In 2013, Canon introduced its first dual-pixel autofocus, a technology that allows almost every pixel in a photo sensor to help focus the image it takes. Now Canon researchers say they’ve developed a new improvement on their previous improvement to autofocus tech. And this new approach finds its focus faster, better, and in lower light—without requiring new components and technologies to be invented first. It simply involves one small twist.
Continue reading Diodes at Right Angles Double Autofocus CapacityCategory Archives: Outlets
How Lightning Flashes Help Predict Storms
Counting seconds between a lightning flash and thunderclap is how anyone can tell how far away a thunderstorm is. (The storm is one kilometer away for each three seconds you count.) But if you want to know when the storm is coming and how strong it will be, you’re better off counting lightning flashes. That’s because supercomputer-armed meteorologists can use lightning-flash data to make more sophisticated predictions.
A team led by meteorologist Ming Xue at the University of Oklahoma reported last month a new way to incorporate lightning data into thunderstorm-forecasting models in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. Early efforts to use lightning flashes were centered on regional ground-based networks of lightning detectors. In 2016, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-16 and -17 satellites with cameras designed to detect lightning flashes, making it possible to watch how lightning evolved over most of both American continents.
Continue reading How Lightning Flashes Help Predict StormsA New Olympics Event: Algorithmic Video Surveillance
AS SKIERS SCHUSSED AND SWERVED in a snow park outside Beijing during the 2022 Winter Olympics, a few may have noticed a string of towers along the way. Did they know that those towers were collecting wavelengths across the spectrum and scouring the data for signs of suspicious movement? Did they care that they were the involuntary subjects of an Internet of Things–based experiment in border surveillance?
This summer, at the Paris Olympic Games, security officials will perform a much bigger experiment in the heart of the City of Light, covering the events, the entire Olympic village, and the connecting roads and rails. It will proceed under a temporary law allowing automated surveillance systems to detect “predetermined events” of the sort that might lead to terrorist attacks.
Continue reading A New Olympics Event: Algorithmic Video SurveillanceNew Photonic Chip Is the Full Package
Researchers at the University of Sydney have combined a photonic filter and modulator on a single chip in a way that allows them to precisely detect signals across a wide band of radiofrequency (RF) spectrum. The work brings photonic chips one step closer to one day potentially replacing bulkier and more complex electronic RF chips in fiber optic networks.
The Sydney team exploited stimulated Brillouin scattering, a technique which involves converting electrical fields into pressure waves in certain insulators, such as optical fibers. In 2011, the researchers reported that Brillouin scattering held potential for high-resolution filtering, and developed new manufacturing techniques to combine a chalcogenide Brillouin waveguide on a silicon chip. In 2023, they managed to combine a photonic filter and modulator on the same type of chip. The combination gives the experimental chip a spectral resolution of 37 megahertz and a wider bandwidth than preceding chips, the team reported in a paper published 20 November in Nature Communications.
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