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TRANSMITTING DATA WITH LIGHT





Steven o’hENRY

Releasing Bandwidth

First there was light, now there is Visible Light Communication to expand our window on the world. Harald Haas, Professor of Mobile Communications at the University of Edinburgh, and his team specialise in finding innovative solutions to mobile communication challenges. Using the visible light spectrum of LED lights not only offers a more energy efficient source of light, it also offers a viable alternative to an overburdened radio bandwidth system.

‘There are many data hungry applications and the radio spectrum is limited,’ Haas explains the challenge. ‘The use of wireless mobile applications is growing and we are running out of radio spectrum to use. This was the problem in 2003, my colleagues and I began to study. We had a few ideas and weren’t sure if they would work but we worked on the release of radio frequencies spectrum to provide more wireless capabilities for the future. The visible light spectrum is 10,000 times larger than the radio frequencies spectrum so I wanted to uncover other possible technologies.’

Light and easy

Li-Fi is the term they coined to describe how their concept works. The light intensity of LEDs can be controlled very rapidly and are faster than the human eye can detect. Digital information can easily be converted by a small device in the light fitting into minute variations in light, even at very low levels of light and transfer to other devices many times faster than the data coming into the building. The light emissions are harmless to humans and can be transmitted even if the light source is dimmed or reflected around the room.

Ready for market

Data security is another key advantage as the light data stream is only available to devices within the four walls in which it is transmitted. Haas foresees Li-Fi having a very practical benefit in the home, hospitals, schools, banks, public buildings, aircraft, even under water.

Their goal of producing an LED bulb that can be fitted to a standard light fitting, completely off the shelf and with very low energy requirement has been achieved. Haas’s team are now aiming to get their product to the market in January 2012. This simple light bulb is set to change our understanding of mobile communication.

TEXT 2

DESIGN WITHOUT CODE

ANdrew mcgregor

The internet may have evolved hugely, but the journey from designing a website to getting it built can still be complicated. Basekit, a company set up by brothers Richard and Simon Best in Chepstow Wales, may change that. Ryan Kiskis, Basekit’s Head of Product, explains that the brothers, who originally ran a web design studio, were seeing the same problems and issues re-occurring while building sites for clients, even though they were essentially starting from scratch each time. They believed there was a more efficient method of design that didn’t involve copying bits of code over and then testing everything.

Manual coding


‘Initially the project was a side aspect of their own business,’ says Kiskis. But they realised any designer would find their idea helpful. ‘It solves a problem dear to web professionals’ hearts,’ explains Kiskis, ‘which is that there are still not a lot of good ways to get from a design concept into an actual website. You inevitably, at some point, are going to have to deal with cutting up html and css and images and it’s mostly done manually.’

Science entrepreneurs

Basekit allows the user to bring to life any design, with no restrictions of particular templates, layouts or graphics. ‘It’s all widget-based to make it easy to drag elements on there,’ says Kiskis. ‘So if you have a blog you can drag on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) which pulls the blog in, you can pull in Twitter and all these social network elements.’ Kiskis, who has worked in Silicon Valley, says that he is able to use his college background in aerospace engineering, ‘so much of my last year at University was looking at computational dynamic fluid systems and that is software-based. London is one of the few places where you have a real entrepreneurial vibe, and it’s been great to see more and more people with solid technical backgrounds making the jump to starting their own company.’ Basekit have dedicated network specialists on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, responding to requests from users including bringing in their own fonts and mp3 editors. Their next step, says Kiskis, is ‘looking towards developing an Open widget, so users can bring anything they want to their sites.

 

TEXT 3

LANGUAGE LEARNING IN A DIGITAL AGE

Eileen o’railly

Authentic materials

As the internet has brought people together from all corners of the globe, language teaching, learning and translation have also evolved. But languages are changing fast, whether that’s to do with new words evolving to describe new consumer technologies or new areas of enquiry such as Sustainable Energy. Dr Serge Sharoff and his team at Leeds University’s Centre for Translation Studies are developing digital tools to help address this and other evolutions in language teaching. ‘A strong point in our work on translation, and linguistics in a broader sense,’ says Dr Sharoff, ‘is using computers.’ One of the recent trends in language teaching is using authentic materials, so instead of relying on invented examples you rely on real communicative exchanges in the classroom.’ But where do you find these materials and how do you make them accessible?

 

Communication context

One place is the internet. ‘For example,’ says Dr Sharoff, ‘if our emphasis is on teaching Chinese for academic purposes or on Chinese for business, then we can find a lot of texts on Chinese business.’ ‘But’, he explains, ‘that’s only the start of a process. The problem is that they are not necessarily useful for language learners.’ They may not be the right type. ‘Or they are not complete texts so they are not suitable for language learning, as a lot is derived from the context of the communication – this is usually the case with spoken language. So we need to filter out the pieces that the tutor feels are not suitable for language learning and this is one way our tools can help.’

