Application of video conferencing in medicine (Telemedicine)

In the present days physicians want to utilize the power of Video Conferencing software for high-quality audio/video interaction for Tele medicine, individual care, undercover research and other programs. Video conference meetings removes the access, overall performance and cost issues of traditional systems that require expensive MCU (Multipoint Control Unit) equipment and dedicated QoS (Quality of service) systems. The MCU can connect multiple video and audio sites to one or more conferences simultaneously and supports mixed ISDN and IP video conferencing calls.
Telemedicine is the major application that has a need for a perfect video conferencing solution. It helps sufferers who cannot access specialized medical care features such as in non-urban places or from far away places to acquire appropriate assessment without having to travel long ranges. The tele-medicine service provides features to deliver sufferers medical care records, pictures, outcome from medical care devices and music as well as audio which is two-way.
The following are the various purposes of video conferencing in the field of Tele-medicine:

Illness Surveillance
This technique is taken up by the government authorities and healthcare committees at periods of epidemics where professionals get a opportunity to estimate, notice and reduce the ill results of the outbreak. Immediate situation reviews are designed using the telemedicine programs.

Catastrophe and Illness management
The telemedicine features come incredibly in use in the situations of mishaps such as earthquakes, flooding etc. where healthcare features cannot be easily set-up. In such situations a simple telemedicine service will help professionals and not need them to achieve the disaster struck places for analysis. This also allows in decreasing the price of transportations of medical facilities and physicians.

Distant Consultation
This program of telemedicine is needed in offering assessment in remote places where full-blown features have not been set-up. This is incredibly crucial for non-urban places where medical organizations do not believe it is successful enough to set-up models which offer all medical features. Only assessment is offered and suggestions for professionals are made.

Second opinion:
Telemedicine programs come to use here when the sufferers are already clinically identified as having a particular illness and the main physician wants to validate the same by looking for the viewpoint from a professional in another area. The individual can him/herself take a second viewpoint from the specialist if he/she is uncertain about the analysis offered by the primary physician without having to go to the additional professionals service.

Telementored procedures
This telemedicine service is used in situations where the professional physician is incapable to perform medical techniques due to his/her lack of ability to be at the involved place. The professional can guide his/her sub-ordinate physicians in doing the process as well as in analysis.

Home care
This service is used by sufferers by signing in straight to the hospital/institute tele consultation unit and getting reviews and clinically diagnosed.

Medical knowledge and community awareness
Telemedicine programs can be used for growing common attention to the public especially in periods outbreak without the need for the professional physician to be existing in the concerned place. This service using Video Conferencing software allows a lot in attaining out to huge public and early

information dispersal.

The author Shelly Desuza works with Peoplelink Corporate Solutions Pvt Ltd, a leader in Video Conferencing software, a company which implemented Video Conferencing software video conferencing in telemedice and healthcare in many hospitals.

meaning of Webinar

Modern technologies are changing the shape of business and entrepreneurship, as well as education and science. In the past to attend a seminar or a class in a rare topic one had to jump through loops, travel to other countries, spend thousands on accommodation and food. Today none of this is necessary because the Internet has erased many of the boundaries between people, and the webinars available today can be used in business and education to bring people with common interests together.
It is important to see that the Internet has had a huge impact on the way new information is being disseminated. When was it possible to hear a lecture from an industry professional or a renowned professor without actually being there and physically attending the event? Now all of this is possible and is done regularly by many people around the world, when information is really accessible to folks from different walks of life and geographical locations, regardless of how much money they have and what they study. Webinars have become very popular and are a legitimate form of educating students and staff. They are a great way of inviting prominent speakers, scholar and industry leaders to speak - something that used to be very expensive but that is getting more affordable now because of all the technologies involved.
Webinars are a great way to get new information, training or learn a new skill via the web. And today more and more people realize that, especially since conferencing online is available via mobile devices, making it even more convenient to do. Use on the go allows people to participate in web seminars from their dorm rooms or even the train when commuting or recording a webinar and accessing it at a later time. This opens up new possibilities for people with special needs and those who have been strangled in bad weather, or just about anybody from anywhere around the world. The possibilities are endless because during web seminars all kinds of slideshows and document sharing options can be used, as well as demonstrating props or even doing lab experiments.
Webinars can be part of the education process both in education establishments and in the workplace. It is important to understand that education should never stop even if the company is very successful at the moment it can even be more successful in the future which will help the business grow and its company members develop as professionals and individuals. Making sure you know what you are doing and always relying on good advice and new information can bring people to the next level of development, and web seminars can facilitate this process significantly and make it totally streamlined. So make sure you at the right spot right now and always make the most of the modern technologies.

10 Traits Aliens Must Have According To modern Science

10 Aggressiveness

What separates humans from other species on the planet in terms of evolution comes down to a simple principle: aggression. For any species to thrive within a given habitat it has to confront adversity and overcome it. These struggles drive evolutionary adaptation. The dominant life form on a planet (which aliens would almost certainly have to be) must have been able to master their environment.
A paper published by the University of Missouri suggests this means they would be aggressive—they would populate and conquer their surroundings in order to progress. If they are more intelligent than we are, they will likely see us as a resource, the way we view farm animals and their habitats.

9 Explorers

Any life form that reaches Earth will, by definition, be an explorer. Looking to our own culture for clues, we immediately see how unexplored territories are targeted for their resources. We wonder what lands might possess that can help further our causes. Look at Columbus and the Americas, Marco Polo and the East Indies, the Vikings and most of Europe. According to Stephen Hawking, aliens are likely to seek out other planets in order to colonize them or mine them for resources. Aliens may not come to destroy our planet, but they will in all likelihood seek to exploit what they find to increase their race’s reach, as again this is the hallmark of a developed species.

8 Viral And Bacterial Immunity

It’s a common trope in Science Fiction that aliens, having never encountered Earth bacteria before, will succumb to simple diseases which they have no immunity to. Just look at the pilgrims and conquistadors, and the havoc smallpox and typhus wreaked on unexposed native populations. But conquistadors and Aztecs were both human. According to Seth Shostak, senior engineer from SETI, bacteria are limited to the life forms they are biochemically related to.
Our germs have evolved to survive on our unique DNA. Even viruses and bacterial infections that infect one species on our planet will only rarely spread to another. Dogs don’t routinely get the ‘flu, for example. Any alien life form that invaded earth will likely be immune to earthly diseases, so don’t expect a War of the Worlds solution.

7 They Won’t Eat Humans

What if they want to feed on us? While a scary thought, it’s unlikely. A race advanced enough to achieve space travel surely will have conquered its need to prey on living animals. The journey to earth from any potentially life-supporting planet is incredibly long, and for any species to attempt it they would have to have sustainable food production methods already in place.
Further, the digestive setup of a creature that evolved in a different sector of the universe is not very likely to be compatible with the kinds of proteins found on our planet. It would be inconceivable that the minimal nourishment resources found on our planet would ever justify the energy spent to obtain it. An alien race would already be adept at harnessing energy by that point. So we won’t be cattle.

6 Impersonal Killers

How many people have ever moved into a new home and found a colony of bugs as an extremely unwelcome surprise? How many of those people then squished each and every offender by hand, swinging the shoe of death over and over again until the job was done? No, most people would call an exterminator to gas the home and lay down poisons for the survivors. Aliens, like any advanced species, will make use of technology to their advantage. They will probably eradicate the life forms on a planet they are considering for their own uses before landing. Forget skies filled with single-pilot saucers firing laser beams at the Capitol Building. Expect a quick and efficient, probably biological, end to our existence.

