Google quits plans to make cheap renewable energy

Google Inc has abandoned an ambitious project to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, the latest target of Chief Executive Larry Page's moves to focus the Internet giant on fewer efforts.

Google said on Tuesday that it was pulling the plug on seven projects, including Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal as well as a Wikipedia-like online encyclopedia service known as Knol.

The plans, which Google announced on its corporate blog, represent the third so-called "spring cleaning" announcement that Google has made since Google co-founder Page took the reins in April.

The changes come as Google is facing stiff competition in mobile computing and social networking from Apple Inc and Facebook, and as some investors have groused about rising spending at the world's No.1 Internet search company.

"To recap, we're in the process of shutting down a number of products which haven't had the impact we'd hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward," wrote Google Senior Vice President of Operations Urs Holzle in the blog post.

Google said that it believed other institutions were better positioned to take its renewable energy efforts "to the next level."

Google began making investments and doing research into technology to drive down the price of renewable energy in 2007, with a particular focus on solar power technology.

In 2009, the company's so-called Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl, told Reuters that he expected to demonstrate within a few years working technology that could produce renewable energy at a cheaper price than coal.

"It is even odds, more or less," Weihl said at the time. "In three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there."

A Google spokesman said that Weihl had left Google earlier this month.

Google noted in its blog post that it would continue efforts to generate "cleaner, more efficient energy," including procuring renewable energy for its data centers.

Among the other projects included in Tuesday's "spring cleaning" were Google Knol, Google Search Timeline, Google Gear, Google Friend Connect, Google Bookmarks Lists and Google Wave, an ill-fated social networking and communication service that Google had previously said it would cease developing.

Google said that in December its email and calendar applications will no longer work with Gears technology, which allows Google's software to work when not connected to the Internet. Google said it is working to create offline capabilities into HTML5 technology instead.

Google Friend Connect, which allows website publishers to add social features to their sites, will be retired in March for all non-Blogger websites, Google said. It suggested that websites use its Google+ social network instead.

Earlier this year, Google said it would "wind down" Google Labs, a website that offered public access to experimental Google products, as well as terminating products that let consumers monitor their home energy consumption and keep track of their personal health records.

Shares of Google, which finished Tuesday's regular trading session down 94 cents, were up 86 cents at $580.86 in after hours trading.

Google continues its Autumn clearance

INTERNET SEARCH OUTFIT Google is continuing its Autumn cleaning and has announced that it will close out more products, including Gears and Friend Connect.

The firm is shutting down products that have not had the impact it had hoped for, said Urs Hölzle, SVP of Operations and Google Fellow in a blog post that sees off the products.

"Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience," he said.

Seven projects have been shuttered and they range from the simple to the far more elaborate.
Google Bookmarks Lists, for example, was a way of sharing bookmarks and collaborating with friends, which is something well catered for anyway. Google will close this down on 19 December.

More elaborate is the 'Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE < C)' initiative that aimed to cut the cost of renewable energy. The work done here so far has been published, so all is not wasted.

"At this point, other institutions are better positioned than Google to take this research to the next level," said Hölzle.
"We will continue our work to generate cleaner, more efficient energy-including our on-campus efforts, procuring renewable energy for our data centers, making our data centers even more efficient and investing more than $850 million in renewable energy technologies."

Also nixed are Google Friend Connect, a webmaster tool for adding social features to web sites, and the social networking stumble, Google Wave.
This makes sense, perhaps, since Google has more recently launched Google+, its social networking service. The firm recommends that any affected web sites add a Google+ badge to their web pages instead.

You can also wave goodbye to Google Gears, whose demise has been on the cards since March when Google stopped supporting new web browsers for it and discontinued its offline development extensions.

Google Search Timeline, a visual way of showing historical search queries, has also had its time, as has Knol, a collaboration tool. Users have about a year to wean themselves off the latter.

Google X: The clandestine lab where Google is tackling a list of 100 shoot-for-the-stars ideas

In a top-secret lab in an undisclosed Bay Area location where robots run free, the future is being imagined.

It's a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you're eating. Your robot could go to the office while you stay home in your pajamas. And you could, perhaps, take an elevator to outer space.

These are just a few of the dreams being chased at Google X, the clandestine lab where Google is tackling a list of 100 shoot-for-the-stars ideas. In interviews, a dozen people discussed the list; some work at the lab or elsewhere at Google, and some have been briefed on the project. But none would speak for attribution because Google is so secretive about the effort that many employees do not even know the lab exists.

Although most of the ideas on the list are in the conceptual stage, nowhere near reality, two people briefed on the project said one product would be released by the end of the year, although they would not say what it was.

"They're pretty far out in front right now," said Rodney Brooks, a professor emeritus at MIT's computer science and artificial intelligence lab and founder of Heartland Robotics. "But Google's not an ordinary company, so almost nothing applies."

At most Silicon Valley companies, innovation means developing online apps or ads, but Google sees itself as different. Even as Google has grown into a major corporation and tech startups are biting at its heels, the lab reflects its ambition to be a place where groundbreaking research and development are happening, in the tradition of Xerox PARC, which developed the modern personal computer in the 1970s.

