Electric eye Part Two : An Effort to solve the Problem

In my last post I have told you how big problem 'Blindness' is and now I am going to tell you about an organization which is trying to get a revolutionary solution for this problem.

'Boston Retinal Implant Project' founded by 'Dr. Joseph Rizzo 'and 'Professor John Wyatt' is trying to develop a microelectronic retinal implant to restore functional vision to patients with certain forms of retinal blindness.

Though there are involved many specialist in this project and this touches many areas but mainly this project is composed of two main components-

Biology-

The biological components have two main issue-

1- optimal parameters of electrical stimulation of the retina

2-ideal biocompatible materials that will ultimately be used for the retinal prosthesis.

To solve these issues they are making experiments on animals and doing electrophysiological recordings from neurons of the visual system to determine the electrical stimulation parameters necessary to generate visual percepts

Engineering-

This is the most tough and key component of the project. Engineers are dealing with conception, designing, and implementation of the retinal prosthesis.

Challenges- 
What do you think? Is solution of such a big problem will be simple?No, there are many challenges in this approach. The importance of device stability stems from the fact that the microelectronics have to function properly within the relatively harsh environment of the human body. This represents a major challenge in developing implantable devices with long-term system performance while reducing their overall size. 

 

Long-term biocompatibility is one of the most significant challenges to be met in order to develop a successful retinal prosthesis. We have worked to identify implantable and biologically safe materials that can be microfabricated into exceptionally thin and flexible structures.

Progress till now-

Currently, the engineering division of the Boston Retinal Implant Project is developing and testing prototype implants for the next round of animal and human trials. The team is also working on the design of next generation prototype of the prosthesis. 

Key to the current prosthesis is a custom designed, low power analog and mixed signal integrated circuit (IC) chip.

So what is the hope?

So after knowing so much about this all what do you think? I am a very optimistic and so I hope soon they will launch their final product and this artificial eye will be available commercially. Are you optimistic enough ???

Electric Eyes Part One : Understanding the problem 'Blindness'

Science and technology is not only about making life easer and full of enjoy but it is also about solving the problems which are making life of some people miserable.'Blindness' is the problem of same type and  project 'Electric Eyes' is an effort to solve this problem. So,I will tell you about this project but for understanding that well you should understand the problem .


Working of Eyes-

So at first talk about the working of eyes in very short .The light coming from an object enters the eye through cornea and pupil. The eye lens converges these light rays to form a real, inverted and diminished image on the retina. The light sensitive cells of the retina gets activated with the incidence of light and generate electric signals. These electric signals are sent to the brain by the optic nerves and the brain interprets the electrical signals in such away that we see an image which is erect and of the same size as the object.

The retina contains two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones.

The rods are more numerous, some 120 million, and are more sensitive than the cones. However, they are not sensitive to color.

 The 6 to 7 million cones provide the eye's color sensitivity and they are much more concentrated in the central yellow spot known as the macula. In the center of that region is the " fovea centralis ", a 0.3 mm diameter rod-free area with very thin, densely packed cones.


What is blindness – 
When a body lost the the power of interpretation of image signal due to any reason like unavailability of signal or very weak signal or unablity of tranfer of the signal , then this condition is called 'Blindness'.

So Why People get blind - 

There can be many reason for  blindness. Any failure
in the whole pathway or any part of eye  object can make a person blind.

 Most common deices of eyes -

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a disease associated with aging that gradually destroys sharp, central vision.

Central vision is needed for seeing objects clearly and for common daily tasks such as reading and driving. AMD affects the macula, the part of the eye that allows you to see fine detail. AMD causes no pain.








Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) is an inherited eye condition affecting initially the mid peripheral portion of the retina.

Initially, a person with RP may complain that their vision is poor at night ("nightblindness"). Peripheral (or side) vision gradually decreases and eventually is lost while central vision is usually preserved until late stages of the disease.




A cataract is an opacity (cloudiness) within the lens. Most cataracts are related to aging and are very common in the elderly population.

In the surgical treatment of cataract, the lens inside the eye is removed and replaced with a clear artificial lens.

 




Diabetic retinopathy occurs as a result of uncontrolled blood sugar associated with advanced diabetes and if left untreated, can cause blindness.

To date, there are no treatments for either AMD or RP.

Do We Have only Bad News?


Off course not!!!  I am not here to tell you to tell you about the problem …......I am here to tell you some solution. It was just to give you a feeling that how big problem we are tying to solve. So in the next part of this post I will tell you about a great effort to solve most of these problems and about the 'Ray of Hope' for mankind.

Sixth sense...Technology that will bring revolution

Every new technology makes some changes in our life and makes it more com
fortable but some times a technology changes our life fully. Cell phone was a great example of this .Now one more technology of the same type is about to come. The technology is ‘Sixth Sense’ and it is supposed to be a a great revolution.