5 Not Giant Insects

While it’s scary as crap to picture aliens as giant forms of the animals that give us the creeps on Earth, it isn’t scientifically plausible. This concept is born more out of a fear of losing our dominance on this planet combined with an evolved disgust response to disease-carriers.
In reality, the body structure of an insect only functions on a small scale. As they do not have oxygenated blood, they cannot take in enough oxygen from our atmosphere to grow larger than they do. In prehistoric times, when the atmosphere was much more oxygen rich, they did grow to distressing sizes, but we’re talking around a meter long. The image of roach-like creatures towering over us is pure fantasy. Sorry Heinlein.

4 Super Intelligence

This is a given. However, in a ton of movies, alien races are depicted as feudal, territorial beings that destroy everything in their paths. This doesn’t make sense. In order to organize the kind of effort needed to achieve interstellar travel, a highly advanced intelligence will need to be present. While the species may be, as noted before, aggressive towards other life forms they encounter and even their own race, the chances of them being intergalactic warlords are considerably low.
It is more likely that they will be calculating, controlled beings making precise decisions—more like playing chess than dodge ball. Species based in aggression with lower intelligence tend to focus their energies towards one another and survival. For a race of beings to advance beyond the levels we have seen in our own civilization would suggest the need to lay individual differences aside in favor of mutual interests. The skills necessary for long-distance travel and exploration coincide with the key signs of intelligence in nature. Memory, self-awareness, cognition of motives, and creativity must be present before a considerable level of scientific proficiency could ever be achieved.

3 Non-Humanoid

It happens in countless TV shows and movies. Aliens appear on screen that resemble normal humans in face paint (I’m looking at you Darth Maul and every Star Trek character ever). This is convenient from a prop standpoint but not very likely at all in the realm of science. Humans developed as the result of specific environmental conditions.
We stood erect to cover greater distances and free our hands to manipulate tools. We formed thumbs as a response to our early tree-dwelling lives. But if a planet doesn’t have trees, it is going to be unusual to develop an appendage adept at manipulating them. There’s no way to tell exactly what an alien species will look like but most likely they will be fast, enabling their early survival and the ability to hunt for prey. They will have very well-developed sensory organs. One would expect (but cannot guarantee) rudimentary traits present in most earth-based life forms: mouths, eyes, a form of hearing and an efficient form of locomotion, such as legs. They must have been predators and will likely possess vestigial traits to indicate this.

2 Speech And Writing

For a civilization to develop it must communicate. A long-distance form of communication will have to be present in order to organize in large numbers and disseminate information, which is crucial to social development. Like humans, aliens would need the ability to communicate complex theories with one another, and record them, thereby assisting the next generation through learning. Without some form of writing, it is unlikely we would have ever passed beyond the barrier of individual generational limitations.
The type of speech employed by interstellar travellers, and how it might be recorded, is somewhat of a mystery, however. Depending on their environments, sound waves may not be the most effective approach. Perhaps they will use vibrations that are received via specialized sensory organs, or maybe they will, as Hollywood would have us believe, speak telepathically. Telepathy has yet to be proven in any other species however, so that would more likely be a secondary development or the result of technology.

1 No Super Strength

Aliens will not be super strong. Once reaching the level of technological proficiency required to be space explorers, the need for brute strength should be several thousand years removed from its usefulness. These creatures will be lean and efficiently designed beings, using minimal energy to power their bodies.
Energy consumption dictates survival on a large scale. Larger muscles use more energy and require more upkeep, which diverts energy away from evolutionary progress.
A scientifically advanced culture would no longer require physical strength to manipulate its surroundings, and a species that has put its evolutionary chips on complex social bonds, abstract thinking and communicating, and fine motor skills and tool manipulation, all of which are necessary to develop interstellar travel, will probably not have the resources left to devote to physical strength or speed.

+ Functional Appendages

Much the same as humans have thumbs and therefore can use objects to their advantage, aliens would presumably also need to possess this functionality. One simply cannot expect to build and use tools without the ability to grasp them. Giant blobs, or creatures with long unwieldy tentacles are highly unlikely. How would we expect an advanced species of creatures to construct a spaceship and pilot such a vessel across the vast expanses of space without the ability to hold on to, and move, an object with precision? It is well within reason to expect alien life forms to have an even better developed set of appendages than the fingers and thumb system we use on earth. Much like smartphones and advanced machinery on Earth, alien species would probably adapt their technology to their bodies as much as their bodies to their technology, leaving it difficult, if not impossible, for humans to operate alien devices.

powerful innovations in robotics (ASIMO)

Robots have never been the same since the introduction of Honda's Asimo robot. Eleventh in line of a series of prototypes started in 1986 it stands as Honda's icon of being at the forefront of bipedal technology.

Sure, other robots have been produced capable of more advanced skills,but none with the history of the improvements- proof of the devoted time it took to create such an assembly. With his short statue, rounded curves, and innocent space man look Asimo has quickly become Honda's public relations unit.

Looking Asimo's family tree, it's hard not to notice the turn that was taken in the function of the design. Going from the bulky frame of P1 (that looks like it could hold up the car it's repairing), to P2 that seems to be made of lighter plastic parts, there was an obvious shift. Insert the Humanoid Robotics Project.

Spearheaded by Kawada with support from METI & NEDO the project started with the purchase of three Honda P3's. Watching videos on the HRP series, the focus has been to manipulate power tools and walk on slippery surfaces. An interesting feature that HRP-2 has is the ability to stand up again after lying flat on the floor either on its back or front. Something that Honda's ASIMO is not able to do. In a similar turn from industrial to friendly, HRP 4c was unveiled recently, a female robot weighting just over a hundred pounds pictured here at the right of two previous models.

From Honda Motor Co.comes a new small, lightweight humanoid robot named ASIMO that is able to walk in a manner which closely resembles that of a human being.

One area of Honda's basic research has involved the pursuit of developing an autonomous walking robot that can be helpful to humans as well as be of practical use in society. Research and development on this project began in 1986. In 1996 the prototype P2 made its debut, followed by P3 in 1997.

"ASIMO" is a further evolved version of P3 in an endearing people-friendly size which enables it to actually perform tasks within the realm of a human living environment. It also walks in a smooth fashion which closely resembles that of a human being. The range of movement of its arms has been significantly increased and it can now be operated by a new portable controller for improved ease of operation.

ASIMO Special Features:
Smaller and Lightweight
More Advanced Walking Technology
Simple Operation
Expanded Range of Arm Movement
People-Friendly Design

Small & Lightweight Compared to P3, ASIMO's height was reduced from 160cm to 120cm and its weight was reduced from 130kg to a mere 43kg. A height of 120cm was chosen because it was considered the optimum to operate household switches, reach doorknobs in a human living space and for performing tasks at tables and benches. By redesigning ASIMO's skeletal frame, reducing the frame's wall thickness and specially designing the control unit for compactness and light weight, ASIMO was made much more compact and its weight was reduced to a remarkable 43kg.

Advanced Walking Technology Predicted Movement Control (for predicting the next move and shifting the center of gravity accordingly) was combined with existing walking control know-how to create i-WALK (intelligent real-time flexible walking) technology, permitting smooth changes of direction. Additionally, because ASIMO walks like a human, with instant response to sudden movements, its walking is natural and very stable.

Simple Operation To improve the operation of the robot, flexible walking control and button operation (for gesticulations and hand waving) can be carried out by either a workstation or from the handy portable controller.

Expanded Range of Movement By installing ASIMO's shoulder's 20 degrees higher than P3, elbow height was increased to 15 degrees over horizontal, allowing a wider range of work capability. Also, ASIMO's range of vertical arm movement has been increased to 105 degrees, compared to P3's 90-degree range.

