Posts tagged technology

Successful human tests for first wirelessly controlled drug-delivery chip

Medication via remote-control instead of a shot? Scientists implanted a microchip in seven women that did just that, oozing out the right dose of a bone-strengthening drug once a day without them even noticing. Implanted medicine is a hot field, aiming to help patients better stick to their meds and to deliver those drugs straight to the body part that needs them.

“You could literally have a pharmacy on a chip,” says Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT. “You can do remote control delivery, you can do pulsatile delivery, and you can deliver multiple drugs.”

medicalxpress.com

Spray-on Nanoparticle Mix Turns Trees Into Antennas

A small company called ChamTech Operations based in Utah has developed a nanoparticle mix that can be sprayed on any vertical object—like a tree—and make that object act as a high-powered antenna.

Not only can the sprayed-on nanoparticles make trees into antennas, but it can also extend the range of an existing antenna by a factor of 100, according to one of the principals of the company, Anthony Sutera. For instance, in RFID tags the nanoparticle spray extended the readable range of the tag from a mere five feet (1.5 meters) to 700 feet (200 m).

The material that Chamtech came up with contains nanoparticles that when sprayed on a surface act as nanocapacitors. The nanocapacitors charge and discharge very quickly and don’t create any heat that can reduce the efficiency of your typical copper antenna. The trick was to get the nanocapacitors to spread out in just the right pattern.

Another intriguing application, Sutera suggests in the video, is using the spray-on material in the white lines of the highway. This could make it possible to have high bandwidth connectivity in your car.

spectrum.ieee.org

The ‘Undue Weight’ of Truth on Wikipedia

A couple of years ago, on a slow day at the office, I decided to experiment with editing one particularly misleading assertion chiseled into the Wikipedia article. The description of the trial stated, “The prosecution, led by Julius Grinnell, did not offer evidence connecting any of the defendants with the bombing. … “

Coincidentally, that is the claim that initially hooked me on the topic. In 2001 I was teaching a labor-history course, and our textbook contained nearly the same wording that appeared on Wikipedia. One of my students raised her hand: “If the trial went on for six weeks and no evidence was presented, what did they talk about all those days?” I’ve been working to answer her question ever since.

I have not resolved all the mysteries that surround the bombing, but I have dug deeply enough to be sure that the claim that the trial was bereft of evidence is flatly wrong.

So I removed the line about there being “no evidence” and provided a full explanation in Wikipedia’s behind-the-scenes editing log. Within minutes my changes were reversed. The explanation: “You must provide reliable sources for your assertions to make changes along these lines to the article.”

That was curious, as I had cited the documents that proved my point, including verbatim testimony from the trial published online by the Library of Congress. I also noted one of my own peer-reviewed articles. One of the people who had assumed the role of keeper of this bit of history for Wikipedia quoted the Web site’s “undue weight” policy, which states that “articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views.” He then scolded me. “You should not delete information supported by the majority of sources to replace it with a minority view.”

The “undue weight” policy posed a problem. Scholars have been publishing the same ideas about the Haymarket case for more than a century. The last published bibliography of titles on the subject has 1,530 entries.

“Explain to me, then, how a ‘minority’ source with facts on its side would ever appear against a wrong ‘majority’ one?” I asked the Wiki-gatekeeper. He responded, “You’re more than welcome to discuss reliable sources here, that’s what the talk page is for. However, you might want to have a quick look at Wikipedia’s civility policy.”

Another editor cheerfully tutored me in what this means: “Wikipedia is not ‘truth,’ Wikipedia is ‘verifiability’ of reliable sources. Hence, if most secondary sources which are taken as reliable happen to repeat a flawed account or description of something, Wikipedia will echo that.”

chronicle.com

‘Phantom’ mobile phone vibrations: why we get them

Bzzt, bzzt. You check the supposed vibration in your pocket, yet no one has called or sent you an SMS.

Known commonly as a phantom vibration, this sensation has been felt by many and left them baffled.

But according to scientists, mobile users aren’t necessarily imagining things and the vibrations may not be “phantom” after all.

Some people believe there is a compulsive element to feeling the sensation, or believe that it occurs simply when there is friction in their pockets or they bump or brush up against something.

Others, such as psychologist and chairman of the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, Alex Blaszczynski, believe it’s a sensation triggered by electrical signals.

“I expect it’s related to some of the electrical signals coming through in a transmission, touching on the surrounding nerves, giving a feeling of a vibration, ” Professor Blaszczynski said.

“I expect what’s happening is that it is causing some physiological effect.”

smh.com.au

Nano quadrotors: Watch a swarm of tiny robots fly in formation

If you worry about the domestic use of drones, this video may give you nightmares.


The nano quadrotors flying in formation. (YouTube)

Since at least 2010, researchers at GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania have been working with nano quadrotors, managing to get them to fly aggressively, build a tower structure and now — fly in perfect formation.

The video posted by GRASP makes it clear the robots now know how to maintain distance from each other, shift positions when obstacles are in their way, and even fly in a figure-eight pattern. CNET reports that the research is a step toward coordinating robots for searching areas after a disaster, or for surveillance.

SOCIAL MEDIA MORE ADDICTIVE THAN BOOZE AND CIGS

If your urges to stay connected 24/7 bring you to hyperbolic declarations of powerlessness, you can now leave the hyperbole at the door. Results of a new study confirm what you’ve claimed for years: checking email and social media is more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol.

Luddite Legacy

This is the disturbing thought that, sluggish business cycles aside, America’s current employment woes stem from a precipitous and permanent change caused by not too little technological progress, but too much. The evidence is irrefutable that computerised automation, networks and artificial intelligence (AI)—including machine-learning, language-translation, and speech- and pattern-recognition software—are beginning to render many jobs simply obsolete.

This is unlike the job destruction and creation that has taken place continuously since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as machines gradually replaced the muscle-power of human labourers and horses. Today, automation is having an impact not just on routine work, but on cognitive and even creative tasks as well. A tipping point seems to have been reached, at which AI-based automation threatens to supplant the brain-power of large swathes of middle-income employees.

That makes a huge, disruptive difference. Not only is AI software much cheaper than mechanical automation to install and operate, there is a far greater incentive to adopt it—given the significantly higher cost of knowledge workers compared with their blue-collar brothers and sisters in the workshop, on the production line, at the check-out and in the field.

Why the Clean Tech Boom Went Bust

There was another factor driving down the cost of conventional photovoltaics. In recent years, China has worked aggressively to develop its domestic solar production capacity. National banks have given credit lines that dwarf the federal loans US firms enjoyed; local and provincial governments have provided tax incentives as well as land at below-market rates; and the national government recently established a so-called feed-in tariff, which compels utilities to buy electricity from solar developers at above-market rates to offset their production costs.

Understandably, American firms have struggled to remain competitive. In 1995, more than 40 percent of all silicon-based solar modules worldwide were made in the US; now it’s 6 percent. 

Government coffers have been compensating for a number of market challenges solar faces, including the incumbency advantage of the fossil fuel industry and private investors’ distaste for capital-intensive enterprises that will take years to deliver a return. And in 2012, the solar industry may face a sudden reduction in these subsidies, as the post-Solyndra political climate grows less and less receptive to investments in clean energy. Despite the fact that renewable energy received only a quarter of the subsidies that fossil-fuel-based electricity received between 2002 and 2007, it’s wind and solar that are on the chopping block.Wind Power: Plummeting natural gas prices now make this option comparatively expensive.