Following film and TV, music takes stab at 3-D

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(AP) -- At the beginning of the re-emergence of 3-D, the focus was on film, with movies like"Avatar"paving the way for the technology to become an integral part of the cinema experience.

Soon TV followed, with sporting events like the World Cup featured in 3-D, and companies such as Sony and Samsung rolling out 3-D televisions.

Now, the music world is making sure it isn't left behind in the 3-D revolution. Justin Bieber and the Black Eyed Peas are planning to release 3-D movie-concerts, while the music video for Shakira's World Cup anthem,"Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),"had a version in 3-D. Even acts like Sia and the Broken Bells are producing 3-D clips.

"It's not the '80s 3-D, like, the way people think of 3-D. It changes the art form of storytelling. It's pretty amazing. It's a whole new freaking jump-off,"said the Peas' leader will.i.am.

Oscar-winning director James Cameron, whose groundbreaking"Avatar"has become the top-grossing movie in history, says 3-D's spillover to music will find success.

"Music videos in 3-D, it's natural, that's great,"he said.

Cameron's production company, Pace, will produce the Peas' upcoming project. Will.i.am says 3-D music content will alter the way we watch music videos and concerts - and record labels have taken note.

JeanBaptise Duprieu, senior director at Sony Music International, says the company will"produce a lot of 3-D content this year."

Duprieu says when he presented Shakira's"Waka Waka"video to Sony staffers, they felt a sense of closeness to the Latin sensation.

"The reaction was, 'Wow, we feel so much closer to the artist ... and really immersed (in) what's going on,'"Duprieu recalled."So I think generally the impression is a better connection and a more sort of real vibrance going on."

The Peas performed a 3-D concert in New York's Times Square in March while rap-rock trio N.E.R.D did so last month. And other musicians like Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers and Kenny Chesney have released 3-D concerts. International singers Kylie Minogue and Sia have also filmed some of their recent live shows in 3-D. Veteran rockers U2 did so in 2006 on their"Vertigo"tour.

Peter Shapiro, co-founder of 3ality Digital and producer for 2008's concert film"U2 3D,"says the music film helped pave the way for more like it. But he adds there are plenty of challenges with creating good 3-D material for the music world.

"If it's not done well and the cuts don't match, you can hurt people's eyes,"he said."3-D likes to be slower than 2-D. So if you're watching TV ... 3-D lends itself to feeling like you're there. You want to forget that you're watching a recorded image."

Cameron says 3-D music content will find more successful in clips that won't have too much action going on.

"It's not that 3-D works against you when you cut fast, it's just that you don't have time for your eye to lock in 3-D so you're not getting the value out of it,"Cameron said."But some music videos are long, sustained takes - so that's the kind that will work the best."

Duprieu agrees, explaining that Sony plans to film 3-D content with its classical musicians - including a recent recital with pianist Lang Lang.

"You would think classical music is pretty static and you would not feel that much stuff going on, but actually because of the depth of 3-D, you really actually enhance the listening experience and connection to the music by having that shot in 3-D,"he said.

"It can actually be overwhelming to have too many cameras and too many different angles,"he added.

Outside the Shakira clip, others have since produced 3-D music videos and content. Guitar Center Sessions, a program on DirecTV Inc., features live 3-D performances, including recent shows with Peter Gabriel and Jane's Addiction. A representative for the channel confirmed that there are plans to shoot about 15 more shows before the end of the year.

Rock duo Broken Bells released a 3-D video for their latest single,"October,"and the video for Bon Jovi's new single,"What Do You Got,"was shot in 3-D.

Wayne Isham, the director behind the Bon Jovi clip, says 3-D music videos are an opportunity for"music videosto blow everyone's minds again."

"I think it's going to be a rebirth of performance again in music, because with everything that's going on with the Internet and everything that's going on with the lack of a true MTV channel where people are not having ... the ability to show their videos, I think now bands are going to be able to showcase themselves ... in the most simplistic sense,"Isham said.

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Flexible and transparent OLEDs from TDK (w/ Video)

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(PhysOrg.com) -- Flexible and translucent organic displays have been developed by TDK for use in“bendable” mobile phones and other gadgets, and the bendable display is expected to go into mass production by the end of 2011.

The displays, developed by TDK, use organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology, which means very low power use because they are self illuminating. Having no back light enables the displays to be ultra thin (at 0.3 mm), but TDK’s flexibledisplayis also super light because it is manufactured using a film substrate rather than metal or glass.

The resolution of the flexible screen is currently 256 x 64, and it can be up to 10 cm tall and installed on curved surfaces of less than 25 mm radius. Being flexible would make the display more resistant to cracks or breakages.

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The translucent display is 320 x 240 resolution, 50 percent translucent, and up to 10 cm tall. The display uses one-way light emission, meaning the user of the device is able to see the text or images displayed, but people on the other side cannot because the light output is set to the direction of the text, although they can see through the display. The translucent display uses a glass substrate, but a film transparent display is planned for 2012.

Several other companies have previously demonstrated flexible screens, such asSony, but TDK'sflexible displayis expected to be in mass production by the end of next year, making it the first to actually reach market. The translucent screen is already being mass produced.

The OLEDs were unveiled at the Cutting-Edge IT&Electronics Comprehensive Exhibition (CEATEC) 2010 in Tokyo, Japan yesterday.

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Japan tech fair offers glimpse of future lifestyles

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Hundreds of technology firms came together in Japan Tuesday to showcase the latest in high-end gadgetry, including wafer-thin speakers and a ring that can monitor your heart rate.

The five-day Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (Ceatec) technology fair in Chiba near Tokyo features more than 600 companies from 15 countries and regions showing newgadgets.

Musical instrument maker Yamaha had on show its prototype TLF speaker that can be displayed as a thin, light and flexible poster with a cloth cover.

The 1.5-millimetre-thick speaker sends directional"flat-wave"sounds that do not deviate once emitted, meaning that sounds can only be heard when the listener is standing in front of it.

Yamaha aims to sell the technology early next year, company spokesman Yusaku Shibuya said, adding:"This can function as a convenient advertising poster, which can be rolled up and carried around."

He said it would first be aimed at corporate users before being released to ordinary consumers with potential benefits for those living in smaller houses who do not want to disturb roommates with music.

FujitsuLtd. offered its"omniview"system for automobiles, which uses small cameras and imaging software to give drivers a 360 degree, 3D view of the car's surroundings. SomeToyotavehicles adopted the system earlier this year.

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Japanese electronics parts maker Murata Electronics displays the company's unicycle robot called the"Murata Seiko-chan"during a demonstration at Ceatec, Asia's largest electronics trade show in Chiba, suburban Tokyo on October 5, 2010. The robot, 50 cms tall and weighing six kilos, was displayed riding on a unicycle along a narrow winding bridge, keeping its balance.

Electronics parts maker Murata Co. was displaying a ring that measures heart speed and blood-oxygen levels and can transmit data to a cellphone or other device to trigger an alarm if the pulse rate is too high.

NTT DoCoMo's new"augmented reality"applications use virtual images to enhance everyday experiences, Japan's leading mobile phone carrier said.

"Cellphones are a bridge between virtual reality and the world around you,"said Manabu Ota, a DoCoMo official for consumer mobile device development.

