Zapping mosquitoes, and corruption: Technology and government: How the clever use of mobile phones is helping to improve government services in Pakistan

Zapping mosquitoes, and corruption: Technology and government: How the clever use of mobile phones is helping to improve government services in Pakistan

Jun 1st 2013 |From the print edition

LIVE in a crowded South Asian city and a host of problems—smog, contagious disease, corruption—may plague you. Each winter, the air grows foul. The monsoon season brings mosquitoes, bloodsuckers capable of carrying nasties such as dengue and malaria. As cities expand and people are packed closer, they are more likely to pass on infections. Overwhelmed municipalities, especially if weakened by corruption, offer a weak response. In Lahore, Pakistan’s second-most populous city, there were 21,292 confirmed dengue patients in 2011, a particularly dire year. At least 350 of them died, victims of associated haemorrhages or shock.

The usual response is to send out fogging lorries to spray a choking mixture of insecticide (such as DDT) and kerosene to kill mosquitoes. Public officials also advise residents to drain every reservoir of water near their homes. Mosquito larvae flourish in puddles, even inside old tyres or old flower pots. But foggers sometimes spread their helpful poison too liberally, where no dengue-infected mosquitoes are present, or too rarely, perhaps neglecting poor neighbourhoods. Municipal workers skip puddle-hunting, or fail to tip chemicals into ponds to kill the larvae. Crooked workers sell their insecticides or refuse to spray without bribes from residents. Read more of this post

Desalination: A useful application may have been found for graphene: improving access to fresh water in the developing world

Desalination: A useful application may have been found for graphene: improving access to fresh water in the developing world

Jun 1st 2013 |From the print edition

ALLOTROPES of carbon—varying forms of the element in which the atoms are stuck together in different patterns—have a mixed record of practical use. Diamonds, famously, are a girl’s best friend. Graphite makes good pencil lead. But buckminsterfullerene, in which the atoms are arranged like the geodesic domes beloved of the eponymous American architect, though hailed as a wonder material, proved largely useless.

Graphene, which looks like atomic-scale chicken-wire, may be in the useful camp. At room temperature, it is the best conductor of heat yet found. It is being developed as a photoreceptor, to convert light into electricity. And now two groups of engineers, one at Lockheed Martin, an American aerospace company, the other at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), are trying to use it to desalinate water. That could change the world. Read more of this post

Teaching old microphones new tricks with sensor technology: Microphones are designed to capture sound. But they turn out to be able to capture other sorts of information, too

Microphones as sensors

Teaching old microphones new tricks

Sensor technology: Microphones are designed to capture sound. But they turn out to be able to capture other sorts of information, too

Jun 1st 2013 |From the print edition

MICROPHONES exist in many shapes and sizes, and work in many different ways. In the late 19th century, early telephones relied on carbon microphones, pioneered by Thomas Edison; today’s smartphones contain tiny microphones based on micro-electro-mechanical systems, commonly called MEMS. Specialist microphones abound in recording studios; others are used by spies. But whatever the technology, these microphones all do the same thing: they convert sound waves into an electrical signal.

It turns out, however, that with the addition of suitable software, microphones can detect more than mere audio signals. They can act as versatile sensors, capable of tuning into signals from inside the body, assessing the social environment and even tracking people’s posture and gestures. Researchers have reimagined microphones as multi-talented collectors of information. And because they are built into smartphones that can be taken anywhere, and can acquire new abilities simply by downloading an app, they are being put to a range of unusual and beneficial uses. Read more of this post

Concrete, heal thyself! Civil engineering: A building material that can perform running repairs on itself, fixing small cracks and holes, is on the horizon

Concrete, heal thyself! Civil engineering: A building material that can perform running repairs on itself, fixing small cracks and holes, is on the horizon

Jun 1st 2013 |From the print edition

IT IS useful stuff, concrete, but it does have drawbacks. One of the biggest is that it is not as weatherproof as the stone it often substitutes for. Salt and ice routinely turn microscopic fractures in its fabric into gaping holes. These let water soak in. That, in time, can cause the structure to fail. The upshot is that concrete needs constant repair by teams of workmen assigned to fill in the newly formed gaps, which is tedious and expensive. It would be better if the stuff could heal such damage by itself. And that, as he reports in Applied Materials & Interfaces, is exactly what Chan-Moon Chung of Yonsei University in South Korea hopes to get it to do.

Self-healing concrete is not a new idea. In 2009 a team at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands showed that it is possible to mix special bacteria, which release crack-sealing chemicals, into concrete before it is poured. These bacteria do, indeed, keep the concrete healthy—but only while they are alive. Experience shows that they last for no more than a year or so. Read more of this post

“Talent exchanges” on the web are starting to transform the world of work

Online labour exchanges

The workforce in the cloud

“Talent exchanges” on the web are starting to transform the world of work

Jun 1st 2013 | REDWOOD CITY, CALIFORNIA |From the print edition

FOR translating a 22-minute video from English into Spanish at short notice, 7Brands Global Content, a professional-translation firm based in New York, quoted “approximately $1,500”. This fee seems in line with the local going rate for the job from a firm which boasts membership of three professional associations and clients such as Chase and Bank of America. Not so long ago, paying the local rate was the only option. Today anyone seeking to get this sort of job done is only a click away from the whole world of professionals competing to do it far cheaper. Read more of this post

For Wearable Computers, Future Looks Blurry

May 30, 2013, 7:29 p.m. ET

For Wearable Computers, Future Looks Blurry

At the D11 Confab, the Silicon Valley Elite Debate Google Glass’s Mainstream Appeal

By EVELYN M. RUSLI

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif.—If you haven’t heard, the future is wearable computing. But how that future—seen through Google GOOG +0.05% Glass specs—will go mainstream is still out of focus.

At the D11: All Things Digital conference here, the tech elite buzzed about the promise of microcomputers that attach onto humans. They opined not just about fitness-tracking bands, which are already becoming ubiquitous, but also about multipurpose mobile gadgets that we can strap onto our wrists, heads or other body parts.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc., AAPL -0.41% which is reported to be working on a watch-like device, said wearable computers will likely be “another key branch” of the Apple tree. But in reference to competitor Google Inc.’s Glass headgear, Mr. Cook said high-tech eyeglasses would be “difficult” to pull off as a mainstream product. On stage, he wore a Nike+ FuelBand bracelet that tracks physical activity. Read more of this post

Killer cloud: report says Amazon Web Services threatens all IT incumbents

Killer cloud: report says Amazon Web Services threatens all IT incumbents

By Barb Darrow | GigaOM.com, Published: May 31

Amazon Web Services faces growing competition from a dozen or more legacy name-brand IT giants. But instead of taking a hit, it poses a bigger-than-ever threat to the those vendors — all of which are building their own competitive clouds, according to new Morgan Stanley research.

Oh, and the researchers project that AWS will hit $24 billion in revenue by 2022. Amazon doesn’t break out AWS revenue, but most pundits figure it passed the $2 billion-a-year mark about a year ago.

The fact that AWS has a huge lead in cloud over the rest of the world is not news to anyone who’s been watching, but these projections could be a wakeup call to investors who think tech incumbents — companies like IBM, Microsoft, HP, VMware, Red Hat, as well as every telco and hosting provider — can challenge Amazon in cloud computing.

“Applying retail economics to the delivery of technology services well positions Amazon Web Services [to be] a Top 5 vendor within the $152 TAM [total addressable market], ” according to Morgan Stanley analysts Scott Devitt, Keith Weiss and team. Read more of this post