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A few enhancements and software will make the eye-wearable device.Google Glass ready to help people with Autism.Autism,a developmental disability,is known to cause communication and behavioral challenges.This software been designed to help those with Autism make eye contact,engage in conversations and easily read social situations."It coaches eye contact directly,rewarding points to the child or adult with Autism. Then,when they look at someone in the eye,their little computer screen shows the emotions the other person is feeling."said Ned Sahin,CEO and Founder of BRAIN POWER. The Brain Power system adds enhancements to Google Glass and then a suit of software."A mom can speak to her childthrough the device and actually see what he is seeing.We activate the camera so it becomes a remote version of her eyes,"sahin said.Clinical trials for the new technology will beginthis fall at Harvard Medical School.

Zimperium  on Monday revealed a stunning discovery by researcher Joshua Drake -- a flaw in Android's  Stagefright  media playback engine that could expose millions of mobile device users to attack without their having done anything. Stagefright, which processes several popular media formats, is implemented in native code -- C++ -- which is more prone to memory corruption than memory-safe languages such as Java, according to Zimperium. Stagefright has several remote code execution vulnerabilities that can be exploited using various methods, Zimperium said. The worst of them doesn't require any user interaction. The vulnerabilities critically expose 95 percent of Android devices -- about 950 million, by Zimperium's count. "Users of Android versions older than 4.1 are at extreme risk," Drake told LinuxInsider. The No-Touch Flaw Attackers need nothing more than a victim's mobile phone number to exploit the most dangerous Stagefright flaw, Zim...

Sensors are increasingly making a foray into our homes in order to furnish and bring to life the concept of an automated smart home. This concept was rallied by the onset of device certification programmes like Apple’s HomeKit. A new smart home-focused hardware start-up called Notion is in the market and aims at putting an app in the pocket of people to send automated reports of your domestic happenings. The makers of Notion, Loop Labs, have built a network of sensors that are compatible with HomeKit and can be placed around your home for you to detect events in your house, including opening of doors, lights being switched on/off , a fire alarm going off, washing machine developing a leak, the fridge losing its cool, and also, how much gas is left in your barbecue propane tank! Each device has sensors that can be used to detect and report various events, thereby letting you customise the function of the system to your home and lifestyle. You can also select how many sensor un...

An anklet attached to a special running sock helps you improve your running technique. Running is a brilliantly simple and effective way to get fit. It takes less time than you would spend commuting to your gym and you can experience the goodness that only a stress – relieving workout can bring about. However simple it might sound, running is not easy. Most of us get a coach for whichever form of exercise we choose – from weightlifting to pranayama. But, as far as running is concerned, we assume we don’t need a coach for we’ve been running since childhood. But, if the technique is wrong, it will eventually cause you chronic pain that will force you to give it up. The market is ready for a tech solution, and Sensoria has come up with a concept that can detect and improve your running technique. The makers raised $100,000 in crowdfunding and another $5 million in investment. The device, priced at $199, is an anklet attached to a special running sock. It coaches you with real...

A web portal that helps you plan your media spend by giving you details about your competitors’ ads. In the last few years, a number of tools have made their presence in the advertising space. There have been tools in the market to help advertisers for quite some time now, for it is easy to follow these web ads and know where they work. But, as a start–up, how do you know where your ad will work? You would not have the budget you want, as is the case with start ups, so, spending it wisely is your only recourse. But, as the need arises, new tools come in the market. One such tool is WhatRunsWhere. If you have a competitor and know that they are getting lots of leads from online ads, WhatRunsWhere can help you track those ads. The application can tell you all the ads that your competitor has created, where the ads are appearing, and what is the traction for each ad. Based on this data, you can plan your online media spend. This tool has a simple interface to look at a larg...

The 350-year-old mystery of why pendulum clocks hanging from the same wall synchronize over time may finally be solved, scientists say. In 1665, Dutch physicist  Christiaan Huygens , inventor of the pendulum clock, was lying in bed with a minor illness and watching two of his clocks hanging on a wall, said Henrique Oliveira, a mathematician at the University of Lisbon and co-author of a new study detailing the findings. Huygens noticed something odd: No matter how the pendulums on these clocks began, within about a half-hour, they ended up swinging in exactly the opposite direction from each other. The cause of this effect — what Huygens called an "odd kind of sympathy" — remained a mystery for centuries. But recently, scientists analyzing two pendulum clocks hanging from the same beam found that the clocks could influence each other through small forces exerted on the supporting beam. However, "nobody tested properly the idea of clocks hanging on the same wall,...

