As NASA prepares to double the number of astronauts living aboard the International Space Station, nothing may do more for crew bonding than a machine being launched aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on Friday.

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Not quite the Terminator yet, but the rat-brained robot developed by Reading University is starting to think for itself.

This pint sized robot isn’t controlled by software, but by 300,000 living neurons generously donated by a rat. These Neurons are being taught how to steer the robot avoiding obstacles and walls.

The Scientists from Reading University took the brain stem from a rat foetus and using an enzyme broke the connections between the neurons. New connections between the neurons were grown, and then connected to electrodes to pick up the signals they were communicating.

The robot itself isn’t that remarkable. It “see’s” the environment around itself by the use of sonar and has two wheels to move it around.

The sonar detects the robots immediate environment and sends the data to a small onboard computer. The computer transmits the data via Bluetooth short range radio to the rat neurons located in a temperature controlled cabinet. The “neural network” then returns the commands needed to control the robot the same way.  By the process of trial and error this “neural network” learns the environment and starts to avoid objects and navigate clear of walls. It does this completely by itself. They haven’t been programmed to avoid these things; it’s learnt this behaviour by itself.

The scientists are hoping that by studying the learning abilities of this organically brained robot, they will have a better understanding of how memories are formed in the brain. Using this information they hope to unlock some of the mysteries of those devastating neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

I wonder if lieutenant Commander Data started off this way.

Bionics

Today, Bionics, while not in the same league as Steve Austin, has progressed to an amazing level and has truly improved the lives of many people.

The hardware side of things is an awesome advance in itself, but that’s not the whole picture. While creating robotic limbs that mimic the movements of the originals are awesome. The real breakthroughs however lie with the Brain-Machine Interfaces. (BMI’s)

Most of the functions of our body are driven by electrical currents from a part of our brain called the motor cortex. The motor cortex sends out the electrical impulses down the spinal cord through nerves into our muscles. These electrical impulses cause our muscles to move. Raise and lower our arm, walk or run and a multitude of other seemingly simply movements we take for granted each day. Brain-Machine Interfaces replicate this system, and are what makes Bionics possible.

BMI’s generally fit into two categories; non-invasive and invasive. The EEG (Electroencephalograph) is the earliest non-invasive BMI, measuring the huge groups of neurons through voltage differences between different parts of the brain. The EEG measures these differences by placing a number of electrodes on the scalp, the ensuing signals being converted to a digital signal and feed into a computer. This type of BMI has achieved success in subjects controlling cursors on a computer screen and playing computer games. It has also been reported that using an EEG a severely disabled tetraplegic patient was able to grasp an object using his paralysed hand.  The patient-generated brain waves were detected by the EEG and converted into external electrical muscle stimulation, allowing the contraction of the muscles and movement of the paralysed hand.

Invasive BMI’s hold a greater promise of returning near normal control to patients with severed spinal cords injuries and amputee’s with bionic limbs. Invasive BMI’s are implanted directly into the patient’s brain. Being more sensitive and in direct contact with appropriate region of the motor cortex the implanted electrodes have a greater resolution and are far more accurate in measuring the electrical impulses.

In 2003, Jesse Sullivan, a 53 year old electrical technician who lost both arms in a work accident, was the first to be fitted with a bionic arm. The nerves that would usually send impulses to his arm muscles were surgically relocated to his chest. Electrodes were them implanted to pick up the signals from these nerves and feed them into a computer. The impulses were then converted into digital signal which controlled the bionic arms.  View video

One of the next great challenges for bionic limbs is to make them “feel”, creating the ability for the limb to send information back to the brain.  Creating a sense of touch, hot and cold as well as being sensitive to the amount of pressure being applied.

Alongside the bionic limb, progress is being made in both restoring sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf. Sight is being restored via a small camera mounted in the patient’s glasses feeding the image to an electronic chip. This is implanted on the retina of the eye. Hearing is being restored by a cochlear implant where tiny wires are inserted to the cochlea and a microphone fixed to the skull.

We are living in a brave new world, one that brings hope to those who through birth or by accident have lost function to parts of their body. Let’s hope so.