A Google spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, declined to comment on the lab, but said that investing in speculative projects was an important part of Google's DNA. "While the possibilities are incredibly exciting, please do keep in mind that the sums involved are very small by comparison to the investments we make in our core businesses," she said.

At Google, which uses artificial intelligence techniques and machine learning in its search algorithm, some of the outlandish projects may not be as much of a stretch as they first appear, even though they defy the bounds of the company's main Web search business.

For example, space elevators, a longtime fantasy of Google's founders and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, could collect information or haul things into space. (In theory, they involve rocketless space travel along a cable anchored to Earth.) "Google is collecting the world's data, so now it could be collecting the solar system's data," Brooks said.

Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, is deeply involved in the lab, said several people with knowledge of it, and came up with the list of ideas along with Larry Page, Google's other founder, who worked on Google X before becoming chief executive in April; Eric E. Schmidt, its chairman; and other top executives. "Where I spend my time is farther afield projects, which we hope will graduate to important key businesses in the future," Brin said recently, though he did not mention Google X.

Google may turn one of the ideas - the driverless cars that it unleashed on California's roads last year - into a new business. Unimpressed by the innovative spirit of Detroit automakers, Google now is considering manufacturing them in the United States, said a person briefed on the effort.

Google could sell navigation or information technology for the cars, and theoretically could show location-based ads to passengers as they zoom by local businesses while playing Angry Birds in the driver's seat.

Robots figure prominently in many of the ideas. They have long captured the imagination of Google engineers, including Brin, who has already attended a conference through robot instead of in the flesh.

Fleets of robots could assist Google with collecting information, replacing the humans who photograph streets for Google Maps, say people with knowledge of Google X. Robots born in the lab could be destined for homes and offices, where they could assist with mundane tasks or allow people to work remotely, they say.

Other ideas involve what Google referred to as the "Web of things" at its software developers conference in May - a way of connecting objects to the Internet. Every time anyone uses the Web, it benefits Google, the company argued, so it could be good for Google if home accessories and wearable objects, not just computers, were connected.

Buying Android phone? Read this

 Over the past one month, five people have asked me, "What's an Android phone? I have to buy a new phone, you think it would be a good idea to try out an Android ?" The surge in numbers of phones with Google's Android operating system has generated a lot of talk, but many aren't clear what it is and whether they actually need an Android phone.

The rule of thumb when going for any gadget is: what do I need it for? The question should be increasingly asked, more so now, when the market has a huge variety of models with confusing permutations and combinations of specifications.

If you are using the phone merely to text and call, and if you hate GPRS, you don't need an Android, which is a smart phone (as different from the simple feature phone). Instead of worrying about Android or any other OS, you could look at the keypad or voice clarity or price or design.
What make Android phones attractive are the applications. If you are an app freak, go for Android. And there are tens of thousands of them in the Android Market -- anything from breaking news and cricket scores to astrological forecasts and currency converters.
There are also those that help you see stars and planets . And, if you are shy of popping that all-important question to your partner, well, there's an app for that too.

Don't other phones like Nokia, iPhone and BlackBerry have apps? Yes, they do. But not the variety and numbers that Android offers. Why?
Mainly because Android is an Open Source platform, meaning app developers in any part of the world can write the codes to develop the apps, and put them on the Android Market.

Nokia has lately woken up to the app power, and is proactively forming a vibrant developer community. If you are a fan of Google products, like Gmail, Picasa, Blogger, Calendar, Reader etc, then too it makes sense to go for Android.
The phone contacts , for example, get synced with Gmail contacts; and serve as a good back-up.

Even if you are only texting and calling, an Android smart phone can significantly enhance user experience. There's , for example , Gesture Search that lets you quickly find a contact, a bookmark, an application or a music track on your device by drawing on the screen.
There's the translator app that can work as an interpreter if you are in a new place where you don't understand the local language.

Android phones are available for a wide price range, from as low as Rs 4,000 to as high as Rs 35,000. The low-priced ones, with minimum features may be good enough for basic functions.
If you are aiming at using a number of apps then you will have to loosen the purse strings a bit. So, do I need an Android phone? Well, it's the same old question : What do I need the phone for?

Google Details 10 Search Tweaks

Google has opened up about ten of the hundreds of changes it makes to its search algorithm each year

Google on 14 November peeled away another layer of the multifaceted onion that comprises its search engine by revealing 10 specific algorithm changes the company has made.

The company has traditionally closely guarded its search technology signals, or the 1,000-plus factors that help Google.com serve results at such a prodigious clip.
Transparency

Yet Google is endeavoring to appear more transparent about its search technology in the face of the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust investigation into its core business. Senator Mike Lee accused Google in a Congressional hearing in September of “cooking” its search results to favour its own products.

Google detailed 10 of the roughly 500 changes it makes each year.
Specifically, Google added increased page content and decreased header and menu content for its search snippets, which are strings of text from search results to give users an idea of whether those results might be useful enough to warrant a click.

Google Search Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts, who detailed the changes in a corporate blog post, said Google is more likely to pick text from the actual page content in the future.

Google also extended rich snippets for application, which help users searching for applications see details such as cost and reviews.

