Future Technology Trends

A new era of nano-warfare and spying may take place on battlefields that are not visible to the human eye. Nano-networks are poised to have a large impact on a variety of fields. A potential challenge for this science is to ensure that these nanodevices cannot have their information viewed or altered by an outside party. Novel nanotechnologies will increasingly perform numerous sophisticated tasks. Biological sensors can capture recordings from their immediate environment and maintain that data. Healthcare is a main application for the technology. There are several ways for rudimentary nanodevices to convey signals. One option is with electromagnetic radiation. Another way is using ultrasound pulses. These routes would work with fabricated nanosensors and academics could employ normal cryptographic techniques to protect them. They need to scale the intrusion prevention to a smaller size and reduce the power requirements necessary to sustain them. With synthetic biology, a choice becomes diffusion-based molecular communication with simple or complex compounds. Read More »

Video game characters have become increasingly realistic. Novel AIs can do many interesting things, but their behavior is still far different from how actual people act. Academics from the Technical University of Munich have a new project that is seeking to use neural agents in a virtual reality environment. These avatars will be able to perform tasks that most humans can do like moving or jumping. The characters will also exhibit facial expressions as well. Their virtual world has a basic physics engine that is similar to what is in most video games. A main feature of this work is that artificial brains control the avatars. The technology uses a neurosim cluster that emulates the synthetic mind. They are employing NVIDIA graphics cards along with software named ANNarchy in order to carry out these functions. This program emulates biologically plausible neural networks. There will also be an immersive way for human users to interact with the digital creations. Putting motions sensors on an actual person’s face and body could help the machine detect changes in behavior. This should allow the avatars to perfect how they react to a subject’s emotions or other situations over time. Empathic computers in augmented reality are a potential outcome. Perhaps cloud severs could send this to portable devices in the future. Emotional processes are sometimes devalued, but they are really an important aspect of intelligence. Dysregulation of these perceptions may cause serious issues for an organism. Feelings are a method that your mind uses to guide what you do in an efficient manner. Read More »

Zettaflop/s mainframes will be a million times faster than a petaflop/s supercomputer. Currently the quickest machine in the world stands at 8 petaflops. A zettaflop/s device could perform a sextillion floating point operations per second. That figure is a one followed by 21 zeroes. Talking about this type of calculating horsepower is really on the fringes of respectability. The pace of Moore’s Law is facing serious challenges. It is all too easy to create a bunch of graphs showing the exponential growth of transistors continuing until transcendence. However when these sorts of trends end, it is often abrupt. CPU clock speed swiftly jumped from kilohertz to megahertz and then finally stopped increasing at around 3-5 gigahertz. Now, it seems that scientists are struggling to double the amount of transistors while keeping the power budget the same. They are using a new metric, which is the performance per watt. A recent publication put out by EPFL called Zetta covers ways to obtain and take advantage of upgraded HPC devices.

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The movie Blade Runner envisioned a future with genetically engineered biological robots. While scientists are unlikely to create anything that sophisticated by 2019, rudimentary bio-bots are a more probable scenario. In the last ten years, there have been many gains in biotechnology. Synthetic biology is a domain that can help academics to design new hybrid artificial life forms with strange capabilities. A workshop is taking place to discuss the merging of several different fields. They mention that there are a number of challenges to overcome. Interfacing the biological samples with other technology is a pressing issue. Bio-inspired muscles will function in a manner dissimilar to how motors or gears operate in conventional machines. Biosensors are a second option that they are pursuing. These biomimetic aspects will give the “organisms” a versatile range of behaviors.  Read More »

Manipulating the mind with computers has been a staple of science fiction. Over the course of the last few decades, neurohacking has become a new field due to advances in neuroscience. Novel non-invasive stimulation technologies are finding all sorts of uses to alter a person’s consciousness for a beneficial effect. One route to do this is by applying weak electric currents to the skull in order to excite neurons. Researchers are investigating transcranial direct current stimulation to treat disorders. It is a cap that you wear on your head and looks like an EEG device. An issue with this technology is that it can seemingly only manipulate the outermost layers of the brain. Scientists from the neural engineering group at the CUNY along with other collaborators have made models of electricity flow within tissue due to a high-definition tDCS appliance. Apparently, the upgrade allows it to penetrate deeper than any TMS design. It appears to be able to alleviate migraines by altering functioning in regions like the brainstem, thalamus and insula.  While the ability to target areas selectively is not very good, there may be ways to improve this situation. They are publishing this work in the Journal Headache.  Read More »

The idea of building structures on the nanoscale atom-by-atom in an assembly line fashion has been around for a while now. Academics have made progress towards this goal. A DNA type device is one possible method to obtain these capabilities in the immediate future. Unfortunately, many futurists employ the concept of nanofactories to promote a variety of improbable outcomes. The idea of superabundance is one prediction that flies in the face of known economics. Advances in nanotechnology often tend to be evolutionary not revolutionary. With all the innovations in the past few decades, buying many items at the store has not become significantly cheaper. In the coming years, there probably won’t be some disruptive economic development, even if nanoscientists create something resembling the nanofactory speculations. The buzzwords “exponential manufacturing” make certain people believe that there will be changes that are greater than the industrial revolution. Over the past few decades, an enormous amount of money has been pouring into fabricating tiny parts. It is all too easy to overstate the nanorevolution and its impact on the world.  Read More »

The protein nanowires of the bacterial cell Geobacter sulfurreducens conduct electricity. There are a number of people investigating this capability. Recently, researchers have synthesized a biological supercapacitor. It stores electrical charges in the c-type cytochromes on the biofilms of these organisms. The cytochromes have a relatively large electron holding capacity. The protein filaments enable the movement of current from one area to the next. This is apparently one of the first demonstrations of a self-renewing supercapacitor. The biofilm was placed between two gold anodes. The scientists mention the mechanism is actually a form of capacitance called pseudocapacitance. This feature is the result of chemical reactions in the cytochrome. Ultracapacitors are a method to complement or replace batteries for certain applications. Some of the properties of this living capacitor are comparable to synthetic ones. The academics state that these can be grown inexpensively. They also can repair themselves and the parts replicate over time.  Read More »

A gigantic MRI machine is being built in France and is scheduled to become operational by 2014. This powerful device will be able to resolve small areas within the body. Two companies (Siemens plus Irfu) are helping to design this 90-centimeter bore magnetic resonance imaging appliance. It has a rating of 11.7 Tesla and operates at a frequency of 500 megahertz. This work is happening at the Neurospin center at CEA Saclay. The magnet is named Iseult. A dedicated refrigerator and liquid helium will cool the entire thing to a temperature of negative 271 degrees Celsius. The wires carry 400 times more current than conventional copper lines. The electricity generates a strong uniform field. The main coil is composed of over a hundred double pancake shapes. Two active shielding coils are also included to contain the massive field and prevent it from interacting with outside items. A similar contraption is being introduced in the US, but that one only has a 65-centimeter opening. The second device has passive shielding. Read More »