NEW YORK: If rumours are to be believed, smartphone giant Apple is coming up with a 5.8-inch iPhone that will feature a tough AMOLED display panel and may launch it in 2018 or even earlier in 2017, media reports said.
The AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) display is thinner and more power-efficient display as compared to current LCD screen and has more depth in colours and clarity.
According to a pre-publication report in DigiTimes as cited by Motley Fool, the company may move as many as 50 million devices in their first year of availability.
DigiTimes is a China-based daily newspaper and The Motley Fool is a US-based multimedia financial-services company.
Apple is reportedly planning to release two variants of its large-screen iPhone 7 Plus this year -- one with a single-lens camera and one with a dual-lens camera. The dual-lens variant has been rumoured to be marketed as the iPhone Pro.
"Although it doesn't appear that the initial iPhone Pro will come equipped with an AMOLED display, particularly if it launches alongside the iPhone 7/7 Plus this fall, it could make a lot of sense for a second-generation iPhone Pro -- which could launch in the fall of 2017 -- to come equipped with such a display," the report in Motley Fool said on Tuesday.
Apple currently sells iPhones in screen sizes of 4, 4.7 and 5.5 inches with the iPhone 6S Plus being the largest handset in that class.
Possible suppliers of the AMOLED screen include Samsung Display, LG Display (LPL) and Japan Display.
Apple is also rumoured to come up with iPhone 5SE at an event on March 21.
BENGALURU: The Chinese smartphone maker Gionee, has recently announced that they will unveil its high-end flip phone on March 29 in China.
This new launch is supposedly expected to be the W909 phone of the company, by having TENNA certification last month. The smartphone will be available to the market in dashing golden colour, at $615. As per features are concerned, Gionee’s W909 will have a dual 4.2-inch touch displays with 1280x720 pixels resolution. Powering the smartphone is a 1.8GHz octa-core MediaTek processor paired with 2GB/4GB of RAM. The internal storage of the handset accounts to 32GB/64GB which can be further expanded to 128GB, using a microSD card.
W909 will run on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop operating system and will also come equipped with a fingerprint sensor. The device includes a 16MP rear camera with LED flash and a 5MP front facing camera for users to take better and clear selfies. Furthermore, the connectivity attributes of the smartphone include 4G, LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.
After Gionee’s last month launch, S8 smartphone with 3D touch at MWC 2016, the buyers are having a high expectation out of the Gionee’s new W909 flip phone. S8 smartphone device can be recognized in three types of force for apps—touch to select, tap to preview and hard press to run. We can say that the upcoming launch of the W909 is being influenced by S8 smartphone. Other interesting software features that were highlighted and are expected in their future innovation as well are the dual WhatsApp and dual WeChat. Given it's a dual-sim smartphone, these features will enable users to use two different WhatsApp or WeChat accounts simultaneously without any hassle of phone getting hanged.
General Motors unveiled the 2017 production model of its new all-electric Chevy Bolt on Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The Bolt is meant to be an affordable long-range electric vehicle, and the company's follow up to the acclaimed Chevy Volt.
The car was introduced as a concept in January 2015, and the company is set to start production by the end of this year.
The 2017 Bolt will come with bells and whistles including a mobile app that will "enable car sharing" and "advanced GPS routing," GM(GM) CEO Mary Barra said in a statement Wednesday.
Drivers are also going to be able to use the app to predict their driving range based on weather, driving habits and even how many hills the car will climb along its route, the company said.
When the concept car was unveiled last year,Barra called the car a "game changer." It's supposed to take a 200 mile trip without recharging.
The latest Volt could model averages about 53 miles on a single charge. Unlike the Volt, the Bolt will not have a gas engine to give it extra range.
It also has an expected sticker price of $30,000 after tax incentives, making it cheaper than electric cars with comparable range.
Take Tesla's(TSLA) Model S, which can go about 230 miles in a single charge, but costs about $70,000.
Tesla has been working on a less expensive version, the Model 3. It's expected to be hit the market sometime in 2017.
Chevy may beat mid-priced plug-in car market, but Tesla on Wednesday welcomed the Bolt.
"Commitments from traditional car makers to build electric vehicles advance Tesla's mission to accelerate the advent of sustainable transportation," Tesla said in a statement. "We hope to see all those additional zero-emission vehicles on the road."
