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).

If Proven, This Announcement About The Development of Fusion Power Could Be One Of The Most Important Snippets Of News You've Ever Received

The concept of nuclear 'fusion power' (as against 'nuclear fission' as used in today's nuclear reactors) represents the Holy Grail for energy researchers. Fusion is the atomic process that powers the Sun and if it were to become possible to reproduce that process here on Earth, humanity would have a safe, clean, limitless supply of energy (no radioactivity risk, no carbon output).

On April 24th Sandia National Laboratories (an organisation funded by the U.S. government) announced that it has developed an electrical circuit that should carry enough power to produce the long-sought goal of controlled high-yield nuclear fusion and, equally important, do so every 10 seconds. The device has undergone extensive preliminary experiments and computer simulations at Sandia National Laboratories’ Z machine facility.

'This is the most significant advance in primary power generation in many decades,' says Keith Matzen, director of Sandia’s Pulsed Power Center.

The new system, called a linear transformer driver (LTD), was created by researchers at the Institute of High Current Electronics in Tomsk, Russia, in collaboration with colleagues at Sandia.

Fired repeatedly, the machine could be the fusion engine that could form the basis of an electricity generating plant by the mid 2020s.

Sandia says that to confirm the new Z fusion concept requires $35 million spent over five to seven years to build a power generation test bed.

Mice Given Human Gene To Make Them See More Colours - Nearly 'Instant Upgrade Potential' For Humans

Although mice, like most mammals, typically view the world with a limited colour palette – similar to the way some people with red-green colour blindness see – scientists have now transformed their vision by introducing a single human gene into a mouse chromosome. The human gene codes for a light sensor that mice do not normally possess, and its insertion allowed the mice to distinguish colours as never before.

In a study published in the journal Science, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers at Johns Hopkins, together with researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, demonstrated in a series of cleverly designed colour vision tests that the genetic modification allows mice to see and distinguish among a broader spectrum of light waves. The experiments were designed to determine whether the brains of the genetically altered mice could efficiently process sensory information from the new photoreceptors in their eyes.

The new abilities of the genetically engineered mice indicate that the mammalian brain possesses a flexibility that permits a nearly instantaneous upgrade in the complexity of colour vision, say the study's senior authors, Gerald Jacobs and Jeremy Nathans.

So will humankind apply this knowledge to cure human colour blindness or to enhance normal human colour vision? I suspect the answer is; both.

Universal Blood Type Developed (Should Help To Solve Blood Shortage)

Researchers led by Henrik Clausen of the University of Copenhagen have found a way to make blood of any type acceptable to any patient by cleaving identifying sugars from the surface of red blood cells. The process is currently in human testing and could be available within five years.

At present only 'Type O' blood can be safely given to a patient whose own blood group is unknown, which means that 'Type O' blood is always in short supply. The new universal blood promises to relieve this shortage.

ZymeQuest, a startup company based in Massachusetts, has licensed the science and has developed a machine that can simultaneously treat eight units of blood with the enzymes in 90 minutes.

In Future Wars, Fighter Pilots Will Fly With Robotic Wing Men

The British Ministry of Defence and the U.S. firm QinetiQ have developed a new system which provides a single pilot with the ability to fly their own military fast jet while simultaneously directing up to four further unmanned aircraft.

The system gives the unmanned aircraft an advanced level of autonomy - including self-organisation, communication, sensing the environment, identifying possible enemies, and targeting of weapons with the final decision to shoot retained by the human pilot.

Get Ready To 'Feel' Your Video Game

To enhance the virtual gaming environment, a UK-based team from the Dutch electronics giant Philips is developing and marketing a suite of software and physical tools to create an 'ambient experience' for gamers.

Called amBX, the software includes a combination of modules and controls that create sound, light and wind effects when played with certain PC games.

For example, when a character walks out into a storm, the fan module blows wind in the player’s face. During a storm, white lights flash to mimic lightning and a rumble pad produces a thunder effect.

The system will be available in the USA this July, priced from $199 to $399 depending on the modules included. It works best when played with amBX-aware games, specially coded versions of PC games that cue the modules to light up or the fans to blow.

