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Issue no. 26, 2008 Published: Aug 29, 2008
Quantum repeater demonstrated
Robo-skeleton lets paralysed walk
Why US must invest against climate change
Researchers looking to turn tongue into 'computer'
MIT model helps computers think like humans
IBM turbocharges solid state storage
Solar-powered cargo ship will leave a cleaner plume
Tech-savvy Neanderthals couldn't blame their tools

Quantum repeater demonstrated
An international team of physicists has taken an important step on the road to global quantum communication by demonstrating the basic principle of a quantum repeater. The breakthrough could someday be used to counteract decay in quantum signals. Quantum communication provides a secure means to transmit information. It requires two parties to be entangled over a quantum channel, over which a 'key' for decoding encrypting information can be established. Because this key becomes corrupt as soon as it is used once, the intended receiver can always tell if the key has been intercepted. Although quantum communication has been used already over distances of up to 100 km, it is difficult to create entanglement over larger distances because of signal degradation. In classical communication the simple remedy would be to amplify the signal periodically, but this is impossible for quantum keys because of the 'no cloning theorem' which precludes a quantum signal from being copied. The answer is the quantum repeater, and now researchers from the University of Heidelberg, the University of Science and Technology of China the Vienna University of Technology have demonstrated a crude version of such a device. The idea is that the quantum channel is split up into segments, each of which is easier to entangle. Once the segments are entangled individually they can then be entangled together via the same process.
PhysicsWorld.com / Nature Aug 27, 2008	back to top

Robo-skeleton lets paralysed walk
A robotic suit is helping people paralysed from the waist down do what was previously considered impossible - stand, walk and climb stairs. ReWalk users wear a backpack device and braces on their legs and select the activity they want from a remote control wrist band. Leaning forwards activates body sensors setting the robotic legs in motion. Users walk with crutches, controlling the suit through changes in centre of gravity and upper body movements. The device effectively mimics the exoskeletion of a crab. The device, which is now in clinical trials in Tel Aviv's Sheba Medical Centre, is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo Medical Technologies, a small Israeli high-tech company. It was Goffer's own paralysis that inspired him to look for an alternative to the wheelchair for mobility. The company claims that by maintaining users upright on a daily basis, and exercising even paralysed limbs in the course of movement, the device can alleviate many of the health-related problems associated with long-term wheelchair use.
BBC News Aug 26, 2008	back to top

Why US must invest against climate change
Eight scientific organisations have urged the next US president to help protect the country from climate change by pushing for increased funding for research and forecasting. The organisations say about USD 2 trillion of US economic output could be hurt by storms, floods and droughts. The groups, including the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society, urged presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain to support USD 9bn in investments between 2010 and 2014 to help protect the country from extreme weather, which would nearly double the current US budget for the area. The investments would pay for satellite and ground-based instruments that observe the Earth's climate and for computers to help make weather predictions more accurate. Neither campaign responded immediately to questions about the plea for funding. Obama and McCain, who face off in a November election, both support regulation of greenhouse gases through market mechanisms such as cap-and-trade programs on emissions.
New Scientist / Reuters Aug 22, 2008	back to top

Researchers looking to turn tongue into 'computer'
The tireless tongue already controls taste and speech, helps kiss and swallow and fights germs. Now scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta hope to add one more ability to the mouthy muscle and turn it into a computer control pad. The researchers believe a magnetic, tongue-powered system could transform a disabled person's mouth into a virtual computer, teeth into a keyboard, and tongue into the key that manipulates it all. The group's Tongue Drive System turns the tongue into a joystick of sorts, allowing the disabled to manipulate wheelchairs, manage home appliances and control computers. The work centres on creating a virtual keyboard through a magnet about 3mm wide that is placed under the tip of the tongue. The magnet's movement is tracked by sensors on the side of each cheek, which sends data to a receiver atop a rather bulky set of headgear. It is then processed by software that converts the movement into commands for a wheelchair or other electronics. After turning the system on, users are asked to establish six commands: Left, right, forward, backward, single-click and double-click.
International Herald Tribune / AP Aug 25, 2008	back to top

