Artificial intelligence to boost airplane safety levels

Researchers are developing a system based on artificial intelligence (AI) to pinpoint internal flaws in aircraft quickly and accurately that are missed otherwise.

Aircraft made mostly from composite materials are already on the drawing boards of major aeronautical manufacturers, which seek lighter planes able to carry more passengers, cargo and fuel.

While these ultralight materials are available, their widespread use is problematic because scanning them for potential flaws is expensive and more time—consuming than similar processes used for checking and certifying metals.

Swinburne University of Technology researchers are tackling this challenge by developing an automated approach, based on AI technology that greatly speeds up analysis and accuracy than a human technician can ever achieve.

“There is a lot of pressure on the technicians who analyse the scans of composite materials for certification,” said Mark Hodge, CEO of the Defence Materials Technology Centre, based at Swinburne’s Hawthorn campus, according to a Swimburne statement.

“Getting it wrong could cost lives and a lot of money. The risk of those consequences means there is a tendency for the technician to be conservative and not certify parts that have any potentially threatening flaw,” he said.

Preventing overheating in laptops

The first warning for possible overheating in laptops is a loud, lasting noise of the fan.

Once it gets really hot outside, laptops make a lot of noise — and in extreme cases they even break down. That’s why laptop owners should make sure their equipment always gets plenty of air, especially in the summer.

“When the ventilation slots are continually covered it could lead to lasting damage in the computer in the worst case,” said Peter Knaak of Germany’s Stiftung Warentest consumer protection group. The battery also loses its capacity quickly with temperatures over 70 degrees. Therefore, laptops should never be kept in direct sunlight and always on a flat, hard surface.

The first warning for possible overheating is a loud, lasting noise of the fan. Users should at this point avoid using computation-intensive games and programs. That also includes the transparency effect in the Windows operating system, according to Knaak: “They may look sleek but they require a lot of work for the graphic card.” Charging the battery while working on the laptop also creates heat. Those who attach their laptop to the mains should when possible take out the battery in the summer.

A cooling laptop support pad can help. They provide additional head space underneath the computer as models made of aluminium are better at disposing of the heat than plastic equipment. But Knaak doesn’t think too highly of coolers with built-in fans. “You don’t really get that much extra cooling and you have an additional source of noise at your desk,” he said.

Desktop PCs meanwhile usually have fewer problems with heat compared to laptops. Still, in this case as well, the ventilation slots should be kept unblocked and not be situated along a wall.

Knaak warned that removing the case covering during severe heat is actually counter-productive. “The computers are built so that air can be circulated and discharged,” he said. This circulation is destroyed if the case covering is removed.

Facebook, emails ‘taking over family life’: study

In today’s world, they may be the best way to keep in contact with others, but emails and social networking websites like Facebook are disrupting family life, a new study has claimed.

Researchers at Cambridge University have found that family life is being disrupted as parents and kids are overwhelmed by the huge volumes of emails and social messaging updates they are handling each day.

As a result, one in three Brits isare now desperate to cut down use of Twitter and Facebook as well as emails, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.

Surprisingly, the study, based on a survey, also found children as well as adults preferred to communicate face to face. More than half of all families said a “technology-free” time is important and a third of parents said technology had disrupted family life.

Amongst children aged 10 to 18, who have grown up with new technology, 38 per cent of respondents admitted to feeling overwhelmed by the volume of messages. And, similar numbers of adults felt the same way.

The study also discovered that 43 per cent of children and 33 per cent of adults are taking steps to reduce their reliance on messaging, text and networking. Both groups now preferred interacting face-to-face rather than through the internet or by mobile phone.

Professor John Clarkson, who led the study, said: “There is much discussion about whether communications technology is affecting us for the better or worse.

“The research has shown that communications technology is seen by most as a positive tool but there are examples where people aren’t managing usage as well as they could be — it’s not necessarily the amount but the way it’s used.”

Hide Facebook by converting it into an Excel sheet!

Now, you can easily check your Facebook account at your work place without the fear of being caught by your boss.

A website developed by a university student allows you to automatically convert your Facebook news feeds into an Excel spreadsheet, reports the Herald Sun.

Users can instantly see what their friends are up to on Facebook with updates appearing as new spreadsheet rows.

Uploaded pictures and videos can be viewed by hovering over the entries, and users can interact by “liking” the updates with a simple click on the spreadsheet.

The page, with its intentionally corporate look, is slyly titled “daily cash reconciliation” so wasting work time appears to nosy onlookers as diligent financial work.

The HardlyWork.in site was created by Yale computer science major Bay Gross, 20, after a friend doing a government internship told him she had to wait until after work to read his Facebook updates.

Scientists develop sensitive skin for robots

Human skin is a biological wonder, registering a multitude of sensations from the finest breath to touch or pain. Now scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany, are developing a synthetic skin for robots with a similar quality.

The synthetic skin will provide important tactile information to the robot and thus supplement its perception formed by camera eyes, infrared scanners and gripping hands.

