Brain computer interface

Man machine interface has been one of the growing fields of research and development in recent years. Most of the effort has been dedicated to the design of user- friendly or ergonomic systems by means of innovative interfaces such as voice recognition, virtual reality. A direct brain-computer interface would add a new dimension to man-machine interaction. A brain-computer interface, sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a human or animal brain(or brain cell culture) and an external device. In one BCIs, computers either accept commands from the brain or send signals to it but not both. Two way BCIs will allow brains and external devices to exchange information in both directions but have yet to be successfully implanted in animals or humans. Brain-Computer interface is a staple of science fiction writing. In its earliest incarnations no mechanism was thought necessary, as the technology seemed so far fetched that no explanation was likely. As more became known about the brain however, the possibility has become more real and the science fiction more technically sophisticated. Recently, the cyberpunk movement has adopted the idea of 'jacking in', sliding 'biosoft' chips into slots implanted in the skull(Gibson, W.1984).Although such biosofts are still science fiction, there have been several recent steps toward interfacing the brain and computers. In this definition, the word brain means the brain or nervous system of an organic life form rather than the mind. Computer means any processing or computational device, from simple circuits to silicon chips (including hypothetical future technologies like quantum computing).

Although virtual laser keyboards perform the same function as traditional keyboards, how they analyze and send information to another device is a different process.

Virtual keyboard

At their most basic, all keyboards, whether they're physical or virtual, are input devices -- once you type in a certain series of keystrokes, you're telling the keyboard to deliver a command to your computer. This allows you to write in a word-processing document, close out a program or write out a Web site's URL in a browser. But apart from the science-fiction element, what sets a virtual laser keyboard apart from a regular keyboard?

A traditional keyboard, one that hooks up to a desktop computer or is part of a laptop, is very much like another smaller computer. If you take it apart, it has a processor and circuitry similar to the insides of your computer. Underneath each key is a grid of circuits, and once you press a key, the switch closes. This sends a small electrical current through the grid, which the processor recognizes and analyzes. The processor, in turn, sends the information regarding your keystrokes to your computer, and it can do this several ways. Most desktop users connect their keyboard using cables, although common wireless technologies like Bluetooth let you type from a distance, as long as the computer has the necessary receiver. Laptop keyboards, on the other hand, connect directly to the computer's hardware.

When you type on a virtual laser keyboard, there aren't any switches involved. In fact, there aren't any mechanical moving parts at all. The device projects the image of a QWERTY keyboard onto a flat, non-reflective surface using a red diode laser. The laser, similar to the kind you see on those cheap laser pointers people wave at rock concerts, shines through a Diffractive Optical Element (DOE), which is simply a tiny image of the keyboard. The DOE, along with special optical lenses, expands the image to a usable size and projects it onto a surface.

But a simple image of a keyboard won't get you anywhere -- something needs to analyze the information you type in. Situated near the bottom of the device is an infrared (IR) laser diode, which shoots out a thin plane of infrared light. The plane, which is invisible and runs parallel to the surface, rests only millimeters above the image of the keyboard. When you start typing, you pass your fingers through certain areas of the infrared light. A CMOS (complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor) images your finger's position within the area of the keyboard, and a special sensor chip called a Virtual Interface Processing Core analyzes the location of the intended keystroke. The device then sends this information to the computer receiving the commands.

Blue eyes

The U.S. computer giant,IBM has been conducting research on the Blue Eyes technology at its Almaden Research Center (ARC) in San Jose, Calif., since 1997. The ARC is IBM's main laboratory for basic research. The primary objective of the research is to give a computer the ability of the human being to assess a situation by using the senses of sight, hearing and touch.

Animal survival depends on highly developed sensory abilities. Likewise, human cognition depends on highly developed abilities to perceive, integrate, and interpret visual, auditory, and touch information. Without a doubt, computers would be much more powerful if they had even a small fraction of the perceptual ability of animals or humans. Adding such perceptual abilities to computers would enable computers and humans to work together more as partners. Toward this end, the Blue Eyes project aims at creating computational devices with the sort of perceptual abilities that people take for granted.

Thus Blue eyes is the technology to make computers sense and understand human behavior and feelings and react in the proper ways.

