GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE - HAPPY 2010
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).

App To Stop Kids (And Others?) Texting As They Drive

'Textecution' is a new app for Android phones that parents can install on mobiles used by adolescents. It's designed to shut down all texting functions - sending and receiving - if the phone handset is moving at more than 10mph.

Texting whilst driving is a major cause of accidents (think of a 17 year-old girl breaking up with her boyfriend whilst doing 90mph in the fast lane) but who honestly thinks than an average parent would be able to outsmart his kids when it comes to locking/unlocking technology. And the app woud be pretty annoying on train journeys.

Drums In Your Strides

Everyone at one time or another has cranked out a beat by slapping their hands on their thighs. One person who obviously feels the rhythm deep in his soul is software designer Boris Smus, who has taken thigh slapping high-tech with his Ubiquitous Drum Pant DIY project that turns an ordinary pair of jeans into a drum kit.

The prototype Ubiquitous Drum Pants system consists of two square force sensitive resistors (FSRs) located on the knee of each pant leg that are hooked up to an Arduino device and a breadboard that sits inside the front left jean pocket. The wires connecting the FSRs and the Arduino run up the pant legs and are held in place with electrical tape. Every time a pad is hit the pad ID and force of the impact are relayed to the laptop through a serial port on the Arduino. A Python program listening on the serial port then synthesizes sounds corresponding to the data using the pyserial and pygame modules respectively.

Robotic doppelgangers have become available in Japan from department store Sogo & Seibu. The life-size humanoids can even speak with a real person's (recorded) voice. Made of silicone, the robots are able to move their upper bodies, although there are not many other details on their design or what they can or cannot do.

With a price of $225,000 per robot, the store isn't sure how many buyers they'll actually have. Currently, the company plans to offer just two robots, and if there are more than two interested buyers, Sogo & Seibu will have a lottery to choose two winners.

The robots will be manufactured by the Japanese robotic company Kokoro, which is known for its realistic robotic androids.

Invisible Bluetooth Earpiece Heralds The Future

Brickhouse Security’s new Micro Bluetooth Earpiece is so small it actually fits inside the ear canal to allow covert two-way communication via any Bluetooth mobile phone or two-way radio. Its size means that a battery is out of the question, so the tiny device is powered by magnetism, which is also used to remove the earpiece from the ear canal.

The earpiece, which is actually a strong passive magnet, receives the audio signal via vibration from an induction-type neck loop transmitter draped over the user’s shoulders. Working on a vibration principle not only allows for the unit’s small size by doing away with the need for a battery, but also means it has no open sound cavity. Four sizes of magnetic earpiece are included ranging from extra small for pixie-esque ears to Michael Phelps large.

The earpiece also comes with a microphone, which can be concealed under clothing, where Brickhouse claims it is still able to pick up the faintest sounds. Meanwhile, for those occasions when you can’t talk there’s the silent SOS Button. The button is attached to a wire that is long enough to run down a pant leg and allow the button to be placed underneath your toe or hidden inside a pocket.

Now, 'Print' Your Replacement Organs

An engineering firm has developed a 3D bio-printer that could one day be used to create organs on demand for organ replacement surgery. The device is already capable of growing arteries and its creators say that arteries 'printed' by the device could be used in heart bypass surgery in as little as five years. Meanwhile, more complex organs such as hearts, and teeth and bone should be possible within ten years.

The 3D bio-printer allows scientists to place cells of almost any type into a desired 3D pattern. It includes two print heads, one for placing human cells, and the other for placing a hydrogel, scaffold, or support matrix. The cells used by the device need to be the cells of what is being regenerated – building an artery requires arterial cells for example. Because the patient’s own cells are used the new organ will not be rejected by the body. The printer fits inside a standard biosafety cabinet for sterile use.

Its creators say that one of the most complex challenges in the development of the printer was being able to repeatedly position the capillary tip, attached to the print head, to within microns. This was essential to ensure that the cells are placed in exactly the right position. A computer controlled, laser-based calibration system was developed to achieve the required repeatability.

An experimental device that uses the tongue instead of the eyes to 'see' could be on the market next year, and a blind Fresno, California, teenager hopes to be among the first to take one home.

Researchers say their BrainPort device does not replace the sense of sight, but lets the blind perceive images, making it easier for them to navigate their surroundings.

One group they foresee benefiting: Troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who are blind because of brain injuries.

BrainPort consists of a tiny digital camera mounted on sunglasses. The camera is attached by a wire to a unit about the size of an iPhone, and the unit connects to a small electrode panel that sits on the tongue. The tongue receives electrical pulses -- like popping champagne bubbles.

An Italian doctor has been getting dramatic results with a new type of treatment for Multiple Sclerosis, or MS, which affects up to 2.5 million people worldwide. In an initial study, Dr. Paolo Zamboni took 65 patients with relapsing-remitting MS, performed a simple operation to unblock restricted bloodflow out of the brain - and two years after the surgery, 73% of the patients had no symptoms. Dr. Zamboni's thinking could turn the current understanding of MS on its head, and offer many sufferers a complete cure.

Multiple sclerosis, or MS, has long been regarded as a life sentence of debilitating nerve degeneration. More common in females, the disease affects an estimated 2.5 million people around the world, causing physical and mental disabilities that can gradually destroy a patient's quality of life.

It's generally accepted that there's no cure for MS, only treatments that mitigate the symptoms - but a new way of looking at the disease has opened the door to a simple treatment that is causing radical improvements in a small sample of sufferers.

At IBM a team of nearly 100 employees, including mathematicians and software developers, is working on a project to create an automatic translation tool, so-called machine translation, that has the speed and accuracy to be used in instant-messaging between speakers of two different languages.

The project, called n.Fluent, is intended to teach the computer terminology that is specific to IBM’s businesses, and, more significantly, allow the computer to learn what it has been doing wrong. To that end, the company is extracting and organizing contributions from IBM's 400,000-member work force spread across more than 170 countries, adding a human touch to the project.

Over a two-week period last month, the company issued a 'worldwide translation challenge' to its employees, using a points-based system to award the biggest contributors prizes that were converted to charitable donations. About 6,000 IBM employees made improvements in 11 languages to more than two million words of text translated by n.Fluent.

Digital Dependency - The New Addiction?

Twenty-five years ago journalists were asking me if computer games were addictive. Now Global market intelligence firm, Synovate, has released data from a global study on media and advertising that showed seven in ten people across 11 markets cannot live without the internet or would miss it a great deal if it were not there, just edging out television as the world's favourite medium.

Rubbish, they can all live without the internet - as I and many of my readers used to do. However, I do think that withdrawing net and cell-phone connection could be a useful disciplinary measure for young people.

Robots That Can Operate On Beating Hearts

Stopping a heart from beating during surgery is a complicated and risky procedure. Robotic technology that predicts the movement of the heart as it beats, thereby enabling surgical tools to move in concert with each beat, could help cut the risks of such surgery by allowing surgeons to operate on a beating heart as if it were stationary.

Researchers from France's Montpellier Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics, and Microelectronics have developed a three-dimensional computerized model that not only tracks the motion of the heart's surface as it beats, but also accounts for the movement of a patient's chest wall during breathing. Known as the 'thin-plate spline deformable model', this new computerized approach allows the robotic arm to continually adjust to heart and chest movements during surgery.

New Year Podcast

Finally, if you're an insomniac you can hear my New Year podcast for the BBC here.

www.rayhammond.com

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