That's according to Monika Bickert, Facebook's head of policy management.
Bickert spoke to the fine (and imperfect) line between free speech and hate speech at SXSW's first Online Harassment Summit on Saturday. Bickert told CNNMoney she didn't know offhand what percentage are serious and taken off the site.
The panel centered on how far tech companies could -- and should -- go in removing potentially harmful content on their platforms.
"You can criticize institutions, religions, and you can engage in robust political conversation," said Bickert, of where Facebook draws the line. "But what you can't do is cross the line into attacking a person or a group of people based on a particular characteristic."
Bickert said crafting the policy is "tricky," especially given that 80% of Facebook's 1.6 billion users are outside of the U.S. and likely have different views on what content might be offensive or threatening.But the most challenging part is enforcement, she said.Bickert told CNNMoney that Facebook prioritizes the review of posts inciting physical harm -- but all reports of violations are reviewed by trained Facebook employees.
She said she often gets asked why the company doesn't have its "world-class engineers" tackle hate speech "proactively and perfectly.""When it comes to hate speech, it's so contextual ... We think it's really important for people to be making that decision," she said, adding that, one day, automation could play a bigger role.
She noted that the number of reported violations has been "steadily increasing" as Facebook has allowed users to flag them from all devices.Other panelists included Juniper Downs of Google(GOOG), Lee Rowland of the ACLU, Deborah Lauter of the Anti-Defamation League, and the National Constitution Center's Jeffrey Rosen.Rosen spoke to the "tremendous pressures" that tech companies have to "adopt a more European" approach to free speech, whereas anything that's offensive to a person's "dignity" can be a basis for removal.
But this open up the possibility that not just individuals would request content be removed -- but also the government."It's messy," Rosen added. "As a society, we have to decide what do we value more -- privacy and dignity, or free expression?"Rowland, meanwhile, said she'd had a blog post removed on Facebook because it contained a photo of a nude statue. (Bickert later said this wasn't a violation of Facebook's policies -- it was a mistake.)
Rowland said she knew who to call to find out why it was removed -- but most people don't.
"For the average user, there's an incredible black space," she said, pleading for tech companies to be more transparent about their policies.
"People don't clearly understand why their speech may have been taken down," added Rowland. "It's ultimately not going to be a good business plan if people don't know where that [free speech] stops."
At the Worldwide
Developers Conference last night, Apple announced a slew of features that will
be coming to iPhones and iPads later this year.
Curious about what new features you will get to see on your coveted Apple
gadget, as well as the availability dates? Worry not. Check out our round-up of
the best iOS 9 features you can look forward to on your iPhones and iPads.
1. Siri goes proactive
One of the major
overhauls in iOS 9 can be found with Siri. The digital voice assistant has
received a colourful facelift, but it's what's going on behind the scenes that
is more interesting.
The new interface displays content in a better way, and Siri can now understand
a wider range of requests on top of what was on offer in iOS 8. We were shown a
number of examples during the keynote, including "show me my photos from
Utah last August", "remind me to grab my coffee off the roof when I
get in my car" and "play the top songs from 1982" via Apple
Music.
Siri has been, until now, a reactive service, but that's changed in iOS 9. It's
now Apple's answer to Google Now, with context sensitive information based on
time, date and location. It can, for example, intelligently recognize when you
get to the gym and plug in your headphones you'll want your workout mix, and
display it on your lock screen.
2. Battery performance
In iOS 8, there is no
clear battery saving mode. You're left to your own devices to turn off data,
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth etc to try and conserve power.
That changes in iOS 9 with the introduction of a "low power mode,"
which Apple claims will provide you with three additional hours of typical
usage.
iOS 9 apparently improves general performance too, with Apple saying it gives
you an extra one hour of full usage over devices running iOS 8.
3. Multitasking on iPads
There are a few
iPad-only new features incorporated into iOS 9. First up is the QuickType
Keyboard, which adds handy copy, cut, paste tools to the suggestion bar, along
with access to the camera, attachments and formatting.
Use two fingers on the keyboard and it becomes a track pad, allowing you to
easily select the text you want -- something which is a little tricky in iOS 8.
