Sri Lanka uses satellite technology to monitor buses

Sri Lanka has started using satellite technology to monitor the movements of buses in a bid to "detect and control misdeeds" committed by drivers, a media report said.

National Transport Commission (NTC) director Chandrasiri Weerasekara said Global Positioning System (GPS) is being used to detect buses that run at high speeds and at unacceptable low speeds, ignore stipulated bus stops and unnecessarily stop for long periods of time, the Daily Mirror reported. The buses would be monitored to ascertain whether they run according to time tables and whether they follow the stipulated speed limits, said a statement by the government information department.

The movements of the buses would be displayed on digital screens at monitoring centres, and errant drivers would be instantly advised to follow rules over satellite phones placed in the buses. There are many different types of satellites orbiting the earth over our heads. Some are used for television, others for telecommunications, and some satellites are top secret and few people know what they are used for. Satellites are brought into space by space shuttles. They are accelerated to the speeds needed to achieve orbit by large rockets. Once in space, the satellite is subjected to two main forces.the gravitational pull of the Earth is greater than the centrifugal force, the spacecraft drops back. This will happen when the orbit velocity from the rocket is insufficient.

If centripetal and centrifugal forces are equal, the object will orbit the Earth. If the induced velocity is too much, the gravitational pull of the Earth would be overcome, and the object goes into solar orbit. At an even higher velocity, the object can escape from the gravitational field of the sun, and will then become lost in outer space. Therefore, calculations for satellite orbits must be very precise. It would be very bad to have such an
expensive piece of equipment get lost in outer space. The period of a satellite is how long it takes to complete one circuit around the earth. The period of the earth’s orbit around the sun takes roughly one year.To simplify accurate navigation, the United States Department of Defense came up with something called the Global Positioning System or GPS. This is a radio based navigation system that gives three dimensional coverage of the Earth 24 hours a day. The system is very accurate. In some cases, surveyors can use GPS to get measurements down to a centimeter.

Since it was initially designed as a defense system, it encounters few problems with jamming
and interference. The government has spent over $12 billion dollars to build the system. It
appears to be worth it because the system works very well.

Cellular images now captured in 3D

Researchers can now peer right into cellular processes and that too in 3D, thanks to an amazing microscope.

The microscopy technique takes images at high speed, so researchers can create dazzling movies about the actual cellular functioning.

The technique is called Bessel beam plane illumination microscopy. The beam sweeps quickly through a sample of cells, allowing scientists to take nearly 200 images per second and build 3D stacks from hundreds of 2D images in one to 10 seconds, reports the journal Nature MethodsIf one is trying to learn the rules of a game, it is better to have a movie of people playing the game than it is to have still photos - and the same is true for cells, says Eric Betzig, group leader at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus.

He has been inventing and improving microscopes for more than 30 years. Betzig says that many microscopy techniques require that cells be killed and fixed in position for imaging.

There is only so much one can learn from studying dead cells - the equivalent of still photos, he says, according to a Janelia statement.

But live-cell techniques can be problematic because light produced by microscopes can damage the cell over time. Besides cell damage, light causes the fluorescent molecules -- of which there are only so many -- to wink out over time.

In other words, the longer you study the cell to uncover its properties, the more damage you do to the cell, Betzig says. This problem has now been overcome with the Bessel beam."

New Instrument Keeps an 'Eye' on Nanoparticles

   Precision measurement in the world of nanoparticles has now become a possibility, thanks to scientists at UC Santa Barbara.The UCSB research team has developed a new instrument capable of detecting individual nanoparticles with diameters as small as a few tens of nanometers. The study will be published online this week by Nature Nanotechnology, and appear in the April print issue of the journal.

"This device opens up a wide range of potential applications in nanoparticle analysis," said Jean-Luc Fraikin, the lead author on the study. "Applications in water analysis, pharmaceutical development, and other biomedical areas are likely to be developed using this new technology." The instrument was developed in the lab of Andrew Cleland, professor of physics at UCSB, in collaboration with the group of Erkki Ruoslahti, Distinguished Professor, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute at UCSB.

Fraikin is presently a postdoctoral associate in the Marth Lab at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute's Center for Nanomedicine, and in the Soh Lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara.

The device detects the tiny particles, suspended in fluid, as they flow one by one through the instrument at rates estimated to be as high as half a million particles per second. Fraikin compares the device to a nanoscale turnstile, which can count -- and measure -- particles as they pass individually through the electronic "eye" of the instrument.

