Future Technology Trends

Many serious disorders have been challenging to treat. Neuroplasticity allows the mind to repair itself and compensate to a certain extent after damage. Unfortunately, this adaptability is often not enough. Neurogenesis, the creation of new neurons, is limited to only key sections of the brain. Printable neural tissue with stem cells may eventually heal people. That outcome appears to be quite a ways off. Another strategy that Tel Aviv University researchers and other collaborators are investigating is synthetic microcircuits that interact with biology. The renachip project is constructing a biohybrid model that could recover lost functioning due to age or other conditions. Crude deep brain implantation can already ameliorate Parkinson’s disease. This recent innovation is a DBS device on steroids. Cyborg-like connections could be part of the therapeutic armament. Now scientists have given an update at a recent SENS conference on the viability of a biomimetic prosthetic in a rat.   Read More »

Cars of the future may rely on brain computer interfaces to go from one place to the next. Imagine not needing to use your hands or feet to operate a vehicle. This may seem like an unrealistic possibility, but scientists from Nissan and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne are teaming up to help make it a reality. EPFL has already developed a way to allow people in wheelchairs to move around with a BMI. Next, they hope to adapt this technology for these other uses. A main innovation is to facilitate the merging of automobile intelligence with the human mind. The car will monitor the thought-induced movements so it safely gets to the proper destination. There could be difficulties if a person is careless as they drive. The academics have to eliminate any conflict between the two mediums. Unfortunately, concentration levels must be high when using many current BCI’s. Simple distractions can lead to a disastrous outcome. The collaboration is creating a system that uses a statistical analysis in order to understand an owner’s intentions. They are also employing methods to evaluate the cognitive state. If you are drunk, the CPU might stop you from going places. Perhaps if the operator was tired, it could adjust to that lower level of functioning.   Read More »

Graphene arrays may help to create extremely high-density electronic computer chips. Many thinkers forecast that these shapes will replace standard technology within the next decade or so. This may not occur until silicon reaches a dead end. The sheets of carbon atoms are finding numerous other uses as times goes by. Researchers from Rice University and Hong Kong Polytechnic U have shown how these graphene nanoribbons can stand on a substrate with only a small support system. This work is located in the journal of the American Chemical Society. Nickel and diamond bind to the ends of the graphene and let it to be upright. Diamond is also composed of intricately bonded carbon and is a very durable material. It is one of the hardest compounds available. The contact between the two mediums is in a relatively tiny area, so the graphene walls maintain their unique properties. The combinations have electric and magnetic characteristics that are similar to freestanding ones. They claim that there is a theoretical limit of putting 100 trillion field-effect transistors into a single square centimeter sized microchip.   Read More »

Hypres Inc. has demonstrated a fast operating clock speed for an arithmetic-logic unit (ALU). Their 8-bit chip has a frequency of 20 gigahertz. It can perform mathematical operations. This is a superconducting circuit and it could lead to energy saving high-end computing applications. Researchers from Stony Brook University collaborated with them to make a novel architecture. This technique is scalable to 32 or 64-bit processing. HYPRES did further work on the designs of the processors. The company also fabricated and tested the ALU. Single flux quantum electronics are superconducting in nature. They have been around for decades and are a possible way of overcoming various bottlenecks to progress. Hypres uses a niobium-based compound to construct the ALU. The whole thing is cooled to a very low temperature. Read More »

A novel technique can enhance the usability of medical implants by enabling them to harvest energy wirelessly. Normally, thin cables connect the devices to a battery that is located outside of the skin or in an easily accessible region. Long-term implantation can cause issues that are due to tethering forces. Researchers from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Boston University have employed near infrared (NIR) laser light as a way to transfer electricity. An obstacle that the scientists needed to overcome was to supply enough power to run the electronics. This requirement has previously made it difficult to build something that could gain a lot of juice through the air. The approach can help to get past those constraints. Read More »

