Google Glass

A new hack for the ingenious Google Glass enables users to control the device, and take pictures, just with brainwaves. By combining the glasses with an electroencephalography (EEG) headset, users now can click pictures without moving a single muscle and just by concentrating on subject, The BBC reported. London-based start-up 'This Place' said the gadget could be beneficial in high-pressure hands-free situations - such as during surgery. It has released the MindRDR software for free in the hope that developers will adapt it for other uses, report said. However, Google has made it very clear that it does not support the hack. A spokesperson said that Google Glass cannot read anyone's mind. We have not reviewed, nor approved, the app so it won't be available in the Glass app store. The app works when one attaches an EEG headset to the Google Glass, the headset is used to measure when certain parts of the brain show a greater level of activity. In this case, the MindRDR software monitors when the wearer engages in high levels of concentration. Within Google Glass's screen, a white horizontal line is shown and as a user concentrates, the white line rises up the screen. Once it reaches the top, a picture is taken using Glass's inbuilt camera.

Digging Deep: How to Feed the World With Perennial Food Crops

More than 9 billion people will live on Earth by 2050. They’ll need to eat somehow, but we’re already running out of arable land. And many types of agriculture — including conventional farming of annual crops, which need to be replanted each year — leave fields nutrient-poor, reducing future productivity. But soil scientist Jerry Glover is optimistic about feeding more people while conserving farmland soil. The solution, he believes, is to focus less on annual crops, which dominate world agriculture, and to embrace instead the potential of perennials, crops that can be harvested more than once without replanting. Glover, a senior sustainable agricultural systems research adviser at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), spent years as a researcher at the Land Institute in Kansas. There he realized the state’s perennial grasses might hold the secret to protecting soil, reducing fertilizer use and getting multiple harvests out of one plant. Farming, Glover discovered, could have a neutral, even positive, impact on the agricultural ecosystem. In 2008, Nature named 48-year-old Glover one of five “crop researchers who could change the world.” Discover talked with Glover about his plan for doing just that.

High-tech FingerReader reads to the blind in real time

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing an audio reading device to be worn on the index finger of people whose vision is impaired, giving them affordable and immediate access to printed words. The so-called FingerReader, a prototype produced by a 3D printer, fits like a ring on the user's finger, equipped with a small camera that scans text. A synthesized voice reads words aloud, quickly translating books, restaurant menus and other needed materials for daily living, especially away from home or office. Reading is as easy as pointing the finger at text. Special software tracks the finger movement, identifies words and processes the information. The device has vibration motors that alert readers when they stray from the script, said Roy Shilkrot, who is developing the device at the MIT Media Lab. Reading medical forms For Jerry Berrier, 62, who was born blind, the promise of the FingerReader is its portability and offer of real-time functionality at school, a doctor's office and restaurants. "When I go to the doctor's office, there may be forms that I wanna read before I sign them," Berrier said. He said there are other optical character recognition devices on the market for those with vision impairments, but none that he knows of that will read in real time. Berrier manages training and evaluation for a federal program that distributes technology to low-income people in Massachusetts and Rhode Island who have lost their sight and hearing. He works from the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts. "Everywhere we go, for folks who are sighted, there are things that inform us about the products that we are about to interact with. I wanna be able to interact with those same products, regardless of how I have to do it," Berrier said. Pattie Maes, an MIT professor who founded and leads the Fluid Interfaces research group developing the prototype, says the FingerReader is like "reading with the tip of your finger and it's a lot more flexible, a lot more immediate than any solution that they have right now." Developing the gizmo has taken three years of software coding, experimenting with various designs and working on feedback from a test group of visually impaired people. Much work remains before it is ready for the market, Shilkrot said, including making it work on cellphones. Shilkrot said developers believe they will be able to affordably market the FingerReader but he could not yet estimate a price. The potential market includes some of the 11.2 million people in the United States with vision impairment, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Access to text not available in Braille Current technology used in homes and offices offers cumbersome scanners that must process the desired script before it can be read aloud by character-recognition software installed on a computer or smartphone, Shilkrot said. The FingerReader would not replace Braille — the system of raised dots that form words, interpreted by touch. Instead, Shilkrot said, the new device would enable users to access a vast number of books and other materials that are not currently available in Braille. Developers had to overcome unusual challenges to help people with visual impairments move their reading fingers along a straight line of printed text that they could not see. Users also had to be alerted at the beginning and end of the reading material. Their solutions? Audio cues in the software that processes information from the FingerReader and vibration motors in the ring. The FingerReader can read papers, books, magazines, newspapers, computer screens and other devices, but it has problems with text on a touch screen, said Shilkrot. That's because touching the screen with the tip of the finger would move text around, producing unintended results. Disabling the touch-screen function eliminates the problem, he said. Berrier said affordable pricing could make the FingerReader a key tool to help people with vision impairment integrate into the modern information economy. "Any tool that we can get that gives us better access to printed material helps us to live fuller, richer, more productive lives, Berrier said.