Eyegaze systems

The field of human computer interaction has been undergoing a new renaissance lately. While many companies have, and continue to spend millions to develop highly visually appealing GUIs and state-of-art interaction systems for the common users since the inception of desktops, the development of interactive systems for the disabled has taken a kick start relatively recently. And the Eyegaze systems are one of the most pivotal inventions in this context. The Eyegaze System is a communication and control system for people with complex physical disabilities. You run the system with your eyes. By looking at control keys displayed on a screen, a person can synthesize speech, control his environment (lights, appliances, etc.), type, operate a telephone, run computer software, operate a computer mouse, and access the Internet and e-mail. Eyegaze Systems are being used to write books, attend school and enhance the quality of life of people with disabilities all over the world.

Inferno

Inferno is answering the current and growing need in the marketplace for distributed computing solutions. Based on more than 20 years of Bell Labs research into operating systems and programming languages, Inferno is poised to propel network computing into the 21st century. Bell Labs will continue to support the evolution of Inferno under a joint development agreement with Vita Nuova. Inferno is an operating system for creating and supporting distributed services. It was originally developed by the Computing Science Research Center of Bell Labs, the R&D arm of Lucent Technologies, and further developed by other groups in Lucent. Inferno was designed specifically as a commercial product, both for licensing in the marketplace and for use within new Lucent offerings. It encapsulates many years of Bell Labs research in operating systems, languages, on-the-fly compilers, graphics, security, networking and portability.

Novel electrostatic coupling method to make quantum dot conjugates

Research with semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) is increasingly showing their huge potential for in vitro and in vivo cellular imaging. For instance, we have previously reported about how researchers have used QDs for in vivo imaging of embryonic stem cells in mice, a novel technique that has opened up the possibility of using QDs for fast and accurate imaging applications in stem cell therapy ("Quantum dot imaging could benefit embryonic stem cell therapy") or how live cell imaging can be conducted with biodegradable quantum dot nanocomposites.

The usefulness of quantum dots comes from their peak emission frequency's extreme sensitivity – quantum mechanical in nature – to both the dot's size and composition. QDs have been touted as possible replacements for organic dyes in the imaging of biological systems, due to their excellent fluorescent properties, good chemical stability, broad excitation ranges and high photobleaching thresholds.

In order for quantum dots to be useful as as nanoemitters for biological imaging, they need to be linked with a specific sensor molecule that exclusively targets a biomolecule of interest. These conjugations are usually made using small linker molecules although this often demands multistep procedures and may suffer from QD colloidal instabilities during the coupling reactions.

Demonstrating hyaluronic acid-QD conjugates (HA-QDs), researchers in Korea have now solved this problem by simple electrostatic conjugation which offers stable and size-tunable conjugates.

"Our conjugation method is simple, size-tunable, and robust" Sungjee Kim tells Nanowerk. "These HA-QDs show cancer specificity and can label lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs). We have also investigated comprehensive cytotoxicity studies of our HA-QDs – they show remarkably low toxicity."

Kim is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry at Pohang University of Science & Technology. Together with an interdisciplinary team of scientists from his group, Hanyang University, and Seoul National University, he managed to use quantum dots to visualize in vivo, for the first time, a lymphatic vessel.

The team has reported their findings in a recent paper in ACS Nano (Hyaluronic Acid Quantum Dot Conjugates for In Vivo Lymphatic Vessel Imaging).

The team used hyaluronic acid – a biodegradable natural polysaccharide – instead of antibodies to target LYVE-1, a lymphatic vessel endothelial receptor, which enabled fluorescence staining of LECs.

Kim points out that hyaluronic acid can be used in large quantities because of the cost effectiveness and biocompatibility. "We also demonstrated a simple electrostatic conjugation scheme to conjugate QDs to HA" he says. "Potentially, HA-QDs can be used for cancer targeting and for visualization of lymphatic vessels in vivo for long-term applications."

The scientists say that HA-QDs can be a useful reporter probe that monitors tumor progressions, such as metastasis trafficking, or that screens anticancer drug efficacies. For example, they can be potentially used to real-time monitor the formation and development of lymphatic vessels around tumor mass such as lymphangiogenesis.

"We have shown that our HA-QDs can be also used to visualize lymphatic vessels by fluorescence staining since they can be delivered into lymphatic endothelial cells through receptors such as LYVE-1," Kim explains. " As a matter of fact, we have been able to fluorescence stain lymphatic vessels of mice up to for a few days. However, being an exogenous imaging contrast agent, the HA-QDs have the inherent limitation of signal dilution due to cell division. To overcome this limitation, multiple injections of HA-QDs may be necessary."

Generally, because HA-QDs can target cancer cells, they can be used for cancer diagnosis and could help in studying the mechanism behind developing tumors. Using multiplexed QD imaging, tumor growth and angiogenesis can be visualized real-time in vivo using animal models without sacrificing the animals.

