APPLES AND ORANGES: Toshiba's high speed pattern recognition technology may take the barcodes out of supermarkets. A suitably equipped scanner can recognise fresh fruits and vegetables by their appearance, disregarding the noise of other objects in view. Toshiba plan to set up a database of agricultural produce for the scanners to use. The software can even distinguish between items that are very similar in appearance, such as different types of apples from the same stock. Imagine combining that with something like a ripeness detector and hooking it in to a smartphone app for shoppers to use while selecting the items they want to buy.
DigInfo News has more, and there's video here.
BLASTED MOLECULES: Researchers at Ohio State University used ultrafast lasers and cameras to record the first real-time image of two atoms vibrating in a Nitrogen or Oxygen molecule. The 50 femtosecond laser pulse knocked one electron out of its natural orbit, then the researchers used the energy of that electron as it fell back to
illuminate the molecular motion. Their ultimate goal is to study how molecules such as proteins interact. It's almost a very miniature game of golf. Ohio State University has details.
CELL DATA CUBED: Light radio cubes from Bell Labs fit in the palm of a hand and boost mobile phone network capacity by collectively reshaping the radio beam. In the face of ever increasing demands for data the devices can be used alone or in clusters to add capacity to a cell network without needing to put up more towers. They are still being tested in Spain, the United Arab Emirates and China though. More data,more networks, the demand keeps growing. Find out more at Technology Review.
SOFTWARE SPEED TWEAK: Deutsche Telekom claims to have achieved a usable bit rate of 400 gigabits per second over a single channel of its fibre optic network. They sent data 734 Km along their network between Berlin and Hanover and back again. The experiment actually delivered a maximum 512Gbps but the extra was used for error
correction. Most of the speed was gained by better error correction software. If they can do it in software, so could anyone. BBC has more.
NOTHING LEFT BEHIND: The U Grok It system uses RFID tags, a hardware reader and your smartphone to keep tabs on all your stuff. First add tags to all the stuff you want to be able to check up on, such as keys, clothing items, travel accessories. The tag has a chip and antenna that reflects slightly modified versions of the radio waves broadcast by hardware reader. The reader attaches to your smartphone,
and has a range of a couple of metres. An app on the phone handles the database and also sends info to the cloud for backup and sharing. To find an item, or spot if something's missing from a collection just use the reader. Being able to find lost items would beat out a simple list. UGrokIt.com has the details, and there's video here.