Taiwan flora show features high-tech displays

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(AP) -- Paper-thin speakers blare pop music. Three-D films appear on elongated screens with no need for special viewing glasses. Viewers' pulses turn cocoons into butterflies in an interactive display.

Welcome to the Pavilion of Dreams, a high-tech enclave within the Taipei International Flora Exposition, where Taiwanese artists and engineers are using technology-generated flowers and plants to strut the island's cutting edge know-how to onlookers from around the world.

The exposition, which runs from November through April, has so far drawn more than 1.9 million visitors to an expansive site in northern Taipei.

Already recognized as a supplier of smartphone and computer components to globaltechnologycompanies, Taiwan wants to use the pavilion to highlight its capacity for product innovation in the increasingly competitive high-tech world, said Hsueh Wen-chen, head of the government-funded creativity center that designed the popular pavilion.

"Taiwan is not so well-known for creating technologies because we use them mainly in making parts and components for consumer products,"she said."Here we let our imaginations run wild in a way that can give us ideas about how to meet consumer needs when we design our products."

Visitors to the pavilion are greeted by a 3.5-ton artificial flower hanging from the ceiling. It opens and folds its petals to the rhythm of pop music blared from scores of palm-sized speakers, cut into leaf shapes to merge with their surroundings. The speakers are made from a thin, flexible metal coated with a vibrating membrane with strategically placed sensors.

In an adjacent exhibition room, a row of 65-inch flat screens runs 3D animated films of flowers and plants that visitors can view without special glasses because the screens have been engineered to display something known as lenticular imaging.

Just around the corner, a wall of 10-foot- (3-meter-) tall liquid crystal glass panels - looking like a giant transparent bowl - shows a lifelike projection of flowers in the wild.

Unlike conventional flat designs, the 18 panels are curved to create a stunning visual effect. Engineers changed the properties of the membrane attached to the glass so light permeates the curved surface evenly - just like it does on theflat screenversion.

Perhaps most impressive of all, a nearby amphitheater shows a film about flora and fauna in a deeply forested environment that allows viewers to transform a small plant into a large tree by breathing onto the screen, or turn a cocoon into a butterfly by placing their wrists near the screen and letting their pulses do the work.

The apparently magical effect is accomplished by using ultra-wide bands, a radio technology first developed at a Russian lab to register life signs in human beings without making physical contact.

"Taiwan is now adapting the UWB technology for medical and other uses,"said Yuan Nai-chuan, chief program producer at the pavilion."We thought it would work very nicely here, too."

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Ceiling lights in Minn. send coded Internet data

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(AP) -- Flickering ceiling lights are usually a nuisance, but in city offices in St. Cloud, they will actually be a pathway to the Internet.

The lights will transmit data to specially equipped computers on desks below by flickering faster than the eye can see. Ultimately, the technique could ease wireless congestion by opening up new expressways for short-range communications.

The first few light fixtures built by LVX System, a local startup, will be installed Wednesday in six municipal buildings in this city of 66,000 in the snowy farm fields of central Minnesota.

The LVX system puts clusters of itslight-emitting diodes, or LEDs, in a standard-sized light fixture. The LEDs transmit coded messages - as a series of 1s and 0s in computer speak - to special modems attached to computers.

A light on the modem talks back to the fixture overhead, where there is sensor to receive the return signal and transmit the data over the Internet. Those computers on the desks aren't connected to the Internet, except through these light signals, much as Wi-Fi allows people to connect wirelessly.

LVX takes its name from the Latin word for light, but the underlying concept is older than Rome; the ancient Greeks signaled each other over long distances using flashes of sunlight off mirrors and polished shields. The Navy uses a Morse-coded version with lamps.

The first generation of the LVX system will transmit data at speeds of about 3megabitsper second, roughly as fast as a residential DSL line.

Mohsen Kavehrad, a Penn State electrical engineering professor who has been working with optical network technology for about 10 years, said the approach could be a vital complement to the existing wireless system.

