Tag Archives: research

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Will laser propulsion beam us up to orbit?

Some lasers, yesterdayThe space geeks among you will doubtless have heard of the laser propulsion concept before, but it’s largely remained ensconced in the realms of the theoretical so far.  However, the superbly-named Leik Myrabo reckons he has cracked it, and is currently working on bringing his ideas to a commercially viable status:

Basic research experiments using high-powered lasers are underway in Brazil, with experts investigating the central physics of laser-heated airspikes and pulsed laser propulsion engines for future ultra-energetic craft.

At the Brazil-based lab, a hypersonic shock tunnel is linked to two pulsed infrared lasers with peak powers reaching the gigawatt range – the highest power laser propulsion experiments performed to date, Myrabo said.

“In the lab we’re doing full-size engine segment tests for vehicles that will revolutionize access to space,” Myrabo emphasized. “It’s real hardware. It’s real physics. We’re getting real data…and it’s not paper studies.”

“Right now, we’re chasing the data,” Myrabo said. “When you fire into the engine, it’s a real wallop. It sounds like a shotgun going off inside the lab. It’s really loud.”

The laser propulsion experiments, Myrabo added, are also relevant to launching nanosatellites (weighing 1 to 10 kilograms) and microsatellites (10 to 100 kilograms) into low Earth orbit.

Now, colour me cynical if you will, but I reckon that last throwaway point there about the microsatellites may be the the more plausible goal for this technology, and the stuff about sending passenger vehicles into suborbital space is optimistic grandstanding designed to attract attention and investment. [image by Krassy Can Do It]

Even if the researchers (who are sponsored under international collaboration between the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Brazilian Air Force) are convinced of their omega point, cheap microsat launches will at least provide an income stream while development continues. Either way, it’s good to see another option on the table for commercial space launches.

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Silicon mindslice: artificial brains (still) “ten years away”

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There’s been a rash of coverage on Dr Markram and the IBM-supported Blue Brain project, one of the experiments designed to move us closer to creating a silicon simulation of the animal brain. Blue Brain is currently based on a silicon recreation of a slice of rat cortex, and Markram’s team have observed spontaneous emergent interaction between their artificial neurons which suggest to them that they’re on the right track… though not everyone is quite so sure.

“We’re building the brain from the bottom up, but in silicon,” says Dr. Markram, the leader of Blue Brain, which is powered by a supercomputer provided by International Business Machines Corp. “We want to understand how the brain learns, how it perceives things, how intelligence emerges.”

Blue Brain is controversial, and its success is far from assured. Christof Koch of the California Institute of Technology, a scientist who studies consciousness, says the Swiss project provides vital data about how part of the brain works. But he says that Dr. Markram’s approach is still missing algorithms, the biological programming that yields higher-level functions.

“You need to have a theory about how a particular circuit in the brain” can trigger complex, higher-order properties, Dr. Koch argues. “You can’t assemble ever larger data fields and shake it and say, ‘Ah, that’s how consciousness emerges.'”

The possibility of simulating consciousness by building a model of the brain is one of those frustrating quandaries that will seemingly only ever be answered by someone succeeding at doing it; the proof is quite literally in the pudding. Still, Markram is pretty convinced he’s on the right track, going so far as to announce in his TED talk that he’ll have built a model human brain within the next decade… which is something that AI researchers have been saying since the sixties, I believe. I’d love to see it happen, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t hold my breath or place any bets just yet.

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Tagging and tracking the trash

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dumpsterEver wondered where your rubbish goes when it leaves your house? The New Scientist people obviously have, and so they’re teaming up with MIT to find out:

The team behind the experiment, MIT’s Senseable City lab, led by Carlo Ratti, have made a device that is about the size of a small matchbox and that works like a cell phone – without the phone bit. A SIM card inside the chip blips out its location every 15 minutes, the signal is picked up by local cell phone antennae and the chip’s location is relayed back to MIT.

Ratti’s team and New Scientist have already deployed a test run of 50 tracked items of trash ranging from paper cups to computers in Seattle. Several thousand more will be released in Seattle and New York garbage cans later this summer and we’ll chuck a batch into the London trash for good measure.

This should be an interesting experiment, and something like a first step toward Chairman Bruce’s “spimes” – objects whose entire life-cycle – cradle to grave, as they say – is trackable and searchable. Perhaps, when we have a better understanding of what happens to all the stuff we throw away and instantly forget, we’ll stop being so casual about our throw-away culture – and about the manufacturing and packaging practices of the companies we buy things from. As New Scientist puts it:

Think of what happens when the garbage men go on strike. We complain that they’re not doing their job – but where did all that trash come from to begin with?

[image by mugley]

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Neuroscience soldiers

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modern soldiersNothing says “futuristic” quite like new tools and techniques of warfare, which probably says something rather sad about our socio-cultural mindsets. Nonetheless, there’s no ignoring the fact that technological advances are changing the state (and nature) of the battlefield more quickly than ever before, meaning that military organisations the world over are looking for any possible way to get a jump on the other side.

Enter the US National Academies of Science, who were hired by the US military to assess the neuroscientific investment paths that would provide the best bang for their buck. It’s not about bigger guns and better armour any more, though; the soldiers themselves are the latest subject for improvement, be it by careful recruitment selection or wetware upgrades, or both.

Genetic testing might also enable recruitment officers to determine which soldiers are best for specialist jobs. For example, by combining psychological testing with genetic tests for levels of brain chemicals, a clearer picture of a soldier’s competencies might shine through. “We might say that given this person’s high levels of brain serotonin, they’re going to be calmer under pressure, so they might make a good sniper,” says Paul Zak of Claremont Graduate University in California, who was on the NAS panel. Alternatively, someone with low dopamine might be less likely to take risks, he says, and therefore be better suited as a commanding officer in a civilian area.

[…]

Zak emphasises that the panel was not asked how to turn soldiers into better “killing machines”, although “the whole purpose of maximising and sustaining battlefield capacity is to gain superiority over opponents”, admits Floyd Bloom of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, who chaired the panel.

That’s not to say someone won’t try it, though. Zak’s own work focuses on the role of the hormone oxytocin in trust and empathy. If drugs were developed to block oxytocin, the effect might be to reduce a soldier’s ability to empathise with enemy combatants or civilians.

“There are lots of stories of soldiers who refuse to shoot other soldiers,” says Zak. “If you could get rid of that empathy response you might create a soldier that’s more prepared to engage in battle and risk their life.”

Um… OK. The practical benefits are obvious enough, I suppose, and if you can justify war itself I dare say you’ll not struggle to justify chemically adjusting your soldiers to be less bothered about the risk of bleeding their life out on some sand dune somewhere.

But research into easy ways to suppress empathy has worrying implications beyond the military sphere. After all, haven’t we just seen first hand what happens when people with a low empathy quotient are given control of the financial instruments that span the globe? Sure, they’re efficient and ruthless – but that’s a double-edged sword, right there. [via Scumlord Warren Ellis; image by Soldiers Media Center]

To be honest, I’d blame our erratic sense of empathy for most of the problems the world suffers currently… and while I suppose that research into oxytocin levels would inevitably throw up ways to boost empathy, that’s never going to be as financially or militarily appealing as the opposite. And of course, one must remember that the street always finds its own use for things…