Burn, patient, burn: medical inferno in China

BEIJING A therapist pours alcohol over a patient and sets him alight - for some in China, playing with fire is a treatment for illness. So-called ‘fire therapy’, which proponents claim can cure stress, indigestion, infertility and even cancer, has been used for hundreds of years and recently garnered a blaze of attention in Chinese media. There is no orthodox medical evidence that it is effective, a fact that matters little to one of China’s most prominent fire therapists. ‘Fire therapy is the fourth revolution in human history... it surpasses both Chinese and Western medicine,’ said Zhang Fenghao, who trains students at a dingy apartment in Beijing and charges around 300 yuan ($48) per hour for treatment. He applied a herbal paste to a patient’s back, covered it with a towel and poured on water and a 95 percent rubbing alcohol, adding proudly: ‘Using this method, patients can avoid operations.’ The man, Qi Lijun, lay on his front placidly as Zhang flicked a cigarette lighter, igniting a miniature inferno of orange and blue flames dancing above his spine. ‘It feels warm, not painful, just warm,’ said the 47-year-old, who recently suffered a brain haemorrhage that affected his memory and mobility. ‘I think it’s effective.’ Many in China cannot afford expensive treatment for chronic ailments and state health insurance is limited, sparking demand for cheaper alternative therapies. Zhao Jing, 49, who suffers from chronic back pain, had at first been shocked by the idea of the treatment, but added: ‘After learning everything I don’t have fears any more.’ The practice is based on Chinese folk beliefs that health depends on maintaining a balance of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ elements within the body. ‘We start a fire on top of the body, which gets rid of cold inside the body,’ said Zhang, who claims to have lit blazes on foreign diplomats and senior Chinese officials. The treatment gained renewed public attention this month when photos of a man having fire applied to his crotch went viral on Chinese social media. ‘Sir, how well would you like your meat cooked?’ joked one microblogger on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo. State media have sought to dampen down enthusiasm for fire therapy, running several reports on shady therapists, some without certification and employing only a bucket of water to prevent conflagrations. ‘There have been injuries, patients have been burned on their faces and bodies, because of a lack of standards,’ said Zhang. ‘I have taught tens of thousands of students, and we have never seen an accident.’ So far the practice has received little attention from medical journals, but the theory behind it bears some relation to the Chinese medicinal practice of ‘cupping’, where a flame burns away the oxygen inside a receptacle to create pressure on parts of a patient’s body. Several long-term studies of that supposed therapy have found little evidence of any effectiveness.

