from IBM and the Hartree Centre will be utilising this information to train `Watson’ in anticipating and responding to questions from patients and families before they tend to come in the hospital.

A paediatric surgeon and director of innovation at Alder Hey, Mr Iain Hennessey, informed BBC that `helping the patients and their families prepare properly to come into the hospital could reduce their anxiety and would mean that they can get them better and return home faster.

He adds that `so much of medicine is about looking after people and is roughly a third of what is done and it is a neglected part. How we communicate with patients has not changed much over the last 100 years. A leaflet is seen as cutting edge and website of patient information is award-winning’.

AI App – First Project of IBM/STFC Hartree


He stated that later on, the platform may offer `more hard-core diagnostic but informed that governance around using patient data was a nightmare. He wanted to get this off the ground faster and utilising patient records in time consuming, is costly and could cause debate.

Alder Hey is well-known for caring and that is what he wants to build on. The future application would comprise of summaries of patient notes, spotting trends all over the hospital and the AI could also be utilised in providing treatment as well as care options. Paul Chong, IBM’s European director for Watson had stated that he was thrilled to see IBM Watson technology applied to help doctors and the patients in an attempt to enhance the lives of children together with their families.

The AI app is said to be one of the first project that has come out of a wide-ranging £315 million partnership between IBM and STFC Hartree. Contributions from the US tech giant are £200 million while the government has pledged £115 million for research in big data applications. IBM has stated that patients can provide feedback through the app on a voluntary basis.

Turn Your Living Room into a High Tech Paradise


Living
Designers: Homify

Home Tech/Latest Devices/Apps


Living room is agreat place to relax in the midst of family and friends with great number of gadgets that tend to make it much more convenient, enhancing our life and home. Home tech is getting better than ever and the latest devices and apps tend to simplify tasks, making the use of these resources better and alter our way of living. So much so we now find it difficult to do without them. From health and well-being, to home automation, together with personal computing and smart wearable we tend to live in the days of technological revolution. The television is the centre piece of most of the living room and hence tends to be of a high quality placed in the room. Various models have been competing in the market and one can make an appropriate choice based on the budget and models.
Echo

Amazon Echo


With achievements done in the technology world, the Amazon Echo is another choice for the living room, which is like Siri. It is just a Bluetooth speaker but then tends to start talking to `Alexa, which is the AI assistant at the core of the device. Besides that, it can do much more. Like Siri or Google Now, or Cortana, it can take down dictated notes, give information regarding the weather, set up alarms, can schedule appointments, read out audio books, add items to a to-do-list or just give random bits of information besides many more tasks. The Echo is said to be better at understanding requests and can get connected to different other smart devices in the home such as Sonos speaker or Philips Hue light. If one intends working on building a smart home, it could be the centre of it all.

TP-Link Archer C9 

Having a reliable Internet connection would enable you to have your connected devices functioning well where the TP-Link Archer C9 has the capability of offering it. It provides fast Wi-Fi speed of over 802.1lac which can manage various devices simultaneously, has good range via its trio of antennas and has various ports for supporting wired as well as wireless connections at the same time. It is also a great mid-tier router available at a good price.

Nest

Nest Protect 

This is a smart smoke alarm and carbon dioxide detector that is connected to your home Internet of Things network. It tends to alert you to dangers in any of the rooms it may take place. Smartphone notification makes sure that one is not caught unaware.

Muji Air Purifier 

Muji Air Purifier sucks up dust, pollen etc., filters out the bad air through the three layers of activated charcoal giving out the pure air through the top. The coolest feature is the jet air setting which tends to identify when you are vacuuming around the house and knocks the speed of the fan to a maximum of 30 minutes giving out clean air.

Devices to give us Control of our World


Besides these, there are various other gadgets which have made a great impact in the lifestyle of individuals and the overall way of living. Whether it is a new device which can bring us close together or tend to give us control of our world, we can find a gadget for any purpose one would prefer. The choice is available if the user intends to be in possession of any of them made available in the market.