X-ray Vision for Road Diggers: The Next Quantum Leap?

Quantum mechanics has been hailed as the next big thing in technology. And quantum computers are a media favourite. But there is a little-known quantum technology that can peer beneath the earth, which could be ready before the quantum computing revolution comes about.

These technologies makes use of the counter-intuitive consequences of quantum mechanics – the principal theory explaining our world on a microscopic scale. One of these consequences is that a single object can be in several different places (or in several different “states”) at the same time. In the quantum world, strange as it may seem, a person could pass a tree simultaneously on the right and the left side, or be wearing business clothes and beach attire simultaneously.

The difficulty in realising quantum technologies and why quantum computers are not yet commercially available lies in another peculiar feature – “it only works if no one looks”. Our everyday experience is of large objects that can be easily observed, forcing them to a well-defined state and position. At the microscopic objects, such as atoms and photons, observation becomes more difficult and quantum mechanics takes over.

Such technology relies on meticulous shielding of quantum particles inside from any possible observation. Quantum communication makes a virtue of this challenge – any eavesdropper observing information encoded in quantum particles will force these particles to give up any superposition and choose a specific state – a change which can be detected at the other end of the line. Thus the in principle absolutely secure quantum communication systems are currently the only reliable quantum technology in the market, which find use in the finance sector.

Four million holes are dug in UK roads every year. But only a third of the time do the diggers know what infrastructure may be buried under the road. This makes the task much slower because of the care needed. The result is more traffic troubles. Soon, quantum “gravimeters” will revolutionise this business.

Gravity appears to be the same anywhere on Earth. But a sensitive quantum gravity sensor can pick up variations, by letting single atoms explore different paths in the gravitational field of the Earth. From those differences one can infer what lies beneath the Earth’s surface. The precision of this method is so great that laboratory prototypes can detect a nearby person by their gravity field.

In principle one can infer the value of gravity using a ruler to record the position of the falling apple over time. For the quantum sensor the ruler is replaced by a laser beam and the apple by a cloud of atoms.

The process is a little more complicated, of course. First the 1997 Nobel prize-winning technology of laser cooling has to be brought on stage. It is used to collect the atoms inside a vacuum chamber and bring them close to a standstill, such they can be observed the drop without any disturbance. Then three laser pulses are used to invoke the “quantum magic” and send each of the atoms along two simultaneous but different paths in the gravity field, which recombine at the end. Only at this point one is allowed to look at the state of the atoms, which encodes the value of gravity.

Currently all this technology can be packaged into the size of a large backpack for a six-figure price tag, making it suitable for high-value applications such as oil and mineral exploration. However, soon sizes and prices will shrink by orders of magnitude, moving the applications into the roadworks and possibly even private use domain.

Quantum gravity sensors will be the first in this new industrial revolution, with remarkably diverse applications. Helping determine the spatial extent of aquifers that have run dry or or the equivalent processes in oil and gas recovery. It can also help climate change science (snow cover of mountains and magnitude of ocean currents) and archaeology (“seeing” without digging).

Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Union (EU), called these sensors the “coolest thing” at the 2013 EU Information and Communication Technologies meeting this week in Vilnius. This area, which brings together the oldest part of physics, gravity, with one of the most recent, ultra-cold quantum atomic gases, shows the capacity of scientific research driven by curiosity to have large and unexpected dividends.

Read More

It's a wireless world: add external speakers to your devices, hassle free

It’s Bluetooth everywhere. Be it smartphones, tablets, laptops or desktops, and now even some televisions — every new gizmo, it seems, has the technology on board. What the arrival of this pervasive wireless technology means is that you can easily add external speakers to the device without the trouble of coping with lengthy wires or stumbling on  them. And, with the advent of NFC — or near field communication — all you do is tap your NFC-enabled device, and the speaker gets paired with the device. If your device does not have NFC, it can pair with the speaker the old-fashioned Bluetooth way. Some can even work as hands-free sets for your cellphone. Let’s take a look some of these

Bose SoundLink Mini
@ Rs. 16,200

Bose is known for great acoustics. Their SoundLink Mobile speaker was hugely successful, so naturally there had to be a variant.The Mini is slightly smaller, and much more portable than the original SoundLink. It delivers full natural sound, while fitting in the palm of your hand. The Bose quality comes through. Even at low volumes, the Mini manages to fill a moderate room with its sound. The speaker comes in a grey-and-black finish, with optional covers in blue, green and orange (at additional cost). The interface is simple, with buttons on top for power-on, volume up/down, mute, Bluetooth and an auxiliary port (when you want to connect a device via 3.5-mm pin and cable)  The speaker body is rugged and durable, and weighs about 600 grams. The battery lasts about 8 hours. To charge it, you put it on its charging dock.

