June 13, 2006
X3D
What ever happened to the virtual reality, 3D world of the web? Back in the late 90s, all the hype was about VRML—Virtual Reality Markup Language—which would turn the web into an immersive environment that you'd maneuver around to get to the information you wanted. We're here to tell you that the reports of the 3D web's death are greatly exaggerated. As evidence, we present three 3D browsers that will use that graphics card for something other than gaming: 3B, Browse3D, and SphereXPlorer.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 11, 2006
Touch sensor
An artificial touch sensor as sensitive as a human fingertip has been developed by US scientists. One day it could let surgeons remotely "feel" tissue through an endoscope and help robots pour drinks without spilling a drop.
The sensor is made from a film of nanoparticles of gold and cadmium sulphide. It is so sensitive that it can easily detect the contours of Abraham Lincoln's head embossed on a US penny, and even make out the outlines of the smallest letters printed on the coin.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMay 14, 2006
Most realistic virtual reality
More than $4 million in equipment upgrades will shine 100 million pixels on Iowa State University's six-sided virtual reality room.
That's twice the number of pixels lighting up any virtual reality room in the world and 16 times the pixels now projected on Iowa State's C6, a 10-foot by 10-foot virtual reality room that surrounds users with computer-generated 3-D images. That means the C6 will produce virtual reality at the world's highest resolution.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesApril 30, 2006
piSight
The piSight™ virtual reality (VR) system is the world's most immersive 3D virtual reality display, ideal for numerous applications including virtual prototyping, training, data mining and more.
The product of nearly a decade of research supported by NASA and a global car company, piSight uses a breakthrough patented optical design that provides for a 3D wrap-around visual sensation with 150° field of view, 2200x1200 pixels per eye in full color.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesApril 04, 2006
Single-molecule diode
Single-molecule diode may change Moore's 'law' of microchip memory.
Using the power of modern computing combined with innovative theoretical tools, an international team of researchers has determined how a one-way electrical valve, or diode, made of only a single molecule does its job. Diodes are critical components within computer, audio equipment and countless other electronic devices. If designers can swap existing diodes with the single-molecule one, the products could be shrunk to incredibly small sizes.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMarch 22, 2006
Bacteria could power tiny robots
Researchers at Rice University and the University of Southern California have embarked on a project to harness the power of Shewanella oneidensis, a microorganism that essentially spits lightning. Rather than consume oxygen to turn food into energy, Shewanella consumes metals.
The waste product of its metabolic process comes in the form of excess electrons stripped from the metals but not recombined in subsequent chemical reactions. The bacteria lives in soil, water and other environments and can extract its necessary nutrients from a variety of materials.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMarch 05, 2006
Nanotube networks conjured on crystals
The key to instantly assembling intricate networks of nanotubes has been discovered by scientists armed with some of the most sophisticated microscopes in the world. The phenomenon may one-day help create tiny nano-circuits that let electrons pass through nano-pipes instead of along silicon wires.
Erdmann Spiecker and colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California, US, along with Wolfgang Jäger at Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, Germany, used several high-powered microscopes to study a nanoscale phenomenon previously observed in the laboratory but not well understood.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMarch 01, 2006
Saab Aero-X Concept
A week before its debut at the 2006 Geneva Motor Show, pictures of the gorgeous Saab Aero-X have leaked onto enthusiast websites across the internet. This two-seat siren boasts the sexiest shape ever seen on a Saab. The opening canopy is certainly a head turner, even if it may be a too-obvious attempt to play up the brand’s aircraft heritage. The wheels are killer eleven-spoke beauties, and all lighting, inside and out, is LED. Alas, a sexy new sports car is not in the Saab product plan. But let’s hope the Aero-X signals the design direction for future Saabs.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesFebruary 11, 2006
Nano Imaging
While a microphone is useful for many things, you probably wouldn’t guess that it could help make movies of molecules or measure physical and chemical properties of a material at the nanoscale with just one poke.
