GLIMPSES OF THE
FUTURE |
'Thought Helmets' For U.S. Soldiers If a new R & D project delivers the goods, American soldiers may soon be communicating via 'Thought Helmets'. The US Army has recently awarded a five-year $4 million contract to researchers from the University of California at Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland to study the concept. A thought helmet could allow soldiers to silently and securely issue and receive commands and data from the battlefield. It will likely be a decade or two before the thought helmet becomes a reality, but prototype technology is already under investigation. Researchers have also been working on other brain-computer interfaces, such as Emotiv Systems´ brain-wave headset for video games, which is expected to be available commercially next summer. Low Cost Method For Extracting Oil From Shale Just as we think oil is starting to run out scientists find new ways of extracting oil from substances and regions that were previously uneconomic. Researchers in Canada and Turkey have now reported the discovery of a new process for economically tapping vast resources of crude oil in the United States, Canada, and other countries currently locked away in rocky deposits called oil shale. The process could boost worldwide oil supplies in the future and lead to lower prices for gasoline, diesel, and home heating oil, the researchers suggest. Swallowing A Self-Assembling Robot To Check Out Your Stomach Doctors have long sought better ways to examine the workings of the human body without having to cut their patients open. A swallowable camera, little bigger than a normal pill, can already snap pictures as it floats through the stomach and intestine, offering a less invasive way to perform diagnosis than an endoscope or surgery. Now a consortium of European researchers is testing a way to connect several swallowable devices to create a surgical 'robot' that would self-assemble inside the stomach. Bacteria That Produce Plastics Scientists at San Diego–based Genomatica, Inc., have announced success in manipulating the common E.coli bacteria to directly produce butanediol (BDO), a chemical compound used to make everything from spandex to car bumpers, thereby providing a more energy-efficient way of making it without oil or natural gas. The E. coli bacteria can be grown in large fermentation tanks, exactly like those used to brew ethanol from corn, and have also been genetically tweaked to tolerate high concentrations of BDO in their water. Two Hopes For Macular Degeneration (See second story below) A team of researchers from multiple institutions, including the Shiley Eye Institute, at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have identified a genetic link associated with dry macular degeneration, which they say may lead to treatments for the debilitating disease. However, they caution that an experimental therapy for another form of macular degeneration may cause adverse effects in patients who possess the genetic variant. Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in people over the age of 65. The disease erodes the macula, the centre of the retina, slowly eclipsing central vision and potentially causing blindness. Currently, there is no treatment for dry macular degeneration, the most common form (but see below), in which more and more cells within the macula slowly die off. Eye Implants To Fight Macular Degeneration The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently fast-tracked a novel treatment for two eye diseases: age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. The new treatment, developed by the Lincoln, RI, biotech company Neurotech, is a capsule that's surgically implanted in the eye. Inside the capsule are genetically engineered cells that produce a protein that may prevent light-sensitive cells in the retina from dying - thereby protecting vision. The device is currently in Phase II clinical trials. Patients with these diseases currently have few or no treatment options.
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Have Your DNA Profiled For Under $400 If your personal DNA is profiled it can be used to predict your likelihood of contracting some diseases. This is a controversial process as many doctors claim it produces more questions than answers. But in the future, personalized DNA treatments will bring immense improvements to the efficacy of medical therapies. Now a Google-backed company called 23andMe Inc. has cut the price of personal genetic profiling from $999 to $399, a move which could herald a price war in the small but rapidly growing marketplace for direct-to-consumer genetic testing. The company's main competitors currently charge anywhere from just under $1,000 to $2,500 for similar services. Genetic profiling can also be used to prove or disprove family links. Fuel Cells For Remote Regions Of Africa Lebônê Solutions, a startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aims to use microbial fuel cells to provide power to Africans who are not near an electricity supply. In some parts of Africa, a small amount of energy is enough for a few hours of lamp light in the evening, or for powering the ubiquitous mobile phone - something that some residents will walk five hours to a generator to do, according to Lebônê. The company is made up largely of Harvard University alumni and current Harvard students originally from African countries. Microbial fuel cells, which use electrodes in dirt to power a small motor, have long been more or less a laboratory curiosity. Because they generate such a small amount of power, developing them to charge devices would not be practical in places where electricity is readily available. Robots See The Irony Robots can be ironic. Even though they might not have emotions of their own (yet), they can still detect and respond to humans’ emotions. A recent study has shown that, by picking up on human emotional traits, as well as a variety of other conscious and unconscious behavioural cues, robots may be able to act more naturally and accurately with humans. The researchers, from the University of California, Davis, have developed a system that allows follower robots to use behavioural cues from human leaders and other robots in order to track and follow them. The ability to follow will likely be essential as robots continue to work alongside people more and more, such as in office buildings, hospitals, and airports. Keep Yourself Under Surveillance A new startup company based in San Francisco, called Fitbit, has built a small, unobtrusive sensor that tracks a person's movement 24 hours a day to produce a record of steps taken, calories burned, and even the quality of the user's sleep. Data is wirelessly uploaded to the web so that users can monitor their activity and compare it with that of their friends. Fitbit says says that one of the main goals was to make the sensor so small that it will go unnoticed no matter what a person is wearing. The device can be put in a pocket, attached discretely to a bra, or slipped into a special wristband during sleep. It is meant to be worn 24-7, and each device can run for 10 days on a single battery charge. Energy Transmitted Wirelessly Over 90 Miles A test of a wireless broadcast of solar power has been carried out which was able to transmit RF energy over a distance of up to 148 kilometres (about 90 miles) - almost 100-times further than a major 1970s power transmission performed by NASA in the Mojave Desert in California. While the project was small scale in terms of power transmitted (about 20 watts), and was being designed for space use - it has possible implications for transmitting power to cellular base stations in rural areas. Currently, each rural base station for cellular networks usually requires its own diesel generator, and often security staff to protect the fuel from being stolen. The ability to broadcast the electricity supply wirelessly from a central hub, most likely to be the Base Station Controller which may already have the necessary line of sight location for transmission could make rural base stations cheaper and safer to operate. Back issues of 'Glimpses' are archived here. |