VIRUS

Do viruses and all the other nasties in cyberspace matter? Do they really do much harm? Imagine that no one has updated your anti-virus software for a few months. When they do, you find that your accounts spreadsheets are infected with a new virus that changes figures at random. Naturally you keep backups. But you might have been backing up infected files for months. How do you know which figures to trust? Now imagine that a new email virus has been released. Your company is receiving so many emails that you decide to shut down your email gateway altogether and miss an urgent order from a big customer.

Imagine that a friend emails you some files he found on the Internet. You open them and trigger a virus that mails confidential documents to everyone in your address book including your competitors. Finally, imagine that you accidentally send another company, a report that carries a virus. Will they feel safe to do business with you again? Today new viruses sweep the planet in hours and virus scares are major news. A computer virus is a computer program that can spread across computers and networks by making copies of itself, usually without the user’s knowledge. Viruses can have harmful side effects. These can range from displaying irritating messages to deleting all the files on your computer.

A virus program has to be run before it can infect your computer. Viruses have ways of making sure that this happens. They can attach themselves to other programs or hide in code that is run automatically when you open certain types of files. The virus can copy itself to other files or disks and make changes on your computer. Virus side effects, often called the payload, are the aspect of mostinterest to users. Password-protecting the documents on a particular day, mailing information about the user and machine to an address somewhere are some of the harmful side effects of viruses. Various kinds of viruses include macro virus, parasitic or file virus, Boot virus, E-mails are the biggest source of viruses. Usually they come as attachments with emails.

The Internet caused the spreading of viruses around the globe. The threat level depends on the particular code used in the WebPages and the security measures taken by service providers and by you. One solution to prevent the viruses is anti-virus softwares. Anti-virus software can detect viruses, prevent access to infected files and often eliminate the infection.

Computer viruses are starting to affect mobile phones too. The virus is rare and is unlikely to cause much damage. Anti-virus experts expect that as mobile phones become more sophisticated they will be targeted by virus writers. Some firms are already working on anti-virus software for mobile phones. VBS/Timo-A, Love Bug,Timofonica,CABIR,aka ACE-? and UNAVAILABLE are some of the viruses that affect the mobile phones

BASIC CONCEPTS

What is a virus?

A computer virus is a computer program that can spread across computers and networks by making copies of itself, usually without the user’s knowledge. Viruses can have harmful side-effects. These can range from displaying irritating messages to deleting all the files on your computer.

Evolution of virus

In the mid-1980s Basit and Amjad Alvi of Lahore, Pakistan discovered that people were pirating their software. They responded by writing the first computer virus, a program that would put a copy of itself and a copyright message on any floppy disk copies their customers made. From these simple beginnings, an entire virus counter-culture has emerged. Today new viruses sweep the planet in hours and virus scares are major news

How does a virus infect computers?

A virus program has to be run before it can infect your computer. Viruses have ways of making sure that this happens. They can attach themselves to other programs or hide in code that is run automatically when you open certain types of files. You might receive an infected file on a disk, in an email attachment, or in a download from the internet. As soon as you launch the file, the virus code runs. Then the virus can copy itself to other files or disks and make changes on your computer.

Who writes viruses?

Virus writers don’t gain in financial or career terms; they rarely achieve real fame; and, unlike hackers, they don’t usually target particular victims, since viruses spread too indiscriminately. Virus writers tend to be male, under 25 and single. Viruses also give their writers powers in cyberspace that they could never hope to have in the real world.

Virus side effects(Payload)

Virus side-effects are often called the payload. Viruses can disable our computer hardware, Can change the figures of an accounts spreadsheets at random, Adversely affects our email contacts and business domain, Can attack on web servers…

 Messages -WM97/Jerk displays the message ‘I think (user’s name) is a big stupid jerk!’  Denying access -WM97/NightShade password-protects the current document on Friday 13th. Data theft- Troj/LoveLet-A emails information about the user and machine to an address in the Philippines

. Corrupting data -XM/Compatable makes changes to the data in Excel spreadsheets. Deleting data -Michelangelo overwrites parts of the hard disk on March 6th.

 Disabling Hardware -CIH or Chernobyl (W95/CIH-10xx)

 attempts to overwrite the BIOS on April 26th, making the machine unusable.

 Crashing servers-Melissa or Explore Zip, which spread via email, can generate so much mail that servers crash.

