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Marketwired: Teledyne DALSA introduces the first in its new Rad-icon series of CMOS X-Ray cameras. The Rad-icon 1520 detector features 1548 x 2064 pixel resolution, an active area of 15.3 x 20.4 cm, and 99um pixel size and delivers real-time frame rates of up to 30 fps. "The Rad-icon digital x-ray cameras deliver a unique combination of speed, resolution and connectivity," commented Thorsten Achterkirchen, VP X-Ray Imaging for Teledyne DALSA. "The 1520 is only the beginning of what we are promoting as a cost-effective and flexible platform for high performance digital x-ray imaging for non-destructive testing."
PR Newswire: Dual Aperture keeps announcing its partners. Recently, it has announced its image sensor partner (Hynix/SiliconFile) and DSP partner (eWBM). Now the company says that it cooperates with Ability Enterprise on camera design. Ability Enterprise and Dual Aperture partner together on a technology licensing agreement whereby Ability Enterprise will incorporate Dual Aperture's 4-color sensor technology, image processing algorithms and various application software, into their latest line of camera module products.
Dual Aperture's technology utilizes a proprietary 4-color sensor design comprised of RGB and IR pixels. Built with separate apertures for the RGB and IR pixels, the sensor is able to generate two distinct images, one in the RGB spectrum and the other in the IR, with a single capture. This allows to estimate a depth of the image, as explained in a Youtube video:
EETimes, Venture Beat: Aquifi, founded by a few ex-Canesta engineers, announce Fluid Experience - software only gesture recognition based on a regular HD-resolution webcam, machine learning algorithms and cloud services. The cloud part accumulates the different users experience with the gesture tracking and processes it to improve the accuracy over time.
"If Kinect was the first generation, we’re building the second generation," said Nazim Kareemi, Aquifi CEO. "In the past, you had to adapt to the machine. We want it to adapt to you." The Palo Alto, Calif.-based Aquifi has raised $9M from Benchmark Capital, and private investors including Mike Farmwald, cofounder of Rambus. Aquifi was founded in 2011, and it has 29 employees. A Youtube video presents the company and its technology:
When you see the face of a familiar actor on screen, you probably assume that somewhere, some time, the actual human being presented to you via technology was really in a studio in front of a camera, speaking the lines you hear.It is only when we remember that motion pictures are designed to produce illusions that we realize the words we hear may be another actor's voice-over, the background may be green-screened in, and even the actor's face could have been digitally retouched, or even created from scratch with sophisticated software.Thinking about these things distracts from the enjoyment of the movie, so usually we don't.But if you saw a person looking, moving, and sounding exactly like Humphrey Bogart acting in a movie made in 2015, say, it would be hard to ignore the little detail that Bogart died in 1957.
The 1994 film "Forrest Gump" digitally placed the live actor Tom Hanks in archival footage of famous deceased persons such as John F. Kennedy, but what I'm talking about is the reverse:hauling John F. Kennedy out of the grave to make him play a role in, say, a new Judd Apatow comedy.And here's where we get into some ethical qualms.
In a recent New Yorker article, the digital exploits of University of Southern California computer scientist Paul Debevec are described, from his early work reverse-aging Brad Pitt in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (2008) to his current attempts to preserve holographic versions of Holocaust survivors for use in a permanent museum display.If the latter project is successful, visitors will be able to pose questions and a three-dimensional representation of the person, accurate down to such details as shadows that fall naturally according to the room lighting prevailing at the time, will answer the questions via artificial-intelligence technology.In effect, Debevec will have resurrected the dead, although to a strictly circumscribed sort of life.
For the last few decades, progress in digitally-enabled technologies that initially depend on huge amounts of computer processing have followed a consistent path.First, a new technique is developed at great expense, often paid for by the military or government agencies, and demonstrated in a limited way.Next comes commercialization, with large institutions and corporations being first in line to use it.And finally, advances in hardware and software lower the cost enough to make it affordable to a reasonably large number of average citizens.Debevec fully intends for his super-accurate simulation and illumination technology to follow this well-worn path, so we ought to give at least a little consideration to its ethical implications.
