Games Gadgets n Technology

London: Emotion-detecting robot cars will face off against eavesdropping flying saucers in the English countryside later this year, as scientists and school children compete with their designs for the next generation of military equipment.

It’s the British Ministry of Defence’s first ever “Grand Challenge’’, aimed at encouraging scientists, inventors and academics to turn ideas into machines for army use in urban environments.

Middlesex University’s Mehmet Ali Erbil displays his unmanned flying vehicle for reconnaissance
It gave six finalists funding to build machine prototypes, such as mini-helicopters and disc-shaped flying robots fitted with heat and motion sensors that can be controlled remotely from a bunker.

And the finalists, who each received 3,00,000 pounds (Rs 2.4 crore), came to London last week to display their models.

“This project has really allowed us to broaden our vision and look at what other work is being done out there in our field,’’ said Norman Gregory, business manager for the Silicon Valley Group PLC, a small research company in southeast Britain.

His company teamed up with the Bruton School for Girls in Somerset to build an unmanned buggy that can analyse gunmen’s movements to determine whether they are angry or nervous.

“We are a small company and would not have been able to put together a consortium to develop such a sophisticated system without this competition. The government made it clear it wanted consortiums to get schools involved, and since the

Bruton school already ran its own robot design competitions, we asked them if they wanted to have a look at our research,’’ Gregory said.

Chris Jones of Bristol University poses with his vision-based control system to use unmanned rotary wing vehicles
Another group, Swarm Systems Ltd, has built a set of tiny helicopters that fly in formation into a village, recording images and audio tracks to beam back to headquarters.

Finalists will take part in a mock battle in August in Copehill Down, a village that was modelled on an East German one when it was built for military training during the Cold War. Copehill Down is near Stonehenge, about 150 kms from London.

The contestants will have their machines search for pretend gunmen and mock bombs, earning points for each find and losing points for hitting civilians or transmitting data too slowly.

The winner gets a trophy made from the recycled metal recovered from a WWII fighter jet. The best designs will also get financial backing from Britain’s defence ministry.
mumbai news

Mumbai: City scientists have developed ‘iSens’ – a low-cost biosensor which they say detects heart attacks well in advance.

Developed at IIT Mumbai’s Centre for Excellence of Nanoelectronics, the iSens is now being prepared for clinical trials and will be available by the end of this year, said Dr V Ramgopal Rao, who heads this project.

“Field trials will not take time since it is only a diagnostic tool. We are talking to some Indian and multinational companies to commercialise the product,” Rao said.

Not only is the cost kept low, he said, but the sensor also detects possible acute myocardial infarction up to six months in advance.







Dr V R Rao

The iSens is primarily a table-top box with a set of sensors, and costs between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000. Blood samples are taken on disposable cartridges, and inserted into the box for a period of around 10 minutes, Rao explained.

The box comprises nano-sized sensors, smaller than a millionth of a millimetre. These sensors measure the levels of proteins and enzymes – such as myoglobin, proponin and CK-MB – which can cause myocardial infarctions. Based on the concentration of these elements, the box displays a reading to classify the risk as low, medium or high.

“Our aim is to reach the iSens to the primary health care (PHC) centres. Only five per cent of

patients are able to reach hospitals, while 95 per cent go to PHCs or small clinics,” Rao said. “We can train the PHC personnel as the device will be simple to operate.”

The project was funded by the National Programme for Smart Materials and the National Programme on Micro and Smart Systems.

In association with his colleague Soumyo Mukherjee of the university’s Bio-School, Rao and his team have also developed small silicon lockets to be worn by patients. These lockets can take an ECG of the patient, and transfer the data to a doctor via a mobile phone.

Western Digital has launched its ‘My Passport Elite’ portable hard drive range in India. Weighing in at a mere 180 gms, the USB 2.0 device comes with a large suite of software, including automatic backup, synchronisation tools to update your email and important documents, and MioNet software to remotely access files from your computer. Compatible with Windows, Macs and also game consoles, the 320GB drive retails at Rs 12,150, while the 250GB version will set you back by Rs 10,350. For more details, visit www.westerndigital.com.

