NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Old Cigarette Vending Machines Dispense Artwork

Giddy attendees at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas report encountering an old, bright yellow cigarette vending machine. Only instead of smokes, the machine dispenses artwork in cellophane-wrapped cartons.

Nanoprinter Achieves Insane Resolution

The converted cigarette machine is called an Art-o-mat and for a mere $5 you can get a pack of art. Wired.com blogger Roberto Baldwin snapped a photo of one yesterday and wrote, "I only have $3. Sure there’s a metaphor for 4K TVs in there somewhere."

Art-o-mats have been around for a little while now, but they're becoming more prevalent as a way to bring art to the masses in an entertaining way. Back in the late '90s, North Carolina artist Clark Whittington noticed his friend had a Pavlovian response to crinkling cellophane.

"When the friend heard someone opening a snack, he had the uncontrollable urge to have one too," Whittington wrote on the Art-o-mat site. So the artist took advantage of that response, converting a banned cigarette vending machine into an art dispenser, appropriately, for a show at a cafe in Winston-Salem. When the show was over, the cafe owner asked to keep the machine.

In the past several years, Art-o-mats have found homes well beyond North Carolina, from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. They've gone from a one-off to a novelty to a nationwide phenomenon. One even arrived here in Denver last year at the Access Gallery in the Santa Fe arts district.

Gallery owner Damon McLeese stocked it with professional artists' work, as well as works created by teens with disabilities who participate in art programs. Inside the machine, packs contained a wide array such as earrings made from computer chips, beaded keychains and drawings of wolves, according to the Denver Post's Colleen O'Connor.

Crystals You Drink Every Morning: Big Pic

I find it hard to argue with the idea of these banned machines finding new lives delivering art with $5 tokens. If everyone bought art instead of cigarette packs and snacks, we'd be a heck of a lot healthier. Possibly even smarter, too.

Photo: An Art-o-mat machine in Las Vegas. Credit: Miss Shari, via Flickr.

X-Ray Scanner Is the Size of a Stick of Gum

Machines that take x rays need a lot of power and as a result are generally large, cumbersome contraptions. Anything that needs to be x rayed has to brought to the machine. But there are plenty of reasons develop a portable x-ray machine. A mobile device could be carried into the sports field or battlefield to diagnose injured people or it could be used by security personnel to analyze packages at airports or check concealed shipments at seaports for illegal contents.

Scott Kovaleski, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and some of his graduate students, found a way to make a lowe-power x-ray machine that's only about the size of a stick of gum. That means instead of bringing objects to an x-ray lab for analyze, technicians can bring the x rays to the field.

The key to the small machine is a crystal of lithium niobate, which exhibits a particular property known piezoelectricity. Piezoelectric crystals generate a small electrical current when put under mechanical stress, such as being squeezed. The effect also works in reverse. Running a current through a piezoelectric crystal generates a mechanical action, like a vibration.

10 Trickiest Spy Gadgets Ever

Kovaleski capitalized on this property by attaching an electrode to each side of the lithium niobate crystal, and then hitting it with alternating current. But instead of using 120 volts alternating at 60 times per second -- the standard for household currents -- Kovaleski's group used 10 volts alternating at 40,000 times per second. That frequency is specially tuned to the lithium niobate crystal: it makes it vibrate in a very specific way. “It makes it ring like a bell,” Kovaleski told Discovery News.

All that vibrating generated an electric field equal to 100,000 volts. Kovaleski was able to turn 10 volts into 100,000 because he and his team modified the ends of the crystals with tiny bits of wire shaped like sharp points. The pieces were so small, the points were at the scale of atoms. But electric fields tend to build up at sharp points and so even though the amount of current going in was small, enough energy gathered on those wires to pull electrons from the crystal at strengths of 100,000 volts.

X Rays Reveal 'New' Van Gogh

Electrons moving at that speed produce x rays when they hit anything because the atoms in the material slow or deflect the electrons. That deflection or slowdown takes energy away from the electron, and the energy takes the form of an x-ray photon. To make a portable x-ray generator, all that is needed is a block of dense material with lots of atoms for the electrons to hit -- lead will do. Voilà, you have x rays.

In addition to being small, Kovaleski's x-ray machine is cheap. Just about all the parts can be had at the local electronics supply store, and even lithium niobate crystals are common in telecommunications equipment.