Georgia Tech researchers have created a highly sensitive atomic force microscopy (AFM) technology capable of high-speed imaging 100 times faster than current AFM. This technology could prove invaluable for many types of nano-research, in particular for measuring microelectronic devices and observing fast biological interactions on the molecular scale, even translating into movies of molecular interactions in real time. The research, funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, appears in the February issue of Review of Scientific Instruments.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJanuary 18, 2006
Nanobattery
Several researchers from Sandia National Laboratories, led by principal investigator Susan Rempe, are part of a multi-institutional, multidisciplinary team developing a nano-size battery that one day could be implanted in the eye to power an artificial retina.
They are among the recipients of a five-year, $6.5 million grant recently awarded by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish a new center, the National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors. Based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under the direction of principal investigator Eric Jakobsson, the center is designed to rapidly launch revolutionary ideas in the use of nanomedicine.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesDecember 27, 2005
Gyroscope sets course to fight cancer
Miniaturised gyroscopes more commonly found in missile guidance systems can make sensitive biosensors for fast cancer diagnosis.
Micro-gyroscopes comprise a chip with a vibrating disc the size of a sand grain mounted at its centre. The vibrations are highly sensitive to acceleration, so the chips can be used to detect motion in rockets, aircraft and anti-lock braking systems in cars.
But now Calum McNeil and his colleagues at the University of Newcastle in the UK have created a gyroscopic disc less than 0.1 millimetres across that can be used to "weigh" proteins, which allows it to identify particular proteins produced by cancer cells. The disc targets the kind of protein that binds to a DNA coating on a cross on the disc's surface.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesDecember 19, 2005
Eliica
The Eliica, short for Electric Lithium-Ion battery Car -- that can do 0-60 in four seconds is faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo, and accelerates at 0.8 Gs. It's also around 5 meters in length, 2400 kg in weight, and has eight wheels. Yes, it's made in Japan. The 10 hour recharge (and the price, over $300,000) are the primary drawbacks.
Watch a video.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesDecember 08, 2005
Shimmering colours which change with temperature
Nail polish and expensive cars can nowadays shimmer in many colours, thanks to progress in the field of colloid chemistry, the chemistry of small particles. The bright colours in modern finishes are created because the light is reflected at layers of regularly arranged colloid particles. Individual colours are either removed or strengthened; the thickness of the layers -- what is known as the "lattice constant" -- determines the colour. Because we can nowadays tailor the spherical shape and the surface of the particles, we can produce optimised crystals with the desired lattice constant in the range of visible light.
The team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, led by Dr Wang, has now produced particles that do not interact with their neighbours in spherically symmetric ways. So they placed a colloidal crystal on a surface (image 2) and bombarded it with reactive ions, reducing the particles in the upper layer to the desired size and expanding the free surfaces between the colloids.
Complete Article
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Home >> Future TechnologiesDecember 07, 2005
Sony super fuel cell film
More good news for those of us still waiting for practical fuel cells for our gadgets; Sony has developed a new technology that it says could help produce the world’s most efficient DMFC (direct methanol fuel cell) yet.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesDecember 06, 2005
Nanotechnology's Dilemmas
Nanotechnology can learn much from history. As the biotechnology industry recently discovered, ignoring public policy and social issues – namely, possible heath and environmental hazards from genetically modified foods – invites a public backlash that crippled progress and sent corporate stocks plummeting. If nanotechnology is billed as the "Next Industrial Revolution",1 then it also must raise a host of important social and ethical questions that we need to consider now.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesNovember 01, 2005
Venetian blinds
A molecule that flips its arms like the slats on a Venetian blind might in future find uses in computer displays, computer memory, or even windows that become tinted at the flick of a switch.
Molecules whose shapes or movements can be easily controlled are important for nanotechnology. One kind that promises to be useful are those shaped in a helix that can be made to reverse its direction. When that happens the molecule is said to reverse its chirality.