Among applications the firm is developing is a function giving shoppers an enhanced view of a chosen object to see if it fits in the home before buying.

DoCoMo also showed a prototype"AR Walker"system -- made with optical equipment maker Olympus -- which requires users to wear special glasses that give a view overlaid with information on directions and local recommendations.

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Obama promotes clean energy; GOP hits Dem spending

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(AP) -- Wind, solar and other clean energy technologies produce jobs and are essential for the country's environment and economy, President Barack Obama said in promoting his administration's efforts.

The president used his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, a month away from congressional elections, to charge Republicans with wanting to scrap incentives for such projects.

"That's what's at stake in this debate,"the president said."We can go back to the failed energy policies that profited the oil companies but weakened our country. We can go back to the days when promising industries got set up overseas. Or we can go after new jobs in growing industries. And we can spur innovation and help make our economy more competitive."

Part of the House GOP's recently released"Pledge to America"calls for freezing spending from last year's stimulus bill. The stimulus included $90 billion for clean energy projects ranging from electric vehicles to solar loan guarantees, although a big chunk of the money has already been obligated or spent.

Obama cited a solar power plant breaking ground in the Mojave Desert this month thanks to government incentives.

"With projects like this one and others across this country, we are staking our claim to continued leadership in the new global economy,"Obama said."And we're putting Americans to work producing clean, homegrown American energy that will help lower our reliance on foreign oil and protect our planet for future generations."

Republicans disputed Obama's criticism, saying they support investments in renewable energy technologies.

Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., took aim in the GOP radio response at government spending, saying Democrats are"maxing out the national credit card on a failed stimulus bill and a government-run health care bill."

He criticized Democrats for recessing Congress until after the elections without acting to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, which expire in January. Obama and Democratic leaders want to extend the tax cuts only for individuals making less than $200,000 and married couples making less than $250,000, while Republicans and some rank-and-file Democrats want to extend tax cuts for the wealthy as well, a costlier proposition.

"Whenever they were asked about this looming tax hike, they just blamed the Republicans,"McConnell said."They said that Republicans will be to blame for some people getting a tax hike because we didn't think anyone should get a tax hike. ... The fact is, the best way to help individuals and small businesses and the economy is to give them all the certainty that their taxes won't be going up at the end of the year."

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Body language to be read by computers one of new innovative solutions

Can a computer read your body language? A consortium of European researchers thinks so, and has developed a range of innovative solutions from escalator safety to online marketing.

The keyboard and mouse are no longer the only means of communicating with computers. Modern consumer devices will respond to the touch of a finger and even the spoken word, but can we go further still? Can a computer learn to make sense of how we walk and stand, to understand our gestures and even to read ourfacial expressions?

The EU-fundedMIAUCEproject set out to do just that."The motivation of the project is to put humans in the loop of interaction between the computer and their environment,” explains project coordinator Chaabane Djeraba, of CNRS in Lille.

“We would like to have a form of ambient intelligence where computers are completely hidden,” he says. “This means a multimodal interface so people can interact with their environment. The computer sees their behavior and then extracts information useful for the user."

It is hard to imagine a world where hidden computers try to anticipate our needs, so the MIAUCE project has developed concrete prototypes of three kinds of applications.

Escalator accidents

The first is to monitor the safety of crowds at busy places such as airports and shopping centres. Surveillance cameras are used to detect situations such as accidents on escalators.

“The background technology of this research is based oncomputer vision,” says Djeraba. “We extract information from videos. This is the basic technology and technical method we use.”

It’s quite a challenge. First the video stream must be analysed in real time to extract a hierarchy of three levels of features. At its lowest, this is amathematical descriptionof shapes, movements and flows. At the next level this basic description is interpreted in terms of crowd density, speed and direction. At the highest level the computer is able to decide when the activity becomes‘abnormal’ perhaps because someone has fallen on an escalator and caused a pile-up that needs urgent intervention.

It is at the second level and the third“semantic” level of interpretation that MIAUCE has been most concerned.

One of the MIAUCE partners is already working with a manufacturer of escalators to augment existing video monitoring systems at international airports where there may be hundreds of escalators. If a collapse can be detected automatically then the seconds saved in responding could save lives as well.

But safety is only one possible kind of application where computers could read ourbody language.

Face swapping

A second could be in marketing, specifically to monitor how customers behave in shops.“We would like to analyse how people walk around in a shop,” Djeraba says, “and the behaviour of people in the shop, where they look, for example.”

The same partner is developing two products. One will be a‘people counter’ to monitor pedestrian flows in the street outside a shop. It is expected to be particularly attractive to fashion stores who wish to attract passers-by. Another is a ‘heat map generator’ to watch the movements of people inside the store, so that the manager can see which parts of the displays are attracting the most attention.

The third application addressed by MIAUCE is interactive web television, a technology of increasing interest where viewers can select what they want to see. As part of the project, the viewer’s webcam is used to monitor their face to see which part of the screen they are looking at.

It could be used to feed the user further information based on the evidence of what they have shown an interest in. Project partner Tilde, a software company in Latvia, is commercialising this application.

MIAUCE has also developed a related technology of‘face swapping’ in which the viewer’s face can replace that of a model. This could be used for trying out hairstyles and clothing.

Ethics and anonymity

These are all ingenious applications but are there not ethical and legal worries about reading people’s behavior in this way?

Djeraba acknowledges that the project team took such issues very seriously and several possible applications of their technology were ruled out on such grounds.

They worked to some basic rules, such as placing cameras only on private premises and always with a warning notice, but the fundamental principle was anonymity.“We have to anonymise people,” he says. “What we are doing here is analysing user behavior without any identification, this is a fundamental requirement for such systems.”

They also took account of whether the applications would be acceptable to society as a whole. No one would reasonably object to the monitoring of escalators, for example, if the aim was to improve public safety. But the technology must not identify individuals or even such characteristics as skin color.

“Generally speaking, anonymity is the critical point. If we anonymise it’s OK, if we don’t anonymise it’s not OK,” Djeraba says.

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'Levytator': Scientist unveils world's first freeform curved escalator (w/ Video)

Jack Levy, an Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering at City University London, has developed and patented the 'Levytator', and is now seeking to take it to market.

Architects will be able to create escalators in any shape they want, even freeform curves, thanks to the first significant rethink of escalator design since the‘moving stairway’ was invented in 1897.

A system known as the 'Levytator' has been developed by Jack Levy, an Emeritus Professor ofMechanical Engineeringat City University London. Unlike traditional designs, where redundant steps move underneath those in use, the Levytator utilises a continuous loop of curved modules, which can follow any path upwards, flatten and straighten out, and descend once more, all with passengers onboard.

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A video of a working model and computer simulation.

The system can be arranged in any configuration - as a DNA-esque double helix in a science museum, for example - and also offers several practical advantages at a cost that is similar to a conventional unit.

"As all of the steps can be accessed from above, maintenance can be carried out much more easily,"says Levy."It also means that no excavation is required when installing the Levytator. This could be particularly useful in the heritage sector, where the system could be placed on top of a grand staircase in a listed stately home, providing better access for elderly and disabled visitors, but not destroying the fabric of the building."

