An electronic patch can analyze complex brainwaves and listen in on a fetus’s heart

An “electronic tattoo” containing flexible electronic circuits can now record some complex brain activity and could also provide a cheap way to monitor a developing fetus. This was appeared in 2011 at the University of California, San Diego by Todd Coleman. Applied to skin like a temporary tattoo, these could be used to monitor electrophysiological signals associated with the heart and muscles, as well as rudimentary brain activity.

To improve its usefulness, Coleman’s group has now optimized the placement of the electrodes to pick up more complex brainwaves. They have demonstrated this by monitoring so-called P300 signals in the forebrain. These appear when you pay attention to a stimulus. The team showed volunteers a series of images and asked them to keep track of how many times a certain object appeared. Whenever volunteers noticed the object, the tattoo registered a blip in the P300 signal.

For now, the group is focusing on optimizing the tattoo for use in conditions such as depression and Alzheimer’s disease, each of which have characteristic patterns of neural activity. People with depression could wear the tattoo for an extended period, allowing it to help gauge whether medication is working. Micron Associates thinks that the number one advantage of this is the medical ease of application.

Because its electronic components are already mass-produced, the tattoo can also be made very cheaply.
That means it might also lend itself to pregnancy monitoring in developing countries. With help from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Coleman’s group is working on a self-effacing version of the tattoo that monitors signals such as maternal contractions and fetal heart rate.

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Human’s imagination truly is remarkable and limitless; soon driverless cars will be heading the driveway and will be seen not only in movies but in the streets.

In due course, driverless cars could redesign our perception on what it means to possess a car. Jut take this for a instance, you could just dial up a car to pick you up and drop you off when you need it instead owning a car that is unused for 22 hours on many days. Google foresee that driverless cars could lessen the overall number of cars by 90 percent.

See in your mind’s eye a long road trip where you can purposely fall asleep “at the wheel” — and arrive safely the next morning.

But perfecting the technology is not enough. This new tech leads to many questions and many changes in law and lifestyle. Governments and courts will have to form out lots of new legal and regulatory issues. If a driverless car crashes, who’s liable? One big question we need to be deciding first.

“It’s absolutely the case that after the first accident involving an automated vehicle, there will be an automated ambulance chaser following,” says Robert Hartwig, President of the Insurance Information Institute.

The auto industry is aware of the legal risk. “We have great exposure as an industry in terms of product liability,” says Dan Gage, of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. “And I think as an industry … most of us suspect that there will always be someone in that driver’s seat.”

Jeff Dial, an Arizona legislator, introduced a bill last year that would update Arizona law to cover driverless cars.

“After I introduced the bill, then suddenly all the insurance companies started approaching me with the questions of the liability,” he says. “The more you deal with this issue, the more the issue grows and grows.”

As driverless cars alter transportation yet again, adding up levels of flexibility, safety and convenience, the car will become a kind of mobile room, just a place to spend time while the rest of our lives are going on. And let’s admit it, some people likes driving cars, it some kind of a stress-reliever, some way to relax and forget for a while. Whatever the options may be the choice is still yours. Technology is good as long as it wont harm us and the environment.

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If you are a business owner, online security should be at the top of your list of things to maintain in order for you to have the so called-long-term business. Acquiring a SSL certificate from a licensed, reputable Certificate Authority is a simple step towards a more protected business, boosting the confidence of your customers which will likely lead to a rise in sales.

If you’re considering applying for a more in-depth Extended Validation certificate, consider the features in this Micron Associates EV SSL guide, to confirm whether it is the right certificate for you. There are others available, should you wish to compare them all before parting with your cash.

There are two choices to be made in terms of Extended Validation certificates – Secure Site Pro and Secure Site. Secure Site EV includes a vulnerability assessment, while Secure Site Pro includes the extra bonus of SSL encryption with SGC.

Security Features

•Up to 256-bit encryption which protects your data to the highest level. With Secure Site Pro, encryption with SGC (Server Gated Cryptography) means that even the older browsers are capable of maximum encryption.
•a green browser bar which provides a clearly visible indicator of site security
•Extended validation – the highest level of authentication currently available on the market.
•Full organisation authenticity – complete verification of your business giving confidence and trust that you are who you say you are.
•Vulnerability Assessment, including automatic scans of web pages and a report of any security issues.
•An Extended Warranty of 1.5million USD, protecting you against any losses suffered from a breach by VeriSign.
•The Norton Secured Seal, clearly visible and one of the most recognized trust seals in the world.
•Seal-in Search, displaying the Secured Seal next to your link in search results
•Daily scanning for malware
•Customer support, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Certificate Authority Features and Benefits

