Tech Talk

BioTx, a company based in Palo Alto, Calif., founded by EE Ph.D. students Anatoly Yakovlev and Daniel Pivonka, recently did what in startup terms is called a “pivot." They're still planning to commercialize their Stanford research in electronic devices that can be implanted in the body and powered and controlled wirelessly. But a year ago they were focused on developing self-propelling chips that could swim through the bloodstream to get to where they needed to be, say, on the heart. About three months ago, they say they got a much better, or at least easier to commercialize, idea for using their technology. The chips they are now working to develop would be implanted in more ordinary ways, say, laparoscopically, would not help the heart, but rather help the digestive system. The chips can slow the emptying of the stomach, triggering feeling of fullness in obese patients, or do the opposite for people struggling with gastroparesis (delayed stomach emptying), a common side effect of diabetes. And patients could take advantage of the technology with a lot less risk than a gastric bypass. In the future, Yakovlev hopes the devices could also provide relief for patients with chronic conditions like irritable bowel syndrome and gastroesophageal reflux disease. The market, the company believes, is huge.

Sending chips “swimming inside the body is far off and risky,” Yakovlev said, “this is a more immediate need with therapies developed that have been proven to work.”

A number of researchers have demonstrated that electrical stimulation can act as a gastric pacemaker.  And researchers have been working on designs for such implantables, but no such device is yet on the market. 

BioTx, which announced its new focus at Stanford’s StartX Demo Day last week, is now working with researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Texas Medical Center, who will help them with animal testing and clinical trials.

Photo: a scene from the movie Fantastic Voyage. Credit: 20th Century-Fox/Getty Images

The geeks were out on the streets last Saturday, in cities and towns in 35 states. They came out to participate in the National Day of Civic Hacking, the first of what will likely be an annual event, designed to bring together the tech savvy with the creative but not-so-tech savvy to brainstorm about ways to use technology to make their communities better. There were talks, and showcases, and conversations formal and informal—and even some actual coding going on.

In my community, Palo Alto, Calif., the city closed off a couple of blocks of its normally busy downtown, and they filled with booths and bands and people, some showing off tech creations like solar powered bicycles and life sized robots, and some just taking in the scene. It was hard to tell what people were involved in official exhibits, sponsored by a local tech business or nonprofit, and what people were just geeks having fun. Were those people coding on their laptops on in that sidewalk café working on a hacking day project? Or were they just normal Silicon Valley residents going about their day? And hard to tell if the people coding on laptops here and there were hacking day participants, or just happened to be working within the general area of the hacker block party.

Inside Talenthouse, a downtown business, I heard audience members questioning a panel on civic engagement about how to get his app that uses proximity awareness to build community to scale beyond his local neighborhood. In a plaza, a group of high school students played classic rock. Inside the Patagonia retail store an architect, a land use activist, and a journalist were developing an app to help local officials gather data about the use of free street parking in certain neighborhoods, a hot topic right now.

While hackers were getting some work done, the local kids were really the ones getting the most out of the day in Palo Alto. They were fascinated by the exhibits, like the crazy data visualization project involving a line graph created by ping pong balls, clear tubes, and blowers set up by startup incubator The Hive and demonstrations of a giant geodesic walking robot. But they particularly seemed drawn by Tech Shop’s large tent, where 3-D printers went about their mesmerizing work. I’m not sure today’s day of civic hacking solved any burning problems in my community, but it likely got a few more children interested in STEM careers.  And I had to wonder how of those geeks in the streets got an idea for a new startup that day.

Photos: Tekla Perry

Strawberry Fields may live forever in the Beatles' song, but fresh strawberries survive for only two or three days in the refrigerator. Now experiments with specially-produced LEDs have shown how ultraviolet light can keep the fruit mold-free for as many as nine days.

UV lights in refrigerators have been tried before, but have failed to extend the life of stored fruits and vegetables because they dried the produce out. But new research being presented next week at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO: 2013) suggests that low-level LED-based UV light could lengthen the shelf life of strawberries without the drying problem.

"UV-LEDs presented the opportunity to try low power devices that work well in the cold and can be engineered to work in small spaces such as refrigerator compartments," says Steven Britz, lead researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), in a press release.

What if you suddenly found that everything you thought you knew was wrong? Okay: What if you suddenly found that everything you thought you knew was slightly wrong?

