A new paint mixed with nanoparticles may offer the sweet silence that theatre owners, school officials and clergy crave. Once applied to walls, the paint blocks cell phone radio signals, locking out any call. NaturalNano, a firm in Rochester (New-York), commercializes the materials.

Two-way radio-frequency transmissions from cell phones, WiFi, and other electronic devices may be blocked.

Nanotubes coated or loaded with copper may be used in paint applied to walls to passively block specific radio frequency ranges. That makes the difference with current techniques which scramble ALL received signals.
Indeed, the wireless phone industry is opposed to blocking technologies, citing legalities and various emergency calls: police, fire, ER, ...
NaturalNano has the solution: Using a complementary technology licensed from AMBIT Corporation, building managers may selectively override the blocking to allow the use of two-way devices in a room or building. An indoor antenna picks up cell-phone or other signals and sends them to an external antenna through an electronic filter

Source: the newspaper Communications of ACM.
For those who do not know: nanoparticles are a direct application of nanotechnologies. The small tubes on the picture here above are 40 nanometers length, or if you prefer 40 x 10^-9 meter, or again 0,000000040 meter. Or 400 atoms. This microscopic size makes it possible to block waves because they're lost after tons of rebounds.

Last week, La Première, a Belgian public radio station, has proposed a talk show about Economic Decreasing.

The speakers' comments were so interesting that everybody should be challenged by the ecological cause seen under this angle.

To be brief, the decreasing is a concept which affirms that infinite economic growth, i.e. the perpetual increase of an economic indicator, is simply not acceptable by the ecosystem of the Earth.

The decreasing comes from the fact that the planetary resources are not inexhaustible. A simple figure: 80% of the resources are exploited per 20% of the world population. It's almost the end of fossil resources (gas, oil): one speaks about 20 or 30 years. And thus the infinite growth is not possible for the limited Earth.

Serge Latouche, highly skilled professor of economy at the University of Paris-Sud :

The decreasing is a provocative slogan which aims to fight with the set language: for the growth, always more... While we know very well that the growth brings us right in the wall . Thus behind this word, there is the questioning, the change of direction for our growth society [...] This is about finding what the experts call a bearable ecological footprint, i.e. a way of life more frugal (does not mean antiquated) to be compatible with the regeneration of the biosphere.

Space available on the planet is 126 billion acres but useful space, bio-productive, is only 30 billion. And since we're about 6 billion, it makes 4.5 acres available to nourish us, to dress us, for all our consumption and especially (it is often forgotten) to recycle our waste. Because each time we burn 1 liter of gasoline, 50 square feet are necessary to absorb emitted CO2. This space, we exceed it of 30%. Globally, if everyone was European, we would need three planets. And if everyone was Australian or American, we would need six of them. It's still possible for the moment because, contrary to the generally accepted idea, the South countries give us a considerable technical aid since if everyone was from Burkina Faso, a tenth of the planet would be enough.

Vincent Cheynet, founder of "casseurs de pub" and chief of the magazine "La Décroissance":

We approach the peak oil, from the moment we will extract the maximum of oil from the ground. After that, the oil extraction will decline, one imagines 3% per year and today, there is no alternative source of energy which has the same capacity as oil. Thus if we do nothing, quite naturally, the regulation is likely to be done by chaos and will create major socio-economic problems. And that's also an enormous stake of the decrease: vis-a-vis this rarefaction of the natural resources, today we must anticipate this movement. [...]

That's the reason why, for example, we fight for the suppression of the Grand Prix de France de Formule1. Obviously, a Grand Prix like this one does not represent an extraordinary pollution (it is certainly a consequent pollution), but we especially attack the symbol which the Grand Prix de France represents, i.e. a kind of paroxysm of pollution, plundering of natural resources, wasting and we think that we will manage also to transform the society by attacking this type of symbol. This way, we'll make understand people that this insane race to technics, growth and wasting cannot continue eternally.

Alain Gras, professor of sociology in La Sorbonne :

It is only in 1900, therefore hardly more than one century ago, that fossil energy won against renewable energy. Today, we just know the fossil energy as a mean of development. Thus, I think that it would be necessary to try to return to other energy, obviously to renewable energy. And try all of them. And indeed, a new frugality in the use of energy. [...] To modify our behaviour with energy, it's obviously to have less comfort in the everyday life and in particular also to decrease mobility. Because mobility is the large greedy one, it's the big catastrophe on the energy level .

Integral script of the show (in French) (many thanks to the speech recognition)

"It's now time to understand how much the desire of going quick is insane when we turn around " (Albert Jacquard)

On the Paul Lamere's blog (see previous article), one can read an interesting note about iTunes.

Reminder: iTunes is a proprietary digital media player application, launched by Apple Computer in 2001, for playing and organizing digital music and video files. The program is also an interface to manage the music on Apple's popular iPod digital audio player. Additionally, iTunes can connect to the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) which allows users to purchase digital music and movie files that can be played by iPods and iTunes.

