Within three to six weeks from being sowed over land mine infested areas the small plant, a Thale Cress, will turn a warning red whenever close to a land mine.  Aresa's invention, based on research at the Institute of Molecular Biology at Copenhagen University, uses a plant's normal reaction to turn red or brown when subjected to stressful conditions such as cold or drought,  

Sanyo TS41 Mobile Phone   Japanese electronics giant Sanyo has developed a truly silent mobile phone. Instead of a loudspeaker, the handset, the TS41, uses the user's own skull to transmit the incoming call.   Using bone to conduct sound waves isn't new, but this is the first time we've heard the technique being used for a mobile phone. Sanyo claims it's a world's first.

When you hold the handset against your cheekbone, it vibrates and the vibrations are transmitted through your skull to the bones in your inner ear. They vibrate in turn, just as if they were under the influence of a sound wave and send signals into the brain accordingly.  The upshot: the user hears a 'sound' that isn't actually there.  Sanyo claims bone conduction makes the 'sound' easier to hear, especially in a noisy environment.

Sanyo's handset will be offered by Japanese network provider Tu-Ka at the end of this month.  The clamshell handset weighs 98g. Inside is a 2.1in, 176 x 132 16-bit colour LCD. On the back is a 1in, 64 x 64 16-bit colour screen that display the time. It can play 40-voice polyphonic ringtones.  The TS41 contains a conventional speaker. Using it, the phone can provide 140 minutes' worth of talktime. With the sub-sonic speaker, it can only manage 130 minutes. Standby time is 400 minutes.

The images are easily viewed in an office environment. Like any computer monitor or TV, they appear brighter the lower the ambient light. Viewing in direct sun light is almost impossible in our current prototype.  The image is planar (2D), not volumetric (3D).  It appears 3D when viewed more than a few feet away, however, because there is no physical depth reference. Thus, like any computer monitor, it can project simulated 3D. Images can be seen up to 75°s off aspect for a total viewing area of 150°s.

The images of the current prototypes are invisible (transparent) from behind. In future versions, the behind image will be togglable between invisible, same as front image or different from front image. Viewing requires no special glasses or background/foreground screening. In the current prototypes, the images float above the device. In future versions, the Heliodisplay will be rotatable, so that images can be projected to the side or even down.

Furthermore, the device can be interactive, like a virtual touchscreen. A hand or finger can act as a mouse. No special glove or pointing device is required.   www.io2technology.com

Toyota Prius - Toyota plans to release a car next month in Japan that parallel parks itself, an Australian newspaper reported.  Toyota has rigged its hybrid Prius model with special gear to accomplish the feat. It uses a rear-mounted camera and a computer program to perform the task, consistently making a perfect reverse park without the driver touching the wheel, said Toby Hagon, an editor of The Age, who test-drove the vehicle.

"This system assures you don't hit other cars," he said.  Hagon, along with other journalists from around the globe, test-drove the car in Tokyo three weeks ago. Toyota declined to comment about the car or its capabilities.

Nonetheless, automotive experts expect the car to make splashy headlines when Toyota officially unveils it to the public next month. It will initially be offered as a high-end feature for the $20,000 Prius, a model that uses an electric motor to assist a gasoline engine to conserve fuel. Hagon said the self-parking option is the first step toward self-driving cars.

Bryan Rickett, who heads the radar group at Roke, says it will be another two years before cars come equipped with the capability to park themselves. He wasn't sure whether self-driving cars would hit the market anytime soon, although Hagon estimated they would in another "10 to 15 years."

"We already have automatic cruise control," Rickett said. "Parking and collision-avoidance-type functions are coming along as well."  Toyota's Prius may become the first car to exhibit those features. In Hagon's test drive, the car's built-in computer electronically measured a parking spot, marked a turn-in point with a virtual flagpole and then steered the car automatically into the space -- rear end first. The car monitored white lines, gutters and nearby objects, avoiding scratches and performing a "perfect" park every time, Hagon said.  But Hagon could see a major pitfall for the Prius: its price tag.

"I wouldn't buy the car," Hagon said. "You can get a better car for less money."  Auto insurance companies probably won't like the system either. Just as airplanes carry pilots even though most of the plane's features are automated, a car will probably always require a driver for liability reasons, Rickett said.  "I doubt insurance companies will let drivers say they aren't responsible for their vehicles," he said.    wired..08/25/2003

The side effect of this popularity has been the costly human monitoring operations needed to process the video information.  VMAD overcomes the inefficiencies of relying on an operator to identify suspicious behaviour from many different video feeds by 'learning' to analyse the live CCTV images for out of the ordinary events. The VMAD software can be configured to alert an operator's attention to an abnormal event that may be cause for concern, and highlight it on screen. An alternate configuration could be set to an indexing point on a CCTV recording, making it easier to analyse an event after it has happened.

"The heightened pressure for ports and airports to increase security measures by investing in new technology to protect people and assets has resulted in security staff being overloaded with information from CCTV, radio and other systems", says Simon Reay, Technical Sales Manager at Roke Manor Research.

"VMAD improves staff efficiency by enabling them to manage more video screens or releasing them to provide extra resource on the ground. The cost savings realised could open up the potential for monitoring operations that were until now economically infeasible due to manning overhead."

Video cameras and motion detectors have been commonplace for a number of years. However, it has been reported that these surveillance systems have been of limited use due to high false alarm rates and an inability to extract key information from scenes of high activity.  Unlike other emerging image intelligence software solutions, VMAD does not need programming to look for a multitude of specific objects or events. Instead, it learns for itself the normal scene behaviour. Therefore, it is simple to set up and maintain and can manage a large number of possible anomalous or unforeseen events.

VMAD can simultaneously process hundreds of moving features, regardless of direction and speed of travel, and is robust to lighting changes. Consequently VMAD can detect an abnormal event even in the presence of other normal movement, improving on traditional video motion detection (VMD) solutions.  For ports, airports and terminals, VMAD can be applied to a wide variety of applications including detecting bags that have been abandoned or fallen from a carousel, speeding vehicles, abnormal passenger behaviour such as people running through a terminal building, jumping over barriers, approaching stationary aircraft or entering restricted areas. The benefits of VMAD are most apparent in situations where accurate event detection is required for distributed installations with many cameras and a high number of possible abnormal events.

In addition to transport hubs, VMAD's flexibility means it is well suited to a number of different sectors, including security agencies, power stations, shopping malls or car parks and corporations such as banks.