Self Aware Robot ?

Step towards conscious bots http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,20792279^15321^^nbv^15306,00.html NOVEMBER 21, 2006

SCIENTISTS claim to have created an intelligent, four-legged robot that can sense damage to its body and, unaided, think of a way to recover. Cornell University researchers Hod Lipson and Victor Zykov, with Josh Bongard of the University of Vermont, made a robot that could observe its own motion through sensors built into its joints, and generated its own concept of itself, or at least its physical structure, in its internal computer. It used this internal model to figure out how to walk on its four legs and eight motorised joints. "In the beginning, the robot starts off and doesn't know what it looks like," Mr Lipson said last week. "You look at it, and you see that it's a four-legged machine, but the robot itself doesn't know that. All it knows is that it could be a snake, it could be a tree, it could have six legs." It used various movements of its joints, firstly to generate hypotheses and then to develop an accurate conception of itself, he said. They then tested its ability to adapt to injury by shortening one of its legs. "The robot knows something's wrong," Mr Lipson said. Animals compensate for injury by limping to favour an injured leg. Machines can be programmed to react to a problem in a certain way, but when damaged in unexpected ways they usually are doomed. This robot responded by generating a new concept of its structure, accurately sensing that it had been altered and coming up with a way to walk with a different gait to compensate for the injury. This robot's awareness of itself and ability to adapt on its own separates it from its mechanical brethren. "We don't think this is self-consciousness, which is a robot thinking about itself thinking, but I do think it is moving in the direction of consciousness," Mr Lipson said. Apart from contributing to a philosophical debate, the research has practical implications. "There is a need for planetary robotic rovers to be able to fix things on their own," Mr Bongard said. "Robots on other planets must be able to continue their missions without human intervention in the event that they are damaged and cannot communicate their problems back to Earth." Christoph Adami, of California's Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences at Claremont, wrote a commentary Titled What do Robots Dream of? accompanying the research. Mr Adami described how a robot such as this might perform in unknown territory, exploring the landscape and then dreaming of new ways to overcome obstacles it had encountered. "Even though the robots seem to prefer to dream about themselves rather than electric sheep, they just may have unwittingly helped us understand what dreams are for," he said. Reminded of malicious robots and computers turning on their human masters in movies such as The Terminator and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mr Lipson was not worried. "We just pull the plug out of the robot, that's all," he said. "There are more immediate things to worry about than to worry about that." Reuters The Australian

Phishing

On the Wild Wild Web, where scams, fraud, and identity theft are
commonplace, which browser protects you more effectively? Is it
Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 or Mozilla's Firefox 2.0?

According to a new report from software (Embedded image moved to file:
pic12319.jpg)testing firm SmartWare -- a report commissioned by Mozilla
-- the answer is Firefox, at least when it comes to protection against
phishing scams.


Phishing is the practice of directing Web surfers to fake Web sites that
prompt them to reveal personal data, such as social security (Embedded
image moved to file: pic06272.jpg)numbers. The fraudulent sites almost
always steal the designs and logos of well-known, trusted companies,
such as eBay and CitiGroup, to dupe users into divulging their data.


Phighting Phishing


Both IE7 and Firefox have built-in antiphishing features designed to
alert you when you've hit a fraudulent site. With Microsoft's browser,
antiphishing is turned on by default. Each Web site you visit is checked
against a database maintained by Microsoft, and known frauds are
blocked.


Firefox has two antiphishing options. With the first, the sites you
visit are checked against a local database on your computer. With the
second, the sites you visit are checked against a live database
maintained by Google.


In the SmartWare test, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 blocked 690 known
phishing sites, or 66.35 percent of the total. In contrast, Firefox
blocked 78.85 percent when using a local antiphishing database and 81.54
percent when using the online database.


Experts Weigh In


Advantage Firefox? Perhaps. "Historically, Firefox has had superior
security," said Patrick Peterson of security firm IronPort. "However,
Microsoft has been working very hard on IE7, which shows great promise
in closing this gap."


Peterson added that Microsoft's new work could be "a great leap
forward," but that it's still too soon to tell which browser will claim
the title of being the safest. "It is true that we see Firefox users
infected less frequently," he said, "but that is primarily because they
are the more technically educated users."


Andrew Braunberg, a security expert with research firm Current Analysis,
said there's another reason that Microsoft's users are more frequently
attacked than Mozilla's: Microsoft's size puts a target on its back.