Jabra Solemate Mini
@ Rs. 4,999

The Solemate Mini is the new avatar of Jabra’s SoleMate. The speaker has feet shaped like shoe soles (which lends stability when it is placed anywhere), hence the name. The speaker is the smallest in our lineup , and yet produces quite good sound. The audio quality is a bit mixed though, but it  did live up to the claimed 8-hour battery life. Sound is good for a small room, and also seemed to do well  in an open-air setting. The speaker has all-round rubber protection, lending durability and protection from scratches to the device. It comes in four colours — red, blue, black and yellow — and also has NFC. But it cannot handle calls. In a neat touch, the 3.5 mm cable is stored at the bottom of the speaker.

Creative Airwave™ HD
@ Rs. 12,999

Heavier than the Bose Mini at 980 grams, the Airwave is also portable and come in a handy size for the desk. It has NFC, so if your smart device is enabled for NFC,  all you do is tap to connect. The speaker can manage loud volumes, and also has an auxiliary input port, and the triangular shape makes it stand out. The Airwave can also handle phone calls with a built-in speakerphone and a concealed microphone. The call and microphone quality are good. There are four colours --- black, blue, red and green, and the battery lasted about 9 hours in our tests, though Creative claims a 12-hour battery life

HMDX JAM Plus
@ Rs. 3,990

The Jam plus is a mono speaker unlike the others in this review. However, you can add one more speaker to the first one (via Bluetooth), and the pair offers full stereo sound. Battery life is about six hours, but the Jam Plus does not have NFC or call-answering capability. On the other hand, you can put one speaker in one room and a second in another and fill your home with music, or bring them together in the same room for full stereo effect. The Jam Plus is available in 4 neon colours and a subtle black. It shows up as Jam2 in Bluetooth search. The downside: the buttons were the most difficult to operate among the four we tested.

Verdict

The Bose SoundLink Mini is the best in class in terms of sound. We also loved its charging dock and the additional coloured covers, but budget-wise, the Creative Airwave goes one-up as it can also answer calls. The Jam Plus has interesting possibilities if you buy two speakers, while the Jabra’s pocketable design and rubberised tough finish were strong points.

Read More

"Pen Printer", a Gadget That Uses Old Pens as Ink...!!!

Have tons of pens laying around and want to put them to good use...? Introducing the Pen 

printer . This portable gadget takes all your old , discarded pens and utilizes the leftover ink

to let you print just about anything (monochrome ofcourse).

Read More

A bio patch that can regrow bone

Scientists at the University of Iowa have created an implantable bio patch that regrows bone in a living body, using existing cells. Potential applications include tooth implants and cranio-facial reconstruction


Scientists at the University of Iowa have created an implantable bio patch that regrows bone in a living body, using existing cells. Potential applications include tooth implants and cranio-facial reconstruction

The bone-regeneration kit relies on a collagen platform seeded with particles containing the genes needed for producing bone. In experiments, the gene-encoding bio patch successfully regrew bone fully enough to cover skull wounds in test animals. It also stimulated new growth in human bone marrow stromal cells in lab experiments.

The study is novel in that the researchers directly delivered bone-producing instructions (using piece of DNA that encodes for a platelet-derived growth factor called PDGF-B) to existing bone cells in vivo, allowing those cells to produce the proteins that led to more bone production. Previous attempts had relied on repeated applications from the outside, which is costly, intensive, and harder to replicate consistently.

"We delivered the DNA to the cells, so that the cells produce the protein and that's how the protein is generated to enhance bone regeneration," explains Aliasger Salem, professor in the College of Pharmacy and a co-corresponding author on the paper, published in the journal Biomaterials. "If you deliver just the protein, you have keep delivering it with continuous injections to maintain the dose. With our method, you get local, sustained expression over a prolonged period of time without having to give continued doses of protein."

The researchers believe the patch has several potential uses in dentistry. For instance, it could be used to rebuild bone in the gum area that serves as the concrete-like foundation for dental implants. That prospect would be a "life-changing experience" for patients who need implants and don't have enough bone in the surrounding area, says Satheesh Elangovan, assistant professor in the UI's College of Dentistry and a joint first author, as well as co-corresponding author, on the paper. It also can be used to repair birth defects where there's missing bone around the head or face.

"We can make a scaffold in the actual shape and size of the defect site, and you'd get complete regeneration to match the shape of what should have been there," Elangovan says.