There is a threat to confidentiality too. Melissa can forward documents, which may contain sensitive information, to anyone in your address book. Viruses can seriously damage your credibility. If you send infected documents to customers, they may refuse to do business with you or demand compensation. Sometimes you risk embarrassment as well as a damaged business reputation. WM/Polypost, for example, places copies of your documents in your name on alt.sex usenet newsgroups.

VIRUSES AND VIRUS LIKE PROGRAMMES

Trojan horses

Trojan horses are programs that do things that are not described in their specifications The user runs what they think is a legitimate program, allowing it to carry out hidden, often harmful, functions. For example, Troj/Zulu claims to be a program for fixing the ‘millennium bug’ but actually overwrites the hard disk. Trojan horses are sometimes used as a means of infecting a user with a computer virus.

Backdoor Trojans

A backdoor Trojan is a program that allows someone to take control of another user’s PC via the internet. Like other Trojans, a backdoor Trojan poses as legitimate or desirable software. When it is run (usually on a Windows 95/98 PC), it adds itself to the PC’s startup routine. The Trojan can then monitor the PC until it makes a connection to the internet. Once the PC is on-line, the person who sent the Trojan can use software on their computer to open and close programs on the infected computer, modify files and even send items to the printer. Subseven and Back Orifice are among the best known backdoor Trojans.

Worms

Worms are similar to viruses but do not need a carrier (like a macro or a boot sector).They are subtype of viruses. Worms simply create exact copies of themselves and use communications between computers to spread. Many viruses, such as Kakworm (VBS/Kakworm) or Love Bug (VBS/LoveLet-A), behave like worms and use email to forward themselves to other users.

Boot sector viruses

Boot sector viruses were the first type of virus to appear. They spread by modifying the boot sector, which contains the program that enables your computer to start up. When you switch on, the hardware looks for the boot sector program – which is usually on the hard disk, but can be on floppy or CD – and runs it. This program then loads the rest of the operating system into memory. A boot sector virus replaces the original boot sector with its own, modified version (and usually hides the original somewhere else on the hard disk). When you next start up, the infected boot sector is used and the virus becomes active. You can only become infected if you boot up your computer from an infected disk, e.g. a floppy disk that has an infected boot sector. Many boot sector viruses are now quite old.

Those written for DOS machines do not usually spread on Windows 95, 98, Me, NT or 2000 computers, though they can sometimes stop them from starting up properly. Boot viruses infect System Boot Sectors (SBS) and Master Boot Sectors (MBS). The MBS is located on all physical hard drives. It contains, among other data, information about the partition table (information about how a physical disk is divided into logical disks), and a short program that can interpret the partition information to find out where the SBS is located. The MBS is operating system independent. The SBS contains, among other data, a program whose purpose is to find and run an operating system. Because floppy diskettes are exchanged more frequently than program files boot viruses are able to propagate more effectively than file viruses.Form -A virus that is still widespread ten years after it first appeared.

The original version triggers on the 18th of each month and produces a click when keys are pressed on the keyboard. Parity Boot - A virus that may randomly display the message ‘PARITY CHECK’ and freeze the operating system. The message resembles a genuine error message displayed when the computer’s memory is faulty.

Parasitic virus (File virus)

Parasitic viruses, also known as file viruses, attach themselves to programs (or ‘executables’) and Acts as a part of the program .When you start a program infected with a file virus, the virus is launched first. To hide itself, the virus then runs the original program. The operating system on your computer sees the virus as part of the program you were trying to run and gives it the same rights. These rights allow the virus to copy itself, install itself in memory or release its payload. these viruses Infects over networks.

The internet has made it easier than ever to distribute programs, giving these viruses new opportunities to spread.

 Jerusalem- On Friday 13th deletes every program run on the computer.

 CIH (Chernobyl) - On the 26th of certain months, this virus will overwrite part of the BIOS chip, making the computer unusable. The virus also overwrites the hard disk.

 Remote Explorer - WNT/RemExp (Remote Explorer) infects Windows NT executables. It was the first virus that could run as a service, i.e. run on NT systems even when no-one is logged in. Parasitic viruses infects executables by companion, link, overwrite, insert, prep end, append techniques

a) Companion virus

A companion virus does not modify its host directly. Instead it maneuvers the operating system to execute itself instead of the host file. Sometimes this is done by renaming the host file into some other name, and then grant the virus file the name of the original program. Or the virus infects an .EXE file by creating a .COM file with the same name in the same directory. DOS will always execute a .COM file first if only the program name is given, so if you type “EDIT” on a DOS prompt, and there is an EDIT.COM and EDIT.EXE in the same directory, the EDIT.COM is executed.

b) Linking Virus

A link virus makes changes in the low-level workings of the file system, so that program names do no longer point to the original program, but to a copy of the virus. It makes it possible to have only one instance of the virus, which all program names point to.

