GLIMPSES OF THE
FUTURE |
The Flying Car Finally Arrives! After decades of futuristic fantasies about cars that can fly, a Massachusetts company has finally received FAA approval for the Terrafugia, a car that has fold-down wings and can actually fly. But (you knew there would be a 'but', didn't you?) the Terrafugia actually seems more like a plane with foldable wings which means you can fly to your airport of choice, then fold up the wings and drive on to your final destination. What you're not allowed to do while on the road is see a traffic jam ahead, fold down the wings and take off from the highway. Damn! And after waiting so long. But mine's on order. Glowing GM Crops Could Cut Down On Pesticides Scientists at the University of Tennessee have genetically engineered the natural immune system of the tobacco plant to make it change colour or glow in the presence of viruses, bacteria and other pathogens known to reduce crop yields, which normally force farmers to apply costly pesticides. In laboratory tests, these 'photosensory' plants turn red or produce a fluorescent glow when infected. As a result farmers may one day be able to target pesticides to only those parts of their fields that are at risk of disease simply by noting which ones are glowing, according to the researchers. MIT Develops Low Cost Eye-Test Device For Mobiles The Camera Culture group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has devised a method of providing basic eye tests using just a smartphone and a specially designed eyepiece. It could provide a home-based eye test for millions of people who cannot easily access regular optometry services. The group's Near-to-Eye Tool for Refractive Assessment (Netra) consists of a viewer that fits over a mobile phone's screen combined with software running on the phone. To test a person's eyesight, the phone displays an image – which may appear as a pair of parallel lines, say – on the screen, which the eyepiece converts into a virtual 3D display. The subject is then asked to focus on the image and use the phone's keyboard to adjust the lines so that they merge. The extent of the adjustment needed reveals the amount of correction the eye will require to focus clearly. That is translated into dioptres – a number which opticians can then use to provide corrective lenses. Now PCs Can Work While They Sleep With billions of PCs in use around the world, we've suddenly realised how inefficient they are in terms of power consumption. But new software that lets desktop computers continue to function in sleep mode could reduce the energy consumption of office networks by around 60 percent, it is claimed. Developed at the University of California, San Diego, the software creates a stripped down, virtual copy of a machine. Software running on a remote server maintains a version of a PC's operating systems and applications. The software, called SleepServer, carries on tasks on behalf of the desktop machine while it is put into a low-energy sleep mode. This lets SleepServer perform basic tasks on behalf of the PC, such as downloading files or staying logged into voice communications or instant-messaging software. High-Tech Agriculture For Farmers Via A Mobile Phone Rice farmers in the Philippines will soon be able to dial a specialised service on their mobile phones to obtain tailored advice on fertiliser use when they plant their crops next month. They will also get information about their land's requirements sourced from satellite sensing in their region. Scientists at the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), officials of the Philippine Department of Agriculture, and local private telecommunications firm Globe, have joined together to create the service that will enable even small-scale farmers to tap into sophisticated 'precision agriculture' techniques commonly used in developed countries. These include technologies such as the remote satellite sensing, that has not previously been available to small Asian farmers. Google Buys 20 Year's Worth Of Wind Power Hot on the heels of its $38.8 million investment in two wind farms in North Dakota, Google has just signed a 20-year contract with an Iowa wind farm that enables the search giant to purchase electricity generated from wind power for its data centres at a set rate over the next two decades. The deal is the first for Google Energy, a subsidiary of the company that received federal approval to trade energy on the open market. In addition to wind power, Google has also taken advantage of corporate solar installations at its Mountain View headquarters. Keen to be green. Very good.
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Even Unborn Children Can Now Tweet Everybody deserves the right to Tweet, proclaim social networking evangelists, and now a prototype device called Kickbee gives the soon-to-be-born a voice on Twitter. Kickbee is an electronics-filled stretchable spandex band, which the pregnant mother wears over her near-term tummy. When the belt detects movement underneath itself, the result is a Twitter update along the lines of 'I just kicked My Mum!' I've lost the will to live. 'Minority Report' Billboards Appear In Tokyo New outdoor billboards in Tokyo read the nature of passers by, then display an advertisement tailored to that person - as in the Tom Cruise film, 'Minority Report'. The experimental billboards can't identify individuals, but the technology uses face recognition to glean the gender and age group of passers-by to select appropriate ads. The experimenters - a consortium of 11 railway companies - launched the one-year pilot project last month. So far, 27 of the high-tech advertising displays have been set up in subway commuter stations around Tokyo. The operators of the experiment have promised they will save no recorded images, only the collated data about groups of people and their responses. Movement-Powered Generators Replace Small Batteries Brother Industries of Japan has developed small vibration-powered generators that can directly replace AA and AAA batteries in low-power devices. When the new generator is used inside a TV remote control, it is possible to operate the remote by simply shaking it to generate power. Brother Industries ensured the versatility of the generator by employing the shapes of commonly-used batteries to ensure the generators can plug straight in as a replacement. Pricing details have not yet been released. Arsenic Removed From Drinking Water - Simply Fresh water in developing countries is often polluted with toxic arsenic, which runs off into rivers from unregulated pesticide use and industrial processes. Now a novel approach to arsenic removal could lead to a quick and inexpensive purification of drinking water. Previous research demonstrated that arsenic can be removed from water using activated carbon or iron minerals, such as magnetite nanocrystals. However, such particles are too small to be effective in flowing water and they quickly degrade when exposed to the atmosphere, rendering them useless. Now, scientists at the South Korea-based Pohang University of Science and Technology have combined the nanocrystals with graphene-based materials to synthesise a new type of magnetite composite which increases adsorption sites for arsenic and makes the nanoparticles more stable in the environment. In laboratory tests in South Korea it took less than a minute to remove arsenic bound to the composite. Within an hour, almost all the poison was removed, leaving the water safe to drink. Work is now underway to make industrial production of the composite economically viable Who Will Train The Teachers? A lack of teachers trained to implement the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) scheme is holding back its progress in Peru, according to a new survey. So far, more than one million laptops — each worth US$100 — have been distributed under the OLPC programme to encourage children's learning in the developing world, with the Peruvian government buying its first computers in 2007. But many teachers have not been trained to design learning environments using the computers, said Peru's Economic and Social Research Consortium (CIES), an association of universities and research centres. Peru's Ministry of Education has provided only five hours of training to some teachers, and many of the schools in the programme are in remote, rural villages without internet connections, making it impossible for untrained teachers to ask for help. The UK and USA suffered from exactly the same problem in the early 1980s. When I was researching for my book 'Computers And Your Child' I found teachers on both sides of the Atlantic too scared and technophobic to open the boxes which contained the first computers destined for classrooms. Teacher training has to come first. Back issues of 'Glimpses' are archived here. |