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Medfly. Photograph: Scott Bauer

Issue no. 5, 2009 Published: Feb 06, 2009
'Self-destructing' fruit flies could protect crops
Computer chips may 'repair' nerve
Philips plans computer in a pill
Nanotube memory flashes past silicon
Climate researchers tap 'wisdom of the crowds'
Japanese mega-lab nears completion
IBM teams up with Google on health software
Managing energy with swarm logic
Innovation: Speech prediction software

'Self-destructing' fruit flies could protect crops
Scientists have genetically modified Mediterranean fruit flies so that their offspring die young, a move they hope will control the spread of the devastating crop pest. Ceratitis capitata - known as medfly - devastates a range of fruit crops and is found in many tropical and subtropical regions. One current control method sees male flies made sterile by irradiation and released into medfly populations, where they compete with normal males to mate with females and decrease the number of offspring in a population. But irradiation damages the flies, making them less able to outcompete their normal counterparts. Researchers at the Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach-Institute of Zoology and Anthropology in Germany have introduced a set of genes into male fruit flies that kills their offspring as embryos, wiping out that generation. Larvae never develop, so there is no damage to the fruit crops in which they usually grow, and concerns about the genes being released into the wild population are unfounded because there are no offspring to pass the genes on. This technique is better than irradiation because it doesn't damage the fly's ability to compete with normal males, meaning fewer flies might be sufficient for pest control.
SciDev / BioMed Central Biology Feb 03, 2009	back to top

Computer chips may 'repair' nerve
Researchers have moved closer to making silicon chips which could one day be used to repair damaged tissue in the human body. Edinburgh University has developed a technique, which allows neurons to grow in fine, detailed patterns on the surface of tiny computer chips. The scientists said the development may eventually enable chips to replace damaged nerve or muscle fibres. They also said the development could possibly be used in the development of prosthetics in the future. During the chip manufacturing process, the scientists printed patterns on the smooth silicon surface. The chip was then dipped in a patented mixture of proteins, and neurons grew along the patterns on the surface. The technique also works with stem cells. It is hoped the method will eventually enable any type of tissue to be grown on a tailor-made pathway and implanted as prosthetic tissue in the body.
BBC News Feb 04, 2009	back to top

Philips plans computer in a pill
Philips is conducting trials of a tiny computer that takes the form of a pill that can be swallowed. The iPill (intelligent pill) is designed to release medicine in controlled bursts inside the body at the command of a doctor communicating wirelessly with the device. The pill is about the size of a large multivitamin tablet, and is designed to pass out of the body within 24 hours. A wireless antenna controls a pump inside the pill, so that medicine can be dispensed either in small doses or all at once. The pump is a screw-driven piston powered by an internal silver-oxide battery, which has enough power to last for 48 hours. The iPill is currently being tested in animals, but human volunteers have taken it to make sure the device can pass easily through the body. Additional sensors can be bolted onto the iPill so that it could detect excess acidity in the stomach, for example, and dispense chemicals to restore the natural PH balance.
VNUnet UK Feb 03, 2009	back to top

Nanotube memory flashes past silicon
Although carbon nanotubes have long been believed to be perfect for making faster, smaller computer memory prototype devices have so far proved too sluggish for practical use. Now a new design that is 100,000 times faster than previous efforts has blasted through that barrier, paving the way for nanotube flash memory to be a part of future electronic and computing devices. The device, developed at the Helsinki University of Technology and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, stores a single digital bit on each nanotube, using a very simple setup. Each tube is laid flat on a silicon wafer and attached to two electrodes that run an electric current along its length. A third, 'gate', electrode is separated from the tiny tube by a thin insulating layer and is used to write the data. In tests, the new device could store and erase data in just 100 nanoseconds - a dramatic improvement over previous prototypes and even faster than commercial flash memory.
New Scientist / Nano Letters Feb 05, 2009	back to top