He said theradio spectrumusually used for short-range transmissions, such as Wi-Fi, is getting increasingly crowded, which can lead to slower connections.

"Light can be the way out of this mess,"said Kavehrad, who is not involved in the LVX project.

But there are significant hurdles. For one, smart phones and computers already work on Wi-Fi networks that are much faster than the LVX system.

Technology analyst Craig Mathias of the Farpoint Group said the problems with wireless congestion will ease as Wi-Fi evolves, leaving LVX's light system to niche applications such as indoor advertising displays and energy management.

LVX Chief Executive Officer John Pederson said a second-generation system that will roll out in about a year will permit speeds on par with commercial Wi-Fi networks. It will also permit lights that can be programmed to change intensity and color.

For the city, the data networking capability is secondary. The main reason it paid a $10,000 installation fee for LVX is to save money on electricity down the line, thanks to the energy-efficient LEDs. Pederson said one of his LED fixtures uses about 36 watts of power to provide the same illumination that 100 watts provides with a standard fluorescent fixture.

Besides installation costs, customers such as St. Cloud will pay LVX a monthly fee that's less than their current lighting expenses. LVX plans to make money because the LED fixtures are more durable and efficient than standard lighting. At least initially, the data transmission system is essentially a bonus for customers.

Pederson said the next generation of the system should get even more efficient as fixtures become"smart"so the lights would dim when bright sunlight is coming through a window or when a conference room or hallway is empty.

Because the lights can also change color, Pederson said they could be combined with personal locators or tiny video cameras to help guide people through large buildings. The lights could show a trail of green lights to an emergency exit, for instance.

While Kavehrad and Mathias credited LVX for being the first company in the United States to bring the technology to market, Kavehrad said it trails researchers and consumer electronics companies in Japan and Korea in developing products for visible-light networks.

Pederson's previous company, 911 EP, built high-powered LED roof lights for squad cars and other emergency vehicles. He said he sold the company in 2002. He said the visible-light network grew out his interest in LEDs that goes to the mid-1990s.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, which pays for 24-hour lighting and replacing fluorescent bulbs on high ceilings, is considering an LVX system, said Jeffrey W. Hamiel, executive director of the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

The system might include mounting cameras on the light fixtures to bolster the airport security system, but the real attraction is the savings on electricity and maintenance.

"Anything we can do to save costs is worth consideration,"he said.

Michael Williams, the city administrator in St. Cloud, said the city had been considering LVX for some time.

"It's pretty wild stuff,"he said."They have been talking about it with us for couple of years, and frankly it took a while for it to sink in."

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Disney's 'Tron' movie reverse-ages Jeff Bridges

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(AP) -- Hollywood has famously had better luck using makeup to make young actors look old - like Russell Crowe in"A Beautiful Mind"- than making old actors look young. But the ability to manipulate images digitally could prove to be a fountain of youth for actors getting long in the tooth.

In"Tron: Legacy,"which opens Dec. 17, 61-year-old actor Jeff Bridges will play Kevin Flynn, at his natural age, and a computerized avatar called"Clu,"who hasn't aged since around the time he was first created in the original"Tron"in 1982.

Clu bears Bridges' face, altered to make him about 35 years old, but it's grafted onto a younger actor's body.

While it may be eerie for audiences to see a new performance from a younger-looking Bridges, it was no less strange for the actor himself.

"It's bizarre. It's great news for me, because now it means I can play myself at any age,"Bridges said.

There have been digitally created faces before, even on fully animated bodies. Think Gollum in"The Lord of the Rings"or Dobby from"Harry Potter."

But no movie yet has done what The Walt Disney Co.'s"Tron: Legacy"attempts - putting an actor's rejuvenated face on a younger body, and in 3-D no less. Inevitably, the 61-year-old-turned-35-year-old face will be compared to Bridges when he was actually 35.

