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Stopped, not dead
DSM/DYNEEMA
Technology STOPPED, NOT DEAD
475 consumer products that make use of nano-sized particles are now on sale worldwide, of which 75 are cosmetics
FBI data open to ‘insider attacks’
SOURCE: WWW.NANOTECHPROJECT.ORG
OPEN-plan offices are social, collaborative environments. They can also be noisy, filled by a cacophony of workers’ chatter. But a new piece of software might help turn down the volume. Cambridge Sound Management of Massachusetts has developed the Open Office Privacy Calculator, which lets architects plan an office’s acoustics. The software calculates how the materials used to construct an office, as well as structural factors such as desk partitions and ceiling height, affect how sound travels. Each company can then set a desired volume for its offices – choosing to embrace loudmouthed colleagues or muffle them, for instance – and the software suggests which design tweaks and noise cancellation systems best achieve it.
–Bring it on–
Percentage of Americans who have received a pornographic spam email in the past year 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
@ 2004
No data for 2006
2005
2007
THE irony of it. America’s leading law enforcement agency is wide open to criminals wanting to steal its secrets. That’s the conclusion of a damning report into the internal network security of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to the Government Accountability Office in Washington DC, the FBI fails to consistently apply such standard
authentication measures as passwords and biometrics to guard against unauthorised access to its computer files. All a potential data thief need do is get a job there, and so gain physical access to a computer. This lets them reach sensitive data, regardless of their security status. The FBI also fails to log the retrieval of critical data, and sensitive information is stored unencrypted in plain text files, says the GAO in its public report (http://tinyurl.com/2sdngg).
GIZMO
STEADY FALL IN X-RATED SPAM
SOURCE: PEW INTERNET AND AMERICAN LIFE PROJECT, MAY 2007
A quieter day at the office
market: a year ago, the US Department of Justice banned police officers from using ultra-lightweight vests based on a polymer called Zylon. Over time, water damage can cause the Zylon polymer backbone to degrade, and some officers were severely injured when they were shot. Their vests were not pierced, but they were injured by the dent in the jacket protruding into their body. These “backface” injuries are an increasing risk as vests get thinner, says ballistics engineer Cindy Bir of Wayne State University in Detroit. In tests in which nine human cadavers dressed in different makes of body armour were shot, eight experienced backface injuries. In living patients, doctors often misinterpret such wounds as entrance wounds and perform unnecessary exploratory surgery, Bir says.
Per cent of population
It’s the mundane stuff of plastic bags and sandwich boxes, but polyethylene has a more streetwise talent: in the form of dense, high-molecular-weight fibres it can stop a bullet in its tracks. But no one has ever succeeded in making an ultra-thin, concealable, easyto-move-in bulletproof vest from it. Until now, that is. Polymer maker DSM of Heerlen, the Netherlands, is selling Dyneema SB61, a still tougher – and secret – formulation of polyethylene fibre. Weight for weight, it is 15 times stronger than steel and 40 per cent stronger than that other staple of the bulletproof vest, Kevlar. American Body Armor of Los Angeles is using the new fibre to make flexible, concealable vests just 5 millimetres thick for US police forces. The vests are likely to find a ready
Bendy TV screens just got a little bendier with the launch by Sony of a prototype full-colour organic LED display. The 160-by-120-pixel 6.3-centimetre screen is made of thin sheets of plastic and metal, allowing it to bend almost into a semicircle while displaying an image. As it uses light-emitting diodes it does not need backlighting, unlike LCD screens. The computer mouse is under threat from the computer ring. Created by a team of students at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, the finger ring emits ultrasonic pulses that are picked up by five receivers on a computer monitor. Based on the delay in the pulses’ arrival at the different receivers, a processor determines the position of the wearer’s finger and converts it to a cursor position on-screen.
