I Had to Dump Her--Her Perfume Kept Setting Off My Home Laser Spectrometer Defense!

Thirty two wavelength-specific lasers can be packed onto a single chip to allow a tiny laster spectrometer to monitor almost any chemical in the environment.

The team, which reported its findings in the Dec. 3 issue of Applied Physics Letters, was headed by Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering, and includes graduate student Benjamin Lee, researchers Mikhail Belkin and Jim MacArthur, and undergraduate Ross Audet, all of Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The researchers have also filed for U.S. patents covering this new class of laser chips.

The broad emission spectrum of the Quantum Cascade Laser material, grown by a commercial reactor used for the mass production of semiconductor lasers, is designed using state-of-the-art nanotechnology by controlling the size of nanometric thin quantum wells in the active region.... The tunability of the laser chip can be extended up to 10-fold and several widely spaced absorption features can be targeted with the same chip, which will enable the detection in parallel of an extremely large number of trace gases in concentrations of parts per billion in volume. A portable compact spectrometer with this capability would revolutionize chemical sensing. ____Source

The ability to pack more functionality into smaller spaces--and mass produce this functionality economically--leads to a smarter environment that can sense more hazards.

Of course, getting your romantic liasons to change their perfume or cologne is entirely your own responsibility.

Many Core Future: Microsoft Wants In

Modern silicon processor chips will melt if driven too fast. How will Intel and AMD build more powerful processors if they are limited by clock speed? One answer is to build multiple simpler processors onto one chip--the many core future.

With the objective of continuing on the quest for a Moore's law type of computational speed-up, the hardware industry has introduced multi-core technology. This will, as recently demonstrated by Intel with their future-oriented 80-core chip, lead from a multi-core to a many-core future. Potentially down the road, assuming a continued trajectory, this could lead to the development of a massive core future whereby one chip could contain thousands of processing cores.

With this sea change in the architecture of the hardware, we are witnessing the software community wrestling with a massive shift from serial-based thinking to parallelism.

This is precisely the problem with multi/many/massive core computing. The software simply is not ready. But Microsoft wants to change that--and in the process gain back much of its dominance lost to more net-savvy companies such as Google.

Intel’s microprocessors were generating so much heat that they were melting, forcing Intel to change direction and try to add computing power by placing multiple smaller processors on a single chip.

Much like adding lanes on a freeway, the new strategy, now being widely adopted by the entire semiconductor industry, works only to the degree that more cars (or computing instructions) can be packed into each lane (or processor)....The chip industry has known about the hurdles involved in moving to parallel computing for four decades. One problem is that not all computing tasks can be split among processors.

To accelerate its parallel computing efforts, Microsoft has hired some of the best minds in the field and has set up teams to explore approaches to rewriting the company’s software.

If it succeeds, the effort could begin to change consumer computing in roughly three years. The most aggressive of the Microsoft planners believe that the new software, designed to take advantage of microprocessors now being refined by companies like Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, could bring as much as a hundredfold computing speed-up in solving some problems.

NYTimes
IBM is another big player in the many-core evolution of computing. The stakes are high, given the qualitative change in computing that would result from hardware and software breakthroughs in managing parallel computing. "Supercomputer in a laptop" could be within reach.

Fast, Flexible Computer Chips and Optical Chipsets

MONARCH is a new "supercomputer on a chip" capable of 64 Gigaflops with memory bandwidth of 60 Gbps and off-chip data bandwidth of 43 Gbps.

Granacki is director of the Advanced Systems Division at ISI, and Research Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Systems and Biomedical Engineering in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

"What we have been creating is essentially a supercomputer on a chip," he said, "and not just a supercomputer, but a flexible supercomputer that reconfigures itself into the optimal supercomputer for each specific part of a multi-part task."

Source

Meanwhile IBM has created the world's fastist optical chipset.

Measuring 3.25 by 5.25 millimeters, IBM's new optical chipset contains both driver and receiver circuits, and was built using industry-standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Optical-grade plastic fibers are used to transmit data, and optical components use indium phosphide (InP) and gallium arsenide (GaAs).

Because of the large number of communication channels as well as the very high speeds for each channel, IBM said the chipset provides the highest record ever of transmitted information per unit of physical space.

Source

These very powerful chips will soon be available in large quantities, which makes one wonder how they will be used. The IBM optical chip has enough data throughput to run a medium sized war--ground, sea, air, and space (data equivalent to four million simultaneous telephone conversations). All on a chip roughly the size of a dime.

The MONARCH supercomputer-on-a-chip has the ability to reconfigure itself to adapt to different computing tasks on the fly.

If you consider these powerful chips to be mere building blocks of a more powerful system, or networks of systems, you may begin to see the potential for systems designers.

Most people will probably just want better video gaming and more realistic virtual reality effects. Computer hobbyists will want to build extremely fast custom systems to impress their friends. Financial and security interests will want more advanced systems to provide better data security. Domestic and international criminals and terrorists will likewise want the features of these advanced chips.

With the rate of advancement in chip processing power and data bandwidth, it becomes more difficult for the holders of wealth and power to keep the wolves at bay. I recommend diversifying.
;-)

The Silicon Cortex

Over the years a lot of AI researchers and electrical engineers have tried to model the neurological function of parts of the brain on silicon. Tech Review features a current effort by Stanford neuroengineer Kwabena Boahen.

"Brains do things in technically and conceptually novel ways--they can solve rather effortlessly issues which we cannot yet resolve with the largest and most modern digital machines," says Rodney Douglas, a professor at the Institute of Neuroinformatics, in Zurich. "One of the ways to explore this is to develop hardware that goes in the same direction."