Google also improved the way it hunts for and finds “official” web pages and changed how it handles result freshness for queries where a user has chosen a specific date range.
Moreover, Cutts and his crew worked to provide better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors.
Boilerplate links

“We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these,” he said. “The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.”

The company also killed a signal, retiring a factor in its Image Search related to images that contained references from multiple web documents.

Some of the changes involved language. For queries in languages where limited web content is available, Google is now translating English web pages and displaying translated titles below English titles in search results.
Clicking on the translated titles will take searchers to pages translated from English into the query language.

Google is doing this for Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh and Icelandic.

Google is also providing autocomplete predictions in Russian based on length to reduce the number of “long, sometimes arbitrary query predictions in Russian”, something it already does for English language results.

The search engine also made changes in how its autocomplete feature handles queries that contain non-Latin characters, such as Hebrew, Russian and Arabic.
Fresh content

Google also improved its ranking of fresh content, such as hot trends, current events or recurring events, a move that affects 35 percent of search results.
The boost came months after Google’s real-time search deal with Twitter lapsed, leaving the company deprived of tweets to surface for users.

Google, which has a 65 percent US search market share, normally keeps such specific tweaks under wraps because it views its search technology as a competitive advantage over Microsoft Bing, Yahoo and other challengers.

But Google also keeps its search updates quiet to keep SEO specialists and enterprising businesses from “gaming” Google to improve their search ranking for their own marketing designs. Cutts alluded to this in a cautionary note in his blog post:

“If you’re a site owner, before you go wild tuning your anchor text or thinking about your web presence for Icelandic users, please remember that this is only a sampling of the hundreds of changes we make to our search algorithms in a given year, and even these changes may not work precisely as you’d imagine,” Cutts wrote.

“We’ve decided to publish these descriptions in part because these specific changes are less susceptible to gaming.”

In other words, if you are a website publisher looking to play an angle, use the information Cutts provided at your own risk and don’t expect to benefit from a better search ranking on Google.

Chromebooks in Indian markets by 2012

The next edition of the Google Chromebooks would be available in the Indian markets by 2012, according to the Senior vice-president( Chrome and apps), Sundar Pichai.

Interacting with media persons in the city, Pichai said that the Chromebook was only available in seven countries currently and were available only online. Dismissing claims that the product was badly received, he stated that product was ‘not a volume play’.

Unwilling to announce a specific date for the launch, he said that a decision such as this would have t o b e taken in consideration. Contradicting claims of Google Plus, their social networking effort, did not make the impact the company had hoped for, he said that Plus had over 40 million subscribers.

Admitting to the flaws existent in ‘Google Buzz,’ Pichai said, “We did not fully understand privacy issues and if we hadn’t made those mistakes in Buzz, then the same mistakes would have been repeated in Plus.”

Facebook security breach raises concerns

A widespread spam attack on Facebook has caused violent and pornographic images to be posted on some users’ profile pages, representing one of the worst security breaches in the young Web site’s history and raising concerns about its vulnerability to hackers.

The company, which acknowledged the problem Monday, said it was working to shut down the accounts responsible for the attack.

The disturbing pictures surfaced as the company tries to quell concerns about user safety and privacy. Facebook is reportedly near a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over complaints about the way it stores and shares user data. Experts said that while this latest attack didn’t appear to compromise users’ data, it was a serious security breach.

“Protecting the people who use Facebook from spam and malicious content is a top priority for us, and we are always working to improve our systems to isolate and remove material that violates our terms,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in a statement. “Our efforts have drastically limited the damage caused by this attack, and we are now in the process of investigating to identify those responsible.”

According to Facebook, users were somehow tricked into copying and pasting malicious code into their browser bars. Hackers then gained access to their profiles and could post whatever they wished, and any of the user’s Facebook friends could see the images.

Chester Wisniewski, a security researcher at Sophos, said similar schemes in the past have lured users in with promises of free or discounted products.

It was unclear Tuesday who was responsible. Groups of hackers have threatened to put out a virus to “take down Facebook” over their concerns with the way it handles user privacy.

Daimon Geopfert, a security expert for RSM McGladrey, said that this was one of the largest Facebook attacks he has seen. The scale and speed were “unprecedented,” he said.

Experts said it was easy to imagine another attack on the Facebook platform that would be more troubling: sending false messages to family and friends to lure them to malicious sites, where they might be tricked into revealing private information. They warned that hackers could use the template of this attack to launch copycat efforts.

The presence of the photos upset many Facebook users, who took to Twitter to say they were weighing whether to deactivate their accounts.

Part of Facebook’s success has stemmed from its ability to get developers to create games and other applications that work seamlessly on the site’s platform. But giving such leeway to outside programmers means the site is also vulnerable to hackers, Wisniewski said.

Facebook could be doing more to stop these kinds of attacks, he said, such as checking the credentials of programmers who register with the site and giving users the option to double-check any actions before they take effect. The company has made an effort to make things seamless, he said, but convenience often comes at the expense of security.

“The technical pieces of this aren’t going to matter,” Geopfert said. “The idea that it happened and that the platform is more risky than you thought is damaging.”