There's also 'Slide Over', 'Split View' and 'Picture in Picture', which provide
a range of multi-tasking options. The first two see two apps share the screen,
the former just for a brief moment while the latter sees tho apps sit side by
side permanently.
If you're familiar with Samsung's top end smartphones you'll recognize
picture-in-picture, which allows you to pop out a video into a floating window.
4. App switching
Apple added contact
shortcuts to the multi-tasking pane in iOS 8, but the large app previews means
it's difficult to see just how many apps you have running.
This has been improved in iOS 9, with app previews now appearing as stacked
cards, allowing you to flip through open applications far more easily and
quickly, while getting a better overview on just how many you have open.
5. Spotlight Search
Apple's Spotlight Search
on iPhone and iPad also benefits from the new and improved Siri, with app
suggestions, keys contacts and other location and time specific info displayed
on the main search page when you swipe left from your home screen.
You'll also spot videos in your search results, something which isn't available
on iOS 8, which you can play without leaving the search screen.
6. Apple Pay
Unsurprisingly Apple Pay
has been given a boost with iOS 9, but a word of warning -- it's still only
supported on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus (and Apple Watch).
Apple Pay on iOS 8 is compatible with a handful of US bank cards, but that
support gets extended with iOS 9 to more providers including Discover, plus the
service rolls out to users in the UK too.
With iOS 9 you can also add store credit and debit cards, plus loyalty and
reward cards too. These are stored in "Wallet", the new name for
"Passbook" in iOS 9.
7. Apple Maps gets transit data
There's weren't any
major changes to Apple Maps with iOS 8, just some minor tweaks here and there.
iOS 9 on the other hand brings a significant upgrade to the app in the form of
Transit.
Maps can now show you train, subway, bus and walking information, with routing
options similar to Google Maps.
8. Support for older devices
Usually with a new iOS
release older Apple devices are cast out into the cold with no update in sight,
so it wasn't looking good for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.
That's not the case with iOS 9 however, as it will be coming to all the
iPhones, iPads and iPods which received iOS 8. Therefore, iPhone 4S and above,
iPad 2 and above, all iPad mini models, and iPod touch fifth-generation will
get the latest software.
9. More free space
There's good news when
it comes to downloading and installing iOS 9, as Apple has reduced its size.
The iOS 8 over-the-air (OTA) update was a hefty 4.6GB download, which caused
many users issues with space on their devices. Last year, Apple had received a
lot of flak from all quarters for the iOS 8 update taking up too much space for
the install files.
The iOS 9 download is just 1.3GB -- which should be much more manageable.
10. Availability
As with iOS 8 last year,
you'll be getting the iOS 9 update this "fall" (probably September)
for free, but for the first time Apple will be launching a public beta this
July -- allowing anyone to sign up and try the latest software before its official
launch.
Saygus Launches Super Smartphone, Saygus V2 (V-Squared)
The Promise of a New World-Class Smartphone Is Realized With the Saygus V2, One of the World's Best
LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwired - Jan 6, 2015) - (CES booth 36736) - The progressive American smartphone manufacturer, Saygus, today announced the launch of the Saygus V2(pronounced V-Squared) from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Hailed as a "super smartphone", the Saygus V2 delivers a stunning array of industry-first, high-end features and components.
"The promise of a Saygus super smartphone is here with the Saygus V2!" said Chad Sayers, Founder of Saygus. "The Saygus V2 is the embodiment of what we believe consumers want in a mobile device. Our super smartphone takes the best functionality and usability of current high-end smartphones and adds an unparalleled level of innovation with several features that are unique to the V2. The V2 provides consumers with many high-demand functionalities not presently found in the marketplace. Industry-first wireless HD gaming and movie beaming technology, state-of-the-art 3D sound, a whopping 320GB of potential storage capacity to enable power multimedia use and about a dozen other new, industry-first features that will provide consumers with an unprecedented mobile device experience."
Optical image stabilization (OIS) in both the rear (21MP) and front (13MP) cameras, waterproofed IPX7 "swimmable" capability, sunlight viewability, 3100 mAh battery with 50% battery savings chip (approx. 4600 mAh), and a compact biometric fingerprint side scanner make the V2 perfect for the video-loving, game-playing, photo-taking, audio-consuming user.
