Mit nyomtatunk ki vacsorára?

MIT-kutatók személyes/személyre szabható "ételgyárat" fejlesztenek.

An early design prototype called Cornucopia is aimed at bringing 3-D printing into the kitchen. Cornucopia moves beyond the intriguing, though commercially unproven concept of printing flavors onto raw ingredients in a home kitchen to layering ingredients in three dimensions--"a one thousandth of a millimeter layer of butter, followed by the same sized layer of bread, followed by butter," as one of Corncucopia's designers puts it--effectively giving an owner of the machine the ability to print precisely designed and cooked foods without any work or clean up inside the kitchen. Under development by MIT Fluid Interfaces Group researchers Marcelo Coelho and Amit Zoran, some of the design specs for Cornucopia are being withheld until the group receives patent approval for the machine. The early concept for Cornucopia is a machine that looks like a microwave, but with canisters of ingredients on top and a cooking chamber underneath. The canisters refrigerate and store ingredients. These would be piped into a mixer, which would combine ingredients, and then pump it into the Cornucopia’s chamber through a funnel-shaped “printer head”. That head would also have a series of tubes to heat and cool the food. The most immediate and profound impacts of Cornucopia or something similar would be in the intersection of food and health. Calorie counters, for example could get a recipe from a weight loss program, print it to some exact specifications, and be done. And if nutrigenomics ever lives up to its promise, it's easy to imagine how a tool like this would enable a busy parent to serve a tasty, dinner customized to each family member's genetics and biology night after night, doing a minimum of work. Such a level of customization sounds impressive, though it also would seem to dramatically curtail how we engage with our food choices. Interestingly, Coelho says he thinks the device will help people engage with their food choices and actually encourage--rather than discourage--cooking. And in a lot of ways, this makes sense. Rather than worry about concepts in chemistry, home chefs can tweak layer after layer to try how different combinations taste.That said, avid home cooks are declining in numbers in part because advances in food science and declines in free time make the task of food preparation seem unnecessary and time consuming. This sort of device could give cooks an interesting new tool; but the bigger effect of 3-D food printing would be to enable a much larger number of people to automate their food choices for health and environmental purposes.

IT3 komment: Az infokommunikációs technológiák olyan távolinak tűnő területeken is terjednek, mint például a táplálkozás. A 3D-s nyomtatás/gyártás felgyorsítja a folyamatot: a digitális gasztronómia elvileg eddig elképzelhetetlen ínyencségeket varázsolhat asztalunkra, miközben a felhasználó pontos képet kap a ételek és összetevőik eredetéről, minőségéről, tápértékéről és ízéről.

Forrás: www.iftf.org

Európában nőnek a nanocsövek

Az EU kutatóműhelyeiben kidolgozott nanovezeték-technológiák fontos szerepet játszhatnak a jövőbeni infokommunikációs eszközök gyártásában.

Nanowires are a promising new technology that could meet rapidly rising performance requirements for integrated circuit design over the next ten years. They are tiny wires just tens of nanometres in diameter and micrometers in length. They could mean smaller, faster and lower power electronics, and lead to entirely novel architectures such as 3D microchips – a vertical stack of circuitry that can massively increase the size of circuits for the same footprint. Nanowires are so narrow they are often called ‘one-dimensional’ structures because the width of the wire constrains the sideways movement of electrons as they pass through the wire. Also, the cylindrical geometry allows the most efficient electrostatic gating technology. Unsurprisingly at this scale, nanowires demonstrate many characteristics that offer the potential for novel circuits and architectures, and physicists are very excited. The Japanese pioneered the field with the USA taking up the work, and with a few European teams entering soon after. But the Europeans are on their way. Recent work at the NODE project led to world-class technology and 40 patents. “Silicon technology becomes very challenging when you get down to 10-15nm,” explains Lars Samuelson, director of the Nanometer Structure Consortium at Lund University and coordinator of the NODE project. “One of the problems of the top-down approach is that it introduces harsh environments and you end up with devices that may be dominated by defects.” NODE’s nanowires are ‘grown’ from the bottom up, like crystals, into vertical structures. “We call it ‘guided self-assembly’, and it is a ‘bottom-up’ process that can result in fewer defects,” Samuelson says. Vertical nanowires can consist of different materials, by simply altering the depositing material, so the wire takes on layers with different characteristics. “There are many potential opportunities for developing new technologies,” he says. “This vertical arrangement may be the route to 3D circuit design as well as to realise monolithic on-chip optoelectronics.” NODE focused on combining silicon with indium arsenide and silicon with silicon germanium, two very promising materials. “Indium arsenide is inherently very fast and, as such, it was of particular interest to our work,” remarks Samuelson. The project looked at every link in the nanowire production chain, from growth, processing on an industrial scale, to characterisation and integration.

