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Tue, Jul 28 12:55 PM

Washington, July 28 (ANI): Forming an international team with US experts, an IIT Kharagpur researcher is developing a new in-car yawn-detection system that will keep an eye on a driver while behind the wheel.

Aurobinda Routray and his colleagues - including Indian-origin researchers Aurobinda Mishra of Vanderbilt University and Mihir Mohanty of ITER - say that their system will warn a drive to pull over and take a break when he/she starts to yawn.

Writing about the new computer program in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics, the researchers have revealed that it is based around an in-car camera hooked up to image-processing software that captures a sequence of images of the driver's face.

The team say that the system analyses changes in the face, and accurately identifies yawning as distinct from other facial movements-such as smiling, talking, and singing.

According to them, the yawn frequency can be correlated with fatigue behaviour, and hooked up to a warning system to alert drivers to the need to take a break.

They believe that the program will be effective at yawn detection regardless of image intensity and contrast, small head movements, viewing angle, spectacle wearing, and skin colour.

The researchers point out that for traffic safety, it is essential to recognize and understand the physical and mental stress leading to fatigue in drivers.

They reckon that a system that watches the driver and analyses their facial expressions would be so much simpler and less invasive. (ANI)

Tue, Jul 28 03:59 PM

New Delhi, July 28 (IANS) Can hospitals in a big metropolis such as Delhi cope with the outcome of a covert anthrax attack, in spite of an effective public health response which could be tripped by delays in detecting the attack and initiating a response?

Scientists in the US have recommended counter-measures to minimize a hospital surge resulting from anthrax-related illness and a response in the first two days after a major bio-terrorism attack.

In a study they have examined one of the major bio-terrorism response programmes of the Centres of Disease Control (CDC), called the Cities Readiness Initiative (CRI).

The researchers found that a CRI-compliant prevention of disease campaign starting two days after exposure would protect as many as 86 percent of exposed victims from illness.

However, each additional day needed to complete the campaign would result in as much as three percent more hospitalizations in the exposed population.

Unsustainable levels of hospitalizations would result from delays in detecting and initiating a response to large-scale, covert aerosol anthrax releases in a major city, even with highly effective mass prophylaxis campaigns.

The report, authored by Nathaniel Hupert, incorporates some of the latest types of modelling techniques scientists use in disaster preparedness. Such models have become increasingly important to public health officials and hospital administrators.

This research set out to determine the best way a clinic could vaccinate as many as 15,000 clients in 17 hours, including such factors as how to best configure the personnel to maximize the number of clients vaccinated; and to estimate the costs and revenue of such an undertaking.

The researchers found that it was possible for the clinic to reach its target and that using a computer simulation could help them determine the most efficient use of staff, machinery, supplies, and time.

'How hospitals and public health agencies are prepared for an attack--and how they respond to the surge in patients seeking care-will determine our success in containing an attack if one happens.'' said Mark Helfand, editor of Medical Decision Making, which published the report.

Tue, Jul 28 04:07 PM

London, July 28 (IANS) Engineers are developing a way to capture the energy released by the marching boots of soldiers and are trying to use it to power their equipment, according to the latest research.

The new system designed to convert foot-power into battery power could help troops reduce the weight of their packs by up to 10 kg.

The project has been designed to address the needs of infantrymen. Heavy packs can severely limit a soldier's mobility and also lead to long-term health problems.

The typical pack weight that an infantryman carries on a six-hour patrol is around 75 kg, with batteries making up 10 kg of the load. Essential kit such as ammunition and water make up much of the rest.

A similar energy harvesting idea has been used in cars for some time where braking force is stored and later used to drive the vehicle forward.

However, harvesting energy from people walking has always proved difficult due to the flexibility and strength of the materials required and the fact that everyone's walking patterns are different.

The devices will use high tech ceramics and crystals as piezoelectric transducers in order to convert mechanical stress into an electric charge.