"With Jeff, we can go rent 'Against All Odds' or 'The Fabulous Baker Boys' or 'Starman,'"visual effects supervisor Eric Barba said."All this makes it incredibly difficult."

The filmmakers did not want Bridges' Clu looking precisely as he did in 1982. The idea was that some time had elapsed, and Clu was meant to look like Bridges in"Against All Odds,"which came out two years after the original"Tron."

"In our mythology, Clu was created after the events of the first film,"director Joseph Kosinski said."This is Clu 2."

Computers have already been used to roll back the years. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were made a couple decades younger in scenes from"X-Men: The Last Stand"from 2006.

Head alterations have happened, too. Helena Bonham Carter had an oversized cranium as the Red Queen in this year's"Alice in Wonderland,"and the late Oliver Reed's face was put on a body double after he died during the shooting of"Gladiator,"released in 2000.

But the triple-toe-loop of complexity in"Tron: Legacy"is a notch tougher than all that.

It also goes beyond the techniques that Barba and"Tron"animation supervisor Steve Preeg pioneered on Brad Pitt in the 2008 movie"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,"for which they shared an Oscar for visual effects. Pitt was digitally remade to look older, but he was never re-engineered to appear as the younger actor who has been seen by countless millions on celluloid.

By contrast,"we know what Jeff looks like and how he acted,"Barba said."It just means that people's perceptions will vary across the board."

In"Tron: Legacy,"Clu was created to help Bridges' character and the other program, Tron, build a perfect virtual world, but Clu turns evil with his own dark notions of building a virtual society.

To make Clu, filmmakers made a silicon mold of Bridges' face and painted it like real flesh. They took multiple photos, put them into a computer and gave him a"digital face lift"that took out wrinkles, tightened the skin and shrunk down his nose and ears.

He then performed a series of facial movements, such as raising his outer left eyebrow or lifting his cheek. Those were recorded by camera and computerized in 3-D.

Finally, when Bridges acted in scenes as Clu, he wore a helmet with four tiny cameras pointed at his face. Dozens of dots on his face acted as reference points for the computer.

"Sometimes I could be in my street clothes and just have this weird helmet on,"Bridges said.

The captured expressions are replicated on his younger-looking self. Actor John Reardon mimicked Bridges in later takes and had his face swapped out later.

Making sure Bridges' computerized head matched up with Reardon's body took artistry as well as high-tech. Preeg said filmmakers took more time looking at 160 Clu shots than they did at all the other 1,400 shots in the movie.

And who knows? Their hard work could help other agingactorsreprise roles they never had in the first place.

"I think this technology opens up really interesting opportunities for actors,"Kosinski said.

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US deploys 'game-changer' weapon to Afghanistan

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It looks and acts like something best left in the hands of Sylvester Stallone's"Rambo,"but this latest dream weapon is real -- and the US Army sees it becoming the Taliban's worst nightmare.

The Pentagon has rolled outprototypesof its first-ever programmable"smart"grenade launcher, a shoulder-fired weapon that uses microchipped ammunition to target and kill the enemy, even when the enemy is hidden behind walls or other cover.

After years of development, the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System, about the size of a regular rifle, has now been deployed to US units on the battlefields of Afghanistan, where the Army expects it to be a"game-changer"in its counterinsurgency operations.

"For well over a week, it's been actively on patrols, and in various combat outposts in areas that are hot,"said Lieutenant Colonel Chris Lehner, program manager for the XM25.

The gun's stats are formidable: it fires 25mm air-bursting shells up to 2,300 feet (700 meters), well past the range of most rifles used by today's soldiers, and programs them to explode at a precise distance, allowing troops to neutralize insurgents hiding behind walls, rocks or trenches or inside buildings.

"This is the first time we're putting smart technology into the hands of the individual soldier,"Lehner told AFP in a telephone interview.

"It's giving them the edge,"he said, in the harsh Afghan landscape where Islamist extremists have vexed US troops using centuries-old techniques of popping up from behind cover to engage.

