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Issue no. 12, 2005 Published: Apr 15, 2005
Icann gives green light to .travel and .jobs
Man gets nine years for spamming
UN video game makes hunger point
Bionic suit offers wearers super-strength
New transistor breaks speed record
Non-acoustic sensors detect speech without sound
Researchers develop bomb-sniffing device
High-flying robot plane could link phone networks
Essays marked by computer program
Qatar says robots to replace child camel jockeys
The clock that wakes you when you are ready
Computer generated papers get accepted for conference

Icann gives green light to .travel and .jobs
Icann, the group in charge of regulating top level domain (TLD) names, has approved two new TLDs — .jobs and .travel — to come on stream later this year. Tralliance will operate the .travel domain and Employ Media .jobs. Registration for both domains will start in a few months time, and both should be live by the end of 2005. Tralliance, a private company set up to operate the .travel domain, will work in conjunction with The Travel Partnership Corporation (TTPC), which brings together more than 100 international travel trade associations. Registrants will be limited to bona fide travel companies who already have an internet presence under their own names. Employ Media, also a private company set up to operate its domain, will work with the US Society for Human Resource Management. It will promote the .jobs domain to companies looking for workers, with the intention that they add a .jobs employment site to their existing web presence. Recruitment agencies will also be able to register.
Silicon.com / ZDNet UK Apr 12, 2005	back to top

Man gets nine years for spamming
A man has been sentenced to nine years in jail by a Virginia judge for sending millions of junk emails. Jeremy Jaynes, 30, is the first person in the US to get a prison term under a spam law. He is said to have been the world's eighth most prolific spammer. By selling sham products and services advertised in his messages, he earned up to $750,000 per month. Jaynes has appealed, and the court has put off the start of his prison term because the new law raises questions. Under Virginia law, sending bulk email using fake addresses is a crime. Jaynes will appeal on the grounds that he has been charged as an out-of-state resident under a Virginia law that has only just come into effect. Jaynes was operating though an AOL server and is believed to have sent some 10m unwanted emails a day. His sentence is the harshest punishment handed down so far for junk emailing in the US, and appears to be a strong signal that authorities will not tolerate the spamming business.
BBC News Apr 09, 2005	back to top

UN video game makes hunger point
A video game which aims to teach children about global hunger has been released by the United Nations. Food Force is the brainchild of the World Food Programme (WFP), which last year fed more than 100 million people. The UN body seeks to capitalise on the popularity of video games to educate youngsters about hunger and the work of the aid agency. Written for the PC and Mac, the free game is aimed at eight to 13-year-olds for download at http://www.food-force.com . Food Force was developed by Deepend, a computer design studio based in Rome, and game developers Playerthree in London. The challenge for players is to complete a series of missions, guided by a team of WFP characters. Each mission begins with a briefing by one of the Food Force characters, who explains the challenge ahead. The player then has to complete the task - in which points are awarded for fast and accurate play and good decision making. At the end of each mission, players are shown a short video explaining how the aid agency would have dealt with the situation.
BBC News Apr 14, 2005	back to top

Bionic suit offers wearers super-strength
Researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan have developed a robot suit that could help older people or those with disabilities to walk or lift heavy objects. Dubbed HAL, or hybrid assistive limb, the suit is slated for release by the end of the year. HAL integrates mechanics, electronics, bionics and robotics in a new field known as cybernics. The most fully developed prototype, HAL 3, is a motor-driven metal 'exoskeleton' that you strap onto your legs to power-assist leg movements. A backpack holds a computer with a wireless network connection, and the batteries are on a belt. Two control systems interact to help the wearer stand, walk and climb stairs. A 'bio-cybernic' system uses bioelectric sensors attached to the skin on the legs to monitor signals transmitted from the brain to the muscles. HAL 3 weighs 22 kilograms, but the help it gives the user is more than enough to compensate for this.
New Scientist Apr 11, 2005	back to top

New transistor breaks speed record
Physicists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, have built the fastest ever transistor that can operate at a frequency of 604 gigahertz. The device is made from the semiconductors indium phosphide and indium gallium arsenide. The work demonstrates the feasibility of making transistors that can operate at frequencies of several terahertz, which could be used in ultrafast communications, high-speed computing, medical imaging and sensors. The new device is a so-called bipolar transistor, which is very different from the more well-known field-effect transistor. In it, electrons are injected from the 'emitter' terminal, travel towards the 'base' and are then received by the 'collector', an arrangement that allows the device to work faster than a field-effect transistor. Devices operating at terahertz frequencies (the far infrared) could be used in communications applications or as sensors to detect toxic gases. They could also be used for medical imaging, since the radiation is long enough to penetrate skin and image what lies underneath.
Physicsweb Apr 14, 2005	back to top

