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How Bluetooth makes you trackable
GIACOMO PIROZZI/PANOS
Technology THE PHONE WILL SEE YOU NOW
COULD you select the best picture of an object without seeing the alternatives you have to choose from? That’s the task now faced by most image search algorithms, but this could soon change. Computers haven’t been very good at understanding pictures, so image searches have tended to rely on text descriptions. Now researchers at Google have combined image recognition with their ranking software to sort pictures according to their visual characteristics. The highestranked are those that have the most features in common with the whole set of images found for a particular search query. When they tested this approach for 2000 of the most popular product image queries, volunteers rated the results as better than the results of Google’s text-based image search engine.
–Diagnosis is just a text message away–
221 million. The number of internet users in China, making it the country that has the largest number of people online
Bloodhounds prefer Bluetooth
SOURCE: XINHUA NEWS AGENCY
Search algorithm picks the best pix
via a USB cable. From there the data is sent via text message to a remote server, where it is processed to create an image of the tissue, in which differences in resistance caused by tumours show up as different colours. This is sent back to the doctor’s cellphone for analysis (PLoS ONE, DOI: 10.1371/journalpone.0002075). “A patient in the foothills of the Himalayas can be scanned and diagnosed, using software in Mumbai,” says Rubinsky. “The doctor can use his own cellphone and doesn’t need to be an expert in imaging.” Rubinsky admits the images are not as detailed as those produced by other techniques. “But you should be able to see a tumour of about 1 centimetre in diameter, and that is enough.” He says the system could also be adapted to generate ultrasound images or X-rays.
WORRIED about your civil liberties and privacy? Then it may come as a shock to discover that you have unwittingly been allowing your phone to signal your every move. Bluetooth, a wireless link built into many cellphones, makes our movements trackable by anyone equipped with a PC and an appropriate receiver. Vassilis
Kostakos at the University of Bath in the UK placed four Bluetooth receivers in the city’s centre. Over four months, his team tracked 10,000 Bluetooth phones and was able to “capture and analyse people’s encounters” in pubs, streets and shops. Bluetooth is now more of a privacy threat than the more frequently publicised RFID chips, Kostakos says. “If people are worried, they should turn off the Bluetooth function on their mobile phones.”
GIZMO
VOTE FOR ME The average time people spend watching video on the US presidential candidates’ websites
Spider-Man it ain’t, but silk spun by a microfluidic duct built at the University of Bayreuth in Germany could still guide the regrowth of damaged nerves or weave superstrong body armour. Inside the micrometre-sized device, two proteins experience changes in flow, pH and the concentrations of certain ions that unite them into a single thread (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073pnas.0709246105).
www.barackobama.com 518,000 viewers
16 minutes
www.hillaryclinton.com 4.8 minutes
351,000 viewers
www.johnmccain.com 1.5 minutes
38,000 viewers
SOURCE: NIELSEN NETRATINGS
Cellphones have long been touted as a way to bridge the developing world’s digital divide. Now doctors in remote hospitals might be able to use them to detect tumours. Conventional imaging devices are too expensive for three-quarters of the world’s population. So Boris Rubinsky and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a cheap imaging device based on a technology known as electrical impedance tomography. Bone, muscles and diseased tissue such as tumours all conduct electricity differently. To spot these telltale differences, up to 256 electrodes are attached to the body and a voltage is applied. The current between them is then measured, and the information is sent from the electrodes to the cellphone
Twiddling your thumbs need no longer be a waste of time. Electrodes in an armband being developed by Microsoft researchers detect voltages generated by the wearer’s forearm muscles as they move their fingers. These can be converted into electrical control signals, so if the armband is hidden under clothing it appears as if the wearer is controlling a device simply by lifting a finger.
