We experimentally demonstrate a class of tractor beams created by coherently superposing coaxial Bessel beams. These optical conveyors have periodic intensity variations along their axes that act as highly effective optical traps for micrometer-scale objects. Varying the Bessel beams' relative phase shifts the traps axially thereby selectively transports trapped objects either downstream or upstream along the length of the beam.
It seems like something is very wrong with the picture when you read the news and it sounds more like a science fiction novel than a newsflash. For example, Barnaby Jack showed how an attacker with a laptop, located up to 50 feet from a victim, could remotely hack a pacemaker and deliver an 830-volt shock.
The world is turning to YouTube to watch Felix Baumgartner's daring stratospheric skydive this morning.
At last count, the video-sharing site's live stream of the high-altitude jump had attracted more than 7.2 million viewers. They are currently watching the last stages of egress before Baumgartner jumps from approximately 128,000 feet.
Baumgartner is attempting to set four records: the fastest freefall (an unprecedented Mach 1), the longest sustained freefall, a free fall from the highest-ever starting point, and the highest ascent in a manned balloon.
It's been the FBI's dream for years -- to do near-instant DNA analysis using mobile equipment in the field -- and now "Rapid DNA" gear is finally here.
The idea is that you simply drop into the system a cotton swab with a person's saliva, for example, and the "Rapid DNA" machine spits out the type of DNA data that's needed to pin down identity. Now that such equipment exists, the FBI is pushing to get it into the hands of law enforcement agencies as soon as possible.
Men who use computers as they enter their winter years have a better chance of avoiding dementia than those who don't, according to a new Australian study.
Older Men Who Use Computers Have Lower Risk of Dementia, compiled by researchers at the University of Western Australia's Centre for Health and Ageing, is one output of the the Health In Men Study (HIMS) study that has seen “5506 community-dwelling men aged 69 to 87 years followed for up to 8.5 years.”
A biometric security system based on how a user moves their eyes is being developed by technologists in Finland. Writing in the International Journal of Biometrics, the team explains how a person's saccades, their tiny, but rapid, involuntary eye movements, can be measured using a video camera. The pattern of saccades is as unique as an iris or fingerprint scan but easier to record and so could provide an alternative secure biometric identification technology.
As I wrote recently, data scientists have been able to decode unstructured data to accurately predict where violence will occur in Afghanistan. Now, they can also mine unstructured data to determine the identity of a document’s writer. All of us, it seems, have a “write-print” as unique as our fingerprint.
Brain hacking is a hot subject right now and has moved from science fiction into reality. At the Usenix Security Symposium, one mind hack looked to create better security and an “unbreakable crypto” system; another brain hack focused on threats to privacy by extracting secrets with brain computer interfaces. Yet other scientists have created a helmet to make an Inception-like world in which reality can be manipulated.
Wake up and smell the coffee. Or stay asleep and smell it. You might learn something either way. People can make new scent associations while they slumber, which suggests that sleep has real learning potential.
"We know we can consolidate the day's information while we sleep," says Anat Arzi at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. "But attempts to teach new facts using verbal information have failed."
The South Australian government has backed the commercialisation plans of a locally developed DNA barcoding technology to be launched internationally as a security and authentication tool.
Biotech outfit GeneWorks claims its DNA barcoding invention, which can invisibly mark a range of valued items, is compatible with forensic analysis and legal applications, unlike technologies currently on the market.