Remember the days when we did things by hand, or better still we did them ourselves? Way back in the dark ages before the world became automatic. They were the good old days, mowing and watering our lawns by hand. We washed the car in the driveway and we even vacuumed our homes ourselves.  This little bit of nostalgia got me thinking. How much have we automated out lives over the last twenty years?

Here’s a list of the automation in my life over the past two decades. You may think of more.

·         Automatic recording of video/TV programmes (Started in the 80’s for me)

·         Car washing – driving through a fully automated car wash (Probably need to do it more)

·         Automatic garage door – now that’s cool. Let’s not underestimate that little beauty

·         The automated coffee machine – makes better coffee than I can at that time in the morning

·         Garden and lawn reticulation – it’ll be dead if it was left to me to water it!

·         Automatic gearbox in my car – an oldie but a goodie

·         Home security system – am I the only one who forgets the pin code? (at 2 in the morning)

·         Sensor lights – we all know how hard it is to flick the light switch

·         Car navigation systems (GPS) – I’ll never get my wife lost again – so she says!

·         Robotic lawn mowers – now that’s a sensible bit a gear, hooray!!

·         Robotic vacuum cleaner (Hover if you come from that part of the world) – don’t know what althe fuss is about

·         Fully automated washing/drying machine – put your dirty clothes in and take your cleaned and dried cloths out. Still waiting for the ironing part. (They had it on Lost in Space)

·         Automatic shopping – the standard weekly items just turn up in a box at the door – still haven’t worked that one out yet.

·         The spell checking as I write this post. On a PC. With Windows Vista. I can already sense the hate mail.

These are only a few of the life changing (lazy) automations that wiz around my family and I each week. If you have any more, please share them. Make a comment and we can compare.

Anyone know how I can automate the wife and kids??

One of my favourite devices from Science Fiction would have to be the “Force Field”. Be it the quaint let’s get it up in a hurry force field from the original Lost in Space TV series, or the nail biting “shields at 5% Captain” from the original Star Trek.

These fictional force fields protect us from a host of nasties ranging from a Klingon phaser blast to the unceasing onslaught of the Wraith in Stargate Atlantis. It’s all well and good for sci-fi but how close are we to developing a real world force field? A lot closer than you think! Welcome to “Cold Plasma”.

Wikipedia defines Plasma as; “a partially ionized gas, in which a certain proportion of electrons are free rather than being bound to an atom or molecule. The ability of the positive and negative charges to move somewhat independently makes the plasma electrically conductive so that it responds strongly to electromagnetic fields”.  The problem with plasma is that it very hot. Cold plasma on the other hand can be produced at room temperature, making it much easier to handle.

“Hot” Plasma, while it’s more dense, isn’t really practical to use a defense shield because of its destructive temperatures. You would have to employ a defense shield against the defense shield!  This is where cold plasma comes in.

Cold plasma in conjunction with powerful electromagnetic fields could protect us from a host of incoming threats. Cold plasma is injected around a ship and held in place by electromagnetic fields. Plasma being electrically charged itself adds the strength of the electromagnetic field. The denser the plasma in the field, the better the field will be at deflection. The generated shield would be able to deflect radiation, microwave, particle beams, laser and other solid objects like micro meteors and projectiles depending on the field’s density.

Cold plasma shielding can also be deployed within the atmosphere; however, it would require substantially more power. The magnetic field would be constantly losing more energy than it would in space and the cold plasma would dissipate more rapidly when in contact with the atmosphere.

Another spin off from these shields is the possibility of cloaking. Not exactly like the Klingon cloaking device from Star Trek, more like an “energy mirror”, reflecting or absorbing radar waves. This would mean the radar would see nothing at all.

Another application for cold plasma is its ability to sterilize and decontaminate. This is not force field related but just as impressive. Cold plasma destroys the integrity of cell membranes providing an efficient way of removing biological threats.

We still have a little further to go for our next generation spaceship to be equipped with a cold plasma force field. In the near future astronauts who are manning the International Space Station may find themselves being protected from potentially fatal radiation by cold plasma.

