Biometrics of Paranormal Activity

While the existence of the human “soul” in the religious sense is yet to receive a proper scientific proof, there are some extracorporeal phenomena attributable to humans that can be detected using means that are quite scientific. These phenomena relate to heat and bioelectric emissions of a human body. While the heat detection is pretty straightforward – any infrared camera would do, the electric activity imaging is much more complicated. The most impressive method of capturing it in a graphic format is the Bioelectrography or the Kirlian photography [1]. It is able to catch the unique bioelectric emission signature of a human (or any other) body.

But what if I tell you that these events can be observed without an actual body anywhere to be found! The ghost busters of today use a wide array of tools to detect and identify ghosts, specters and wraiths of every sort. Moreover, the most widely used tools are the infrared cameras and EMF detectors which are tools designed detect fluctuations in magnetic, electric and radio/microwave energy levels [2]. Curiously, as you can see these are in essence the same tools you would use to identify a living human, should you choose emission methods of authentication.

So, you bought your first ghost busting kit and are ready for some late night spooky action. What should you expect? Well, the main types of ghosts are Human, Animal, Vehicles and Orbs [3]. Typically, they manifest themselves by sudden temperature fluctuations and spikes in electric and magnetic activity.  As a proper scientist you must carefully record your observations and try not to lose your stuff while running! Sorry, strategically retreating - scientists do not run in panic...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography

[2] http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/afterlife/ghost-buster4.htm

[3] http://www.squidoo.com/ghost-identification-

The "Big Bro" is watching!

Well, biometric identification is a very useful technique, but guess who is the main user?! The governments have historically invested heavily into the methods to identify and control the population. And the FBI, being the richest and the most technologically advanced (consequently) special service in the world is definitely the leader of this trend.

The FBI claims that their fingerprint database (IAFIS) is the  "largest biometric database in the world",  containing records for over a hundred million people. But that's nothing compared to the agency's plans for Next Generation Identification (NGI), a massive, billion-dollar upgrade that will hold iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos. 

With the costs of digital imaging, plummeting backed with the radical decrease in respectable hardware costs and increase of computer calculation power, the ideas of some fantasy writers and conspiracy theorists is as close to reality as it ever was. As if the currently prevalent cellphone triangulation method was insufficient, in a few years ubiquitous biometric population control may become a reality in North America and Europe.

Knowing some of the security agencies, the personal biometric info may be leaked. And come of the corporates may take an advantage of it! So, folks just be prepared for that. I do not believe that such a future may really be avoided: there will always be some terrorist threat to justify the government spending on such a system and the spying that may ensue.

One piece of advice: Do not be good – be honest!

http://theinternetpost.net/tag/integrated-automated-fingerprint-identification-system/

Weird methods of biometric authentication

The pursuit of new ideas is about expanding the limits of the known universe, but sometimes the creative thought exceeds the limits of common sense!  Strangely enough, the world of Biometric identification is the place where some people get excessively creative. Hold your breath, guys, here is the Top 10 list of weird, but really working ways of Biometric authentication:

1.  In 2009, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security hatched a plan to use body-odor as a method of identifying individuals.
2. The British Comedy troupe Monty Python famously joked about the strange strides emanating from the farcical Ministry of Funny Walks. But even normal looking walks can be quite distinctive. According to researchers at Shinshu University in Tokida, Japan, computers aided by 3D image processing technology can identify an individual with up to 90% accuracy just based on their gait.
3. Researchers at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon have been working on software that doesn’t analyze what passwords are typed, but rather how words are typed. Researchers Ravel Jabbour, Wes Mastri and Ali El-Hajj have found that examining the speed and rhythm of the user’s keystrokes “significantly boosts reliable authentication.”
4. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the wellspring of U.S. government technology innovation. Now the agency is looking at what they’ve called a “cognitive fingerprint.”DARPA’s main goal with the project is to bypass what’s become the “current standard method,” for authentication: memorizing long passphrases. The Agency thinks that, instead, we could identify users with a cocktail of biometrics including eye scans, keystrokes and even online surfing behavior, the report claims.
5. Fed up with using swipe cards and PINs for their students’ lunch payments, a school board district in Clearwater, Fla. recently partnered with microelectronic company Fujitsu to use palm vein readers for nearly half of their 102,000 students. Pinellas County School Board District spent $120,000 to implement 300 machines that rely on vascular biometrics to read, encrypt and store images of students’ hands. Unlike other devices, the palm vein readers scan students’ palm patterns via near-infrared light and don’t require contact with the children’s hands.
6. Last year researchers from Cornell took a Microsoft Xbox and tweaked its Kinect motion sensing device to analyze what exactly people are doing – be it brushing their teeth, cooking or writing. The device is based around a webcam-like peripheral that uses a RGBD (Red, Green, Blue, Depth) camera. Treating each person's activity as composed of a set of sub-activities; researchers Jaeyong Sung, Colin Ponce, Bart Selman, Ashutosh Saxena were able to associate certain activities with certain algorithms. 
7.  Researchers at Bath University have unveiled a system where noses, not fingerprints or irises, could be scanned and used for biometric authentication. Using a system called PhotoFace, first developed at the University of the West of England Bristol and Imperial College London, individuals had photos of their noses taken four times, each in different lighting, to determine which category their nose fall under. The software found six main nose types: Roman, Greek, Nubian, Hawk, Snub and Turn-up.
8. Japan’s Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology has developed a system that they believe is capable of authenticating a person’s identity by performing a series of measurement on that person’s posterior. The system relies on a seat equipped with 400 pressure sensitive sensors that can detect the contours of an individual’s derriere. Shigeomi Koshimizu, the research team’s leader, claims sitting down “carries less physiological baggage” and is also apparently 98 percent accurate.
9.  The insides of our ears are a mysterious place for most of us. It turns out, however, that there’s more going on in there than we expected. In a study presented at the IEEE Fourth International Conference on Biometrics in September of 2010, researchers used a shape-finding algorithm to determine – with 99.6 percent success rate – someone’s identity by studying the shape of their outer ear.
10. DNA has been in use as a biometric identifier for some time. But as the O.J. trial proved, DNA analysis takes time, costs a lot of money and requires a lab to process – often creating the opening for challenges as to the accuracy of the test results.  That’s the reason that, despite its utility, DNA testing has generally been reserved for use by law enforcement and in civil paternity disputes.

https://threatpost.com/en_us/slideshow/Weird%20Science%3A%2010%20Forms%20of%20Biometric%20Authentication?page=9

Cats&Dogs

Pet identification has always been a challenge – without the chip or a tag it may be virtually impossible to identify a stray cat’s or dog’s owner. Studies show that like human’s fingers the cats’ and dogs’ noses have unique pattrn structures and noseprints may be just the way to do the identification just in the way that the fingerprints are used.

And the method has its advantages: it is non-intrusive when compared to chips. The saved noseprints database can be easily handled by the vets the police, just like the fingerprints databases are. Noseprint recognition software is soon to come!

http://animalfactoftheday.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/animal-fact-for-april-2-2012.html

http://www.petplace.com/dogs/nose-printing-of-dogs/page1.aspx