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).

Create A Back-Up Of Your Immune System For When You Might Need It

British company Lifeforce has just received permission from America's FDA to offer a service which creates and stores a back-up of human immune systems against future need.

For an initial payment of $800 the company will take 480 millilitres of your blood, extract the white blood cells and then, for a payment of $25 a month will store those cells at -196 °C.

If you later suffer from an autoimmune disease such as AIDS or if you have to undergo chemotherapy for cancer, by taking some of the stored cells and exposing them to natural growth factors such as interleukin-2, whole new armies of white blood cells could be grown in the lab and reinfused into your body to restore your immune system.

Nigeria Plans A Manned Moon Landing By 2030

Oil-rich Nigeria has just launched its first communications satellite. The satellite was built and launched for Nigeria by China, the rapidly developing nation that has been assiduously (and some say unscrupulously) courting all oil-rich African nations to ensure the security of its future energy requirements.

To celebrate the launch, Nigeria’s Science and Technology Minister Professor Turner Isoun said the country’s space program is expected to grow by leaps and bounds and will culminate in Nigeria sending a manned mission to the Moon by 2030.

A Transparent Plastic Sheet That Can Block Wireless And Mobile Phone Signals

A new transparent film for windows has been developed which, it is claimed, can block or seriously degrade radio signal penetration. While aimed at companies seeking to secure internal wireless communications, doubtless some organisations will investigate the possibility of using the technology to block mobile phone signals.

CPFilms says that patented technology built into LLumar Signal Defense film reduces electronic signal leakage through windows, a building's point of least resistance, by serving as a transparent barrier that allows light to pass through, while minimizing transmission of wireless (WiFi), radio frequency (RF), and other electronic signals.

Now, A Robot To Watch Over You

A U.S. patent has just been awarded for an 'Autonomous Personal Service Robot' which will monitor its owner for symptoms of distress and provide assistance.

The system may also include sensors to detect situations before they affect people such as smoke, heat, temperature and carbon monoxide. The robot will also provide security for the home.

Additionally the robot may comprise features such as a medicine dispenser and blood pressure cuff. Features such as broadband internet, MP3 player, reading lights and eye glass tracker will provide butler type capabilities that are intended to provide appeal to markets beyond the elderly and infirm. The system may also include an X10 transmitter/receiver to automatically control various household lights and appliances. Equipping the system with a robot arm enables the robot to fetch items, turn on and off wall switches and open the refrigerator.

Stem cell technology has the potential to grow new organs for humans and a new way of embedding silicon nanowires in cells could one day allow scientists to control how living tissues grow using electrical stimulation.

Living cells cannot easily be connected to nanowires. In the past, researchers have had to physically push nanowires or carbon nanotubes into the cells, which can damage or kill them.

However, Peidong Yang of the University of California at Berkeley and a team of researchers found that when cells in a solution settle onto an array of silicon nanowires, they gradually incorporate the wires into the cells without any resistance.

Importantly, the team didn’t use just any old cells - they used embryonic stem cells from a mouse that had begun differentiating into cardiac muscle.

An Electronic Glove To Improve CPR

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is the most widely used technique to resuscitate patients whose hearts have stopped (however, see my story 'Emergency Room Heart Doctors May Have Been Killing Heart Attack Victims By Accident' in last month's Glimpses).

Now, research has shown that only six months after learning life-saving CPR techniques, around 60 percent of first aiders - including doctors and nurses - forget how to do it correctly. As a result, survival rates from cardiac arrests remain low.

To help solve this problem Canadian company Atreo Medical has introduced the CPRGlove, an electronic one-size-fits-all glove. It features a series of sensors and chips that measure the frequency and depth of compressions being administered during CPR and outputs the data to a digital display, thus helping to ensure the correct rate and depth of CPR.

Wind Power Can Re-charge Your Mobile Phone

At the recent Glastonbury music festival in Somerset, UK, the mobile network provider Orange demonstrated a mobile phone charger prototype powered by wind energy. The Orange Mobile Wind Charger is the result of months of research into a viable alternate energy source to power mobile phones during summer music festivals, where attendees more commonly live in tents for several days.

The wind turbine, weighing in at only 150grams, is small enough to fit into a weekend rucksack and is easily mounted onto festival goers' tents using a simple mounting bracket. So whilst festival revellers are out during the day taking in their favourite bands, the turbine stores wind generated power in the control box, ready for when they return to their tent each night to recharge their phone.

The Hand-Held, 1.6lb Ultrasound Scanner

Ultrasound machines have been getting smaller for a while now, leading some doctors to claim that they'll eventually replace the stethoscope. Siemen's latest model, the ACUSON P10, is another step in the transition.

The 1.6-pound P10 is designed to fit inside a standard white coat pocket, and can store images and video clips for later examination. The unit is currently undergoing clinical trials in the US.

Poor Quality Video Can Now Be Made High Resolution - in Real Time

Researchers at Intel have developed an algorithm that, by leveraging the power of multiple microprocessors, can boost the resolution of a video as it plays in real time.

The technology, called super resolution, can run on machines with as few as two cores and as many as hundreds, potentially letting people enhance video captured with a cheap webcam, improve old home movies, or turn a DVD-quality video into a high-resolution movie.

Security, surveillance and police applications of super resolution will probably lead the take up of this new technology.

Robots Being Developed To Pick Fruit

As U.S. immigration law is tightened, farmers in Southern California are worried that their supply of cheap fruit-picking labour may dry up. As a result, they are investing to develop robots which can pick fruit.

Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labour-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season.

Stretchable Plastic-Silicon May Inspire a New Wave of Electronics

Scientists have created a form of nanoscale silicon that is stretchable. The new material may help pave the way for a class of stretchable electronic devices, such as 'smart' surgical gloves and personal health monitors, that are not possible to create using current technology and materials.

John Rogers, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and colleagues from UIUC and the University of Arizona created an ultra-thin silicon membrane from a silicon wafer and merged the membrane with a slab of a silicon-based polymer.

The overall process involved several steps but, in short, the group first 'pre-strained' the polymer slab, pulling it taut, before they topped it with the prepared silicon. When they released the strain the silicon buckled, resulting in a series of raised wavy ridges forming a herringbone-like pattern. The finished composite membrane is about 100 nanometers thick and can stretch biaxially – that is, in both the vertical and horizontal directions.

Moulded Plastic Connections Could Improve Brain Implants (And A Means of Creating A Computer-Brain Interface?)

Connecting electrodes to the human nervous system is difficult because the tissue becomes inflamed when in contact with metal. This creates a layer of electrically insulating scar tissue that makes it harder to send or receive signals.

In the course of experimenting with soft, rubbery electrodes, neuroscientists at the University of Michigan, USA, had a new idea. Instead of connecting previously formed polymer to the neurons, why not build the rubbery electrode around them and allow it to mould itself around cells?

The mouldable polymer, PEDOT, assembles from a solution of monomers that assemble into polymer chains in response to electric current.

After testing that the monomer solution was not toxic to cells, the team allowed it to soak into cultures of mouse neurons, and living slices of brain tissue containing wires around which scar tissue had already formed.

Running a small current through the wires caused the monomers to form rubbery conductive polymer in a close-fitting web around the cells.

www.rayhammond.com

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