The future of ultra-low-powered displays is finally in living color

E ink, the company behind the pigment-based, low-energy monochromatic displays found in many of today’s popular readers finally figured out how to create up to 32,000 colors in what is almost the exact same technology.

The company will unveil what it’s calling a breakthrough technology on Tuesday at the annual SID Display Week conference in San Francisco.

“For the first time, we can create all colors at every pixel location,” said E Ink Holding’s Head of Global marketing Giovanni Mancini. “We have encapsulated four different things in one micro-cup.”

Those four things are actually four different pigments: yellow, cyan, magenta and white. In traditional monochromatic E Ink, there were just two colors: black and white. Both microcups work in similar ways, E Ink changes the polarity to move the pigments around. For monochrome, the white and black pigments basically switch places (you see white or black on the reflective screen). However, for the new full-color electrophoretic display, E Ink had to figure out a more sophisticated way to manage the pigments in each tiny cup.

“The ability to control those pigments is significant,” said Mancini

In addition to being different colors, each pigment will have additional properties that gives E Ink greater control over their movement and position. This allows E Ink to move some or all together to create combinations that result in up to 32,000 display colors. Since each cup basically represents a controllable pixel, the results can be pretty stunning.

Color that lasts

The new display, which E Ink will publicly demonstrate for the first time, is a 20-inch, 2500 x 1600 resolution display that actually shares monochrome E Ink’s impressive power capabilities. Mancini told Mashable that it’s equally power-efficient. He explained that it could be used in bus stop signage. “Bus stops are powered with solar cells, you could power this with solar cells,” he said.

E Ink is not alone in the low-power color display market. Qualcomm’s full-color Mirasol display technology has been around for more than six years. Instead of pigments, capsules and polarity, it uses a fully mechanical system to create a wide color gamut and uses almost zero power to maintain the image once it’s set. Last year, Apple reportedly bought Qualcomm’s Mirasol plant. No word yet on if Apple plans to productize the low-power color display technology.

Not for everyone

While color E Ink is on the fast-track to commercialization, it does have some significant limitations. For now, the resolution is 150 pixels per inch (ppi), which is roughly half the resolution you find on a typical, 6-inch, monochromatic E Ink display. In addition, the full-color E Ink can’t come anywhere close to the virtual instant refresh capabilities of today’s ereaders. Right now, it takes a color E Ink display two seconds to fully resolve.

Mancini doesn’t consider this an issue, though, because the company is targeting commercial signage, which wouldn’t need to change that often and is also designed to grab attention, an area where color E Ink may excel. Mancini said color E Ink will feature highly saturated colors. “Something close to what you would see on printed poster, paper type of product.”

He also noted that even though the prototype will be less than 2-feet wide, size is actually only limited by E Ink’s manufacturing capabilities.

General availability for color E Ink displays is expected in two years. Will color E Ink make it to future Amazon Kindles? Mancini would only reiterate that E Ink is currently focused on the display market.

This new lightbulb will give you energy during the day, and help you sleep at night

Philips’ family of smart lighting products have gotten a new member in the form of the Philips Hue white ambience light bulb.

The bulb’s focus is on providing a bright, natural-looking light which the company claims will help users feel more energised throughout the day. The bulb is also capable of outputting a warmer shade of light in the evenings which should help you get to sleep.

When combined with the routines function introduced in the last Hue app update, the bulbs can be set to automatically brighten throughout the day to give you more energy, and then dim at night to help you sleep.

Sleepy lighting and moody lighting

Scientists are increasingly recognising the effect lighting can have on the human psyche.

People are recommended not to use a screen within an hour of going to bed because of the way the blue light can trick the brain into thinking it’s earlier in the day and can hence interfere with sleep.

In response, programs such as f.lux have been introduced, which turn give your screen an orange tinge after sunset to prevent it affecting your sleep. Apple introduced similar functionality in its recent iOS 9.3 update.

Bright light is also seen as increasingly important for mood during the day. In fact, the absence of natural light in winter leads many to suffer from ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder’ (SAD), resulting in low moods during the winter months.