Researchers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh and Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, were working with a helical polymer called polyguanidine. Polyguanidine actually switched chirality so easily that it was difficult to control. To try to make the helices more stable, the researchers stuck side chains of anthracene along the helical backbone.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesOctober 26, 2005
NanoCar
Rice University scientists have constructed the world's smallest car -- a single molecule "nanocar" that contains a chassis, axles and four buckyball wheels.
The "nanocar" is described in a research paper that is available online and due to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Nano Letters. The "nanocar" is described in a research paper that is available online and due to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Nano Letters.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesSeptember 18, 2005
The Air Car
French company Moteur Developpment International (MDI) has developed a car powered by compressed air. The air expands to push pistons and then the pistons drive a crankshaft in a way similar to the way an internal combustion engine works. The vehicle has a compressor driven from plugging into an electric socket that recharges the compressed air in 3 to 4 hours.
Read more How it works
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Home >> Future TechnologiesSeptember 12, 2005
Nanohelix structure
A previously-unknown zinc oxide nanostructure that resembles the helical configuration of DNA could provide engineers with a new building block for creating nanometer-scale sensors, transducers, resonators and other devices that rely on electromechanical coupling.
Based on a superlattice composed of alternating single-crystal "stripes" just a few nanometers wide, the "nanohelix" structure is part of a family of nanobelts – tiny ribbon-like structures with semiconducting and piezoelectric properties – that were first reported in 2001.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesSeptember 11, 2005
Bio Programming
The next step after reading genetic code is writing it. In June, biotech pioneers J. Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith launched Synthetic Genomics, a Rockville, MD-based "synthetic biology" startup aimed at creating custom-made micro-organisms.
The new company's president is Juan Enriquez, former director of Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project and CEO of the Wellesley, MA, investment partnership Biotechonomy, which funds Synthetic Genomics.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesSeptember 08, 2005
Six Degrees of Separation
University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have invented a new algorithm that solves a network-searching conundrum that has puzzled computer scientists and sociologists for years.
The scientists created an algorithm that helps explain the sociological findings that led to the theory of “six degrees of separation,” and could have broad implications for how networks are navigated, from improving emergency response systems to preventing the spread of computer viruses.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesSeptember 06, 2005
4G prototypes reach blistering speeds
Cellphones capable of transmitting data at blistering speeds have been demonstrated by NTT DoCoMo in Japan.
In experiments, prototype phones were used to view 32 high definition video streams, while travelling in an automobile at 20 kilometres per hour. Officials from NTT DoCoMo say the phones could receive data at 100 megabits per second on the move and at up to a gigabit per second while static. At this rate, an entire DVD could be downloaded within a minute. DoCoMo's current 3G (third generation) phone network offers download speeds of 384 kilobits per second and upload speeds of 129 kilobits per second.
The technology behind NTT DoCoMo's high-speed phone network remains experimental, but the 4G tests used a method called Variable-Spreading-Factor Spread Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (VSF-Spread OFDM), which increases downlink speeds by using multiple radio frequencies to send the same data stream.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesAugust 26, 2005
3D TV by 2020
Japan plans to make this futuristic television a commercial reality by 2020 as part of a broad national project that will bring together researchers from the government, technology companies and academia.
The targeted "virtual reality" television would allow people to view high-definition images in 3D from any angle, in addition to being able to touch and smell the objects being projected upwards from a screen parallel to the floor.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesAugust 25, 2005
Light that travels… faster than light!
A team of researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has successfully demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to control the speed of light – both slowing it down and speeding it up – in an optical fiber, using off-the-shelf instrumentation in normal environmental conditions. Their results, to be published in the August 22 issue of Applied Physics Letters, could have implications that range from optical computing to the fiber-optic telecommunications industry.