People-Friendly Design In addition to its compact size, ASIMO features a people-friendly design that is attractive in appearance and easy to live with.

About the Name
ASIMO is an abbreviation for "Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility"; revolutionary mobility progressing into a new era.

Specifications
Weight: 43kg
Height: 1,200mm
Depth: 440mm Width 450mm
Walking Speed: 0 - 1.6km/h
Operating Degrees of Freedom*
Head: 2 degrees of freedom
Arm: 5 x 2 = 10 degrees of freedom
Hand: 1 x 2 = 2 degrees of freedom
Leg: 6 x 2 = 12 degrees of freedom
TOTAL: 26 degrees of freedom
Actuators: Servomotor + Harmonic Decelerator + Drive ECU
Controller: Walking/Operation Control ECU, Wireless Transmission ECU Sensors - Foot: 6-axis sensor
Torso: Gyroscope & Deceleration Sensor
Power Source: 38.4V/10AH (Ni-MN)
Operation: Work Station & Portable Controller

10 important Tips to Improve your Memory

Virtually every day we are required to remember a name, a face, a number, or some other piece of information. For many people it is a struggle. It no longer needs to be so – here is a list of ten great tips to improving your memory.


1. Patterns
An excellent way to remember a large number or phrase, is to look for patterns. Here is a simple example:
3810151722242931363843
The number appears to be random until you realize that it is following a pattern: add 5, then add 2, repeat. Once you know the pattern, you only need to remember the first number in the sequence. This can be a useful way to create a numeric password that changes regularly. Another way to use this system is to remember the numbers in the form of a numerical keyboard. You can use your spatial awareness to remember the number rather than just blind memorizing.

2. Associations
This is an excellent method for memorizing numbers. In this system, you associate portions of the number with a word that has some relation to it. For example:
74736052007365
Split the number up and make an association for each sequence. Doing so can give us a list like this: Jumbo Jet (747), XBox (360), Deck of Cards (52), James Bond (007), Days in the year (365). This method can again be used for passwords that are easy to remember. To help you remember your images, try to imagine a scene that incorporates all of the items. For example, you may see a calendar with a photograph of James Bond playing poker on his XBox on a private 747. Sounds weird, but it works.

3. Alphabetize
We are all very familiar with the system of alphabetization – we see it every day in phone books, online directories, and a variety of other places. If you have a list of words to remember, put them into alphabetical order. If you wanted to learn a very long list – such as the States of the USA, start with one state per letter. Once you have that memorized, go back and add another state for each letter. Repeat until the whole list is stored in your mind. You would be surprised how much more effective this is than just trying to remember the whole list in one go.


4. Categorize
In a way, alphabetizing is categorizing, but with this method you can go a lot further. If you have a big list of things to remember, you can find similarities and group them. For example a shopping list:
Apples, Shampoo, Cheese, Milk, Sugar, Bananas, Soap, Coconut, Flour
Now, reorder them into categories and we have this:
Fruit: Apples, Bananas
Dried Goods: Coconut, Sugar, Flour
Dairy: Milk, Cheese
Bathroom: Shampoo, Soap
Another great way to remember your categories (especially in the case of a shopping list) is to remember your categories in the order that they are found in the supermarket. For example, if your first aisle is Fruit, remember the fruit first and think of the fruit aisle while you are doing so.

5. Chunking
Chunking is such a useful method of remembering things that we all use it every day. The best example is telephone numbers. When we are told a phone number we have to remember we chunk it up – usually into area code – 3 digits – four digits. This is not out of conformity – it is because it is the most effective way to remember such random numbers. This is also an excellent way to remember long sequences like pi to n digits. Taking just four extra digits a day you can easily remember pi to many decimal places. Great for a party trick.

6. Images
This is the most effective way to remember a person’s name. If you meet John Key, imagine his face with a big key right in the center of his face. If you meet someone called Patty Grant, you can try to remember a meat patty wrapped in wads of cash. I will leave it up to your own imagination if you meet Bob Johnson. Another way to do this is to find an association between this person and someone else you know – imagine them shaking hands or standing next to each other.

7. Visualize
This is a very ancient technique of memorization called Loci. In this method you imagine a location (something easy like your home) and you place the objects you need to remember in to a different part of the room. The famous Cicero had this to say:

“One must employ a large number of places which must be well-lighted, clearly set out in order, at moderate intervals apart, and images which are active, which are sharply defined, unusual, and which have the power of speedily encountering and penetrating the mind.”

For example, if you need to remember a list of vegetables, put each vegetable in a different place in the room. When you need to recall the list, move in your mind through each location in the room and see what you put there. If you find this one especially helpful, you can expand on it by adding additional floors to your location.

8. Story Method
This one can be very fun. Make up a story and include all of the things you need to remember in it. The story can be totally ridiculous. Let’s say you need to remember to buy a bucket, a dozen apples, a hairbrush, and some kitty litter, you might make a story like this:
After Jane emptied the kitty litter from Felix’s dirtbox in to the red bucket, she gave him a good brushing with his new hairbrush while she ate an apple for lunch.
It is not the most thrilling or original story, but it can be very effective in helping you to remember your list.


9. Mnemonics
A mnemonic is a word or short phrase that you can use to remember something because it is like a key to the rest of the information. For example, if you learned music as a child, you probably remember the phrase: “every good boy deserves fruit” – each word stands for a note on the musical staff – EGBDF. No doubt you were also taught a mnemonic to remember the colors of the rainbow as well.
Another slight variation is to use a phrase: desert and dessert: the sweet one has two sugars. We also use this to remember daylight savings time: Spring forward, fall back.

10. Senses
If you have to remember a word, try remembering it with your other senses. For example, if you have to remember to buy soap, try to conjure up an image of soap and whilst doing so, imagine what it smells like. You can also use your other senses in the same way: to remember to buy an alarm clock, remember the sound it makes when it goes off in the morning.
All of the items on this list can be used on their own, or in conjunction with the others to help you improve your memory. The more you practice these tips, the better you will become.

Source: 5 Minute Memory Workout

10 Misconceptions About Space

A lot of people have some pretty big misconceptions about space. To be fair, very few of us have ever been, there’s a lot more to study before anybody really knows what’s actually going on up there, and movies tend to give us the complete wrong idea. In the interests of setting things straight, here are 10 common misconceptions about space, and the truth behind them.

10People Explode

Perhaps one of the oldest and most common misconceptions is that we would explode if exposed unprotected to the vacuum of space. The logic here is that, since there is no pressure, we would simply bloat and pop, like a balloon that flew too high. But it may shock you to learn that humans are far more resilient than balloons. Jut like we don’t pop when jabbed with a needle, we wouldn’t pop in space—our bodies are just too tough for it. We would bloat a bit, that much is true. But our bones, skin, and other organs aren’t fragile enough to give way and burst unless something is actively tearing them.
In fact, several people have already been exposed to extremely low pressure environments when working on space missions. In 1966, one man was testing out a space suit when it decompressed at 120,000 feet. He lost consciousness, but did not explode, and made a full recovery.

9People Freeze

This is one misconception mostly perpetuated by movies. Many films set in space will have a scene where one character finds themselves outside the ship without a suit. They quickly begin to freeze and, unless they manage to get back inside, turn into an icicle and float away. The reality is the complete opposite. You wouldn’t freeze if you were exposed to space, you’d overheat.
We probably all remember those diagrams of convection currents in science class. Water over a heat source will heat up, rise to the top, cool down, sink to the bottom, and repeat. This happens because the water at the top transfers its heat to the air around it, which causes the water to contract, thus becoming more dense, and sinking. In space, as the name suggests, there is nothing to transfer your heat to, making cooling down enough to freeze impossible. So your body will continue to work away, generating heat as it does. Of course, before you became uncomfortably hot, you’d be dead.