The fact that Debevec is labeled a scientist obscures the reality of what he is doing when he takes Angelina Jolie's picture from hundreds of different angles to make a digital clone of her to perform a film stunt too dangerous for stunt doubles to do:he is being an artist.And the ethical rules for artists doing art are different from the rules for scientists doing science.From what little I know about the way art is regarded in Western cultures today, there aren't any ethical rules that are generally observed, unless you count legal strictures such as bans on child pornography and copyright laws.I suspect if Judd Apatow tried to make a digital clone of John F. Kennedy to do the kind of disreputable things that actors in his films typically do, he might hear from the Kennedy estate via a process server.But the legal treatment of public figures differs from the way the rights of a private citizen are treated.Courts have held that as long as the image of a public figure is not being used for commercial exploitation, it is okay to portray it in a work of art.After death, a person's estate can still control the use of the person's image for commercial purposes, and this would undoubtedly include a Debevec-style holographic image.So when Debevec was asked if he had considered resurrecting Marilyn Monroe, for instance, he said that Monroe's estate was unwilling, and so he dropped the idea.
On the other hand, when ConAgra, the firm that makes Orville Redenbacher popcorn, approached Debevec to simulate the recently deceased popcorn king for a TV commercial, Debevec readily agreed.So, two years after Redenbacher died in 2005, viewers saw a digital version of Redenbacher, still promoting his popcorn.But when critics started referring to "Orville Deadenbacher, the popcorn zombie" the ad disappeared.This was not a violation of ethics so much as it was a violation of good taste, and I'm not talking about popcorn.
Highly realistic holographic images of people, alive or dead, are simply the latest advance in a sequence that began 40,000 years ago, when someone blew paint through a stencil onto the wall of the Cave of El Castillo in northern Spain to form the earliest known cave paintings.Sculpture, portraits in oils, photography, motion pictures, and CGI (computer-generated images) followed, and it is only our inordinate addiction to novelty that makes us think there is something fundamentally different in Debevec's hyper-realistic representations of the human form.Art is one of the most notable activities that separates humans—the only rational animal—from other animals, and the fact that Debevec's form of art involves rationality of a scientific and technological kind does not make it any less an art form.And art can be put to both the holiest and the most debauched of uses.
As our power to create increasingly realistic-looking digital human forms grows and the technology to do this spreads, we can only hope that artists will rediscover that truth, beauty, and goodness are their true subjects.Most of the art world refuses to acknowledge this fact, which is the real basis for the ethics of art.But no amount of technological advance will change that situation.That change cannot take place in server rooms, or in the theories of computer scientists.That change can take place only in the heart.
Sources:The article "Pixel Perfect: the scientist behind the digital cloning of actors" appeared in The New Yorker's Apr. 28, 2014 issue on pp. 32-38. I referred to http://www.onlineartrights.org/issues/depictions-real-people/depictions-real-people, and the Wikipedia articles on Orville Redenbacher and cave painting.
EETimes publishes a popular article "Sensors Beyond Megapixels" by Junko Yoshida on image sensor applications beyond the mainstream consumer ones. No revelations there, the article just briefly talks about automotive, food sorting, dental, and few other applications.
"Curved CMOS Image System: When light transmitted by a lens strikes a perpendicular target such as a CMOS image sensor, it forms a circle of light called an image circle. It’s difficult for a flat (planar) CMOS image sensor to deliver high image sensitivity at high resolution (highly scaled pixel pitch) because of the fundamental physical limit known as quantum efficiency. To break through that physical limit and to achieve higher sensitivity anywhere within the image circle at higher resolution, Sony built and will describe an imaging system that comprises a hemispherically curved, back-illuminated CMOS image sensor (BIS) and integrated lens. It doubles the sensitivity at the edge of the image circle while increasing sensitivity at its center by a factor of 1.4, with a 5x reduction of dark current (Jd) compared to a planar BIS. Moreover, a common problem known as lens field curvature aberration (Afc) is mitigated by the curved sensor itself, and so the curved BIS enables higher system sensitivity with a brighter lens with a smaller F number (Fn) than is possible with a planar BIS. In addition, by controlling the tensile stress of the BIS chip to produce a curved shape in the first place, the energy band-gap (Eg) is widened and a lower Jd is achieved. (Paper T2.1, “A Novel Curved CMOS Image Sensor Integrated with Imaging System,” K. Itonaga et al., Sony)"
Concept of an imaging system which integrates a curved sensor with a brighter (lower F number) lens for better image sensitivity.
Sony presents 13MP IMX214 sensor, already featuring in Oppo Find 7 and OnePlus One smartphones. The 1/4-inch 1.12um pixel IMX214 is said to be "the industry's first 13M-Pixel CMOS image sensor enabling HDR output at 30 frame/s." The new sensor utilizes SME-HDR (Spatially Multiplexed Exposure HDR) technology. It sets two different exposures in a single frame and performs image processing to generate HDR images. A reduced backside optical stack helps to improve the color crosstalk and angular sensitivity over the 1st generation stacked sensor IMX135:
Forza Silicon introduces the Forza 100+ MP CAM Platform featuring a customizable CMOS image sensor operating at 60fps and supporting multiple camera resolutions. The dual-mode camera operates in B&W or color and has a proprietary onboard image processor. It can be configured to capture image sequences at resolutions approaching 200MP while maintaining 60fps speed. The modular platform includes a high resolution, visible CMOS image sensor module and camera reference design that can be customized to allow for fast integration into multiple camera hardware designs and applications.