A global arms race to make artificial-intelligence-based autonomous weapons is almost sure to occur unless nations can ban the development of such weapons, several scientists warn. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, physicist Stephen Hawking and other tech luminaries have signed an open letter warning against the dangers of starting a global arms race of  artificial intelligence (AI) technology  unless the United Nations supports a ban on weapons that humans "have no meaningful control over." The letter, which was issued by the Future of Life organization, is being presented today (July 27) at the International Joint Conference On Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina. [ Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures ] "The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and t...

A new, extremely precise measure of Avogadro's number, a fundamental constant, could ensure solid footing for a new definition of the kilogram that does not rely on a single hunk of metal sitting in France. Every junior high school chemistry student learned Avogadro's number, or 6.022 X 10 ^23, a huge value that dwarfs the  number of stars in the universe . Because Avogadro's number defines how many atoms or molecules are in a mole of matter, each mole of a substance weighs a different amount depending on the substance in question. So, a single mole of water would weigh just 0.56 ounces (16 grams), while a mole of lead would weigh about 7.3 ounces (207.2 grams). Scientists have tried to precisely measure Avogadro's number in the past, each time using a single  silicon  ball that weighs 2.2 pounds (1 kg). Because silicon crystallizes into a lattice with eight atoms for each repeating unit of the lattice, they can get at Avogadro's number by measuring the vol...

Deep learning is the latest incarnation of the neural network, which inspired a number of chip designs in the late 1980s before researchers lost interest in using the technology for real-world applications: other algorithms turned out to be better at recognition tasks. Researchers then turned to techniques such as support vector machines in image processing and Gaussian models in speech recognition.                    The problem for the neural network was primarily one of size. The technology of the time could only support networks of limited size, even using specially designed devices, such as a 2000-neuron chip presented by Bell Labs at the 1991 International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Experiments with neural networks in the 1990s and 2000s used a fairly flat structure, with no more than three layers of neurons – an input layer, a middle 'hidden' layer and an output layer – feeding data forw...

In an era of slick gadgets, PCs are the dinosaurs, ensnared in wire clutter, sporting tired 2D cameras and stricken with the occasional blue screen of death. Technology coming up in 2015, though, is set to make PCs more interactive, fun and perhaps nosier than you’d like them to be. Apple’s iPad changed the way people viewed computers and spurred PC innovation. Hardware makers drew ideas from mobile devices, gaming consoles and even 3D printers to rethink the PC, and the resulting new technologies will have a profound effect on how laptops and desktops are used next year and into the future. Perhaps the most interesting idea is Intel’s “wire-free” PC, in which wireless technology will replace display, charging and data transfer cables. Chip maker Intel next year will show an experimental laptop that has no ports, and relies completely on wireless technology to connect to monitors and external storage devices. Further reading:  The future is now: The 10 biggest tech innov...

Nikon announced  the development and deployment of OPTIA - a device that is able to measure all forms of lens aberration. The new system includes also a dedicated image simulator. This technology will help the company produce " high-performance lenses with unique characteristics " and " provide customers with interchangeable lenses that offer new forms of value never before seen ": "While the light used for exposure with IC steppers and scanners is of a very narrow band of wavelengths, light used by camera lenses covers a wide band of wavelengths that includes the entire visible range. What's more, the amount of aberration that occurs with camera lenses is significantly greater. OPTIA is equipped with a brand new aberration measurement sensor that responds to these characteristics of camera lenses, making it a ground-breaking device capable of measuring nearly all aspects of optical performance for a wide variety of camera lenses. In addition to re...

Researchers from South Korea's Hanyang University and the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) have got together to resolve the journaling of journal anomaly in the Android IO stack. Translation: They have worked out a way to improve life with a smartphone. They presented their work at this year's USENIX technical conference in Santa Clara, California, which took place from July 8 to 10. Their paper is titled "WALDIO: Eliminating the Filesystem Journaling in Resolving the Journaling of Journal Anomaly." They said they successfully eliminated the root cause for journaling of journal  anomaly , the filesystem journaling. The authors believe that the  performance  of the  smartphone  is governed by the performance of the storage device, not by the performance of the airlinks. "In Android, it is reported that more than 70% page writes generated by the  smartphone application  are for filesystem journal and dominant fraction of ...