The instrument measures the volume of each nanoparticle, allowing for very rapid and precise size analysis of complex mixtures. Additionally, the researchers showed that the instrument could detect bacterial virus particles, both in saline solution as well as in mouse blood plasma.

In this study, the researchers further discovered a surprisingly high concentration of nanoparticles present in the native blood plasma. These particles exhibited an intriguing size distribution, with particle concentration increasing as the diameter fell to an order of 30 to 40 nanometers, an as-yet unexplained result.The field of aerosol science and technology is undergoing significant changes as global interest in ultra-fine particles expands to meet the evolving needs of the research community and industry. Traditional applications in environmental studies, safety, and metrology to name a few, have been well served with laboratory style instruments. These products provide single-particle detection limits for sizes as low as a few nanometers, and are configurable to provide flexibility for concentration, flow, and the aerosol range of interest. Similarly, characteristics which have been associated with these capabilities include a degree of complexity, high capital cost, specialized operator training requirements, and measurement and analysis largely confined to the laboratory.

This new collection of products provide the performance of laboratory grade instrumentation but are specifically designed for the Application-Based needs of occupational hygienists, toxicologists, environmental researchers, metrologists, manufacturing process and quality control groups.

New Light-Sensing Mechanism Found in Neurons

A UC Irvine research team led by Todd C. Holmes has discovered a second form of phototransduction light sensing in cells that is derived from vitamin B2. This discovery may reveal new information about cellular processes controlled by light.For more than 100 years, it had been believed that the phototransduction process was solely based on a chemical derived from vitamin A called retinal. Phototransduction is the conversion of light signals into electrical signals in photoreceptive neurons and underlies both image-forming and non-image-forming light sensing.

In discovering this new light-sensing phototransduction mechanism, the UCI scientists found that phototransduction can also be mediated by a protein called cryptochrome, which uses a B2 vitamin chemical derivative for light sensing. Cryptochromes are blue-light photoreceptors found in circadian and arousal neurons that regulate slow biochemical processes, but this is the first time they have been linked to rapid phototransduction.

Their work appears March 3 on online Express site for the journal Science.

"This is totally novel mechanism that does not depend on retinal," said Holmes, a professor of physiology & biophysics. "This discovery opens whole new technology opportunities for adapting light-sensing proteins to drive medically relevant cellular activities."

This basic science breakthrough -- "which literally and figuratively came 'out of the blue,'" Holmes said -- has implications in the fast-growing field of optogenetics. Optogenetics combines optical and genetic research techniques to probe neural circuits at the high speeds needed to understand brain information processing. In one area, it is being used to understand how treatments such as deep brain massage can aid people with neurodegenerative diseases.

Holmes' team found that cryptochrome mediates phototransduction directly in fruit fly circadian and arousal neurons in response to blue-light wavelengths. The researchers also found that they could genetically express cryptochrome in neurons that are not ordinarily electrically responsive to light to make them light responsive.

Keri Fogel, Kelly Parson and Nicole Dahm of UCI contributed to the study, which received National Institutes of Health support.

Control computer by sight

A laptop prototype has been unveiled with a device that allows a user to control the computer by sight.The eye-tracking technology monitors the user's gaze and works out where they're looking on the computer screen and means, among other things, that users can play a game where they defeat enemies because the game's lasers hit where they look.

It can also scroll text on the screen in response to eye movements, sensing when the reader has reached the end of the visible text.

In the future, such a laptop could make the mouse cursor appear where the user is looking, or make a game character maintain eye contact, according to Tobii Technology Inc, the Swedish firm behind the tracking technology, the Daily Mail reports.

Now planned for commercial use, the eye tracker works by shining two invisible infrared lights at the user.

Two hidden cameras then look for the glints from eyeballs and reflections from each retina. It needs to be calibrated for each person, and works for those with or without glasses.

Barbara Barclay, general manager of Tobii's analysis solutions business, said rather than a replacement for the traditional mouse and keyboard or the touch screen, the eye-tracking could be complementary, making a computer faster and more efficient to use.

Tobii has been making eye-tracking devices for researchers and the disabled for nearly a decade. The laptop is its way of showing that eye-tracking could expand beyond those uses, Barclay said

The laptop is made by Lenovo Corp, and incorporates Tobii's eye-tracking cameras in a hump on the cover, making the entire package about twice as thick as a normal laptop.A new software platform, developed by French scientists, which was demonstrated at a tech fest at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here allows individuals to control computer commands by just a 'thought'.