For years, climate researchers have mined radio occultation data to produce a picture of the atmosphere. Just as refraction makes the sun appear to drop tendrils down to the horizon as it sets, the atmosphere bends radio waves arcing through the upper air from medium-Earth-orbit GPS satellites (circling at altitudes of about 20 200 km) to low-Earth-orbit satellites (non-geostationary communications and remote-sensing craft at altitudes of about 2000 km). Picture a GPS satellite beaming a ray over the surface of the Earth to a low-flying satellite playing peek-a-boo around the curvature of the earth, with the atmosphere acting like a prism to bend the light path downward.

Environmental scientists can track the exquisitely timed GPS signals to measure how a wave’s path and phase shift, analyzing it to give a picture of atmospheric pressure and, especially, temperature at almost every altitude.

The basic formula for calculating the refractive bending angle dates back to 1953, and includes terms for deflection by dry atmosphere, moist atmosphere (humidity), water droplets, and ionospheric effects, all as functions of altitude. The atmospheric, humidity, and water droplet terms all tend to increase the beam’s downward bend. The ionospheric term—a function of electron density (number of electrons per cubic meter) and the beam’s frequency—tends to bend the beam back up towards the horizontal. In effect, the ionospheric term masks some of the effects of temperature and humidity.

Despite later refinements in the bending angle calculation, subsequent studies may not have made enough allowance for the wide fluctuations in high-atmosphere ionization caused by the ever-changing solar wind. 

Researchers at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change at Austria’s University of Graz analyzed 11 years worth of radio occultation and solar particle flux data to conclude that we have made longstanding and systematic errors in our pictures of the atmosphere. After reviewing CHAMP (Challenging Minisatellite Payload) and COSMIC  (Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate) radio occultation data from 2001 through 2011, Graz physicists J. Danzer, B. Scherlin-Pirscher, and  project leader Ulrich Foelsche calculate, for example, that temperature measurements for the air 35 km above the equator have been off by about -3.9 Kelvin during the peak of the solar cycle (as in 2002) and -1.4 K during the solar minimum (2008). And, though it has long been known that bending angles change at night, the variation is, in fact, larger than had been previously suspected, with daytime path “undeflections” as much as 0.4 microradians ( 0.000023 degrees) greater than previously calculated.

The purpose of the research, the authors note, is to allow more accurate interpretation of very large-scale, very long-term climate monitoring and projection. Foelsche readily concedes that the effect is small, but it does affect our understanding of the current situation. For example, atmospheric warming near the Earth's surface seems to be accompanied by a cooling in the stratosphere. The CHAMP satellite was launched in 2000 (just in time for the maximum) and re-entered the atmosphere in 2010 (just after the minimum). So the gradual decline of ionospheric bias would have masked anthropogenic cooling of the upper atmosphere, leading us to underestimate the magnitude of the effect, Foelsche says.

Image: Wegener Center

(Post revised to correct 0.4 microradian bias figure.)

A friend of mine is a local tour guide, and occasionally gets tapped for a Silicon Valley tech tour. She has lots to tell her groups about the history of Silicon Valley and the tech industry, but not so much to show them—people can only take so many pictures of the Hewlett-Packard garage.

In classic Silicon Valley fashion, an entrepreneur is coming to the rescue of Silicon Valley tour guides and tech history buffs; he’s planning to erect a statue of Nikola Tesla in Palo Alto. Tesla, best known for his contributions to AC power, radio communications, and X-ray technology, did most of his research in New York City. But Silicon Valley looks up to Tesla as the consummate geek—consider that current hot startup Tesla Motors was named in his honor (and that I can’t introduce myself to anyone in this valley without hearing a Tesla-related joke about my name). So clearly we need a statue here.

The entrepreneur, Dorrian Porter, was inspired to start the project by a Google doodle. And, in modern Silicon Valley style, he turned to Kickstarter, the money-raising website, to make it happen.

Porter has commissioned a 1.9-meter bronze statue from a local artist, Terry Guyer, and then convinced Harold Hohbach, who owns a building near California Avenue in Palo Alto, to put the statue up on his property. And he just successfully concluded his Kickstarter campaign, raising $127 260. The statue will show Tesla demonstrating wireless transmission of power more than a hundred years ago (a project described in "A Critical Look at Wireless Power," published in Spectrum in 2010).

