Technology Category Archive

The Future for Smartguns

3 Replies Jonny Hankins

Smart phones are a way of life, but have you heard about smartguns? Here in the USA a debate is raging about the introduction of this type of technology, while in Germany it has already passed into law. But firstly, what is a smartgun and what type of technology does it involve?

The idea is that only the rightful owner of the weapon can fire it. There are different mechanisms on the market for ensuring this and I would like to introduce a few here.

Trigger Smart is an Irish company. They have a system that uses radio waves. The weapon has a receiver placed in the handle and the owner is given a tiny HF transponder (something similar to the device found in your car keys) that can be worn in a ring or a bracelet. The gun will only fire when the correct ID number is received from the ring or bracelet.

The manufacturers argue that this makes the gun safer, as it cannot be fired by the kids while you are out or by an intruder or attacker that takes the gun off you in a fight. In the event of a shooting the police can also jam the frequencies and make the gun useless. In some cases a chip can even be placed under the owner’s skin.

Way back in 1975 a magnetic version of the same idea was invented, and is generally believed to work very reliably, although it is not widely used. Another system uses biometrics, identifying the owner through their grip and characteristics of their hands, but even the developers argue that the system is only 90% effective.

One problem with biometrics is that the gun needs time to process all of this input, but a US Austrian company called Biomac have a system that uses optical sensors to measure data from below the skin. They hope to design a system that will be accurate and work within half a second of picking up the gun.

Smartguns

Possible smartgun biometrics?

The gun lobby argue however that these security systems make the gun potentially more dangerous as any intruder may be able to block the radio systems, the batteries or other electronic parts may fail, parents who like to shoot with their children would have to buy them a dedicated weapon, and what if the owner is not in the house and another family member needs to defend themselves using the gun?

Even pro gun control groups are not convinced as it might even make gun ownership seem safer, leading to more sales, so it are very difficult to find in the USA.

The extent to which the gun lobby influences politics here is difficult to appreciate from outside the country. There is an attempt at the moment to make it illegal to buy a gun for someone who has been declined permission to own one. At the moment if I buy a beer for someone under 21 or give watered down wine to my son (as we did in Italy) I risk going to prison, but if I buy a gun for my friend who has been declined a license on psychological grounds I do not. There is no guarantee that it will pass though, as any form of gun control is fought tooth and nail and with the advantage of high financial backing.

It is not a completely dark picture though. The state of New Jersey actually passed a law to say that smartgun technology must be fitted to new weapons as soon as it has been developed enough and shown to be reliable. In Germany a law was passed in 2009 that goes even further, in that the technology will have to be fitted to all weapons old and new once it is available and proven. Unfortunately proven etc might take many years.

What none of the above really does is to address one of the biggest problems of gun ownership here in the USA, suicide. There is a massive increase in suicide rates in states where gun ownership is high. Suicide rates using other means remain constant, but a gun is a no return tool. Extremely efficient and easy to manage, success is almost guaranteed, and none of the technology that is currently under development can address this problem.

This Harvard University link explains the relationship, but it is enough to say that suicide rates are double in states where gun ownership is high, although non firearm suicide rates are about the same. To give an idea there were almost 20 000 firearm suicides in 2009 out of 36 000 total deaths, while there were only 11 000 murders.

The debate will rage for many years to come, but what part will smartgun technology play?

Top 10 Emerging Technologies

3 Replies Jonny Hankins

A couple of weeks ago the World Economic Forum published a document on its blog called “The top 10 emerging technologies for 2013”. I thought it might be interesting to have a look at what they say. The article can be read here. The comments are my own interpretation however.

World Economic Forum

1. Online Electric Vehicles.

About 100 years ago a scientist called Tesla demonstrated that electricity could be provided wirelessly. Today there is an idea that electric cars could drive while being recharged from electromagnetic fields created from cables under the road. The cars would need much smaller batteries of course.

The problem with this technology seems to be that it is difficult to measure how much power is taken, so difficult to bill for, nothing more than that. Take a look at this article about other ways of cutting pollution from transport systems.

2. 3D printing and remote manufacturing.

Much has been written and the technology undoubtedly carries advantages, but did you read my post about 3D printers potentially being used to make gun parts?

3. Self Healing Materials.

A great idea but this and other uses of nanotechnology and its production practices need to be regulated, as does the disposal of such materials. We don’t know enough about the effects upon human health as the recent report cited in another post on this blog demonstrates.

4. Energy Efficient Water Purification.

Must be a good thing. Some of Christopher’s thoughts on the issue here.

5. Carbon Dioxide conversion and use.

Geo-engineering offers the possibility of drawing carbon dioxide from the air and storing it underground, but this technology is extremely controversial. This article entitled Engineering a Solution to Global Warming gives an idea of some of the ethical debate surrounding such processes.