Brandywine Photonics got first images from its FBX-640×512 BSI CMOS sensor with deep depletion, specifically designed for hyperspectral imaging with enhanced NIR sensitivity. The QE, dark noise, and frame rate numbers will be reported later. The sensor was first announced in May 2013 as being in the fab.
An actuation package supplied with ROTEX DRS actuator and manual override.
The DRS is a great choice for any large actuation drive because of the following features:
X SEALS
X seals for low wear and tear, each with grease retaining groove.
Extra heavy duty travel adjustment bolts can withstand high impact and are easy to adjust.
Dual needle roller bearings provide for the most efficient torque transmission.
The actuator can easily be converted to fail open from fail close, by interchanging the spring and pneumatic modules.
The spring is well caged in the cartridge form
Solid bearing for piston rod for better alignment and smooth operation.
Needle bearing, Flexijoint, and the hardened yoke thrust pin bearing, are all incorporated into the actuator for longer, smoother operation. The ROTEX DRS actuator gives you greater efficiency and higher torque output, with less maintenance.
PISTON SEAL AND GUIDE
The piston is guided by PTFE thrust bearing, to ensure no IFP metal to metal contact.
The seal is X shape with flexibility , to minimize the friction.
Guaranteed operation of 1 million cycles.
YOKE PIN THRUST BEARING
The carrier is well guided on the support rod.
Case hardened steel of the yoke thrust pin is stong for consistent transmission of the force.
FLEXI JOINT
The thrust transmitted through the Flexi joint ensures no side thrust on the cylinder walls and the bearings.
In spring return actuators, dual Flexi joints allow the carrier to operate perfectly and smoothly.
HEAVY DUTY BEARING
The piston rod is guided on the heavy duty bearing.
V - Seal at the rod end ensures a very long life.
The bearing is built with a high grade bronze metal.
DUAL YOKE BEARINGS
The yoke is supported on lifetime lubricated ball bearings.
Very low coefficient of friction.
Provides 98% of the torque transmission.
X SEAL ON TIE ROD
The X seal provides the flexibility in sealing.
The X seal provides extremely low friction and a long life.
Marketwired: InVisage announces $18M round of funding bringing the total amount that it has raised since its creation to more than $100M. Investors include GGV Capital, Nokia Growth Partners, RockPort Capital, InterWest Partners, Intel Capital and OnPoint Technologies. The additional funding enables InVisage to scale manufacturing capacity from its initial pilot production line to support high volume customers and further its mission to mass produce fast, thin, high performance cameras in ultra-small form-factors.
InVisage also expands its leadership team with two new additions: Ephraim Kwok as CFO and Emanuele Mandelli as VP of Engineering. Mandelli has more than 20 years of image sensor, x-ray detectors and particle physics detectors experience. Most recently, he worked for AltaSens.
Venture Beat quotes Invisage CEO, Jess Lee telling that "the company expects to deliver its final product samples to manufacturing partners within the next few quarters, and it will take another six to nine months before the technology can be implemented in future products".
Lytro announces its second generation lightfield camera having DSLR look and featuring a new, custom-designed 40 Megaray image sensor (vs 11 Megaray in the 1st generation). As with the 1st Lytro generation, the number of pixels in the final image has not been disclosed.
Lytro Illum sensor
Venture Beat publishes a video interview with Lytro Founder Ren Ng explaining the features of the new camera:
DPReview publishes a Q&A session with Lytro CEO Jason Rosenthal and Ren Ng. Few quotes:
Q: "What's new about the sensor? It's listed at 40 megarays, but how would you explain that in terms that are more relatable to stills photographers?"
Rosenthal: "It's basically a 4x step up in terms of both number of pixels and underlying resolution, as well as sensor area size ... The sensor in the previous camera was 1/3", essentially a mobile sensor. This is a 1" sensor with an [underlying] 40-megapixel resolution."