Andrew Bell, professor at the University of Leeds, who is leading the project says: 'It could also reduce a soldier's pack weight by around 15 percent.'

'And this technology could potentially have lots of applications in civvy street too.' Bell says his team will succeed where others have failed because they are taking a holistic approach.

Wed, Jul 29 01:30 PM

Enlarge Photo How To Tackle A Virtual Trade Show

Melanie Lindner, Forbes.com

Trade shows are an expensive but necessary part of doing business for David Appelbaum, senior vice president of marketing for BigFix, an Emeryville, Calif.-based information-technology security software maker.

"In the tech industry, you have to participate in trade shows to generate new leads," says Appelbaum. "The problem is the uneven playing field for small and medium businesses. Bigger firms with a lot of money can get premium booth space, podium presentation time and top advertising on event programs and lanyard name tags. With the cost of your booth rental and all of that extra promotion you could easily spend up to $100,000 per show."

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Traditional trade shows have long been a convention-center-sized hassle. "At a physical show, you have hundreds of vendors in a crowded, noisy exhibit hall with competing messages," says Appelbaum. "It's really hard to know who's worth talking to." Throw in a recession and it's little wonder that overall trade show revenue ($12 billion at last count in the U.S.) is expected to contract nearly 7% this year.

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Hence the rise of virtual trade shows, designed to look and function like the real thing but that play out in real time in cyberspace. Entry fee: just $3,000 to $8,000. Better yet, you don't need to be a computer wizard to participate. Revenue generated by North American Web events hit $156 million last year, according to Frost & Sullivan's 2009 World Web Events Services Market Report.

These virtual events can be designed to look like a convention center (complete with lobby, exhibit hall and networking lounge), a college campus, the top of a skyscraper in Paris, or anywhere else in the world. The savvier the crowd, the more realistic and compelling the show. "I've been doing this for seven years, and one of the biggest changes I've seen is the improvement in computer skills of the sponsors and attendees," says Paul Scroggs, founder of Huntley, Ill.-based virtual trade show designer GoExhibit. "More businesspeople are comfortable navigating through virtual space."

Show hosts pay an event designer--such as GoToMeeting, GoExhibit, ON24 and SecondLife--$20,000 to $50,000 to create the custom virtual environment; they make the money back (and then some) by charging exhibitors fees to set up their booths, make presentations and even buy additional, premium advertising.

Getting Started

Before you invest a dime in showcasing at a virtual trade show, get a feel for the environment. (Most shows are free for attendees.) You can also contact the show designer and for a demo walk-through. "Browse" the booths and listen to a few seminars to get a feel for the style and length of presentations.

Unlike in the physical world, setting up a booth eats all of 30 minutes and takes no sweat. Designers like ON24 will construct a booth free of charge; all you have to do is set up a brief phone call to lay out the general design, and send them your materials (white papers, logos and audio and video clips) for formatting. If you'd rather do it yourself, you can log onto the designer's Web site and work within a template wizard that walks you through the process.

Generating Leads

As for placement, "It absolutely helps drive attendees if you pay for prime real estate in the virtual exhibit hall," says Paul Scroggs, founder of Huntley, Ill.-based GoExhibit. Generally, attendees "enter" the exhibit hall from one main doorway, so getting near that portal is important. Prime placement could run a few thousand dollars more, but it's still significantly cheaper than a bad spot at a physical show for $25,000.

During designated show days (some events run for three days, others go on for months), have a representative from your company logged in and prepared to engage booth visitors. When an attendee visits your booth, her name appears in a sidebar list of all the people present, and you can greet her in the form of an instant message. When you IM visitors, they immediately see your name, business affiliation and title; for more information, they can click on your name to view your profile.

"Last month I worked my booth while on a flight from Atlanta to Portland," says Jeff Pedowitz, chief executive of Alpharetta, Ga.-based marketing firm the Pedowitz Group. Pedowitz recently set up a virtual booth at the B-to-B Magazine show, where he says he ginned up some 50 leads for his marketing services. Not a bad return for a $5,000 investment.

