WATCH YOUR PHOTOS DON’T GIVE YOU UP

Before you proudly go posting photos of your Ming vase online, you should be aware that computer-savvy burglars can likely use that photo to find out where you live. The same goes for photos or videos of your kids, yourself, or anything else that you don’t want strangers knowing how to locate. The practice of tracking people via their posted images is an example of “cybercasing”, and is possible because many digital cameras and smart phones, including the iPhone, automatically geotag their images by embedding the longitude and latitude at which they were taken. Even when uploaded to a website, the images still retain this information. By plugging the coordinates into a service like Google Street View, getting an address or an identifying landmark is entirely possible.

This disturbing fact was recently announced in a report published by the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI). Researchers Gerald Friedland and Robin Sommer wrote that they successfully obtained the home addresses of people who had posted photos in ads on Craigslist, despite those people having opted to keep their addresses hidden in their postings.

Creepier still, they were also able to obtain addresses where home videos of children had been shot, by searching under the tag “kids” on YouTube. They then proceeded to search for recent videos from those same users, that had been shot over 1,000 miles away. Within 15 minutes, they were able to determine that 13 of these video posters were likely still away on vacation, leaving their homes available for burglary.

While iPhones do geotag by default, it is possible to turn the feature off. The folks over at I Can Stalk U (they’re against stalking, not in favor of it) can show you how. For other phones and cameras, a Googling or a look through your user’s manual should tell you what you need to know.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors
Press release from OSRAM Opto Semiconductors - 2010-04-28
Powerful LED flash for cell phones

Powerful LED flash for cell phones

OSLUX now with UX:3 chip technology

The new OSLUX from OSRAM Opto Semiconductors is brighter and smaller than ever before and provides extremely uniform light thanks to a chip fabricated in state-of-the-art UX:3 technology. Together with an optimized lens it not only ensures that the LED is 50 percent brighter than the predecessor model but also that the light is much more evenly distributed and can therefore illuminate a wide area.

The new OSLUX has an area of 3.9 mm² and a height of only 2.5 mm (previously 3 mm) but is 50 lx brighter. This takes its output to an impressive 150 lx. The light is uniformly distributed in the flash; the usual round spot in the center is completely absent. “Our OSLUX is therefore perfect for the fast-growing design-based smartphone and cell phone segment”, said Gunnar Klick, Marketing Manager Consumer at OSRAM Opto Semiconductors. “Even extremely thin phones can now be equipped with a powerful LED flash so they can deliver pictures of superb quality”.

The LED is available in two versions with different lenses. These are already integrated in the LED and are matched to the beam characteristics of the top-emitting UX:3 chips. The subject of the picture is illuminated in a uniform rectangular pattern. The distribution of the light depends on the lens used: 40% or 20% of the center brightness is possible in the corners. At a distance of one meter the LED flash uniformly illuminates a diagonal of 90 cm, which is sufficient to produce razor-sharp pictures even in low light conditions.

The impressive brightness is the result of new UX:3 chip technology that makes the LED capable of handling high currents and gets even more light from the chip. What’s more, the light is more evenly distributed over the surface compared to previous chip technologies. The new OSLUX is therefore considerably more efficient at high currents than previous LEDs and offers impressive luminous efficacy in a small area.

With the new OSLUX OSRAM’s LED portfolio for flash applications is even better tailored to the latest trends in which mobile slimline terminals require small powerful light sources. For users who want to supply their own lens packages there is the CERAMOS which has no lens.

Press contact:
Marion Reichl
Headquarter, Europe

Tel: +49 (0) 941 – 850 – 16 93
Fax: +49 (0) 941 – 850 – 33 05
Email: marion.reichl@osram-os.com

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 23rd May 2010

OPTICAL MOLECULAR

IMAGING:

In vivo commercial systems

heighten appeal of molecular

imaging

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Last November, the Cleveland Clinic (Cleveland, OH) ranked an optical molecular imaging system as one of the year’s top ten medical innovations. “We believe this technology to be a game changer,” said Jennifer Hunt, the clinic’s head of surgical pathology. “When we’re talking about tumors, we’re talking about what information we can gain about that tumor to guide and direct therapy, prognosis, and diagnostics,” she said, referring to the clinic’s use of the Nuance system by Cambridge Research & Instrumentation, Inc. (CRi; Woburn, MA). “Being able to analyze multiple markers in a single cell to understand the behavior of signaling pathways will significantly aid in disease diagnosis and therapy development.”

