Smartwatches can now track your finger in mid-air using sonar

A new sonar technology developed by computer scientists and electrical engineers allows you to interact with mobile devices and smartwatch screens by writing or gesturing on any nearby surface -- a tabletop, a sheet of paper or even in mid-air.

As mobile and wearable devices such as smartwatches grow smaller, it gets tougher for people to interact with screens the size of a matchbook.

That could change with a new sonar technology developed by University of Washington computer scientists and electrical engineers that allows you to interact with mobile devices by writing or gesturing on any nearby surface -- a tabletop, a sheet of paper or even in mid-air.

FingerIO tracks fine-grained finger movements by turning a smartphone or smartwatch into an active sonar system using the device's own microphones and speakers.

Because sound waves travel through fabric and do not require a line of sight, users can even interact with a phone inside a front pocket or a smartwatch hidden under a sweater sleeve.

In a paper to be presented in May at the Association for Computing Machinery's CHI 2016 conference in San Jose, California, the UW team demonstrates that FingerIO can accurately track two-dimensional finger movements to within 8mm, which is sufficiently accurate to interact with today's mobile devices. The work was recognized with an honorable mention award by the conference.

"You can't type very easily onto a smartwatch display, so we wanted to transform a desk or any area around a device into an input surface," said lead author Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering. "I don't need to instrument my fingers with any other sensors -- I just use my finger to write something on a desk or any other surface and the device can track it with high resolution."

Using FingerIO, one could use the flick of a finger to turn up the volume, press a button, or scroll through menus on a smartphone without touching it, or even write a search command or text in the air rather than typing on a tiny screen.

FingerIO turns a smartwatch or smartphone into a sonar system using the device's own speaker to emit an inaudible sound wave. That signal bounces off the finger, and those "echoes" are recorded by the device's microphones and used to calculate the finger's location in space.

Using sound waves to track finger motion offers several advantages over cameras -- which don't work without line-of-sight when the device is hidden by fabric or another obstructions -- and other technologies like radar that require both custom sensor hardware and greater computing power, said senior author and UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering Shyam Gollakota.

"Acoustic signals are great -- because sound waves travel much slower than the radio waves used in radar, you don't need as much processing bandwidth so everything is simpler," said Gollakota, who directs the UW's Networks and Mobile Systems Lab. "And from a cost perspective, almost every device has a speaker and microphones so you can achieve this without any special hardware."

But sonar echoes are weak and typically not accurate enough to track finger motion at a high resolution. Errors of a few centimeters make it impossible to differentiate between writing individual letters or subtle hand gestures.

The UW researchers employed a type of signal typically used in wireless communication -- called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing -- and demonstrated that it can be used to achieve high-resolution finger tracking using sound. Their algorithms leverage the properties of OFDM signals to track phase changes in the echoes and correct for any errors in the finger location to achieve sub-centimeter finger tracking.

To test their approach, the researchers created a FingerIO prototype app for Android devices and downloaded it to an off-the-shelf Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone and a smartwatch customized with two microphones, which are needed to track finger motion in two dimensions. Today's smartwatches typically only have one, which can be used to track a finger in one dimension.

The researchers asked testers to draw shapes such as stars, squiggles or figure 8s on a touchpad next to a smartphone or smartwatch running FingerIO. Then they compared the touchpad tracings to the shapes created by FingerIO's tracking.

The average difference between the drawings and the FingerIO tracings was 0.8 centimeters for the smartphone and 1.2 centimeters for the smartwatch.

"Given that your finger is already a centimeter thick, that's sufficient to accurately interact with the devices," said co-author and electrical engineering graduate student Vikram Iyer.

Next steps for the research team include demonstrating how FingerIO can be used to track multiple fingers moving at the same time, and extending its tracking abilities into three dime

Young sun-like star shows a magnetic field was critical for life on the early Earth

Nearly four billion years ago, life arose on Earth. Life appeared because our planet had a rocky surface, liquid water, and a blanketing atmosphere. But life thrived thanks to another necessary ingredient: the presence of a protective magnetic field. A new study of the young, Sun-like star Kappa Ceti shows that a magnetic field plays a key role in making a planet conducive to life.