Washington Post Co. chairman and chief executive Donald E. Graham is a member of the Facebook board of directors.

Facebook, Google back new web tracking privacy standard

Popular websites such as Facebook and Google will now give their users more control over how they are tracked online under a draft developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

W3C, headed by inventor of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee, published technical proposals to enable websites to respond to forthcoming privacy regulations in the US.

The proposals, designed to give users more control over what advertisers and marketing firms know about them, has been backed by Facebook and Google, as well as browser makers Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla.

US regulators and civil liberties groups have also collaborated on the new standards, The Telegraph reports.

The stronger privacy protections are expected to challenge the online advertising and marketing industries, who depend on tracking data to measure the success of their campaigns.

"Advertisers, even if they don't show targeted ads, it's important for them to know how many people viewed and clicked, what your conversion rate is. Currently, many mechanisms used for these statistics are not so privacy-friendly," said Dr Matthias Schunter of IBM Research, who co-chaired the W3C Tracking Protection, Information Week reports.

According to Information Week, the new standards would be enforced via self-regulatory industry bodies from mid-2012.

HP, Intel plotted to keep Itanium processor alive: Oracle

Oracle Corp accused Hewlett-Packard C of "secretly" contracting with Intel Corp to keep Intel's Itanium microprocessor from being phased out, according to a court filing from Oracle in its long-running legal battle with HP over the Itanium platform.

According to Oracle's filing, HP and Intel forged a "contractual commitment" to keep Itanium going through the next two generations of microprocessors, despite HP's previous statements that Intel's decision to keep investing in Itanium was its own.

"HP has secretly contracted with Intel to keep churning out Itaniums so that HP can maintain the appearance that a dead microprocessor is alive," Oracle wrote. "The whole thing is a remake of Weekend at Bernie's."

HP spokesman Michael Thacker called the filing "nothing more than a desperate delay tactic designed to extend the paralyzing uncertainty in the marketplace created when Oracle announced in March 2011 - in clear break of contract - that it would no longer support HP's Itanium platform."

Intel declined to comment.

It's the latest salvo in a bitter lawsuit and countersuit between the two companies. In March, Oracle decided to discontinue its support for Itanium, a heavy-duty computing microprocessor, saying that Intel made it clear that the chip was nearing the end of its life and that Intel was shifting its focus to its x86 microprocessor.

HP called Oracle's decision "anti-customer," and sued Oracle in California state court in June.

In August, Oracle hit back with a countersuit against HP, accusing the company of concealing facts during its negotiation over the Itanium platform.
    Among the facts that HP is accused of concealing it was about to hire Leo Apotheker as its chief executive and Ray Lane as its chairman, according to the suit.

Other claims asserted by Oracle against HP include defamation and intentional interference with contractual relations.

Trai asks telcos to block violators sending commercial calls and messages via Internet

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has told telecom operators to identify and block those violators sending commercial calls and messages through the Internet from servers located outside India.

"The operators have been asked to track Internet from servers outside India, which is being used by telemarketers to send unwanted messages. Telemarketers are playing a cat and mouse race.

     They are going one step ahead than what we do," Trai chairman, R.S. Sarma told reporters on the sidelines of the National Telecom Summit, 2011 on Friday.

The government has been lenient in its efforts to put in place an effective filtering mechanism for unwanted calls and messages telemarketers.

     Telecom minister Kapil Sibal had earlier expressed the government's helplessness in curbing unsolicited calls and messages to over 85 crore mobile phone users even as the ban on such communications came into force from September 27.

INFOGRAPHICS: Strangling Spam: Trai's big victory

He had stated that the operators and the concerned agencies are unable to track calls or messages sent by telemarketers through Internet servers located outside India.

    He had said that the government has no jurisdiction over the issue and has no solution to it either. Sarma however said that the government and the telcos were already working on it.

   "Operators have been told to gear up and take adequate action against offenders. Operators have already been able to track down many such violators and are blocking them," he said.

The Trai chairman admitted that unsolicited messages and calls continue to be there but said that it has dropped down drastically.

Subscribers who have registered their mobile numbers with the National Customer Preference Registry, earlier known as the National Do Not Call Registry have complained that though the number of unsolicited calls and messages has dropped, they continue to receive such calls and messages.

Most such unsolicited calls and messages relate to the real estate industry.

The bulk and unwanted messages market in India is worth over Rs 335 crore, with over 16,800 crore bulk messages being sent to mobile users every year. Service operators sell bulk SMS packages, typically of one lakh SMSs, for costs ranging

Sony racing to beat Apple to next generation of connected TV sets

Sony CEO Howard Stringer said Thursday that he has "no doubt" that the late Steve Jobs was working to reinvent the television, while the company has spent the past five years developing a platform to compete against Jobs and Apple.

During a breakfast hosted and reported by The Wall Street Journal, Stringer acknowledged that the television industry can't continue on its current path.

"We can't continue selling TV sets [the way we have been]. Every TV set we all make loses money," he said.

Sony warned last week that it may lose as much as $1 billion this fiscal year, largely due to the company's bleeding television business, which has lost money for seven straight years.