8Your Blood Would Boil

This myth has nothing do do with the fact that your body would overheat if you were exposed to empty space. Instead it comes from the fact that the boiling point of any liquid has a direct relationship with the pressure of its environment. The higher the pressure, the higher the boiling point and vice versa. This is because it’s easier for a liquid to turn to gas when there’s less pressure compressing it into its liquid state. So it’s not a huge leap of logic for people to assume that in space, where there is no pressure, liquids would boil, including your blood.
The Armstrong line is when atmospheric pressure is so low that liquids can boil at body temperature. The problem here is that while exposed liquids would boil in space, your blood wouldn’t. However, bodily fluids such as the those in your eyes and mouth would. In fact, the man who decompressed at 120,000 feet said the saliva boiled right off his tongue. The “boiling” wouldn’t actually be searing hot, it’d be more like they were drying out. But your blood, unlike your saliva, is inside a closed system, and still has your veins to keep it compressed in the liquid state. Even though you’d be inside a vacuum, the fact that your blood is locked inside your body means it won’t turn into gas and float away.

7The Sun

The Sun is one of the first things you study when learning about space. It’s a big fiery ball that all the planets spin around, and it’s just far enough away that it keeps us warm, but doesn’t cause us all to burst into flames. Given that we could never have existed were it not for the heat and light given off by the Sun, it’s surprising that so many of us have a pretty basic misconception about it: that it’s on fire. If you’ve ever burnt yourself on a flame then congratulations, you’ve had more fire on you than the sun ever has or will. In reality, the sun is a big ball of gas that gives off light and heat energy through nuclear fusion, which occurs when two hydrogen atoms combine and form helium. So the Sun does give off light and heat, but there is no conventional fire involved at all. It is simply a giant, warm glow.

6Black Holes Are Funnel-Shaped

This is another common misconception that can be put down to the portrayal of black holes in movies and cartoons. Obviously black holes are essentially “invisible,” but for the sake of the audience they’re made to look like ominous whirlpools of doom. They’re shown as almost 2D, funnel-like objects, with an entrance to nothingness on one side only. In real life however, this representation could not be further form the truth. A real black hole is actually a sphere. There’s no one side that will pull you in, it’s just like a planet with a lot of gravity. If you pass by it too close on any side, you’ll get pulled in.

5Re-Entry

We’ve all seen clips of spacecraft re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere at some point. It’s a rough ride, and things tend to get extremely hot on the surface of the craft. Most of us will have been told that this is because of the friction between the craft and the atmosphere, which is an explanation that seems to make sense: A spacecraft is surrounded by nothing, and then suddenly shooting through an atmosphere at unfathomable speed. Of course things are going to get hot.
Well the truth is that friction has less than one percent to do with the searing heat associated with re-entry. While it is a contributing factor, the vast majority of the heat comes from compression. As the craft hurtles back down to Earth, the air it passes through is compressed and collects around the craft. This is known as the bow shock. The air in the bow shock is trapped by the spacecraft now pushing it around. The speed of this causes the air to heat up, allowing no time for decompression or cooling. While some of that heat is transferred to the craft and absorbed by the heat shield, the dramatic re-entry we see is mostly the air around the craft, and is exactly what scientists hope to see.

4Comet Tails

Picture a comet for a moment. Odds are most of you pictured a chunk of ice shooting through space with a stream of light or fire trailing behind it because of its speed. Well it may come as a surprise that the way a comet tail trails has nothing to do with the direction in which the comet is moving. That’s because, unlike with meteors, the tail of a comet is not the result of friction or break up. It’s caused by heat and solar wind, which melt the ice and send dust particles flying in the opposite direction. For this reason, the tail of a comet does not drag behind it, but will always point away from the Sun.

3Mercury

Since the demotion of Pluto, Mercury has been our smallest planet. It’s also the closest planet to the Sun, so it would be natural to assume that it’s our system’s hottest planet. Well, not only is that untrue, but Mercury can actually get pretty darn cold. First off, at its hottest, Mercury is about 801 degrees Fahrenheit (427 Celsius). If this was the constant temperature for the entire planet all the time, it would still be cooler than Venus, which is 860 degrees Fahrenheit (460 Celsius). The reason Venus is so much hotter despite being 49,889,664 kilometers (31 million miles) further away is that Venus has an atmosphere of CO₂ to trap in the heat, whereas Mercury has nothing.
But another reason Mercury can get so cold, apart from the lack of atmosphere, is to do with its rotation and orbit. A complete orbit of the sun for Mercury takes about 88 Earth days, while complete rotation of the planet is about 58 Earth days. This means that night lasts 58 days on the the planet, giving the temperature plenty of time to drop down to a cool -279 degrees Fahrenheit (-173 Celsius).

2Probes

Everybody knows about the Curiosity rover on Mars and the important scientific research it’s conducting. But people seem to have forgotten about many of the other probes we’ve sent out over the years. The Opportunity rover landed on Mars in 2003, and was given a 90 day life expectancy. Almost 10 years later, it’s still roving.
Most people seem to think that we’ve never managed to send a probe to any planet other than Mars. Of course, we’ve sent all sorts of satellites into orbit, but landing on a planet is vastly more complex. Still, it’s actually a lot more common than you think. Between 1970 and 1984, the USSR successfully landed eight probes on the surface of Venus. The difference here is that the atmosphere on Venus is considerably more hostile, and even if a rover managed to land it would soon be cooked and crushed. The longest a rover lasted was about two hours, much longer than anticipated.
If we move a little further out into space, we’ll reach Jupiter. Now Jupiter is even trickier for rovers than Mars or Venus, seeing as it’s made almost entirely of gas, which isn’t ideal for driving on. But that didn’t stop scientists from sending in a probe. In 1989, the Galileo spacecraft was sent to examine Jupiter and its moons, which it did for the next 14 years. Six years into its mission, it dropped a probe down to Jupiter, which beamed information back about its composition. Although another craft is on its way to Jupiter, this remains the only probe to enter its atmosphere, and the information it gathered is invaluable. It sent completely unexpected measurements, forcing scientists to totally reevaluate how they thought planets formed and worked.

 

1Zero-Gravity

This one is so seemingly obvious that many people will have a hard time believing it’s not true. Satellites, spacecraft, astronauts, and so on do not experience zero-gravity. True zero-gravity, or micro-gravity, barely exists anywhere in space, and certainly no human has ever experienced it. Most people are under the impression that astronauts and everything else in spacecrafts are floating around because they’ve gone so far away from Earth that they are no longer affected by its gravitational pull, when actually it’s the presence of gravity that causes floating. When orbiting Earth, or any other celestial body large enough to have significant gravity, an object is actually falling. But since the Earth is constantly moving, things like spacecrafts don’t crash into it. The Earth’s gravity is attempting to pull the craft down onto its surface, but Earth keeps moving, so the craft keeps falling. This perpetual fall is what results in the illusion of zero-gravity. The astronauts are also falling inside the craft, but since they’re moving at the same speed, it looks like they’re floating. The same phenomenon could be experienced in a falling elevator or plane. In fact, the weightless scenes for the movie Apollo 13 were filmed in a falling plane used to train astronauts. The plane climbs up to 30,000 feet before going into a near-freefall, which allows for 23 seconds of “zero-gravity.” Although it lasts for less than a minute, it’s exactly what real astronauts experience in space.