Sony has updated its pages on Effio and Xarina ISPs for security and surveillance cameras. The high-end Xarina line is going to be split into 2K and 4K ones with added support for RGB-W CFA and few other features:
Sr. Piping Designer - WorleyParsons, Abu Dhabi Job Type: Full-time Recruiter Purayil, Rijosh Advertising Category: Engineering/Design & Sciences Location of Job: Abu Dhabi, AE (Primary) Job Description: Worley Parsons is a dynamic, entrepreneurial, empowered EPCM employing over 40,000 people across 41 countries. With a recognized global reputation as a provider of professional services to the
David Cameron, the United Kingdom's Prime Minister, not only thinks porn is bad for children—he's done something about it.After calling in a speech last year for a change in online access to adult sites in the UK from "opt-out" to "opt-in", most internet providers were persuaded by Cameron's government to make porn-blocking filters the default option for their customers.After the change, if an account holder wants to view such sites he or she must actively set the account option to do so.In promoting this initiative, Cameron's goal was, as he put it, "protecting innocence, protecting childhood itself."But what I want to ask is, exactly what is the harm that this initiative protects against?
Your opinion of how pornography can harm children will depend on what you think children are.
If you believe children are simply economic units that consume for their early years, and then become units of productivity for their adult years, then you will naturally look to scientific surveys of objective measures of harm such as increases in teen pregnancies, evidence of social pathologies such as sex crimes, and so on.This is the view that New York Times business writer David Segal took when he wrote a riff on Cameron's action called "Does Porn Hurt Children?"After interviewing experts who did meta-studies of more than 200 social-science papers examining the question, he concluded that if there is any harm, it's hard to identify.There were slight statistical increases in some measures, but nothing that could be called a smoking gun.The only time he mentioned ethics in the article was when he decried the fact that the ideal scientific study of the effects of porn on children could not be done for ethical reasons.It would be unethical, he said, to find a sample of children who had never seen porn, and then give them a strong dose of it over a period of months and measure its effects as compared with a control group whose innocence was preserved.
But what if you believe children are immortal souls whose eternal destiny may be affected by things they see?And what if you believe the words of Jesus, who, after calling a child to him, and telling his disciples that they must become as little children to enter his kingdom, said ". . . whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea"?In other words, it's better to die a quick and certain death than to run a porn website that children can view.
We seem to have a difference of opinion here.On the one hand is a materialist view that looks to scientific studies as the ultimate authority on whether porn harms children in objective, measureable ways.On the other hand is a view that there is something special about children, an attitude or state of mind that we generally call "innocence", and that doing anything to damage that innocence is a worse thing than death by drowning.
Sociologists and psychologists don't have much to say about innocence, and even less to say about the soul.William James, brother of the novelist Henry James and one of the founders of modern scientific psychology, famously dispensed with the soul, saying that if there was such a thing, it was incapable of being detected or measured scientifically.For a picture of innocence, one could turn instead to the Christian eighteenth-century poet William Blake, whose Songs of Innocence contrast with his Songs of Experience.Blake is a puzzle for modern readers, because he combines what for his time was a shocking frankness about sexuality (many of his hand-illustrated poems depict nude figures) and a total lack of what might be called pornographic intent, that is hard to comprehend today.
As one of the leading spokesmen of the Romantic movement, Blake opposed the Industrial Revolution and the new scientific, rational mode of thought that was sweeping the intellectual world around 1800.After two centuries of its dominance, we have a lot of trouble trying to think in any other way.But even Segal encountered hints that there is another way of viewing children besides the scientific one.Many scientists he talked with prefaced their remarks with comments like, "Don't portray me as endorsing pornography" or "I don't want my kids watching this stuff."And he described an interesting event in which a group of teenagers were divided into two panels.One panel was to argue in favor of the idea that pornography affected them, and the other was to argue that it didn't.The pro-impact panel waxed eloquent about how pornography negatively affected their views of what sex should be like, and tempted them to go out and try some of the pornographic acts they'd seen.By contrast, the no-impact group ran out of things to say after two minutes.
It has been argued that the widespread availability of internet porn has damaged or destroyed what should be one of the strongest bonds between a married couple:the channeling of a man's sexual desire into fulfillment exclusively by his wife, and vice-versa.True, this is an ideal, not always realized for long, if at all, in some marriages.But the fact that an ideal is not always realized does not make it any less of an ideal.And the competition women feel between their own appearance and the fictional airbrushed images online may explain why so many young women obsess about their looks and are generally unhappy with them, no matter how attractive they are.
So I applaud Cameron's move toward restricting internet porn access in the UK, and wish we could do something similar here, though our federal system and fragmented regulatory structure makes such a move much more difficult in the U. S.But for sure, nothing much will happen about protecting children from internet porn if the only authorities we listen to are scientific ones.