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Nokia research lab working on nanowire sensing, stretchable electronic skin

Getting into a Nokia Research Center laboratory isn't easy. The security doors remain open long enough for one or two people to enter and if held open too long, will sound what we're told is an exceptionally loud alarm. Lucky then that we were part of a group taken around NRC’s Cambridge laboratory to see some of the latest scientific problems being solved there. We were treated to demoes of three different strands of research; Nanowire Sensing, Stretchable Electronic Skin and Electrotactile Experience. Each one as amazing and eye-opening as the next. Read on after thejump for a lowdown including pics and video.

The Nokia Research Center in Cambridge was set up in 2007 as a partnership with the University of Cambridge. Soon after it was established, theMorph Conceptwas unveiled, to help build a picture of where the research at the labs was heading. Led by Dr Tapani Ryhänen the Cambridge team is one part of a two-location European NRC operation, the other location being in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Dr Tapani has a team of about 25 Nokia researchers working in Cambridge (and a further 10 in Lausanne), but they also work closely with the University of Cambridge, giving access to a much wider team. The focus of the research though is very much around nanotechnology and executing what Dr Tapani refers to as“meaningful engineering at a smaller scale”. Nanotech isn’t something which we’ll see appear on a device as a feature. Rather it’s a way of working which offers a whole new world of possibility, some of which we’re previewing below.

Nanowire sensing

The lowdown: The team involved in this project is effectively working on an artificial nose. By placing a nanowire on top of a chip, they can train it to recognise different substances which are placed close to the sensing surface. This all happens at a nanometer scale, where the current passing through the nanowire is influenced by its immediate surroundings. Place a different substance near it and the current running through the wire will react differently. There’s still a lot of work to do on it, but the team were able to show us the nanowire and its accompanying software (which used a sniffing dog as it’s icon) correctly identify a substance.

The potential application: In the future, this kind of technology could be used to monitor environments and measure a variety of things including air pollution, food-based contaminants or bio-chemical processes. Right now it’s restricted to identifying particular molecules but the long term aim is to enable it to identify complex molecular mixtures - similar to how our own noses work.

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Stretchable electronic skin

The lowdown: Right now, circuit boards are solid. The team at Cambridge however are working on a technology that’ll enable them to be flexible, creating something akin to “electronic skin”. By using evaporated gold as a conductor, they have created an electronic touchpad which can be stretched like a rubber band, but still respond to touch and pressure. The team has been testing it to stretch by up to 20 per cent of its original length without any drop in performance. The process of creating the material is pretty unique and the results are utterly mind-boggling, when you start to think about the possibilities it offers.

The potential application: This research has at its heart new form factors for devices of the future. The possibilities might sound hard to believe, but working technology which can be twisted and distorted like a rubber band could enable a unique range of wearable devices or even enable technology to feasibly become part of our clothing. After we’d seen it, the talk from the group was of us having completely different ways of us interacting with technology in the future. What is solid and known to us right now, could be flexible and entirely different in the future.

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Electrotactile experience

The lowdown: The third of our demoes was also the most realistic, as it was being shown off on a Nokia N900. The team is working on ways to enable touchscreens to offer more realistic feedback. This goes way beyond simple haptics to deliver genuine tactile response. The team are influenced by the belief that the sensation of touch isn’t currently well understood so they’re trying to work out ways to make it more effective when interacting with technology. Part of the team’s research is looking at ways to try and replicate textures, potentially offering users new experiences when it comes to interacting with a touchscreen. Using the concept of electrovibration, which was first documented in the 1950s, the team have been working on the concept for about a year now but have already made tremendous progress. As part of the project, the team has been working with the electrical engineers atNokia’s Research Center in Beijing who managed to miniaturise the required hardware to fit into a modified N900 (using a half-size battery).

The potential application: This technology would enable a new level of feedback from touchscreen devices, taking our way of interacting with them to a whole new level. Of course this is just a concept prototype so don’t expect it on your device any time soon. However, given the speed with which the team have reached this phase of research, progress does seem to be pretty rapid.

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'Ubice': Nokia builds a touchscreen made of ice (w/ Video)

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(PhysOrg.com) -- Nokia researchers in Finland have created a massive touchscreen display from a wall made of blocks of ice, dubbed ubiquitous ice or"Ubice."

Scientists at the Nokia Research Center in Tampere in Finland projected images on a wall made of blocks of ice 25 cm thick and 50 cm square, and used near-infrared projectors and cameras to determine the position and movements of the hands of users, who saw what looked like flames or colored lights in the ice.

The aim of the project was to demonstrate"ubiquitous computing,"the principle of incorporating computers into everyday objects. In Finland, river ice is in plentiful supply in winter, and the researchers hired a local contractor at Oulu to collect a tonne of river ice, which was then chopped into square blocks using a chainsaw and ice sculpting tools. The blocks were then assembled to create a wall of ice two meters wide and 1.5 meters high. Water or snow was applied to the joints, and then a heat gun (like a paint stripping gun) was used to smooth the ice wall surface.

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Ubice installation

An array of near-infrared lights, near-infrared cameras, and a digital projector were positioned behind the ice wall and focused on the front surface. When a user places a hand on the front of the ice wall the invisible near-infrared light is reflected back to the cameras, which transmit the signals to a nearby computer. The computer then uses information from the signals to track the precise position, size and movements of the hand. The digital projector then projects an image of colored light or flames that appears to the user to be in the ice beneath the hand.

The system worked best with bare hands, but also worked with gloved hands. The cold ambient temperature (-15°C) kept the ice wall intact even in the face of the heat generated by the projector, and team member Antti Virolainen said it was much more interesting seeing what looked like flames inside ice than in a plastic screen.

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Nokia scientist Jyri Huopaniemi said the team had been asked to explore novel interfaces, multimedia and software approaches, and while the experiment was“playful” it showed interactive computing interfaces could be built anywhere. The concept could be used in cold countries as interactive ice sculptures, byicehotels such as that in Jukkasjärvi in Sweden, or for advertising.

The Ubicetouchscreenwas introduced last week in Saarbrucken, Germany at the Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces conference.

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Military deploys virtual reality to train soldiers, staff

Seated in a tan leather couch, Petty Officer Sarax suddenly straightens his back and begins flailing his right arm.

"She doesn't know what I've been through,"Sarax, who just returned from Iraq, says when asked about his marriage."There are things that I just don't want to talk about with her. And she keeps pushing."

He talks and behaves like a soldier overcome by combat trauma, but Sarax isn't real. He is a software program, a life-size projection on a movie screen that is reacting and responding to questions from a psychologist being trained to treatpost-traumatic stress disorder.

Sarax is a virtual patient, one of many computer-simulated humans created by artists, engineers and scientists at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies. By the end of the year, the virtual patient is expected to be in use in university classrooms, and eventually in clinical hospitals and military bases.

Interactive computerpatients are just one of many cutting-edge virtual technologies being developed at the institute. Many of them are used as training tools for U.S. military personnel, from fighting insurgents to calming nerves of combat-weary soldiers.

The institute's wide-ranging virtual technologies, now found on 65 military sites across the country, have popped in and out of the public spotlight, but they're on full display now that the institute has opened the doors to its new 72,000-square-foot facility in Playa Vista, Calif.

"The move is a mark of a new era for us,"said Randall W. Hill Jr., executive director of the institute, which outgrew its facility in Marina del Rey, Calif."But really, it's a new era for the Army as well."