The team started with a collagen scaffold. The researchers then loaded the bio patch with synthetically created plasmids, each of which is outfitted with the genetic instructions for producing bone. They then inserted the scaffold on to a 5-millimeter by 2-millimeter missing area of skull in test animals. Four weeks later, the team compared the bio patch's effectiveness to inserting a scaffold with no plasmids or taking no action at all.

The plasmid-seeded bio patch grew 44-times more bone and soft tissue in the affected area than with the scaffold alone, and was 14-fold higher than the affected area with no manipulation. Aerial and cross-sectional scans showed the plasmid-encoded scaffolds had spurred enough new bone growth to nearly close the wound area, the researchers report.

The plasmid does its work by entering bone cells already in the body – usually those located right around the damaged area that wander over to the scaffold. The team used a polymer to shrink the particle's size (like creating a zip file, for example) and to give the plasmid the positive electrical charge that would make it easier for the resident bone cells to take them in.

"The delivery mechanism is the scaffold loaded with the plasmid," Salem says. "When cells migrate into the scaffold, they meet with the plasmid, they take up the plasmid, and they get the encoding to start producing PDGF-B, which enhances bone regeneration."

The researchers also point out that their delivery system is nonviral. That means the plasmid is less likely to cause an undesired immune response and is easier to produce in mass quantities, which lowers the cost.

"The most exciting part to me is that we were able to develop an efficacious, nonviral-based gene-delivery system for treating bone loss," says Sheetal D'mello, a graduate student in pharmacy and a joint first author on the paper.

Elangovan and Salem next hope to create a bio platform that promotes new blood vessel growth– needed for extended and sustained bone growth.

Read More

Recipe For Artificial Blood

Artificial blood that could one day be used in humans without side effects has been created by scientists in Romania.The blood contains water and salts along with a protein known as hemerythrin which is extracted from sea worms

Artificial blood that could one day be used in humans without side effects has been created in Romania

Researchers from Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, hope it could help end blood supply shortages and prevent infections through donations.Dr Radu Silaghi-Dumitrescu added that it may even lead to the creation of ‘instant blood’ that can be transported and turns into artificial blood when water is added.

Up until now, efforts to create artificial blood have failed as the fluid was unable to withstand the chemical and mechanical stresses placed on it. According Dr Silaghi-Dumitrescu, unlike hemoglobin, hemerythrin remains stable when exposed to physical and chemical stress.

So far the artificial blood has been tested on laboratory mice who didn't experience any adverse side effects.Laura Sinpetru from Softpedia reports that the researchers hope to roll the artificial blood out in clinical trials involving human volunteers within a year or two.

The work builds on research by Edinburgh and Bristol University who, in 2011, made thousands of millions of red blood cells from stem cells taken from bone marrow.

Edinburgh University’s Professor Marc Turner hopes to make a supply of cells with the O-negative blood type.

This ‘universal donor’ blood could be given to up to 98 per cent of the population.A supply of safe blood would also be a boon in developing countries, where thousands of lives are lost  to conditions such as haemorrhages after childbirth.

The French have started early-stage human trials with stem cell blood and other researchers around the world are making haemoglobin, the red blood cell protein used to ferry oxygen around the body.Ideas being pursued elsewhere include using haemoglobin taken from cows as a blood substitute.

Some 1.6 million Britons give blood each year. In the UK, stocks can fall during holiday periods, with supplies of the highly versatile O-negative type particularly vulnerable.

Read More

These Smart Gloves Will Change How We Interact With Our Environment

As we have already mentioned in our other articles, gadgets and new inventions/methods owe a great deal to the imagination of human mind. It is only after a concept has been imagined that scientists and engineers put their time into making it a reality

Today we have such a concept that might very well be a reality in the years to come. Say hello to Smart Glove equipped with a projector

The idea is to use hand gestures to accomplish tasks using the built-in projector and the smart glove. The tasks include making calls, taking pictures and browsing through content etc.  Although we do not have the technology to make this concept into a reality right now but this might very well be possible in the not so distant future

Imagine how that would change the way things are done and how they would be done in the future. Even if we keep the tech stuff aside, we’d say the glove sure looks classy!

Read More

These Custom Computers Will Make You Fall in Love At First Sight

A computer is one of the most important piece of technology we have in our lives. Most people settle on what is sold in the market, however, there are a few who dare to achieve their dream of owing the coolest PC in town. Today, we have compiled a list of some of the coolest custom computers, so sit back and enjoy. Which one is your favourite? Let us know in comments!

Read More