The article reminds that Apple sold, during the first quarter of 2006, its 50 millionth iPod. Right around the same time, Apple celebrated selling its 1 billionth song on iTunes, considered as a big commercial success.
But is it really true? If we divide 1 billion by 50 million, we notice that only 20 songs on average were sold, by iPod. Therefore, after having spent $200 or $300 for a luxury walkman, an average person spends $20 to put music iTunes on it.

Lamere concludes: if this user buys 1 song per month, the credit card transaction fees have to be eating up any potential profits.

exploits


The system can thus generate a X minutes-playlist, while going from Rage Against The Machine because you are irritated after the job and finishing with a piece of Schumann to arrive calm at the house. The whole with an unperceivable transition and only with tracks you like.

What are the commercial applications?
Beyond the example above, which remains criticable because the music is finally perception, one speaks about musical indexing: to find a solo of trumpet in a long jazz piece. That can also contribute to copyrights. As to help a film maker to find the music which corresponds to a scene. That also can help us to find the title of a song because we remember 3 tones.
Briefly, like often, Sun is right at the beginning of research, and at the beginning of discovery of new real applications.


Source: Sun, one month ago.

For those who do not know:
A metadata est une donnée servant à définir ou décrire une autre donnée quel que soit son support (papier ou électronique). Dans un organisme documentaire (une médiathèque par exemple) are data that describe other data. Generally, a set of metadata describe a single set of data, called a resource.Metadata are of special interest in various fields of computer science, e. g. information retrieval and the semantic web. Although many consider them a powerful tool to bridge the semantic gap, they are criticized severely by others.

internet

The navigational satellite GIOVE-A, launched recently, is the prototype of 30 satellites that will compose Galileo in 2010. Reminder: Galileo is a positioning system by satellite, the direct competitor of American GPS that everyone uses for the moment.

Because GPS satellites are payed by US taxpayers, the signal is free. Consumers need only purchase a GPS receiver. On another hand, Galileo must make money to reimburse its investors. That's why someone has to pay to get the PRN codes necessary to decode the signal.

And since Galileo and GPS will share frequency bandwidths, Europe and the US signed an agreement whereby some of Galileo's PRN codes must be open source. Nevertheless, after broadcasting its first signals on January 12, 2006, none of GIOVE-A's codes had been made public.

In mid-January, Mark Psiaki, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell and co-leader of Cornell's GPS Laboratory, requested the codes from Martin Unwin at Surrey Satellite Technology. Ltd, one of three privileged groups in the world with the PRN codes. Martin politely declined.
Then Mark contacts his friend Olivier Montenbruck, a German colleague. He realizes that even him wants to know the codes. Even Europeans were being frustrated!

Upset, Mark and his team develop in one week a algorithm to extract the codes. Two weeks later, he got a first result that he has to throw away 'cause the signal's repeat period was twice that expected. But in the middle of March, they end up with their first estimations, with a little tip from Olivier. Finally, on the first of April, they publish it on this website.
Two days later, Canadian-based GPS receiver manufacturer, NovAtel, downloaded the codes from the website and began tracking GIOVE-A for the first time.

Then, Galileo also publishes the PRN codes, mid-April. But they're not the ones used bu GIOVE-A. Furthermore, the same publication labelled the open source codes as Intellectual Property, claiming a licence is required for any commercial receiver.
"Apparently they were trying to make money on the open source code", says Mark.

But, afraid that cracking the code might have been copyright infringement, Psiaki's team consulted with Cornell's university counsel, and were told that while cracking the encryption of creative content like music or a movie, is illegal, cracking a navigation signal is an open game. Vamos!

The conclusion of this story: Europeans cannot copyright the data coming from a satellite that they built! It's quite odd if all the business-plan is based on seling the codes. I don't think so. And moreover, Galileo affirms that the final codes will be different. But now, we know how to do...

Researchers of the UCL, the University College of London, have completed a brain-scanning experiment using a functional Magnetic Resonance Imager (fMRI). It's now fashion: remember the hand controlled by the thought.

But this time, the subjects are men and women who must take a decision. The brain locked up in the MRI scan, they are presented with a series of slot machines that paid out different amounts of money: they have to find the best one.

Analyzing the operation of the brain during this stage, the scientists of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience unit intend to discover what allows us to make a decision, and to adapt this routine into an algorithm.

"If we can understand how people solve problems using past experience, we can design better decision-making machine algorithms that could be used in something like an autonomous robot..."
Nathaniel Daw says. He's the big boss.
But he's cracking up when he adds "or in perfecting systems such as those used by Amazon.com to price books with." Maybe he has a cousin who works for Amazon, we don't know.

Anyway, another lab, the Accenture Technology Lab, develops in parallel a system of camera-monitoring based on this technology. While a computer can treat a lot of data without being able to interpret and make true decisions, a human being can treat only a few data at the same time but more intelligently. The system of Accenture should be able to detect anomalies and to inform a guard if necessary.