As with human skin, the way artificial skin is touched could, for example, lead to a spontaneous retreat (when the robot hits an object) or cause the machine to use its eyes for the first time to search for the source of contact, according to a TUM statement.

Such behaviour is especially important for robotic helpers of people travelling in constantly changing environments. According to robot vision, this is just a regular apartment in which things often change position and people and pets move around.

“In contrast to the tactile information provided by the skin, the sense of sight is limited because objects can be hidden,” explains Philip Mittendorfer, the scientist who is developing the artificial skin at the Institute of Cognitive Systems at TUM.

The centrepiece of the new robotic shell is a five square cm hexagonal plate or circuit board. Each small circuit board contains four infrared sensors that detect anything closer than one cm. “We thus simulate light touch,” explains Mittendorfer.

“This corresponds to our sense of the fine hairs on our skin being gently stroked,” he said.

There are also six temperature sensors and an accelerometer.

“This allows the machine to accurately register the movement of individual limbs, for example, of its arms, and thus to learn what body parts it has just moved. We try to pack many different sensory modalities into the smallest of spaces,” explains the engineer.

“In addition, it is easy to expand the circuit boards to later include other sensors, for example, pressure,” Mittendorfer said.

Mobile phones ‘do not cause cancer’, say experts

Concerns over whether or not mobile phones cause cancer have been floating for over a decade, and have become a popular topic for modern scientific debate.

A slew of studies conducted on the same have neither positively confirmed nor denied this link, only to confuse users all the more.

Now, a new study has sought to settle the confusion, saying that it was unlikely that mobile phones could lead to cancer.

Studies from several countries have failed to show an increase in brain tumours as many as 20 years after mobile phones were introduced and 10 years after the technology became widespread, according to the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection’s committee on Epidemiology.

For the latest review experts looked at all published scientific studies on whether mobiles increase the risk of developing brain tumours, reports the Daily Express.

However, researchers behind the study say that small or long-term repercussions cannot be ruled out yet.

"Although there remains some uncertainty, the trend in the accumulating evidence is increasingly against the hypothesis that mobile phone use can cause brain tumours in adults,” they said.

Now, ‘WiFi napping’ to double battery life of smart phones, laptops!

A Duke University student, under the direction of an Indian assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has found a new system to double the battery life of mobile devices.

According to Justin Manweiler, the system named SleepWell enables smart phones and laptop computers to work for longer hours by making changes to the WiFi technology.

He explained that the energy drain in these gadgets is severe in the presence of other WiFi devices in the neighborhood. In such cases, each device has to ‘stay awake’ before it gets its turn to download a small piece of the desired information. For instance, the battery drainage in downloading a movie in Manhattan is far higher than downloading the same movie in a farmhouse in the Midwest, the researchers said.

However, the Duke-developed software eliminates this problem by allowing mobile devices to sleep while a neighbouring device is downloading information. This not only saves energy for the sleeping device, but also for competing devices as well.

"Big cities face heavy rush hours as workers come and leave their jobs at similar times. If work schedules were more flexible, different companies could stagger their office hours to reduce the rush. With less of a rush, there would be more free time for all, and yet, the total number of working hours would remain the same,” said Manweiler.

"The same is true of mobile devices trying to access the Internet at the same time. The SleepWell-enabled WiFi access points can stagger their activity cycles to minimally overlap with others, ultimately resulting in promising energy gains with negligible loss of performance,” he added.

The SleepWell system was presented at the ninth Association for Computing Machinery’s International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys), being held in Washington, D.C.

Now, ‘WiFi napping’ to double battery life of smart phones, laptops!

A Duke University student, under the direction of an Indian assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has found a new system to double the battery life of mobile devices.

According to Justin Manweiler, the system named SleepWell enables smart phones and laptop computers to work for longer hours by making changes to the WiFi technology.

He explained that the energy drain in these gadgets is severe in the presence of other WiFi devices in the neighborhood. In such cases, each device has to ‘stay awake’ before it gets its turn to download a small piece of the desired information. For instance, the battery drainage in downloading a movie in Manhattan is far higher than downloading the same movie in a farmhouse in the Midwest, the researchers said.

However, the Duke-developed software eliminates this problem by allowing mobile devices to sleep while a neighbouring device is downloading information. This not only saves energy for the sleeping device, but also for competing devices as well.

"Big cities face heavy rush hours as workers come and leave their jobs at similar times. If work schedules were more flexible, different companies could stagger their office hours to reduce the rush. With less of a rush, there would be more free time for all, and yet, the total number of working hours would remain the same,” said Manweiler.

"The same is true of mobile devices trying to access the Internet at the same time. The SleepWell-enabled WiFi access points can stagger their activity cycles to minimally overlap with others, ultimately resulting in promising energy gains with negligible loss of performance,” he added.

The SleepWell system was presented at the ninth Association for Computing Machinery’s International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys), being held in Washington, D.C.