WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news
by Alan Lenton
This week we cover Doug Engelbart, antibiotics and silver, NASA’s advanced ion propulsion engine, faster than light travel, non-military drones, architecture and 3D printers, heads up info in a motorbike helmet, and a genuine amphibious vehicle. Extra URLs point you to a flashlight that runs on body heat, ‘corkscrew’ light (no, you can’t use it to open that bottle of wine!), the Afghan war, and the world of Google.
Mainly homework this week as we catch up with some of the less time based articles that have caught my eye over the past month or so. These things tend to get pushed down the list every time there are plenty of time critical things to cover, and I have to make an effort to catch up every so often. So, here we go...
Shorts:
R.I.P. Doug Engelbart. Computing legend Doug Engelbart died aged 88 this week. Unlike better known ‘legends’ Doug actually invented things, rather than commercializing them - the computer mouse, the graphical user interface, and hypertext (think HTML) in 1950, for instance. My chosen profession is poorer without him.
Here are some URLs to a selection of obituaries covering his life and work.
http://gigaom.com/2013/07/03/doug-engelbart-american-inventor-computing-legend-passes-away/
http://www.cringely.com/2013/07/03/doug-engelbart-visionary/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/03/douglas_engelbart_mouse_creator/
Homework:
One of the most serious problems facing the medical profession is that of resistance to antibiotics. As the use of antibiotics has grown, more and more strains of bacteria are becoming resistant to the existing drugs. For a while, this wasn’t a problem, because new drugs were coming onto the market to replace the older, less effective ones. This is no longer the case for a number of reasons. Drugs are expensive to develop. Drugs are expensive to test, and the testing takes a long time. Antibiotics are only used by patients for a short period of time, even though they take the same time and money to develop, and thus are less profitable than drugs for conditions like type 2 diabetes which the patient will be taking for the rest of their life.
Now, however, it looks like help might be on the way. The possible knight in shining armor is silver, in the form of dissolved ions which has been found, in very small quantities, to make existing antibiotics more potent. It does this in two ways, by letting more of the drug get into bacterial cells, and by disrupting the cell mechanisms that remove the drug once it’s in there.
Of course, there are problems, not least of which is that silver is also toxic to humans in larger quantities, so there will have to be careful examination of the toxicity issues. Nonetheless this represents something of a breakthrough, if only because of the idea of boosting existing drugs, rather than searching for brand new ones. Even if this silver lining is a double edged sword! (Sorry, couldn’t resist that one...)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=silver-makes-antibiotics-thousands-of-times-more-effective&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20130626
On a completely different topic, NASA’s advanced ion propulsion engine has now been operating for 48,000 hours (five and a half years) non-stop. It is generally considered that ion thrusters will be the propulsion method that opens up the outer solar system. The thrusters work by electrically charging particles of xenon gas. The charged particles are then accelerated up to around 90,000 mile an hour. The equal and opposite acceleration that this generates on the probe is small - very small - indeed. But if you apply a small acceleration for long enough, then the resulting speed can become very significant indeed.
Expect to see rather more use of ion engines in the not too distant future.
http://www.gizmag.com/next-ion-thruster-duration-record/28067/
Perhaps, though, you’d like to travel a little faster? Maybe even faster than light? Most people don’t realize that faster than light (FTL) travel became theoretically possible nearly 20 years ago, when theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre showed that FTL was possible if you surrounded a piece of regular space time with a curved space time bubble. You then use gravitational effects to compress the front of the bubble, and expand the rear of the bubble, which drags the bubble along at a speed in excess of that of light. It’s a bit like surfing a wave, really.