Sources:David Segal's article "Does Porn Hurt Children?" appeared on Mar. 29, 2014 at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/sunday-review/does-porn-hurt-children.html.David Cameron's speech before Britain's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children calling for the change to opt-in for internet porn is at
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-internet-and-pornography-prime-minister-calls-for-action.The quotation from Jesus is from the English Standard Version of the Bible, Matthew 18:6.
Abstract— We study the following problem: A data distributor has given sensitive data to a set of supposedly trusted agents (third parties). Some of the data are leaked and found in an unauthorized place (e.g., on the web or somebody’s laptop). The distributor must assess the likelihood that the leaked data came from one or more agents, as opposed to having been independently gathered by other means. We propose data allocation strategies (across the agents) that improve the probability of identifying leakages. These methods do not rely on alterations of the released data (e.g., watermarks). In some cases, we can also inject “realistic but fake” data records to further improve our chances of detecting leakage and identifying the guilty party.
Online recruiters, especially taking recourse to social networking media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. are great sources for gaining employment, besides the other online registered recruitment firms that cater to the employment and employ ability needs of vast segment of people seeking gainful employment, in either temporary(temp), permanent or contractual basis. Potential employees do gain a great deal of benefits and help from online recruiters, or recruiting agencies.
While online recruiters cannot guarantee jobs they do make all efforts to fit candidates in some suitable and profitable opening.
By registering online(with or without fees),filling Job Application forms and providing CV, or curriculum vitae, it is possible for prospective employers to gain data about possible candidates through recruitment agency and fill their Human Resource needs
Online recruiters help you to gain the most suitable job opportunities in line with your qualifications, skill sets and experience and perhaps help you gain your dream job
Nowadays, most HRM managers outsource their manpower needs to outside consultants or professional online recruiters or recruitment agencies. Large companies also follow suit since it saves them a great deal of time, money, efforts and perseverance which is avoided through subcontracting to online recruiters.
Employers and employees both get the best of both worlds, through online recruitment agencies. Employers need to be satisfied with the kind and suitability of employees while prospective employees need to get the kind of jobs they love and desire.
From largesse of online data bank resources, it is possible for online recruitment agencies to link the candidature with the job vacancies, thus ensuring the best choice for both employers and employees.
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Online sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, and also online recruitment agencies, are very good and helpful for people seeking jobs, preferably temp appointments immediately. Normally this would take 2-3 months in the case of posts required from brick-and-mortar recruitment agencies.
When time, money and immediate placement are major criteria, online recruiters are indeed what the doctor ordered. They not only provide quick and speedy results but also ensure that both employers and employees stand to gain through the procedure of online recruitments. Suitability and job choice are key aspects that are honored in this mode
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Thus, it may be concluded that online recruitments are indeed the first and last word in recruitment which benefits employees in terms of saving costs, time and efforts of seeking suitable and gainful employment in good companies like the unique essay writing services does. Best fit and temporary or long term business models are best gained through online recruitment procedures that have a great deal of advantages when compared to brick and mortar or other ways of gaining good employment opportunities, especially in highly competitive and cut throat job markets of today.
TechCrunch: Google Street View team reports that its recent text and street numbers recognition algorithm can be successfully used for solving CAPTCHA puzzles widely used on the web to determine a human versus a spam bot. The algorithm has been presented in a paper at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR).
I have a feeling that this algorithm has leaked outside Google, as starting from about Sept. 2013 the amount of spam comments in this blog has grown dramatically. On same days, per each real comment I get 10 spam ones, in spite of CAPTCHA protection.
Google algorithm recoginizes this with 99.8% accuracy
iFixIt teardown of Google Project Tango 3D camera revealed that it uses Primesense's recent Capri PS1200 SoC and its IR illuminator projects a familiar structured light dot pattern:
EETimes: Yves Faroudja presents a layered way to improve the video compression efficiency at NAB. He adds a new pre-processor layer, prior to a standard encoder such as H.264, HEVC, or MPEG 2, and post-processor (after compression decoding). "We take an image and simplify it; and that simplified image goes through the regular [standards-based] compression process," Faroudja explains. "But we never throw away information." This additional information is inserted in what Faroudja calls a "support layer." This compresses signals not used in Faroudja's so-called simplified image. Together with the decompressed simplified image, the support layer helps reconstruct the original image in full resolution and at 35-50% reduced bit rate at the same quality.
