Tomorrow in Brief (July-August 2011)

Detecting Callers’ Stress Levels

A computer program that recognizes different levels of urgency in callers’ voices could help crisis centers respond more quickly to the most serious emergencies.

“Stress and negative emotions, in general, have a strong influence on voice characteristics,” according to researchers at Delft University of Technology and the Netherlands Defense Academy.

Rapid talking, variations in pitch (rising or falling intonation, for example), and changes in breathing rates are among the vocal cues that allow the program to gauge urgency and alert responders who may already be overwhelmed with calls during a major crisis. The system may also prove beneficial in military situations.

Source: International Journal of Intelligent Defence Support Systems (2011, Vol. 4, No. 2), Inderscience, www.inderscience.com.

WordBuzz: Followee

A followee is someone you follow (or “fan” or “friend”) in an online social network such as Twitter. It is just one of many neologisms submitted by wordsmiths to Merriam-Webster’s Open Dictionary.

New words and clever coinages showcase the rapid and fluid movements of the English language, but they are not necessarily accepted as words in the official Merriam-Webster dictionary (which, incidentally, still spells e-mail with a hyphen, unlike just about everyone else).

More new words at Open Dictionary, http://nws.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/.

3-D Movies Go Mobile

Film lovers on the go may soon have the best of all worlds: 3-D movies delivered to their cell phones.

Combining new mobile radio standards with advanced video coding, researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications in Berlin have developed a special data compression technique that permits the transmission of two video streams required for a 3-D effect.

The 3-D option promises to enhance the consumer experience as more people access YouTube and other favorite Internet sites via their smartphones. The technology also will increase the options for businesses, medical responders, and other communicators who need high-definition mobile imaging.

Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, www.fraunhofer.de/en/.

Supersizing Microscopes

Bringing microscopic samples up to where researchers can see and “touch” them is the aim of a new touchscreen developed by researchers in Finland.

The innovation merges Web-based virtual microscopy with supersized (minimum of 46 inches) multitouch displays. The samples are digitized with microscopy scanners and stored on shared image servers. Researchers accessing the image can zoom in and move around it, much like using Google Maps.

The developers believe that the multitouch microscope will enhance interactive teaching as well as virtual research.

Sources: University of Helsinki, www.helsinki.fi. MultiTouch Ltd., www.multitouch.fi.

From Album to App

The creation of albums —collections of songs built around a theme or cohesive musical sound—could have become a lost art in the age of single-tune downloads. But thanks to application development for tablets like the iPad, artists and their record labels now have a new way to offer their fans an affordable augmented musical package.

In his blog for Forrester Research, consumer products analyst Mark Mulligan reports that music giant EMI has released an app version of the band Swedish House Mafia’s Until One album. The app includes the trio’s book and photos, along with lyrics, videos, interviews, discussion forums, games, social-networking feeds, and dynamically updated news content.

“This is a great innovation in music product,” says Mulligan, “but EMI needs to understand that that is exactly what this is: the start of the next generation of music products, not ‘just an app.’”

Source: “Finally a 21st Century Music Product, And It’s From EMI!” blog post by Mark Mulligan, March 24, 2011, Forrester Research Inc.