Needless to say, the devil is in the details. How do you start? How do you steer? How do you stop? What happens if you run into something large (and probably very hot)? The answer, unfortunately, isn’t blowing in the wind, it’s that we don’t know, but people have been speculating for the past 20 or so years, as well as trying to prove it impossible. However, there is a nice, non-mathematical, discussion of the issues in in Gizmag, and for those of you with a more mathematical bent there is a page on the subject in the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is a little less starry eyed about the topic than Gizmag.
http://www.gizmag.com/warp-drive-bubble-nasa-interstellar/24392/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
I guess we might as well stick with Gizmag for a bit. It also has an interesting article on non-military drones. By now most people are familiar with the idea of military drones from reports of their use in the war in Afghanistan. What you may not have realized it that there are also many non-military uses of drones under development around the world. Drones, otherwise known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) come in all shapes and sizes from airliners (small ones) to tiny quadcopters.
In Japan UAVs have been used in agriculture for crop spraying and sowing seeds for many years. In the world of geoimaging they are ubiquitous as camera and LIDAR platforms. They seem to be rapidly be taking over as general purpose workhorses, with the US army using unmanned helicopters to move cargo in Afghanistan.
Although there have been tests of unmanned airliners, there remains the problem of control on increasing crowded air traffic routes and this one isn’t going to be solved for quite a while yet. The key problem is that the current system of air traffic control relies on human ground traffic controllers giving verbal instructions to pilots, and UAVs have no pilot. This makes mixing UAVs and regular traffic in the same airspace a thorny, and dangerous problem. You may be able to get on a train with no human driver, but an airliner with no human driver is some way off yet.
But not everything about UAVs is military or utilitarian, so I’d like to introduce you to Raffaello D’Andrea and his athletic quadcopters. Take a look at the video for a peek at what’s really possible for the future. And, in the mean time I am willing to bet that it’s only a matter of time before we start to encounter UAV speed cameras...
http://www.gizmag.com/uav-future-of-unmanned-flight/27478/
http://www.ted.com/talks/raffaello_d_andrea_the_astounding_athletic_power_of_quadcopters.html
And now for something completely different! 3D printers. Yes I know I’ve talked about them before, but earlier this week I was reading an article I thought I’d share with you. It’s about the way the ability to print out miniatures of architect’s designs has created possibilities not envisaged before in the fields of architecture, feasibility studies, environmental impact reports, the visualizing of a new development as part of a planning application, or as a glossy promotional image or animation to showcase a new development as part of a public consultation.
I found it really interesting, and much more useful for envisaging what sort of wreckage developers plan to inflict on my neighborhood than glossy brochures!
http://www.geoconnexion.com/publications/geo-international/issue/july-august-2013-international-issue/article/model-buildings
For Geeks:
Into augmented reality? Ride a motorbike? Then take a look at this rather nice prototype motorcycle helmet. It puts a display onto the visor, similar to the classic heads up display. Given that mounting a smart phone on the handlebars is not really a going proposition, something like this is a must if you are travelling into unfamiliar territory. Nice piece of work - fingers crossed that it makes it into production.
http://www.digitalafro.com/very-cool-new-helmet-gives-motorcycle-riders-augmented-reality-like-iron-man/
If a bike isn’t your style, how about an amphibious vehicle. Let’s face it, up till now amphibious vehicles have been neither fish nor fowl - lousy cars and indifferent boats. Well, now there is one coming to market that looks like a mould breaker. It’s called the Panther, and goes like a bat out of hell on both land and water. I’m impressed - take a look at the video!
http://www.gizmag.com/watercar-panther-amphibious-jeep-acura-jet-boat-water-fun/28099/
Scanner: Other stories
Teenager creates flashlight that runs on human body heat
http://www.dvice.com/2013-6-29/teenager-creates-flashlight-runs-human-body-heat
“Corkscrew” light could turbocharge the internet
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=corkscrew-light-could-turbocharge-internet&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SPCPHYS_20130705
The Merry Pranksters who hacked the Afghan war
http://www.psmag.com/culture/the-merry-pranksters-who-hacked-the-afghan-war-60873/
A glimpse into the world of Google
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/10150353/A-glimpse-into-the-world-of-Google.html
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
7 July 30013
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