 

Nearly four billion years ago, life arose on Earth. Life appeared because our planet had a rocky surface, liquid water, and a blanketing atmosphere. But life thrived thanks to another necessary ingredient: the presence of a protective magnetic field. A new study of the young, Sun-like star Kappa Ceti shows that a magnetic field plays a key role in making a planet conducive to life.

"To be habitable, a planet needs warmth, water, and it needs to be sheltered from a young, violent Sun," says lead author Jose-Dias Do Nascimento of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and University of Rio G. do Norte (UFRN), Brazil.

Kappa Ceti, located 30 light-years away in the constellation Cetus, the Whale, is remarkably similar to our Sun but younger. The team calculates an age of only 400-600 million years old, which agrees with the age estimated from its rotation period (a technique pioneered by CfA astronomer Soren Meibom). This age roughly corresponds to the time when life first appeared on Earth. As a result, studying Kappa Ceti can give us insights into the early history of our solar system.

Like other stars its age, Kappa Ceti is very magnetically active. Its surface is blotched with many giant starspots, like sunspots but larger and more numerous. It also propels a steady stream of plasma, or ionized gases, out into space. The research team found that this stellar wind is 50 times stronger than our Sun's solar wind.

Such a fierce stellar wind would batter the atmosphere of any planet in the habitable zone, unless that planet was shielded by a magnetic field. At the extreme, a planet without a magnetic field could lose most of its atmosphere. In our solar system, the planet Mars suffered this fate and turned from a world warm enough for briny oceans to a cold, dry desert.

The team modeled the strong stellar wind of Kappa Ceti and its effect on a young Earth. The early Earth's magnetic field is expected to have been about as strong as it is today, or slightly weaker. Depending on the assumed strength, the researchers found that the resulting protected region, or magnetosphere, of Earth would be about one-third to one-half as large as it is today.

"The early Earth didn't have as much protection as it does now, but it had enough," says Do Nascimento.

Kappa Ceti also shows evidence of "superflares" -- enormous eruptions that release 10 to 100 million times more energy than the largest flares ever observed on our Sun. Flares that energetic can strip a planet's atmosphere. By studying Kappa Ceti, researchers hope to learn how frequently it produces superflares, and therefore how often our Sun might have erupted in its youth.

Clocking the rotation rate of a supermassive black hole

The rotational rate of one of the most massive black holes in the universe has been accurately measured by an international team of astronomers, using several optical telescopes and NASA's SWIFT X-ray telescope. The rotational rate of this massive black hole is one third of the maximum spin rate allowed in General Relativity. This 18 billion solar mass heavy black hole powers a quasar OJ287 which lies about 3.5 billion light years away from Earth.

A recent observational campaign involving more than two dozen optical telescopes and NASA's space based SWIFT X-ray telescope allowed a team of astronomers to measure very accurately the rotational rate of one of the most massive black holes in the universe. The rotational rate of this massive black hole is one third of the maximum spin rate allowed in General Relativity. This 18 billion solar mass heavy black hole powers a quasar called OJ287 which lies about 3.5 billion light years away from Earth. Quasi-stellar radio sources or `quasars' for short, are the very bright centers of distant galaxies which emit huge amounts of electro-magnetic radiation due to the infall of matter into their massive black holes.

This quasar lies very close to the apparent path of the Sun's motion on the celestial sphere as seen from Earth, where most searches for asteroids and comets are conducted. Therefore, its optical photometric measurements already cover more than 100 years. A careful analysis of these observations show that OJ 287 has produced quasi-periodic optical outbursts at intervals of approximately 12 years dating back to around 1891. Additionally, a close inspection of newer data sets reveals the presence of double-peaks in these outbursts.

These deductions prompted Prof. Mauri Valtonen of University of Turku, Finland and his collaborators to develop a model that requires the quasar OJ287 to harbour two unequal mass black holes. Their model involves a massive black hole with an accretion disk (a disk of interstellar material formed by matter falling into objects like black holes) while the comparatively smaller black hole revolves around it. The quasar OJ287 is visible due to the slow accretion of matter, present in the accretion disk, onto the largest black hole. Additionally, the small black hole passes through the accretion disk during its orbit which causes the disk material to heat up to very high temperatures. This heated material flows out from both sides of the accretion disk and radiates strongly for weeks. This causes peaks in the brightness, and the double peaks arise due to the ellipticity of the orbit, as shown in the figure.

The binary black hole model for OJ287 implies that the smaller black hole's orbit should rotate, and this changes where and when the smaller hole impacts the accretion disk. This effect arises from Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and its precessional rate depends mainly on the two black hole masses and the rotation rate of the more massive black hole. In 2010, Valtonen and collaborators used eight well timed bright outbursts of OJ287 to accurately measure the precession rate of the smaller hole's orbit. This analysis revealed for the first time the rotation rate of the massive black hole along with accurate estimates for the masses of the two black holes. This was possible since the smaller black hole's orbit precess at an incredible 39 degrees per individual orbit. The General Relativistic model for OJ287 also predicted that the next outburst could occur around the time of GR Centenary, 25 November 2015, which marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

An observational campaign was therefore launched to catch this predicted outburst. The predicted optical flare began around November 18, 2015 and reached its maximum brightness on December 4, 2015. It is the timing of this bright outburst that allowed Valtonen and his co-workers to directly measure the rotation rate of the more massive black hole to be one third of the maximum spin rate allowed in General Relativity. In other words, its Kerr parameter is accurately measured to be 0.31 and its maximum allowed value in General Relativity is one. In comparison, the Kerr parameter of the final black hole associated with the first ever direct detection of gravitational waves is only estimated to be below 0.7.

The observations leading to accurate spin measurement have been made due to the collaboration of a number of optical telescopes in Japan, South Korea, India, Turkey, Greece, Finland, Poland, Germany, UK, Spain, USA and Mexico. The effort, led by Staszek Zola of Poland, involved close to 100 astronomers from these countries. Interestingly, a number of key participants were amateur astronomers who operate their own telescopes. Valtonen's team that developed and contributed to the spinning binary black hole model include theoretical astrophysicist A. Gopakumar from TIFR, India, and Italian X-Ray astronomer Stefano Ciprini who obtained and analyzed the X-ray data.

The occurrence of the predicted optical outburst of OJ287 also allowed the team to confirm the loss of orbital energy to gravitational waves within two percent of General Relativity's prediction. This provides the first indirect evidence for the existence of a massive spinning black hole binary emitting gravitational waves. This is encouraging news for the Pulsar Timing Array efforts that will directly detect gravitational waves from such systems in the near future. Therefore, the present optical outburst of OJ287 makes a fitting contribution to the centenary celebrations of General Relativity and adds to the excitement of the first direct observation of a transient gravitational wave signal by LIGO.

Android 6.0 Marshmallow

Android 6.0 Marshmallow Update Status For Galaxy Note 5, S6 Edge+, S6, S6 Edge, Note 4, Edge, S5, Alpha, A7, A5, A3, Galaxy Tab S2

The Android 6.0 Marshmallow OTA update has already been released by Samsung for the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones. However, it is yet to rollout Android 6.0 update for other smartphones. Now, a newly leaked Marshmallow update roadmap has surfaced, revealing when would devices like S6 Edge+, Note 5, Note 4, Note Edge and other models would receive the software update.

Phone Arena has reported that the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+ would start receiving the update from this month. The Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge users outside the U.S. and South Korea would also be receiving the Marshmallow update in this month.