Pakistan’s IDP crisis

Over 350,000 people have been displaced since the start of the military offensive against militants in North Waziristan, according to the FATA Disaster Management Authority (FDMA). The fighting first escalated in May, but after this month’s deadly attack on Karachi airport — claimed by an Uzbek militant group and the Pakistani Taliban — the army officially launched Operation Zarb-e-Azb. As the military pounds Taliban hideouts in North Waziristan, internally displaced people (IDPs) are fleeing to safer areas, i.e. the towns of Bannu, Peshawar and Kohat. Roughly 4,000 families are reported to have crossed into Afghanistan and many more are being put up in refugee camps. The influx is likely to accelerate. These people — collateral damage in a war they are trapped in through no fault of their own — are poor and earn a living through farming, family trades and petty jobs. When war hits, they pack up their belongings — whatever they can fit into a bed sheet and carry on their backs — and leave home to go off into a rather uncertain future.IDP situations are dramatically challenging for any country; to have the resources to indefinitely sustain an exodus, and to create peace in the areas they left, so they can migrate back, is difficult. In fact, the number of people living as refugees from war or persecution around the world has hit 51.2 million, exceeding the 50 million mark for the first time since World War II. Conflicts are multiplying more and more, and at the same time old conflicts seem never to die. The worry is that Pakistan’s fragile civilian government and its institutions, already fighting on so many fronts, may lack the capacity and means to provide sufficient food, shelter, health and sanitation to those living in the camps, especially with Ramadan round the corner. Currently, the provincial government has released Rs 350 million for relief efforts, Senior Minister Sirajul Haq has announced a Ramadan relief package and has also said IDPs will be provided with SIMs. An emergency has been declared in all the hospitals of the area, and the IDPs are being provided free transport and schooling. At the same time, the government has banned international aid organizations from entering the area. Although most likely for security reasons, it is not the most practical decision to make. More importantly, city administrations and border check posts have begun a polio vaccination campaign as IDPs begin to arrive at transit points, making it mandatory to be vaccinated and turning away those who refuse the drops. This is vital as Pakistan is one of the few countries in the world where polio remains endemic, and 46 of the country’s 70 polio cases were reported this year to be from North Waziristan (mainly because of the vaccination ban imposed by the Taliban since 2012). Even though Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah has ruled out the possibility of opening Sindh’s borders to the IDPs this time round, tribal leaders estimate that between 5,000 and 10,000 will make it to Karachi in search of safety and livelihoods. In the Pakhtun culture, tribe matters and many IDPs travel to relatives’ homes for refuge. This raises questions about what these hundreds of thousands of people will do for employment, and whether they will be able to go back at all once the operation ends. Although the army has claimed to have closed off escape routes in North Waziristan and trapped the militants, it is virtually impossible to seal the area off totally. The militants can scatter into Shawal valley or cross the infamously porous Afghan border, and bide their time till deciding to return. That being said, the Swat IDP crisis was hailed as an international success story, and the hope is that this crisis will be handled the same way. A population exhausted by conflict could become a soft target for militants, making stability in the north west even more elusive. The IDP camps could become breeding grounds for the menace the army is trying to fight.

51 million dollars required for IDPs in Pakistan: WFP

Islamabad- World Food Programme (WFP) says it needs 51 million dollars for its relief activities in Pakistan until the end of the year. In an interview, WFP Pakistan Country Director Ms Castro said this included assistance to the newly displaced population from North Waziristan, families displaced earlier and people returning to their areas. She said the WFP has provided 15-day food rations to displaced families in Bannu and Lakki Marwat districts. WFP is distributing its standard food basket of wheat flour, pulses, vegetable oil and iodized salt.

Customizing Your Tech to Minimize Stress

What's the Latest? It's safe to say that, all things considered, the introduction of new technologies over the past 20 years have made us more stressed. Grasping an opportunity to reduce the trend, tech developers are trying to innovate new ways to de-stress gadgets and technology. These include smartphone apps designed to lower stress, devices aimed at measuring/controlling stress-causing hormones, and wearable technology that keeps track of the user's mood. There are other ways users of tech can amend their strategies to minimize the anxieties intrinsic in a tech-based world. What's the Big Idea?tech_stress One key to reducing tech stress is shifting the ways you access your devices. You can experiment with different strategies for temporarily unplugging yourself or make a plan to reduce the bad tech habits that lead to stress. These include better utilizing your e-mail inbox,modifying your workspace, and helping yourself remember to take breaks. It's important to note that completely excising tech from our lives is an unreasonable response to the negatives effects we see it causing. At the end of the day, stress doesn't come from technology but rather how we approach technology. The secret to our stress management is in modifying that approach.

NASA Launches "Flying Saucer" into Earth's Atmosphere

After weeks of delays, NASA has launched a prototype flying saucer they hope can one day be used for a mission to Mars. The saucer was released into the air with aid of a weather balloon this morning. It was then parachuted down through the upper reaches of the atmosphere in conditions similar to what the craft would experience on Mars. The parachute designs are nearly identical to the the kind that helped the twin Viking spacecraft reach the red planet in 1976.