The institute's funding has increased from $5 million in 1999 to about $30 million today - as the Pentagon has stepped up spending on training military personnel through simulations. It has also attracted a diverse staff of more than 180 professionals, from graphic designers to psychologists.

"Five years ago, the characters were talking heads with computer-generated voices with no emotion,"said Patrick G. Kenny, who leads thevirtual patientprogram."Today, it's getting harder to distinguish what is real from what is not with virtual human characters."

Walking through the institute's new Playa Vista offices is like walking through a fraternity house for high-tech geeks. Cubicles have white boards on which workers can quickly jot down ideas whenever they have an"aha"moment. And a corner office is more likely to be occupied by a twentysomething in a T-shirt huddled over a computer monitor than a supervisor in a suit.

On a recent visit, the institute engineers were testing one of their latest first-person, multi-player games that allows players to take part in a simulated attack that includes dealing with an improvised explosive device. The game is designed to prepare soldiers for an insurgent ambush. It is already found on three military bases, including Camp Pendleton, in northern San Diego County.

In the training simulation, soldiers sit in mock Humvees and slowly roll through towns in either Iraq or Afghanistan, which are aesthetically true to life because the institute used satellite photographs to design the town's landscape.

"We try to make it as real as possible,"said Todd Richmond, the game's project director.

Richmond said he knew the institute got the game right after one of its players, a Marine who had been deployed overseas, pointed to a shop by the side of the road, saying,"Hey, I went in that place and bought a Coke."

In addition to mapping and satellite reconnaissance, the institute uses Hollywood movie writers to come in and make the story lines more compelling. The institute is one of the country's only organizations that draws on the entertainment industry to do such work.

Maintaining this kind of realism is key to the institute's success, said Peter W. Singer, author of"Wired for War,"a book that examines robotic warfare."The stuff that (the institute) does is really in a class of its own."

Singer estimates the U.S.militaryis spending about $6 billion each year on virtual training and expects that number to rise.

"This is a medium the iPhone generation knows,"Singer said."You can't simply teach them on a chalkboard anymore."

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Japan to test walk-through explosive sniffers during APEC

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Japan will test new"walk-through"bomb detectors that can pick up minute traces of explosives when the country hosts an Asia-Pacific summit next month, government officials said Wednesday.

The system, still in the development and test phase, will be installed on November 12-14 at a train station in Yokohama near Tokyo, the venue for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, officials said.

Passengers will be alerted by signs and given the choice of whether to help trial the Hitachi-made system, or whether to pick another gate, under a test that is meant to check for false positives.

However,policealso hope the new device will act as a deterrent against terrorist attacks during the summit, a police official said.

The walk-through gate works by blowing a stream of warm air that brushes the passing passenger before it is captured by a suction device for chemical analysis of anyairborne particles.

Explosives particles can be recognised within two or three seconds, according to the science and technology ministry.

When a person makes or carries home-made bombs,"chemical substances from the explosives can stay on the producer's hands, clothes or bags... The air jet can blow them off,"said Akiko Kobayashi at the ministry.

The system, believed to be the first of its kind in the world, has also been tested at Tokyo's Haneda airport and in Akihabara, Tokyo's electrical goods and comic and anime shopping district, since last year.

Security has been tightening ahead of the APEC meetings, which will bring government leaders from 21 economies, with more police officers patrolling train stations, airports, parks and other locations.

The national police said it will mobilise a maximum of 21,000 officers a day when a string of meetings are held from November 7 to 14, the largest international event in Japan since a Group of Eight summit in 2008.

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Shoppers whip out smart phones to streamline purchases

Standing before a display of heart-rate monitors at Sports Authority, Robert Dries of Brookfield, Wis., was ready to buy the one he'd heard about at his health club. But before making the purchase, he decided to pull out his Apple iPhone and check some reviews online.

"They were not that favorable at all,"Dries said."I ended up buying another model."

All over the country, shoppers armed with smart phones are doing some version of this, and the trend is expected to be bigger than ever this holiday season.

"It's a hot topic,"said Anne Brouwer, senior partner at McMillan/Doolittle, a Chicago retail consulting firm.

One-quarter of Americans who own smart phones - cell phones that run software, play media and connect to the Internet - plan to use them this year to look for gift ideas, compare prices and find items in nearby stores, according to a survey by BIGresearch for the National Retail Federation. Among young adults ages 18-24, the percentage using phones for shopping is 45 percent.

This is the first year that the retail trade group asked the question. But while it's still a relatively new phenomenon, experts expect shopping applications to exert a growing influence on retailers, as consumers continue to use their mobile devices to take more control of the buying process.

"I do very little store shopping now,"said Kristine Hinrichs of Milwaukee."Last year I did a bunch of Christmas shopping while under a quilt in bed."

Hinrichs wasn't ill. She just enjoys the convenience of curling up with her phone - and now with her iPad.

Consumers who ownsmart phoneshave an ever-growing number of shopping apps to choose from, in addition to the ability to simply surf the Web on traditional sites. There are apps that help find stores, locate products locally, review products, provide coupons and compare prices.

Fast Mall, an app that launched this fall, has a voice recorder to help you remember where you parked, as long as you remember to use it. Once inside, the app will give you bathroom locations in the mall and can guide you to a particular store if you type in your location. On a test run at Mayfair mall in Wauwasota, Wis., Fast Mall guided me past several stores by name, and then told me to take the escalator upstairs to find GapKids.

Point Inside, a geo-positioning app, can pinpoint your location inside malls and airports, and provides maps of the premises. The Coupon Sherpa app lists national chains alphabetically and provides store coupons and special offers.

Price comparison apps with bar code scanners could have the biggest impact on retailers because they can bring up a list of other merchants offering the same item, allowing an instant price comparison. The PriceGrabber app does that, but the bar code scanner worked only one out of six times when I tested it in Wal-Mart and Macy's stores.

Even without the scanner, PriceGrabber.com and similar price comparison websites can be accessed from a smart phone, and a shopper standing in a store could make a purchase on the phone from a competitor.

"We recommend that retailers get over the fact that consumers can compare prices,"said Candace Corlett, president of WSL Strategic Retail in New York."That horse has left the barn. So go with it and turn it into an advantage."

For example, Corlett recommends that retailers have a store app that will pop up when a shopper enters their stores.

Retailers are adapting to the new smart phone technology, but are still early in the process, according to a report this summer from Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. About 60 percent of retailers surveyed early this year either had no mobile strategy or were in the early stage of development.

About 35 percent of retailers had a special site that works with mobile browsers, and a third had aniPhoneapp. Android and BlackBerry apps were available for 8 percent of retailers.

Kohl's Corp. has its weekly ad circular available on its app, along with store information. Macy's app lists special events by store and sale information. Both Kohl's and Macy's apps allow users to make a purchase from their phones. JC Penney's app has product-related YouTube videos, offers weekly deals for mobile and sends coupons to your phone.

Amazon.com's app, meanwhile, has a bar code scanner and an experimental feature that offers to save photos and try to find similar products. Theappwasn't tested for this report.

Retailers surveyed by Forrester report investing, on average, $170,000 on their mobile sites in 2009, but large chains said they expected to spend $500,000.