Credit: Peter Norgard, University of Missouri

CES 2013: Watch Watches Your Child

For anxious parents, there needs to be some happy medium for their kids somewhere between a pricey smart phone and a GPS tracker in the backpack. An electronics company thinks they've found it with a chunky watch.

The wide-band watch called VivoPlay made by Evado Filip debuted this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The company called the device the world's smallest commercially available communications and location device to keep kids in touch with their parents. Hype aside, Evado Filip founder Sten Kirkbak designed the watch, saying that he came up with the idea after he briefly lost track of his young son in a mall.

This retro-looking device works by tracking your kid using GPS, GSM and Wi-Fi. Communication between the watch and other devices has to be programmed in by a parent so that only up five phone numbers max work with it. Say something bad happens, the kid just presses a simple button to make an emergency call. Parents have the ability to transmit messages and make calls to the watch.

In addition, VivoPlay lets parents designate "safety zones." If the child leaves any of those areas, the device will send an alert to the parent's smart phone. While there's no retail price for the watch yet, the company said it expects to start accepting pre-orders in the spring.

As a kid, I had important phone numbers memorized, ready to dial them from a rotodial phone at a friend's house if needed. But the world is a different place now, and so is my hometown. A special watch your child wears can never be an all-encompassing protective bubble, but it seems far less risky than handing sophisticated communication devices to young children.

The scary part is when kids turn into young teenagers. I feel for anyone grappling with attempting to set limits on their adolescents' access to social media. Too bad that watch can't prompt an automatic Facebook block.

Credit: Evado Filip

The Big Internet Museum: Milestones and Memes

If you were given the opportunity to curate a historical museum about the Internet, what would you include? Now's your chance to add to the collection of The Big Internet Museum, a virtual hall exhibiting the milestones and memes of the 43-year history of the World Wide Web. The online museum project was created by Dutch advertising pros Dani Polak, Joep Drummen and Joeri Bakker.

BLOG: Top 10 Social Networking Sites

DNEWS VIDEO: COOL JOBS: HACKER

The collection begins precisely on October 29 1969, the day when former NASA researcher, Robert William Taylor, launched the ARPAnet operational network for the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The network is widely recognized as the precursor of what we now know as the Internet.

The exhibit concludes with South Korean megastar Psy, whose 2012 song "Gangnam Syle" became the first video to tally one billion views on YouTube.

As you can imagine, the space between those two bookends spans all that is significant and silly about the network platform that, for better or worse, has redefined our lives. America Online (AOL), Internet Relay Chat (IRC), .GIFs, chat lingo, Hyper Text markup Language (HTML), Flash, Google, Facebook -- even Double Rainbow guy -- get equal billing in this gallery. But that's only a smattering of the collection.

BLOG: Thin, Flexible PaperTab To Redefine The Tablet

Take a tour here and decide for yourself if each icon is deserving or not. The public is able to vote on whether each "piece" belongs in the museum or not. Or better yet, submit your own idea.

via Gizmag

Credit: The Big Internet Museum

---

Email:

---

Silence Turned Into Secret Skype Messages

A team of encryption specialists has figured out a way to communicate with each other using silence. No, it's not a Cold War era spy trick, but it's still very tricky. Welcome to SkypeHide.

The group that created the technique for SkypeHide was led by Wojciech Mazurczyk, an assistant professor of computer networks and switching at the Warsaw University of Technology. Mazurczyk and his colleagues specialize in network steganography. Spy nerds know that's the science of hiding information and messages within computer networks.

Redditors Decrypt Mysterious Subway Message

SkypeHide works using something called "packet hijacking." Mazurczyk, along with Maciej Karaś and Krzysztof Szczypiorski, found that whenever we use Skype, the program keeps sending 70-bit data packets during the silences that occur within a conversation. So the computer scientists put their own secret messages into those data packets, according to Nancy Owano at Phys.org.

Mazurczyk told Owano, "The secret data is indistinguishable from silence-period traffic, so detection of SkypeHide is very difficult." This opens up the potential to transmit secret text, audio files and even video during a red herring conversation that's happening. At best, the speed for transmitting these secret messages was 1 kilobit per second, which isn't superfast but could be fast enough to communicate something important.