On the screen, a small pulse shifts back and forth – just a little bit. But this seemingly unremarkable phenomenon could have profound technological consequences. It represents the success of Luc Thévenaz and his fellow researchers in the Nanophotonics and Metrology laboratory at EPFL in controlling the speed of light in a simple optical fiber. They were able not only to slow light down by a factor of three from its well – established speed c of 300 million meters per second in a vacuum, but they've also accomplished the considerable feat of speeding it up – making light go faster than the speed of light.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesAugust 15, 2005
‘Fantastic Voyage’ Through the Human Body
Using revolutionary medical imaging technology, researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology are providing a better understanding of the human body and its many secrets.
Led by Richard Doolittle, RIT’s director of the department of medical sciences, and Paul Craig, professor of chemistry, a team of students has created never-before-seen virtual images of the pancreas, detailed pictures of the human skull and DNA-level images of protein molecules. Their findings were presented today in a virtual tour entitled “3D Visualization in Science, from molecules to cells to organs.”
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Home >> Future TechnologiesAugust 08, 2005
FUTURES MARKET
Cars that drive themselves, artificial brains and human rights for robots... it's just a matter of time.
A Technology Timeline compiled by researchers at BT's futurology department has come up with a list of advances it says will change tomorrow's world.
And they should know what they're talking about - in the past they've correctly predicted text messaging, email spam and internet search engines.
According to BT's boffins, most of us will live to 100 while obesity and the dentist's drill will be distant memories.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJuly 18, 2005
Virtual Culture
Virtual computer characters more accustomed to battling deranged alien monsters are about to take part in a unique social experiment.
A society of virtual "agents” - each with a remarkably realistic personality and the ability to learn and communicate - is being crafted by scientists from five European research institutes who hope to gain insights into the way human societies evolve.
The project, known as – or – brings together experts in artificial intelligence, linguistics, computer science and sociology. It is backed by a consortium consisting of the and in the UK, Tilberg and Universities in the Netherlands and in Hungary.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJuly 10, 2005
Big Screen
France Telecom's wireless unit, SA, will soon roll out a new mobile video service that will let cellular phone subscribers view TV, movies, photos, and broadband Internet content with a big-screen viewing effect using Kopin®-enabled video eyewear from U.S.-based . ., the largest U.S. manufacturer of microdisplays for mobile consumer electronics and military applications, has received an order for CyberDisplay® 230K microdisplays from MicroOptical for this application.
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With robots, you can live forever
Futurist Ray Kurzweil believes immortality is ours if we program the human body like a computer. Clint Witchalls reports.
Most people know Ray Kurzweil as an IT boffin. He is a pioneer of flatbed scanners, print-to-speech software for the blind and commercially marketed speech-recognition software. And as if that isn't enough, he is known for his IT predictions.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Marvin Minsky described Kurzweil as a "leading futurist of our time" - so it should come as no surprise that Kurzweil's latest book is about health and longevity.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJuly 02, 2005
Nano-levers point to futuristic gadgets
Billions of tiny mechanical levers could be used to store songs on future MP3 players and pictures on digital cameras.
As bizarre as the idea might sound, researchers at a Dutch company have already demonstrated that miniscule mechanical switches can be used to store data using less power than existing technologies and with greater reliability.
Nanomech memory, developed by Cavendish Kinetics in the Netherlands, stores data using thousands of electro-mechanical switches that are toggled up or down to represent either a one or zero as a binary bit. Each switch is a few microns long and less than a micron wide - roughly one-hundredth the width of a human hair.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 22, 2005
The next generation of prosthetics
Every week, 3,000 people lose a limb. They join the more than 4 million American amputees living in the United States. Prosthetics can help, but they're a far cry from the real thing.
Jay Martin, of Scott Sabolich Prosthetics & Research in Oklahoma City says much has been mimicked in prosthetics, but a few things are lacking. One is the control system. Prosthetics don't allow people to have a varied control corresponding to their environment. Secondly, they don't mimic whole natural biomechanical movements independent of the terrain. Martin says with the most advanced technology currently available, the ankle is positioned at a set angle and has a limited range of motion.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 21, 2005
Further steps towards artificial eggs and sperm
Human embryonic stem cells have been coaxed in the lab to develop into the early forms of cells which eventually become eggs or sperm, UK researchers have revealed.
