GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE
A monthly digest of technologies, developments and trends that will shape our lives. (If you would prefer not to receive these digests, flip back 'NO THANKS' and you will be removed from the list).

Contact Lenses Will Display Computer Images In Front Of Your Eyes

Professor Babak Parviz of the University of Washington, in Seattle, is developing contact lenses with built-in circuits which will display computer images in front of our eyes. The images will appear to 'float' in front of the wearer at a distance of less than a metre.

Fitting a contact lens with circuitry is challenging. The polymer the lens is made from cannot withstand the temperatures or chemicals used in large-scale microfabrication, Parviz explains. So, some components – the power-harvesting circuitry and the micro light-emitting diode – had to be made separately, encased in a biocompatible material and then placed into crevices carved into the lens.

One obvious problem is powering such a device. The circuitry requires 330 microwatts but doesn't need a battery. Instead, a loop antenna picks up power beamed from a nearby radio source. To date, the team has tested the lens by fitting it to a rabbit. What the rabbit thought is unclear.

Floating Expo Centre Proposed

A futuristic adaptable living building called the 'Fluid – Amphibian Pavilion' has been proposed by architects Peddle Thorp as an exhibition centre for the World Expo 2012 to be held in Yeosu, Korea.

Apart from its unique design, the building has a low impact on the environment because, when the Expo finishes, this floating exhibition space can be 'unhooked' and sailed away to its next location.

Now Even Your Bathroom Scales Are On Twitter

A company called Withings has produced the world’s first WiFi-enabled body scale, capable of uploading your vital statistics to a secure webpage or iPhone.

This system offers the advantage of being able to track your measurements without going to the rigmarole of writing them down and entering them into a spreadsheet, but the innovations don’t end there!

The scales are capable of uploading to a Twitter account to share progress, get advice on how to improve things further and presumably motivate you to keep at it and avoid the embarrassment of piling on the pounds after a particularly heavy weekend.

Stem Cells Might Restore Memory After Radiotherapy

Human embryonic stem cells could help people with learning and memory deficits after radiation treatment for brain tumours, suggests a new study from the University of California, Irvine.

Research with rats found that transplanted stem cells restored learning and memory to normal levels four months after radiotherapy. In contrast, irradiated rats that didn't receive stem cells experienced a more than 50 percent drop in cognitive function.

In the UCI study, stem cells were transplanted into the heads of rats that had undergone radiation treatment. They migrated to a brain region known to support the growth of neurons, scientists observed, and developed into new brain cells.

Nano-Scale Drug Delivery Improves Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is a stressful but necessary treatment for cancer but now bioengineers at Duke University, North Carolina, have developed a simple and inexpensive method for loading cancer drug payloads into nano-scale delivery vehicles.

The researchers have demonstrated in animal models that this new nanoformulation can eliminate tumours after a single treatment. After delivering the drug to the tumour, the delivery vehicle breaks down into harmless byproducts, markedly decreasing the toxicity for the recipient.

Nano-delivery systems have become increasingly attractive to researchers because of their ability to efficiently get into tumours. Since blood vessels supplying tumours are more porous, or leaky, than normal vessels, the nanoformulation can more easily enter and accumulate within tumour cells. This means that higher doses of the drug can be delivered, increasing its cancer-killing abilities while decreasing the side effects associated with systematic chemotherapy.

Colour Blindness To Become Curable?

Researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Florida have used gene therapy to cure two squirrel monkeys of colour blindness - the most common genetic disorder in humans.

In a paper describing the breakthrough the scientists cast a rosy light on the potential for gene therapy to treat human colour blindness.

The treated monkeys were trained to examine colour charts and the researchers worked with with the makers of a standard vision-testing technique called the Cambridge Colour Test to perfect a way the monkeys could 'tell' them which colours they were seeing.

Mind Reading Becomes A Reality

Jack Gallant, a leading 'neural decoder' at the University of California, Berkeley, recently demonstrated that he and his colleagues could create a crude reproduction of a movie clip that someone was watching just by scanning and viewing their brain activity.

Such developments are raising concerns about 'mind reading' technologies, which might be exploited by advertisers or governments (during interrogations perhaps?).

However, the benefits the technology offers includes a better understanding of the brain and improved communication with people who can't speak or write, such as stroke victims or people with neurodegenerative diseases. There is also excitement over the possibility of being able to visualise something highly graphical that someone healthy, perhaps an artist, is thinking.

A research collaboration led by biologists and neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania has found a molecular pathway in the brain that is the cause of cognitive impairment due to sleep deprivation.

Just as importantly, the team believes that the cognitive deficits caused by sleep deprivation, such as an inability to focus, learn or memorize, may be reversible by reducing the concentration of a specific enzyme that builds up in the hippocampus of the brain.

The findings of the research project could present a new approach to treating the memory and learning deficits of insomnia.

A Robot To Help You Drive Your Car More Safely

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology are creating an in-car personal robot that is designed to offer the same kind of guidance as 'an informed and friendly companion'.

To identify the set of goals the driver would like to achieve the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent, or AIDA, analyses the driver’s mobility patterns, keeping track of common routes and destinations, and incorporates real-time event information and knowledge of environmental conditions, as well as commercial activity, tourist attractions, and residential areas.

AIDA merges all this information and makes inferences and communicates with the driver through a small robot embedded in the dashboard that also reads the driver’s mood from facial expressions and other cues.

Chickens Immunised By GM Peas

Genetically modified peas that can protect chickens against a common infection have been successful in field trials (where else?).

The plants, which protected the chickens from a parasite called Eimeria, which costs the poultry industry billions a year, were developed by Sergey Kipriyanov and colleagues at Novoplant GmbH, a German plant biotechnology company.

Scientists inserted a gene that caused the plants to produce an antibody that stops the parasite invading the chicken's gut cells.

The peas can be ground into flour and then added to cheap chicken fodder, making the approach suitable for rural poultry farming in developing countries, the researchers say.

www.rayhammond.com

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