The executive went on to note that there's a "tremendous amount of R&D going into a different kind of TV set." For his part, Jobs revealed to his biographer that he had "cracked" the secret for a simple and elegant interface for an Apple-style television set.

Stringer said he has "no doubt" that Jobs was working on a new kind of TV, adding, "that's what we're all looking for."

The Journal noted Stringer as saying that he "wouldn't underestimate Apple's ability to come up with a novel concept, but he noted it is a tricky process." He added that any transition to a new kind of television would "take a long time."

Sony threw its lot in with the Google TV platform last year, but saw little success. Google recently released a major update to the platform in hopes of revitalizing interest in it.

However, Google's partners may be hesitant to work with the platform again. Logitech CEO Guerrino De Luca said earlier this week that his company had decided to sit "on the bench" about the platform after taking a costly $100 million loss on its Google TV-equipped Revue, due to "a mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature," The Verge reports.

Sony also bet big on 3D TV sets, but has yet to see widespread consumer adoption. Stringer on Thursday attributed the lack of regular TV content as a cause for slow sales of the devices.

"I spent the last five years building a platform so I can compete against Steve Jobs," he said after admitting that the iPhone is "really well organized." That platform is "finished, and it's launching now," Stringer continued.

The company's strategy is described as a "four-screen" approach for mobile phones, tablets, personal computers and televisions. Stringer indicated Thursday that he intends to stick to that strategy, despite calls for his resignation from some shareholders.

As for tablets, Sony released its first tablets this fall, more than a year after Apple launched the iPad. Despite having innovative form factors, the devices received a chilly reception from analysts and bloggers.

The executive characterized 2011 as a rough year and claimed that Sony would have been profitable except for several disasters, including an earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March, a hacking attack on the company's PlayStation Online service and recent flooding in Thailand. According to him, those events cost the company as much as $3 billion this year.

"For Sony this year, all those things are much worse than you can even characterize," he said.

Gmail gets a makeover

Google has unveiled a new look for its free e-mail service that has more white space, less clutter, threaded conversations, new themes, and better search.

Over the next several days, users will be prompted to switch to the new Gmail design with a link in the lower-right corner of their inbox. Eventually, it’s going to become the default.

“We’re excited to finally share Gmail’s new look with you,” Google user experience designer Jason Cornwell said in a blog post. “We’ll be bringing these changes to everyone soon,” he said.

“But if you’d like to make the switch right away, we’re rolling out a ‘Switch to the new look’ link in the bottom-right of Gmail over the next few days.”

The new layout has a revamped “conversation view” to help users read through e-mail threads. It has improved tools for searching mailboxes, which typically serve as storage bins for users.

Google also began providing more insight and control regarding how ad pitches are personalised to users.

Information such as location and search history is used to decide what ads people might find more useful, according to Google.

People can use Ads Preference Manager tools to tune systems to their tastes or block messages from advertisers that are of no interest to them.

A new, streamlined conversation view that displays Google profile pictures for your contacts — making an e-mail thread look a little more like an instant messaging conversation.

Elastic density, which means that the spacing between items on the screen will automatically adjust based on the screen size and device you’re viewing it on.

Instant messages (Google calls them conversations) now come with photos and the messages have a better streamline like a real conversation.

Adding a social element, Google is adding profile pictures beside each message.

The density of the text also adjusts depending on your screen size and resolution, making it easier on the eyes.

The new design is in line with some of the changes Google just made to Google Reader in terms of spacing and overall feel.

Gmail is also prettying itself up with a host of new themes with background images from iStockPhoto.

Fast High Precision Eye-Surgery Robot Developed

Researcher Thijs Meenink at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) has developed a smart eye-surgery robot that allows eye surgeons to operate with increased ease and greater precision on the retina and the vitreous humor of the eye. The system also extends the effective period during which ophthalmologists can carry out these intricate procedures.Meenink will defend his PhD thesis on Oct. 31 for his work on the robot, and intends later to commercialize his system.

Filters-out tremors

Eye operations such as retina repairs or treating a detached retina demands high precision. In most cases surgeons can only carry out these operations for a limited part of their career. "When ophthalmologists start operating they are usually already at an advanced stage in their careers," says Thijs Meenink. "But at a later age it becomes increasingly difficult to perform these intricate procedures." The new system can simply filter-out hand tremors, which significantly increases the effective working period of the ophthalmologist.

Same location every time

The robot consists of a 'master' and a 'slave'. The ophthalmologist remains fully in control, and operates from the master using two joysticks. This master was developed in an earlier PhD project at TU/e by dr.ir. Ron Hendrix. Two robot arms (the 'slave' developed by Meenink) copy the movements of the master and carry out the actual operation. The tiny needle-like instruments on the robot arms have a diameter of only 0.5 millimeter, and include forceps, surgical scissors and drains. The robot is designed such that the point at which the needle enters the eye is always at the same location, to prevent damage to the delicate eye structures.

Quick instrument change

Meenink has also designed a unique 'instrument changer' for the slave allowing the robot arms to change instruments, for example from forceps to scissors, within only a few seconds. This is an important factor in reducing the time taken by the procedure. Some eye operations can require as many as 40 instrument changes, which are normally a time consuming part of the overall procedure.

