Other computing/telecom news:

• The US National Institutes of Health are said to be spending billions of additional dollars to beef up a collaborative effort to accelerate breakthroughs in biomedical research.
• “Spintronics” applied to computing could bring quantum computinga significant step closer.
• A 1 Gbps wireless networkhas been demonstrated by Siemens.
• If it works, a new lie-detection technique under development in the US poses a threat to the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which gives citizens the right not to incriminate themselves.

An IBM project called World Community Grid will apply the untapped computing power of millions of personal computers to the study of AIDS, Alzheimer’s, malaria, cancer and other diseases. The new network’s first mission will be the Human Proteome Folding Project of the Institute for Systems Biology, which seeks to identify all the proteins in the human body and their functions.

Understanding how each protein affects human health will help in the search for cures, but analysis of the astronomical amounts of existing data that can identify the role of individual proteins could take years to complete on super computers. World Community Grid hopes to shrink this time to months.

Reference: Unknown (2004). “World Community Grid for Health Research.” NewsScan Daily (email newsletter), citing a New York Times article dated November 16 available at

Reference: Lohr, Steve (2004). “Unused PC Power to Run Grid for Unraveling Disease.” New York Times, November 16.

Reference: IBM website

State Grids

Organizations in West Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado are linking their computers into statewide supercomputing grids accessible to researchers, universities, private companies, and citizens.

North Carolina’s grid currently includes seven universities but has a goal to link 180 institutions. Start-up companies will be given free access to the grid for up to nine months and at discounted rates thereafter. The grid could create 24,000 jobs and boost the state’s output by US$10.1 billion by 2010, according to one economist.

The software that makes the grids possible is the open source Globus Toolkit, the product of a collaborative alliance to facilitate large-scale computing projects for the common good and level the playing field among researchers worldwide conducting research into earthquake prediction, oil and gas exploration, and medical diagnostics, among others.

Reference: Gartner, John (2004). “Grids Unleash the Power of Many.” Technology Review, January 14.

BIRN Catches Fire

The NIH’s National Center for Research Resources will provide an additional US$32.8 billion in funding to enhance its Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN), a consortium of 15 universities and 22 research groups established in 2001 with the aim of making new discoveries by facilitating sharing, analysis, visualization and data comparisons. The program’s initial three test bed projects focus on brain imaging of human neurological disorders and associated animal models. BIRN is developing tools and technologies that allow data from any lab research program to be added to its data federation system. BIRN was established in late 2001 (iHealthBeat, 2/24).

Reference: Unknown (2004). December 09, 2004. “NIH Provides More Funding for Research Network.” iHealthBeat, December 9.

Another Step for Quantum Computing

Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Maryland have brought practical quantum computers a step closer by proposing a type of quantum bit (qubit) that is relatively easy to build. Their qubit is based on electron spin rather than atomic spin, which is more difficult to manipulate and to measure.

Reference: Unknown (2004). “Scheme Simplifies Quantum Chips.” Technology Research News, December 8.

1Gbps Wireless Network

Siemens scientists have transmitted one gigabit (one billion bits) of data per second across a mobile network. By contrast, the average wireless computer network can send only around 50 megabits (50 million bits) of data per second. It is estimated that such bandwidth will be in demand by 2015. Today’s major wireless networks typically perform at 50 Mbps.

Reference: Knight, Will (2004). “Wireless network smashes world speed record.” New Scientist. December 9.

Lie Detection

A US Department of Defense $5m grantee is developing a technology that will detect lies by monitoring a person’s brainwaves. The prototype is between 94-100 percent accurate, she claims.

It consists of 128 electrodes on the face and scalp, which translate brainwaves in under a second as subjects answer questions put to them. It relies on the researcher’s finding that it takes longer for the brain to process lies than to process the truth, so presumably it simply measures and compares response times.

Reference: Summers, Chris (2005). “The future of lying.” BBC News, January 14.