Advances in Computing

Lifelike Intelligent Avatars

A research project called LifeLike takes precise 3-D measurements of a person, including facial movements and other body language, to create a near-video-realistic avatar of the person, then endows the avatar with artificial intelligence capabilities including natural language processing and machine learning. The goal is to make the user feel that s/he is dealing with the real person rather than with the avatar.

At a project demonstration last winter at the National Science Foundation, an NSF staff member’s avatar was created and supplied with information about an upcoming NSF proposal solicitation. People were then able to converse with the avatar and have it answer questions about the solicitation. Colleagues of the NSF staffer were instantly able to recognize who the avatar represented and commented that it captured some of the person’s mannerisms. It’s a start.

The researchers envision schoolchildren talking with avatars of historical figures, and believe that in coming decades many of the people we interact with won’t be people at all.

DNA Molecular Computer

Even people might not be people any more—at least, not people as we have known them for 150,000 years. Their cells might be run by DNA programmed not by nature, but (mercy!) by  Microsoft. Israeli researchers who previously created nanobots that found and eliminated cancerous cells in tissue samples have now made DNA computers able to run simple logic programs, just like electronic computers, according to Jason Palmer of the BBC News. The difference between the DNA computer and an electronic computer is not one of principle, but only of materials used and stage of development.

The DNA computer uses molecules rather than electrons to represent facts and rules and obviously has a long way to go to catch up with electronic computers in terms of power, but the point is: It can be programmed. Anyway, the goal is not to compete with electronic computers; rather, it is to create “programmable autonomous computing devices that can operate in a biological environment,” the researchers said. “In other words,” commented Palmer, “computers that go to work inside a cell.”

Sustained Quantum Computing Achieved

Computing with molecules is one thing. Computing with infinitely smaller and stranger subatomic particles is something else altogether. Using lasers to manipulate beryllium ions, US National Institute of Standards and Technology researchers have demonstrated multiple computing operations on quantum bits (qubits, which simultaneously represent the binary digits 0 and 1. That’s weird, but it’s a fact, and it means an atomic explosion in computing power is coming.) The researchers performed five quantum logic operations and 10 transport operations (meaning they moved qubits from one part of the system to another) in series.

This is a big step forward for quantum computing, which will eventually (within a decade or two at most) make electronic computing as obsolete as the quill pen. It demonstrates “a complete assembly of basic steps needed for a scalable quantum computer” said one of the researchers, who have so far managed to manipulate two qubits at a time. In order to outperform a classical computer, they would need to perform operations on 30 or more qubits, which they think could happen in the next five to 10 years.

Terabyte 5-D DVDs

An atomic explosion in computing power of course means corresponding megawaves (more likely exowaves) of data that will need storing somehow. We’ll get there. Already, a nanotechnology-based “5-D” optical recording method could result in DVDs able to pack 1.6 terabytes of data—300 times the storage capacity of standard DVDs. With further refinement, they might even carry 10 terabytes per disc. The five dimensions are the usual three plus a spectral (color) dimension and a polarization dimension.

The 5-D recording is sufficiently similar to current CD and DVD writing processes that industrial scale production of the new system is quite feasible, and indeed the Australian team that made it is working with Samsung to develop a drive that can record and read onto a DVD-sized disc.

We happen to think that within a few years discs of any sort will be dead as the Dodo. Tthe latest Blu-ray disks hold 25 gigabytes of data, but you can buy a much more convenient USB thumb drive holding 64 gigabytes for less than US$150. Still,  the message in this 5-D medium is simply that massive data storage will not be a problem.

Flurry of Remote Monitoring Devices

Storage had better not be a problem, because even without molecular and quantum computers, there’ll be plenty to store—from medical devices alone, as these examples suggest:

Digestible Computer

Silicon Valley start-up company Proteus Biomedical is testing a digestible chip that can be attached to pills, reports Don Clark for the Wall Street Journal. A wireless sensing device worn on the skin informs the remote doctor’s cell phone that the patient has taken the pill at the prescribed dosage (or not), and transmits the patient’s current vital signs. The doctor can then intervene if there appear to be problems.

Wearable Wireless Vital Signs Monitor

San Diego start-up Triage Wireless is testing a wearable device for wirelessly measuring vital signs, including continuous blood pressure readings, in hospitalized patients. Corventis has a Band-Aid-style sensor called PiiX that monitors respiration, fluid status, physical movement, and other signs in ambulatory patients.