Work by several groups has shown that a tiny proportion of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) spontaneously develop into primordial germ cells when allowed to differentiate in a dish. In this latest study, Behrouz Aflatoonian and colleagues at the University of Sheffield, produced primordial germ cells which began to express the proteins characteristic of sperm cells, while others resembled eggs.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 19, 2005
Is this the future of air combat?
For 65 years, the Mojave Desert has spawned the fastest, highest-flying and most agile airplanes in the world. This vast expanse of scrub and Joshua tree forests encompasses the U.S. Air Force’s deadly-secret Area 51 in Nevada, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, and, at Mojave airfield itself, Burt Rutan’s sci-fi enclave, Scaled Composites. At the heart of it all is the flight-test center at Edwards Air Force Base—and here is where a very nontraditional confrontation over the future of air combat is beginning to play out.
In one corner of the base resides the USAF’s current star project, the Lockheed Martin F/A-22 Raptor. The Raptor is fast, cruising at speeds other fighters can attain only in short sprints. It’s also agile, heavily armed, and stealthy. In tests last year, the pilots of older F-15s that engaged the Raptors in simulated combat never saw the airplane that “hit” them.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 16, 2005
'Curious' Aibos
Sony has succeeded in giving selected Aibo pet robots curiosity, researchers at Sony Computer Science Laboratory (SCSL) in Paris said last week. Their research won't lead to conscious robots soon, if ever, but it could help other fields such as child developmental psychology, they said during an open day in Tokyo.
More than 50 years ago Alan Turing, considered by many to be the father of computer science, speculated about the possibility of creating synthetic consciousness. Progress has been made with AI (artificial intelligence) systems, which have typically used task-defined learning algorithms that enable programs to define what is good or bad about particular sets of information in relation to achieving preset goals, according to SCSL researcher Frederic Kaplan.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 15, 2005
Japan's robot-led recovery
Ten teenagers huddled over a Transformer-like robot in a humble classroom are pioneers in a Japanese initiative called "super science", a nationwide effort in public education to nurture future leaders in technology.
While fears are growing that Japan is being overshadowed by the clout of China, along with increasingly successful businesses in other Asian nations, hopes are high for the program, which grants high schools money to pay for their own original technology curriculum.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 13, 2005
BIONIC MAN
Researchers at Imperial College London are planning to implant tiny computer chips into patients to monitor their condition.
Trials on diabetics are expected to take place by as early as this Christmas.
The "999 chip" will keep an eye on blood sugar levels, transmitting a signal to doctors the instant there is any dangerous change in the patient's condition.
It is the latest development in the field of cyborg technology which began with the very first heart pacemakers in the 1950s.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 09, 2005
Intelligent Design
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 07, 2005
The machine that can copy anything
A revolutionary machine that can copy itself and manufacture everyday objects quickly and cheaply could transform industry in the developing world, according to its creator.
The "self-replicating rapid prototyper," or "RepRap" is the brainchild of Dr. Adrian Bowyer, a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Bath in the UK.
It is based on rapid prototyping technology commonly used to manufacturer plastic components in industry from computer-generated blueprints -- effectively a form of 3D printer.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 06, 2005
IBM Aims To Simulate A Brain
IBM has embarked on a quest for the holy grail of neuroscience--the far-off goal of creating a computer simulation of the human brain.
When the first mammals evolved from reptiles 200 million years ago, one of the biggest changes was inside their heads. Their brain cells were structured together into columns, an innovation that could be repeated like a computer chip to make larger and more powerful minds-- from mice to cats and dogs to humans.
"This was the jump from reptiles to mammals," says Henry Markram, founder of the Brain/Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland. "It was like discovering a G5 processor or Pentium 4 and just copying it."
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 04, 2005
Next-Generation Memory Chip
A team of international scientists has made a gigantic stride forward to develop next-generation memory chips, which are more progressed compared to the current best 60-nanometer products.