Despite the fanfare this year, mobile shopping is still just a tiny part of sales. Retailers told Forrester that mobile browsers generated just 2.8 percent of their website traffic last year and 2 percent of Internet revenue.

A survey by WSL Strategic Retail found that one of the biggest uses for mobile phones while shopping in stores was taking photos of products. People send them to friends, post them online or keep them as a reference.

"Last year I was looking for a camera,"Hinrichs said."I couldn't remember which model was at which place."She solved her problem by taking pictures of the cameras she liked, and also showed the photos to her friend to get advice.

Corlett said her company's surveys show very different uses of mobile by gender and age.

"Men are using it more than women,"Corlett said. They are more likely to be gadget-lovers and to use their phones to compare prices.

Dries admits to making a purchase while showing off his phone to friends in a restaurant.

"We were goofing around with the phones,"Dries recalled. By the end of the evening, he'd bought a Timex Ironman watch from Zappos.com, without leaving the table.

All of the apps in this report are free.

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Taking movies beyond Avatar -- for under $150 (w/ Video)

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A new development in virtual cameras at the University of Abertay Dundee, UK, is developing the pioneering work of James Cameron's blockbuster Avatar using a Nintendo Wii-like motion controller– all for less than $150.

Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all time, used several completely new filming techniques to bring to life its ultra-realistic 3D action. Now computer games researchers have found a way of taking those techniques further using home computers and motion controllers.

James Cameron invented a new way of filming called Simul-cam, where the image recorded is processed in real-time before it reaches the director’s monitor screen. This allows actors in motion-capture suits to be instantly seen as the blue Na’vi characters, without days spent creating computer-generated images.

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A new development in virtual cameras at the University of Abertay Dundee is developing the pioneering work of James Cameron's blockbuster Avatar using a Nintendo Wii-like motion controller - all for less than $150.

The Abertay researchers, led by computer games technology lecturer Matt Bett, have linked the power of a virtual camera– where a computer dramatically enhances what a film camera could achieve– using a motion-sensor. This allows completely intuitive, immediately responsive camera actions within any computer-generated world.

Matt said:“Avatar is a fantastic film in terms of its technical achievements. To push the boundaries of filmmaking required the creation of brand new techniques, which is staggering. What the Simul-cam technology allows is a kind of augmented reality, where the computer-generated world can be seen immediately.

“What I wanted to do was turn this on its head, and bring this power to home computers. Using a new Sixense electromagneticmotion controller, we can now manipulate a virtual camera in any virtual environment– be it a film, an animation, acomputer game, or a simulation tool for teaching.”

The applications of the project, dubbed Motus, are substantial. Complex films and animations could be produced at a very low cost, giving new creative tools to small studios or artists at home. Computer environments can be manipulated in the same way as a camera, opening new opportunities for games, and for education.

Project associate Erin Michno, an undergraduate Computer Games Technology student at Abertay University, added:“This tool could completely change the way people interact with computer games, and the way computer-aided learning is delivered to students around the world.

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“Within games, watching and sharing replays of the action is hugely popular. What our development allows is replays to be edited exactly as if they were a film, zooming in, panning the camera, quickly and easily creating a whole movie based on your gaming. For online games enthusiasts, that would dramatically change what’s possible.

“In the classroom and lecture theatre, having this level of control for such a small price would allow some things which just aren’t possible– performing virtual operations live on screen, flying through the inside of an engine– in any school and any university.”

Motion controllers first became popular with theNintendo Wiigames console, and more recently with the launch of PlayStation Move. The Abertay researchers built their new system using the Sixense Truemotion Devkit, a more advanced version of these technologies which will be manufactured by Razer.

This tool uses electromagnetic sensors to capture the controller’s position to a precise single millimetre accuracy, and unlike other controllers still works even when an object is in the way. It will work on any home PC, and is expected to retail for under£100 from early 2011.

A patent application for the invention and unique applications of the technology has been recently filed in the UK.

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Eyes, ears of US military take shape in high-tech labs

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A Global Hawk robotic plane, hovering more than 11 miles above Afghanistan, can snap images of Taliban hide-outs so crystal clear that U.S. intelligence officials can make out the pickup trucks parked nearby - and how long they've been there.

Halfway around the globe in an underground laboratory in El Segundo, Calif., Raytheon Co. engineers who helped develop the cameras and sensors for the pilotless spy plane are now working on even more powerful devices that are revolutionizing the way the military gathers intelligence.

The new sensors enable flying drones to"listen in"on cell phone conversations and pinpoint the location of the caller on the ground. Some can even"smell"the air and sniff out chemical plumes emanating from a potential underground nuclear laboratory.

Reconnaissance is"now the centerpiece of our global war on terrorism,"said David L. Rockwell, an electronics analyst with aerospace research firm the Teal Group Corp."The military wants to have an unblinking eye over the war zone."

And that has meant a growing and potentially huge business for the defense industry at a time when the Pentagon is looking at cutting back on big-ticket purchases such as fighter jets and Navy ships.

The drone electronics industry now generates about $3 billion in revenue, but that's expected to double to $6 billion in the next eight years, Teal Group estimates.

The industry's projected growth has fueled a surge in mergers and acquisitions of companies that develop and make the parts for the sensor systems.

"There has been an explosion in the reconnaissance market,"said Jon B. Kutler, founder of Admiralty Partners, a Century City, Calif., private investment firm that buys and sells small defense firms.

"It's one of the few remaining growth areas."

Kutler's company recently acquired Torrance, Calif.-based Trident Space&Defense, which manufactures hard drives that enable drones to store high-resolution images.

Trident, which has about 70 employees, has seen its sales more than double to about $40 million over the last five years.

The demand for sensors is growing as the Pentagon steps up use of drones for intelligence gathering.

More than 7,000 drones - ranging from the small, hand-launched Raven to the massive Global Hawk - are currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though some have been outfitted with laser-guided bombs or missiles - grabbing most of the news headlines - all are equipped with sensors for reconnaissance and surveillance work.

The most advanced cameras and sensors are on theGlobal Hawk, a long-endurance, high-altitude drone that can fly for 30 hours at a time at more than 60,000 feet, out of range of most antiaircraft missiles and undetectable to the human eye.

Peter W. Singer, author of"Wired for War,"a book about robotic warfare, compares the technology to the popular"Where's Waldo"children's books, in which readers are challenged to find one person hidden in a mass of people.

The latest detectors not only can pick out Waldo from a crowd, but know when Waldo may have fired a rifle. Such sensors can detect the heat from the barrel of a gun and estimate when it was fired.

Many of the sensors have been developed by Raytheon engineers in El Segundo, where the company has had a long history of developing spy equipment, including those found on the famed U-2 spy plane.

Some of the more advanced cameras can cost more than $15 million and take 18 months to make. Raytheon develops the cameras in a humidity-controlled, dust-free laboratory to ensure that they are free of blemishes.

Each basketball-sized camera"must be perfect,"said Oscar Fragoso, a Raytheon optical engineer."If it isn't, we know we're putting lives at risk."

Raytheon has begun to face stiff competition as other aerospace contractors vie for its business.

Sparks, Nev.-based Sierra Nevada Corp., which is known for its work on developing parts for spy satellites, has developed a sensor system, named the Gorgon Stare, that widens the area that drones can monitor from 1 mile to nearly 3 miles.