IT3 komment: Az Európai Uniós által támogatott NODE kutatási projekt eredményeként úgy tűnik, hogy Európa is be tud kapcsolódni a szilicium alapú nanocsövekre épülő nanotechnológiás csipgyártásba. A technológia ugyan még nem érett arra, hogy segítségével működő processzorokat állítsanak elő. A kutatási eredmények arra utalnak, hogy ehhez még 5-10 év szükséges.

Forrás: www.physorg.com

Túl hatékonyak a képfelismerő technológiák?

Mivel az ember sokkal jobb mozgóképek felismerésében, mint a gépek, mozgó tárgyak jelenthetik a CAPTCHA-k újabb, a jelenlegieknél sokkal biztonságosabb generációját.

We see the popular "captcha" security mechanism often — wavy letters websites ask us to type into a box. It's used by web pages and newsletter sign-up forms to prevent computer robots from hacking into servers and databases. But these codes, which are becoming increasingly complicated for an average person to use, are not immune to security holes. A research project led by Prof. Danny Cohen-Or of Tel Aviv University demonstrates how a new kind of video captcha code may be harder to outsmart. The foundation of the work is really pure research, but it opens the door so security researchers can think a little differently. "Humans have a very special skill that computer bots have not yet been able to master," says Cohen-Or. "We can see what's called an 'emergence image' — an object on a computer screen that becomes recognizable only when it's moving — and identify this image in a matter of seconds. While a person can't 'see' the image as a stationary object on a mottled background, it becomes part of our gestalt as it moves, allowing us to recognize and process it." In the new research paper, co-authored with colleagues Cohen-Or describes a synthesis technique that generates pictures of 3-D objects, like a running man or a flying airplane. This technique, he says, will allow security developers to generate an infinite number of moving "emergence" images that will be virtually impossible for any computer algorithm to decode. Emergence," as defined by the researchers, is a unique human ability to collect fragments of seemingly useless information, then synthesize and perceive it as an identifiable whole. So far, computers don't have this skill. Computer vision algorithms are completely incapable of effectively processing emergence images. The scientists warn that it will take some time before this research can be applied in the real world, but they are currently defining parameters that identify the "perception difficulty level" of various images that might be used in future security technologies. "We're not claiming in our research paper that we've developed a whole new captcha technology," says Prof. Cohen-Or. "But we are taking a step towards that — something that could lead to a much better captcha, to highlight the big difference between men and bots.

IT3 komment: A képfelismerő technológiák határozottan sokat fejlődtek az elmúlt két évtizedben. Legalábbis ezt látszik alátámasztani az a tény, hogy a két dimenziós capthcha-k egyre kevésbbé alkalmasak arra, hogy távol tartsák a weboldalaktól a rosszindulatú (ro)botokat. A Tel-Aviv Egyetemen fejlesztett emergens, három dimenziós képalkotó algoritmusok alkalmasak lehetnek a "túlságosan fejlett" két dimenziós képfelismerő technológiák okozta biztonsági problémák kezelésére is. Természetesen csak addig, amíg ki nem fejlesztik az emergens, háromdimenziós képek felismerését is lehetővé tevő megoldásokat.

Forrás: www.aftau.org