Besides serving as a monument and photo opp, the statue will house a time capsule, to be opened on January 7, 2043, 100 years after Tesla’s death. And the statue will contain a free Wi-Fi hotspot.

As part of the Kickstarter campaign, Porter posted a video (below) that made fun of Silicon Valley investors for their short-term thinking, and hopes that the statue will encourage entrepreneurs and investors to think, like Tesla, bigger and longer term.

Photo: Model of Tesla statue. Credit: Terry Guyer

Conceptual artist and self-described experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats has previously snapped up San Francisco real estate in extra dimensions, exhibited paintings based on the average color of the universe (beige, in case you were wondering), and created television programming for plants.

Next week, he will install what could (very very arguably) be called the world's first quantum ATM. It will be available from 1:00 pm EST on June 11 through June 14 at the Engineer's Office Gallery, a tiny alcove in the basement of 20 Rockefeller Plaza that once housed a water fountain. According to Keats' press release for the project, the concept has the potential to "fix the world economy by bolstering finance with quantum physics." This quantum bank, it continues, "will be the first financial institution with the technological means to make money quantum, resulting in a nearly infinite proliferation of wealth."

How would it do that? The ATM consists of two areas - one for deposits and one for withdrawals (which, Keats says, will be stocked with bills bearing the word "quantum" on them). These will sit near an enclosure containing a small sphere of uranium, which will periodically emit an alpha particle. These particles can in principle hit any one of 7 billion boxes—corresponding to 7 billion accounts—that have been inscribed on a plastic cylinder surrounding the sphere. Like Schrödinger's Cat, so long as the ATM remains insulated from the outside world, the deposit exists in a superposition of many possible states: it is effectively credited to all seven billion accounts at once. 

In reality, of course, this is a conceptual piece. Deposits don't trigger anything in the ATM (the uranium will keep spitting out particles quite happily even if no one deposits any money) and even if the ATM were recording deposits and alpha particle hits in some way, if you went so far as to open up the box and measure what's inside, you'd find only as much money as had been put in (the delicate superposition of states would collapse). 

But I like this project. It's another way to think about the abstraction of money and a reminder of how modern currency has diverged from physical measures of wealth, such as gold. It's also a nice, macroscopic way to think about the fundamental strangeness of quantum mechanics. And it might be the closest we get to real, uncounterfeitable quantum money for a while yet.

Bin He, a biomedical engineering professor at the University of Minnesota, is developing tools to help people with disabilities. But part of that research involves some studies that look like pure fun. He and his students have developed a way to control the flight of a quadrotor using your mind.

“Our study shows that or the fist time, humans are able to control the flight of flying robots using just there thoughts sensed from a noninvasive skull cap,” says He.

Subjects wore a skull cap studded with 64 EEG sensors. Using special algorithms, data from the sensors were translated into commands for the robot. When a wearer thought about making a fist with one his left hand—but did not actually do it—the robot would flight left. Thinking about the right fist tilted sent the robot to the right. Both fists meant rise and then fall.

Twenty-two federal agencies, including the Census Bureau, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, NASA, and the Peace Corps are opening up their data files—at least some of them—to hackers around the United States today as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking. These hackers are the good guys—volunteers around the country who will develop tools and apps to make that data more publicly accessible.

Todd Park, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, said in a press statement, “Imagine all the good that can be done by innovators with the growing troves of data the federal government has been making available—data on everything from hospital pricing to drinking water safety to natural disasters and much more. Americans paid for these data resources and deserve easy access to them.”

Working with this data is only a small part of the coding and other tech-related activities going on around the United States today. In Los Angeles, a foundation founded by will.i.am is hosting an event designed to bring young people into technology.  In Rockaway Beach, N.Y., a town recently damaged by Hurricane Sandy, civic hackers are building tools to help the community and the government collaborate on rebuilding.  In Austin, Texas, hackers are participating in a “mapathon,” an all-day effort to make maps of Austin more detailed, as well as inclusive of moving targets, like food trucks.

In my town, Palo Alto, Calif., the main business street in town is closed today to make way for an ambitious agenda of on-the-spot software writing, brainstorming, hardware building and arts activities, displays by tech companies, speeches, and food. Speakers include MacArthur Fellow Jim Fruchterman, futurist Paul Saffo, NASA researcher Steven Zornetzer, and data scientist Paco Nathan. While the speakers hold forth at a local park, some twenty VCs are holding open office hours for entrepreneurs wanting to pitch their venture ideas. Meanwhile, over at the Googleplex in nearby Mountain View, Saturday kicks off a two-day hacking event focusing on technology to benefit public health and the environment.