Acting as an interface designed to translate what happens in the brain into a computer command, this software --'OpenViBE'-- is the outcome of a project initiated in 2005 and has a multitude of potential applications.

"The OpenViBE software platform facilitates the design, testing and use of 'brain-computer interfaces' - in other words, systems that process the electrical signals linked with brain activity and translate them into a command that can be understood by machines," computer scientists Yann Renard and Laurent Bonnet said while demonstrating the software at the Department of Computer Sciences, IIT, here yesterday.

Despite drop in voice, networks carry 26 exabyte

ABI Research estimates that $12.5 billion will be spent on mobile gateways, subscriber databases, IMS, session border controllers, and software switch/media gateways in 2011. That represents an increase of 4.2 percent year-on-year (YoY).

Mobile operators are steadily getting a handle on the mobile data traffic boom that is rippling through their networks, as smartphones and apps downloads redefine the end-user mobile experience.
Operators are investing significantly in their core network architecture, not just to speed up the throughput on their networks but also to make those networks more efficient and ‘aware’ of the traffic passing through them,” says Aditya Kaul, practice director, Mobile Networks, ABI Research.

Why these investments in the core network? It is well known that voice revenues are declining. In 2010, global mobile voice revenues declined -0.7 percent YoY, yet mobile networks carried 26.1 exabytes of traffic.

While that traffic does benefit from IP’s greater efficiency, operators need to create additional revenue opportunities and constrain operating expenses wherever possible.

Overall capital expenditure by the global mobile operator community is projected to decline slightly (-1.2 percent) to $110.3 billion by the end of 2011.

“Yes, operators will need to invest significantly in 4G,” comments VP for Forecasting Jake Saunders, “but they will be striving to reuse existing cell-site towers, backhaul infrastructure and core network data centres. The initial strategy will be to secure as much population coverage as possible for the most efficient investment profile.”

While 4G will require upgrades to radio access networks, backhaul, and core network architectures, operators are also seeking optimized products and services to maximize their return on investment.

Operators will increasingly rely on outsourcing their network management to vendors and on small-cell technology for base station deployment, as well as embracing offload strategies (Wi-Fi , content delivery networks, direct tunneling) to maximize network efficiency.

Bharti starts 3G in Delhi; unlimited data usage at 2,000

Telecom major Bharti airtel today launched third generation (3G) services, that offer LIVE and on-demand TV channels, video calling and high-speed internet access, in Delhi and NCR.

The company has launched its services in Delhi and the National Capital Region spanning Gurgaon, Faridabad and Noida powered by 1,800-plus 3G sites, including Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and other social network accounts, Bharti airtel President (Mobile Services) Atul Bindal told reporters here. Airtel's 3G services are already in the seven cities of Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore, Mysore, Manipal, Udipi and Jaipur and will be available in all 13 3G-licence circles by March 2011. We are also in talks with other service operators to provide services across India," Bindal added.

Customers can choose from airtel's easy-to-understand 3G tariff plans, which have been crafted to prevent 'bill shock' and help customers monitor their consumption of data with personalised data usage limits and alerts.

"We expect to cover 40-45 cities with our 3G services in one month (by March end) and for the year ahead (next year by March) we expect to have our network coverage by over 1,000 cities. Data Average Revenue per User (ARPU) showing up very nicely because of investment have already been made in," Bindal said.

airtel 3G also allow customers enjoy a variety of exciting service offerings including mobile TV, video calls, high-speed internet and video capabilities on social networks. airtel 3G Mobile TV at an affordable price of Rs 40 for 20 minutes per week. The company is offering video call rates at 5 paise per second.

The company has offered different plans like pay as you go offers for all the existing airtel customers who want to experience the 3G internet this plan will be there where they have to pay the prevailing rates as on 2G services.

Flexishield plan has a combination of free data usage and low inbuilt volume based charging rate with a bill cap of 2,000.

To download 2GB data prepaid and postpaid customers have to pay 750. Under the Flexishield plan the customer has to pay 675 for 1.25 GB free data download with 3G speed till total data bill reaches 2,000, after that no charges on data access with speed of 20kbps.

Airtel has also introduced a first of its kind internet usage calculator that will help customers monitor and analyse their current internet data usage and choose an airtel 3G plan accordingly.