Technology

COULD a Wiki-style website speed

up broadband access in the US?

Because the Federal

Communications Commission

(FCC) releases little information

on the availability and quality of

existing services, it’s hard to know

where to start, although the US

government has a mandate to

increase access to broadband .

To tackle the problem, analyst

Drew Clark of Washington DC will

launch BroadbandCensus.com

later this month. People will enter

where they live, the price of their

service and how happy they are

with it. Eventually, a speed test

will measure connection quality.

Awaiting a vote in the Senate,

the Broadband Census of America

Act will force the FCC to release

information such as the promised

speed of various services. Clark’s

site will provide a cross-check with

actual speeds and experiences.

ONE of the hazards of hospital

emergency rooms is that patients

can deteriorate without staff

noticing. Now they can be given a

device to monitor their vital signs.

The Scalable Medical Alert

Response Technology (SMART),

developed by Dorothy Curtis and

colleagues at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology, consists

of an infrared blood oxygen

3billion dollars. The total sum stolen from the 3.6 million American adults who fell victim to phishing attacks in 2007

Fresh from its last-minute acceptance of

a global climate deal last month in Bali,

the US underlined its green credentials

by flicking the switch on the power-

hungry incandescent light bulb.

The Energy Independence and

Security Act , which President George

W. Bush signed into law on 18 December,

is a mandate for phasing out 100-watt

incandescent bulbs starting in 2012,

75-watt bulbs in 2013 and 60-watt

bulbs in 2014. They will be replaced

by energy-saving alternatives such as

compact fluorescent lighting. It also

proposes a fivefold increase in the

availability of biofuel by 2022, and

making vehicles 40 per cent more fuel-

efficient by 2020.

This law adds federal momentum to

moves already under way in the lighting

industry and individual states (New

Scientist, 2 March 2007, p 26). Last

March, lighting giant Philips launched

a campaign to scrap energy-guzzling

lighting by 2016 – the firm estimates

that ditching incandescent bulbs would

save the $18 billion per year and cut

carbon dioxide emissions by 158 million

tonnes. In 2007, at least four states

drafted legislation aiming to ban

incandescent bulbs, while Wal-Mart

launched a campaign to sell 100 million

energy-efficient bulbs by the end of

2007, which it achieved in October.

Environmentalists are convinced

the new act is a significant step

forward. Christopher Flavin, president

of the Worldwatch Institute in

Washington DC, says it will “reshape

the trajectory of the whole lighting

industry, and tilt the market towards

efficient technologies”.

SWITCHING TO GREENER BULBS

sensor that clips onto a finger,

and chest electrodes that monitor

heartbeat. Both are attached to a

PDA that sits in a belt pack and

runs software that monitors their

readings, and sounds the alarm if

they change to a worrying extent.

It also beams the data to a PC

monitored by a paramedic.

In tests on 145 volunteers in

the ER at Brigham and Women’s

Hospital in Boston, SMART flagged

three patients who were stable

when admitted but later developed

dangerously irregular heartbeats.

For builders, holding heavy ceiling panels in place with one hand while standing on

a ladder and driving in screws with the other is, quite literally, a pain. So a team at

Nagoya University in Japan has developed a one-armed wearable robotic exoskeleton

(tinyurl.com/yto4g3) that takes the weight. After the builder has guided the panel into

place, powerful motors and springs in the exoskeleton take over to help support it.

The California Institute of Technology has filed a patent (tinyurl.com/28ue9e) on

an implantable lens that can switch its strength. Made of a light-sensitive polymer,

it changes its molecular structure in response to UV light of a particular frequency.

This gives people who have a lens replaced during cataract surgery two strengths to

choose from, allowing them to opt for the one that lets them see more clearly.

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WE LUV 2 TXT

The number of SMS text messages sent from

cellphones is expected to rise in 2008

Google’s translation into Chinese of the English word “flippant”. The error likely arose because Google’s algorithms deduce translations for individual words

by using examples of texts written in the two languages. Bad translations creep in if a word appears only rarely (www.danwei.org, 17 December 2007)

“The assassin who stabbed Bush”

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How is your

broadband sir?

How to survive in

an overworked ER

www.newscientist.com 5 January 2008 | NewScientist | 19

–Lighting the future–