The Galaxy Note 4 and the Galaxy Note Edge smartphones from 2014 are slated to get updated to Android 6.0 in the next month. The Samsung Galaxy S5 from 2014 would getting the Android 6.0 software in May 2016. The 8-inch and 9.7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 would be upgraded to Android 6.0 in May 2016. The Galaxy Alpha would be updated to the latest Android software in June 2016.

After the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update is made available for flagship devices from Samsung, the software update would also be made available to other Galaxy devices. However, the publication has only mentioned that the Android 6.0 upgrade would be coming to Galaxy A7 (2016). It is likely that other A series smartphone from this year such as Galaxy A5 and A3 may receive the update later this year.

Samsung has recently launched the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones. Both come preloaded with Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS that is customized with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI. Recent rumors suggest that the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge that were made available for presale from Feb. 23 are smashing preorder records in 60 launch markets across the world.

Electricity can flow through graphene at high frequencies without energy loss

Electrical signals transmitted at high frequencies lose none of their energy when passed through the 'wonder material' graphene, a study has shown. Discovered in 2004, graphene -- which measures just an atom in thickness and is around 100 times stronger than steel -- has been identified as having a range of potential uses across the engineering and health sectors.

Electrical signals transmitted at high frequencies lose none of their energy when passed through the 'wonder material' graphene, a study led by Plymouth University has shown.

Discovered in 2004, graphene -- which measures just an atom in thickness and is around 100 times stronger than steel -- has been identified as having a range of potential uses across the engineering and health sectors.

Now research has shown graphene out-performs any other known material, including superconductors, when carrying high-frequency electrical signals compared to direct current, essentially transmitting signals without any additional energy loss.

And since graphene lacks band-gap, which allows electrical signals to be switched on and off using silicon in digital electronics, academics say it seems most applicable for applications ranging from next generation high-speed transistors and amplifiers for mobile phones and satellite communications to ultra-sensitive biological sensors.

The study was led by Dr Shakil Awan, a Lecturer in the School of Computing, Electronics and Mathematics at Plymouth University, alongside colleagues from Cambridge and Tohoku (Japan) Universities and Nokia Technologies (Cambridge, UK).

Dr Shakil Awan, Lecturer in the School of Computing, Electronics and Mathematics and the principal investigator in the study, said: "An accurate understanding of the electromagnetic properties of graphene over a broad range of frequencies (from direct current to over 10 GHz) has been an important quest for several groups around the world. Initial measurements gave conflicting results with theory because graphene's intrinsic properties are often masked by much larger interfering signals from the supporting substrate, metallic contacts and measurement probes. Our results for the first time not only confirm the theoretical properties of graphene but also open up many new applications of the material in high-speed electronics and bio-sensing."

The study, published in the IOP 2D Materials Journal, was funded by the EU Graphene Flagship, EPSRC, ERC and Nokia Technologies, and the results are now being exploited in developing high-speed and efficient low noise amplifiers, mixers, radiation detectors and novel bio-sensors.

The latter is the focus of a three-year £1million project funded by the EPSRC on developing highly-sensitive graphene bio-sensors for early detection of dementia (such as Alzheimer's disease) compared to current methods.

Graphene is ideally suited for this as its room temperature thermal noise is smaller than any other known material, enabling the sensitive detection of tiny numbers of antibody-antigen interactions to indicate the likelihood of a patient to develop dementia in the future.

Dr Alan Colli, from Nokia Technologies, said: "Graphene devices for next generation wireless technologies (up to and beyond 10 GHz) are progressing fast. Our study has unlocked the fundamental behaviour of graphene at high frequencies, which will be essential in the design and evaluation of future graphene-based wireless devices. This has only been made possible because of the multi-discipline expertise of the different groups based at Nokia, and in Plymouth, Cambridge and Tohoku universities."

Monkeys drive wheelchairs using only their thoughts

Neuroscientists have developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) that allows primates to use only their thoughts to navigate a robotic wheelchair.

