Ocean Proof Mobile Phones Through Atomic Layer Deposition and Barrier Films

Scientists have developed a barrier film through through a molecular process called atomic layer deposition (ALD) that can protect objects such as mobile phones from harsh environments such as salt water.

Barrier films are used to protect electronics from water vapor, oxygen degradation, and other harmful elements. Current barrier films although offer protection, the way they are made still result in small impurities and imperfections that can still allow water or oxygen to penetrate.

Using atomic layer deposition, the barrier film is controlled at the molecular level. The process results in an even coating without any holes or impurities that may be penetrated by harmful elements. The finished product is about 10 nanometers thick which is hundreds of times thinner than current available high end barrier films.

By using this process, electronic devices using organic materials such as OLED displays can be developed that last longer. ALso, existing electronic devices such as mobile phones, implantable biomedical devices, and solar power cells can be produced which can operate in extreme conditions.

Mobile App Tracking Diet and Calorie Consumption Can Help In Weight Loss

A recent study has shown that using mobile applications to assist in tracking and managing eating habits effectively helps in losing weight by an average of fifteen pounds.

With the advent of the advanced mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, the use of mobile applications have risen tremendously. Mobile apps are software programs that are designed to run on these mobile devices. From just a simple email client, apps now have expanded to games, GPS tracking, and even online banking.

A recent study reported that mobile app users use their devices to browse the web more than using a standard desktop computer (51.1% vs. 49.8% respectively).

Since these apps can effectively assist users in their activities, a useful activity that can benefit from this is in tracking one's diet and eating behavior. It can record the daily calorie consumption and suggest how to keep it under a healthy threshold.

There are numerous applications that does this and even extends to exercise & physical activities to also monitor how much calories have been burned.

MIT News: Speeding Up GPS Algorithms Through Data Compression, Line Simplification, and Signal Clustering

MIT Researchers have devised an algorithm that is fast and efficient by compressing the data and processing them into smaller data coresets. This approach which they applied to a GPS program can also be utilized by other algorithms.

Computers process data based on a series of sequential procedures in performing its calculations. This is called an algorithm. Algorithms help computers decide how to treat data without consulting the user.

But how does an algorithm work? Here is a sample algorithm to see if the user is old enough to register in a website. First the program asks the user to input his birthday. The computer checks the present age based on the birthday. If the result is below the allowed age, then the computer informs the user he is too young to register for the sit.

iPhone App Takes ECG Reading For Monitoring Heart and Atrial Fibrillation Diagnosis

An iPhone application that takes electrocardiogram (ECG) readings that is vital to diagnosing for atrial fibrillation was presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2012.

Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is a type of arrhythmia (irregular beating of the heart) where the patient suffers from a rapid beating of the heart combined with poor blood flow. This leads to an increased risk of suffering from a stroke up to as much as seven times the average.

3D Screens On Mobile Devices Using Tilt Displays Being Developed

Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are experiencing a tremendous growth in sales. Its use in various applications are gaining popularity.

Manufacturers vie for attention and market share by developing features and technology guaranteed to catch the consumer's eye. Apple alone sold 172 million of its mobile devices (iPad, iPhone and iPod) last year, 2011.

One notable feature users look at is the display screen. Screen size is important since bigger screens can display more data and bigger images. A standard smartphone range from 3.5 inches to 5.5 inches (Samsung Galaxy Note II). An iPad screen stands at 9.7 inches.

There are also different types of screens. They range from the often used TFT-LCD screens to the various flavors of Super AMOLED screens. Even Apple has marketed its display screen naming it "Retina Display" which is basically a high density screen that does not pixelate at all.

But aside from screen size and screen type, it seems another screen feature for mobile devices may be in the horizon; 3D screens.

3D screens are already being featured in high definition LCD screens. To capitalize on this, there are movies released in blue ray and DVD formats that support 3D viewing. Most require the use of 3D glasses to fully appreciate the experience.

3-D display screen on mobile devices could be on the horizon

Imagine a mobile device that visually displays a street map and whose screen physically mutates to show the hilly terrain and buildings. A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, have developed a new type of screen display that not only moves but also physically tilts.

Researchers from the University's Department of Computer Science will present the display, called Tilt Displays, at MobileHCI 2012, the world's leading conference in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), held in San Francisco, USA.

Tilt Displays is a display surface about half the size of a standard tablet, such as an iPad. It consists of a collection of individual display components each of which can tilt along one or more axes and move vertically up and down. This ability to tilt along multiple axes distinguishes it from previous actuatable displays.

Inexpensive Rectenna and Advances in Near Field Communication For Fast and Efficient Mobile Transactions

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a set of rules, guidelines and standards implemented by smartphones and similar mobile devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity.

Some applications that utilizes NFC are wireless or contactless transactions, data exchange, and wi-fi. Contactless payments are usually transactions that involve payment through the smartphone (usually called "smart wallets"). Near field communication (NFC) technology also lets smartphones and other enabled devices communicate with other devices that are not powered through a NFC tag. This is similar in nature to QR codes that smart phones are able to use and read.

