GLIMPSES OF THE
FUTURE |
Get Ready To FEEL The Movies! Researchers at Philips Electronics have developed a new jacket to be worn while watching a movie that delivers the sensation of touch all over the body. The jacket has been lined with vibration motors to study the effects of touch on a movie viewer’s emotional response to what the characters on screen are experiencing. Over 60 independently controlled actuators are contained within the jacket and are distributed across the arms and torso. The actuators draw so little current that the jacket could operate for an hour on its two AA batteries even if the system was continuously driving 20 of the motors simultaneously. Stem-Cell Repair Kit For Strokes Works In Rats A novel matrix of neural stem cells and a biodegradable polymer can quickly repair brain damage from stroke in rats. Within just seven days of injecting the concoction directly into the damaged part of the brain, new nerve tissue grew to fill stroke-induced cavities. The London-based scientists who carried out the research say that the key to the advance is the use of a biodegradable polymer called PLGA, which ensures that the stem cells remain in the area of stroke damage and establish connections with surrounding brain tissue. By reducing the number of stray stem cells, the system is likely to be safer as well as more effective than other methods, the researchers add. Solar Energy Beamed From Space 'Within 20 Years' A start-up company called Space Energy, Inc says it plans to develop solar-power-capturing satellites to generate and transmit electricity to receivers on the Earth's surface. To do this, the company plans to create and launch a prototype satellite into low earth orbit. Solar power satellites are large arrays of photovoltaic panels assembled in orbit, which use microwave radio waves to transmit solar power to large receiving antennas on Earth. The resulting power can either supplement, or be a substitute for, conventional electricity sources. Solar Panels Hit New Low Price Production Cost Arizona based First Solar has achieved a major milestone in reducing the manufacturing cost for solar panels below the $1 per watt price barrier - the target necessary for solar to compete with coal-burning electricity on the grid or grid-parity. Using cadmium telluride (CdTe) technology in its thin-film photovoltaic cells, First Solar claims to have the lowest manufacturing cost per watt in the industry with the ability to make solar cells at 98 cents per watt, one third of the price of comparable standard silicon panels. The efficiency is in part due to a low cycle time - 2.5 hours from sheet of glass to solar module - about a tenth of the time it takes for silicon equivalents. Super-Fast Networks Become Possible Without New Fibre Cables To get to the next generation super-fast internet networks it has long been believed that new fibre-optics cables will have to be laid around the world and into individual homes and offices. But now Swedish Telecommunications giant Ericsson has demonstrated 500-Mbits/s transmission rates over traditional copper cabling (old phone lines) by using new crosstalk cancellation or 'vectorized' VDSL2-based modems. The data rate is over 20 times faster than the fastest ADSL2 services currently on offer in most countries. With products using the technology likely to be available by the end of the year, this will open up the possibility of broadband services such as video-on-demand over existing phone networks. The implications are profound. Google - Becoming 'The Global Brain' Google has given its Web search engine an injection of semantic technology which means it is beginning to understand the meaning and context of your search terms, and not just simple keywords. The new technology will allow Google's search engine to identify associations and concepts related to a query, improving the list of related search terms Google displays along with its results. Scientists In Germany Build Chip Which Mimics Human Brain An international team of scientists in Germany has created a silicon chip designed to function like a human brain. With 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections, the chip is able to mimic the brain's ability to learn more closely than any other machine. Although the chip has a fraction of the number of neurons or connections found in a brain, its design allows it to be scaled up, says Karlheinz Meier, a physicist at Heidelberg University, in Germany, who has coordinated the Fast Analog Computing with Emergent Transient States project, or FACETS. The hope is that recreating the structure of the brain in computer form may help to further our understanding of how to develop massively parallel, powerful new computers.
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Don't Drink Bottled Water (Unless You Have To)! New research from the Pacific Institute in the USA estimates that bottled water is up to 2000 times more energy-intensive than tap water. Similarly, bottled water that requires long-distance transport is far more energy-intensive than bottled water produced and distributed locally. The Institute's analysis finds that producing bottled water requires between 5.6 and 10.2MJ of energy per litre. The report's authors further estimate that to satisfy global demands, the energy equivalent of 50 million barrels of oil per year is used just to produce the bottles, primarily made of PET plastic, almost all of which are currently made from virgin, not recycled, material. For water transported short distances, the energy requirements of bottled water are dominated by the energy to produce these plastic bottles. Long-distance transport, however, can lead to energy costs comparable to, or even higher than, the energy to produce the bottle. What the report doesn't say is that water packaged in glass bottles is even more energy intensive. Nokia Invests In Turning Your Mobile Phone Into Your Credit Card Nokia, the world's largest maker of cell phones, is making a large investment in a California-based startup that wants to make the mobile phone the credit card of the developing world. The amount of Nokia's investment in Obopay Inc. of Redwood City was not disclosed, but the startup made a regulatory filing this month for the sale of up to $70 million in preferred stock. Obopay's service, available in the U.S. and India, lets people pay each other through text messages or other cell phone applications. The funds can come out of bank accounts or credit cards. People who lack bank accounts can prepay funds into a Obopay account. Who Will Control The Robots? Robot sentries patrol the borders of South Korea and Israel. Remote-controlled aircraft mount missile attacks on enemy positions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Other military robots are already in service, and not just for defusing bombs or detecting land mines: a coming generation of autonomous combat robots capable of deep penetration into enemy territory raises questions about whether they will be able to discriminate between soldiers and innocent civilians. Police forces are looking to acquire miniature Taser-firing robot helicopters. In South Korea and Japan the development of robots for feeding and bathing the elderly and children is already advanced. Even in a robot-backward country like the UK, some vacuum cleaners sense their autonomous way around furniture. In the next decades, completely autonomous robots might be involved in many military, policing, transport and even caring roles. What if they malfunction? What if a programming glitch makes them kill, electrocute, demolish, drown and explode, or fail at the crucial moment? Whose insurance will pay for damage to furniture, other traffic or the baby, when things go wrong? The software company, the manufacturer, the owner? Answers are needed - and soon. Hope For Iron-Tolerant Rice In West Africa Agricultural researchers in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea and Nigeria and are preparing field tests on some 80 varieties of rice designed to survive - and even thrive - in the iron-rich soils of West Africa. Beginning in May 2009, studies in three regions of each country will test the plants’ abilities to tolerate levels of iron that would kill most high-yielding rice. Local farmers are participating in the trials, which will be directed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Ghana, Guinea's Agronomic Research Institute, the National Cereals Research Institute in Nigeria and the Environment and Agricultural Research Institute in Burkina Faso Motion-Sensitive Windows May Deter Burglars Windows are handy point of entry for would be burglars but what if the simple act of moving around outside a window were enough to raise the alert? That’s the concept behind a new window coating system developed by the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Polymer Research IAP in Potsdam-Golm and Computer Architecture and Software Technology FIRST in Berlin that sensitises windows and doors to detect suspicious movements. The motion sensor enables window panes and glass doors to detect movements thanks to a special polymer coating. If anything changes in front of the pane, or someone sneaks up to it, an alarm signal is triggered. That'll give window cleaners nightmares. (read my new occasional blog here) Back issues of 'Glimpses' are archived here. |