The company expects to have up to 15 titles available by the end of the year from developers including THQ and Gas Powered Games. Console versions of amBX will be available next year.

Solar Power Brings WiFi To Ugandan Refugee Camps

A new venture has set up solar powered WiFi networks at refugee camps in Uganda to offer communications for aid charities, and for the refugees.

Inveneo, a non-profit social enterprise says that it partnered with the BOSCO (Battery Operated Systems for Community Outreach) Uganda Relief Project to provide access to computers, the Internet and VoIP telephony for Northern Uganda's Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps.

Solar Powered Bikini To Recharge Mobile Phones

Few beaches have handy power outlets so American garment designer Andrew Schneider is creating a bikini covered with photovoltaic solar panels which will provide you with a trickle charge for that 'go everywhere' mobile.

The bikini's photovoltaic film panels allow a fashionable fit while supplying the 6.5 volts @ 1.5 Amps needed to power a peltier junction and recharge a mobile phone. A USB connection is also provided to charge your iPod.

The designer says nothing about the waterproof qualities of the bikini.

Rat Brain Interface Suggests How Machines Can Connect Directly To Human Brains

At the University of Southern California’s Los Angeles campus, researchers have developed a new microchip to connect computer output to the neural pathways of rat brain tissue and see the result appear as brain output. The ultimate aim is to connect computer output directly to the human brain.

The new microchip’s ability to converse with live brain cells is a dramatic first step, the researchers at the Center for Neural Engineering believe, toward an implantable machine that fluently speaks the language of the brain—a machine that could restore memories in people with brain damage or help them make new ones.

Remedying Alzheimer’s disease would, if the researchers' grand vision plays out, be as simple as upgrading a bit of hardware. No more complicated drug regimens with their frustrating side effects. A surgeon simply implants a few computerized brain cells, and the problem is solved.

Scientists To Create Robot Communities To See How They Will Interact

UK scientists in Bristol and Dundee have announced plans to create a 'robot village' in an effort to learn how different robot cultures emerge in society.

The four-year study will feature about 60 miniature robots who will be organised into groups and programmed to interact. The project team plans to observe the robots to see how they behave together.

Scientists say the robots will be organised into groups or 'villages' and told to observe then copy each other's behaviour in different situations.

'Of course the behaviours which emerge and evolve will not be human but decidedly robotic,' says Professor Alan Winfield of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. 'We do not expect these artificial "memes" to have any meaning in a human cultural context - they will only be meaningful within the closed context of this artificial society.'

Using a modified ink-jet printer, a McGill University researcher in Canada is producing three-dimensional bioceramic 'bones' that could one day change the way reconstructive surgery is performed.

McGill professor Jake Barralet, Canada Research Chair in Osteoinductive Biomaterials, Charles Doillon of Université Laval and Uwe Gbureck of the Department for Functional Materials in Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Würzburg, Bavaria, have taken advantage of the ink-jet printer’s ability to print layer upon layer to produce three-dimensional porous materials using the same building blocks as real bone. Their results are published in the journal Advanced Materials.

'Rather than printing on paper, we’re printing on a bed of cement powder using an acid instead of ink, which reacts with the cement to print whatever pattern we want,' explained Dr. Barralet. 'It’s similar to a CT scan, in that the image is created one layer at a time. The result is three-dimensional.'

Invisibility Cloak Comes One Step Closer

Yes, I know it sounds like science fiction, but our whole future is going to sound more and more like science fiction from here on in.

Researchers using nanotechnology have taken a further step toward creating an 'optical cloaking' device that could render objects invisible by guiding light around anything placed inside this 'cloak.'

The Purdue University engineers in the USA, following mathematical guidelines devised in 2006 by physicists in the United Kingdom, have created a theoretical design that uses an array of tiny needles radiating outward from a central spoke.

The design, which resembles a round hairbrush, would bend light around the object being cloaked. Background objects would be visible but not the object surrounded by the cylindrical array of nano-needles, said Vladimir Shalaev, Purdue's Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

www.rayhammond.com

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