Cellphone Pregnancy Monitor

AirStrip Technologies offers a smartphone application that allows obstetricians to remotely view fetal and maternal heart rates, among other things.

Heart Monitoring Patch

Corventis’ wireless sensor patch, approved by the FDA and put on the market early this year, monitors heart and respiration rate, patient activity level, fluid accumulation in the lungs, and other vital signs. It sends the data in a continuous stream to servers that process it and can alert a doctor if the patient shows early signs of heart failure. It has been estimated that such prediction would save US$20 billion annually in hospitalization costs.

 

The device is also being tested to diagnose sleep apnea through changes in respiration and blood oxygen levels. A second device under development will monitor heart-rhythm disturbances to detect subtle changes in heart patterns suggestive of arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation.

 

A company executive told Technology Review’s David Talbot: “Someday, this will give the ability to transform one’s home into an [intensive-care unit], with continuous vital-sign measurements. There is a lot going on here, and there is the potential that it will transform health care.”

It’s not just start-ups: Intel is working on devices to monitor senior citizens at home, including a sensor-laden “magic carpet” that tracks how a patient moves and thereby helps prevent falls.

Why Remote Monitoring?

Annual savings from such remote monitoring have been estimated at US$10.1 billion for congestive heart failure, $6.1 billion for diabetes, and $4.9 billion for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients in the US. Some analysts say there is no real evidence to support such numbers. Anyway, as long as insurers refuse to cover the cost, doctors and hospitals won’t want to do remote monitoring and the evidence may never be gathered. Chicken-and-egg.

“But the system is so bloated and calcified that the opportunity for improvement is great—a point not lost on the venture capital industry,” which is now investing heavily in healthcare, writes Clark. But who do the venture capitalists think will buy the technologies, if not the hospitals and doctors who comprise that bloated system? Clark doesn’t say, but we suspect the answer is a combination of patients themselves and non-traditional care providers.

Will It Cause Chaos in the Airwaves?

No. And no only that: Remote monitoring will go places no remote monitor has gone before. Last November’s decision of the US Federal Communications Commission to allow device manufacturers to use so-called “white space” frequencies previously allocated to television broadcasters meant that “future wireless gadgets will be able to blast tens of megabits per second of data over hundreds of kilometers,” wrote Kate Greene in Technology Review at the time. “They will cover previously unreachable parts of the country with Internet signals, enable faster Web browsing on mobile devices, and even make in-car Internet and car-to-car wireless communication more realistic.”

In anticipation of the FCC decision, several prototype devices were produced. Motorola has developed a white-space radio device that can find and operate on free frequencies in its vicinity while controlling the strength of signals to keep them from interfering with those from other devices using nearby frequencies. When perfected (and it still had a way to go as of last November), such a device could providing wireless broadband Internet access to rural areas.

Advances in Materials

For years, we’ve reported on the exciting possibilities for nanomaterials. Now, the possibilities are being realized. In her survey of “The Year [2008] in Materials,” Katherine Bourzac included most of the following, and we’ve added a couple ourselves:

Graphene, the strongest material ever tested. It also has valuable electrical properties. Fast graphene transistors that could be used for wireless communications have been fabricated, and a simple way to manufacture large sheets of graphene (by dissolving graphite in hydrazine) has been discovered.

 

Adding hydrogen to graphene turns it into graphane—an insulator rather than a conductor. It can easily be reconverted into graphene by heating it to a high temperature. The key point is that graphene’s electronic properties can easily be fine-tuned according to need. It might, for instance, be turned into semiconducting material, facilitating low-power, carbon-based integrated circuits that would run hundreds of times faster than silicon transistors.

 

Safe nanomaterials to deliver RNA for RNA interference therapy, which uses strands of RNA to interfere with the activity of disease genes, rendering them harmless.

 

Carbon nanotubes added to a polymer formed the basis for a stretchy electronic circuit that could be used for stretchable displays, simple computers that wrap around furniture, and transparent flexible loudspeakers. Cotton thread coated with a mixture of carbon nanotubes and a conductive polymer was woven into fabrics that can perform sophisticated computation and act as wearable diagnostic biosensors. Arrays of carbon nanotubes have been made with 10 times the stickyness of gecko’s feet.

 

A new ceramic that’s better than nacre could eventually be used as a structural material for buildings and vehicles.

 

Metamaterials, previously demonstrated to bend light around an object, completely hiding it and making Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak a reality, have now been made to bend sound as well, soundproofing any object or person cloaked in the stuff. Metamaterials have also been used to make superlenses that increase the resolution of biological light microscopes by an order of magnitude.