Named for the creature in Greek mythology whose gaze turns victims to stone, the sensor system features 12 small cameras - instead of one large one. It is to be affixed to Reaper drones before the end of the year.

With the multiple cameras, the operator can follow numerous vehicles instead of just one, said Brig. Gen. Robert P. Otto, the U.S. Air Force's director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance."By the end of the year, we're going to be fielding capabilities that are unlike anything we've used before."

But with an increase in the number of drone patrols and new sensor technology, the Air Force will be"drowning in data,"Otto said."That means we're going to need a lot more people looking at computer screens."

The Pentagon has said that drones last year took so much video footage that it would take someone 24 years to watch it all.

By this time next year, the Air Force expects to have almost 5,000 people trawling through the images for intelligence information. That's up from little more than 1,200 nine years ago.

"The reconnaissance work that's being done now takes seconds, where it used to take days,"Otto said."We're pushing the edge of technology."

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Laser-based camera can see around corners

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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from MIT have developed a camera that can capture images of a scene that is not in its direct line of sight. The camera is equipped with a femtosecond laser, which fires extremely short bursts of light that can reflect off one object (such as a door or mirror) and then a second object before reflecting back to the first object and being captured by the camera. Algorithms can then use this information to reconstruct the hidden scene.

The laser-based camera system is being designed by MIT Professor Ramesh Raskar and others. They call the system a"femtosecond transient imaging system,"and explain that it exploits the fact that it is possible to capture light at extremely short time scales, about one quadrillionth of a second. By continuously gathering light and computing the time and distance that each pixel has traveled, thecameracreates a"3D time-image"of the scene.

"It’s like having x-ray vision without the x-rays,"Raskar said."We’re going around the problem rather than going through it."

The researchers are still in the early stages of development and are working on accurately mapping more complex scenes. They predict that the system could have a variety of applications. For instance, it could be used for search and rescue missions to search for survivors in a collapsed building or a building on fire. It could also be used for avoiding car collisions at blind corners, for machine vision, and for inspecting industrial objects with hidden surfaces. It could have similar biomedical imaging applications by allowing doctors to use endoscopes to view areas inside the body that are normally hidden. The researchers noted that a portable imaging system in the form of an endoscope could be ready in the next two years.

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Israeli high tech adjusts to Asian challenge

(AP) -- It's well known that the emergence of India and China is casting a shadow on the developed economies of Europe and North America. Less famous is the challenge facing Israel: With the Jewish state having quietly prospered as a global haven of innovation, key players here are asking whether the Asian giants might steal their high-tech thunder.

The laundry list of Israeli achievements is surprising for a country of just 7.6 million. The country helped give the world instant messaging, voicemail, and Internet telephony. Itsnanotechnologyhas enabled great advances in medicine.

It boasts more companies on the technology-focused Nasdaq exchange than any place outside North America, and houses research and development centers for multinational giants like Microsoft and Intel.

All this has fueled economic growth and given the Jewish state, for all its troubles with the Arab world around it, a first-world standard of living. Technology now accounts for an eighth of Israel's economy and has pushed the per capita output up to a respectable $30,000 - more than many countries in Europe, and just under Japan, at about $32,000.

But there is increasing concern that just as Asia was able to seize a dominant slice of manufacturing - as well as outsourcing basic programming and call centers - with cheap labor, so it might do with higher-level technology.

Entrepreneurs here generally seem confident that they will maintain, at least for a while, an edge in the ability to innovate - a quality Israelis ascribe to a combination of circumstances, including the need to develop military technology and a societal bent to break the rules and challenge the established order.

But with the populations of India and China each topping 1 billion, so much larger than Israel's, it's easy to see how a shift could come quickly, by dint of sheer numbers alone.

Chinese technology companies employed 9.6 million people in 2009 - 2 million more than Israel's entire population. And India graduated more than 350,000 engineers in 2009 - more than three times the number of all of Israel's registered engineers.

"At some point, quantity becomes quality,"says Zeev Holtzman, chairman of Giza Venture Capital in Tel Aviv.

As they weigh their options, there is a distinct sense among key players in the industry that to maintain its position in the long term, Israel must do something differently.

Generally speaking,"many of the (Israeli) funds and many of the startups and many of the entrepreneurs need to reinvent themselves,"said Erel Margalit, managing partner of Jerusalem Venture Partners and an early champion of melding tech and other disciplines."What you did five or 10 years ago is not novel anymore."

One emerging idea is to target the consumer: Rather than focus on hardcore technology that only other engineers could possibly understand, why not innovate for the end user? Essentially, why should Israel not have a Nokia?

"When a country or companies are focused on technology as the choice of innovation, there is a ceiling that company can reach unless it becomes a customer-focused innovator,"said Adam Fisher, an Israel-based partner for Bessemer Venture Partners of the U.S.

For the moment, India and China are focusing on converting existing technology into products for their huge domestic markets and not on trailblazing ideas, which is Israel's specialty.

India and China"have a domestic market to supply,"Fisher said."And when you have that, there is very little reason to develop cutting-edge innovation for U.S. enterprises... When will that stop? I give it about 20 years."

Slowing things down, many engineering graduates in India are deemed by employers not ready for the workplace, leading software services giants like Infosys to launch intensive training programs for new hires. An emphasis on rote learning and general fear of failure, some executives say, also dampen the creative spirit needed for groundbreaking innovation.

But Chinese companies are now also developing technology and expanding into services and systems - areas where Israeli companies excel. And the huge domestic market gives companies cash flow to finance research and economies of scale.

Both Asian giants benefit from an incubator that helped to galvanize Israel's own technology industry decades ago: Research facilities set up by dozens of multinationals to take advantage of abundant engineering talent coming at a far lower cost than Israel's does now.

For now, Israelis continue to be a magnet for the venture capital that has helped the tech industry grow. Israeli venture funds aren't attracting the kind of money they did a decade ago following an industry trend, but they do hope to raise $500 million this year - more than double the figure in 2009.

Although venture capital money can be attracted by opportunities - meaning countries are not necessarily competing for a given pool - it is instructive to look at recent trends.

According to Dow Jones VentureSource, which tracks the global venture market, venture capitalists from around the world invested nearly $904 million in Israeli startups in the first nine months of 2010. Chinese companies drew a little more than $2 billion in that same period and Indian companies drew $710 million, the VentureSource figures show.

Israeli funds"have a challenge in recruiting follow-on funding because of the shift in global attention to the east,"said Holtzman, referring to repeat, later stage investments.

Meanwhile, many Israeli tech companies are outsourcing programming to India. Giza maintains an Asia office in Singapore. Ness Technologies, an Israeli computer services outfit, has offices across India.

"Those are big markets that we need to start targeting and already are,"said Michael Eisenberg, a partner in the Israel office of U.S.-based Benchmark Capital."India and China have to be a focus. There are 2.5 billion people there."

A technology conference held in Tel Aviv this month underscored, perhaps, the beginnings of a move to consumer orientation.

Among the companies on hand were outfits that provide Internet TV storefronts, produce gaming platforms and Facebook applications.

Conduit, for example, is a service that enables web publishers to create applications using their own brand and content, and to distribute them to engage users beyond their own websites.