While the first big application for in-vivo optical molecular imaging was infectious disease, oncology has been an important next step according to Caliper Life Sciences’ (Hopkinton, MA) Stephen Oldfield PhD. Indeed, Carestream Health Molecular Imaging (Rochester, NY) reports a surge of interest from oncologists just in the past couple of years. William McLaughlin, Director of Research and Advanced Applications for Carestream, says that at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting two years ago, he saw significantly more interest in analytical techniques such as gel documentation and western blotting–but in 2008 noticed that more people were asking about the newer technology. Then at this year’s AACR meeting (April 18-22, Denver, CO), the majority of leads were for in vivo imaging, he said.

“The products have reached a point where they provide a lot of benefit to researchers,” McLaughlin explained, noting that in the past year or so he’s seen a shift in percentages: Previously most of Carestream’s molecular imaging customers were hard core imaging people; now, more customers are in application areas.

State-of-the-art optical molecular imaging systems enable noninvasive visualization of biological processes in vivo, enabling researchers to watch disease progression over time in the same animal. They use multiple fluorochromes to selectively target biological processes, and visualize small groups of cells (usually 50 is sufficient for research needs, though Oldfield says Caliper has followed tumors composed of just five cells–to demonstrate the technology’s capability). They enable testing at intervals to illustrate how tumors develop and respond to drugs, and their output can be co-registered with images produced by other modalities such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems.

Moving up for drug discovery

For drug discovery, Oldfield says the technology has been used mainly at the end of the process, but is now being pushed much further upstream, to help determine which cell signaling pathways are affected by a drug. Previously the pathways were studied in vitro and millions of compounds were screened, he explains, but the newer approach lets researchers narrow down their work to perhaps 10 or 20 compounds, look at the pathways, learn what triggers this or that enzyme, and focus on compound optimization and drug efficacy. Oldfield says in vivo systems enable researchers to “fail faster” by getting the compounds into animals sooner so they can learn more quickly and accelerate the whole screening process. Observing disease progression in a live animal can provide all kinds of other information as well, he says.


(Courtesy Caliper Life Sciences)

Pharmaceutical companies don’t publish much (and are typically tight lipped about the technologies that help them get ahead), but Oldfield says he has just begun to see publications from the pharma labs demonstrating correlation between the upstream and downstream ends of the process.

In addition to this, in-vivo imaging is moving closer to clinical trials to enable testing of dosing levels. McLaughlin and Oldfield note that the approach has proven attractive for imaging of inflammation and for stem cell research. Explaining its use for imaging the inflammation that accompanies heart disease, McLaughlin explains that “vulnerable plaques have certain signatures of inflammation that indicate whether they are benign or active.” Oldfield points to observation of inflammation associated with asthma, arthritis, and stroke. A slideshow on Caliper’s website explains that all of the most commonly employed optical reporter labeling strategies have been used to generate light-producing stem cells; Oldfield explains that these can be seen tracking to the heart following cardiovascular damage.

The latest technology progress relates to 3D imaging for more precise pinpointing and quantification. Oldfield says Caliper has done much to improve software to enable this and make it easily accessible. And Carestream is working on a multimodal animal rotation system designed to eventually enable 3D visualization. The idea is to enable change of modalities (optical and x-ray) without moving the animal or focal plane–and register the imagery with precision. McLaughlin says the system will find the optimal angle for the optical signal and keep track of the rotation angle to enable tracking of changes over time.–Barbara G. Goode

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 8th Oct 2009

flashing-bright-blue-line

NEW SCIENTIST EUREKA PRIZE [Australian Museum]

for science photography

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……………………………………………………….

CALL FOR ENTRIES

……………………………………………………….

dossier-photo

The new sceintist $10,000 Eureka  prize for science photography recognizes and rewards outstanding science photography.