The war on cancer has been a long and arduous road. There are a vast number of possible methods to ameliorate these pathologies, but clinical progress has still been relatively slow. Finding ideal anti-cancer compounds is time consuming. A team from the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Japan is employing a swifter way to discover the mode of action for certain experimental medications. They utilize a specialized proteomic profiling technique to assess potential candidates. BNS-22 is a remedy that they found with this biotechnology. Read More »

A designer programmable mind is the challenge for scientists. Leading European researchers are working on the Human Brain Project (HBP). This venture will combine the study of neuroscientific operating principles with gains in information technology. High performance computers will detect, store and compute neurobiological data. These applications can run on petaflop/s mainframes. One undertaking beneath the HBP umbrella is BrainScaleS. They are synthesizing the next generation machines that can be successors to Von Neumann architectures. To accomplish this, they have built a neuromorphic wafer that has analog components. The CPU is composed of 200,000 artificial neurons with 50 million synapses. Regular neural cells fire at a frequency in the tens of hertz range, whereas electronic microchips can cycle at the megahertz or gigahertz level. Their chip operates at hundreds of times the rate of what nature can do. They have special software that estimates the capabilities of wafer scale hardware (see Development of an Executable System Specification for a Large-Scale Neuromorphic Hybrid Device PDF). The circuit has a lot of flexibility, but there are many hardware-specific effects to take into account. The program helps workers to understand the functionality and limitations of future designs before they actually create them. This enables the testing of a variety of configurations to come up with the best possible one. The FACETS initiative came before BrainScaleS and had similar criteria. A main objective is to develop energy saving equipment. Read More »

University of California Berkeley scientists have used a brain-scanning tool to decode and reconstruct dynamic visual experiences as people watched Hollywood movie trailers. This is a step toward mind reading capabilities. The science of neural functioning has been rapidly progressing over the last few decades. Functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI has seen many gains in the quality of the scans produced. The fMRI monitors functional changes in cerebral blood flow (rCBF). When rCBF increases, it means that neurons are firing at a greater rate. It can help researchers to understand how the brain processes visual information by examining these alterations. The functioning of the visual cortex is involved in enabling people to see. Various layers of the VC correspond to the decoding of different aspects of sight (motion etc.).   Read More »

A program recently took place to discuss laboratory directed research and development science. The LDRD meeting covered a number of innovations. The main goal is to keep the country competitive in a variety of domains. The meeting is associated with the US’s Los Alamos National Lab. A few of the items are emerging trends that can potentially be disruptive in nature. One technology is an ultra-low field MRI. It only needs micro or MilliTesla strength magnetic fields to image biology. This compares to clinical devices that have a much higher Tesla rating. There is hope that this will power machines that require less superconducting cables to run. The magnets consume a lot of liquid helium to maintain a low temperature. Any way of reducing this would help to lessen expenses. They are combining MRI with magnetoencephalography to obtain the best aspects of each technology. A mixture of the two could boost the temporal and spatial capabilities of scanning neurons (see Probing Brain Dynamics by Ultra-low Field Magnetic Resonance PDF). Read More »

Extreme longevity is something of a futurist’s pipe dream. No matter how much state of the art medical equipment is developed, drastically longer lifespans seem to remain a distant fantasy. The biology of the aging processes is extremely complex. Fortunately, new tools allow a rapid analysis of pathologies. There is a surfeit of data on biochemical functions. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Buck Institute have discovered a novel method to revert adult stem cells back to a previous state. Experimental techniques combined with computational approaches helped them understand a few of the genomic changes associated with age. Adult stem cells are located in numerous tissues and they help them regenerate. Microscopic cellular constituents of the body are constantly dying off and replaced by new ones. The stem cell hypothesis of aging is relatively recent addition to the field of biogerontology. The theory’s main point is that a decline in their ability to renew is one reason that health gets worse as a person becomes older.   Read More »