Microsoft Surface Computing Platform and PhotoSynth

Posted by james on Jun 15, 2007 in science | 2 comments

There’s not much I can say about this other than I can’t WAIT for it to be available for me to play with.

The following video talks about Microsoft’s Surface Computing Platform:

Found via: Microsoft’s new project code named Milan

Now, using the above technology, combine it with the following, called PhotoSynth, which is demonstrated and explained in this presentation recorded at TED:

Absolutely awesome stuff, in all it’s fine geekery.

Naked at the airport

Posted by james on Apr 5, 2007 in science | 0 comments

Did you know that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security started testing a security scanner last month at the international airport in Phoenix, Arizona that enables Security to see you naked?

According to the article “New Security Scanner Sees Through Clothes, But With Modesty“:

The backscatter machines bounce low-intensity x-ray beams off skin to create black-and-white images that render clothing transparent. Concealed weapons like ceramic knives and pistols are completely revealed.

But so are intimate body parts.

In U.S. congressional testimony last year, the American Civil Liberties Union called the backscatter technology a “tremendous invasion of privacy” that could reveal personal details like evidence of a mastectomy or genital size.

I’m not sure about you, but THAT just FREAKS ME OUT!

Anyway, the actual reason for the National Geographic article is to point out that there’s another security scanner that’s being developed that can see through clothes, but rather than give a detailed picture of your body, it generates a heat map of your body, so anything not the same temperature as your body will show up. But, it also manages to identify different materials, so a gun that is now body temperature will also show up as a different colour to that of your body.

Instead of bouncing x-rays off an object to create an image, the sensor Helistö described simply absorbs natural thermal radiation.

The device is sensitive to terahertz frequencies—electromagnetic radiation from between the infrared spectrum and radio spectrum.

The absorbed radiation allows the sensor to map the temperature profile of a body, similarly to a thermal infrared image, Helistö explained.

“The good point of terahertz is that it penetrates most clothing material,” he said.

Since the device is also sensitive to the differing properties of materials, a metal object—even if it is the same temperature as the body—will show up in the image, Helistö added.

Sounds good. Though I’ll bet there are going to be a few upset airport security guards when they find out they don’t get to scan any Playboy Models with the backscatter machines…

Talk without talking

Posted by james on Jan 4, 2007 in science | 0 comments

Here’s a neat little device that might come in handy. It’s a speech recognition device that doesn’t rely on actual sounds, like normal speech recognition, but rather recognising muscular patterns of speech.

“Subvocal speech recognition is basically the understanding of words without the requirement for sound,” said Chuck Jorgensen, a scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, whose team is developing the system.

“We’re looking at the neuromuscular patterns being sent through the nervous system and inferring from those patterns what words would have been said out loud had a person actually permitted himself to produce the acoustics.”

Go read the whole article here: “Silent” Speech Device May Aid Divers, Firefighters, Cell Phone Users