Philips isn’t claiming that the white ambience light bulb can be used to treat SAD like a lightbox would, but the idea that strong white light gives you energy is one that is commonly accepted within the scientific community.

The new ambience light is available now as a single bulb for $29.95 (£25.95) or as part of a starter kit which includes a wall-mountable dimmer switch for $129.95 (£99.95) and works with a number of existing home automation solutions including Amazon’s Alexa, Nest and Samsung SmartThings.

Mitsubishi Electric, Kyoto Univ. and Tohoku Univ. Succeed in World’s First 3 Tesla MRI with High-Temperature Coils

TOKYO–(Business Wire)–Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO:6503), Kyoto University and Tohoku University announced today the world’s first successful 3 tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) using a small model MRI with high-temperature superconducting coils that do not require cooling with increasingly scarce liquid helium. Mitsubishi Electric expects that the high-quality images made possible at this magnetic field strength will contribute to earlier detection of illnesses.

Mitsubishi Electric, Kyoto University and Tohoku University plan to increase the size of the system to one half of a full-size MRI scanner by 2020 and to commercialize a full-size version from 2021.

Mitsubishi Electric achieved a strong, stable 3 tesla magnetic field by increasing the precision of the coil winding. Existing commercially available MRIs use low-temperature superconducting wires with a round or square cross section of 2- to 3-millimeters. The high-temperature superconducting wires are about 0.2 millimeter thick and 4- to 5-millimeters wide and are usually wound several hundred times, creating a pancake coil. Small discrepancies in the thickness and width of the wire give the coil an uneven height that can disrupt the magnetic field and distort imaging. Mitsubishi Electric solved this problem by using laser displacement meters to measure the coil height and then adjusting it with correction sheets. This realized a winding accuracy of 0.1 millimeter for pancake coils with an outer diameter of about 400 millimeters, achieving the magnetic field homogeneity required for commercial imaging.

The small model has an imaging space 25 millimeters in diameter with field homogeneity of less than two-millionths, the same level required for a 230-mm dia. x 650-mm cylinder in a commercial-size MRI. Using this new approach, Mitsubishi Electric succeeded in imaging a 25-millimeter mouse fetus at 3 tesla.

Bug-zapping Lasers Add New Weapon to our Insect-fighting Arsenal

WASHINGTON–(Business Wire)–Control and monitoring of disease-vector insects are critical to global health, as insect vectors spread pathogens among humans, animals and agricultural products, creating worldwide strain on health care and food resources. Mosquito-borne malaria, for example, caused over 200 million infections and over 400,000 deaths in 2015, according to the World Health Organization. A small insect is also to blame for the jump in the price of orange juice in recent years. The Asian citrus psyllid, a vector of citrus greening disease, has devastated orange groves in Florida and threatened citrus production around the world.

Traditional insect control methods broadly rely on chemical insecticides, which may harm humans and beneficial insects and cause insecticide resistance in the target pests. A research team from Intellectual Ventures Laboratory, Washington State, USA, have developed a novel laser system called the “Photonic Fence,” which can effectively identify, track and kill flying insects in real-time, shooting down insects with a low-energy laser without harming other organisms, animals or humans.

Originally invented for controlling certain types of mosquitoes that carry malaria, the ‘Photonic Fence’ system has been adapted for more general applications in pest control for agriculture. It has now reached a stage where field deployment is practical. This week in the journal Optics Express, from The Optical Society (OSA), the researchers describe the work.

In the study, conducted in collaboration with United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) personnel, the researchers selected two important insect vectors as experimental subjects: Diaphorina citri psyllids, a vector of citrus greening disease and Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes, a vector of malaria.

“Our study showed that the ‘Photonic Fence’ is able to effectively track and distinguish between different insects by measuring insects’ wing beat frequency,” said 3ric Johanson, primary investigator and a project scientist, Intellectual Ventures Laboratory. “We also confirmed that low-power lasers can indeed lethally disable the Asian citrus psyllid. These findings position the ‘Photonic Fence’ as an excellent tool to help citrus growers contain and eventually eliminate citrus greening disease.”

According to Johanson, the ‘Photonic Fence’ is an electro-optical system that employs lasers, detectors and sophisticated computer software to search, detect, identify and shoot down insects in flight in real-time.