Imec published a brochure about its image sensor services offerings: "Imec offers services ranging from development-on-demand, over prototyping, to low-volume production." Imec has 200mm and 300mm image sensor fabs with 65nm, 90nm and 130nm processes, including an extensive image sensor toolbox:
Specific substrate (HR-Silicon, thick or graded dopant epi)
Pixels (3T, 4T, trench isolation, embedded CCD pixels in CMOS)
BSI processing
Hyperspectral filters
Special ARCs (CMOS compatible)
Stitching / Butting capabilities for large area imagers
Micro-bumping, 3D integration with TSVs
Capability to develop dedicated pixel technologies (e.g. for SPADs).
Organic imagers (polymer photo diodes & full imagers)
Lightfield Forum reviews Panasonic patent application on high resolution light field imaging. The US20140078259 "Light field image capture device and image sensor" by Masao Hiramoto, Yasunori Ishii, and Yusuke Monobe proposes to place microlens behind the photosensitive layer, rather than in front of it like in most other light field imaging approaches. This promotes the Panasonic-Fujifilm organic sensing layer possibilities:
The control layer 1b switches the light reflected from the layer 1c between the 1st and 2nd image capturing sessions:
Business Wire: ON Semiconductor announces a new PYTHON CMOS image sensor family based on 4.8um global shutter pixels. With resolutions of 300K, 500K and 1.3MP respectively, the PYTHON 300, 500 and 1300 feature in-pixel CDS (ipCDS) - global shutter with CDS in a relatively compact pixel size. The new PYTHON pixel combines a read noise of less than 9 e-, with 7.7 V/lux sensitivity and frame rates as high as 850fps (VGA format). A highly configurable sequencer also allows designers to tailor the sensor operation to the exact needs of the application, including support for fast on the fly updates to the sensor configuration. The sensor's operation is supported across the -40°C to +85°C industrial temperature range.
The new VGA, SVGA and SXGA are the first three sensors in the PYTHON family, with additional higher resolutions planned for release in the near future. All are pin-to-pin compatible with one-another and with the existing VITA1300 image sensor.
"With our new PYTHON image sensors we provide a cost-effective, high performance solution that will address the needs of the growing number of image sensing applications across a range of end markets," said Thad Smith, Director of the Image Sensor business unit at ON Semiconductor. "PYTHON offers an image sensing solution that not only provides appealing levels of speed without compromising image quality, but is also configurable and flexible enough to provide simple integration across multiple resolutions."
Engineers are people of action, not just words.But even if we believe what we are often told about climate change, it's not at all clear what we should do about it.
Last week, I attended a meeting at which a highly credentialed professional meteorologist outlined the history of the science of climate change from the nineteenth century to the present.Prof. Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M's Department of Atmospheric Sciences described how as long ago as the 1890s, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius calculated that the small concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (then around 300 parts per million) had a disproportionate effect on the earth's temperature.Regular monitoring of this concentration began in the 1950s, and by then it was clearly understood that more carbon dioxide means higher temperatures.Dr. Dessler said that for at least fifty years, there has been a consensus that the present human-caused increase in carbon dioxide in the air will eventually lead to a rise in global average temperatures of "a few degrees C."
So far I was with him.Other things being equal (which they never are), more greenhouse gases in the air (of which carbon dioxide is one) means the planet gets warmer.But then he started talking about cigarette smoking, and how the tobacco industry mounted a cynical disinformation campaign in the 1960s against the overwhelming evidence that smoking caused lung cancer and heart disease.Because it took about forty years for the scientific truth to change public policies (you began to see smoke-free campuses and workplaces only about ten years ago), Dr. Dessler thinks it may take that long for the U. S. to get serious about global warming.Personally, I think it will take longer than that, because the two cases are more different than they are similar.
As someone else in the audience pointed out, smoking has highly specific individual consequences.As long ago as 1964, anyone who read a newspaper knew that by smoking, you made it a lot more likely that you would die early and fast, the way my father died of lung cancer at 57 only a year after he was diagnosed.If driving a Humvee increased your personal chances of having your own house wrecked by a tornado by the same degree as smoking increases your chances of causing lung cancer, what would happen?Well, for one thing, Humvee owners would have a lot of trouble getting home insurance.And sales of Humvees would fall.
But in contrast to the smoking-cancer tie-in, the actions that contribute to climate change, and the possible (I emphasize "possible") consequences, are about as far removed as you can get and still stay on the same planet.From what little I know about the matter, it appears that the most widespread and likely consequence of letting the earth's average temperature rise a few degrees Celsius is that a lot of ice will melt, water will expand, and the ocean's average levels will rise.Let's leave aside all the other stuff—species extinction, storms, and other changes in weather patterns—and concentrate on just that one thing.