Basic technology -

The Sixth Sense is a wearable gesture interface that lets natural hand gestures interact with digital information. In other words, it's the computer interface that you have watching in every science fiction film made in the last ten years.

This Technology is a mini-projector coupled with a camera and a cell phone—which acts as the computer and connected to the Cloud, all the information stored on the web. Sixth Sense can also obey hand gestures. The camera recognizes objects around a person instantly, with the micro-projector overlaying the information on any surface, including the object itself or hand. Also can access or manipulate the information using fingers. Color marked fingers are also a part of this system.

So what it can do?

It has a very long list of work it can do. This is going to do things in the same way you had seen in many English films. Let see some examples

See time or make a call

You want to see time? No need to have a wrist watch. Just draw a circle on your wrist with colored mark figure. The camera which is the part of Sixth sense system will recognize it and projector will project a wrist watch there. In the same way if you want to make a call you can just draw a square on your hand and no will appear there to make a call.









Plane or Train Timing Enquiry

If you going to catch a train or a plane and don’t know the status of the train, you just need to see your ticket.

The projector will recognize it and gather all information about the ticket. As it is connected to web it will get the information abut the train and will project on the ticket.

More Cool uses-

There are many more things that it can do. If you reading a book it will give you a lot of information about keywords author and many other things related to that book.

If you are reading news paper you can see live video instead of seeing just still images like seeing live update about what you are reading.

Cost of this system-

This is always a million dollar question but in this too it is really cool. This system will cost only $350 which mean less expensive than notebook.

So , Are you ready to change you life fully ???

Bulletproof T-Shirt

Why do we wear cloth? Simply, to protect our body from weather. But what if it can protect you form bullets too? No I am neither going to tell you about heavy bulletproof jackets not going to tell you a comic story. Scientist has made it possible recently. Now a soft cotton t-shirt will be strong enough to protect your body .In University of South Carolina a scientist Dr. Xiaodong L  did it.

How it is possible?

To make this thing possible they have used a material named boron carbide. This is the third toughest known material at room temperature. They dipped sections of regular T-shirts in a special mix of nickel and borate. After allowing the cotton to absorb the mix for 2 hours, the textile was dried quickly in an oven and cured at a high temperature for 3 hours. Once ready, the pieces of cotton were placed in a furnace and headed at 1160°C for 4 hours while continuously aerated with argon. Finally, the resulting fabric pieces were cooled and analyzed using electron microscopes and a barrage of strength tests.

So what was the result of test?

The end result was a fairly elastic and flexible fabric with the strength of boron carbide but the flexibility of cloth.

Future scope

The researchers are hopeful that this new technique will revolutionize not only personal body armor but also the protective coating on planes, tanks and other military vehicles. "We should be able to fabricate much tougher body armors using this new technique. It could even be used to produce lightweight, fuel-efficient cars and aircrafts."

Use in making better Vehicle

As boron carbon nano wires is one of the toughest materials so we can hope to see very light and so high mileage vehicle and planes.

So when you will get it?

Although the scientists have high hopes for their nano wires, the new tech isn't ready to replace Kevlar in bulletproof vests any time soon. The actual performance of the material wasn't quite as high as they had hoped, and further refinement of the technique will be necessary before it can replace current body armor materials. So you have  to wait for some time .

But at least we have to say…….......this is an incredible idea.

OS CHROME : Solution of all web browsing problems

Which OS you are using in your computer? let me guess.... o.k.  I got it , this is some version of Windows. May be XP or VISTA or may be 07.Are you spending maximum of your time on net surfing? If 'YES' then your System must be suffering of virus, worms, tors even if you have latest version of most expensive anti-virus.

Then why don't you switch on Linux ? oh it is too tough to use !!! don't worry GOOGLE have brought the solution specially for people like you who do net surfing a lot and the name of the solution for all these problems is 'CHROME'.

GOOGLE have announced his OS named CHROME.This is an open source OS based on Linux and is designed to work exclusively with web-application.This OS will not be available for installing but it will but is will be inbuilt in some hardware with whom Google have partnership.

As this is a Linux base  OS and will be embedded on hardware , is will be virus and worm free but it's most exiting feature will be it's speed. Google have claimed that it will boot  in 15seconds. As it is explicitly designed for net users it is,it will surly give a very high speed  for net.

This OS have a very easy-to-use  interface and have inbuilt media player helps to deal with multimedia files off line  , adobe flash player   and support to printers to get print out from any printer.


But the most important issue is that how much it will cost you ? well according to a light guess it will be in between $300 to $ 400 and it is not a big amount for all these benefits.Moreover Google have said that it will provide this OS free , so if there is a good competition prices can go down

So dear friend be ready to enjoy a new way of browsing............after all this is a great change in the world of web surfing.