Wireless power for the price of a penny

The newspaper-style printing of electronic equipment has led to a cost-effective device that could change the way we interact with everyday objects.

For a price of just one penny per unit the device, known as a rectenna, which is presented today, Friday 10 August, in IOP Publishing's journal Nanotechnology, can be placed onto objects such as price tags, logos and signage so that we can read product information on our smartphones with one simple swipe.

This type of technology, which is known as near-field communication (NFC), has already been implemented to allow fast money transactions; however, this new device could lead the way to large-scale adoption at a low cost.

The rectenna, created by researchers from Sunchon National University and Paru Printed Electronics Research Institute, could be implemented onto everyday objects so that they can harness the power given off by the smartphone's radio waves and send information back to it via printed digital circuits.

320 Tons of Gold Worth US$21B Used Annually For Electronic Devices

Urban Mining is the process of reclaiming compounds and elements from products, buildings and waste. The term is synonymous to recycling but generally refers to recycling of industrial and electronic products for minerals and metals.

Urban mining is gaining interest now since its yield of metals per ton is higher than in traditional mining. Gold for instance yields around 150 grams per ton in cell phone circuitry while traditional mining only yields 5 grams per ton of gold ore.

Not only does the circuitry contain gold, it also has other precious metals that can be "mined" such as copper (100kg per ton) and silver (3kg per ton). Aside from these, other elements that can be found in circuit boards are iron, manganese, nickel, palladium, platinum, tin and zinc.

E-waste: Annual gold, silver 'deposits' in new high-tech goods worth $21B; less than 15% recovered

A staggering 320 tons of gold and more than 7,500 tons of silver are now used annually to make PCs, cell phones, tablet computers and other new electronic and electrical products worldwide, adding more than $21 billion in value each year to the rich fortunes in metals eventually available through "urban mining" of e-waste, experts say.

Manufacturing these high-tech products requires more than $16 billion in gold and $5 billion in silver: a total of $21 billion -- equal to the GDP of El Salvador -- locked away annually in e-products. Most of those valuable metals will be squandered, however; just 15% or less is recovered from e-waste today in developed and developing countries alike.

Electronic waste now contains precious metal "deposits" 40 to 50 times richer than ores mined from the ground, experts told participants from 12 countries at last week's first-ever GeSI and StEP e-Waste Academy for policymakers and small businesses, co-organized in Accra, Ghana by the United Nations University and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI).

MIT News: Side Channel Attacks - New Developments in Computer Security

In the last 10 years, cryptography researchers have demonstrated that even the most secure-seeming computer is shockingly vulnerable to attack. The time it takes a computer to store data in memory, fluctuations in its power consumption and even the noises it emits can betray information to a savvy assailant.

Attacks that use such indirect sources of information are called side-channel attacks, and the increasing popularity of cloud computing makes them an even greater threat. An attacker would have to be pretty motivated to install a device in your wall to measure your computer’s power consumption. But it’s comparatively easy to load a bit of code on a server in the cloud and eavesdrop on other applications it’s running.

Fortunately, even as they’ve been researching side-channel attacks, cryptographers have also been investigating ways of stopping them. Shafi Goldwasser, the RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and her former student Guy Rothblum, who’s now a researcher at Microsoft Research, recently posted a long report on the website of the Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity, describing a general approach to mitigating side-channel attacks. At the Association for Computing Machinery’s Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) in May, Goldwasser and colleagues will present a paper demonstrating how the technique she developed with Rothblum can be adapted to protect information processed on web servers.

In addition to preventing attacks on private information, Goldwasser says, the technique could also protect devices that use proprietary algorithms so that they can’t be reverse-engineered by pirates or market competitors — an application that she, Rothblum and others described at last year’s AsiaCrypt conference.

How To Film a Movie Using A Smartphone or iPhone - Tips, Apps, and Attachments

Technology has made it possible to make professional looking film using a smartphone as the movie camera.

Proof of this is Olive, a movie entirely shot using a Nokia N8. This may be the first movie ever to be shown on the big screen. The Nokia N8 boasts a 12-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss glass that could record 720p video.

But aside from the N8, other smartphones such as the iPhone can similarly accomplish the same feat. Devices, attachments, and applications that can help in making the movie are important to achieve a polished look. In this aspect, the iPhone is advantageous because of the sheer glut of devices and apps available for it.

To make the film have a polished and professional look, accessories and smartphone apps are needed. These attachments and apps give the movie a close to Hollywood look by giving more professional looking shots, wider scenes, and special effects. Of course, a story or plot, script and actors are very important. It is also advisable to storyboard the movie (drawing or illustrating each scene as it would be filmed).

Attachments, Accessories, and Devices

When it comes to accessorizing the smartphone for movie making, the following should be considered. These assist in making the actual shots better looking and give the desired effects such as a wider shot, steady movement, and better sound.

1. The Lens
2. The Tripod
3. A Tracker
4. Steadicam
5. Microphone