"Microsoft will say, 'It's not that our software is less secure
inherently, it's just that we're a bigger target,'" said Braunberg.
People go hunting for Microsoft because "that's where the action is."


And, like Peterson, Braunberg said that Microsoft is taking large
strides in security, above all with the impending release of Windows
Vista. "In a lot of ways, Vista is morphing into a security platform, as
opposed to just being an OS."


Microsoft, said Braunberg, has been active in "beefing up the security
with Vista."


User Beware


But no matter how safe your browser -- or even which browser you choose
-- your own behavior might be the worst threat against you.


According to IronPort's Peterson, his firm's internal research shows
that a vast majority of the world's virus attacks and malicious software
infects users' machines with their complete permission.


"End-users are regularly infected by purposefully clicking on links," he
said, noting that even a perfect level of browser security would cause a
reduction in malicious software infections by 20 percent at the most.

"Better browser security is needed," said Peterson. "But no one should
confuse this with a solution to what ails us."
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=032001VRKCKG

Genius made not Born

Read an interesting article in New Scientist (?) the other day.
The interesting conclusion was that genius is much more a product of
environment rather than genetics.

The upshot is that people who are really good at something
generally work really hard to get that way. Harder than everyone else.
Generally, they have a real love for what they do, which makes it
easier for them to be dedicated.

The good news for us all is that we all can be geniuses (genii ?)
The bad news is that most of us don't want it badly enough.

Wave & Tidal Energy Generation - Sci-Tech article

Wave & Tidal Energy Generation

http:/www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=012000O7YUNC

In the quest for oil-free power, a handful of small companies are staking claims on the boundless energy of the rising and ebbing sea.

The technology that would draw energy from ocean tides to keep light bulbs and laptops aglow is largely untested, but several newly minted companies are reserving tracts of water from Alaska's Cook Inlet to Manhattan's East River in the belief that such sites could become profitable sources of electricity.

The trickle of interest began two years ago, said Celeste Miller, spokeswoman for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The agency issues permits that give companies exclusive rights to study the tidal sites. Permit holders usually have first dibs on development licenses.

Tidal power proponents liken the technology to little wind turbines on steroids, turning like windmills in the current. Water's greater density means fewer and smaller turbines are needed to produce the same amount of electricity as wind turbines.

After more than two decades of experimenting, the technology has advanced enough to make business sense, said Carolyn Elefant, co-founder of the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition, a marine energy lobbying group formed in May 2005.

In the last four years, the federal commission has approved nearly a dozen permits to study tidal sites. Applications for about 40 others, all filed in 2006, are under review. No one has applied for a development license, Miller said.

The site that is furthest along in testing lies in New York's East River, between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, where Verdant Power plans to install two underwater turbines this month as part of a small pilot project.

Power from the turbines will be routed to a supermarket and parking garage on nearby Roosevelt Island.

Verdant co-founder and President Trey Taylor said the six-year-old company will spend 18 months studying the effects on fish before putting in another four turbines.

The project will cost more than $10 million, including $2 million on fish monitoring equipment, Taylor said.

"It's important to spend this much initially," Taylor said. "It's like our flight at Kitty Hawk. It puts us on a path to commercialization and we think eventually costs will fall really fast."

If all goes well, New York-based Verdant could have up to 300 turbines in the river by 2008, Taylor said. The turbines would produce as much as 10 megawatts of power, or enough electricity for 8,000 homes, he said.

With 12,380 miles of coastline, the U.S. may seem like a wide-open frontier for the fledgling industry, but experts believe only a few will prove profitable. The ideal sites are close to a power grid and have large amounts of fast-moving water with enough room to build on the sea floor while staying clear of boat traffic.

"There are thousands of sites, but only a handful of really, really good ones," said Roger Bedard of the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit organization in Palo Alto, Calif., that researches energy and the environment.

"If you're sitting on top of the best scallop fishing in the world, you can't put these things down there," said Chris Sauer, president of Ocean Renewable Power Co. in Miami. The two-year-old company is awaiting approval for federal study permits in Cook Inlet and Resurrection Bay in Alaska, and Cobscook Bay and the St. Croix River in Maine.

Other prime tidal energy sites lie beneath San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and in Knik Arm near Anchorage, Bedard said.

Government and the private sector in Europe, Canada and Asia have moved faster than their U.S. counterparts to support tidal energy research. As of June 2006, there were small facilities in Russia, Nova Scotia and China, as well as a 30-year-old plant in France, according to a report by EPRI.