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Graphic on the US army's new programmable"smart"gun that uses microchipped ammunition to target and kill enemy combatants hidden behind walls or other cover.

"You get behind something when someone is shooting at you, and that sort of cover has protected people for thousands of years,"Lehner said.

"Now we're taking that away from the enemy forever."

PEO Soldier says studies show the XM25 is 300 percent more effective than current weapons at the squad level.

The revolutionary advance involves an array of sights, sensors and lasers that reads the distance to the target, assesses elements such as air pressure, temperature, and ballistics and then sends that data to the microchip embedded in the XM25 shell before it is launched.

Previous grenade launchers needed to arc their shells over cover and land near the target to be effective.

"It takes out a lot of the variables that soldiers have to contemplate and even guess at,"Lehner said.

If, for example, an enemy combatant pops up from behind a wall to fire at US troops and then ducks behind it, an XM25 gunner can aim thelaserrange finder at the top of the wall, then program the shell to detonate one meter beyond it, showering lethal fragmentation where the insurgent is seeking cover.

Use of the XM25 can slash civilian deaths and damage, the Army argues, because its pinpointed firepower offers far less risk than larger mortars or air strikes.

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A soldier aims an XM25 weapon system at Aberdeen Test Center, Maryland. After years of development, the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System has been deployed on the battlefields of Afghanistan, where the Army expects it to be a"game-changer"in its counterinsurgency operations.

The result, the Army says, is"very limited collateral damage."

The Pentagon plans to purchase at least 12,500 of the guns -- at a price tag of 25,000 to 30,000 dollars each -- beginning next year, enough for one in each Infantry squad and Special Forces team.

Lehner said the XM25 was special in that it requires comparatively little training, because the high-powered technology does so much of the work.

"This system is turning soldiers with average shooting skills into those with phenomenal shooting skills,"he said.

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China passenger train hits 300 mph, breaks record

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(AP) -- A Chinese passenger train hit a record speed of 302 miles per hour (486 kilometers per hour) Friday during a test run of a yet-to-be opened link between Beijing and Shanghai, state media said.

The Xinhua News Agency said it was the fastest speed recorded by an unmodified conventional commercial train. Other types of trains in other countries have traveled faster.

A specially modified French TGV train reached 357.2 mph (574.8 kph) during a 2007 test, while a Japanese magnetically levitated train sped to 361 mph (581 kph) in 2003.

State television footage showed the sleek white train whipping past green farm fields in eastern China. It reached the top speed on a segment of the 824-mile (1,318-kilometer) -long line between Zaozhuang city in Shandong province and Bengbu city in Anhui province, Xinhua said.

The line is due to open in 2012 and will halve the current travel time between the capital Beijing and Shanghai to five hours.

The project costs $32.5 billion and is part of a massive government effort to link many of China's cities by high-speed rail and reduce overcrowding on heavily used lines.

Chinaalready has the world's longest high-speed rail network, and it plans to cover 8,125 miles (13,000 kilometers) by 2012 and 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) by 2020.

The drive to develop high-speed rail technology rivals China's space program in terms of national pride and importance. Railway officials say they want to reach speeds over 500 kph (312 mph).

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Thai tech pioneer converts waste into wealth

Paijit Sangchai drops a small piece of laminated paper into a jar of cloudy liquid which he hopes will transform his start-up into a multi-million dollar company and help revolutionise recycling.

"Now this is the fun part,"he says a few minutes later, holding it under the tap to wash away soggy paper pulp and reveal a clearplastic film.

His Thai firm, Flexoresearch, has developed a series of blended enzymes that can recover pulp or fibre from laminated paper such as cigarette packets, stickers or milk cartons that were previously hard or impossible to recycle.

First one enzyme attacks the water resistant chemical coating the surface, then others take over and tackle the paper and adhesive layers.

The resulting pulp, he says, can be used to produce new paper products -- thus saving trees -- or turned into building materials that can be used as an alternative to asbestos, which is potentially hazardous to human health.