First, the optical tracking subsystem identifies targets from an insect database based on the characteristic data from insects, including flight behavior, insect size, insect shape and wing beat frequency (the measure of how fast the insect is flapping its wings). With this data the system decides whether a specific insect should be eliminated or not. Second, the safety interlock subsystem confirms there are no other organisms nearby that could be subjected to collateral damage. Finally, the lethal laser is employed to disable the insect target. The entire process, spanning from initial target acquisition through the application of the lethal dose, takes less than 100 milliseconds, Johanson said.

“Used as a virtual fence, the ‘Photonic Fence’ can be deployed as a perimeter defense around villages, hospitals, crop fields, etc. Over time, the population of target insects inside the protected region would be decreased to the point of collapse,” he explained.

The researchers believe the ‘Photonic Fence’ presents a potential new way to monitor and control insects. A particularly useful case would involve a small number of insects moving into a sensitive area in which current abatement techniques are not effective.

“A few good examples are organic farms and greenhouses,” Johanson said. “These areas are difficult to control for pests using organic means. A ‘Photonic Fence’ installation, which is inherently organic, could not only reduce the population of yield-reducing pests, but also inform the grower what kind of pests are present and when. Armed with this information, the grower could choose to use traditional insecticides in a precise, pin-pointed manner to stop the flying pests.”

The researchers have established a database of insects that they have experimented on so far, and the database will continue to grow as the researchers test the system in new environments.

“Wherever a ‘Photonic Fence’ installation is deployed, we have situational awareness about the types of insects that are present, the insect density, and the time of day when insects are more prevalent, all on an up-to-the-second basis,” Johanson explained. “Now imagine hundreds of thousands of ‘Photonic Fence’ units reporting back to a central data aggregation system. Using this information on a regional, state or national level, we can make decisions about where and when to concentrate our pest-control efforts, whether they should be photonic or traditional. We will now be able to understand, for the first time on this resolution, the trends in insect behavior and the impact that our pest control efforts are having.”

The researchers said the study is part of a larger project supported by the “Global Good Fund” to assess the impact on a number of disease-carrying mosquitoes and agricultural pests. As the Global Good Fund is primarily focused on using technology to improve people’s lives in the developing world, the researchers’ goal is to eventually make the new system deployable to the developing world for malaria eradication. In order to make the technology economically viable for the developing world, they are also exploring developed world applications such as those in agriculture and hospitality markets. Lead by Arty Makagon, the commercialization team aims to deploy in one or more of these markets in the coming years, scale up production and collect product robustness and effectiveness data prior to unleashing the technology in Africa and beyond.

Paper: 3ric Johanson, “Laser system for identification, tracking, and control of flying insects,” Opt. Express Vol. 24, Issue 11, pp. 11828-11838 (2016).

DOI: 10.1364/OE.24.011828

Google is building its own chip called Tensor Processing Unit for AI

Google has designed its very own custom chip for deep neural networks calling it a TPU, Tensor Processing Unit.

Google’s Tensor Processing Unit is delivering an order of magnitude better-optimized performance per watt for machine learning (Source: Google)

Google has designed its very own custom chip for deep neural networks, the technology behind its artificial intelligence based internet services.

At Google I/O, CEO Sundar Pichai spoke about company’s self-designed ASIC or application-specific integrated circuit to drive deep neural networks. Google is using AI to identify objects and faces inside photos and same AI processes ‘Google Now’ voice queries.

Google is in fact using the same technology to deliver smart home speaker with Google Assistant built-in. Google calls the chip as Tensor processing unit, based on company’s TensorFlow software engine.

Google, like Microsoft and Facebook, is betting heavily on AI for its future. At I/O 2016, Google employees spoke in lengths about company’s AI technology and machine learning. “We’ve been running TPUs inside our data centers for more than a year, and have found them to deliver an order of magnitude better-optimized performance per watt for machine learning,” Google said in a blog post. Google developing its very own chip could mean trouble for traditional chipmakers like Intel who are underpinning hopes on AI as their next growth segment.

Google Unveils Project Soli 2.0, Radar-Based Gesture Tracking for Wearables, IoT

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