Spy techniques can backfire, though. What if this technique gets into the wrong hands? Hopefully that long pause between birthday greetings doesn't end up being an ideal time for terrorists to touch base. If secret messages are discovered and have a criminal connection, a law enforcement entity could compel Skype to share messages stored temporarily on its server.

Skype does tells its users to be careful. As much as the site tries to protect users, the site can't guarantee their safeguards "will prevent every unauthorized attempt to access, use or disclose personal information."

10 Trickiest Spy Gadgets Ever

More answers may be forthcoming later this summer, when the Warsaw University of Technology group plans to present SkypeHide at the ACM Workshop on Information Hiding and Multimedia Security in Montpellier, France. In the meantime, if you want to send some secret spy messages, there's always the classics: a red flag in the flowerpot or the chalk mark on the mailbox.

Credit: Hotblack

These Robots Rock: Gotta-See Video

If you're looking for more video, check out our new web show DNews! Anthony, Laci and Trace release three videos daily on the science of everyday life. Check it out!

What do you get when you combine the latest advancements in robot technology with a mohawk and musical instruments? The band Compressorhead.

This is pretty epic. Note the glowing red eyes of the bassist and the headbanging of the drummer -- who, by the way, has four arms. I can't wait for these robots to go on tour. My only question is: would you cheer for them? It's not like they can hear you. via YouTube 

Want to recommend a video? Tweet it to @Discovery_News with the hashtag #GottaSeeVideos.

Don't miss today's Must-Read DNews Nuggets and you can watch Discovery Curiosity video here.

---

Email:

---

CES 2013: Wireless Hard Drive Offers Wi-Fi

The next frontier storage companies are exploring: wireless hard drives.

Debuting at CES, the Seagate Wireless Plus external hard drive has a Wi-Fi hotspot on board, which can create a wireless network for computers and mobile devices.

Geared toward smartphone and tablet owners, this drive lets them stream media content on up to eight smartphones and tablets with the accompanying Seagate Media app, available for iOS and Android.

Named a CES 2013 Best of Innovations Award Winner, the Wireless Plus includes a terabyte of storage, which can hold roughly 500 high-definition movies. Though the drive is known for its wireless capabilities, it will also include a removable USB 3.0 adapter to transfer files over hard wire (how old school).

Seagate Wireless Plus is available now for $199.99.

Credit: Seagate

---

Email:

---

Holograms in the Palm of Your Hand

A grid of 4,096 miniature antennas steer beams of infrared light to create patterns and images. Jie Sun, MIT

Holograms are a science-fiction staple from Star Trek’s holodeck to the famous scene in Star Wars where a holographic Princess Leia implores, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” But the reality has never lived up to the dream.

That might change. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology built a tiny device that contains a grid of 4,096 miniature antennas (64 by 64) that steer beams of infrared light to create patterns. Their so-called phased array was able to generate an image -- in this case a tiny MIT logo --  and "float" it a few millimeters out in front of the grid.

A 50,000-Megapixel Camera Points and Shoots

It's the first time anyone has built an array with so many components, as previous attempts only managed 16. It's also the first device of its kind that can steer each beam from an individual antennae in both the vertical and horizontal direction, making it possible to create three-dimensional pictures.

“At a basic level we’re showing that not only can you steer beams actively but also generate new and arbitrary patterns,” said Michael Watts, a professor in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. That opens up a number of possibilities in holography as well as imaging devices such as biomedical sensors, akin to radar. Communications is also a possibility, since fine control of light waves can reduce interference and noise.

Watts and graduate student Jie Sun, the lead author, presented their work in the Jan. 9. Issue of Nature.

Watts and his colleagues made antennas that control both the phase and intensity of the light it transmits. Two light beams that are 180 degrees out of phase will, if transmitted together, cancel each other out. Meanwhile light waves that are slightly out of phase will interfere with and reinforce each other in certain patterns, making the light look brighter or dimmer depending on how far in or out of phase they are.

That makes an image in the “far field” -- a technical way of saying that it’s some distance away. If one were to build a display like this in a living room, it would mean that the image would be out in front of it.

Phased arrays aren’t new: modern radar uses them all the time. But Watts and Sun transmitted signals at short wavelengths, in the near infrared as opposed to the radio waves of radar. They also made images, which hadn't been done before with a phased array at those wavelengths.