Near the Center of a Black Hole

A black hole has never been seen directly. There are always clear indicators of a black hole at work. For instance, this image released by NASA shows a swirling whirlpool of hot gas. NASA explains: Studies of the bright light emitted by the swirling gas frequently indicate not only that a black hole is present, but also likely attributes. The gas surrounding GRO J1655-40, for example, has been found to display an unusual flickering at a rate of 450 times a second. Given a previous mass estimate for the central object of seven times the mass of our Sun, the rate of the fast flickering can be explained by a black hole that is rotating very rapidly. What physical mechanisms actually cause the flickering -- and a slower quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) -- in accretion disks surrounding black holes and neutron stars remains a topic of much research.

Poverty

Poverty is associated with the undermining of a range of key human attributes, including health. The poor are exposed to greater personal and environmental health risks, are less well nourished, have less information and are less able to access health care; they thus have a higher risk of illness and disability. Conversely, illness can reduce household savings, lower learning ability, reduce productivity, and lead to a diminished quality of life, thereby perpetuating or even increasing poverty. Poverty is often defined in absolute terms of low income – less than US$2 a day, for example. But in reality, the consequences of poverty exist on a relative scale. The poorest of the poor, around the world, have the worst health. Within countries, the evidence shows that in general the lower an individual’s socioeconomic position the worse their health. There is a social gradient in health that runs from top to bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum. This is a global phenomenon, seen in low, middle and high income countries.

Friendship and thrills in Caju

A 16-year-old Brazilian boy teaches an enchanted 15-year-old Cambodian girl how to samba. A Costa Rican taps an Australian on the shoulder, hides behind a Zambian and they all erupt in laughter. A bubbly bunch made up of a German, a Palestinian, a Kenyan, an American and two Brazilians blurt out the Queen mega-hit We Are The Champions. Another ebullient sextet are doing the Cuban Conga! Giggles, cheers and hugs are incessant as activities unfold. Welcome to the Football for Hope Festival 2014 in Caju, a poor district in Rio de Janeiro. Welcome to the experience of a lifetime for 192 youngsters from 27 nations from seven continents. They arrived on Wednesday, six teenagers apiece from the 32 participating organisations. On Thursday the activities began. The teenagers were separated from their compatriots and friends for games such as 'rock, paper, scissors, shoot', with the morning activities aimed at getting them to integrate with others who speak different languages. “I can samba!” said the aforementioned Cambodian, giggling widely. “I’m so happy. I never imagined I would have an opportunity like this. It’s even better than I imagined. I was shy at first but now I already have so many friends.” Rob O’Connor from British organisation Street League was hoping to be able to compete with his mates from north-east England. He’s glad he didn’t. “I didn’t want to get split up at first, but I think it made it much better. I got to meet so many people – from Brazil, from Vietnam, from all these other places – and I got along with them all. “The activities were class. It’s just been amazing. Being out here and getting together with all the delegations, it really puts it into perspective how much football really does change lives and bring people together. Words can’t describe this experience.” Lucas, from the Vila Olimpica Mane Garrincha programme, is actually from Caju, but this is a far cry from his usual day. “There’s a lot of drugs and violence where I live,” he explained. “Having an opportunity like this is incredible. I’ve made so many friends. I could have never imagined making friends with people from France, Australia and India. Everyone is really nice. “The activities are really fun. And we are all just laughing the whole time, everybody together. This is just an incredible experience.” In 2014, FIFA is supporting 108 organisations financially through its Football for Hope program - 26 from Brazil. Many of them have submitted a proposal on why coming to the Football for Hope Festival 2014 would benefit them in the moment and the future. The best 32 were chosen for a paradisiacal adventure. The organisations then had to select three boys and three girls to represent them - a tough task given that some have upwards of 250. “It was unbelievable,” a 15-year-old girl from Fundacao EPROCAD in Sao Paulo said of discovering she had been chosen. “I still can’t believe I’m here. I’m so, so happy.” All the youngsters will attend the quarter-final at the Maracana on Friday, and France fan Praveen Kumar took a break from debating with his Germany-supporting friend to concur: “I was very happy to get this opportunity,” said the youngster from Dream A Dream in India. “It’s been such a great experience. We’ve been making friends with people from all over the world. We’re all very happy.” Happiness was something there was a lot of on Day 1 of the Football for Hope Festival… along with giggles, singing and dancing.

Amazing Vedio