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Wed, Jul 29 01:30 PM

Andy Greenberg, Forbes.com

If you receive a text message on your iPhone any time after Thursday afternoon containing only a single square character, Charlie Miller would suggest you turn the device off. Quickly.

That small cipher will likely be your only warning that someone has taken advantage of a bug that Miller and his fellow cybersecurity researcher Collin Mulliner plan to publicize Thursday at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. Using a flaw they've found in the iPhone's handling of text messages, the researchers say they'll demonstrate how to send a series of mostly invisible SMS bursts that can give a hacker complete power over any of the smart phone's functions. That includes dialing the phone, visiting Web sites, turning on the device's camera and microphone and, most importantly, sending more text messages to further propagate a mass-gadget hijacking.

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"This is serious. The only thing you can do to prevent it is turn off your phone," Miller told Forbes. "Someone could pretty quickly take over every iPhone in the world with this."

Though Miller and Mulliner say they notified Apple about the vulnerability more than a month ago, the company hasn't released a patch, and it didn't respond to Forbes' repeated calls seeking comment.

The iPhone SMS bug is just one of a series that the researchers plan to reveal in their talk. They say they've also found a similar texting bug in Windows Mobile that allows complete remote control of Microsoft-based devices. Another pair of SMS bugs in the iPhone and Google's Android phones would purportedly allow a hacker to knock a phone off its wireless network for about 10 seconds with a series of text messages. The trick could be repeated again and again to keep the user offline, Miller says. Though Google has patched the Android flaw, this second iPhone bug also remains unpatched, he adds.

The new round of bugs aren't the first that Miller has dug up in the iPhone's code. In 2007, he became the first to remotely hijack the iPhone using a flaw in its browser. But while that vulnerability gave the attacker a similar power over the phone's functions, it required tricking the user into visiting an infected Web site to invisibly download a piece of malicious software. When Miller alerted Apple in July of that year, the company patched the vulnerability before Miller publicized the bug at the Black Hat conference the following month. ("See: Hacking the iPhone.")

The new attacks, by contrast, can strike a phone without any action on the part of the user and are virtually unpreventable while the phone is powered on, according to Miller and Mulliner's research. And unlike the earlier exploits, Apple has inexplicably left them unpatched, Miller says. "I've given them more time to patch this than I've ever given a company to patch a bug," he says.

The Windows bug he and Mulliner plan to reveal hasn't been patched either, says Miller, though he admits that he and Mulliner discovered the Windows flaw on Monday and hadn't yet alerted Microsoft to its existence.

The attack developed by Miller and Mulliner works by exploiting a missing safeguard in the phones' text messaging software that prevents code in the messages' text from overflowing into other parts of the device's memory where it can run as an executable program. The two researchers plan to demonstrate how a series of 512 SMS messages can exploit the bug, with only one of those messages actually appearing on the phone, showing a small square. (Someone could easily design the attack to show a different message or without any visible messages, Miller cautions.) The entire process of infecting an iPhone and then using the device to infect another phone on the user's contact list would take only a few minutes, Miller says.

The vulnerability of SMS to that sort of attack will likely be a hot topic at this year's Black Hat and Defcon cybersecurity confabs. Two other researchers, Zane Lackey and Luis Miras, say they plan to present other vulnerabilities in major vendors' SMS applications, though they declined to discuss which vendors or the specifics of the vulnerabilities before the companies had issued patches.

Lackey and Miras argue that SMS demands far more attention from the cybersecurity community and device vendors. "Like a lot of mobile phone software, it's been relatively unexplored in the past," Lackey told Forbes. "Only recently has there been proper debugging and development tools available. SMS exemplifies a common trend: once it was a simple technology. Now it's being used in devices far beyond its original purposes, and security is still playing catch up."