10 amazing flying cars

Curtiss AutoPlane

The Curtiss AutoPlane is pretty much the first glimpse the world got of a flying car, outside the pages of fiction. In 1917, an aviation engineer named Glenn Curtiss dissected one of his own airplane designs and slapped some of the pieces onto an aluminum Model T. The airplane it was based on was called the Curtiss Model L trainer, a triplane (three rows of wings) with a one-hundred-horsepower engine (which is about as powerful as a decent tractor).
Like a car, the front two tires could be turned with a steering wheel inside the cabin, and it was propelled on the ground and in the air by a propeller attached to the back. Unfortunately, the “limousine of the air” never really flew—by all accounts, the most it could manage was a series of short hops before it was discontinued at the start of WWI.

 

9

Jess Dixon’s Flying Auto

This flying car is almost a legend, and besides this photo and a brief mention of the vehicle in a newspaper clipping from Andalusia, Alabama, it might as well have not existed at all. According to the story, the photo above is of Jess Dixon; it was supposedly taken sometime around 1940. Although it’s considered a flying car by aviation history buffs, the machine is actually closer to a “roadable helicopter,” due to the two overhead blades spinning in opposite directions. In other words, it’s a gyrocopter that can also roll.
The Flying Auto was powered by a small forty-horsepower engine, and foot pedals controlled the tail vane on the back, allowing Mr. Dixon to turn in mid-air. It was also supposed to be able to reach speeds of up to one hundred miles per hour (160 kph), and was able to fly forwards, backwards, sideways, and hover. Not bad for a flying car that was never heard from again.

 

8

ConvAirCar

The Convair Model 116 Flying Car took flight for the first time in 1946, and looked like nothing more than a small airplane welded onto a car. And essentially, that’s exactly what it was. The wings, tail, and propeller could be detached from the (plastic) car, allowing it to be driven like a regular vehicle on the road. When it needed to go where no roads could take it, the plane attachment was fitted on.
The 116 model only had one prototype, which itself managed a whopping sixty-six flights. A few years later, designer Ted Hall recreated the machine as the Convair Model 118, bumping the engine from a 130-horsepower model to a 190-horsepower beast that gave it more power in the air. Convair planned to build 160,000 for their first production run—but that never panned out, thanks to a tragedy which saw one of the prototypes crash in California. When the pilot took the car into the air, he had assumed that the fuel tank was full. But the ConvAirCar had two fuel gauges—one for the car’s engine and one for the plane’s—and while the car still had plenty of gas, the plane engine ran dry in mid-air. Such are the dangers of multi-tasking.

 

7

Curtiss-Wright VZ-7

The Curtiss-Wright VZ-7 resulted from one of the first attempts by the US military to get involved in the flying car industry. Ideally, the VZ-7 was meant to be a type of flying jeep. Like a jeep, it allowed the pilot to maneuver through rough terrain on the ground—but with the not-insignificant bonus that it could also fly. It was developed by Curtiss-Wright, which, interestingly, formed through the merger of the Wright Company (the Wright Brothers) and Curtiss Aeroplane (Glenn Curtiss). Curtiss and the Wright Brothers had been fierce rivals during the early days of aviation.
The VZ-7 was designed as a VTOL craft—Vertical Take-Off and Landing. It flew with the aid of four upright propellers, which were positioned behind the “cockpit,” more or less just an open-air seat. In order to maneuver, the pilot could change the speed of individual propellers, tilting the craft forwards, backwards, or to the side. Technical aspects aside, the entire thing was a death trap, since none of the propellers were covered—and in 1960, the army cancelled the project just two years after its commencement.

 

6

Piasecki AirGeep

With the VZ-7 grounded forever, the army turned to a very different prototype: the Piasecki VZ-8 AirGeep. Bear in mind that helicopters had already become popular by this point; but it turned out that the military was interested in something smaller than helicopters, which could be successfully flown with less training.
The AirGeep went through seven different versions before it was finally deemed “unfit for military use,” but they all kept the basic design: two large vertical propellers in the front and the back of the craft, with a seat in the middle for the pilot and either three or four wheels for ground use. While the first model was flat, later ones curved upwards at the front and back to form a flattened V-shape. The navy even tried to fit one model with floats, with the hope of using it at sea—but that idea was eventually abandoned, along with the rest of the program.


5

AVE Mizar

In 1971, the Advanced Vehicle Engineers company in California decided to design a flying car that was reminiscent of the ConvAirCar of the 1940s. They took a Ford Pinto, welded a Cessna Skymaster to the top, and essentially called it a day. The bizarre hybrid monster that resulted was dubbed the Ave Mizar.
The car-half of the craft was fairly similar to any normal Ford Pinto on the street. The Pinto’s engine brought the plane up to speed for take off, at which point the plane’s propeller took over. Upon landing, the car’s brakes were responsible for slowing it down. Unfortunately, in 1973—just a year before the car was scheduled to begin mass production—the right wing of one prototype crumpled in mid-air. The car plummeted to the ground, taking any future it might have had with it.

 

4

Super Sky Cycle

As we broach the modern era, it’s surprising to see how far we still are from developing a practical flying car. Case in point: the Butterfly Super Sky Cycle, which doesn’t look much different to Jess Dixon’s fabled Flying Auto. Like the 1940s incarnation, the Super Sky Cycle is technically a road-able gyrocopter, with a single folding propeller and a swiveling tail to steer the craft in flight.
The Super Sky Cycle was built in 2009 and is now (as of 2012) fully legal to drive, provided you have a motorcycle license and a pilot’s license. It even folds down to seven feet (2.1m), allowing it to fit into most garages. The gyrocopters are manufactured by Butterfly Aircraft LLC, and sold as kits that you assemble at home. It may not be what most people envision when they think of flying cars; regardless, they’re available to anyone with an spare $40,000.

 

3

Terrafugia Transition

In 2009, the Terrafugia Transition had its first successful test flight. Since then, it’s gone through a whirlwind of upgrades and remodels, resulting in several completely new designs and a second successful test flight in 2012. In any case, the Transition finally offers something that at least looks futuristic. It has the aerodynamic shape of a plane, with wings that fold in and then swivel into a vertical position while on the ground. It can reach up to seventy miles per hour (110 km/h) on the highway, and 115 miles per hour (185 km/h) in the air.
One problem that the company faced in designing the Transition was that it was too heavy to comply with FAA regulations, due to all the extra parts needed to be safe on the road—such as bumpers and airbags, for instance. In 2010, the FAA decided to let the flying car slide through the regulations, which changes its classification and makes it easier to get the appropriate pilot’s license. Unfortunately, it still costs more than a Lamborghini.

 

2

PAL-V One

Bringing some much needed style to the world of autogyros, the PAL-V One is a Dutch design, which makes some huge changes to the traditional format. For starters, it only has one engine; the power is automatically switched between the tires and the propeller, depending on whether or not it is making contact with the ground.
What’s especially interesting about the PAL-V craft is that it’s only meant to fly below four thousand feet (1,200 m), which essentially means that you don’t have to file a flight plan to use it—a huge hurdle for flying cars in modern times. This could well lead to GPS-guided “digital corridors,” invisible highways in the sky that would allow airborne traffic to remain organized, like cars upon a regular highway.

