Saturday, April 16, 2011

Wearable computer

Ever since the development of the ENIGMA (the first digital computer), Computers have inspired our imagination. In this period came the World War II code breaking machine designed by Alan Turing, and Von Neumann’s ENIAC which can be called dinosaurs compared to present day PCs. In the earlier days, computers were so huge that it took an entire building, or at least a floor to occupy one. By the 1970s, computers grew fast enough to process an average user’s applications. But, they continued to occupy considerable amount of space as they were made of solid blocks of iron. The input was done by means of punch cards, and later came the keyboard, which revolutionalized the market. In 1971 came the 4004, a computer that was finally small in size.
This was the time when wearable computer (wearcomp) was born. In the 1970s, wearcomp challenged the other PCs with its capability to run on batteries. Wearcomps were a new vision of how computing should be done. Wearable computing showed that man and machine were no more separate concepts, but rather a symbiosis. The wearcomps could become a true extension of one’s mind and body.

CELLDAR

“Celldar” is made from two words: “cell” and “radar”. This is a passive multistatic radar system, which is based on radiation of mobile base stations and can track moving objects. The concept of cell phone radar could provide a totally convert and innovative approach to the detection of land, air and sea-based objects. The hardware required is much simpler than existing radar systems, though the signal-processing software is complex. Previously, radar needed massive fixed equipment to work and transmissions from mobile phone masts were thought too weak to be useful. An individual with one type of receiver, a portable unit little bigger than a laptop computer, could even use the celldar as a‘personal radar’ covering the area around the user.
The most important advantage of celldar is that it is invisible to anti-radar weapons. Celldar is aimed at anti-terrorism, defence, security and road traffic management. The seminar covers the concept of operation, advantages and applications of the celldar.

MICROELECTRONIC PILL

A “Microelectronic pill” is a basically a multichannel sensor used for remote biomedical measurements using micro technology. This has been developed for the internal study and detection of diseases and abnormalities in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract where restricted access prevents the use of traditional endoscope. The measurement parameters for detection include real – time remote recording of temperature, pH, conductivity and dissolved oxygen in the GI tract. This paper deals with the design of the “Microelectronic pill” which mainly consists of an outer biocompatible capsule encasing 4–channel micro sensors, a control chip, a discrete component radio transmitter and 2 silver oxide cells.
Micro electronic pill is the third-generation medical apparatus made by micro-electronic technology, which can be taken orally or put into rectum. It can send, inside body, rhythmic coded pulse which directly impulses non-striated muscle, gland, nerve and focus parts, distinctly treat many diseases of stomach, intestines and the near organs, such as dyspepsia, stomachspasm,stomachelectricityrhymedisorder,intestinesimpulsivemultiplydiseases,habitualcomstipation,partialintestinesparalysis, chronic prostate disease, cholecystitis and pancreatitis. The main Characteristics are non side effect. It is praised as “green medicine in the 21st century.

FLUORESCENT MULTILAYER DISC

The demand for digital storage capacity exceeds a growth of 60% per annum. Facilities like storage area networks, data warehouses, supercomputers and e-commerce related data mining requires much greater capacity to process the volume of data.
Further, with the advent of high bandwidth Internet and data-intensive applications such as high-definition TV (HDTV) and video & music on-demand, even smaller devices such as personal VCRs, PDAs, mobile phones etc will require multi-gigabyte and terabyte capacity in the next couple of years.
This ever increasing capacity demand can only be managed by the steady increase in the areal density of the magnetic and optical recording media. In future,this density increase is possible by taking advantage of the shorter wavelength lasers, higher lens numerical aperture (NA) or by employing near-field techniques. Today, the optical data storage capacities have been increased by creating double-sided media. This approach for increasing the effective storage capacity is quite unique for optical memory technologies. Fluorescent multilayer disc (FMD) is a three-dimensional storage for large amount of data. This three-dimensional optical storage opens up another dimension of increasing the capacity of a given volume of media, with the objective of achieving a cubic storage element, having the dimensions of writing / reading laser wavelength. The current wavelength of 650 µm should be sufficient enough to store up to a Terabyte of data.

Optical coherence tomography

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an optical signal acquisition and processing method allowing extremely high-quality, micrometre-resolution, three-dimensional images from within optical scattering media (e.g., biological tissue) to be obtained. In distinction with other optical methods, OCT, an interferometric technique, is able to penetrate significantly deeper into the scattering medium, for example ~3× deeper than its nearest competitor, Confocal microscopy. Depending on the use of high-brightness and wide-spectrum light sources such as superluminescent diodes or ultrashort pulse lasers, OCT has achieved sub-micrometre resolution (with very wide-spectrum sources emitting over a ~100 nm wavelength range). It is one of a class of optical tomographic techniques. A relatively recent implementation of OCT, frequency-domain OCT, provides advantages in signal-to-noise ratio and therefore faster signal acquisition. OCT systems, now commercially available following years of testing, are finding diverse application areas such as art conservation and diagnostic medicine (notably in ophthalmology where it permits remarkable noninvasive images to be obtained from within the retina).