The definition of ’science’, for the purpose of this prize,is a comprehensive one. It includes all asp[ects of science [such as nature, technology, health] as well as work that addresses the social or economical aspects of science.

rosa-sericea-plant

Entries are invited from both amateur and professional photographers aged 18 years or over.

Enter now and view past entries >

http://www.austmus.gov.au/eureka

Sourced and Published by Henry Sapiecha 23rd May 2009

yellow-black-line

Scientists create liquid lens on a chip

p35600

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (UPI) — U.S. scientists say they’ve created tunable fluidic micro lenses that can focus light at will while remaining stationary and can be fabricated on a chip.

The Pennsylvania State University research engineers said such fluidic lenses can be used for many applications, such as counting cells, evaluating molecules or creating on-chip optical tweezers. The lenses might also provide imaging in medical devices, eliminating the necessity of moving the tip of a probe, they added.

The researchers, led by Assistant Professor Tony Jun Huang, said conventional, fixed focal length lenses can focus light at only one distance and the entire lens must move to focus on an object or to change the direction of the light. Fluidic lenses, however, can change focal length or direction in less than a second while remaining in the same place.

“We use water and a calcium chloride solution because they are readily available and safe and their optical properties have been well characterized,” said Huang.
aqu018
The research that included graduate students Sz-Chin Lin, Michael Lapsley, Jinjie Shi, Bala Juluri and Xiaole Mao was reported in a recent issue of the journal Lab on a Chip.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 18th May 2009

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Imax 3-D camera to film Hubble mission

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WASHINGTON (UPI) — The U.S. space agency says it will join the Imax Corp. and Warner Bros. Pictures to film the upcoming Hubble Space Telescope mission in 3-D.

The Imax cameras will be used to document what the National Aeronautics and Space Administration calls one of its most complex space shuttle operations — the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.

“The cameras will launch aboard space shuttle Atlantis, which is scheduled to lift off May 11,” NASA said. “Astronauts will use the cameras to film five spacewalks needed to repair and upgrade Hubble.

Officials said the footage will be used in the movie “Hubble 3D” that is scheduled for release in the spring of 2010.

The Atlantis’ crew has been trained to operate the cameras, one of which will be mounted outside the crew cabin in the shuttle’s cargo bay to capture images of the historic final servicing mission. The commander and pilot will double as filmmakers as two teams of spacewalking astronauts “perform some of the most challenging work ever undertaken in space as they replace and refurbish many of the telescope’s precision instruments,” the space agency said.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 11th May 2009

Sharp, Pioneer Enable Communication Between Cell Phones, Car Navigation Systems

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Apr 14, 2009 19:57
Naoshige Shimizu, Nikkei Electronics

Sharp Corp and Pioneer Corp announced April 13, 2009, that they jointly developed “Photoremo@Navi Ver1.0,” a data standard for communications between mobile phones and car navigation systems.

Using Photoremo@Navi-based mobile phones and car navigation systems, it is possible to easily exchange GPS data, expected arrival time calculated by a car navigation system, notifications of received e-mails and calls, etc via Bluetooth and infrared rays.

pda

The data standard was developed as part of the two companies’ joint development projects that were launched after they formed a capital alliance in 2007 and cover a variety of themes in the TV and car electronics areas. They will promote the standard to other mobile phone and car navigation system manufacturers.

“We are aiming to make the format open to anyone in the future,” Sharp said. However, Pioneer said, “We have yet to determine when and how we will release the format.”

“Photoremo” is a standard originally developed by Sharp for data exchange between mobile phones and home appliances. It attaches information used to control home appliances to images in JPEG format. With Photoremo@Navi, the same capability can be easily used with car navigation systems.

anicam

For example, a user carrying a GPS mobile phone finds a good restaurant and takes a picture of it (in JPEG format). Then, the photo data is registered together with its location data based on the Photoremo@Navi standard. If this photo is sent to his/her friend’s mobile phone, the friend can easily register the photo and location data in his/her car navigation system.