The technique, believed to be the first of its kind, also produces clean plastic that can be recycled and used to produce new products.

The firm was recently named one of 31"Technology Pioneers"by the World Economic Forum, which said its products were"poised to reduce the use of asbestos in the developing world, positively impacting people's health."

Time Magazine described Flexoresearch as one of"10 start-ups that will change your life".

It is a rare honour to be bestowed on an entrepreneur in a country hardly renowned for its technological prowess.

In developing countries such as Thailand, laminated paper is usually thrown away, Paijit says.

"Most people burn it illegally and that causes toxic fumes which harm people's health,"he tells AFP at his small laboratory in a science park on the northern outskirts of Bangkok.

"For people in developing countries who suffer from the fumes and don't know why they are sick ... it can help improve their lives,"he adds.

And whiledeveloped countrieslike the United States are able to incinerate laminated paper such as fast food wrappers safely, they do not have any commercially viable way to recycle it either, he says.

"Every country uses laminated paper, in stickers and wrappers of food like McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken. That's all laminated and people throw it away,"he says."I think this a global market."

Since winning the Technology Pioneer award -- previous recipients of which include Google and Twitter -- Paijit has been flooded with thousands of emails, mostly from venture capitalists interested in investing in his start-up.

But the affable company founder and CEO is not interested in borrowing more money or selling stakes to investors.

He is looking for people overseas who want to licence the technology, which is already attracting interest in countries including Malaysia, Japan, China, South Korea and India.

"I want to work with people around the world to heal the environment,"says Paijit.

It is a far cry from the days he spent experimenting with enzymes produced from mushrooms in a home laboratory after quitting a more than decade-long, well-paid career with a leading Thai industrial giant four years ago.

He invested his savings, then borrowed heavily from the bank, putting up his house as collateral to keep the project going and build a paper mill in eastern Bangkok.

At one point the firm was in debt to the tune of about 1.5 million dollars, but it has since repaid all the money and now employs 17 people.

And Paijit is already eyeing ways to turn other problems into profits, including a technique to turn used liquid coolant drained from refrigeration systems into oil that can be used in the construction industry.

"I make a profit from a problem. I convert waste into wealth,"he says.

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Apple patents an inexpensive 3-D projection system

(PhysOrg.com) -- The U.S. patent office has granted Apple a patent for a 3-D projection system that doesn't require the use of bulky 3-D glasses. This gives the viewer more freedom of movement and viewing angles.

The name Apple has given to this simple 3-D system is called,"Three Dimensional Display System."This auto-stereoscopic system works by projecting each pixel onto a reflective, textured surface, which is then bounced into a viewer's left and right eye separately; this produces the 3D or stereoscopic effect. By sensing the locations of both eyes of each viewer, multiple viewers could observe the 3-D effect from a variety of angles.

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Each pixel is aimed at a curved surface, where it reflects onto the correct eye.

Apple is not the only company that’s involved in auto-stereoscopic R&D; however Apple's patent has picked apart the limitations of three categories of auto-stereoscopic system:

1. Ghost like or transparent images in volumetric displays.
2. The viewer required to remain stationary using the parallax barrier method.
3. The use of holographic images requires greater computer power and larger bandwidth, keeping the commercial cost higher that is required for other auto-stereoscopic systems.

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Apple's auto-stereoscopic system tracks where the viewer is located and tailors its display to your position.

Apple’s main objective is to develop a 3-D glass-free auto-stereoscopic system that would give viewers the freedom to move around without being tied down to bulky 3-D glasses.Apple’spatentalso promises to keep costs low and simplifying the system while maintaining performance.

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Let your beer mat do the talking

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Forget speed-dating and the classifieds column– now you can leave it to your beer mat to make that all-important first move.

Beer mats have always provided endless entertainment in thebarand now a group of computer scientists from Newcastle University have developed a novel way of sparking upconversationwith a new generation of beer mat.

Using an interactive bar surface, camera-based technology tracks the specially-designed mats as they are moved around the bar.