 

1

AirMule

The AirMule is more like an airborne ambulance than a car—but the idea is still the same. It’s being developed by the Israeli company Urban Aeronautics, and its main purpose would be assisting search and rescue missions. While it could feasibly reach the same speeds as a regular helicopter, it uses less than half the airspace, so it can also squeeze into areas that would be impossible for a helicopter.
If you’ve been reading, you can probably tell that it looks a lot like the AirGeep designs the military tried to hatch in the 1970s. But it has one crucial difference: it’s flown remotely. That’s right, the AirMule is unmanned, which either means it’s going to be instrumental in saving lives, or—based on the way UAVs have been used in the past—taking them. Even so, it won’t necessarily be on autopilot—Urban Aero plans to use a remote pilot with flight controls and a bank of monitors to control the AirMule in real time—a little like the way we might control planes in a complex video game.

Top 10 Scientific Inventions that will change mankind

There are tons of awesome inventions in sci fi movies and books. Things like faster than light travel, force fields and bionic implants. There are also some things that, on the surface, seem like they would make life easier and simpler. This is a list of sci fi inventions that seem great, but are really more trouble then they are worth.

10. Flying Cars

Imagine being stuck in traffic. It sucks right? Now imagine that you could flip a switch, and suddenly your car would begin to rise into the air. You fly over all those suckers stuck in traffic, gloating. Now that you’re flying, imagine running into a tree. Next, imagine getting into a fender bender with another flying car and plummeting toward your death in a flaming heap of twisted metal.
Flying cars would undoubtedly solve a number of problems. The only thing is, they would create a whole new world of problems. To keep from running into every single power line and radio tower we would need to create laws dictating where you could drive. Kind of like creating flying roads. Of course, as soon as you get enough flying cars, you get a traffic jam on the skyways, thus negating the purpose of having a flying car.

9. Cryogenic freezing

Cryogenic freezing actually exists today. Every year, dozens of people elect to be frozen in the hope that medical advances will progress to the point where they can be thawed and cured of their diseases. Despite obvious risks and expenses, this process has been around for decades.
Now, let’s assume that medical science advances to the point where it is possible to thaw the frozen bodies and heal any diseases which might have occurred. Suddenly, you can just go freeze yourself and thaw yourself at some point in the future. The question is then, what happens to the population when people who would have otherwise died, are brought to life in the future? Talk about overpopulation.

8. Artificial Intelligence

Movies and literature are chock full of robots. It’s quite possibly one of the most cliché objects in sci fi media. Despite this, robots are very real today and AI is not far off. Wouldn’t it be great though, to have a servant who will do anything you ask? Or perhaps a lover who never ages? What about a machine that completely supplants all menial laborers?
The answer is no, it would not be great. AI is a common theme in sci fi and usually it causes more problems than solutions. If you don’t believe me, think about the facts. The current trend is that every two years processors double in speed, halve in size and halve in price. Assuming this trend continues, in 20 years you’ll be able to purchase a computer the size of a postage stamp that’s smarter than the human brain, for about $1. Now who’s the superior species?

7. Prediction of the future

Wouldn’t it be great to stop murders before they happened? How about wars? What about knowing next week’s lotto numbers? Worthwhile goals, all of them. And entirely within reach with a time viewing machine. Imagine how many problems would be solved. No more war, famine or pestilence. The complete utilitarian society, right?
Wrong. So let’s say, hypothetically speaking, that the US has a time viewing machine; this machine then predicts that China is going to attack Los Angeles. To prevent this from happening, the US issues a preemptive strike, thus starting a war in which China launches a missile headed straight for California. Thus becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is true of any major man made catastrophe.

6. Teleportation Device

Imagine a world where you can travel to New Zealand on Saturday, then stop over in Denmark for quick visit on Sunday, before you have to be to work on Monday. No longer do we have to use precious fossil fuel to travel. Terrorism in travel is a thing of the past. Until a terrorist teleports a bomb into the White House.
First, let’s assume that there is some sort of safety protocol in place to prevent things like that from happening. Technically, a teleporter breaks down all of the atoms in your body and sends them to the destination, where they are then reconstructed. The only problem with this is the actual transmission of the atoms. That’s where information age comes in. It makes far more sense to just transmit the blueprints of your atomic structure to a reconstruction device. Essentially, a teleporter is just a fax machine. The problem arises in the early use of such devices. Have you ever made a copy of a copy of a copy? Even using the highest quality copy machine, the quality degenerates rapidly. At first, it might not be noticeable. What are a few atoms from a hair? Or a fingernail? Or your heart? We’re not sure what even the smallest change in your atomic structure would do.
 
5. Nanobots

Cancer has been cured! The human lifespan numbers in the centuries. All degenerative diseases have ceased to exist. Major injuries heal within seconds. Recreational drug use no longer has any negative effects. Hangovers are a thing of the past.
Nanobots have cured the world. These self replicating robots are now injected into everyone as a natural immunization. To describe the horrors of these machines, here’s a quote from Eric Drexler’s book Engines of Creation:
Imagine such a replicator floating in a bottle of chemicals, making copies of itself….the first replicator assembles a copy in one thousand seconds, the two replicators then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four, and the eight build another eight. At the end of ten hours, there are not thirty-six new replicators, but over 68 billion. In less than a day, they would weigh a ton; in less than two days, they would outweigh the Earth; in another four hours, they would exceed the mass of the Sun and all the planets combined – if the bottle of chemicals hadn’t run dry long before.
Part of the appeal of nanobots is that only a few need be injected and they can replicate in the human body. This also describes the danger. To put it succinctly: We are the Borg. Lower your shields. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance if futile!

4. Weather Control

Welcome to the future. Global hunger has been solved. The world community lives in utopian tranquility without hurricanes, tornadoes or floods. The human race can now turn its gaze to more worthwhile things like space travel and beer.
The problem with weather control arises when we unleash specific weather on delicate ecosystems which cannot exist except under certain conditions. If this hurdle is overcome there is no reason we shouldn’t have a weather control device. Until it breaks. Then a world lulled into complacency by good weather is suddenly thrown into a natural disaster. Or, in a worst case scenario, a hostile foreign power takes over our weather control devices and unleashes storms of unimaginable power and magnitude against us.

3. Genetic Engineering

Perfect humans. Engineered from before birth to be the best of the best. What could be better than having the perfect child, with no possible risk of inherited flaws? All without the use of those messy nanobots. I think the movie Gattaca (1997) says it best:

We want to give your child the best possible start. Believe me, we have enough imperfection built in already. Your child doesn’t need any more additional burdens. Keep in mind, this child is still you. Simply, the best, of you. You could conceive naturally a thousand times and never get such a result.

The danger arises not from any physical aspect of genetic engineering, but rather the social aspects. When you begin to breed perfect humans, you create an entirely new social class. Bringing discrimination to new levels, the class you belong to will not be determined by social status, income or the color of your skin, rather, the build of your genes.

2. Holodecks

After a stressful day at work, what could be more relaxing than coming home and relaxing in a nice peaceful meadow? Perhaps going for a relaxing drive in your flying car? With a holodeck, you can go anywhere, be anyone, or do anything. With the way videogames are heading, holodecks are not too far off. Imagine that you can have anything you want. Any fantasy you have is possible. And there is the danger.
It’s the perfect drug. Why would anyone bother going dealing with their crappy wife and kids when they have the perfect life in the holodeck? Why would anyone bother dealing with reality? You want to be Emperor of Rome? Sure! You want to be Blackbeard the Pirate? Why not? You want to have sex with Marilyn Monroe? Whatever you want is possible with the holodeck. It’s been jokingly put forth that the holodeck would be the world’s last invention. The thing is; it would be. Why bother inventing anything else when you’ve already invented the perfect world?