The V2 was created from the ground up to offer a feature set that would take the smartphone to a new level. Numerous exclusive features are packed into a 1080p FHD 5" borderless screen. The V2 is housed in a hardened Kevlar protective edge with durable anodized brushed aluminum sides, a strong lightweight magnesium mid-frame and a resilient soft-touch back coating in a tough fiberglass body of less than 10mm in width. With access to CDMA and GSM wireless technologies, the V2 is a world phone designed to be used and enjoyed by people around the globe.
The Saygus V2 was recognized as a 2015 CES Innovation Award Honoree in the Wireless Handset category. This is the second CES Innovation Award the company has received.
The product is scheduled to begin shipping early 2015 and pre-orders will begin in January.
About Saygus
Saygus is a US-based mobile device designer and manufacturer located in Salt Lake City. Saygus is focused on delivering leading-edge cellular devices that introduce new, innovative features to the mobile marketplace. For more information on Saygus, please visit:http://www.saygus.com
& the price is about 600 usd
With many more ways to control an Apple Watch than just winding it up, using Apple's newest gadget to its fullest extent will take some time to master. The small and pressure-sensitive touchscreen isn't quite like what you use on your iPhone and accessing so many (and sometimes hidden) features isn't always straightforward.
Fear not, though, as CNET How To is here to help. As he was writing his exhaustive Apple Watch review, our wearables guru Scott Stein explored all corners of the device. So, if you have an Apple Watch, or have pre ordered and are eagerly waiting for it to arrive, let us guide you on exactly how to use the your new friend and what it can do for you.
We'll be adding more Apple Watch How To s this week so bookmark this post and check back. And if you have any questions, ask them in the comments.
Setting up your Apple Watch
How to set up and pair your Apple Watch with your iPhone
Congratulations, your Apple watch has arrived! And now that you have it, unboxed it, and slipped it on your wrist like a boss, here's what to do next.
How to swap bands on the Apple Watch
The bands on the Apple Watch are interchangeable, meaning you can easily change and swap bands for different looks. CNET's Scott Stein showed us how it's done, and the process couldn't be simpler. Here's what you need to know.
Apps on Apple Watch: How to install them and how they work
There are many, many apps for the Apple Watch. Here's how you get them on and off, and how they actually work.
How to use your Apple Watch as an iPod (and leave your phone behind)
No headphone jack? No problem. You connect a pair of Bluetooth headphones to your Watch to listen to music during your run -- without your phone.
Gestures and features
The 10 gestures you need to know for the Apple Watch
Learning the Apple Watch's many gestures should be first on your list when you strap it on your wrist. Here's how to locate apps, pay for things on the go and find your way around Apple's advanced new watch. These are the key ways to navigate on it.
Here's what you can do on the Apple Watch without your iPhone
What can the Apple Watch do by itself? Not a lot -- it's mainly an iPhone accessory -- but there are some key things that it can handle on its own, beyond just telling you the time.
How to set up and use Apple Pay on the Apple Watch
Compatibility with Apple Pay is one of the watch's most touted features. Adding your credit card is easy, but it's a different process than what you may be used to with your iPhone.
How to talk, text and send emoji like Dick Tracy on your Apple Watch
While the Apple Watch isn't its own stand-alone communication device, when connected to an iPhone it does offer a lot of different ways to interact with others. You can make phone calls, send and receive texts, and even send little doodles or your heartbeat.
How to set custom text replies on the Apple Watch
Being able to quickly reply to a message from your Apple Watch is a big part of its appeal. Instead of responding using Apple's preset, generic responses, take a few seconds to create your own.
How to take a screenshot on an Apple Watch
The method for taking a screenshot on an Apple Watch is slightly different than on an iPhone or iPad. Here's what you need to know.
Four tips for improving battery life on the Apple Watch
The battery life on the Apple Watch will last you about a day, but there are ways to squeeze some extra juice out of it.
Still need to order? No problem
Unless you order online, buying an Apple Watch is quite different from buying an iPhone or iPad. In stores, you'll need an appointment, and the very personal nature of the device can make the choices bewildering. If you're still confused, Sharon Profis can guide you through the process in her complete guide to buying an Apple Watch.
The only place I like seeing a beach ball is at a beach or in a stadium during a baseball game or concert. The one place I least like to see a beach ball is on my aging MacBook Pro, where the spinning beach ball has become an altogether too familiar a sight. If your Mac has become frustratingly slow, there are a number of ways you can speed it up again.