Fuel cell

A fuel cell is a device that uses hydrogen (or hydrogen-rich fuel) and oxygen to create electricity by an electrochemical process. If pure hydrogen is used as a fuel, fuel cells emit only heat and water as a by-product. Several fuel cell types are under development, and they have a variety of potential applications.

                                

Fuel cells are being developed to power passenger vehicles, commercial buildings, homes, and even small devices such as laptop computers.What Is A Fuel Cell?In principle, a fuel cell operates like a battery. Unlike a battery, a fuel cell does not run down or require recharging. It will produce energy in the form of electricity and heat as long as fuel is supplied.

A fuel cell consists of two electrodes sandwiched around an electrolyte. Oxygen passes over one electrode and hydrogen over the other, generating electricity, water and heat.Hydrogen fuel is fed into the "anode" of the fuel cell. Oxygen (or air) enters the fuel cell through the cathode. Encouraged by a catalyst, the hydrogen atom splits into a proton and an electron, which take different paths to the cathode. The proton passes through the electrolyte. The electrons create a separate current that can be utilized before they return to the cathode, to be reunited with the hydrogen and oxygen in a molecule of water.

How Fuel Cells Work?

Fuel Cell Components & Function: A fuel cell is a device that uses hydrogen (or hydrogen-rich fuel) and oxygen to create electricity by an electrochemical process. A single fuel cell consists of an electrolyte sandwiched between two thin electrodes (a porous anode and cathode). While there are different fuel cell types, all work on the same principle: Hydrogen, or a hydrogen-rich fuel, is fed to the anode where a catalyst separates hydrogen's negatively charged electrons from positively charged ions (protons).

At the cathode, oxygen combines with electrons and, in some cases, with species such as protons or water, resulting in water or hydroxide ions, respectively. For polymer exchange membrane (PEM) and phosphoric acid fuel cells, protons move through the electrolyte to the cathode to combine with oxygen and electrons, producing water and heat. For alkaline, molten carbonate, and solid oxide fuel cells, negative ions travel through the electrolyte to the anode where they combine with hydrogen to generate water and electrons.

The electrons from the anode side of the cell cannot pass through the membrane to the positively charged cathode; they must travel around it via an electrical circuit to reach the other side of the cell. This movement of electrons is an electrical current. The amount of power produced by a fuel cell depends upon several factors, such as fuel cell type, cell size, the temperature at which it operates, and the pressure at which the gases are supplied to the cell. Still, a single fuel cell produces enough electricity for only the smallest applications. Therefore, individual fuel cells are typically combined in series into a fuel cell stack.

A typical fuel cell stack may consist of hundreds of fuel cells. Direct hydrogen fuel cells produce pure water as the only emission. This water is typically released as water vapour. Fuel cells release less water vapour than internal combustion engines producing the same amount of power. Pure Hydrogen: Most fuel cell systems are fueled with pure hydrogen gas, which is stored onboard as a compressed gas. Since hydrogen gas has a low energy density, it is difficult to store enough hydrogen to generate the same amount of power as with conventional fuels such as gasoline.

This is a significant problem for fuel cell vehicles, which need to have a driving range of 300-400 miles between refueling to be competitive gasoline vehicles. High-pressure tanks and other technologies are being developed to allow larger amounts of hydrogen to be stored in tanks small enough for passenger cars and trucks. In addition to onboard storage problems, our current infrastructure for getting liquid fuel to consumers can't be used for gaseous hydrogen.

New facilities and delivery systems must be built, which will require significant time and resources. Costs for large-scale deployment will be substantial. Hydrogen-rich Fuels: Fuel cell systems can also be fueled with hydrogen-rich fuels, such as methanol, natural gas, gasoline, or gasified coal. In many fuel cell systems, these fuels are passed through onboard "reformers" that extract hydrogen from the fuel.

Onboard reforming has several advantages:There are also several disadvantages to reforming hydrogen-rich fuels: Onboard reformers add to the complexity, cost, and maintenance demands of fuel cell systems.High-temperature fuel cell systems can reform fuels within the fuel cell itself-a process called internal reforming-removing the need for onboard reformers and their associated costs. Internal reforming, however, does emit carbon dioxide, just like onboard reforming. In addition, impurities in the gaseous fuel can reduce cell efficiency.