1. Replicators

Replicators are the solution to nearly every problem the world has. Imagine no more world hunger. No longer is there any energy crisis. Never again will there be a shortage of medical supplies. The perfect world where you can have anything you want.
Until the complete and utter collapse of society. You see, the replicator would make work obsolete. There would be no need for money. As a matter of fact, you would only need one large replicator and you could replicate another one. You could make anything from fresh pizza to a molecule-for-molecule exact reproduction of the Hope Diamond. The last day of the world will come when anybody can make anything.

Bonus: Time Travel

Though not actually possible, time travel would create incalculable problems. Imagine going back in time and you meet a nice girl and take her out and things happen and you go back to your time and nine months later, she gives birth to your father. You kind of have to ask yourself, “What?”
The slightest change in the past would create ripples into the future. Only you would know about those ripples, because to everyone else, that’s just the way history turned out. Then let’s say you go into the future and copy the blueprints for some fantastic machine like a replicator. You bring it back to your time and invent it and somewhere along the line some knave steals your blueprints. Oh wait! That knave was you! It just doesn’t work.

10 Things You Can’t Know

10

Trade Secrets

Secret: Trade Secrets
This is a very necessary legal provision. After all, healthy competition is fundamental to a capitalistic society and making sure companies keep locked up what exactly gives them a leg up ensures that the market isn’t flooded with cheap imitators. In that way, monopolies are also guaranteed. For instance, if anyone ever managed to ascertain Coca Cola’s secret formula, Coca Cola would no longer be the #1 cola in the world, as you could just make it at at home in your bathtub for much less (although with possibly more floating hairs and bits of soap scum). Everything Coke has worked for from the ground up to accomplish in the last hundred plus years would have been unrightfully negated. These laws preserve integrity as much as they might be less in favor of the common man.

 

9

Oil

Secret: Locations of Oil Deposits
If this wasn’t a purposeful secret, there’d be Beverly Hillbillies; the locations of oil deposits maintain such a tight lid because otherwise anybody could purchase the land under which the wells appear and become instantly wealthy. And with that, there’d be an incredible lack of fairness if anyone who had privileged access to that kind of information (and there always is someone) were able to go out and invest some of that golden property. The government does, at times, go out of its way to set a level playing field, even when it may seem to favors corporations over people.

 

8

Intelligence

Secret: Any “Intelligence” the Government Choose to Withhold
There is a whole process through which government obtains information about the on-goings of various countries and people and packages them into manilla folders. The government can release information, although it rarely goes out of its way to (why the Freedom of Information Act and Government in the Sunshine Act exist, the essential common purposes being transparency). It may deliberately leak information or demote or remove the “classified” status of a piece of information. But some information is just clutched onto with a death grip, sometimes to save face (lest we forget the the backlashes following Wikileaks and the Pentagon Papers).

 

7

Insider Information

Secret: Insider Information
Another certainty of fairness is the illegality of acquiring financial reports that have yet to be released to the public (and using them advantageously). This ensure no individual cheats the system and has his illicit payday. Remember how humble homemaker and uber-savvy businesswomen Martha Stewart attempted to profit beyond her already gross profits by using this illegal maneuver–a tactic that landed her straight in prison (where she probably had the most ornately arranged cell in the facility). Word to the wise: don’t be like Martha.

 

6

Banking

Secret: Bank Account Information
This legal bank provision actually works against the government; the Swiss Banking Act, created in 1934, actually protects off-shore bank accounts, which make it so clients can evade taxes and essentially lie about their level of wealth. This forbids authority figures from accessing information about clients, except when particular individuals are being indicted and their account information may serve the case in some essential way. But you can imagine the kind of abuse and corruption than can ensue with this kind of provision (and if you haven’t experienced it in recent years, you’ve surely witnessed it). This is one of those example where the law seems to serve banks and big corporations more than it does your average Joe. There are a few anti-corruption measures that have been implemented since, such as the U.S Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 and the (all-around-Orwellian) Patriot Act, which both work against bank secrecy, and in particular to cut back on the illegal stuff (money laundering, etc.).

 

5

Medical Secrets

Secret: Medical Records or Patient Histories
Another provision of U.S. privacy laws, employees – who benefit from the various ways businesses are protected and who are treated as bits of information within a company – are protected from any undue poking around. In addition to bank account information, kept private are individuals medical records. Also in accordance with the Hippocratic Oath, which all doctors and medical specialists must uphold by law–unless it becomes an issue of patient safety or the safety of others–a strict confidentiality agreement with their patients. This, amongst else, prevents pure and utter humiliation.

 

4

Nuclear Secrets

Secret: Nuclear Weapon Design Plans
This is evidence that the U.S.-Soviet Arms race has never quite concluded, not in spirit anyway. Maintaining a constant “Top Secret” or “Secret” status, the two highest levels of “Classified” information, of information that if exposed could cause some sort of harm, “Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information” (as it’s called) is something that will never be revealed to anyone but officials with the utmost kind of security clearance. As our Department of Defense is a very tight-lipped bunch, the fear here is that to disseminate what we have in our arsenal enables rival nations to see what exactly kind we have (and can proceed to call our bluff, as circumstance may provide).

 

3

Military Secrets

Secret: Anything that Can Jeopardize a War or Endanger Troops’ Lives
This one is a no-brainer. At war-time, the locations of troops or any kind of strategies are off-limits as far as the public goes, for if the enemy caught wind, the consequences could be dire. Some secrets are kept for only the best of reasons.

 

2

Court Secrets

Secret: Details of a Court Proceeding that Might Influence the Jury and/or a Case’s Outcome
Witnessing a court case in sessions is to see the justice system kick with life, which is like seeing a doe in the wild. It is a very delicate process, which is decided by individuals with no more the moral wisdom of anyone else picked at random, and which determines the fate and guilt/innocent a human being. And being that no one in this setting is anything but human–one capable of being mislead, influenced, baited, etc.– it makes sense that proceeding maintain a secrecy about certain case details which, in the wrong hands, could endanger participants. Similarly, details of an open investigation are off-limits, as such knowledge could influence the outcome of a case itself.

 

1

Pretty Much Anything

Secret: Anything the Government Deems “Classified.”
The government has a strict, multi-level classification by which it deems sensitive materials to be off limits to all but a select, entrusted few. The different levels, from most critical to least, are: “Top Secret,” “Secret,” “Confidential,” and “Restricted” (the rest are “Unclassified”). The more secret it is, the more harm that could come from the learning of. Items falling under such categories include, but aren’t limited to, military plans, negotiation tactics, weapon designs, and other secrets obtained by spurious means. Also, for those conspiracy theorists among us, there may very well exist proof of first contact somewhere within those crowded filing cabinets.

10 New Technologies That Will Make You A Cyborg

If you look at the history of human culture, most of our technology was created with the purpose of making something easier. But recently we’ve been moving in a new direction: instead of creating technology that we can use, we’re making technology that makes it easier for us to use ourselves. There’s something terrifyingly romantic about the idea of a cyborg—the merging of man and machine—and these new technologies serve as subtle reminders that we are nudging our civilization inexorably closer to the brink of a cyborg age.

10 Vibrotactile Gloves

One of the attractions of becoming a cyborg is the possibility of extra senses. Humans have five senses (depending on how you divide them up), and most of them are linked to a specific organ. For example, you see with your eyes. But what if you had the ability to “see” with your hands when conditions weren’t the best for vision? Well, ask Anthony Carton and Lucy Dunne of the University of Minnesota, who are developing technology that will help firefighters navigate through smoke without needing to actually see.
It’s called the vibrotactile glove, and it uses a pair of gloves outfitted with an ultrasonic rangefinder. Inside the glove is a series of vibrating motors that, when activated by the rangefinder, will map the position of surrounding obstacles on the back of the wearer’s hand. A firefighter will be able to hold his hand in front of him and “feel” the position of everything in the room.