And because it’s possible to control the phase and intensity of the light, you get more than the illusion of depth from the front: a person standing on any side of the image could be shown a different perspective. A hologram would be truly 3-D, and if built with billions of antennas, would produce an image as detailed as any ordinary display. That's because each antennae essentially represents one pixel.

“The exciting part is that you can project an image,” said Thomas Krauss, a physicist at the University of York in the U.K., who was not involved in the research. “It’s the first time anyone has done it with so many pixels.” Previous attempts had never managed more than a dozen or so.

Hologram Lady Will Greet You at the Airport

Sun and Watts didn't just set records for the size and number of antennas: they did it using ordinary microchip manufacturing methods. That means building a larger-scale device won't require retooling or building whole factories.

Jonathan Doylend, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California santa Barbara’s Optoelectronics Research Group, noted that being able to build such an array is an important step. “Were all working in this field with that sort of end goal in mind –- there’s always a push towards higher array counts and higher density (of antennas),” he said.

The MIT device used near infrared light. To make it work for visible light the only change would be the material the antennas and waveguides are made of -– it has to be something other than silicon. “We’re working on making it in the visible,” Watts said.

Thin, Flexible PaperTab to Redefine the Tablet

One of the many things I love about old media such as magazines and newspapers is their flexibility. You can roll 'em up, stick em' in your back pocket, bang 'em around and even use 'em to swat house flies.

New media tablets, on the other hand, require almost a custodial reverence when it comes to ownership. Cases and sleeves are a must for transport and safe keeping, lest it get scratched or shattered. And you can forget about rolling one up in your back pocket or swatting house flies. Unless you want gashes in your drywall.

NEWS: Nanoprinter Achieves Insane Resolution

Potentially bridging this gap is a team from Canada's Queen's University. They're collaborating with Intel Labs and Plastic Logic to redefine the tablet's form as a flexible, paper-like touchscreen computer called PaperTab.

But PaperTab's flexible form isn't its only innovation. Unlike tablets, which switch between apps on a single display, multiple PaperTabs are designed to be used together. Each tab acts as a window for separate applications, but they still interact with each other. 

For example, when a PaperTab is placed beyond reaching distance, it reverts to a thumbnail overview of the document, like icons on a desktop computer. When the tab is picked back up or touched, it switches back to a full screen view, like opening a new window.

Additionally, PaperTab's interface allows functions simply by tapping tabs together. For example, a photo can be sent via email simply by tapping a tab of a draft email together with a tab of a photo. Even cooler, when that email is ready to go, it can be sent by bending the top corner of the display. Also, placing tabs side by side can create a larger display surface.

BLOG: The Eyes Have It: Control Of Your Tablet

Designers say these functions emulate the natural handling of multiple sheets of paper. This may sound like a cluttered step back, but think how long it takes to back track through a tablet to close out or switch apps as opposed to picking up a piece of paper that's right in front of you.

"Using several PaperTabs makes it much easier to work with multiple documents," Roel Vertegaal, Director of Queen's University's Human Media Lab said on the university's website. "Within five to ten years, most computers, from ultra-notebooks to tablets, will look and feel just like these sheets of printed color paper."

via Gizmag

Credit: Queen's University

Fireflies Inspire Brighter LEDs

LEDs are bright, but they don't shine as bright as their potential. That's because when light emits from an LED, some of it gets reflected back inside. 

Work It! Human-Powered Machines: Photos

To make LEDs brighter, researchers are taking a cue from the firefly. In fireflies, a chemical reaction makes the light, which then emits through the insect’s exoskeleton, called the cuticle. Covering the cuticle are tiny scales that each have jagged edges. Each scale is about 10 micrometers long and makes a little slope that reaches 3 micrometers high. Computer simulations showed that the light at those edges was brighter.

A team of scientists from Belgium, France, and Canada, led by Annick Bay, decided to do something similar with LEDs. They put a layer of light-sensitive material on top of LEDs and then using a laser, created a sawtooth pattern, with each “peak” about 5 microns high. The structure minimized the reflection and boosted the LED's brightness by 55 percent.

Smartphone Controls 'Brainy' WiFi LED Bulb

The team isn’t the first to look at fireflies. But previous efforts had focused on the tiniest structures of firefly skin, those at the nanometer scale, comparable to the wavelengths of light. This time, scientists went bigger: they looked at structures that were a thousand times larger.

The papers describing the work appear in the journal Optics Express.

Credit: Optics Express

---

Email:

---