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Computer spy turns tables on Big Brother
TECHNOLOGY
Battery grown from ‘armour-plated’ viruses GENETICALLY engineered viruses that assemble into electrodes have been used to make complete miniature rechargeable batteries for the first time. The new lithium ion batteries are as powerful as existing devices but smaller and cleaner to make, claim the team behind the work. The technology could improve the performance of hybrid electric cars and electronic gadgets. Lithium ion batteries exploit the reactivity of lithium to produce a current. Inside the battery, lithium ions move from the anode to the cathode, forcing
“It’s environmentally friendly because much of its materials can be made at room temperature” electrons in the opposite direction around an external circuit. This process is reversed when the battery is recharged. Making these batteries takes a tough manufacturing process because of the highly reactive components, aggressive solvents and high temperatures used in
construction, as well as the dangers of handling lithium. Viruses could make this process much safer and cleaner, says Angela Belcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her team converted a harmless virus called M13 into a cathode by inserting a gene that causes the virus to produce proteins that bond with iron and phosphate ions in a surrounding solution. As a result, the long, tubular virus particles become sheathed in an “armour plating” of iron phosphate, turning them into nanowires. The resultant batteries were not as good as commercial models, however – the cathodes turned out to be good at conducting lithium ions but not electrons. To solve this, the team inserted a second gene that creates a protein at the tip of the virus that bonds to a carbon nanotube. The nanotube increases the electron conductivity of the combined structure (see diagram). “We were basically adding a highway that allows the electrons to move in and out rapidly,” says Belcher.
Eyeball spy turns the tables on Big Brother AN ORWELLIAN nightmare it may be to many of us, but CCTV is a boat full of holes to the organisations that pay for it. That’s because the people watching CCTV images back in the control rooms often have too many screens to monitor at once, and so may miss the criminal or antisocial activities they are there to spot. To the rescue of Big Brother’s limited attention capabilities come Ulas Vural and Yusuf Akgul of the Gebze Institute of Technology in Turkey, who have developed a gaze-tracking camera system that 18 | NewScientist | 11 April 2009
watches the eyeballs of CCTV operators as they work. It then automatically produces a summary of the CCTV video sequences they have missed during their shift. “This increases the reliability of the surveillance system by giving a second chance to the operator,” the researchers write in the journal Pattern Recognition Letters (DOI: 10.1016/j.patrec.2009.03.002). The system uses webcam-style cameras trained on the irises of the CCTV operators. From this, software works out where the operators are
Growing better batteries The M13 virus has been modified to bond with iron and phosphate ions, and with carbon nanotubes M13 virus plated with iron phosphate
Carbon nanotube
When used as a cathode, the armour plated virus conducts lithium ions while the carbon nanotubes improve electron conductance CATHODE
ELECTROLYTE
ANODE
The resulting battery turned out to be as good as the best commercially available that use crystalline lithium iron phosphate materials (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1171541). And since the team had previously used the same viral technique to produce anodes (New Scientist
looking as they stare at each monitor – and the areas they have not been paying attention to. From this it creates a video of what they missed, for them and their bosses to watch at the end of their shift . To make sure the summary can be watched as quickly as possible, Vural and Akgul have developed an
“The gaze-tracking system may well be regarded as intrusive by CCTV controlroom staff” algorithm that discards frames that show only the background with no people or moving vehicles in them, to leave only a few key frames for each scene of interest. Vural says the
online, 6 April 2006), it has now been able to make a full virusbased 3-volt lithium ion battery. Compared to conventional lithium ion batteries, the biologically grown battery is environmentally friendly because much of the materials can now be made at room temperature or on ice and without harsh solvents. “It’s a pretty simple process that doesn’t require fancy equipment,” says Belcher. It has potential to be even better, though. This production system could boost battery performance because it uses nanostructured materials that can store and release more power than conventional materials, and also do it faster. Already Belcher’s prototype battery is as powerful as existing technologies, an ability she has shown off by using one to power an LED. Her team is now investigating materials that work at higher voltages and with higher energy-storage capacities. Joachim Maier, at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany, reckons using biology is a useful approach. “Not too many people look into biology in this context, so from that point of view it is very interesting,” he says. Catherine Zandonella ■
system runs on a standard PC and processes the images in real time, so the summary frames are ready to browse, like a fast-motion flip book, at the end of the shift. Privacy campaigners may enjoy the irony if the gaze-tracking system comes to be regarded as intrusive by CCTV operators – who could fear that employers will use it to dispense with their services if they consistently miss too much on-screen skulduggery. Mike Lynch, chief executive of Autonomy, a smart software company based in the UK that has created its own CCTV analysis algorithms, points out that gaze does not prove that an operator is registering the action. “They may be looking but not seeing,” he says. Paul Marks ■
