Gizmorama - June 8, 2015

Good Morning,

It's like something out of the movie 'Minority Report'.
Iris scanners appear to have the capacity to identify a person from up to 40 feet away. It's another scary breakthrough in identity-recognition technology.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

P.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click GopherArchives

***
* Iris scanner can ID a person from 40 feet away *
PITTSBURGH (UPI) - Big Brother is growing up. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University recently demonstrated an iris scanner capable of identifying a person at a distance of 40 feet.

In a series of tests, identity recognition software developed by scientists at Carnegie Mellon's CyLab Biometrics Center was able to identify unique patterns in a person's iris and match it to a name in a database using a live video feed honed on the eyes of the subject.

Imagine this: a police officer pulls a speeding car over. Before the officer has exited the car, iris scanning software has picked up the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror and matched the iris to an identity -- that of a potentially dangerous subject.

That's what happened during one of the CyLab's recent tests.

The technology works just like fingerprinting. Like a fingerprint, each person's iris is unique. Mathematical models can recognize the unique patterns in each. But while fingerprinting (or DNA testing) requires direct contact or extensive testing, iris scanning can be performed at a distance.

Imagine a slightly less threatening scenario: iris-recognition devices constantly scan a queue at the airport security checkpoint, minimizing wait time and screening out high-risk travelers.

But convenience and safety aren't always enough to make the general public comfortable with identity-recognition technologies. In a recent survey, researchers at the University of Oxford found that people remain uncomfortable with wireless (and human-less) biometric technologies.

"I feel negatively about a remote iris scan because I want there to be some kind of interaction between me and this system that's going to be monitoring me," one study participant explained.

Before the technology is employed in daily life, researchers say significant legal and public relations hurdles will need to be successfully navigated.


*-- Large Hadron Collider smashes protons, energy record --*
GENEVA, Switzerland (UPI) - The Large Hadron Collidor has broken energy records by colliding protons at 13 trillion electron volts, or TeV, nearly double the energy of its first beam after being turned back on in April for the first time in two years.

The collisions are part of testing that scientists at CERN are doing before the declare "stable beams" in June and begin recording measurements as part of the physics experiments conducted using the LHC. No collisions had been conducted since 2013, as maintenance and upgrades were made to prepare for this upcoming round of experiments.

Testing will ensure magnets and detectors will be properly protected by collimators which absorb stray particles during collisions.

"When we start to bring the beams into collision at a new energy, they often miss each other," says Jorg Wenninger of the LHC Operations team before testing. "The beams are tiny -- only about 20 microns in diameter at 6.5 TeV; more than 10 times smaller than at 450 GeV. So we have to scan around -- adjusting the orbit of each beam until collision rates provided by the experiments tell us that they are colliding properly."

Missed an Issue? Visit the Gizmorama Archives