The team, participated by Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology professor Kim Sang-ouk, said yesterday that they established a pattern helpful in building the futuristic memory chips.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 03, 2005
Transhumanist Values
Transhumanism is a loosely defined movement that has developed gradually over the past two decades. It promotes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating the opportunities for enhancing the human condition and the human organism opened up by the advancement of technology. Attention is given to both present technologies, like genetic engineering and information technology, and anticipated future ones, such as molecular nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.
The enhancement options being discussed include radical extension of human health-span, eradication of disease, elimination of unnecessary suffering, and augmentation of human intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities. Other transhumanist themes include space colonization and the possibility of creating superintelligent machines, along with other potential developments that could profoundly alter the human condition. The ambit is not limited to gadgets and medicine, but encompasses also economic, social, institutional designs, cultural development, and psychological skills and techniques.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesJune 02, 2005
Magnetic Resonance goes Nano
Researchers from NTT Basic Research Labs in Japan and the Japan Science and Technology Agency have built a nuclear magnetic resonance device that has the potential to overcome the limit because it is small enough to fit on a computer chip. It could also be tapped to allow nuclear magnetic resonance devices used in chemistry, biology and medicine to examine smaller samples, according to the researchers.
Quantum computers use properties like spin to represent the 1s and 0s of digital information. In theory, quantum computers would be able to solve certain types of very large problems, including those underpinning today's encryption technologies, many orders of magnitude faster than today's classical computers.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMay 31, 2005
Future soldiers ironmen?
The American military is working on a new generation of soldiers, far different from the army it has.
"They don't get hungry," said Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command. "They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes."
The robot soldier is coming.
The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force, and a $127 billion project called Future Combat Systems is the biggest military contract in American history.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMay 30, 2005
Hydrogen Cars
Is the world at the tipping point of saying yea or nay to a hydrogen economy, at least, for transportation? What trend or world event will force the tipping point? The crystal ball remains fuzzy.
Ford and General Motors are in dire financial straits. Credit rating agencies saw the automakers' plights as so desperate they cut their credit ratings to junk status, which means it is far more expensive for them to borrow money.
At the same time, both companies are developing hydrogen-powered vehicles, and spending billions to do so. An insider at one company said there's a raging debate about whether the automaker should be spending those billions on technologies that appear to be far in the future. The debate centers around whether those billions should be cut to save money (and maybe the future of the company), or reallocate those billions to new products that will keep the company afloat in the short run.
Dennis Campbell, chief executive of a premier company in developing fuel cells, Ballard Power Systems Inc., based in Vancouver, British Columbia, thinks we're approaching the tipping point toward a hydrogen economy.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMay 29, 2005
The future is a chip inside your head
Imagine a world where you can never lose your mobile phone because the technology has been implanted in your jawbone; a future where elite football teams play to neurally downloaded tactics and where everything you buy comes with GPS software to help you keep track of it. It may sound like science fiction but, according to a leading academic based in Scotland, it could soon be fact.
Andy Clark, a shock-haired professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, believes his finger is on tomorrow’s pulse. He burst into the academic stratosphere with the 2003 publication of Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence. That book explored the way human minds might interact with emerging technology, instantly becoming both a key scientific text and a crossover hit in the United States, casting Clark in the role of scientific seer.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMay 24, 2005
Digital Immortality - Download the Mind by 2050
The wealthy will be able to download their consciousness into computers by 2050 - the not so well off by "2075 or 2080", claims futurologist Dr. Ian Pearson, head of the Futurology unit at BT.
While it sounds like science fiction, Pearson is serious about his claim. He believes that humans will achieve a kind of virtual immortality by saving their consciousnesses into computers within the next 45 years.
"If you draw the timelines, realistically by 2050 we would expect to be able to download your mind into a machine, so when you die it's not a major career problem,' Pearson told The Observer. “If you're rich enough then by 2050 it's feasible. If you're poor you'll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it's routine. We are very serious about it. That's how fast this technology is moving: 45 years is a hell of a long time in IT."