Before you engage in any maintenance, I would urge you to take caution and back up your data. For Macs, it's easy: grab an external drive and run Time Machine. With your Mac's drive freshly backed up, you may proceed.
1. Replace your hard drive with an SSD
Moving from a traditional spinning hard drive to a solid-state drive (SSD) is the single best thing you can do to improve the performance of an aging MacBook. Follow Sharon Profis's instructions on how to upgrade your MacBook Pro with an SSD. You'll be shocked at not only how easy it is to do but also at the huge impact it has on performance.
I just performed the maneuver myself, replacing my 2011-era MacBook Pro's 500GB hard drive with the 500GB Samsung 850 EVO. The Samsung SSD and a SATA-to-USB cable kit cost me just north of $200 on Amazon. And the whole procedure took less than an hour (not counting the half a day it took to clone my MacBook's hard drive to the SSD). Really, the hardest part of the whole thing was tracking down a size 6T torx-head screwdriver for the four torx screws that help hold the hard drive in place.
2. Add more memory
While you have your MacBook opened to replace its hard drive, you may want take the opportunity to add more memory. Like the replacing a hard drive, adding more memory is a straightforward, simple process.
First, you need to find the right type of memory for your specific MacBook model. The brand doesn't matter; everyone has his or her favorite. Just make sure you are buying the right amount, type, and speed. Apple has a handy support page that shows the memory specifications for a variety of models, along with an illustrated guide to replacing the memory.
In my case, my early-2011 MacBook Pro has two DIMM slots, each of which is occupied by a 2GB module. Since I don't have any free slots, I will need to replace those two modules with two 4GB modules. I need DDR3 memory with a speed of 1,333 MHz.
After finding the right RAM for your MacBook, you will need to power it off and remove the 10 small screws on its bottom panel (if you don't already have your MacBook opened to replace the hard drive). Be sure you note the position of the screws when you remove them; some are short and some are longer. Since I need to replace the existing memory instead of simply adding a new module to an open memory slot, I had to push outward on the two levers holding the sides of the memory module to release it before gently sliding it out. Repeat for the second module. Install your new memory by lining up the bottom notch of each module with the memory slot and push it in until it clicks. Once your new memory is installed, screw the bottom panel back into place.
3. Clean your hard drive
If you aren't up for the challenge of getting inside your MacBook's case (or are already using an SSD and have maxed out the memory), there are still some ways you can speed up your system. Instead of replacing your hard drive, you need to clean up your data on the existing drive. I'd wager that over the years, you have cluttered your Mac with files and applications you no longer use or need.
To get started, let's look in the Applications and Downloads folders. If there are apps in there you can't remember installing, odds are you can live without them. Move them to the Trash to reclaim some hard-drive space. There are files associated with every application you install, however, and they are left behind when you simply move an application to the Trash. Mac OS X lacks anything resembling an uninstaller, but App Zapper is one such app. With it, you can uninstall apps and the related files. App Zapper is free for the first five zaps, after which you'll need to pay $12.95.
Next, let's clean up the applications you are keeping. When you install an app on your Mac, the piece of software arrives as part of a package of files, including permissions that tell OS X which users can do what things with specific files. Over time, these permissions can get changed, resulting in your Mac lagging, freezing or crashing. Repairing these disk permissions, in the most basic terms, amounts to reshuffling and re-dealing these permissions so that they return to their rightful place. Thankfully, OS X has a built-in tool called Disk Utility that does just the trick. Read my previous post on how to repair disk permissions for a step-by-step guide.
If your Mac acts like it needs a nap every afternoon, when you are at the height of multitasking, there is an easy way to see which of your open applications is using the most system resources. Open the Activity Monitor. The numbers are constantly fluctuating, but they show you the amount of CPU and memory resources each app is using. After watching the Activity Monitor for a while this morning, I see that Firefox generally takes up more CPU resources and more than triple the memory resources. Perhaps it's time for me to abandon Firefox and use Chrome exclusively. Also, I found that the sluggish iTunes isn't nearly the resource hog I thought it was. My apologies, iTunes.