 

A biomaterial made of proteins from silkworm cocoons has been used to make biodegradable optical devices that could be implanted during surgery to monitor patients’ recovery.

 

A stretchy polymer that can withstand the mechanical stresses of beating heart tissue and that encourages heart-muscle cells to orient naturally has been used to make heart-tissue patches that contract like real heart muscle.

 

Biosensing nanofabric woven from ordinary cotton thread coated with highly conductive carbon nanotubes can be used to make biosensing clothing that can, for example, detect human blood. To do that, the carbon nanotubes are coated with antibodies to the human blood protein albumin. When the antibodies come into contact with the protein, a battery-supplied electric current flowing through the textile changes detectably. A wireless device detects the change in current and alerts a remote doctor that the wearer is bleeding—an obvious benefit to soldiers in battle. Multi-function clothing incorporating multiple strips of sensing fabric, each targeted to a different biomarker or to environmental parameters such as temperature, are possible.

 

Nanosensors mass-produced from treated nanowires represent a step toward handheld sensors that could quickly, reliably, and inexpensively screen for hundreds of pathogens and toxic chemicals, or catch the first signs of disease.

Implants

These new materials are already finding their way into medical devices, especially implants:

Bionanomaterial for Implants

Late last year the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) received a Medical Futures Innovation Award for a nanotechnology-based process designed to coat orthopedic implants with fibers that facilitate bonding with living bone and to last the lifetime of the patient.

 

The fiber is produced by “electrospinning” polymers into extremely thin fibers which are woven into a mat. Such mats could be used for tissue regeneration and drug delivery.

 

In the orthopedic implant application, the mat relieves stress on the implant, making it more reliable and durable. The mat can be infused with chemicals that facilitate growth and improve the bonding of healthy tissue to the implant, which is of particular benefit to osteoarthritis and sports-injury patients.

New Material for Better Brain Implants

A biopolymer inspired by sea cucumbers switches rapidly between rigid and flexible states. It softens in the presence of a water-based solvent, and stiffens as the solvent evaporates. Such a material might be beneficially used to minimize the scarring caused by long-term brain implants, a problem that both damages the brain and decreases the implant’s ability to capture brain activity.

BMI Implant

Within the next year or so, reports Emily Singer in Technology Review, Neurolutions hopes to begin a clinical trial of a brain–machine interface (BMI) implant that translates signals recorded from the surface of the brain into computer commands enabling paralyzed patients to control a computer and perhaps prosthetic limbs and other devices. The experimental device is based on electrocorticography (ECoG), in which a grid of electrodes is surgically placed directly on the surface of the brain to monitor electrical activity. ECoG is merely temporary, used for surgical planning for epilepsy patients.

 

Most other neural interfaces are based on either electroencephalography (EEG), which uses electrodes taped to the skull, or on electrodes implanted into the brain. ECoG is a compromise, providing better signals than EEG and less invasion than penetrating electrodes. The new device will also be much smaller and is being designed to last at least five years (electrode implants typically deteriorate within six to twelve months because the immune system attacks them).

 

ECoG has been validated for this new purpose in more than 20 patients, who quickly learned to move a cursor on a computer screen using just their brains. A preliminary prototype, about the size of three or four stacked quarters, is being tested in monkeys to assess device longevity and optimize various technical parameters sufficient to capture enough signal from the brain to control a prosthetic arm.

Miniature Electrode Implants

An RFID-based injectable implant under development by MicroTransponder aims to replace large neural stimulators that treat chronic pain and other neurological disorders. Existing devices have a battery and controller, implanted beneath the skin, which deliver electrical pulses to wires placed near the spinal cord. The MicroTransponder device, in contrast, is wireless and has no batteries, being powered instead by radio-frequency transmission, reports Emily Singer in Technology Review.

A prototype of the device is being tested in rats. So far it has been shown to effectively stimulate peripheral nerves, but it is not yet known if it alleviates pain. If successful, the device could have a number of applications, including as a treatment for tinnitus.

Silk for Optical Implants

The strong protein fibers of silkworm cocoons can be infused with sensory proteins to create biodegradable implants for monitoring post-surgical and chronic disease patients. The infused silk has optical properties that enable it to glow in the presence of a target molecule.

 

Prototypes built include a simple blood oxygen sensor, but the technology could be targeted against just about any medically interesting molecule, such as glucose or a tumor marker.

We can expect much more where all this came from—that is, from garage tinkers to university labs to corporate research centers, all over the world.