Battery grown from ‘armour-plated’ viruses GENETICALLY engineered viruses that assemble into electrodes have been used to make complete miniature rechargeable batteries for the first time. The new lithium ion batteries are as powerful as existing devices but smaller and cleaner to make, claim the team behind the work. The technology could improve the performance of hybrid electric cars and electronic gadgets. Lithium ion batteries exploit the reactivity of lithium to produce a current. Inside the battery, lithium ions move from the anode to the cathode, forcing
“It’s environmentally friendly because much of its materials can be made at room temperature” electrons in the opposite direction around an external circuit. This process is reversed when the battery is recharged. Making these batteries takes a tough manufacturing process because of the highly reactive components, aggressive solvents and high temperatures used in
construction, as well as the dangers of handling lithium. Viruses could make this process much safer and cleaner, says Angela Belcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her team converted a harmless virus called M13 into a cathode by inserting a gene that causes the virus to produce proteins that bond with iron and phosphate ions in a surrounding solution. As a result, the long, tubular virus particles become sheathed in an “armour plating” of iron phosphate, turning them into nanowires. The resultant batteries were not as good as commercial models, however – the cathodes turned out to be good at conducting lithium ions but not electrons. To solve this, the team inserted a second gene that creates a protein at the tip of the virus that bonds to a carbon nanotube. The nanotube increases the electron conductivity of the combined structure (see diagram). “We were basically adding a highway that allows the electrons to move in and out rapidly,” says Belcher.
Eyeball spy turns the tables on Big Brother AN ORWELLIAN nightmare it may be to many of us, but CCTV is a boat full of holes to the organisations that pay for it. That’s because the people watching CCTV images back in the control rooms often have too many screens to monitor at once, and so may miss the criminal or antisocial activities they are there to spot. To the rescue of Big Brother’s limited attention capabilities come Ulas Vural and Yusuf Akgul of the Gebze Institute of Technology in Turkey, who have developed a gaze-tracking camera system that 18 | NewScientist | 11 April 2009
watches the eyeballs of CCTV operators as they work. It then automatically produces a summary of the CCTV video sequences they have missed during their shift. “This increases the reliability of the surveillance system by giving a second chance to the operator,” the researchers write in the journal Pattern Recognition Letters (DOI: 10.1016/j.patrec.2009.03.002). The system uses webcam-style cameras trained on the irises of the CCTV operators. From this, software works out where the operators are
Growing better batteries The M13 virus has been modified to bond with iron and phosphate ions, and with carbon nanotubes M13 virus plated with iron phosphate
Carbon nanotube
When used as a cathode, the armour plated virus conducts lithium ions while the carbon nanotubes improve electron conductance CATHODE
ELECTROLYTE
ANODE
The resulting battery turned out to be as good as the best commercially available that use crystalline lithium iron phosphate materials (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1171541). And since the team had previously used the same viral technique to produce anodes (New Scientist
looking as they stare at each monitor – and the areas they have not been paying attention to. From this it creates a video of what they missed, for them and their bosses to watch at the end of their shift . To make sure the summary can be watched as quickly as possible, Vural and Akgul have developed an
“The gaze-tracking system may well be regarded as intrusive by CCTV controlroom staff” algorithm that discards frames that show only the background with no people or moving vehicles in them, to leave only a few key frames for each scene of interest. Vural says the
online, 6 April 2006), it has now been able to make a full virusbased 3-volt lithium ion battery. Compared to conventional lithium ion batteries, the biologically grown battery is environmentally friendly because much of the materials can now be made at room temperature or on ice and without harsh solvents. “It’s a pretty simple process that doesn’t require fancy equipment,” says Belcher. It has potential to be even better, though. This production system could boost battery performance because it uses nanostructured materials that can store and release more power than conventional materials, and also do it faster. Already Belcher’s prototype battery is as powerful as existing technologies, an ability she has shown off by using one to power an LED. Her team is now investigating materials that work at higher voltages and with higher energy-storage capacities. Joachim Maier, at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany, reckons using biology is a useful approach. “Not too many people look into biology in this context, so from that point of view it is very interesting,” he says. Catherine Zandonella ■
system runs on a standard PC and processes the images in real time, so the summary frames are ready to browse, like a fast-motion flip book, at the end of the shift. Privacy campaigners may enjoy the irony if the gaze-tracking system comes to be regarded as intrusive by CCTV operators – who could fear that employers will use it to dispense with their services if they consistently miss too much on-screen skulduggery. Mike Lynch, chief executive of Autonomy, a smart software company based in the UK that has created its own CCTV analysis algorithms, points out that gaze does not prove that an operator is registering the action. “They may be looking but not seeing,” he says. Paul Marks ■