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Issue no. 27, 2008 Published: Sep 05, 2008
Google launches internet browser
Cloud-seeding ships could combat climate change
Shadow analysis could spot terrorists by their walk
New fingerprint method could unlock cold cases
Ultrasound to give feel to games
Invention: Space satnav

Google launches internet browser
Google has launched an open source web browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Firefox. The browser is designed to be fast, and to cope with the next generation of web applications that rely on graphics and multimedia. Called Chrome, it has been launched as a beta for Windows machines in 100 countries, with Mac and Linux versions to come. The new browser will help Google take advantage of developments it is pushing online in rich web applications that are challenging traditional desktop programs. The launch of Chrome is Google's latest assault on Microsoft's dominance of the PC business. The firm's Internet Explorer program dominates the browser landscape, with 80% of the market.
BBC News Sep 02, 2008	back to top

Cloud-seeding ships could combat climate change
It should be possible to counteract the global warming associated with a doubling of carbon dioxide levels by enhancing the reflectivity of low-lying clouds above the oceans, according to researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, US. They say that this can be done using a worldwide fleet of autonomous ships spraying salt water into the air. Clouds can both heat the planet by trapping the longer-wavelength radiation given off from the Earth's surface and cool it by reflecting incoming shorter wavelength radiation back into space. The greater weight of the second mechanism means that, on balance, clouds have a cooling effect. The new proposal involves increasing the reflectivity, or 'albedo', of clouds lying about 1 km above the ocean's surface. The idea relies on the 'Twomey effect', which says that increasing the concentration of water droplets within a cloud raises the overall surface area of the droplets and thereby enhances the cloud's albedo. By spraying fine droplets of sea water into the air, the small particles of salt within each droplet act as new centres of condensation when they reach the clouds above, leading to a greater concentration of water droplets within each cloud.
PhysicsWorld Sep 04, 2008	back to top

Shadow analysis could spot terrorists by their walk
Nearly seven years after Osama Bin Laden disappeared, US intelligence agencies are still chasing his shadow. And shadows are precisely what they should be looking for, says NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. By analysing the movements of human shadows in aerial and satellite footage, JPL engineer Adrian Stoica says it should be possible to identify people from the way they walk - a technique called gait analysis, whose power lies in the fact that a person's walking style is very hard to disguise. Video taken from above shows only people's heads and shoulders, which makes measuring the characteristic length and rhythm of a person's stride impossible. However, Stoica says shadows provide enough gait data to deduce a positive ID. He has written software that recognises human movement in aerial and satellite video footage. It isolates moving shadows and uses data on the time of day and the camera angle to correct shadows if they are elongated or foreshortened. Regular gait analysis is then applied to identify people.
New Scientist Sep 04, 2008	back to top

New fingerprint method could unlock cold cases
Scientists from the University of Leicester, UK, have developed a new crime-fighting technique that allows police to lift fingerprints from bullets even if a criminal has wiped down a shell casing. Authorities in Britain and the US used the method to re-open three cold cases, including a US double murder that police are now optimistic of solving. The conventional method of taking fingerprints has been around for more than 100 years and involves creating a chemical reaction with the sweat left behind on an object to produce an image police can use. But if a criminal wipes away the sweat, there is little left to react with the chemical and regular methods are useless. The new technique allows police to produce a fingerprint even if there is no sweat impression to work with. The British experts focused on hair-width bits of corrosion that sweat often leaves on certain metals in bullets and bombs. They cover the metal with a fine powder and apply a strong electrical charge that makes the dust stick to the corroded areas, producing a potential fingerprint.
MSNBC / Reuters Sep 04, 2008	back to top

Ultrasound to give feel to games
The field of haptics - integrating computing and the sense of touch - has been around for some time but has required gloves or mechanical devices to impart a sense of feeling. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Tokyohas developed a system that uses focused ultrasound to do the job. With the expansion in multimedia on the web, our eyes and ears are flooded with sensory information, but the sense of touch has been largely left behind. The popularity of vibrating gaming handsets has proven that it is a rich but untapped way to increase interaction. Sound is a pressure wave, meaning that as the inaudible sound waves from each of the transducers interfere, they can create a focal point that is perceived as a solid object. The Tokyo team's prototype system includes a camera which tracks the position of a user's hand and shifts the output from the transducers to move the focus around with the hand. The result is a feeling of tracing the edge or surface of the virtual object. At the moment, the system provides a small force only in the vertical dimension, but the team is improving the geometry of the array and the amount of power it can produce so that future devices will provide a stiffer feel and more contoured objects.
BBC News Sep 02, 2008	back to top

Invention: Space satnav
The most accurate way of navigating on Earth is to use the Global Positioning System (GPS) - a receiver reads the signals broadcast by at least three orbiting satellites and calculates its position to within a few metres on Earth. Arthur Dula, a space lawyer and former NASA consultant, wants to make a similar version for the whole solar system. A SSPS, if you will. He suggests placing satellite-like base stations on various moons and asteroids around the solar system. As long as the orbits of these bodies are well known, any a passing spacecraft can send a signal to several base stations and receive positioning signals in return. This would allow the craft to fix its location within the Solar System.
New Scientist Sep 01, 2008	back to top