About 44% of the world's population in 2010 lived within 150 km (94 miles) of the sea.And many of the world's most populous cities are coastal ones, or so close to the coast that a significant rise in ocean level would cause them major problems.Now if all the ice in Antarctica melted, the ocean's level would rise some 61 meters (200 feet).So in that case, good-bye Hong Kong, New York, and Florida.But to my knowledge, no serious scientist has proposed that the entire ice sheet covering Antarctica is going to melt because of human-induced climate change.So the fact is that you have a range of estimates of how much the oceans will rise, but all of them are much less than 61 meters.They may be well-educated estimates, but that's all they are—estimates.
So instead of a single increased chance that you, individually, will suffer about the most serious consequence you can encounter—death—as a result of your individual actions, your individual motivation to do something about climate change is that somebody, somewhere, possibly but not certainly near a coastline, might eventually have to move or suffer an increased chance of getting flooded out in a storm.And that person might be you, but not for another few decades, anyway.And even if you become a hyper-climate-conscious zero-carbon-footprint fanatic, your solitary actions will be fruitless unless billions of people all across the world do likewise, or at least move in that direction.
Personal versus impersonal, individual versus transnational, death versus some fuzzy probabilistic consequence for many people you will never meet—at the point of political action, the analogy between smoking and burning fossil fuels collapses.There is also the little matter of the difference in economic importance of the two industries in question.If the entire tobacco industry vanished tomorrow, life could go on more or less normally for most of us, but if the entire fossil-fuel industry vanished tomorrow, a large number of us would die in a matter of weeks for lack of basic necessities.That is a big downside cost to the proposal to something about climate change fast.
Prof. Dessler sees a global carbon tax as the way forward.He thinks if the U. S. slapped a big carbon tax on imports, that the rest of the world would fall in line and come along quietly.A global tax high enough to put significant brakes on fossil fuel consumption now would likely do something similar to what the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 did.Most economists believe that those extremely high U. S. tariffs contributed significantly to the worldwide depression of the 1930s, and punitive carbon taxes imposed on countries that don't get in line with reduction in fossil-fuel use would probably trigger a global depression that would make the 1930s one look like a mild headache in comparison.
From an engineering point of view, achieving the goal of transitioning from a global economy based on fossil fuels to one in which fossil-fuel use is cut to a small fraction of its present rate is logically possible.But achieving it in a way that is just and fair, and imposes hardships less than those otherwise suffered from whatever climate change would result, is an immensely challenging technical and political task, and would require a degree of coordination and cooperation that is unprecedented in world history.
Maybe it will happen.But if history is any guide, something really awful, and unequivocally attributable to climate change, will first have to happen worldwide, in order to create the political will to act.
Sources:Prof. Andrew Dessler spoke at the Lone Star Historians of Science meeting at Texas A&M University on Apr. 11, 2014.I referred to Charles Krauthammer's column on climate change carried by the Washington Post on Feb. 20, 2014 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-myth-of-settled-science/2014/02/20/c1f8d994-9a75-11e3-b931-0204122c514b_story.html, and Daniel Yergin's history of climate change at http://danielyergin.com/history-of-climate-change/.
The statistic about ocean levels and Antarctica is from http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question473.htm.And for how a qualified opponent of the conventional view of climate change, Prof. William Happer, was received at another professional meeting, see my blog "When Scientists Aren't Scientists" on Oct. 7, 2013.
After installing the image on an sd card, you have to configure the system for your needs.
Calibrate the touch screen The touch screen calibration involves two steps and you need a keyboard connected: 1. Calibrating the touch screen for X11 applications(like Navit). Open the terminal from Desktop and type xinput_calibrator and follow the indications. After the calibration is completed you have to put the output in a file to make this permanent: sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/01-input.conf Put here the output of xinput_calibrator. It will be something like: Section "InputClass" Identifier "calibration" MatchProduct "eGalax Inc. USB TouchController" Option "Calibration" "121 1917 317 1741" Option "SwapAxes" "1" EndSection 2. Calibrating the touch screen for XBMC. In XBMC use the keyboard to go to Programs/Touch Screen Calibration and follow the informations on screen. Note, that in order to make a better calibration you can move the finger on screen towards the point, before pressing enter(as can be seen on minute 0:52 in the video). Touch each point and then press enter to go to the next one. At the end, you have to unplug the touch from usb and then plug it back(works on XBMC Gotham). After this, he calibration is stored permanently in the file /home/pi/touchscreen_axes_calib. You can edit this file to fine tune the position of the cursor if the calibration isn't perfect. calib_x_d and calib_y_d - control the cursor displacement up/down/left/right calib_x_fact and calib_y_fact - some factors obtained in the calibration process(don't edit them) click_confines - defines the area that will be used for click(if the touch moves outside of this area then a drag action will occur) - this area is measured from the first touched point touch_mouse - if you want to use a mouse you have to set this to 0, but some touch screens behave as mouses and you have to set this to 1 in order for them to work(with single click). For the most of the touches this can be 0 if you want to also use a mouse, but if you don't want to use a mouse it doesn't mater, let it be 1.
