Aptera Is The Future: 100 MPG

This awesome vehicle is just about to hit the market.  Check out their website!

Link

Robot Wall Climber Unleashed

Imagine one of these sent to seek & destroy your person, or even assassanate a political figure.  Who would be responsible in court?

LINK

170 MPG! Three-Wheeled Hybrid Scooter

Tongues And Technology

The tireless tongue already controls taste and speech, helps kiss and swallow and fights germs. Now scientists hope to add one more ability to the mouthy muscle, and turn it into a computer control pad.

Georgia Tech researchers believe a magnetic, tongue-powered system could transform a disabled person’s mouth into a virtual computer, teeth into a keyboard — and tongue into the key that manipulates it all.

“You could have full control over your environment by just being able to move your tongue,” said Maysam Ghovanloo, a Georgia Tech assistant professor who leads the team’s research.

The group’s Tongue Drive System turns the tongue into a joystick of sorts, allowing the disabled to manipulate wheelchairs, manage home appliances and control computers. The work still has a ways to go — one potential user called the design “grotesque” — but early tests are encouraging.

The system is far from the first that seeks a new way to control electronics through facial movements. But disabled advocates have particularly high hopes that the tongue could prove the most effective.

“This could give you an almost infinite number of switches and options for communication,” said Mike Jones, a vice president of research and technology at the Shepherd Center, an Atlanta rehabilitation hospital. “It’s easy, and somebody could learn an entirely different language.”

That’s quite a contrast to the handful of methods already available to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are disabled from the neck down.

The “sip and puff” technique, which lets people issue commands by inhaling and exhaling into a tube, is among the most popular. But it offers users only four different commands, limiting their options.

Control systems that use sophisticated pads to measure neck and head movements are also widespread, but using the hardware can be tiring, and frustrating on smaller electronics like computers.

And while newer innovations that track eye movement are promising, they can be costly, slow and susceptible to mixed signals.

The tongue, though, is a more flexible, sensitive and tireless option. And like other facial muscles, its functions tend to be spared in accidents that can paralyze most of the rest of the body, because the tongue is attached to the brain, not the spinal cord.

The tongue’s promise has long enticed scientists. In the 1960s, research work focused on turning the tongue into a primitive lens by attaching electrodes to the tissue. More recent studies have connected a camera that activates tongue electrodes in the shape of an object, helping blind people sense images.

A Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, newAbilities Systems Inc., has already designed a nine-button keypad placed on the roof of the mouth to control electronics.

Ghovanloo’s work, however, centers on creating a virtual keyboard instead of a physical one. He does that through a magnet about 3 millimeters wide that’s placed under the tip of the tongue.

The magnet’s movement is tracked by sensors on the side of each cheek, which sends data to a receiver atop a rather bulky set of headgear. It is then processed by software that converts the movement into commands for a wheelchair or other electronics.

After turning the system on, users are asked to establish six commands: Left, right, forward, backward, single-click and double-click. A graduate student who tested the technology was cruising the lab at will in a wheelchair, tongue firmly in cheek.

LINK

Cisco + HIPAA Security = Compliant Email Solution

Benign email messages are safe when sent from one healthcare provider to another over public systems. Messages with patient information must be encrypted or sent through secure VPNs or purely in-house email routes. Knowing when to use each is sometimes complicated, leading many healthcare workers to use secure methods every time, which can become unnecessarily expensive, slow or both.

In a recent interview with Cisco representatives Frances Dare and Terri Quinn-Andry, HCAR learned that new technology is available to analyze email messages before they are sent, searching for sensitive words. When language is found that potentially crosses HIPAA privacy regulations, software automatically reroutes the email through a secure path.

Ms. Dare is Director of Healthcare Practice at Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group. Terri Quinn-Andry is the company’s Security Solutions Manager. They described for us a company called “Iron Port Technologies,” which Cisco acquired last year.

“More than any other space in healthcare,” Ms. Dare explained, “I believe home care is one where HIPAA regulations overlay with security. We are talking with all constituents about the need to render data unusable. If a backup tape or laptop computer is stolen and hacked, the data should be unreadable. For many healthcare organizations today, that security aspect – data at rest – is already covered by encryption and other technologies that continue to evolve.”

Data Security Challenges
Both Dare and Quinn-Andry agree that protecting critical assets within an organization is an ongoing systems process rather than simply a checklist of items to meet compliance requirements. Cisco has outlined four key areas to ensure that an organization’s critical assets are secure:

1.     Education: Identify what the business critical data assets are and where these assets are located

2.     Operations (Process):  Safeguard critical data while “at rest” and “in motion.” Isolate access to those assets and network segments where the assets are with a layered defense approach.

3.     Regulatory and Corporate Policy Compliance: Adopt a security program that focuses on safeguarding critical data and addresses government and regulatory compliance requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, PCI, and HIPAA.

4.     Technology: Implement a solid security infrastructure and portfolio of technologies that satisfies the education, operations and policy steps.

Cisco has joined the “PCI Data Security Standards Council” with the goal of helping to evolve a security standard for the payment card industry in and out of healthcare. The company also participates as a board member of the HITRUST Alliance and actively participates in public policy discussions and Congressional hearings about data security advancements.
http://www.ironport.com

FULL ARTICLE: