News Cars Update : Ferrari Recalls 2,600 Cars Worldwide Due To Faulty Airbags: Yes, It's Takata In Your Prancing Horse

Luxury car manufacturer Ferrari has issued a recall order for eight new models of its vehicles with price tags of $200,000 to over $1.4 million each due to the Takata airbags that are installed in them.

However, the recall order for the Ferrari vehicles is not due to the controversial defect of Takata airbags that are potentially fatal, which has resulted in a nationwide recall order of 34 million vehicles. The defective airbags can explode upon inflation, sending metal shrapnel into the cabin. This is a good thing for the car owners, as previous reports revealed that it could take months before the replacement airbag systems for cars suffering from such a defect can be provided.

The recall order issued by Ferrari is due to the improper installation of the Takata airbags, as they were installed in the vehicles at a wrong angle.

The wrongly installed airbags were discovered by Ferrari while tests were being done on the steering column of the 458 Italia, according to documents that were uploaded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The Italian luxury car maker, which is a unit of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, discovered that the leather skin that covers the module of the airbag systems were improperly glued, along with the cushions of the airbags being installed in a wrong angle.

The improper installation will cause the airbags to be deployed with a rotated orientation, which could result in injury for the passenger's vehicles.

"The issue is a possible production defect in a component inside the air bags," said Krista Florin, a spokeswoman for Ferrari. The company has now issued the recall order for the affected vehicles so that the airbag systems can be replaced, she added. The replacements will be done at no cost to the customer.

No injuries or deaths have resulted from the issue covered by the recall order, Ferrari stated in the documents that it filed with the NHTSA.

Worldwide, the recall order affects 2,600 Ferrari vehicles, according to Florin, with the vehicles that have the defective Takata airbags being the 458 Italia, the 458 Speciale, the 458 Speciale A, the 458 Spider, the FF, the California T, the F12 Berlinetta and even the $1.4 million LaFerrari.

Posted by Unknown Sunday, July 19, 2015

News Computer Technology Update : A New Type Of Computer System That Can Detect Sarcasm, Irony In Emails

Jerusalem: A new computerized learning system spots emotional sentiments, such as sarcasm and irony, in text messages and emails and it could even detect content that suggests suicidal ideations.

Eden Saig, a computer science student at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Israel, developed the computerized learning system which works by recognizing repeated word patterns.

Saig developed the system at the Technician's Learning and Reasoning Laboratory, after taking a course in artificial intelligence supervised by Professor Shaul Markovich, of the Technician Faculty of Computer Science.

According to Saig, voice tone and inflections play an important role in conveying one's meaning in verbally communicated message.

In text and email messages, those nuances are lost and writers who want to signify sarcasm, sympathy or doubt have taken to using images, or "emoticons," such as the smiley face, to compensate.

"These icons are superficial cues at best. They could never express the subtle or complex feelings that exist in real life verbal communication," said Saig.

Recently, pages intended to be humorous on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter were titled "superior and condescending people," or "ordinary and sensible people." Such pages are very popular in Israel, said Saig, and users are invited to submit suggestions for phrases that can be labelled as 'stereotypical sayings,' for that particular page.

By observing posts to these groups, Saig identified existing patterns. The method he developed enables the system to detect future patterns on any social network.

Since the content in these sections was colloquial, everyday language, Saig realized that, "the content could provide a good database for collecting homogeneous data that could, in turn, help 'teach' a computerized learning system to recognize patronizing sounding semantics or slang words and phrases in text."
Saig applied 'Machine-Learning' algorithms to the content on these pages and used the results to automatically identify stereotypical behaviours found every day in social network communication.

The quantification was carried out by examining 5,000 posts on social media pages and, through statistical analysis, gearing a learning system to recognise content structure that could be identified as condescending or slang.

The system was constructed to identify key words and grammatical habits that were characteristic of sentence structure implied by the content's sentiments.

"Now, the system can recognize patterns that are either condescending or caring sentiments and can even send a text message to the user if the system thinks the post may be arrogant," said Saig.

When applied to other networking pages it may help detect content that suggests suicidal ideations, for example, or 'calls' for help, or expressions of admiration or pleasure, Saig said.    

Posted by Unknown Saturday, July 04, 2015

New Gadget Achivement Update : As Chinese Retiree Designs A Robotic Horse

You just can't keep an inventive mind down. Su Daocheng -- a 60-year-old retiree from Shiyan in the eastern Hubei province of Central China -- spends his spare time inventing things. You know, just normal things, like you'd find in any garage -- like a helicopter designed for the road or a mechanical elephant.

His latest invention is a petrol-powered rideable robotic horse, inspired by Three Kingdoms-era chancellor Zhuge Liang. Zhuge Liang is said to have invented some 1,800 years ago a steamed bread called mantou, the land mine and a mysterious transportation device called "wooden ox and flowing horse" (sometimes thought to be the wheelbarrow, although archaeological evidence dates the wheelbarrow at least a century earlier). 

At any rate, Su's "horse" -- which took two months to build -- is a little more complex. It stands 1.5 metres high and two metres long, weighing in at 250 kilograms. It uses a recycled go-kart engine, which runs on petrol, powering the spring-loaded legs to move back and forth. Only the back legs propel the horse, though; the front is supported by wheels, and the front legs appear to move only for show.

While it looks like a bit of a bumpy ride, the aim of the horse isn't transportation. Rather, it seems to be designed to help farmers. The robotic horse would, Su claimed, cost less than a real horse, since it does not require the time spent on human care, or the money spent on feed -- which would be higher than the cost of the horse's fuel.

Posted by Unknown Sunday, February 01, 2015