When the mats are placed on the bar they 'chat' to each other in the form of visual text messages - the words scrolling across the surface like television news bulletins and triggering a response.

‘Talking’ amongst themselves, the mats send out a random selection of pre-programmed messages, the aim being they act as an ice-breaker and prompt conversation between the owners of the drinks.

The interactive mats are the brainchild of a group of Newcastle University PhD students from the university’s Culture Lab with the system being built by Tom Bartindale and Jack Weeden.

Being demonstrated for the first time at Culture Lab’s Jam45 event, the technology is part of a showcase of new and innovative audio/visual performances from across the North East.

Tom explains:“The idea is that the mats gain a personality when placed on the bar - some are funny, some are naughty, some are scared of other mats and some are out to talk to everyone.

“This is a twist on meeting new people in a public space.  I think most of us feel quite self-conscious and uncomfortable about starting a conversation with a stranger so what our mat does is make that first move and also provides a talking point.”

Tom says the group first came up with the idea while they were sat in a bar in Germany.

“We were looking around at all these isolated groups and started thinking about how we could get them talking to each other.  The interactive beer mats started off as a bit of fun and then we realised their potential for bringing people together.”

The technology works by using cameras to sense the positions of traditional beer mats that have been printed with markers on their underside.  Text and graphics are then displayed on the bar, allowing the beer mats to“talk” to each other.

The conversation starters have been drawn from a variety of phrases, including humorous chat up lines, serious questions and light-hearted banter. When a drink mat is removed, other mats will comment on this, and encourage conversation with new“un-known” mats.

Weeden adds:“In general, technology tends to kill conversation and trigger quite anti-social behavior– we bury ourselves in our text messaging, iPods or computer screens and never even look up to see who’s standing next to us.

“The focus of our work is to use technology to encourage interaction and relationships.  We want these very public text messages to break the ice and make people laugh.”

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Japan pitches mind-blowing high-tech 3D World Cup

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Japan promised a high tech marvel in its final pitch to host the 2022 World Cup on Wednesday by paving 400 stadiums around the world with 3D flat screens to show life size matches thousands of miles away.

"I have to admit that the idea of this blows my mind away,"admitted Japan 2022 bid committee chief executive Kohzo Tashima.

"Three hundred and sixty million people could have a full stadium experience of matches; that's over 100 times the number of spectators at the 1994 World Cup in the United States,"he told FIFA's executive committee.

Backed by Sony chairman Howard Stringer, Japanese officials mirrored the promise of an electronics revolution for the next generation that would eliminate language problems in Japan by providing tiny real-time interpretation machines and constant connection to palm sized screens.

But the highlight of the presentation a day before the grandees of world footballs' governing body -- some of whom are in their 80s -- choose the hosts, was the idea of paving whole pitches including Wembley or the legendary Maracana stadium with flat screens.

They would project real-time hologram-likethree dimensional imagesof the game in life size and real time to crowds around the world.

"Our nation's bid is not about one nation hosting the games or two nations, but 208 regions and FIFA nations hosting the game together,"said Junji Ogura, chairman of the Japanese bid and a member of FIFA's executive committee.

"Create aWorld Cupfor the next generation to bring 208 smiles to the world,"he urged his fellow footballing offocials.

Although the idea seemed far fetched, Stringer insisted it was as realistic as the steps taken when the Walkman portable music player, home video cameras, or PlayStation were launched

"The truth is the world is changing faster than any of us can understand,"the Sony chief explained.

"I can tell you that this is not science fiction, in 2022 this will be science fact,"Stringer insisted, dressed in a Japan football jersey.

Japanese sports minister Kan Suzuki said the government was ready to give"absolute guarantees"not only for the political and financial pledges, but also the technological promise.

Ogura said:"The challenge for FIFA, for football, is to identify the next big idea."

Japan is vying with more traditional bids from Australia, the United States, Qatar, and South Korea to host the 2022 tournament.

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