High precision movements

The surgeon's movements are scaled-down, for example so that each centimeter of motion on the joystick is translated into a movement of only one millimeter at the tip of the instrument. "This greatly increases the precision of the movements," says Meenink.

Haptic feedback

The master also provides haptic feedback. Ophthalmologists currently work entirely by sight -- the forces used in the operation are usually too small to be felt. However Meenink's robot can 'measure' these tiny forces, which are then amplified and transmitted to the joysticks. This allows surgeons to feel the effects of their actions, which also contributes to the precision of the procedure.Comfort

The system developed by Meenink and Hendrix also offers ergonomic benefits. While surgeons currently are bent statically over the patient, they will soon be able to operate the robot from a comfortable seated position. In addition, the slave is so compact and lightweight that operating room staff can easily carry it and attach it to the operating table.

New procedures

Ophthalmologist prof.dr. Marc de Smet (AMC Amsterdam), one of Meenink's PhD supervisors, is enthusiastic about the system -- not only because of the time savings it offers, but also because in his view the limits of manual procedures have now been reached. "Robotic eye surgery is the next step in the evolution of microsurgery in ophthalmology, and will lead to the development of new and more precise procedures," de Smet explains.

Scientists Measure Dream Content for the First Time: Dreams Activate the Brain in a Similar Way to Real Actions

The ability to dream is a fascinating aspect of the human mind. However, how the images and emotions that we experience so intensively when we dream form in our heads remains a mystery. Up to now it has not been possible to measure dream content. Max Planck scientists working with colleagues from the Charité hospital in Berlin have now succeeded, for the first time, in analysing the activity of the brain during dreaming.They were able to do this with the help of lucid dreamers, i.e. people who become aware of their dreaming state and are able to alter the content of their dreams. The scientists measured that the brain activity during the dreamed motion matched the one observed during a real executed movement in a state of wakefulness.

The research is published in the journal Current Biology.

Methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging have enabled scientists to visualise and identify the precise spatial location of brain activity during sleep. However, up to now, researchers have not been able to analyse specific brain activity associated with dream content, as measured brain activity can only be traced back to a specific dream if the precise temporal coincidence of the dream content and measurement is known. Whether a person is dreaming is something that could only be reported by the individual himself.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, the Charité hospital in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig availed of the ability of lucid dreamers to dream consciously for their research. Lucid dreamers were asked to become aware of their dream while sleeping in a magnetic resonance scanner and to report this "lucid" state to the researchers by means of eye movements. They were then asked to voluntarily "dream" that they were repeatedly clenching first their right fist and then their left one for ten seconds.

This enabled the scientists to measure the entry into REM sleep -- a phase in which dreams are perceived particularly intensively -- with the help of the subject's electroencephalogram (EEG) and to detect the beginning of a lucid phase. The brain activity measured from this time onwards corresponded with the arranged "dream" involving the fist clenching. A region in the sensorimotor cortex of the brain, which is responsible for the execution of movements, was actually activated during the dream. This is directly comparable with the brain activity that arises when the hand is moved while the person is awake. Even if the lucid dreamer just imagines the hand movement while awake, the sensorimotor cortex reacts in a similar way.The coincidence of the brain activity measured during dreaming and the conscious action shows that dream content can be measured. "With this combination of sleep EEGs, imaging methods and lucid dreamers, we can measure not only simple movements during sleep but also the activity patterns in the brain during visual dream perceptions," says Martin Dresler, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry.

The researchers were able to confirm the data obtained using MR imaging in another subject using a different technology. With the help of near-infrared spectroscopy, they also observed increased activity in a region of the brain that plays an important role in the planning of movements. "Our dreams are therefore not a 'sleep cinema' in which we merely observe an event passively, but involve activity in the regions of the brain that are relevant to the dream content," explains Michael Czisch, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry.

Low-Cost Paper-Based Wireless Sensor Could Help Detect Explosive Devices

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a prototype wireless sensor capable of detecting trace amounts of a key ingredient found in many explosives.

The device, which employs carbon nanotubes and is printed on paper or paper-like material using standard inkjet technology, could be deployed in large numbers to alert authorities to the presence of explosives, such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

"This prototype represents a significant step toward producing an integrated wireless system for explosives detection," said Krishna Naishadham, a principal research scientist who is leading the work at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).

"It incorporates a sensor and a communications device in a small, low-cost package that could operate almost anywhere."

Other types of hazardous gas sensors are based on expensive semiconductor fabrication and gas chromatography, Naishadham said, and they consume more power, require human intervention, and typically do not operate at ambient temperatures. Furthermore, those sensors have not been integrated with communication devices such as antennas.

The wireless component for communicating the sensor information -- a resonant lightweight antenna -- was printed on photographic paper using inkjet techniques devised by Professor Manos Tentzeris of Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Tentzeris is collaborating with Naishadham on development of the sensing device.

The sensing component, based on functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs), has been fabricated and tested for detection sensitivity by Xiaojuan (Judy) Song, a GTRI research scientist. The device relies on carbon-nanotube materials optimized by Song.