9 Display-Enhanced Forearm

The area between a person’s wrist and elbow serves a very important function. Specifically, it keeps your wrist connected to your elbow. But to Simon Oberding and his team at Singapore University, that area is nothing more than wasted space. What Oberding plans to do with the forearms of the future is turn them into digital displays. He’s developed a prototype that straps onto the forearm and has four separate screens, each of which shows a different set of data. For example, one screen can display GPS directions while another scans YouTube for interesting videos.
At its core, Oberding’s prototype is just an extended wristwatch. To reach true cyborg level, you have to dig a little deeper and implant the watch directly under your skin. A Toronto software company—called AutoDesk—has been experimenting with implanted user interfaces. They don’t have a specific goal for the technology yet, but they’ve managed to successfully implant a touch sensor in the forearm of a cadaver and charge the embedded electronics with a Bluetooth receiver. They are still working on making the tech commercially viable.

8 Muscle-Propelled Force Feedback

Haptic technology—or force feedback—is not new. If you’ve played a video game with a vibrating controller, you’ve experienced haptic technology—the rumble pack vibrates simultaneous with action in the game, providing a sensation along with the visual image. In some cases, force feedback is used to make you do something specific by creating a force that you naturally try to counter. Think of it like someone pushing you sideways—your body resists and pushes back towards them in an effort to maintain your balance.
Most devices that use haptic technology create the force with a vibrating motor, but there are limits to how small that can get, which means there are limits to what it can be used for. A team of German researchers threw out the motors entirely; instead, they use electrical stimulation on the muscles to force a response. In testing, they had volunteers play an airplane game on a smart phone while strong gusts of wind (in the game) periodically knocked the plane off course. As the “winds” hit, the player’s right arm would jerk up, tilting the game to the left and forcing them to compensate by using their other arm to tilt the phone back to the right position.
Video games aside, muscle-propelled force feedback will eventually be used when you’re trying to learn something new. So if you’re golfing, electrical impulses could gently nudge your body into the correct posture for the perfect swing.

7 Brainwave Sensors

We’ve already discussed the huge strides in reading brainwaves, like one experiment in which researchers flew a helicopter with brain signals picked up by an EEG sensor.
But using a different type of brainwave reader—known as functional near-infrared spectroscopy, or fNIRS—a group of researchers at Tufts University has developed a device that will not only pick up brainwaves, but actually organizes that data to tap into personal preferences. In this case, the fNIRS data was linked to a brain-computer interface that was able to accurately display movie recommendations. Stranger yet, the more a person used the system, the more accurate the predictions became, as if it was actually learning about that person over time.
These sensors are difficult to use in everyday settings because little things like head movements can disrupt the signal, but the same team is developing a program that can effectively filter out this noise. This could lead to a seamless brain-to-machine connection that will be able to make the perfect decision for you every time. It could tell you what movie you want to watch, what you want to eat, or even what kind of car you want to buy.

6 Fully Articulated Prosthetics

Perhaps the oldest form of cyborg technology is the prosthetic limb. We know that the ancient Egyptians used prosthetics, but we’ve come a long way from carving blocks of wood into the shape of a toe. In fact, we’ve made more progress in that area in the past decade or so than the rest of history combined. Take the BeBionic myoelectric prosthetic hand, which can move every finger joint individually via a connection to the skin and muscles in the amputee’s upper arm. A tiny twitch will orient the hand into a different position based on the electrical current running through the skin—giving the prosthetic full articulation that’s almost, but not quite, as realistic as using a real hand.
It takes a little practice, but eventually you can perform a huge number of tasks that wouldn’t be possible with a less advanced prosthetic, such as tying your shoelaces or using a computer mouse.

5 Nano-Fractal Implants

In 2005, neuroscientist Armand R. Tanguay Jr. wowed the world with his bionic eye that attached to the retina and received images from a digital camera mounted on a pair of sunglasses. But the future of bionic eyes looks even stranger—physicist Richard Taylor is developing an “implant” made of self-assembling fractal-shaped nanomaterial that can mimic eye neurons.
The biggest problem with cameras is that they don’t provide information in the same structure that the eye is used to. Retinal neurons are branched, like a fractal pattern, and a camera sends signals in a straight line. When a camera is plugged into a blind person’s retina, most of the information is lost in the gap between machine and living tissue. That’s why nearly every retinal implant to this point results in a hazy, grainy, black-and-white image—far from the resolution achieved by the human eye.
Taylor’s “nanoflowers” would form a more appropriate connection when implanted in the retina. Since they more closely resemble naturally occurring neurons, they would be able to mesh almost seamlessly with the still-working parts of a blind person’s eye, letting the brain receive the full transmission from a camera.
The next step is building a camera that can see with the 127-megapixel resolution of the human eye. At that point, a blind person would have perfect vision.

4Merging Vehicles And Humans

This project, dubbed Homunculus, seems a little silly on the surface. However, it’s also one of the first experiments of its kind to attempt to merge a human with a vehicle, and the implications could potentially change the way we communicate with our cars. As the researchers put it, “We propose the situation that humans and vehicles can be unified as one unit.”
The current approach with Homunculus is geared toward pedestrian safety. For example, an onboard camera tracks the driver’s head movements, while a pair of eyes attached to the front of the car copies those movements. This allows a pedestrian to see if the driver is looking at them. Strips of infrared sensors on the sides of the car connect to two vibrating motors on the driver’s arms, signaling when something (a small child, for instance) is close to the car.

3 Taste Changing

If you’ve seen the The Matrix, you might remember when one of the characters comments about how the machines couldn’t figure out what chicken tasted like—and that’s why everything tastes like chicken. It’s a throwaway joke, but if you think about it, how would you break down the elements of something as abstract as “flavor,” and reproduce them at will?
That’s the question Hiromi Nakamura and Homei Miyashita have been tackling for the past two years, and they have successfully managed to change the flavor of food at the flick of a switch with electric currents. Their goal is to use artificial taste sensation to enhance the realism of virtual reality simulators. In other words, if you’re using a virtual reality headset and you go through the motions of eating a piece of cake, a tiny device attached to your tongue will produce the right type of current to make you literally taste the cake.
Their second goal is to develop something like an electric straw, which you can program to deliver the taste you want—no matter what you’re drinking. It’s not unrealistic to see that technology evolve into a tongue implant that lets you choose what you want to taste.

2 Telescopic Vision

“Superpower” is a term that shouldn’t be thrown around lightly, but that might be the only way to describe a contact lens that’s being tested at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Using a liquid crystal shutter embedded in the contact lens, a person wearing it would be able to instantly switch between normal vision and 2.8x magnification, giving them telescopic vision on demand.
And surprisingly, it works. The contact lens was already tested on a life-size model of an eye, and the technology was put into a modified pair of 3-D glasses to test on a real human. The only hurdle the team is facing right now is putting the liquid crystal shutter onto a softer plastic, like the kind used in most contact lenses today. In true cyborg fashion, the lens has been dubbed the “Terminator Lens.”

1 Parasitic Humanoid

The Parasitic Humanoid, developed by a team at Osaka University in Japan, turns the previously mentioned force feedback into the ultimate tool for skill transmission. Basically, the device is worn on the head, and sensors spread out to the different parts of the wearer’s body. As the person goes through the motions of an activity, the computer learns what the proper movements should be. Eventually, it’s able to “teach” those motions to someone else using force feedback.