“People like to sit indoors when they haven’t got much money” Piers Harding-Rolls, an analyst at Screen Digest, on the competitive threat that video games such as Grand Theft Auto IV, released on Tuesday and expected to sell 6 million copies this week, pose to Hollywood movie blockbusters, particularly during economic hard times (The Guardian, London, 28 April)
www.newscientist.com
3 May 2008 | NewScientist | 23
Technology THE PHONE WILL SEE YOU NOW
COULD you select the best picture of an object without seeing the alternatives you have to choose from? That’s the task now faced by most image search algorithms, but this could soon change. Computers haven’t been very good at understanding pictures, so image searches have tended to rely on text descriptions. Now researchers at Google have combined image recognition with their ranking software to sort pictures according to their visual characteristics. The highestranked are those that have the most features in common with the whole set of images found for a particular search query. When they tested this approach for 2000 of the most popular product image queries, volunteers rated the results as better than the results of Google’s text-based image search engine.
–Diagnosis is just a text message away–
221 million. The number of internet users in China, making it the country that has the largest number of people online
Bloodhounds prefer Bluetooth
SOURCE: XINHUA NEWS AGENCY
Search algorithm picks the best pix
via a USB cable. From there the data is sent via text message to a remote server, where it is processed to create an image of the tissue, in which differences in resistance caused by tumours show up as different colours. This is sent back to the doctor’s cellphone for analysis (PLoS ONE, DOI: 10.1371/journalpone.0002075). “A patient in the foothills of the Himalayas can be scanned and diagnosed, using software in Mumbai,” says Rubinsky. “The doctor can use his own cellphone and doesn’t need to be an expert in imaging.” Rubinsky admits the images are not as detailed as those produced by other techniques. “But you should be able to see a tumour of about 1 centimetre in diameter, and that is enough.” He says the system could also be adapted to generate ultrasound images or X-rays.
WORRIED about your civil liberties and privacy? Then it may come as a shock to discover that you have unwittingly been allowing your phone to signal your every move. Bluetooth, a wireless link built into many cellphones, makes our movements trackable by anyone equipped with a PC and an appropriate receiver. Vassilis
Kostakos at the University of Bath in the UK placed four Bluetooth receivers in the city’s centre. Over four months, his team tracked 10,000 Bluetooth phones and was able to “capture and analyse people’s encounters” in pubs, streets and shops. Bluetooth is now more of a privacy threat than the more frequently publicised RFID chips, Kostakos says. “If people are worried, they should turn off the Bluetooth function on their mobile phones.”
GIZMO
VOTE FOR ME The average time people spend watching video on the US presidential candidates’ websites
Spider-Man it ain’t, but silk spun by a microfluidic duct built at the University of Bayreuth in Germany could still guide the regrowth of damaged nerves or weave superstrong body armour. Inside the micrometre-sized device, two proteins experience changes in flow, pH and the concentrations of certain ions that unite them into a single thread (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073pnas.0709246105).
www.barackobama.com 518,000 viewers
16 minutes
www.hillaryclinton.com 4.8 minutes
351,000 viewers
www.johnmccain.com 1.5 minutes
38,000 viewers
SOURCE: NIELSEN NETRATINGS
Cellphones have long been touted as a way to bridge the developing world’s digital divide. Now doctors in remote hospitals might be able to use them to detect tumours. Conventional imaging devices are too expensive for three-quarters of the world’s population. So Boris Rubinsky and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a cheap imaging device based on a technology known as electrical impedance tomography. Bone, muscles and diseased tissue such as tumours all conduct electricity differently. To spot these telltale differences, up to 256 electrodes are attached to the body and a voltage is applied. The current between them is then measured, and the information is sent from the electrodes to the cellphone
Twiddling your thumbs need no longer be a waste of time. Electrodes in an armband being developed by Microsoft researchers detect voltages generated by the wearer’s forearm muscles as they move their fingers. These can be converted into electrical control signals, so if the armband is hidden under clothing it appears as if the wearer is controlling a device simply by lifting a finger.
“People like to sit indoors when they haven’t got much money” Piers Harding-Rolls, an analyst at Screen Digest, on the competitive threat that video games such as Grand Theft Auto IV, released on Tuesday and expected to sell 6 million copies this week, pose to Hollywood movie blockbusters, particularly during economic hard times (The Guardian, London, 28 April)
www.newscientist.com
3 May 2008 | NewScientist | 23