A presentation on this sensing technology was given in July at the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Symposium (IEEE APS) in Spokane, Wash., by Hoseon Lee, a Ph.D. student in ECE co-advised by Tentzeris and Naishadham. The paper received the Honorable Mention Award in the Best Student Paper competition at the symposium.

This is not the first inkjet-printed ammonia sensor that has been integrated with an antenna on paper, said Tentzeris. His group produced a similar integrated sensor last year in collaboration with the research group of C.P. Wong, who is Regents professor and Smithgall Institute Endowed Chair in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Turn anything (even your clothes) into a touchscreen

Want the convenience of a touchscreen without the hassle of removing your phone from your pocket? Researchers at Microsoft have you covered, with two new touch interfaces that let you turn any surface into a touchscreen or control your phone through a trouser pocket.

OmniTouch combines a pico projector and a Kinect-like depth-sensing camera to create a shoulder-mounted device that can project a multitouch interface on to a wall, desk or even your own hand. Users can define the size and location of their own interfaces, or let the system decide the best choice of display. Chris Harrison, who worked on the project, calls it a "mega Kinect hack" and an extension of his previous device which could only work on skin. While the prototype device is quite bulky, the team says it may be possible for future versions to be the size of a matchbox.

If you'd rather not project your screen for all to see, PocketTouch lets you control your phone while keeping it in your trousers. The team created a prototype device with a grid of touch sensors that can detect finger strokes through cloth and developed a specific unlock gesture that reorientates the screen each time you use it - avoiding the need to flip your phone upside down before using the interface.

They found that the screen was sensitive enough to use existing Microsoft touch recognition software, making it possible to send a text by drawing characters one by one, or control your playlist with a few strokes of your thigh. Both systems are being presented this week at the User Interface Software and Technology symposium in Santa Barbara, California.

Brain Scans Support Findings That IQ Can Rise or Fall Significantly During Adolescence

IQ, the standard measure of intelligence, can increase or fall significantly during our teenage years, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust, and these changes are associated with changes to the structure of our brains. The findings may have implications for testing and streaming of children during their school years.Across our lifetime, our intellectual ability is considered to be stable, with intelligence quotient (IQ) scores taken at one point in time used to predict educational achievement and employment prospects later in life. However, in a study published October 20 in the journal Nature, researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) and the Centre for Educational Neuroscience show for the first time that, in fact, our IQ is not constant.

The researchers, led by Professor Cathy Price, tested 33 healthy adolescents in 2004 when they were between the ages of 12 and 16 years. They then repeated the tests four years later when the same subjects were between 15 and 20 years old. On both occasions, the researchers took structural brain scans of the subjects using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Professor Price and colleagues found significant changes in the IQ scores measured in 2008 compared to the 2004 scores. Some subjects had improved their performance relative to people of a similar age by as much as 20 points on the standardised IQ scale; in other cases, however, performance had fallen by a similar amount.

To test whether these changes were meaningful, the researchers analysed the MRI scans to see whether there was a correlation with changes in the structure of the subjects' brains.

"We found a considerable amount of change in how our subjects performed on the IQ tests in 2008 compared to four years earlier," explains Sue Ramsden, first author of the study. "Some subjects performed markedly better but some performed considerably worse. We found a clear correlation between this change in performance and changes in the structure of their brains and so can say with some certainty that these changes in IQ are real."

The researchers measured each subject's verbal IQ, which includes measurements of language, arithmetic, general knowledge and memory, and their non-verbal IQ, such as identifying the missing elements of a picture or solving visual puzzles. They found a clear correlation with particular regions of the brain.

An increase in verbal IQ score correlated with an increase in the density of grey matter -- the nerve cells where the processing takes place -- in an area of the left motor cortex of the brain that is activated when articulating speech. Similarly, an increase in non-verbal IQ score correlated with an increase in the density of grey matter in the anterior cerebellum, which is associated with movements of the hand. However, an increase in verbal IQ did not necessarily go hand-in-hand with an increase in non-verbal IQ.

According to Professor Price, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow, it is not clear why IQ should have changed so much and why some people's performance improved while others' declined. It is possible that the differences are due to some of the subjects being early or late developers, but it is equally possible that education had a role in changing IQ, and this has implications for how schoolchildren are assessed.

Biggest Ever Study Shows No Link Between Mobile Phone Use and Tumors

There is no link between long-term use of mobile phones and tumours of the brain or central nervous system, finds new research published online in the British Medical Journal.In what is described as the largest study on the subject to date, Danish researchers found no evidence that the risk of brain tumours was raised among 358,403 mobile phone subscribers over an 18-year period.

The number of people using mobile phones is constantly rising with more than five billion subscriptions worldwide in 2010. This has led to concerns about potential adverse health effects, particularly tumours of the central nervous system.

Previous studies on a possible link between phone use and tumours have been inconclusive particularly on long-term use of mobile phones. Some of this earlier work took the form of case control studies involving small numbers of long-term users and were shown to be prone to error and bias. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently classified radio frequency electromagnetic fields, as emitted by mobile phones, as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

The only cohort study investigating mobile phone use and cancer to date is a Danish nationwide study comparing cancer risk of all 420,095 Danish mobile phone subscribers from 1982 until 1995, with the corresponding risk in the rest of the adult population with follow-up to 1996 and then 2002. This study found no evidence of any increased risk of brain or nervous system tumours or any cancer among mobile phone subscribers.