MIT model helps computers think like humans
In a development that will extend the eternal quest of creating computers that think like humans, MIT researchers have developed a model that helps computers recognise patterns in the same way as humans do. They produced a broad algorithm that examines several different approaches of looking at data that is similar to the way humans typically size up different situations. Realising that humans naturally tend to sort out order from different sets of information, the researchers knew that computers, on the other hand, typically do not know where to begin when faced with large and varied data sets - unless the machines have been programmed to seek a specific structure like a hierarchy, a cluster, or linear order. The model developed by the researchers offers various data structures and then finds the best-fitting structure of each type for a given data set and then picks the type of structure that best represents the data. The researchers said that humans - even young, inexperienced children - carry out similar tasks every day, often unconsciously.
InformationWeek / MIT Aug 27, 2008	back to top

IBM turbocharges solid state storage
IBM is touting a new flash memory system hailed by the company as a 'groundbreaking' advance in solid-state storage. The so-called 'Project Quicksilver' storage devices combine regular solid-state disk (SSD) chips with storage virtualization software. The result, says Big Blue, is significantly faster and more efficient SSD storage system. The drives are the first to perform more than 1 million input/output operations per second, and IBM says that they are some 55% more power efficient than high-speed disk storage systems. Additionally, seek times for the SSD systems are 1/20th those of disk systems and the devices them selves only require a fifth of the floor space. The project is part of a larger effort by IBM to better integrate SSD storage to its enterprise server systems.
VNUnet UK Aug 29, 2008	back to top

Solar-powered cargo ship will leave a cleaner plume
The race to go green has taken to the high seas with two Japanese companies saying they will begin work on the world's first ship to have propulsion engines partially powered by solar energy. Japan's biggest shipping line Nippon Yusen KK and Nippon Oil Corp said solar panels capable of generating 40 kilowatts of electricity each would be placed on top of a 60,000-tonne car carrier to be used by Toyota Motor Corp. The solar panels would help conserve up to 6.5% of the fuel used in powering the diesel engines that generate electricity aboard the ships. The ship system is expected to help reduce CO2 emissions by 1 to 2%, or about 20 tonnes per year, according to Nippon Oil. Solar panels capable of generating several kilowatts of electricity have been used on large vessels before, but their use has been limited to power for the crew's living quarters. Solar panels for an average home usually generate 3.5 kW of electricity. Damage to the panels from salt and vibration are hurdles that remain to be overcome. The ship is scheduled to be completed in December.
New Scientist / Reuters Aug 26, 2008	back to top

Tech-savvy Neanderthals couldn't blame their tools
Neanderthal stock is on the rise. A slew of recent studies have argued that the not-quite modern humans hunted, painted and communicated like their Homo sapiens cousins. Now new research suggests that Neanderthal technology was at least as good as that of early humans. For most of the Stone Age, Homo sapiens and neanderthalensis both made disc-shaped stone tools called 'flakes'. But around 40,000 years ago humans in Europe began exclusively producing rectangular blades. Some researchers have argued that this gave modern humans a decided advantage over Neanderthals, who went extinct in Europe around 28,000 years ago. s But experimental archaeologists at Southern Methodist University in Dallas focused on the process of creating the tools, not just the final product. Disc flakes, the team discovered, waste less rock, suffer fewer breaks and have more cutting edge for their mass compared with straight blades. They found that the Neanderthal technology was just as efficient, if not slightly more efficient, than modern Homo sapiens blade technology, providing a very strong indication that Neanderthals did not go extinct because of any cognitive inferiority. Rather, modern human blade technology may have been more useful for making spears or projectiles. Additionally, blades may have functioned as cultural glue that enforced similarities among bands of humans and distinguished them from nearby Neanderthals.
New Scientist / Journal of Human Evolution Aug 26, 2008	back to top