6. Enhanced nutrition to drive health.

Genetic modification of plants to make them more nutritional. Much has been written about the GM issue, it is certainly not as simple as it may sound. Great commercial interests are involved, as are problems of cross fertilization and non-reproducibility. See this article on the Bassetti Foundation website about the Vatican and its interests in the problem.

7. Remote sensing.

The buzz-phrase Smart City is all over nowadays. Have a look at this article for some ideas of how using sensors might improve urban life.

8. Precise drug delivery through nanoscale engineering.

Medicine is the area in which nanotechnology research shows its greatest potential. The problems of regulation still exist as brought up in the article above, but the possible advantages for society make this type of research extremely valuable.

9. Organic electronics and photovoltaics.

This article mentions solar panels made using fruit and vegetable juice instead of silicon, and the printing of circuits using organic materials is already a reality. Silicon is more efficient at the moment, but expensive, polluting and will eventually run out, but if scale is not a problem these solutions work well.

10. Fourth generation nuclear reactors and waste recycling.

Making nuclear energy cleaner and better is the goal. The questions of safety and sustainability as well as real cost are not raised however, again not an argument that can be expanded upon too much as it is extremely polarized, but there are cleaner and safer ways to produce electricity as the article about electricity generation cited above shows.

Well it looks like we got most of it covered at Technology Bloggers anyway, cutting edge as we are.

Leap seconds

Leave a reply Christopher Roberts

2012 was a leap year, 2016 will be too, as will 2020 – you get the picture.

Every four years, the Gregorian calendar observers what is known as a leap year, a year with one day extra than the previous three years, or than the next three. This is because the solar year (how long it takes the earth to complete an entire orbit of the sun) is almost 6 hours longer than the standard 365 days calendar year.

Solar vs Gregorian Time

There is however a small issue with leap years. The original rule of adding a leap day every fourth year ever so slightly overcompensates for the time difference, as the solar year is 365.2422 days long. With leap years the average year has 365.25 days, which is 0.0078 days too many! Also, our planets spin is slightly irregular, meaning that some [solar] days are slightly longer [as in milliseconds!] than others, whilst others are slightly shorter.

TimeYou might think that there really isn’t any point in worrying about 0.0078 days, as it would take over 128 years before all those tiny bits of days added up to make an entire day. However if we ignored the 0.0078 days, in 23,376 years we would have lost so much time, the seasons would have completely reversed, as there would be a huge 6 months of time distortion!

To solve the problem, clever scientists have worked out that if we miss out three leap days (omitting three leap years) every 400 years, then the average calendar year becomes 365.2425 days long. However this still leaves a 0.0003 day (or 25.92 second) difference each 400 year cycle – 0.0648 seconds every year. A relatively insignificant amount, but all the same, we want to be accurate, so a solution has been found!

Leap Seconds

Every so often we also get a leap second. Due to the irregularity of the movement of the earth, it is impossible to construct a precise schedule for these seconds.

23:59:60 - a leap secondLeap seconds are added in as and when they are needed, so the Gregorian measure of time should never be more than one second out of sync with the measure of time linked to the earth’s orbit.

Sometimes leap seconds are positive, meaning they add to time, and they can also [in theory] be negative.

Leap seconds are usually added to the end of the day, at the end of a year, or half year period. The most recent leap second was on July the 30th 2012, where one second was added to time, so it didn’t become the 1st of June the second after 23:59:59, it instead became 23:59:60.

Problems With Leap Seconds

Leap seconds are brilliant from a scientific perspective, as they help to keep time and the environment in almost perfect constant sync, year after year. However from a technical perspective, they pose some huge problems!

Remember the huge fuss about the Millennium bug, the problems the turn of the century was [thought] to cause and the money that was thrown at it? Ultimately, nothing major happened. Leap seconds pose a similar sort of technological issue, but the threat much more real.

The most recent leap second, caused major technical issues for firms all around the world. Just before the leap second, there was a solar storm, which disrupted technology, especially websites, needless to say this didn’t help the leap second scenario in the slightest!

One of the most high profile victims of the June 2012 leap second was social network Reddit. Due to the nature of its activates Reddit relies heavily on synchronised operations, as do Foursquare, LinkedIn, Gawker, and StumbleUpon, who were all also affected. When the time on the servers of these services was thrown out of sync by one second with the time Apache Cassandra and Java were displaying, their technical systems went into meltdown!

After a few hours, most of the technical blackout was over, and the majority of services were back up and running.

Six months notice is given prior to a leap second, and for many firms they are not a problem. Measures do need to be put in place, however if they are, there are [usually] no issues.

Should We Abolish The Leap Second?

From a scientific perspective, the leap second is a fantastic idea; it keeps time perfectly synchronised. However from a technical perspective it is a bit of a costly annoyance.

In January 2012, there was a meeting by the ITU, who discussed whether or not to drop the leap second. We could just ignore these time adjustments altogether, or we could add a leap hour every few hundred years. Despite hopes, the ITU were unable to reach a consensus, so have put off making a decision until 2015 – at the earliest.