Now that you've paid some attention to your applications, it's time to look at the files cluttering your drive. You can use Finder to search for huge files. To do so, open Finder and select the volume you'd like to search. Next, choose File > Find (or hit Command-F). Click on the Kind pull-down menu and select Other. When the Select a search attribute window opens, check the box for File Size, uncheck any other boxes, and click OK. Change the "equals" pull-down menu option to "is greater than" and then change KB to MB. Enter a minimum files file size such as, say, 100 MB. You can then delete any files that show up on the list that you no longer need -- or move them to an external drive at the very least.
4. Reduce login items
If your Mac is slow to boot up, the problem may be it simply has too many applications to open that it can't load the OS in a timely fashion. Many applications by default open automatically at startup. Go to System Preferences > Users & Groups and then click on the Login Items tab to see a list of the apps that open when you boot your Mac. Highlight the apps you don't want to open at startup and click the minus-sign button below the list of apps.
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5. Keep current with OS X
Apple releases new versions of OS X as free upgrades, so there is no reason not to stay current. New versions of OS X contain performance enhancements and security improvements to keep your Mac running smoothly and safely. Check in periodically with the Updates tab of the Mac App Store for OS X updates and don't ignore notifications of updates that are ready to install.
Neuroscientists have made remarkable progress in recent years toward understanding how the brain works. And in coming years, Europe’s Human Brain Project will attempt to create a computational simulation of the human brain, while the U.S. BRAIN Initiative will try to create a wide-ranging picture of brain activity. These ambitious projects will greatly benefit from a new resource: detailed and comprehensive maps of the brain’s structure and its different regions.
As part of the Human Brain Project, an international team of researchers led by German and Canadian scientists has produced a three-dimensional atlas of the brain that has 50 times the resolution of previous such maps. The atlas, which took a decade to complete, required slicing a brain into thousands of thin sections and digitally stitching them back together with the help of supercomputers. Able to show details as small as 20 micrometers, roughly the size of many human cells, it is a major step forward in understanding the brain’s three-dimensional anatomy.
To guide the brain’s digital reconstruction, researchers led by Katrin Amunts at the Jülich Research Centre in Germany initially used an MRI machine to image the postmortem brain of a 65-year-old woman. The brain was then cut into ultrathin slices. The scientists stained the sections and then imaged them one by one on a flatbed scanner. Alan Evans and his coworkers at the Montreal Neurological Institute organized the 7,404 resulting images into a data set about a terabyte in size. Slicing had bent, ripped, and torn the tissue, so Evans had to correct these defects in the images. He also aligned each one to its original position in the brain. The result is mesmerizing: a brain model that you can swim through, zooming in or out to see the arrangement of cells and tissues.
At the start of the 20th century, a German neuroanatomist named Korbinian Brodmann parceled the human cortex into nearly 50 different areas by looking at the structure and organization of sections of brain under a microscope. “That has been pretty much the reference framework that we’ve used for 100 years,” Evans says. Now he and his coworkers are redoing Brodmann’s work as they map the borders between brain regions. The result may show something more like 100 to 200 distinct areas, providing scientists with a far more accurate road map for studying the brain’s different functions.
“We would like to have in the future a reference brain that shows true cellular resolution,” says Amunts—about one or two micrometers, as opposed to 20. That’s a daunting goal, for several reasons. One is computational: Evans says such a map of the brain might contain several petabytes of data, which computers today can’t easily navigate in real time, though he’s optimistic that they will be able to in the future. Another problem is physical: a brain can be sliced only so thin.
Advances could come from new techniques that allow scientists to see the arrangement of cells and nerve fibers inside intact brain tissue at very high resolution. Amunts is developing one such technique, which uses polarized light to reconstruct three-dimensional structures of nerve fibers in brain tissue. And a technique called Clarity, developed in the lab of Karl Deisseroth, a neuroscientist and bioengineer at Stanford University, allows scientists to directly see the structures of neurons and circuitry in an intact brain. The brain, like any other tissue, is usually opaque because the fats in its cells block light. Clarity melts the lipids away, replacing them with a gel-like substance that leaves other structures intact and visible. Though Clarity can be used on a whole mouse brain, the human brain is too big to be studied fully intact with the existing version of the technology. But Deisseroth says the technique can already be used on blocks of human brain tissue thousands of times larger than a thin brain section, making 3-D reconstruction easier and less error prone. And Evans says that while Clarity and polarized-light imaging currently give fantastic resolution to pieces of brain, “in the future we hope that this can be expanded to include a whole human brain.”