“To boldly go where no man has gone before”, sounds like a good motto for

Unlike our intrepid Chief Engineer Scotty from the iconic Star Trek TV series, teleportation today is a long way from beaming Captain Kirk and crew down to any nearby planet. Science has however been able to teleport much smaller commuters a shorter distance of around (I’ll say it quickly) one meter. Well it’s a start.

Way back in 1998 a team from the Californian Institute of Technology successfully teleported a photon 3.28 feet over a coaxial cable and recreated the photon on the other side. This may not sound a huge deal but it proved teleportation was possible.

The most recent teleportation experiment took place in Denmark on the 4 October 2006. Dr. Eugene Polzik and his team from at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen teleported information stored in a laser beam into a cloud of atoms. This is a great step forward, for the first time teleportation between two different objects (light and matter) had been successful.

Unfortunately we are years away from being able to teleport to the ISS (International Space Station). Some say the laws of physics make it impossible.

To be able to successfully teleport a human being, the first thing we would have to do is scan each individual atom in the traveller’s body, (that’s each individual person who wants to be teleported) about a trillion trillion atoms.  The data containing the information about these atoms would be beamed to the location you desire, where the traveller would be reconstructed atom by atom and presto! You have arrived.

Herein lies the problem, only the data containing the information about the traveller’s atoms is transmitted, not the traveller. Their body is destroyed in the process and a copy reconstructed at the other end. Ouch! I hear you say. What happens to consciousness, the non tangible, non matter part that makes us who we are?  What happens to our memories? Is it the same person who is reconstructed or just a physical copy of their physical bodies? The cost of travelling down the wire or wireless of this biological fax machine may be the death of the original traveller, their ideas, their dreams, emotions and memories.  They may be reconstructed as mere copy of themselves. A reflection of what they once were. Like looking at a old home video, you can recognise them but they’re not the real person.

Let’s hope that science will overcome these possible problems. Let’s face it, teleporting to the office is a lot better than catching the bus.

Nikola Tesla, mad scientist or forgotten genius? Born in Croatia in the 1800’s to Serbian immigrant parents, Tesla has directly influenced our modern world in ways that affect our everyday lives. Able to speak 6 languages before he was 18 years old, Nikola Tesla has been touted as one of the greatest geniuses of the 20^th century, credited with invention of alternating current (AC Power), radio, Radar, remote control, robotics and the fluorescent lights and nearly 700 other patents. Unfortunately Tesla also had the reputation of a mad scientist due to eccentric behaviour and over exaggerated announcements.

Upon immigrating to the United States, Tesla gained a position working with and assisting Thomas Edison. However it wasn’t long before rivalries emerged between Tesla and Edison, as Tesla work on alternating current directly competed with Edison’s work on Direct Current. It wasn’t long before the two took each other on head to head, at Niagara Falls, New York State. After a public battle between Tesla and Edison, Tesla won the race to build his first great dream – harnessing the power of Niagara Falls to produce power. By 1897, Tesla and alternating current had become a house hold name.

Free Energy

Tesla was obsessed with the idea of providing the world with free energy and went to work perfecting the generation of electrical power without the use of fuels, solar or wind. He would pull the electrical power out of “the vacuum”. He would also demonstrate the transmission of electric power without wires.

Using the “Shoeman Cavity”, a 60km high region between the earth and the bottom of the Ionosphere and charged with megawatts of electrical power by lightning bolts generated worldwide, Tesla demonstrated transmission of electrical power over many kilometres. He lit fluorescent lamps by simply holding them with the field he had created. Tesla also demonstrated the transmission of electrical power through waves of energy passing through the earth lighting lamps up to 25 kilometres from his laboratory.

It was at this point Tesla was introduced to the infamous banker and financier, JP Morgan. Tesla convinced Morgan that he could build a worldwide broadcasting system that would make millions. Morgan promptly invested and Tesla began the Wardenclyff Tower project.