Another promising startup called Outbrain alerts readers of blogs and media sites to recommended links targeted to their specific interests, much the way Netflix or Amazon make movie and book recommendations to their customers. The idea is to help readers cut through information overload and find information that is relevant to them.

Cleantechnologyis another key area: Better Place, the brainchild of Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi, hopes to revolutionize the global automobile industry by laying down the world's first electric car grids next year.

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Intel teams up with leading researchers to make football helmets safer

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Intel today announced that it is collaborating with industry experts and several universities to tackle the issue of football-related head injuries.

Using supercomputers and workstations based on present and futureIntelprocessortechnology, researchers are simulating collisions to study the impact on the brain, and use that information to design new football helmets that reduce the risk of short- and long-term injuries.

Intel, working with Riddell, the premier designer and developer of helmets and protective equipment, and researchers from the Thayer School of Engineering (Dartmouth), Wayne State University, University of Northern Colorado and Texas State University-San Marcos, demonstrated simulations during an event at the SC10 conference in New Orleans.

In this demonstration, simulated impacts are processed on Intel Xeon Processor-based Workstations and Clusters, or a group of linked computers, to rapidly compute, visualize and assess the risk of injury in an impact event. The simulations are based on computer models from partner universities, some of which include actual data from on-field impacts using the Riddell HITS (Head Impact Telemetry System), a proprietary in-helmet technology that provides real-time data regarding head impacts. These models show visualization of the stresses on the brain and can allow for comparisons between impacts that are found to result in a concussion and similar impacts that cause no injury.

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"Computer simulationshave been instrumental in designing improved brain injury criteria,” said Dr. Igor Szczyrba with the University of Northern Colorado.“In the near future, they can also help doctors diagnose actual brain injuries.”

Separately, attending the event and discussing the importance of using safe equipment to prevent injuries, was Drew Brees, quarterback of the New Orleans Saints and Super Bowl XLIV MVP.

While no equipment can prevent 100 percent of injuries, Intel is also working with Mayo Clinic to accelerate the ability to process medical scans. In this application, cranial scans running on Intel Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture co-processors were accelerated by up to 18 times.

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This is an image of the Sideline Response System* from Riddell, which takes the HITS data from instrumented helmets and saves the data for later analysis, or alerts sideline staff if a dangerous impact was detected by a player’s helmet. The software can show the angle and force of each impact. This image was provided courtesy of Riddell.

During the event, Intel also discussed future technologies, based on its Intel Atom processors, which could be embedded in helmets and wirelessly feed data into servers and cloud networks that measure injury risk and impact in real-time. When combined with impact simulation, this could better safeguard players by identifying potential injuries quickly so that medical personnel can respond faster and have information as soon as they reach the player on the field.

Intel, with its top-ranked Intel Xeon chip-based supercomputers, has been a leader in using parallel processing to solve complex problems. Some of this urgent and groundbreaking research is made possible by Intel MIC architecture, which could run up to trillions of calculations per second, and includes in its targets high-performance computing segments such as scientific research, exploration and climate modeling. The first Intel MIC product, codenamed“Knights Corner,” will be made on Intel’s 22-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process– transistor structures packed as small as 22 billionths of a meter -- and will use Moore’s Law to scale tens of Intel processing cores on a single chip. While the vast majority of workloads will still run best on award-winning Intel Xeon processors, Intel MIC architecture will add more business opportunities for highly parallel applications.

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Israeli invention wins Wall Street Journal Award

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The 2010 Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award in the area of physical security will be awarded this week in the US to the Israel-based BriefCam Company for its invention, which was developed by Prof. Shmuel Peleg of the Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem The invention offers an innovative solution to quick review of information from security cameras.

Surveillance cameras generate a prodigious amount of video; unfortunately there's not enough time and manpower to watch it all. Other video-surveillance technologies address this problem by fast forwarding through recordings or capturing only moving images using motion detectors, for instance.

BriefCam takes a different approach. Itspatented technology, called Video Synopsis, provides a solution to this problem through computer software that creates a synopsis of recorded information, generating a very short video preserving the essential activities of the original video captured over a very long time period. For example, the passage of vehicles passing through a security gate over many hours can ne condensed into a few minutes, showing each vehicle's entry followed immediately by another.

"Five hours of video is not five hours any more,"says Peleg, developer of the technology and the company's chief scientist."It's five minutes."Earlier this year Peleg was the winner of a Kaye Innovation Award at the Hebrew University for his invention.

The Video Synopsis invention was licensed to BriefCam through Yissum, the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University.

The winners of The Wall Street Journal's 2010Technology InnovationAwards will be honored on Nov. 3 at a ceremony and dinner in Redwood City, Calif.

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Singapore group to develop 'next-generation' cars

An international consortium backed by the Singapore government Thursday launched ten research projects to develop technology for"next-generation"vehicles.

The Capabilities forAutomotive Research11-member consortium, which includes industry heavyweights such as German smart phone chipmaker Infineon, will work on areas such as anti-collision steering systems and wireless charging of electronic cars.

"The automotive sector today faces many challenges and therefore presents many opportunities,"said Lim Chuan Poh, the chairman of state-backed Agency for Science,Technologyand Research.

"The car of the future has to be increasingly intelligent and connected,"he said, adding the consortium's work aims to"solve these increasingly complex and multi-disciplinary problems as well as to testbed some of these solutions."

Toyota Tsusho, part of Japanese auto giant Toyota, is also a member of the group and will be providing technical expertise on installing batteries that can be wireless charged onto a golf buggy-shaped car.

"The basic technology comes from A*STAR (Agence for Science, Technology and Research) but we support this car and how to use such a wireless battery"on it, said Yasuhiro Kakihara, the president of Toyota Tsusho Singapore.

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Home security is going high-tech to counter housing bust

While almost every other piece of the consumer electronics business has gotten wired and then wireless over the last 10 years, home security systems have remained stubbornly low-tech.

Burglar breaks glass, cops get pinged, end of story.

When you get home, all you can do is hope your house is still in one piece.

That's about to change, and home security systems are becoming as high-tech as the smartphone in your pocket.

While the natural progression of technology is partly driving that trend, it's also getting a boost from the housing bust.

Home security purchases have historically been driven by new home construction or buyers of used homes buying security systems when they move in.

With those traditional catalysts fizzling, home security companies are innovating with all sorts of new features to entice existing homeowners.

"Thesecurity industryis looking toward high-tech,"said Tricia Parks, chief executive of Dallas-based research firm Parks Associates.

And it's not just about security.

The companies behind this technology are developing systems that essentially connect your entire house to the Internet.

Companies such as Alarm.com and Honeywell International Inc., sell systems that don't just let you arm or disarm your security system from a website or iPhone app but also let you adjust your thermostat, close your garage door, turn your lights on and off, monitor yourenergy useand even watch live video from webcams scattered around your home.

Eventually, almost every appliance in your house could be wired into these networks.

And you'll be able to monitor it all through your phone,tablet computeror laptop.

"If we cast our minds back to the traditional security industry, essentially the focus was very much on life safety, almost an extension of the 911 infrastructure,"said Jonathan Klinger, vice president of marketing for Honeywell.

"If something happens in my home, I want a bell to go off somewhere. If you were to take a snapshot of the industry maybe five years ago or so, that's pretty much what you would see."

TOTALLY CONNECTED

But that market is pretty much tapped out.

