Obscure Research Blog May Archive

Get ready to design power for security IP cameras.

"Now as the IEEE works to increase the power available to network powered devices, the market is expected to have new momentum to increase this explosive growth. "

Source: Power Management Design Line

Source: GPS World

Isn't eavesdropping illegal?

Source: Sensors Magazine

I can just see you walking into WAL*MART where they are scanning for these things. "Diabetic Supplies are on sale in Aisle Three!" Insurance Company scanners will be hidden where?

Gaithersburg, MD -- Retailers, manufacturers, hospitals, federal agencies and other organizations planning to use radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to improve their operations should also systematically evaluate the possible security and privacy risks and use best practices to mitigate them, according to a new report from the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

"RFID tags, commonly referred to as smart tags, have the ability to improve logistics, profoundly change cost structures for business, and improve the current levels of safety and authenticity of the international pharmaceutical supply chain and many other industries," said Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology Robert C. Cresanti. "This important report lays the foundation for addressing potential RFID security risks so that a thoughtful enterprise can launch a smart tag program with confidence."

RFID devices send and/or receive radio signals to transmit identifying information such as product model or serial numbers. They come in a wide variety of types and sizes, from the size of a grain of rice or printed on paper to much larger devices with built in batteries. Unlike bar coding systems, RFID devices can communicate without requiring a line of sight and over longer distances for faster batch processing of inventory and can be outfitted with sensors to collect data on temperature changes, sudden shocks, humidity or other factors affecting products.

As RFID devices are deployed in more sophisticated applications from matching hospital patients with laboratory test results to tracking systems for dangerous materials, concerns have been raised about protecting such systems against eavesdropping and unauthorized uses.

"The goal of our report," according to lead author Tom Karygiannis of NIST, "is to give organizations practical ways in a structured format with checklists and specific recommendations to address potential RFID security risks."

NIST prepared the new report as part of its responsibilities under the Federal Information and Security Management Act of 2002 to help federal agencies provide adequate security for their information technology systems. However, its recommendations for selecting appropriate security controls for RFID systems are likely to be useful to other types of organizations as well.

Two case studies -- in health care and supply chain settings -- provide examples for identifying and minimizing security risks throughout the various stages of an RFID project.

Source: NIST News Release.

"The world's biggest hole is located in Russia. The giant hole is actually a diamond mine in Eastern Siberia near the town Mirna. It is 525 meters deep and 1.25 km in the diameter."

All flight above the hole is prohibited now, because of the suction created by the hole. Is this an example of Vortexian Motion in action?

I've been reading Old Physics for New. If you think that Old Physics might have been giving the short shrift in favor of Modern Physics then this book is for you.

It covers the older theories of Webber, Hertz, and explains how these older theories are better than Modern Physics.

"Meditation includes the mental training of attention, which involves the selection of goal-relevant information from the array of inputs that bombard our sensory systems. One of the major limitations of the attentional system concerns the ability to process two temporally close, task-relevant stimuli. When the second of two target stimuli is presented within a half second of the first one in a rapid sequence of events, it is often not detected. This so-called "attentional-blink" deficit is thought to result from competition between stimuli for limited attentional resources. We measured the effects of intense meditation on performance and scalp-recorded brain potentials in an attentional-blink task. We found that three months of intensive meditation reduced brain-resource allocation to the first target, enabling practitioners to more often detect the second target with no compromise in their ability to detect the first target. These findings demonstrate that meditative training can improve performance on a novel task that requires the trained attentional abilities. -- Heleen A. Slagter, Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar, Andrew D. Francis, Sander Nieuwenhuis2, James M. Davis, Richard J. Davidson."

Source PLoS Biology.

Worried that your wife will catch you taking a peek at that pretty young lady in the bikini that just walked by? For today you are safe, but Google will know that you just looked at a billboard advertisement, by shining a small invisible infrared beam in your eye.

What I wonder is what the long term health implications of this technology will be? Many types of eye damage are cumulative. Undoubtedly Google and [404 Check: was link to http:/ / www. xuuk. com, anchor: Xuuk] will say the technology is perfectly safe. cure-BobP

Blackouts, "loss of load expectation" as a power company euphonium, and brownouts are likely this summer and will become more frequent in the future.

"... the possibility of blackouts and brownouts this summer remains. 'A summer power outage is enough of a possibility that Wall Street firms should make sure to be prepared,' warns Neil Katkov, research director at Celent."

"...Con Ed agrees that New York's energy grid needs new sources of energy generation. But it's politically unpopular to discuss putting [in] a power plant..."

Source: Power Management Design Line.

http://www.lenr-canr.org/

This site features a library of papers on LENR, Low Energy Nuclear Reactions CANR, Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions, is another term for this phenomenon.

See also: IEEE Spectrum September 2004.