“Killing monsters is fun, but curing cancer is more important” Computer scientist Andrei Turinsky on his enthusiasm for CAVEman, a 3D model of the human body created at the University of Calgary. By inputting a patient’s scans, X-rays and blood results, doctors personalise the model and then navigate it using a joystick as they would a computer game (Reuters, 23 May).
www.newscientist.com
2 June 2007 | NewScientist | 29
Technology STOPPED, NOT DEAD
475 consumer products that make use of nano-sized particles are now on sale worldwide, of which 75 are cosmetics
FBI data open to ‘insider attacks’
SOURCE: WWW.NANOTECHPROJECT.ORG
OPEN-plan offices are social, collaborative environments. They can also be noisy, filled by a cacophony of workers’ chatter. But a new piece of software might help turn down the volume. Cambridge Sound Management of Massachusetts has developed the Open Office Privacy Calculator, which lets architects plan an office’s acoustics. The software calculates how the materials used to construct an office, as well as structural factors such as desk partitions and ceiling height, affect how sound travels. Each company can then set a desired volume for its offices – choosing to embrace loudmouthed colleagues or muffle them, for instance – and the software suggests which design tweaks and noise cancellation systems best achieve it.
–Bring it on–
Percentage of Americans who have received a pornographic spam email in the past year 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
@ 2004
No data for 2006
2005
2007
THE irony of it. America’s leading law enforcement agency is wide open to criminals wanting to steal its secrets. That’s the conclusion of a damning report into the internal network security of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to the Government Accountability Office in Washington DC, the FBI fails to consistently apply such standard
authentication measures as passwords and biometrics to guard against unauthorised access to its computer files. All a potential data thief need do is get a job there, and so gain physical access to a computer. This lets them reach sensitive data, regardless of their security status. The FBI also fails to log the retrieval of critical data, and sensitive information is stored unencrypted in plain text files, says the GAO in its public report (http://tinyurl.com/2sdngg).
GIZMO
STEADY FALL IN X-RATED SPAM
SOURCE: PEW INTERNET AND AMERICAN LIFE PROJECT, MAY 2007
A quieter day at the office
market: a year ago, the US Department of Justice banned police officers from using ultra-lightweight vests based on a polymer called Zylon. Over time, water damage can cause the Zylon polymer backbone to degrade, and some officers were severely injured when they were shot. Their vests were not pierced, but they were injured by the dent in the jacket protruding into their body. These “backface” injuries are an increasing risk as vests get thinner, says ballistics engineer Cindy Bir of Wayne State University in Detroit. In tests in which nine human cadavers dressed in different makes of body armour were shot, eight experienced backface injuries. In living patients, doctors often misinterpret such wounds as entrance wounds and perform unnecessary exploratory surgery, Bir says.
Per cent of population
It’s the mundane stuff of plastic bags and sandwich boxes, but polyethylene has a more streetwise talent: in the form of dense, high-molecular-weight fibres it can stop a bullet in its tracks. But no one has ever succeeded in making an ultra-thin, concealable, easyto-move-in bulletproof vest from it. Until now, that is. Polymer maker DSM of Heerlen, the Netherlands, is selling Dyneema SB61, a still tougher – and secret – formulation of polyethylene fibre. Weight for weight, it is 15 times stronger than steel and 40 per cent stronger than that other staple of the bulletproof vest, Kevlar. American Body Armor of Los Angeles is using the new fibre to make flexible, concealable vests just 5 millimetres thick for US police forces. The vests are likely to find a ready
Bendy TV screens just got a little bendier with the launch by Sony of a prototype full-colour organic LED display. The 160-by-120-pixel 6.3-centimetre screen is made of thin sheets of plastic and metal, allowing it to bend almost into a semicircle while displaying an image. As it uses light-emitting diodes it does not need backlighting, unlike LCD screens. The computer mouse is under threat from the computer ring. Created by a team of students at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, the finger ring emits ultrasonic pulses that are picked up by five receivers on a computer monitor. Based on the delay in the pulses’ arrival at the different receivers, a processor determines the position of the wearer’s finger and converts it to a cursor position on-screen.
“Killing monsters is fun, but curing cancer is more important” Computer scientist Andrei Turinsky on his enthusiasm for CAVEman, a 3D model of the human body created at the University of Calgary. By inputting a patient’s scans, X-rays and blood results, doctors personalise the model and then navigate it using a joystick as they would a computer game (Reuters, 23 May).
www.newscientist.com
2 June 2007 | NewScientist | 29