3-D Lenses

Until a few years back we were satisfied with 2-Dimensional movies and pictures. One angle gave people all they wanted to know about a subject. They could imagine the extra dimensions. Then 3D technology came into play, and flat pictures weren't enough. But in order to capture an image in three dimensions, people needed to take at least two different images of it at the same time. To see the world in three dimensions, the human brain takes the slight variations seen by the left eye and the right eye and constructs one picture. In order to render things in three dimensions, movies have to re-construct that variation. But now the story is different it is not the film that is reconstructed the capturing itself is done 3-Dimensionally

After a lot of speculation and trials, the world has finally got its first 3D microscopic lens which has been created by Lei Li and Allen Yi of Ohio State University. This device is one of its kinds which are mainly because it gives the ability to see microscopic objects while they are stationary. Other such microscopes capture images of the subject by circling around it.

This device was crafted by the engineers on a precision cutting machine using a diamond blade because they believe that it can be made by using the traditional methods. The acrylic glass was cut by 10 nanometre spacing to result into a flat plane.

The top of the lens is surrounded by 8 facets like a gem stone which is not symmetric. This allows the user to see 9 different angles and hence giving a 3D view of the subject or object. This method has paved way for scientists to get better angles of microscopic objects.

The lens is compact, can be kept in one place, but can give scientists nine different angles on the same object at the same time. The microscope that uses this lens can't be entirely stripped down - the different angles still require a computer to merge them into one three dimensional image. The image up above is the lens' un-merged view of the tip of a ballpoint pen. Still, the overall version would be a great deal more compact and easy-to-use than current models.

The lens was designed to speed up miniaturization of technological components, and make it cheaper to shrink them down. It will also help speed up assembly. So the next iPad will be half the thickness, weight, and price. .All these factors will make the upcoming gadgets cheaper.

Make Brain Quicker And Smarter

It found that participants who received electrical stimulation of the anterior temporal lobes were three times as likely to reach the fresh insight necessary to solve a difficult, unfamiliar problem as those in the control group.
        According to this, our propensity to rigidly apply strategies and insights that have had previous success is a major bottleneck to making creative leaps in solving new problems. There is normally a cognitive tradeoff between the necessity of being fast at the familiar on one hand and being receptive to novelty on the other.
       It is argued that we can modulate this tradeoff to our advantage by applying transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a safe, non-invasive technique that temporarily increases or decreases excitability of populations of neurons. In particular, tDCS can be used to manipulate the competition between the left and right hemisphere by inhibiting and/or disinhibiting certain networks. Their findings are consistent with evidence that the right anterior temporal lobe is associated with insight or novel meaning and that inhibition of the left anterior temporal lobe can induce a cognitive style that is less top-down, less influenced by preconceptions.
      While further studies involving brain stimulation in combination with neuro-imaging are needed to elucidate the exact mechanisms leading to insight, thus we can imagine a future when non-invasive brain stimulation is briefly employed for solving problems that have evaded traditional cognitive approaches. 

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing refers to the provision of computational resources on demand via a network. Cloud computing can be compared to the supply of electricity and gas, or the provision of telephone, television and postal services. All of these services are presented to the users in a simple way that is easy to understand without the users needing to know how the services are provided. This simplified view is called an abstraction. Similarly, cloud computing offers computer application developers and users an abstract view of services that simplifies and ignores much of the details and inner workings. A provider's offering of abstracted Internet services is often called "The Cloud".

Several research groups are exploring the idea of robots that rely on cloud-computing infrastructure to access vast amounts of processing power and data. This approach which some are calling "cloud robotics", would allow robots to off-load compute-intensive tasks like image processing and voice recognition and even download new skills instantly.

       CLOUD ROBOTICS PROJECTS :

   RoboEarth is a European project led by the Eindhoven University of Technology, in the Netherlands, to develop a "World Wide Web for robots", a giant database where robots can share information about objects, environments, and tasks.

   Researchers at Singapore's ASORO (A-Star Social Robotics Laboratory) have built a cloud-computing infrastructure that allows robots to generate 3-d maps of their environments much faster than they could with their onboard computers.

   Google engineers developed Android-powered robot software that allows a smartphone to control robots based on platforms like Lego Mindstorms, iRobot Create ,and Vex Pro.

   Researchers at the Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of Systems, in Toulouse, France,are creating "user manual" repositories for everyday objects to help robots with manipulation tasks.

   At a children's hospital in Italy, Nao humanoid robots, created by the French firm Aldebaran Robotics, will rely on a cloud infrastructure to perform speech recognition, face detection, and other tasks that might help to improve their interaction with patients.

Quantom Computing

It’s now going to be era of quantum computing. Such computers would use the quantum properties of atoms or molecules to perform calculations in a fraction of the time it would take conventional computers. Silicon could provide a useful path to systems with 100 or more qubits, say some scientists, because it would make quantum computers easily compatible with conventional ones. In the past few months, researchers have reported progress in using the phosphorus-in-silicon system. In the latest development, it is reported that by using bursts of radio waves, it is managed to entangle the spins of 10 billion pairs of electrons and nuclei in a crystal of phosphorus-doped silicon. Entanglement is a phenomenon that allows quantum particles to be interlinked even if they are separated. It is used in quantum computing, along with another quantum phenomenon called superposition, to create qubits that can exist in many different states at the same time.

Carbon Replacing Coppper

Nanotubes made of carbon,if grown in dense bundles, can transport large quantities of charge through tiny channels reliability.The density of their interconnects is within an order of magnitude of what's needed for replacing copper in IC's. In future such bundles have the potential to exceed copper's current carrying capacity  by a factor of 100. 

Speed

IBM is now presenting its all new zEnterprize 196 chip and it says that it is the fastest commercial microprocessor.IBM engineers made it  wit ways to improve the chips consumption and distribution of power.The processor also use a 30 megabyte high-speed dynamic RAM cache. 

Ultimate Scanning

Physicists and neuroscientistss in the US and UK say they have found a way to combine two techniques to reduce time needed to produce an MRI brain scan from 2-3 seconds to 400 milliseconds.The techniques works on ordinary scanners, so researchers expect its use to spread quickly.It was developed as part of the Human connectome Project ,an effort to map the connections in the brains of 1200 people.

Squishy Mermistors

Researchers at North Carolina State University have demonstrated "soft" versions of electronic components, including mermistors.The squishy devices' electrodes are made of a liquid metal alloy, and the material that makes up the mermistors is a chemically altered version of a common hydro gel. The scientists hope that such components will work better than traditional electronics to interface with wet squishy things, such as the human brain.