Ryan Kunde is a winemaker whose family’s picture-perfect vineyard nestles in the Sonoma Valley north of San Francisco. But Kunde is not your average farmer. He’s also a drone operator—and he’s not alone. He’s part of the vanguard of farmers who are using what was once military aviation technology to grow better grapes using pictures from the air, part of a broader trend of using sensors and robotics to bring big data to precision agriculture.
What “drones” means to Kunde and the growing number of farmers like him is simply a low-cost aerial camera platform: either miniature fixed-wing airplanes or, more commonly, quadcopters and other multibladed small helicopters. These aircraft are equipped with an autopilot using GPS and a standard point-and-shoot camera controlled by the autopilot; software on the ground can stitch aerial shots into a high-resolution mosaic map. Whereas a traditional radio-controlled aircraft needs to be flown by a pilot on the ground, in Kunde’s drone the autopilot (made by my company, 3D Robotics) does all the flying, from auto takeoff to landing. Its software plans the flight path, aiming for maximum coverage of the vineyards, and controls the camera to optimize the images for later analysis.
This low-altitude view (from a few meters above the plants to around 120 meters, which is the regulatory ceiling in the United States for unmanned aircraft operating without special clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration) gives a perspective that farmers have rarely had before. Compared with satellite imagery, it’s much cheaper and offers higher resolution. Because it’s taken under the clouds, it’s unobstructed and available anytime. It’s also much cheaper than crop imaging with a manned aircraft, which can run $1,000 an hour. Farmers can buy the drones outright for less than $1,000 each.
The advent of drones this small, cheap, and easy to use is due largely to remarkable advances in technology: tiny MEMS sensors (accelerometers, gyros, magnetometers, and often pressure sensors), small GPS modules, incredibly powerful processors, and a range of digital radios. All those components are now getting better and cheaper at an unprecedented rate, thanks to their use in smartphones and the extraordinary economies of scale of that industry. At the heart of a drone, the autopilot runs specialized software—often open-source programs created by communities such as DIY Drones, which I founded, rather than costly code from the aerospace industry.
Drones can provide farmers with three types of detailed views. First, seeing a crop from the air can reveal patterns that expose everything from irrigation problems to soil variation and even pest and fungal infestations that aren’t apparent at eye level. Second, airborne cameras can take multispectral images, capturing data from the infrared as well as the visual spectrum, which can be combined to create a view of the crop that highlights differences between healthy and distressed plants in a way that can’t be seen with the naked eye. Finally, a drone can survey a crop every week, every day, or even every hour. Combined to create a time-series animation, that imagery can show changes in the crop, revealing trouble spots or opportunities for better crop management.
Top: A drone from Precision Hawk is equipped with multiple sensors to image fields.
Bottom: This image depicts vegetation in near-infrared light to show chlorophyll levels. It’s part of a trend toward increasingly data-driven agriculture. Farms today are bursting with engineering marvels, the result of years of automation and other innovations designed to grow more food with less labor. Tractors autonomously plant seeds within a few centimeters of their target locations, and GPS-guided harvesters reap the crops with equal accuracy. Extensive wireless networks backhaul data on soil hydration and environmental factors to faraway servers for analysis. But what if we could add to these capabilities the ability to more comprehensively assess the water content of soil, become more rigorous in our ability to spot irrigation and pest problems, and get a general sense of the state of the farm, every day or even every hour? The implications cannot be stressed enough. We expect 9.6 billion people to call Earth home by 2050. All of them need to be fed. Farming is an input-output problem. If we can reduce the inputs—water and pesticides—and maintain the same output, we will be overcoming a central challenge.
Agricultural drones are becoming a tool like any other consumer device, and we’re starting to talk about what we can do with them. Ryan Kunde wants to irrigate less, use less pesticide, and ultimately produce better wine. More and better data can reduce water use and lower the chemical load in our environment and our food. Seen this way, what started as a military technology may end up better known as a green-tech tool, and our kids will grow up used to flying robots buzzing over farms like tiny crop dusters.