WIBREE TECHNOLOGY

Ultra low power Bluetooth technology is an open, globally viable wireless technology for small devices allowing compatibility and interoperability with existing devices. Ultra low power Bluetooth technology can be built into products such as watches, wireless keyboards, gaming and sports sensors, which can then connect to host devices such as mobile phones and personal computers. It is essentially the missing link between small devices and mobile phones/personal computers.
Ultra low power Bluetooth technology originated in 2001, when Nokia Research Center uncovered many interesting use cases for tiny low power devices, such as sensors, but realized that there was no suitable wireless solution for connecting them to devices such as mobile phones and personal computers. Therefore, Nokia began to develop the technology, and then branded as Wibree to cover this gap. Wibree was launched to the marketplace as a new low-power, low-cost radio technology in October 2006. To this day Broadcom, Casio, CSR, Epson, ItoM (Semiconductor Ideas to the Market), Logitech, Nordic Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, Suunto, Taiyo Yuden and Texas Instruments have contributed to the interoperability specification, profiles and use case definition in their respective areas of expertise and will continue this work in the Bluetooth SIG working groups. Several new companies, including terminal, watch and access systems manufacturers will join the finalization of the specification. Once the specification is finalized, the technology will be made broadly available to the industry via the Bluetooth SIG.

Surface Plasmon Resonance

Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) is a phenomenon occurring at metal surfaces(typically gold and silver) when an incident light beam strikes the surface at a particular angle. Depending on the thickness of a molecular layer at the metal surface, the SPR phenomenon results in a graded reduction in intensity of the reflected light. Biomedical applications take advantage of the exquisite sensitivity of SPR to the refractive index of the medium next to the metal surface, which makes it possible to measure accurately the adsorption of molecules on the metal surface an their eventual interactions with specific ligands. The last ten years have seen a tremendous development of SPR use in biomedical applications.

The technique is applied not only to the measurement in real time of the kinetics of ligands receptor interactions and to the screening of lead compounds in the pharmaceutical industry, but also to the measurement DNA hybridization, enzyme- substrate interactions, in polyclonal antibody characterization, epitope mapping, protein conformation studies and label free immunoassays. Conventional SPR is applied in specialized biosensing instruments. These instruments use expensive sensor chips of limited reuse capacity and require complex chemistry for ligand or protein immobilization. Laboratory has successfully applied SPR with colloidal gold particles in buffered solutions. This application offers many advantages over conventional SPR. The support is cheap, easily synthesized, and can be coated with various proteins or protein ligand complexes by charge adsorption. With colloidal gold, the SPR phenomenon can be monitored in any UV spectrophotometer. For high throughput applications we have adapted the technology in an

automated clinical chemistry analyzer. This simple technology finds application in label free quantitative immunoassay techniques for proteins and small analytes, in conformational studies with proteins as well as real time association dissociation measurements of receptor ligand interactions for high throughput screening and lead optimization.

OPTICAL TWEEZERS

Optical tweezers are capable of manipulating nanometer and micrometer-sized dielectric particles by exerting extremely small forces via a highly focused laser beam. The beam is typically focused by sending it through a microscope objective. The narrowest point of the focused beam, known as the beam waist, contains a very strong electric field gradient. It turns out that dielectric particles are attracted along the gradient to the region of strongest electric field, which is the center of the beam. The laser light also tends to apply a force on particles in the beam along the direction of beam propagation. It is easy to understand why if you imagine light to be a group of tiny particles, each impinging on the tiny dielectric particle in its path. This is known as the scattering force and results in the particle being displaced slightly downstream from the exact position of the beam waist.

TEMPEST and ECHELON

Whenever we open the newspapers or switch on the television we can view the gory incidents of violence which has shaken up the world. Terrorism is the master word of today and we are threatened by bomb blasts, hijackings bloodshed and what not !

TEMPEST and ECHELON are the methods of spying in a sophisticated manner. Both were developed by the National Security Agency (NSA) for monitoring the people. These technologies were originally developed for pure espionage, but hackers use them now for spying into other people’s activities.