Key Features

•Certificate Authority vendor-agnostic SSL certificate discovery capabilities
•Configurable network scans across different parts of the network
•A comprehensive, interactive dashboard with a rich, intuitive user interface and drill-down capabilities
•In-console alerts and email notification
•Detailed reports and audit trails
•SSL security rating
•Symantec Certificate for Mobile available on Apple iPad®
•Secure cloud-based service, integrated with Managed PKI for SSL console

Key Benefits

•Reduce risk and help ensure business continuity by avoiding unplanned certificate expirations and eliminating rogue SSL certificates
•Increase operational efficiency with automated discovery of all SSL certificates on the enterprise from any Certificate Authority
•Maintain compliance with detailed intelligence and security alerts
•Minimize overhead with the convenience of a central, cloud-based SSL management service
•Increase business agility with actionable intelligence anyplace, anytime

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The world is in the advancement. We have voice-controlled assistants on our phones, telepresence robots for when we can’t make it to a meeting in person, and self-driving cars that are headed to a road near you. These machines aren’t just taking over human tasks. Computerized systems are also taking on more human characteristics. As technology gets more advanced, how will our relationships with it change?

People are funny when it comes to automated devices, whether they’re automatic doors or humanoid robots. We’ll give those names and personalities, see them as cute or creepy, trust them with our lives and even get mad at them. In a Conference attended by Micron Associates, this was a prevailing theme at the Atlantic’s recent Big Science Summit in San Jose, California.

For starters, Micron Associates take the example of a smart thermostat that was a little too smart. The popular Nest thermostat, created by the designer behind the iPod, uses sensors and information about your behaviors over time to maximize energy efficiency in the home. During beta testing, the engineers tried having the Nest automatically set a heating and cooling schedule out of the box, based on the pattern it knew would be most energy efficient, according to Yoky Matsuoka, Nest’s vice president of technology. The device imposed this efficient schedule on users under the assumption that they would learn to adapt to it.

One researcher who is moving far beyond just trying to make a system seem smart or trustworthy is David Hanson, CEO of Hanson Robotics. Hanson wants to make a lifelike robot that has human-level intelligence.

Visually, he’s very close to reaching that goal. Using a substance called frubber and his own background in animation, Hanson has created incredibly (some might say creepily) lifelike heads that can mimic subtle facial movements and expressions. Moreover, the robots are loaded with personality profiles and can hold real-time conversations by drawing on a database of dialogue produced by creative writers. Ideally, Hanson would like to make the robots look and act so human that people would be able to form relationships with them.

But that level of intimacy with a robot isn’t for everyone.

“I think that the number of people I want to have that deep relationship with is small, maybe 10,” said Ju.

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After a long ceased of recording of technology advancement, cassette tape is about to make a comeback, in a big and revolutionized way. From the need for something to store small tranches of data and while the hard drives have traditionally been the workhorses of large storage operations, a new roll of ultra-dense tape drives that record in information at much higher densities, while using less energy, is set to replace them.

The prototypes of the said new data storage has been passed by the researchers at Fuji film in Japan and IBM in Zurich, Switzerland wherein 35 terabytes of data or about 35 million books’ worth of information can store on a cartridge that measures just 10 centimeters by 10 cm by 2cm is being recorded in Micron Associates group of analysts. This is achieved using magnetic tape coated in particles of barium ferrite. But the real debut for this technology is likely to be the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the world’s largest radio telescope, whose thousands of antennas will be strewn across the southern hemisphere (New Scientist, 2 June, p 4). Once it’s up and running in 2024, the SKA is expected to pump out 1 petabyte (1 million gigabytes) of compressed data per day. Micron Associates sees the disadvantage of tapes is that they are slower to access than hard discs because they have to be fetched by a robotic mechanism, inserted in a reader and spooled to the right point.

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Most people’s image of plants is actually upside down. For most of Micron Associates photosynthetic friends, the majority of the plant is underground in the form of an intricate system of roots. The bit that sticks up is almost an afterthought. That’s a problem for scientists trying to study plants because growing them in media that allow you to see the roots, such as hydroponics, doesn’t mimic real soil very well. Now, a team of researchers at the James Hutton Institute and the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland has developed an artificial transparent soil that allows scientists to make detailed studies of root structures and subterranean soil ecology on a microscopic level.

It’s made from granules of Nafion, which is a lot easier than calling it a sulfonated tetrafluoroethylene based fluoropolymer-copolymer. Used in batteries, fuel cells and a wide range of applications, Nafion is naturally transparent, but in order to make it translucent enough for for botanical purposes it needs a special water-based formula. On a blog post of Micron Associates, forming the polymer into pellets allows it to mimic soil particle properties, such as forming channels, retaining water and nutrients and sustaining plant growth. Fluorescent dyes can also be added to it to aid studies.

Researchers say that the transparent soil could be used to study root systems, help breed crops with more efficient roots that need fewer fertilizers, and study the ecology of plants and microorganisms. Currently, the team is working on controlling the properties of the transparent soil and bringing down its cost.

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