"I expect the first real big tidal plant in North America is going to be built in Nova Scotia," said Bedard, who led the study. "They have the mother of all tidal passages up there."

The industry is coalescing over worries about dependence on foreign oil, volatile oil prices and global warming. Many states have passed laws requiring a certain percentage of energy from renewable sources, and tidal entrepreneurs believe they will be looking to diversify beyond wind and solar power.

Elefant said the industry is still trying to figure out how much energy it will be able to supply from tides, as well as waves.

"While ocean energy may not power everything in the U.S., it will be functioning in tandem with other renewable resources and supplement other sea-based technologies," said Elefant, a lawyer in Washington D.C. "The most important thing is for the nation to invest in a diverse energy supply."

In the United States, wave energy technology is less advanced than tidal and will need more government subsidies, Bedard said, however, the number of good wave sites far exceeds that of tidal. Wave power collection involves cork or serpent-like devices that absorb energy from swells on the ocean's surface, whereas tidal machines sit on the sea floor.

Tidal energy technology has been able to build on lessons learned from wind power development, while wave engineers have had to start virtually from scratch, Bedard said. But a few companies are working aggressively to usher wave power into the energy industry.

Aqua Energy, could start building a wave energy plant at Makah Bay in Washington state within two years, said Chief Executive Officer Alla Weinstein. Another wave plant, whose backers include major Norwegian energy company Norsk Hydro ASA, is under construction off the coast of Portugal.

Miller said the commission has received applications for three wave energy permits in Oregon, all filed since July.

With the uptick in interest in tidal and wave energy sites, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is holding a public meeting in Washington on Dec. 6 to discuss marine energy technologies. The meeting can be viewed on the commission's Web site.

PiezoElectricity - harnessing the power of human movement

Scientists are working to harness the power of human movement, writes Danny Bradbury.

FIVE years ago, when the World Trade Centre fell, a shockwave rolled around the world. It ruined many lives and sank a few companies. But who would have known that it would hit Sir Trevor Baylis' business so hard?

Sir Trevor, a British inventor best known for the wind-up radio, was developing a shoe that would charge your mobile phone battery as you walked. The shoe had a slot for the battery and captured some of the energy discharged in the average human step, roughly eight watts (about eight joules), and used it to charge a phone over thousands of strides.

Sir Trevor even walked 160 kilometres across the Namibian desert to raise money for the idea. But it collapsed along with the twin towers.

"After 9/11, anyone wearing electric shoes would look like a bomber. That's what you have to watch with any electric kit that you carry nowadays," he muses.

Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a plane by carrying explosives in his heels - which made customs officials particularly nervous about footwear - has a lot to answer for.

The idea of harvesting otherwise wasted energy isn't new, but it's beginning to gain appeal. Researchers are hoping to reap energy from people and are also planning to use the vibrations from motors and even passing trains to generate power.

Converting vibrations into a tiny charge may be enough to power a wireless sensor, or thousands of footsteps could power lights and audio systems.

Piezoelectricity has been the biggest hope for energy harvesters.

Discovered in 1880, piezoelectric crystals emit a charge when subjected to sudden mechanical stress.

When you press the button on an electric lighter or the ignition switch on your gas oven, a piezocrystal is probably causing the spark.

In 1996, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab doctoral student Thad Starner wrote a paper about "the potential for energy harvesting".

Using a piezoelectric shoe insert that flexed with each step, or a flywheel system connected to a small spring in the back of the shoe, five to eight joules could be recovered from each foot-fall, he said. Other options for harvesting human energy included finger motion (a 90-words-per-minute typist can generate 19 milliwatts). Dr Starner believed that by using footfall energy alone, he could power a small wearable computer.

Building a low-powered wearable computer in the lab is one thing, but commercialising wearable computing and wearable power would involve a huge design and user testing effort. Besides, such a computing technology hasn't captured the public imagination yet. People don't want to walk around looking like one of the Borg from Star Trek.

Catch an Elevator to Space

This is an exciting idea and one that has been around for a while.
Instead of building massive rockets to blast people into space,
have a permanent space elevator to take people to space.

The idea is to have a very large weight in space on the end of a
VERY strong cable attached to earth, and have an elevator
run up & down the cable.
The centrifugal force of the weight spinning around is supposed to counter
the force of gravity.

With the advent of new materials such as carbon nano-tubes, a cable strong enough
is now feasible. Given enough money it seems that the space elevator could
be built. Nasa has even sponsored research into the concept.

• Elevator 2010
• Nasa Institute for advanced Concepts
•