The Wardenclyff Tower project                            

Initially Wardenclyff was about radio broadcasting; however Tesla convinced JP Morgan that he could pull down power from the Ionosphere, making it possible to transmit electricity around the world without wires – free energy for everyone. At this time Marconi announced he had successfully completed a trans ocean radio transmission. Seeing there was no way to make money from a free energy device and fearing Marconi would monopolise radio Morgan pulled away from Tesla. Ironically, 40 years later the Supreme Court of the United States determined that Marconi copied his technology from Patents already held by Tesla, and it was Tesla who had discovered radio transmission, not Marconi.

Some say it was more than JP Morgan pulling out that shut down the Wardenclyff project. It was Tesla himself who scuttled it. He feared that the potential power generated by Wardenclyff could bring lasting harm to the people and the planet. He knows militarisation of this technology could bring down planes and sink ships.

Death Ray

In July 1934 Tesla announced his Death Ray.  Tesla stated that with the use of only 12 of these weapons he could end all wars!

Tesla’s Death Ray was a particle beam weapon, electrostatic acceleration of minute particles. Extremely small particles (micro projectiles) accelerated to extremely high speeds through the use of high voltage. The speed or velocity being used was so high, that very small particles could cause extreme damage. With a stream of highly accelerated particles focused on one spot, you could bring down a plane, sink a ship or take out a missile. This sounds very much like Ronald Ragen’s Star Wars project (SDI – Strategic Defence Initiative) of the 1980’s.

Tesla stated with just 12 of these weapons strategically placed around the United States, his “Teleforce” could be used to keep the United States safe from any foe. With the world on the verge of World War 2 the US Government took an active interest in Tesla and his Death Ray.

The US Government undertook work and development of Tesla’s Particle Beam Technology in the 1940’s and it quickly fell off the radar so to speak.

The New York Times of the same period stated that “Tesla’s Death Ray could send a concentrated beam of particles through the air and cause armies of millions to drop in their tracks” and “is the most important of Tesla’s inventions”. However, in an unprecedented decision, Tesla made it impossible for any one Government to exploit his technology. He distributed the plans for his Particle Beam Weapon in sections to the English, Canadian, American and Russian Governments (who at that stage was allied to the United States). Tesla’s plan was that each Government would have to sit down and work together if they wanted to realise his invention.

Whatever happened to Tesla’s Particle Beam Weapon? Try goggling Talon High Energy Laser Weapon and it may give you an idea!

In conclusion

Science today needs to take a new look at Tesla and his work. Tesla is everywhere around us in this modern world. Every time you turn on a light, use your mobile phone or microwave your dinner we are reminded of Nikola Tesla. We also need to imagine what might have been, a world of free energy and a world without wires.

Please feel free to leave a comment or further insite on Nikola Tesla

If God meant us to fly, he’d given us wings! Well, for Yves Rossy that’s exactly what he did. The 48 year old former fighter pilot has built himself a set of jet powered wings.

After jumping out of airplane at 7500 feet, he unfolds the 8 foot wings, ignites the jets and screamed off at 186 miles per hour.

Rossy used his body to steer the wings, saying “It’s like a second skin, If I turn to the left, I fly left. If I nudge to the right, I go right.”                                     

To land Rossy kills the jets and deploys a parachute to safely descend the ground.

Rossy has a dream to fly the Grand Canyon, but before that he will have to develop bigger more powerful jets to achieve greater manoeuvrability.

I think I’ll just take the bus.

Check out his website:

http://www.jet-man.com/prod/index.html

How do air cars work?

Air cars use an electric pump to compress air into a tank at high pressures, effectively storing energy like a battery. That air is allowed to escape and, in a way similar to a combustion engine, it presses on the vehicle’s pistons , producing power.

The air cars electric pumps can typically be recharged using a standard electrical outlet. Keep in mind, the use of this pump and outlet do not make them hybrid vehicles, just like conventional gasoline vehicle is not hybrid simply because it requires a battery.

Source: futurecars.com

One definition of artificial intelligence is offered by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence — “the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines”.

Another definition I found sums up artificial intelligence as: “intelligent behavior in machines”.

My own oversimplified version is “reasoning machines”.

If I understand ai correctly, the ability to reach a new conclusion from what I have learned is one faculty that separates me from most “intelligent” machines today.