The researchers' concerns aren't merely theoretical. Finnish security firm F-Secure says it's found nearly 500 different variants of mobile phone malicious software since 2004, mostly using Bluetooth to hop between phones in close proximity. But in the last 18 months, cybercriminals have begun using text messages to send links to malicious Web sites that infect the phone with malware, says Mikko Hyppönen, an F-Secure researcher.

One seemingly-Chinese variant, known as "Sexy View" and currently targeting the Symbian operating system, is far more threatening than an iPhone attack, given that around 50% of cellphones use Symbian, Hyppönen says. "After years of the security industry wondering why we aren't seeing text message worms, it's starting to happen now," he says.

While many of those ongoing attacks are merely hacker experiments, some have used phones to text premium numbers that generate revenue for cybercriminals. "Mostly it's still about curiosity and fun, but eventually the criminal guys move in," says Hyppönen. "We're probably on the verge of that right now."

As dangerous as his iPhone attack sounds, Miller argues that it's important to expose flaws in SMS software before they can be exploited by more malicious actors. Texting applications' insecurity isn't due to the software's complexity so much as the security community's inattention and the expense of sending thousands of text messages to test a phone's security, Miller says.

"The bad news is that SMS is the perfect attack vector, but the good news is that it's probably possible to build it securely," he says. "As a researcher, I can only show [Apple] the bugs. It's up to them to fix them."

See Also:

Your Spying iPhone

Apple's Security Paradox

Hacking The iPhone

Wed, Jul 29 02:05 PM

Sydney, July 29 (ANI): Want to measure your performance in the sack? Well, all you need to do is to download a new iPhone application and see how competent you are when it comes to action between the sheets.

The "Passion" application uses the phone's built-in accelerometer, used to sense motion, as well as the device's microphone and timer.

Users will just have to place the phone on the bed or in a pocket before intercourse and, at the end of the horizontal dance, the phone will give a rating out of 10 based on three criteria-duration, orgasm and activity.

The timer measures duration, while the accelerometer measures activity and the microphone measures the orgasm.

And then one can uploaded the scores and compare to those of other people around the world.

In fact, "high scores" leaderboard also gives you a chance to go on a bragging drive.

Priced at 4.99 dollars, the application is the brainchild of Chris Alvares, a US computer science student who has previously developed a number of iPhone quiz apps including WikiQuiz, Four Squared and MusicApp.

"All you have to do is start the application, put your iPhone on the bed, in an arm band, or even in your pocket and have intercourse, it is as easy as that," the Sydney Morning Herlad quoted Alvares as saying in a blog post announcing the new app.

He added: "Once you are finished, press the stop button and view your results."

In case a person is not happy with the score, there is an option of "try again", providing a chance for another stint in the bed.

In an email interview, Alvares said that he was not sure how many copies of the app he had sold yet, as it had recently been added to the iTunes App Store.

"No, it is not a hoax, and it actually works! The idea came up as a joke between some of my co-works [sic] and I, and later I figured out an algorithm that I could use with the iPhone's available features," he wrote. (ANI)

Wed, Jul 29 04:30 PM

London, July 29 (ANI): Popular microblogging website Twitter has launched a new home page.

The Internet phenomenon, which boasts of an estimated 55 million visitors each month, made changes to the page, that now includes a search facility and lists the 23 most popular "trending topics" "by the minute, day, and week".

"Today we're trying a redesigned front page for folks who are new to Twitter.com. If you're a regular around these parts, then you won't notice the new look unless you sign out of your account," The Telegraph quoted a statement on the Twitter blog as saying.

"Helping people access Twitter in more relevant and useful ways upon first introduction lowers the barrier to accessing the value Twitter has to offer and presents the service more consistently with how it has evolved.

"Twitter began as a rudimentary social tool based on the concept of status messages but together with those who use it every day, the service has taught us what it wants to be.

"From features invented by users to applications built on the platform, we're still discovering potential," it was added. (ANI)