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMay 16, 2005
Paralyzed Rats Walk; Humans Next?
Researchers studying embryonic stem cells have published long-awaited data in a peer-reviewed journal, revealing how they enabled rats with crushed spinal cords to walk again. Spinal cord injury patients are hopeful, but they're not all celebrating just yet.
The publication is certainly a step in a promising direction for the treatment of patients with damaged spinal cords. But the study found that the technique worked only on recently injured rats, not those with chronic injuries. The researchers say they hope to begin human clinical trials sometime soon, but the tests will likely study only newly injured patients.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMay 14, 2005
High-Tech Robot Skin
High-Tech Robot Skin: Goddard technologist Vladimir Lumelsky believes the future of robotics lies with the development of a high-tech, sensor-embedded covering that would be able to sense the environment, much like human skin.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMay 11, 2005
ROBEA Project
The machine called RABBIT, which resembles a high-tech Tin Man from "The Wizard of Oz," minus the arms, was developed by University of Michigan and French scientists over six years. It's the first known robot to walk and balance like a human, and late last year, researchers succeeded in making RABBIT run for six steps. It has been able to walk gracefully for the past 18 months.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMay 05, 2005
Penelope: The Robo-Nurse
Meet “Penelope”, the robo-nurse of the future. With nurse shortages becoming a problem nationwide, Penelope’s creators hope that their creation can help reduce the burden put on nurses.
The robot will not be involved with the actual care of the patients – the most important role of its human counterpart. Instead, its main job will be to help surgeons in the operating room with simple tasks.
Her developers, Michael Treat and his team at Robotic Surgical Tech, Inc., endowed her artificial intelligence specific to surgical situations. Penelope uses voice recognition technology to “listen” for the surgeon’s commands. When the surgeon asks for a scalpel, she repeats the word, and using a visual processing capability, reaches for the tool and hands it to the surgeon.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesMay 03, 2005
Aerogel
Aerogel is not like conventional foams, but is a special porous material with extreme microporosity on a micron scale. It is composed of individual features only a few nanometers in size. These are linked in a highly porous dendritic-like structure.
This exotic substance has many unusual properties, such as low thermal conductivity, refractive index and sound speed - in addition to its exceptional ability to capture fast moving dust. Aerogel is made by high temperature and pressure-critical-point drying of a gel composed of colloidal silica structural units filled with solvents. Aerogel was prepared and flight qualified at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). JPL also produced aerogel for the Mars Pathfinder and Stardust missions, which possesses well-controlled properties and purity. This particular JPL-made silica aerogel approaches the density of air. It is strong and easily survives launch and space environments. JPL aerogel capture experiments have flown previously and been recovered on Shuttle flights, Spacelab II and Eureca.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesApril 30, 2005
iBOT
INDEPENDENCE® iBOT™ 3000 Mobility System, one of the most scientifically advanced devices of its kind ever brought to market. Power across sand, gravel, grass and other rough terrain…travel easily over curbs…rise to an "eye-level" position where you can reach new heights …climb up and down a flight of stairs -- you can do all this with your iBOT™ Mobility System. Created for people like yourself who want to be more active, this is the first powered mobility system that lets you go more places and do what you love - on your own and with little planning.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesApril 20, 2005
Concept Centaur
Like the mythical half-horse, half-man of Greek lore, Concept Centaur combines the best of several technologies to create an innovative whole. The result of exploration by Segway LLC's product development team, Concept Centaur will challenge the way you think about four-wheeled transportation.
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Home >> Future TechnologiesApril 03, 2005
Sort of human, but not quite
Donald McLellan has a pretty smart computer.
It watches what he reads and writes and can go online for information it thinks he might need. "If I didn't have it, I'd have to hire a research analyst to sit next to me," said the corporate vice president at Motorola Inc.
McLellan uses software called Watson, developed at Northwestern University and marketed by Chicago's Intellext Inc., which is part of a new wave of programs that provide computers with something akin to human intelligence. But these programs do not think for their users.
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