“One of the major issues with car navigation maps is the fact that they cannot quickly update store names and other variable information,” Pioneer said. “If Photoremo@Navi can enable the easy registration of the names and locations of the stores that users recommend, this challenge can be overcome.”

“Photoremo@Navi is also available for any devices that support Photoremo,” Sharp said.

Currently, Photoremo-compatible products include Sharp’s “SH706iW” mobile phone and “Aquos R” series LCD TVs released in 2008. Meanwhile, Pioneer has not yet determined when it will release a Photoremo-compatible car navigation system.

yellow-racer

Know where your’e at

“It is impossible to make our car navigation systems compatible with Photoremo only by upgrading their software,” Pioneer said. “So, it is difficult to incorporate Photoremo@Navi capability in our existing products.”

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 22nd April 2009

JVC to Debut 46-inch Professional

3D Display

Apr 14, 2009 18:55
Yousuke Ogasawara, Nikkei Electronics

Victor Company of Japan Ltd (JVC) will release the “GD-463D10,” a 46-inch three-dimensional (3D) liquid crystal display designed for business use.

The display has a resolution of 1920 x 1080. With the use of polarizing filters, it reproduces 3D images that can be viewed by wearing a pair of dedicated circular polarization glasses. JVC reduced the thickness to 39mm at the thinnest part and 75mm at the thickest part (excluding the stand).

Initially, the product will be targeted for use in production and promotion of 3D movies and various events. But the company plans to expand the sales, targeting scientific, medical and educational applications, as well as simulations.

The GD-463D10 employs the “Xpol polarizing filter method,” which allocates right and left images respectively to the odd- and even-numbered lines and displays the images through polarizing filters that have properties inverse to each other.

glasses_t

To view 3D images, users need to wear a pair of dedicated circular polarization glasses that are lightweight and do not need batteries. The product comes with two pairs of glasses. It can reproduce 3D images with no flicker because it simultaneously displays the right and left images on the screen, JVC said.

The GD-463D10 supports the signal input by both the line-by-line and side-by-side methods. In the former method, video signals for the right and left eyes are alternately arranged in every other line. And, in the latter method, video signals for the right and left eyes are compressed to 1/2 only in the horizontal direction and arranged on the right and left sides.

The display has three HDMI input ports and supports the 1080/24p, 1080/50p, 1080/60p, 1080/50i and 1080/60i video signals. 3D representation at 1080/50i and 1080/60i are only possible by signals compliant with the side-by-side method.

The GD-463D10 is slated for release in early July 2009. There is no manufacturer’s suggested retail price. JVC plans to produce 2,000 units per year throughout the world. The company will exhibit the product at NAB Show 2009, which runs from April 18 to 23, 2009, in Las Vegas.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 22nd April  2009

[HK Fair] Chinese Firm Exhibits ‘

World’s Smallest’ Video Camera

Shenzhen AEE Wireless Technology Co Ltd of China exhibits what it claims is the world’s smallest video camera at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Spring Edition).

The fair, which is organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, is taking place in Hong Kong from April 13 to 16, 2009.


The dimensions of the camera, “Mini DV,” are 55 x 20 x 18mm. Its volume is 20cm3 and weight is 50g.

“Only an ultra-small camcorder like this can enable people cycling or skiing, pet animals and radio control toys to shoot video,” AEE said. “We developed this product to have more flexability and to allow people to shoot a wider variety of scenes.”

The company reduced the size by focusing on image recording function. The Mini DV is not equipped with a monitor for checking images, and recorded images can be viewed only after they are transferred to a PC.

The camcorder employs a 2-Mpixel CMOS sensor. It shoots 640 x 480-pixel images at 30fps, compresses the images with the JPEG format and stores them in the AVI format by using a microSD memory card of up to 8 Gbytes.

The interface for PC connection is USB 2.0. When the camcorder is connected to a PC, images can be output to a PC in real time. Its Li-ion secondary battery has a capacity of 260mAh, allowing two hours of continuous shooting.

The Mini DV is equipped with a clip for attaching the camera to clothing or accessories like belts etc..  AEE offers a version including a mount that allows users to attach the camera to a helmet, etc, and is intended for filming while playing sports.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 22nd April 2009