It’s taking a number of private and public sponsors to make this all happen, details about the sponsors, the concept, and local events are at available at Hack For Change.

What’s going on in your community?

En route to the Martian surface, NASA's Curiosity rover was buffeted five times by distinct blasts of protons jettisoned from the sun. The spacecraft was also bombarded by a steady stream of galactic cosmic rays, charged particles emanating from far outside the solar system. All of this was documented by the Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector, mounted on the top deck of the rover. 

Now the team responsible for the experiment has tallied up the results and estimated the sort of risk the unfriendly radiation environment beyond low-Earth orbit might pose to human explorers. The numbers, reported this week in Science, are in line with previous estimates. All told, the authors find, an astronaut on a 360-day round trip to the Red Planet would be exposed to 662 millisieverts of radiation from galactic cosmic rays alone (solar protons tack on a bit more). 

That's a somewhat encouraging number. The European Space Agency, the Russian Space Agency, and the Japanese Space Agency set the current career limit for astronauts at 1000 millisieverts (pdf). NASA sets its career limit at no more than a 3 percent risk of developing and dying from a cancer caused by radiation exposure: the actual dose will vary by age and gender, but it's in that same 1000 millisievert ballpark.

There are a few caveats to the new results. Protons from the sun amounted to just 5 percent of the radiation dose measured during Curiosity's cruise to the planet, but the mission coincided with a relatively inactive period of the sun's 11-year cycle. The solar contribution, the paper says, could potentially be "many times larger in a different time frame." Then, of course, there's the radiation astronauts will be exposed to while on the Martian surface, which the team has yet to calculate. Since Mars has considerably less atmospheric and magnetic shielding than the Earth, the flux there could also be quite high.

On the other hand, new developments might reduce radiation exposure on missions beyond the moon. The shielding around Curiosity during its flight "is probably not drastically different" from what will be on the Crew Exploration Vehicle, NASA's planned spacecraft for deep space missions, the researchers write. But alternate shielding materials could help, and some are eyeing the possibility of using superconducting coils to create a protective magnetic bubble around a spacecraft. 

(Photo: NASA/Reuters)

How many of you have been to Las Vegas? Were I ask this question in a reader-filled room, I’d bet a majority would raise your hands, thanks to all the trade-show action there. How many of you have taken the monorail to the MGM Grand? I’m guessing I’d see quite a few hands still raised. Now, how many of you have gotten off the monorail at the MGM Grand, walked through the hotel, and made it to the front door without spending at least 15 minutes horribly lost? Maybe I’d have one person still nodding yes, but he was probably just lucky.

Getting around inside the MGM—or any large hotel—can be a nightmare; so many seem to be designed like the inn described in the song “Hotel California”: You can check in any time you want, but you can never leave. And, to date, the navigation software on mobile devices hasn’t been able to help lost travelers find their way inside such GPS-signal-blocking giant buildings.

In the past year or so, a number of companies have put a lot of effort into developing technologies to fix the indoor navigation problem. Solutions take on multiple forms, including simple maps, dead reckoning software that gathers data from sensors already built into smart phones, systems that calculate location using signals from cell phone towers, planted locator beams, and preexisting WiFi hotspots.

As t turns out it’s this last approach that will likely get you out of the MGM—without retracing your steps several times—the next time you’re in Las Vegas. Because today, Lighthouse Signal Systems announced that it has mapped the WiFi signals covering the nearly 2 million square meters of casino and hotel space in the gambling mecca. The result is WiFi fingerprints that enable a mobile device to determine its location to within 5 to 7 meters. Lighthouse is making the signal map and its indoor navigation software available to Android developers for free; it expects to profit from taking a small share of location-targeted ad revenue as that market develops. And, though Lighthouse doesn’t claim to be particularly good at app development, it does have a free Android app, Lighthouse Locate, that allows consumers to beta test its system. (Lighthouse Locate is available on Google Play.)

One small step for indoor navigation, one giant leap towards ensuring that even if you happen to get lost in Vegas you won't stay lost in Vegas.

Photo: Lighthouse Signal Systems

Updated 5/24/2013