Change the resolution [XBMC] Using ssh you have to edit the file /home/pi/.xbmc/userdata/advancedsettings.xml and set your resolution. After this restart the whole system and XBMC should run with your new resolution. [LXDE] Connect with ssh and type tvservice -mDMT && tvservice -mCEA and get the desired resolution mode Edit /boot/config.txt and modify according to your preference, for example: hdmi_group=2 hdmi_mode=27 CEA group is 1 and DMT 2.
Add a new map for Navit 1. Go to Navit Planet Extractor and download a .bin file for your area. 2. Copy the .bin file in your RPI card in /home/pi/.navit/ folder 3. Edit the file /home/pi/navit_src/build/navit/navit.xml and search for the entry: <mapset enabled="yes"> <map type="binfile" enabled="yes" data="/home/pi/.navit/Romania.bin"/> </mapset> 4. Add your map name here like this: <mapset enabled="yes"> <map type="binfile" enabled="yes" data="/home/pi/.navit/Romania.bin"/> <map type="binfile" enabled="yes" data="/home/pi/.navit/new_map.bin"/> </mapset>
Setup the GPS receiver 1. For USB devices. After plugging the device into the usb port type dmesg and you should see somewhere that a new device was mapped on /dev/tty... Most probably the file name would be /dev/ttyACM0. 2. For Serial(UART) modules. The device will have the file name as /dev/ttyAMA0. You can test that the device is connected to a file name by calling cat/dev/ttyAMA0, for example and you should see some NMEA output. Now, copy this file name and put it in the file /home/pi/StartCarPC in the section: # Start gpsd # /dev/ttyAMA0 - RPI serial port # /dev/ttyACM0 - usb port sudo killall gpsd gpsd /dev/ttyAMA0
Voice configuration for Navit Each time a road indication has to be made, Navit will execute the file /home/pi/.navit/speech.sh with the indication text. This file will play a sound and the speak the indication, through speakers. aplay -r 44100 /home/pi/.navit/notification3.wav & sleep 0.7 && espeak -ven+f4 -s150 -a 150 -p 50 "$1" --stdout | aplay /home/pi/.navit/notification3.wav - the sound that will be played each time before an indication -ven+f4 - female voice number 4 -s150 - speed 150 words per minute -a150 - amplitude -p50 - pitch You can find more settings in the espeak manual If you don't want the voice guidance you can press the speaker button in Navit and it will be turned off.
Configure the Controller The controller can be easily used with Steering wheel controls or other physical controls in your car. To enable this controller, you have to edit the file /home/pi/StartCarPC and search for the entry: # Start the GPIO Remote #sudo opencarpc-controller /home/pi/gpio_description & You have to change it to: # Start the GPIO Remote sudo opencarpc-controller /home/pi/gpio_description & Now, you can set the configuration file like in this post
Change the car logo in the Home screen If you want to put another car logo you have to edit the file /home/pi/.xmc/addons/skin.CarPC-touch/16x9/Home.xml and find the entry: <posx>580</posx> <posy>205</posy> <width>550</width> <height>550</height> <texture>bmw_logo.png</texture> Here, you can set your new image instead of bmw_logo.png you can put a complete path of the new image.
Set up a WIFI connection If you want to have internet connection, or airplay or control the whole system using the XBMC remotes, you have to setup a wifi hotspot with your phone and then use an USB WIFI dongle(I am using EDIMAX EW-7811UN dongle). The system is configured to automatically connect to a wifi hotspot with the following settings: wpa-ssid "opencarpc" wpa-psk "opencarpc123" You can find these settings in the file /etc/network/interfaces.
Rambus PCT application WO/2014/055391 "Conditional-Reset Multi-Bit Read-out Image Sensor" by Thomas Vogelsang, Michael Guidash, Song Xue, and James Harris talks about a version of the old idea to expand DR by resetting pixel each time its signal value crosses a threshold during the integration time: "If the pixel signal exceeds a sampling threshold, the photosensitive element is reset. During an image capture period, digital values associated with pixel signals that exceed a sampling threshold are accumulated into image data."