Can an object speak volumes about your personality? Well, it sure can, if that object is as intimate as a mobile phone. Accessorisation is the buzzword today – be it your wardrobe and the paraphernalia that goes with it or the cozy interiors of your abode. If you aren't in the 'let-it-be-accessorised' league then are you sure living on Mars. The markets is ionised with new innovations each offering that 'extra' bit to woo 'the' mass of customer base. Mediocre pace and space is not for these high-end mobile phones that take form of a style statement going beyond a mere possession of need.

Indian mobile phone market is ripe with juicy entrants like ‘Nokia’ series, ‘HTC’, ‘LG Viewty’, ‘BlackBerry’ et al. And the flamboyant elite have added their favourite piece of jewellery to their existing grandeur.

Grand talks:

BlackBerry

The latest BlackBerry smartphones launched in India such as the BlackBerry Pearl 8120, the BlackBerry Curve 8300, 8310 and 8320, come with advanced multimedia and powerful voice and messaging capabilities. They are choices for executives and consumers who want to make the most out of their work and personal lives.

Katie Lee, RIM Asia Pacific explains, “The smartphone has become a lifestyle statement. Consumers demand robust performance and user-friendly experience for both messaging (voice and data) and entertainment (multimedia) in a stylish design and form factor.” She adds, “Smartphones come with strong consumer-friendly features, such as high resolution camera, multimedia player, ability to share photos via MMS, email and IM clients. Recently, RIM introduced a Facebook client allowing users to log onto the popular social network site on their preferable locations, as well as upload and share pictures via Facebook.” The phone ultimately helps users manage their work and lifestyle uniquely and hence has become a preferred choice in the market place.

Price range: Rs 14,990.00 to 31,990.00/-

Nokia:

Nokia believes in catering users who are looking at combination of style, class and functionality. Devinder Kishore, director marketing (India) says, “The phones suit consumers with an active lifestyle, who can use their stunning designs and cutting-edge features as a fashion statement.” He adds, “Nokia high-end products translate in a combination of ‘Style with substance’.”

Knocking deals:
Nokia 8800 Arte is built with combination of exquisite materials, glass and stainless steel. Its twin sibling, the Sapphire Arte sports an actual sapphire gemstone and a leather cover to commemorate its exclusivity.

PRISM Collection is a modernist collection of sophisticated phones with unconventional designs. It comprises of Nokia 7900 and 7500 Prism. The signature diamond-cut designs exhibit class.

Nokia 8800 Sirocco Gold is 18-carat gold plated with the sapphire-coated, scratch-resistant glass display. A smooth sliding mechanism reveals a stunning colour screen (up to 262k colours), high resolution camera, exclusive ringtones by Brian Eno and a wide array of messaging functionalities.

Nokia N95 and N95 8GB - Personal entertainment has taken on a whole new meaning with this multimedia computer, optimised for enjoying videos, playing games, or even locating destinations with A-GPS.

The Nokia E90 is the first GPS enabled device from Nokia Eseries portfolio. The device offers onboard GPS along with high-speed connectivity to allow consumers to search map and navigate to a location.

Price range: Rs 20,000 to 60,000/-

LG:

Anil Arora, business group head, GSM, LGEIL is of the view that their phones offer perfect harmony of stylish design and smart technology. They cater to those who are stylish, want to flaunt the latest gizmos, are abreast with latest technology and who want to lead fashion. These customers consider themselves trendsetters and fashionable.

Arora explains, “Our products have a balanced mix of all the three aspects - lifestyle tag, smooth functionality and superior brand. ‘Viewty’ provides mobile users with high feature-led technology in the palm of their hand. The professional-level camera phone boasts of a number of 'world's first' easy-to-use features never seen before in a mobile handset.”

Price range: Rs. 10,000/- (Shine Slider) to Rs. 22,000/- (Viewty).

HTC

Ajay Sharma, country manager, HTC (India) says, “In this era of converged devices, mobiles have long transcended from being just voice and texting devices to ones that offer a multitude of applications and functionalities. Today, they serve diverse purposes - from being an entertainment medium, extending to m-commerce platform, GPS device to a device that supports business and enterprise solutions as well.” At HTC, they believe that their data-centric devices have different attributes to offer something to everybody, right from a student to a corporate honcho. It is the first phone with a touch flow technology, provides a Microsoft Windows platform, Version 6.