Parks Associates found in a report earlier this year that the percentage of U.S. households with security monitoring has declined from nearly 19 percent in 2007 to 17.5 percent now.

So security companies are expanding into new areas to appeal to customers who might not be as concerned about burglars and fires but who do want tools to monitor their homes.

"Security is transitioning from being a stand-alone product and service, if you will, to being part of a much broader universe of offerings -- offerings which have become as much lifestyle as life safety,"Klinger said.

For example, Honeywell offers a service through local installers called Total Connect that lets users monitor temperature changes in their houses, adjust lighting, close garage doors and remotely unlock front doors to let plumbers and other service workers in.

The service can also include live video, if you want to remotely follow the plumber as he works.

Or you can give the plumber a one-time entry code for your keypad-equipped door and get an e-mail alert when the code is usedÂ- and also get alerts if your medicine or liquor cabinets are opened.

Honeywell already has Total Connect apps for iPhone and BlackBerry, and also recently launched its Android phone app.

Alarm.com offers similar technology through its network of affiliated dealers and installers.

"You can basically put a camera looking out on your driveway, and you can draw a window and if there's any activity in this little window, the camera will automatically record the video,"said Alison Slavin, vice president of product management at Alarm.com."We can even e-mail you a clip."

CUTTING THE CORD

A major hurdle for many security companies has been the declining number of homes with land-line phones, Slavin said.

Until recently, security companies monitored alarm systems by connecting those systems to copper wire phone lines.

But a growing number of households are dumping their land-line phones -- 24.5 percent of U.S. households were wireless only in June, up from 7.7 percent five years ago, according to trade group CTIA-The Wireless Association. That makes those systems useless.

So security systems have gone wireless, too.

Many now have built-in antennas to connect to 2G cellular networks.

That has the added benefit of giving security companies much more bandwidth over which to send data, allowing features such as energy management.

Eventually, as 3G and then 4G networks proliferate, those high-bandwidth services will be able to handle video streaming, too.

For now, though, if you want to watch live or recorded video from your home, you have to wire your cameras into a home broadband Internet connection. Some people have been doing that on their own for years.

HOMEMADE SAFETY

Dallas resident Vincent Hunter made headlines in August when webcams in his home and theiPhoneapp iCam alerted him to two burglars breaking into his house while he was traveling with his wife in Connecticut.

Corinth resident Bear Cahill rolled his own high-tech security system by wirelessly connecting a night-vision security camera to his PC.

He sets the computer to capture pictures from the camera at regular intervals and upload them to a server that he can access remotely from anywhere in the world.

"Usually when we're in town, I use it as a baby monitor (I have a second receiver on the TV),"Cahill said in an e-mail.

"But when we go out of town, I can put the camera overlooking the living room and see if anything's going on: burglary, flooding, etc."

Cahill is a full-time programmer, though, and security companies know that a home-brew setup can be daunting to non-techie users.

"One of the things that slows down a retail purchase is a sense of incompetence on the part of the retail consumer, saying 'Oh my gosh, can I put this in myself?'"Parks said.

For years, Irving resident Eric Flores had an older security system from ADT Security Services Inc. When his battery recently died, he decided to upgrade to a new system from an Alarm.com-affiliated dealer.

He now has his security system and thermostat wired into his account, along with the ability to monitor the video feed from a Wi-Fi webcam in his house. He controls it through his BlackBerry.

"I have a teenager, so I know the time he walks in every day from school,"Flores said.

Flores also long ago cut his landline phone so he needed a system that relied on the cellular network.

He paid $100 for the equipment, along with a $55 monthly fee. That's comparable to the high-tech systems offered by other companies, although prices vary depending on which equipment and services are selected.

"It is real convenient,"Flores said."I log in two, three, four times a day through my phone just to make sure everything is OK. It's great."

ENTER THE COMPETITION

But as the technology gets more user-friendly and grows from merely security to full-fledged home networking, more companies are getting interested in the space.

Cable and telecom companies are angling for a piece of the action, for example.

Cable television and broadband provider Comcast Corp. offers its Xfinity home security service that also bundles lighting and energy management and video monitoring.

Verizon Communications Inc., is working on home security, heating and air conditioning controls as part of its FiOS fiber-optic Internet service.

For now, cutting-edge security and monitoring technologies are still a small percentage of the installations in homes.

But they're coming on fast.

In the Parks report, 21 percent of security dealers said they"certainly will"start offering Internet-connected home security products this year.

"We're not even yet at the early mass market, in terms of that comprehensive home networking,"said Klinger at Honeywell."But we're not far from it."

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S.Africa turns apartheid-era nukes into medicine

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South Africa has transformed apartheid-era nuclear weapons into a tool for detecting cancer and heart disease, with a new technology that could ease global worries about nuclear arms trafficking.

After voluntarily dismantling its weapons programme, democratic South Africa used the leftover nuclear fuel to producemedical isotopesused by doctors for imaging technology.

South Africa is one of the world's top three producers of molybdenum-99, better known as moly, used in 80 percent of the 50 million nuclear medical procedures performed globally each year.

Normally, moly is created with the same type of uranium as used to make nuclear arms, creating a headache for efforts to corral weapons-grade uranium.

But a new technique designed by the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) allows scientists to create moly using low-enriched uranium, rather than the highly enriched type needed for bombs.

"This is very exciting,"said Mike Sathekge, chief ofnuclear medicineat the University of Pretoria."This is envisaged to have a huge impact."

In July, Necsa delivered the first shipment of the new moly to a distributor in the United States, which accounts for half of the world's billion-dollar market for this kind of nuclear medicine.

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NECSA (Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa) radioactive wasted drums are seen here being stocked in Pretoria. S.Africa has transformed apartheid-era nuclear weapons into a tool for detecting cancer and heart disease, with a new technology that could ease global worries about nuclear arms trafficking.

The new technology is more expensive, but the United States has given a 25-million-dollar grant to Necsa and its partner, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, to make more.

That doesn't mean drug distributors will be willing to pay the extra price, but Necsa chief Rob Adams said Washington's worries about arms trafficking could change that.

"What we will be expecting is the erection of some kind of tariff barrier which would make it not as attractive to importmolybdenum... derived from highly-enriched uranium,"he told AFP.

Jennifer Wagner, spokeswoman for the US National Nuclear Security Administration, said Washington was pushing to impose deterrents against moly made from highly-enriched uranium.

She said the NNSA"is working with the appropriate agencies to discuss all of the possible options to ensure... incentives are provided"for the new technology.

Most of the world's moly is produced at nuclear reactors in only five countries: Belgium, Canada, France, the Netherlands and South Africa.

South Africa is the only country using the new technique, which now appears poised to help keep the nuclear industry afloat.

Pretoria in September mothballed a projected cutting-edge nuclear reactor, after pouring more than one billion dollars into the development of a new type of small plant touted as a safer source of nuclear power.

South Africa is now looking overseas for expertise in building new nuclear plants to expand its electricity supply, which created worries about the future of the local industry.

Nuclear medicine, though, remains a bright spot for South Africa, Adams said.

"Being recognized by the top technology nation in the world, and having provided them with something they don't have... that's a tremendous marketing tool,"Adams said.

"To say we, this country in Africa, have developed this technology that the United States wants very badly, that's for me, something I am proud of."

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