Tempest is the technology, which can reproduce what you are seeing in your monitor, what you are typing in your keyboard from a couple of kilometers away. It traces all electromagnetic radiation from the victim’s monitor, keyboard, even pc memory and hard disk, then it reproduces the signals.

Echelon is the spying on a large network by sniffing through the words. It can intercept as many as 2 million communications per hour through phone calls, faxes, e-mails, downloads, microwave, cellular, satellite communication etc.

This seminar describes about the various methods employed in spying with the help of Tempest and Echelon and that is why I decided to select this topic for my presentation.

Bubble fusion

“Bubble fusion”, also known as “Sonofusion” provides us with a considerably simpler and cheaper means of thermonuclear fusion study. The application of deuterium ions in fusion helps to reduce the reaction cost as well as improve the reaction efficiency, since deuterium can withstand considerable stress and resultant stretching. The hazard factor also gets reduced compared to other nuclear fusion reactions.
Sonofusion phenomena occur when bubbles implode. This paper reviews the status of understanding the bubble dynamics involved in this phenomena. The experimental and analytical evidence supporting the observed production of neutrons and tritium due to thermonuclear fusion within imploding bubble clusters is reviewed. Also some potential methods to scale up the neutron yield as well as the applications of bubble fusion are discussed.

Plasmonics

Plasmonics is a new branch of science which exploits the properties of plasmons which exist in a metal. Plasmons can be defined as the collective oscillations of the free electron gas density, often at optical frequencies. It is a quasi particle resulting from the quantization of Plasma oscillations. Most of the researches are based on a particular group of plasmons namely ‘SURFACE PLASMONS’ .They are electron waves that propagate along the surface of a conductor. By altering the structure of a metal surface, the interaction of plasmons with light can be modified, offering the potential for revolutionizing photonic systems. Surface plasmons can help to overcome the diffraction limits of size and performance in photonic components. Sub wavelength optics and structures may be possible using plasmonics by exploiting the existence of surface plasmons (SP) in metals. By appropriately designing nanostructures considering its environment, the SP properties can be tailored to making new sub wavelength devices for application ranging from plasmonics chips to bio-photonics. Thus the study of plasmonics has a wide range of applications in various fields such as nanotechnology, medical fields and even in space shuttles.

QUANTUM TELEPORTATION

Quantum teleportation, or entanglement-assisted teleportation, is a technique used to transfer information on a quantum level, usually from one particle (or series of particles) to another particle (or series of particles) in another location via quantum entanglement. It does not transport energy or matter, nor does it allow communication of information at superluminal (faster than light) speed, but is useful for quantum communication and computation.
More precisely, quantum teleportation is a quantum protocol by which a qubit a (the basic unit of quantum information) can be transmitted exactly (in principle) from one location to another. The prerequisites are a conventional communication channel capable of transmitting two classical bits (i.e. one of four states), and an entangled pair (b,c) of qubits, with b at the origin and c at the destination. (So whereas b and c are intimately related, a is entirely independent of them other than being initially colocated with b.) The protocol has three steps: measure a and b jointly to yield two classical bits; transmit the two bits to the other end of the channel (the only potentially time-consuming step, due to speed-of-light considerations); and use the two bits to select one of four ways of recovering c. The upshot of this protocol is to permute the original arrangement ((a,b),c) to ((b′,c′),a), that is, a moves to where c was and the previously separated qubits of the Bell pair turn into a new Bell pair (b′,c′) at the origin.

Intelligent Flight Control System

The Intelligent Flight Control System (IFCS) is a next-generation flight control system designed to provide increased safety for the crew and passengers of aircraft as well as to optimize the aircraft performance under normal conditions. The main benefit of this system is that it will allow a pilot to control an aircraft even under failure conditions that would normally cause it to crash.
The main purpose of the IFCS project is to create a system for use in civilian and military aircraft that is both adaptive and fault tolerant. This is accomplished through the use of upgrades to the flight control software that incorporate self-learning neural network technology.

High-Definition Multimedia Interface

The High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a compact audio/video connector interface for transmitting uncompressed digital streams. It represents a digital alternative to consumer analog standards such as Radio Frequency (RF) coaxial cable, composite video, S-Video, SCART, component video, D-Terminal, and VGA. HDMI connects digital audio/video sources such as set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players, personal computers, video game consoles, and AV receivers to compatible digital audio devices, computer monitors, and digital televisions.

HDMI supports two-way communication between the video source (such as a DVD player) and the DTV, enabling new functionality such as automatic configuration and one-touch play. By using HDMI, devices automatically deliver the most effective format for the display that it is connected to - eliminating the need for the consumer to scroll through all the format options to guess what looks best