He adds, “Our device should offer them total connectivity with mobility in terms of Internet email access etc. Devices should have appealing form factors, which the customer would like to flaunt. And, business capabilities, which they would like to have, a simple user interface that is easy to use, and good multi media capabilities to pass their free time.”

Price range: Rs 13, 000 to 28, 000/-

Though the mobile revolution is just a decade old in India, its growth has been phenomenal attracting the best of the world. Consumer is the king and nothing but the best can appeal to these masters, who are on the better end of the stick.

Kishore aptly concludes, “While a lot of focus today is on the volumes of new consumers in India, we are also seeing a silent revolution of discerning consumers picking phones not only on the basis of capabilities but also design and form factor. Today, consumers are increasingly becoming more sophisticated in their selection of handset so that they can get best blend of technology and style.”

Creative recently launched the MuVo T200 MP3 player in India.Weighing in at around 20 gms, the device is equipped with a tiny 65k-colour LCD screen that can change between six colour themes. The gadget can store upto 500 MP3 songs, and also supports WMA and Audible music formats. The device also offers FM radio with 32 presets, and voice recording capability. The T200, which boasts of a battery life of up to 9 hours, retails in two memory capacities – 2 GB for Rs 3,399 and 4 GB for Rs 4,999.For more info, visit in.creative.com

No more waiting: New discovery in electronics could lead to computers that start instantly, and with the same programs running as when you shut it off

For nearly 40 years, scientists have speculated that basic electrical circuits have a natural ability to remember things even when the power is switched off. They just couldn’t find it.

Now, US researchers at Hewlett-Packard have proven them right with the discovery of an electrical circuit that could lead to a computer you never have to boot up.

The finding proves what until now had only been theory – but could save millions from the tedium of waiting for a computer to find its “place”, the researchers said.

The newly discovered circuit element – called a memristor – could enable PCs that start up

instantly, and laptops that retain your session information long after the battery dies.

Lasts long, really long

Basic electronics theory teaches that there are three fundamental elements of a passive circuit – resistors, capacitors and inductors.

But in the 1970s, Leon Chua of the University of California at Berkeley, theorised there should be a fourth called a memory resistor, or ‘memristor’, and he worked out the mathematical equations to prove it.

Now, the HP team – led by Stanley Williams – has proven that ‘memristance’ exists. They developed a mathematical model and a physical example of a memristor, which they described in the journal Nature.

“It’s very different from any other electrical device,” Williams said. “No combination of resistor, capacitor or inductor will give you this.”

It’s like water flowing in a pipe...

Williams likens the memristance to water flowing through a garden hose. In a regular circuit, the water flows from more than one direction.

But in a memory resistor, the hose remembers what direction the water (or current) is flowing from, and it expands in that direction to

improve the flow. If water or current flows from the other direction, the hose shrinks.

“It remembers both the direction and the amount of charge that flows through it… That is the memory,” Williams said.

The discovery is more than an academic pursuit for Williams, who said the finding could lead a new kind of computer memory that would never need booting up.

Conventional computers use Dynamic Random Access Memory or DRAM, which is lost when the power is turned off, and must be

accessed from the hard drive when the computer goes back on.

But a computer that incorporates this new kind of memory circuit would never lose it place, even when the power is turned off.

“If you turn on your computer it will come up instantly where it was when you turned it off. That is a very interesting potential application, and one that is very realistic,” Williams said.

But he said understanding this new circuit element could be critical as companies attempt to build ever smaller devices.

“It’s essential that people understand this to be able to go further into the world of nanoelectronics,” referring to electronics on the nano scale – objects tens of thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair.

“It turns out that memristance gets more important as the device gets smaller. That is another major reason it took so long to find,” Williams said.

Chua, who wrote the first paper on the topic when he was a new professor at Berkeley, is now 71 years old and says he’s nearing retirement from the university.

“I never thought I’d live long enough to see this happen,” Chua said with a laugh. “I’m thrilled because it’s almost like vindication. Something I did is not just in my imagination, it’s fundamental.’’