carapace – Not your father's america

A surveillance company in Cincinnati found the most practical way to test their new tagging technology — they embedded tiny silicon chips into two of their workers. The two workers at CityWatcher volunteered to test the RFID chips, along with the company CEO.

The chips are the size of a grain of rice and were embedded by a doctor in the forearm just under the surface of the skin. The chips work as access cards. There is a reader outside the door, and when the worker approaches the reader and puts his arm under it, the door senses the information in the chip and opens the door.

The company states that the implants cannot track employees’ movements, as they emit no signal. The chips would be used to identify workers with access to vaults and other secure areas.

Visit http://link.abpi.net/l.php?20060313A8 for more information.

The teardown analysis service from iSuppli provides complete, detailed analyses of electronic devices by performing complete teardowns of devices. iSuppli delivers a complete assessment of all electronic, electromechanical, and mechanical components. This iSuppli service is the ultimate competitive benchmarking tool – providing the highest quality view available of the design and manufacturing of competing device models, as well as the costs to build the equipment.

http://www.electronicproducts.com/whatsinside/viewteardown.asp?filename=Xbox%5F360%5Fweb%2Ehtml

“The cereal aisle at your local supermarket may soon resemble the Las Vegas strip. Electronics maker Siemens is readying a paper-thin electronic-display technology so cheap it could replace conventional labels on disposable packaging, from milk cartons to boxes of Cheerios.

In less than two years, Siemens says, the technology could transform consumer-goods packaging from the fixed, ink-printed images of today to a digital medium of flashing graphics and text that displays prices, special offers or alluring photos, all blinking on miniature flat screens.

‘When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don’t expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, “I want it,”‘ said Axel Gerlt, an engineer at Siemens tasked with helping packaging companies implement the technology.”

Learn more in Wired News.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69839,00.html

From: Future Brief

“Microchips are like potato chips: More of them come out of the oven broken than whole. And of the chips – micro, not potato – that make it to market, many have built-in weaknesses that eventually cause them to fail. Most people don’t care. The useful lifespan of an electronic device is only about three years, and it’s hard to consume just one. By the time your cell phone’s processor melts down, you’ve already bought a newer model. But if you’re planning to send a computer on, say, a 10-year mission into deep space, then you need more staying power. The best option­ used to be to send lots of spare processors and cross your fingers. As your probe flew silently­ through the night, you would dream about chips that could fix themselves. It’s not crazy. A type of processor called a field programmable gate array really can recover on the fly. Invented in 1984, FPGAs don’t have hardwired patterns of circuits. Instead­, their wiring runs through program­mable intersections called logic blocks.”

Learn more in Wired News.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/start.html?pg=12?tw=wn_tophead_9
From: Future Brief

A new sensor being patented by Ohio State University could be used to detect concealed weapons or help pilots see better through rain and fog.

Unlike x-ray machines or radar instruments, the sensor doesn’t have to generate a signal to detect objects; it spots them based on how brightly they reflect the natural radiation that is all around us every day.

The new sensor is essentially a tunnel diode with a strong short circuit running backwards and very little tunneling current running forwards. This diode is unique because it is compatible with mainstream silicon, so computer chip makers could manufacture it cheaply and integrate it with existing technology easily.

Once the sensor is further developed, it could be used to scan people or luggage without subjecting them to x-rays or other radiation. And if thesensor were embedded in an airplane nose, it might help pilots see a runway during bad weather.

For more information, visit: http://link.abpi.net/l.php?20050804A3

Tektronix (Beaverton, OR) and the Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group (MPRG) at Virginia Tech are conducting joint research to develop cognitive radio (CR) technology. Their goal is to establish a test methodology for cognitive algorithms, which will enable a radio to be aware of its environment.

CR builds on software-defined radio (SDR) to adapt to changing communications protocols, and inserts a new element — the ability to recognize its environment and learn by drawing on artificial intelligence. After
sensing the environment and location, it can then alter its power, frequency, modulation, and other parameters for more efficient spectrum utilization by negotiating the best transmission path to overcome obstacles.

Read the complete story at: http://link.abpi.net/l.php?20050802A7