Facial recognition is something that comes easily to humans – we learn it within weeks of birth – but it was a much harder feat to achieve with a computer. We recognize faces because we are, essentially, ‘programmed’ to do so by our evolutionary psychology.
Every time you visit your favourite website, you’re in contact with a web server -a program that figures out what content you’re asking to see, and then sends it to your browser. Any computer can act as a web server, but the trend is to have a company that runs servers that host your site …
The Geiger counter was invented by Hans Geiger and Ernest Rutherford in 1908 to detect alpha particles – one of the four main types of radioactivity (the others being beta, gamma and x-rays). It was later modified by Geiger and his student Walther Müller to detect the others and again in 1947 by Sidney Liebson …
So you’ve got a DVD burner and some software like Nero or Toast and you want to transfer some video you’ve shot to DVD. Ever wondered how your PC and that software accomplish this task? Well here’s the answer. Hitting the Burn button will start the burning life cycle, which is essentially a four-step process. …
Bluetooth has turned our Inspector Gadget fantasies into reality. Mobile phones that stream music to the car stereo, open the garage door and call friends hands-free. Fashionable bracelets that vibrate gently to signal an incoming call, stethoscopes that transmit heart and lung readings directly to a laptop and restaurant tables that double as touch-screen menus.
A polygraph works by measuring multiple physical characteristics of a person while they’re asked questions to which – so the theory goes -they’ll answer either truthfully or deceptively, with deceptive answers detectable by fluctuations of the aforementioned signs. The polygraph doesn’t detect if someone is telling a lie, however, it only tells you if they …
How do these zero tar, zero tobacco cigarettes help smokers quit? Electronic cigarettes, such as the E-Lites brand pictured here, work by turning liquid nicotine into vapour by heating it up in an atomizing chamber, allowing it to then be inhaled by the user through a plastic inhaler.
Revolutionizing the generation of electricity, dynamos are now used worldwide to power cars, planes and ships! A dynamo electric generator converts mechanical energy into electrical energy. It rotates coils of metal wire (the mechanical energy) within a magnetic field to force the field to push on the electrons in the metal and vary its flux …
DOCTORS HAVE LONG warned of the damaging effects of prolonged exposure to loud music via earphones. The popularity of portable cassette players in the 1980s led to studies claiming that around 1 in 20 people were risking Noise-Induced Hearing Loss.
There are two main varieties of household oven – gas and electric – with a few hybrids between the two. The former work by burning gas to warm a heating element and/or a metal cooking compartment directly. The gas supply is ignited using an electric lighter that proceeds through one or more burner units to …