So researchers, led by the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen, continued this study up to 2007.

They studied data on the whole Danish population aged 30 and over and born in Denmark after 1925, subdivided into subscribers and non-subscribers of mobile phones before 1995. Information was gathered from the Danish phone network operators and from the Danish Cancer Register.

Overall, 10,729 central nervous system tumours occurred in the study period 1990-2007.

When the figures were restricted to people with the longest mobile phone use -- 13 years or more -- cancer rates were almost the same in both long-term users and non-subscribers of mobile phones.

The researchers say they observed no overall increased risk for tumours of the central nervous system or for all cancers combined in mobile phone users.

They conclude: "The extended follow-up allowed us to investigate effects in people who had used mobile phones for 10 years or more, and this long-term use was not associated with higher risks of cancer.

"However, as a small to moderate increase in risk for subgroups of heavy users or after even longer induction periods than 10-15 years cannot be ruled out, further studies with large study populations, where the potential for misclassification of exposure and selection bias is minimised, are warranted."

In an accompanying editorial, Professors Anders Ahlbom and Maria Feychting at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden say this new evidence is reassuring, but continued monitoring of health registers and prospective cohorts is still warranted.

Microsoft best MNC workplace: Study

US technology companies, led by Microsoft, topped a league table of the world's 25 best multinational workplaces released by a New York-based human resources consultancy.

"Microsoft is at the top of the list because it believes that spreading a trust-based culture is the right way to do business, independent of size, national culture or industry," said Jose Tolovi of Great Place to Work.

Software developer SAS, network storage provider NetApp and search engine Google held down second, third and fourth place, followed by courier FedEx, networking specialist Cisco, Mariott hotels and McDonald's restaurants.

Top among European companies were British drinks group Diageo at 11, German building equipment manufacturer Hilti at 15, and Spanish telecoms operator Telefonica at 17.

No Asian companies made the list. "Asia is still a relatively new area for us," Tolovi told AFP by email. "We expect that Asia-based multinationals will show up on future Great Place to Work world's best lists."

American Express, at 12, was the only financial institution to make the grade, at a time when big banks are coming under fire from the Occupy Wall Street movement and its global offshoots.

"These companies are very good examples of profitable businesses built in conjunction with their employees and not in spite of them," said Tovoli, who is global chief executive of Great Place to Work.

The rankings were based on opinion surveys of employees in 45 countries about their workplace culture, and on questionnaires to human resources departments about their policies and practices, Tovoli said.

While Great Place to Work advises corporations on how to become better workplaces, Tovoli said its rankings are not limited to those that are its clients.

NASA Telescopes Help Solve Ancient Supernova Mystery

A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, reveal how the first supernova ever recorded occurred and how its shattered remains ultimately spread out to great distances.The findings show that the stellar explosion took place in a hollowed-out cavity, allowing material expelled by the star to travel much faster and farther than it would have otherwise.

"This supernova remnant got really big, really fast," said Brian J. Williams, an astronomer at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Williams is lead author of a new study detailing the findings online in the Astrophysical Journal. "It's two to three times bigger than we would expect for a supernova that was witnessed exploding nearly 2,000 years ago. Now, we've been able to finally pinpoint the cause."In 185 A.D., Chinese astronomers noted a "guest star" that mysteriously appeared in the sky and stayed for about 8 months. By the 1960s, scientists had determined that the mysterious object was the first documented supernova. Later, they pinpointed RCW 86 as a supernova remnant located about 8,000 light-years away. But a puzzle persisted. The star's spherical remains are larger than expected. If they could be seen in the sky today in infrared light, they'd take up more space than our full moon.

The solution arrived through new infrared observations made with Spitzer and WISE, and previous data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton Observatory.

The findings reveal that the event is a "Type Ia" supernova, created by the relatively peaceful death of a star like our sun, which then shrank into a dense star called a white dwarf. The white dwarf is thought to have later blown up in a supernova after siphoning matter, or fuel, from a nearby star.

"A white dwarf is like a smoking cinder from a burnt-out fire," Williams said. "If you pour gasoline on it, it will explode."

The observations also show for the first time that a white dwarf can create a cavity around it before blowing up in a Type Ia event. A cavity would explain why the remains of RCW 86 are so big. When the explosion occurred, the ejected material would have traveled unimpeded by gas and dust and spread out quickly.

Spitzer and WISE allowed the team to measure the temperature of the dust making up the RCW 86 remnant at about minus 325 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 200 degrees Celsius. They then calculated how much gas must be present within the remnant to heat the dust to those temperatures. The results point to a low-density environment for much of the life of the remnant, essentially a cavity.

Scientists initially suspected that RCW 86 was the result of a core-collapse supernova, the most powerful type of stellar blast. They had seen hints of a cavity around the remnant, and, at that time, such cavities were only associated with core-collapse supernovae. In those events, massive stars blow material away from them before they blow up, carving out holes around them.