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A computer in the lab of Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., Ph.D., monitors brain signals from a rhesus macaque. Nicolelis and Duke researchers record signals from hundreds of neurons in two regions of the monkeys' brains that are involved in movement and sensation. As the animals think about moving toward their goal -- in this case, a bowl containing fresh grapes -- computers translate their brain activity into real-time operation of a wheelchair.

Credit: Shawn Rocco/ Duke Health

Neuroscientists at Duke Health have developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) that allows primates to use only their thoughts to navigate a robotic wheelchair.

The BMI uses signals from hundreds of neurons recorded simultaneously in two regions of the monkeys' brains that are involved in movement and sensation. As the animals think about moving toward their goal -- in this case, a bowl containing fresh grapes -- computers translate their brain activity into real-time operation of the wheelchair.

The interface, described in the March 3 issue of the online journal Scientific Reports, demonstrates the future potential for people with disabilities who have lost most muscle control and mobility due to quadriplegia or ALS, said senior author Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., Ph.D., co-director for the Duke Center for Neuroengineering.

"In some severely disabled people, even blinking is not possible," Nicolelis said. "For them, using a wheelchair or device controlled by noninvasive measures like an EEG (a device that monitors brain waves through electrodes on the scalp) may not be sufficient. We show clearly that if you have intracranial implants, you get better control of a wheelchair than with noninvasive devices."

Scientists began the experiments in 2012, implanting hundreds of hair-thin microfilaments in the premotor and somatosensory regions of the brains of two rhesus macaques. They trained the animals by passively navigating the chair toward their goal, the bowl containing grapes. During this training phase, the scientists recorded the primates' large-scale electrical brain activity. The researchers then programmed a computer system to translate brain signals into digital motor commands that controlled the movements of the wheelchair.

As the monkeys learned to control the wheelchair just by thinking, they became more efficient at navigating toward the grapes and completed the trials faster, Nicolelis said.

In addition to observing brain signals that corresponded to translational and rotational movement, the Duke team also discovered that primates' brain signals showed signs they were contemplating their distance to the bowl of grapes.

"This was not a signal that was present in the beginning of the training, but something that emerged as an effect of the monkeys becoming proficient in this task," Nicolelis said. "This was a surprise. It demonstrates the brain's enormous flexibility to assimilate a device, in this case a wheelchair, and that device's spatial relationships to the surrounding world."

The trials measured the activity of nearly 300 neurons in each of the two monkeys. The Nicolelis lab previously reported the ability to record up to 2,000 neurons using the same technique. The team now hopes to expand the experiment by recording more neuronal signals to continue to increase the accuracy and fidelity of the primate BMI before seeking trials for an implanted device in humans, he said.

In addition to Nicolelis, study authors include Sankaranarayani Rajangam; Po-He Tseng; Allen Yin; Gary Lehew; David Schwarz; and Mikhail A. Lebedev.

The National Institutes of Health (DP1MH099903) funded this study. The Itau Bank of Brazil provided research support to the study as part of the Walk Again Project, an international non-profit consortium aimed at developing new assistive technologies for severely paralyzed patients.

NASA's IBEX observations pin down interstellar magnetic field

A new study uses IBEX data and simulations of the interstellar boundary -- which lies at the very edge of the giant magnetic bubble surrounding our solar system called the heliosphere - to better describe space in our galactic neighborhood.

(Artist concept) Far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the solar wind and the interstellar medium interact to create a region known as the inner heliosheath, bounded on the inside by the termination shock, and on the outside by the heliopause.

 Immediately after its 2008 launch, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spotted a curiosity in a thin slice of space: More particles streamed in through a long, skinny swath in the sky than anywhere else. The origin of the so-called IBEX ribbon was unknown -- but its very existence opened doors to observing what lies outside our solar system, the way drops of rain on a window tell you more about the weather outside.