Neurons communicate with a series of electrical pulses; chemical signals transiently change the electrical properties of individual cells, which in turn trigger an electrical change in the next neuron in the circuit. In the 1980s, Carver Mead, a pioneer in microelectronics at the California Institute of Technology, realized that the same transistors used to build computer chips could be used to build circuits that mimicked the electrical properties of neurons. Since then, scientists and engineers have been using these transistor-based neurons to build more-complicated neural circuits, modeling the retina, the cochlea (the part of the inner ear that translates sound waves into neural signals), and the hippocampus (a part of the brain crucial for memory). They call the process neuromorphing.

Now Kwabena Boahen, a neuroengineer at Stanford University, is planning the most ambitious neuromorphic project to date: creating a silicon model of the cortex. The first-generation design will be composed of a circuit board with 16 chips, each containing a 256-by-256 array of silicon neurons. Groups of neurons can be set to have different electrical properties, mimicking different types of cells in the cortex. Engineers can also program specific connections between the cells to model the architecture in different parts of the cortex.

Source.

I am putting my money on Jeff Hawkins and Rodney Brooks. But when attempting something this ambitious, it doesn't hurt to include as many contestants as possible.

We Are All Cyborgs Now--Neural/Electronic Interface

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have made progress in creating a brain-to-chip interface, which should eventually allow people to regain brain control over regions of the brain or body lost due to disease or injury. Mental control over advanced prostheses and remote devices is also brought closer by these discoveries. (psychokinesis, anyone?)

The central feature of the proposed interface is the ability to create transplantable living nervous tissue already coupled to electrodes. Like an extension cord, of sorts, the non-electrode end of the lab-grown nervous tissue could integrate with a patient’s nerve, relaying the signals to and from the electrode side, in turn connected to an electronic device.

This system may one day be able to return function to people who have been paralyzed by a spinal-cord injury, lost a limb, or in other ways. "Whether it is a prosthetic device or a disabled body function, the mind could regain control," says Smith.

To create the interface, the team used a newly developed process of stretch growth of nerve fibers called axons, previously pioneered in Smith’s lab. Two adjacent plates of neurons are grown in a bioreactor. Axons sprout out to connect the neuron populations on each plate. The plates are then slowly pulled apart over a series of days, aided by a precise computer-controlled motor system, until they reached a desired length.

For the interface, one of the plates is an electrical microchip. Because Smith and his team have shown that stretch-grown axons can transmit active electrical signals, they propose that the nervous-tissue interface - through the microchip - could detect and record real-time signals conducted down the nerve and stimulate the sensory signals back through the axons.

Source.

The researchers have already shown that the stretch-grown axons can be implanted into rat spinal cord and continue to grow. Since feeding electronic signals to growing nerves can train them to perform "lost" functions, this combining of growing nerves with interfaced neurochips holds many possibilities. If you add the right stem cells and growth factors to the mix, you may be able to do restorative wonders to the central nervous system.

Restoring control of muscles to the previously paralyzed, and restoring control of parts of the brain previously lost to injury or disease, is just the first step. The next step is brain:electronic interface for controlling prosthetic actuators, and actuators that are completely separate from the body.

It is not difficult to imagine thought control over a look-alike robot, that can be sent as a proxy to conduct business, give lectures, or other more intriguing possibilities. Likewise, controlling a remote robot that looks exactly like someone else would allow someone to leave a long trail of false clues.

This really is a "Brave New World" that we are entering.

Hat tip Medgadget.

Update: A PBS video discusses the issue of brain interface using nano-wires. The PBS "anchors" are irritating and infantile, but the interviews with scientists and researchers are fascinating.

Amazing Neurochip Has Potential to Strengthen Neural Connections

UW Researchers report on an implantable electronic neurochip that may help rehabilitate patients with stroke or other types of brain damage. This chip is capable of performing an amazing function--it creates an artificial neural pathway that the brain can use to recuperate from otherwise disabling injury.

Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) are working on an implantable electronic chip that may help establish new nerve connections in the part of the brain that controls movement. Their most recent study, to be published in the Nov. 2, 2006, edition of Nature, showed such a device can induce brain changes in monkeys lasting more than a week. Strengthening of weak connections through this mechanism may have potential in the rehabilitation of patients with brain injuries, stroke, or paralysis.....

When awake, the brain continuously governs the body's voluntary movements. This is largely done through the activity of nerve cells in the part of the brain called the motor cortex. These nerve cells, or neurons, send signals down to the spinal cord to control the contraction of certain muscles, like those in the arms and legs.

The possibility that these neural signals can be recorded directly and used to operate a computer or to control mechanical devices outside of the body has been driving the rapidly expanding field of brain-computer interfaces, often abbreviated BCI. The recent Nature study suggests that the brain's nerve signals can be harnessed to create changes within itself.

The researchers tested a miniature, self-contained device with a tiny computer chip. The devices were placed on top of the heads of monkeys who were free to carry out their usual behaviors, including sleep. Called a Neurochip, the brain-computer interface was developed by Mavoori for his doctoral thesis.

"The Neurochip records the activity of motor cortex cells," Fetz explained, "It can convert this activity into a stimulus that can be sent back to the brain, spinal cord, or muscle, and thereby set up an artificial connection that operates continuously during normal behavior. This recurrent brain-computer interface creates an artificial motor pathway that the brain may learn to use to compensate for impaired pathways."

Jackson found that, when the brain-computer interface continuously connects neighboring sites in the motor cortex, it produces long-lasting changes. Namely, the movements evoked from the recording site changed to resemble those evoked from the stimulation site.

Source.

An electronic implant that can learn neuronal "language" in order to teach damaged brain to repair itself, is something new and promising. Insightful thinkers have wanted to learn the "language of the brain" for many years. Now we seem poised on the brink of beginning that process productively for healing purposes. I look forward to following this progress.