Climate researchers tap 'wisdom of the crowds'
Researchers at MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence (CCI) want to harness the power of social groups and computers to address some of the world's most pressing problems. Applications like Wikipedia, Linux, and YouTube hint at the potential of collective intelligence. Similar developments could improve doctors' diagnoses and scientists' ability to address climate change. The Climate Collaboratorium project is designed to develop an online collaboration tool for harnessing data and discussing solutions related to pollution, transportation, economics, and other issues surrounding the problem. Users record their contributions and connect them to existing material, creating 'argument maps' to weed out repetitive and useless material. The material also is linked to computer-based climate models for testing people's suggestions. The researchers developed a similar tool for engineers and hope that one day applications exploiting 'wisdom of the crowds' can be put to work to address poverty, terrorism, and other complex problems.
Information Week Feb 02, 2009	back to top

Japanese mega-lab nears completion
The massive USD 1.5bn Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) in Tokai-Mura moved a step closer to completion after researchers successfully accelerated proton beams to 30 GeV at the facility's 50 GeV synchrotron. The protons are then sent to the Hadron Experimental Facility (HEL), where they can be smashed against a target to produce a variety of subatomic particles, including muons, neutrinos and kaons. The HEL will have room for five experiments, the first of which will be a study of how neutral kaons decay. Other planned experiments include a study of hyper nuclei - nuclei that contain strange quarks. In April the 50 GeV synchrotron will also send its first stream of neutrinos to the SuperKamiokande detector located in the Kamioka mine, 295 km away. J-PARC also contains a neutron-scattering facility, which is the country's only neutron 'spallation' source and replaces the KENS facility at the KEK particle-physics lab in Tsukuba. The neutrons are produced when protons are accelerated to 3 GeV in a synchrotron and then smashed into a mercury target. They are then guided to J-PARC's Materials and Life Science Facility, where researchers can carry out experiments in biology and condensed-matter physics.
Physics World Jan 29, 2009	back to top

IBM teams up with Google on health software
IBM is teaming up with Google on a new software to move data from remote personal medical devices into Google Health and other personal health records (PHRs). Patients will be able to exchange vital health information with their doctors and other health services professionals more easily, and in real-time, by using the IBM software. Google Health, which was officially launched in May 2008, allows users to store, manage, and share their medical records and personal health information securely online. IBM developed the software based on guidelines from Continua Health Alliance, an organisation dedicated to enabling interoperable personal healthcare products and solutions.
Reuters Feb 05, 2009	back to top

Managing energy with swarm logic
Air-conditioning units and heating systems are examples of power-hungry equipment that regularly switches on and off in commercial buildings. When these devices are all switched on at once, power consumption spikes, and a building's owners are left with hefty peak-demand charges on their electricity bills. Startup REGEN Energy in Toronto has come up with a way to reduce energy use by mimicking the self-organising behaviour of bees. It has developed a wireless controller that connects to the control box on a piece of building equipment and functions as a smart power switch. Once several controllers have been activated, they detect each other using a networking standard called ZigBee and begin negotiating the best times to turn equipment on and off. The devices learn the power cycles of each appliance and reconfigure them to maximize collective efficiency. The goal is to avoid everything coming on at the same time without sacrificing individual performance. The devices work through this problem using a 'swarm algorithm' that coordinates activity without any single device issuing orders. Before making a decision a node will consider the circumstances of other nodes in its network.
Technology Review Feb 04, 2009	back to top

Innovation: Speech prediction software
If people who finish your sentences drive you crazy, it's a safe bet that you're probably not going to be nuts about new software that can do just that. It has been dreamed up as a speech-recognition equivalent to the predictive text on cellphones. Mutter a half-considered thought into the microphone and the software will plunder a database to complete half-formed words or sentences - in Japanese, at least. The system looks for fragments of words and other signs of hesitation such as filler sounds that Japanese speakers use when searching for their next phrase, just as English speakers "um" and "er". It can work backwards too. If you're using the voice-controlled jukebox made to demo the idea and ask for a song by 'someone, er, Jackson' it will offer up Michael, Janet, and even Joe. You can imagine how that could be useful for requesting songs from a car's stereo while driving, or requesting a new location from a GPS device. The team that developed it at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, claims that the 'speech completion' technology is a first.
New Scientist Feb 03, 2009	back to top