Now, a new study uses IBEX data and simulations of the interstellar boundary -- which lies at the very edge of the giant magnetic bubble surrounding our solar system called the heliosphere -- to better describe space in our galactic neighborhood. The paper, published Feb. 8, 2016, in Astrophysical Journal Letters, precisely determines the strength and direction of the magnetic field outside the heliosphere. Such information gives us a peek into the magnetic forces that dominate the galaxy beyond, teaching us more about our home in space.

The new paper is based on one particular theory of the origin of the IBEX ribbon, in which the particles streaming in from the ribbon are actually solar material reflected back at us after a long journey to the edges of the sun's magnetic boundaries. A giant bubble, known as the heliosphere, exists around the sun and is filled with what's called solar wind, the sun's constant outflow of ionized gas, known as plasma. When these particles reach the edges of the heliosphere, their motion becomes more complicated.

"The theory says that some solar wind protons are sent flying back towards the sun as neutral atoms after a complex series of charge exchanges, creating the IBEX ribbon," said Eric Zirnstein, a space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and lead author on the study. "Simulations and IBEX observations pinpoint this process -- which takes anywhere from three to six years on average -- as the most likely origin of the IBEX ribbon."

Outside the heliosphere lies the interstellar medium, with plasma that has different speed, density, and temperature than solar wind plasma, as well as neutral gases. These materials interact at the heliosphere's edge to create a region known as the inner heliosheath, bounded on the inside by the termination shock -- which is more than twice as far from us as the orbit of Pluto -- and on the outside by the heliopause, the boundary between the solar wind and the comparatively dense interstellar medium.

Some solar wind protons that flow out from the sun to this boundary region will gain an electron, making them neutral and allowing them to cross the heliopause. Once in the interstellar medium, they can lose that electron again, making them gyrate around the interstellar magnetic field. If those particles pick up another electron at the right place and time, they can be fired back into the heliosphere, travel all the way back toward Earth, and collide with IBEX's detector. The particles carry information about all that interaction with the interstellar magnetic field, and as they hit the detector they can give us unprecedented insight into the characteristics of that region of space.

"Only Voyager 1 has ever made direct observations of the interstellar magnetic field, and those are close to the heliopause, where it's distorted," said Zirnstein. "But this analysis provides a nice determination of its strength and direction farther out."

The directions of different ribbon particles shooting back toward Earth are determined by the characteristics of the interstellar magnetic field. For instance, simulations show that the most energetic particles come from a different region of space than the least energetic particles, which gives clues as to how the interstellar magnetic field interacts with the heliosphere.

For the recent study, such observations were used to seed simulations of the ribbon's origin. Not only do these simulations correctly predict the locations of neutral ribbon particles at different energies, but the deduced interstellar magnetic field agrees with Voyager 1 measurements, the deflection of interstellar neutral gases, and observations of distant polarized starlight.

However, some early simulations of the interstellar magnetic field don't quite line up. Those pre-IBEX estimates were based largely on two data points -- the distances at which Voyagers 1 and 2 crossed the termination shock.

"Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock at 94 astronomical units, or AU, from the sun, and Voyager 2 at 84 AU," said Zirnstein. One AU is equal to about 93 million miles, the average distance between Earth and the sun. "That difference of almost 930 million miles was mostly explained by a strong, very tilted interstellar magnetic field pushing on the heliosphere."

But that difference may be accounted for by considering a stronger influence from the solar cycle, which can lead to changes in the strength of the solar wind and thus change the distance to the termination shock in the directions of Voyager 1 and 2. The two Voyager spacecraft made their measurements almost three years apart, giving plenty of time for the variable solar wind to change the distance of the termination shock.

"Scientists in the field are developing more sophisticated models of the time-dependent solar wind," said Zirnstein.

The simulations generally jibe well with the Voyager data.

"The new findings can be used to better understand how our space environment interacts with the interstellar environment beyond the heliopause," said Eric Christian, IBEX program scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was not involved in this study. "In turn, understanding that interaction could help explain the mystery of what causes the IBEX ribbon once and for all."