Non-acoustic sensors detect speech without sound
Just think how eerie it would be, yet also how peaceful - people all around having conversations on their mobile phones, but without uttering a sound. DARPA, the US Department of Defense's research agency, is working on a project known as Advanced Speech Encoding, aimed at replacing microphones with non-acoustic sensors that detect speech via the speaker's nerve and muscle activity, rather than sound itself. One system relies on a sensor worn around the neck called a tuned electromagnetic resonator collar (TERC). The collar detects changes in capacitance caused by movement of the vocal cords, and is designed to allow speech to be heard above loud background noise. DARPA is also pursuing an approach which involves placing electrodes called electromyographic sensors on the neck, to detect changes in impedance during speech. A neural network processes the data and identifies the pattern of words. The sensor can even detect subvocal or silent speech. The speech pattern is sent to a computerised voice generator that recreates the speaker's words.
New Scientist Apr 09, 2005	back to top

Researchers develop bomb-sniffing device
Researchers have developed a novel polymer device that can pick up on trace amounts of explosive vapours. The work could deliver sensors that can detect explosives with unparalleled sensitivity. Researchers at MIT used a type of compound known as a semiconducting organic polymer (SOP) in their design. When exposed to laser light, this type of compound subsequently produces its own additional laser light - a process called lasing. Molecules of explosives such TNT are drawn to the polymer because they are deficient in electrons and are attracted to the electron-rich polymer. When they stick to the surface, they interfere with the lasing and the SOP's light output decreases as a result. By measuring the change in lasing, the scientists were able to detect TNT at concentrations as low as five parts per billion. The team also identified DNT at 100 parts per billion in just one second.
Scientific American Apr 14, 2005	back to top

High-flying robot plane could link phone networks
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it is 'Stratellite', and its makers believe it will revolutionise the broadband and wireless industry - if it ever gets off the ground. Florida communications company Sanswire on Tuesday unveiled its almost-finished prototype of a hard-framed, unmanned airship designed to fly in the stratosphere 13 miles above the earth and send broadband and mobile phone signals to an area the size of Texas. When finished, the 245-foot-long, robot-piloted, solar-powered airship will resemble a double-tailed whale. Flying above the jet stream but lower than a satellite - and one-tenth the cost at $25m to $30m - the Stratellite also would render land-based cell-phone towers obsolete, its makers say. The company hopes to start building and launching full-size Stratellites as soon as next year, with hundreds if not thousands of the devices eventually straddling the globe, staying aloft for months at a time.
Reuters Apr 13, 2005	back to top

Essays marked by computer program
Computers are being used to mark American university students' essays in a project which could radically alter the teaching role of academics. Qualrus, a program developed at the University of Missouri, offers instant feedback on even complex subjects. It picks up word patterns, from which it can tell whether students' arguments are sound, and gives the essay a score. It will save staff hundreds of hours of marking time, according to its developers. Students submit their draft essays online and receive detailed feedback within a couple of seconds. It gives a numerical score based on the weight instructors place on different parts of the assignment. Qualrus is not designed to replace the academics' marking, but to ensure undergraduates are thinking along the right lines before handing in their final work. Qualrus was developed with a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.
BBC News Apr 09, 2005	back to top

Qatar says robots to replace child camel jockeys
Qatar plans to start using robots as riders in popular camel races after international criticism of the use of child jockeys. The robot, developed by an unnamed Swiss company, has been tested successfully and Qatar is reportedly considering setting up a factory to build them. Sheikh Abdullah bin Saud al-Thani, the official in charge of the project, referred to United Nations concern over child jockeys and said Qatar was determined to save camel racing, which is popular among Arabs of Bedouin origin. Nearby United Arab Emirates has also announced plans to introduce remote-controlled robots, which can be light enough to use as jockeys in the lucrative sport. Rights groups say several thousand boys, some as young as four, work as camel jockeys, many after being abducted or sold by their families mainly from the Indian subcontinent. They say the boys are kept in prison-like conditions and underfed to keep them light.
Reuters / QNA Apr 14, 2005	back to top

The clock that wakes you when you are ready
Are you a real grump in the mornings? If so, then a new alarm clock could be just for you. SleepSmart measures your sleep cycle, and waits for you to be in your lightest phase of sleep before rousing you to ensure you wake up feeling refreshed every morning. As you sleep you pass through a sequence of sleep states - light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep - that repeats approximately every 90 minutes. The point in that cycle at which you wake can affect how you feel later. Being roused during a light phase means you are more likely to wake up perky. SleepSmart records the distinct pattern of brain waves produced during each phase of sleep, via a headband equipped with electrodes and a microprocessor. This measures electrical activity of the wearer's brain and communicates wirelessly with a clock unit near the bed. You program the clock with the latest time at which you want to be wakened, and it then duly wakes you during the last light sleep phase before that.
New Scientist Apr 14, 2005	back to top

Computer generated papers get accepted for conference
A group of MIT students have proven that high-tech computer conferences are so loaded with jargon that people are only pretending to understand anything. The students wrote a computer program to generate research papers complete with 'context-free grammar', charts and diagrams. They submitted two of the randomly assembled papers to the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI). One of the papers, called 'Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy', was accepted. The paper contains phrases such as 'the model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of reinforcement learning'. It talks about how researchers 'implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in Simula-67, augmented with opportunistically pipelined extensions'. WMSCI was targeted for the prank because it sends out long e-mails loaded with jargon in a bid to get people interested in the conference. WMSCI said it was reviewing their acceptance procedures in light of the hoax.
The Inquirer Apr 15, 2005	back to top