Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Major US food & beverage players caught plotting dirty PR tricks over BPA
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nzchook
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10:19 AM
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Robotics: Should war be easy as playing a computer game
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nzchook
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5:18 PM
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Sunday, June 07, 2009
Emerging global reach and sophistication of video surveillance
A couple of interesting recent insights on the emerging reach and sophistication of video surveillance:
In its latest report on surveillance technologies, IDC says rapid advancements in network surveillance technology are shifting the emphasis away from guns, guards, gates, and dogs and placing it on “more sophisticated, scalable security solutions,” which the research firm predicts will see worldwide surveillance/monitoring camera shipments grow from 9.3 million in 2007 to 26.5 million in 2013: an average annual growth of 45.0%.
Next generation of camera surveillance will have imbedded intelligence
Bir Bhanu, director of the Center for Research in Intelligent Systems, said the goal is “to understand the interaction of people from video networks, to figure out their intention.” Bhanu foresees a time, possibly within the next decade, when programs analyzing facial identification, emotional expressions, social interactions and contextual anomalies will be able to alert monitors or law enforcement personnel about someone who may be up to no good. He said a computer system could spot “person who brings a briefcase and does not normally carry a briefcase, or a person who is wearing a jacket in Riverside when it's 100 degrees outside. These simple things can be detected.”
THOUGHTS: How can we be sure that the needs of state and commerce for pervasive video surveillance do not override the individual's right of privacy? These market signals are reminiscent of the themes expressed in that movie The Minority Report.
KEYWORDS: Democracy, Freedom, Surveillance, Video, Artificial Intelligence
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nzchook
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10:26 PM
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Sunday, March 01, 2009
Residential building with segregated trash shutes for recycling
I ran across a really interesting waste recycling innovation reported in the Las Vegas Business Press. The article reported Rita Brandin, Executive vice president and development director of Newland Communities, as saying:
“It's not only construction elements but the operational ease you create for tenants to recycle. It's about having healthy living systems. For example, we have designed (in Union Park) a (residential) building with segregated trash chutes, so residents can put wet trash in one and what can be recycled in the other.”
THOUGHTS: What a great idea! We already do this for water and sewage. Separating packaging, household and food waste at source seems an obvious next step, for improving waste recycling efficiency and lowering operating (e.g. transport) costs.
KEY WORDS: Waste, Recycling, Building, Sustainability
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nzchook
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1:33 PM
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
Biofuel breakthrough from Texas
Fantastic news from The University of Texas! Professor R. Malcolm Brown Jr. and Dr. David Nobles Jr. have created a microbe that produces cellulose that can be turned into ethanol and other biofuels. Nobles says that the microbe could provide a significant portion of the nation's transportation fuel if production can be scaled up.
“The cyanobacterium is potentially a very inexpensive source for sugars to use for ethanol and designer fuels,” says Nobles, a research associate in the Section of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. Brown and Nobles say their cyanobacteria can be grown in production facilities on non-agricultural lands using salty water unsuitable for human consumption or crops.
- The new cyanobacteria use sunlight as an energy source to produce and excrete sugars and cellulose,
- Glucose, cellulose and sucrose can be continually harvested without harming or destroying the cyanobacteria (harvesting cellulose and sugars from true algae or crops, like corn and sugarcane, requires killing the organisms and using enzymes and mechanical methods to extract the sugars),
- Cyanobacteria that can fix atmospheric nitrogen can be grown without petroleum-based fertilizer input.
THOUGHTS: I these guys can really find a way to scale up the efficient and cost-effective production of this cyanobacteria… it could provide a sustainable and global breakthrough for the converging challenges climate change, peak oil and rampant food price rises.
KEY WORDS: Biotechnology, Biofuel, Energy, Peak Oil, Sustainability
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nzchook
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2:51 PM
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Wednesday, August 01, 2007
How about facial recognition from more than two miles away!
The U.S. Air Force's Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Battlelab (UAVB) has tested software that can pick desired features out of UAV video long before they become visible to the naked eye, according to Lt. Col. Timothy Cook, chief of the UAVB's Combat Applications Division. Based at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., the UAVB's mandate is to take existing hardware and weapons and integrate them with UAVs. The recognition software originally was developed for the Nevada gaming industry, to automatically spot problem gamblers when they enter casinos, Cook said. "It's based on the dimensions of your face," he said. "If I trained the camera on your face, it would plot the distance between the pupils of your eyes ... the length of your nose, the width of your mouth."
Intrigued by the possible applications to UAV surveillance video, the UAVB conducted a test last year at Eglin using streaming video from a Pointer UAV. A captain's face was entered into the computer as a search item, and the UAV was launched. "It starts beeping on this clump of trees," Cook said. "And they had to drive the UAV about another two miles before they could get close enough [to see] there was a vehicle underneath the trees." The captain whose face had been loaded into the computer was sitting in his truck eating lunch. "It found his face through the trees, through the windscreen, in the shadows of the trees, and we went, 'Wow, we need to explore this,'" Cook said. While the UAV Battlelab continues to pursue the Digital Imagery and Video Object Tracking software's application to operations, the technology also has found its way into the classified world, Cook said
THOUGHTS: Can you imagine how much more sophisticated the application is now after 3 years. Facial recognition via satellite? It's ironic that such technology might drive male combatants in the Middle East to wearing burqa's.
KEYWORDS: Facial recognition, UAV, intelligence, software
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nzchook
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4:22 PM
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Sunday, May 20, 2007
Carbon emissions trading - on the cusp of a boom?
Check out the just published Hill & Knowlton survey of 420 senior execs with USD 100 million plus companies in the United States, UK, Canada and China. It reports that:
- While 82% of the respondents closely monitor the issue of global warming, 65% said that they don’t yet have a defined energy strategy to deal with it.
- 65% said that no one within their organizations is tasked with defining the company’s energy strategy.
- 52% identified improved corporate reputation as the most important return on investment for environmental programs.
- 38% rated actual carbon emission reduction as the most important metric for return on investment for environmental programs.
Further to the above, I also ran across the “Preliminary results for the year ending 31st December 2006” of the Climate Exchange Plc. The Climate Exchange plc operates the world’s largest markets for trading carbon credits; the European Climate Exchange and the Chicago Climate Exchange. The report details a dramatic growth (be it from a low base) in global the carbon trading market…for example CLE chairman Richard Sandor reports:
"The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) saw its average daily volume increase by 610% over 2005. Total volume in the Carbon Financial Instrument (CFI) for 2005 was l.4 million tonnes, which grew to 10.3 million tonnes in 2006. For the first quarter 2007, average daily volume increased by 167% over the figure for the full year 2006. Our list of members also grew dramatically. We closed 2005 with 131 members which increased to 238 in 2006."
THOUGHTS: Both these reports signal that despite a sea change jump in global corporate interest in climate change, most businesses have yet to develop coherent strategies to engage the challenge. Those businesses that are acting have focused their reduction strategies around carbon emissions trading (Cap & Trade).
And that the growth in carbon credit trading in the US and Europe is explosive. And clearly the stock markets get it too. Just look at the financial share price rise of Climate Exchange Plc (CLE).
The is great news for the planet!
KEYWORDS: Climate Change, Sustainability, Carbon, Footprint reduction
Posted by
nzchook
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11:25 AM