Up-to-date terminology

And as languages evolve, the advantage of digital learning tools is that they stay abreast of changes and remain up-to-date. It’s also important for professional translators. Software tools can gather material on the internet, on say, sustainable forms of energy. It’s a semi-automatic process explains Dr Kossoff, ‘there is always a human in the loop and we ask this person to evaluate and can filter out some suggestions which are not suitable.’ His team are working on a few different large-scale projects including one called TTC (Terminology Extraction, Translation Tools and Comparable Corpora) which will provide new tools for translators which give them the latest, most up-to-date terminology in a range of different fields.

 

 

TEXT 4

HI ROBOT!

Lee allan

Interact Emotionally

While there has been long debate over the idea of Artificial Intelligence in computers and robots, there is now increasing research on what could be called Emotional Intelligence – or more simply emotions. Dr Lola Cañamero at the University of Hertfordshire, in collaboration with other universities and robotics companies, is doing pioneering research in programming robots to adapt and interact emotionally. Dr Cañamero has been coordinating a large European project (Feelix Growing) over the past three and a half years, to understand the emotional development of humans and nonhuman primates, particularly in the first years of life. The goal, she explains, was to use the research, ‘to develop robots that can actually learn, from people, how to interact with us in a way that is socially acceptable.’

Emotional feedback

Dr Cañamero explains that currently there are many aspects of human behaviour not used in robotics, ‘like movement for example, or touch. With children the tactile is very important, holding them, and also the voice.’ These are all cues which give emotional feedback. She and her researchers are taking the research from the Feelix Growing project and applying it in a new European project called ALIZ-E. They are focusing on children around eight years old to develop companion robots and nurses. ‘The idea,’ explains Dr Cañamero, ‘is to develop a robot that helps diabetic children that have to go to hospital to undergo treatment, and to accept that treatment and to understand it better.’ It will also support emotionally other activities the children have to undertake when they go to the hospital, such as having their injections. The robots could ‘support the children, the doctors and nurses, and the parents, making the link for all the people involved in the treatment.

Attachment bonds

The robots will have a range of capabilities. They will remember how the children like to interact, they will remember the treatment and so be able to engage in verbal communication and play games. ‘What I am developing in particular with this project is nonverbal emotional expression through the body, through movement and also the development of attachment bonds between the robot and the children. Adapting the personality to the personality of the children.’ And they aim to have a working prototype in the hospital by 2015.

TEXT 5

BASIC NETWORKING

NIGEL SHARP

In the simplest explanation, networking is just computers talking to each other. They do this by sending data packets using various protocols and transmission mediums such as ethernet cable or Wi-Fi connections. Computers must also know how to find other computers on the network. To put it briefly, every computer on the network needs a unique address so messages know where to go after they are sent.

Networks exist for many reasons including:

  • distributed computing in a client-server or peer-to-peer networking architecture
  • centralized data security and authentication
  • elimination of risk of computer downtime.
  • combining computers into a single domain to facilitate groupware applications and system administration tasks
  • communication and fun!

The types of networks you deal with on a daily basis include local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs).

Many people today have LANs in their schools, offices, and even their homes. LANs are especially good for sharing Internet access and commonly used files and databases.

Users can also connect to wide are networks (WANS) as well, which are just large LANS spread out over several physical locations. The Internet itself is basically a large WAN, with each node on the network having its own unique IP address.

As you may have read in books or seen in movies, security considerations play a large role when designing networks. Technology such as firewalls can both block and filter unwanted network traffic. Virtual private networks (VPNs) are used to connect remote users to office networks without jeopardizing security. VPNs use strong data encryption to hide data as it is moving between routers over the Internet.

Networking is not something you can master in a week or even a month. Hundreds of books have been written about the subject and many more hundreds will come in the future as technologies mature and evolve. If you work on networks for a living, you are called a network engineer, and you will probably take certification exams by networking companies such as Cisco.


INTERVIEWING

TOPICS

  1. My Bachelor’s Thesis
  2. Why Have You Decided to Apply for the Master’s Course?
  3. Your Specialization as a Science
  4. Relevance of Your Selected Specialization in Today’s Society

 

TENTATIVE TOPIC LAYOUTS

My Bachelor’s Thesis

 

1) What is the theme of your bachelor’s thesis? Which field of science does it belong to?

2) When did you take up this theme? Does it relate to your earlier yearly papers?

3) Give a brief description of your research

a) What was your hypothesis?

b) Which methods did you use to prove it?

c) Did you manage to prove your hypothesis?

d) Say a few words about your research findings. Can they be applied practically? Did you find out anything unexpected?

4) Did you use any English language literature when preparing your research?

5) Do you feel that your bachelor’s thesis has contributed to your professional or personal development? In which way?

6) Are you going to proceed with this research during your master’s course? Or would you prefer to take up something completely different? Do you have any ideas regarding your master’s thesis?

 







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