The working schedules are extremely heavy in space as they remain in touch with the earth centers with the video connections and astronauts have a little time to enjoy their private time. The situation is very tense in space strong mental health is needed there.

In a near future, doctors would be able to look into an astronaut space life through portable brain scanner. This could be highly helpful in examining the mental health of the astronauts. This device would provide information and help in monitoring the astronauts for signs of any kind of brain injury or depression or mental tiredness.

In these conditions the astronauts would loose their ability to make critical repair work of space equipment.This scanner is not finally released. The research work is going on at Massachusetts General Hospital in US state of Boston. This will be finally evaluated for its performance and safety perspectives. After then it will be handed over to NASA which will think to send it into orbit.

The temperature was lowered down to 25 C. At that temperature hydrogel started absorbing water and swelling and then it was again raised up to 37 C.

By doing in this way, researchers saw that around 80% of the attached cells dropped by. The fellow researchers of Giant repeated the temperature change procedure every 60 minute, and continued to do it for four hours. After the experiment the researchers said that a sensor coated fully with the gel keeps it free from fibrous growth around it and it demonstrated well.

In a second test membrane was made porous. It was observed that analytes like glucose move through to the sensor without making its ability ineffective to monitor the conditions such as diabetes and providing read-out.

To prevent the sensors from immune defence and to attain the desired changes and results the sensors are coated with membrane and placed under the surface of the skin. These sensors are then regulated through an external mean; which is a device integrated with a heating and cooling element to change the temperature.

Megan Frost is a researcher working at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, US. She is fascinated by these findings. She says,

“The idea of shrinking and swelling is novel to the best of my knowledge”

Earlier the researchers made much research work on creating such substances which could prevent the fibroblasts from getting attention. These substances don’t behave to cause the immune response.

Frosts says that by using a membrane which possesses both chemical properties and physical properties - shrinking and swelling - could successfully keep the implanted sensors clean than any other material. She says that

We would be waiting to see how it results in the real body, because there is a very little correlation in the lab experiments and actual happening. Despite of seeing the astonishing and positive results by experimenting on cell cultures in test tubes, she is suspicious about its behavior in real body. She thinks that it is more likely that we see the shrinking and growing membrane creating new problems when used in the body.

She says.

“Physical movement sometimes increases the inflammatory response to implanted devices”

Danny O’Hare is working at Imperial College London, UK since many years. He feels that the movements caused by the physical properties could create complications. He thinks that it would probably affect the performance of the sensor.

He says,

“It’s hard to see how the optical or spectroscopic properties of the tissue-sensor interface won’t be adversely affected by the swelling/shrinking membrane,”

The surface which could clean it by itself and combat with the immune response of the body could increase the life of biosensors inside the human body.

The sensors implanted beneath the skin give continuous information therefore this technique is considered as the easiest and simplest way to get reports on chronic diseases like diabetes.

The implanted sensors continue working in the right manner as long as its surface remains clean. But as it is not the part of the body and the body treats it as it is and produces antibodies against this outsider. This is actually called as the immune response; which is actually defence reaction against an invading substance.

This immune system usually fails to destroy the sensors, if it happened body reacts in other way. In this way, specialist cells fibroblasts move in and start developing a tissue layer to form a capsule shaped body around the sensor; this layer effects the sensor greatly and makes its sensitivity less effective.

Rebecca Gant working at Texas A&M University in College Station made a research with his colleagues and succeeded in developing a new thing called self-cleaning membrane. She positively thinks that she can cope with the problem and this invention would help in combating the growth of fibrous tissue. This will be achieved by coating the implanted sensor with this newly invented self-cleaning membrane.

This membrane is actually a hydrogel. Its properties depend on the temperature. When the temperature is below 34 °C it switches to hydrophilic state having the characteristics of absorbing water and swelling whereas in the temperature above 34 °C it behaves and shifts to hydrophobic state with totally opposite behavior in which it releases water and shrinks.

The researchers say that this behavior of the membrane with the temperature in its properties of swelling and shrinking is would move away and get rid of the cells that have become attached to the surface.

This was a just claim it needed practical demonstration for that they placed it in a mouse fibroblast cell culture. This experiment was given a time of full night keeping it at 37 C; which is the normal body temperature. In the morning the researchers saw that it started working; the fibroblast was forming a layer around the hydrogel and was going to encapsulate it.

A study and research work made at Arizona State University directed the thoughts of scientists to develop a new memory technology which could replace the flash memory which is being used in the world nowadays. This memory is having 1000 times more storage capacity than the flash. This new technology is introduced in the market by the name of PMC - programmable metallization cell. This memory device could be used in digital cameras, MP3 player, and laptops and it would be possible to increase their memories to a much greater extent.

This advanced technique has been introduced in college Center of Applied Nanoionics (CANi). They considered it a challenge to the physical limits of storage capacity. When we see to its structure and functionalities we can say it the advancement of the previous flash drive; the existing materials are used but different principles are applied in it.

This new technology works entirely differently to the currently used technology of flash drive. In flash drive, the electrodes move between the ions, whereas in this discovery ions are subjected to move. By this method, resistance of electrodes is much reduced and doesn’t remain as high as in flash drive.

This technology is expected to be used in commercial products in the next 18 months. Many big companies showed their interest to use it in their products like Micron Technology, Samsung, Sony and IBM.

Good news for the eye-patients who have gone blind due to retina damage or disease. German scientists have successfully created wireless bionic eyeball recently, which will restore vision of that kind of eye-patients.

It took 12 years of deep research work by the scientists to create this new prosthetic device for the eye-patients. This is named as “bionic eyeball” and it would be fully implanted in the body.

This will bypass the damaged retina; this statement was given by the German scientists from Franuhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems in Duisburg, Germany.

This new system is consisted of implant and external transmitter; both are integrated on the eyeglass-frame.

This integrated implant system plays a key role in this eyeglass-frame and works amazingly. A telemetric link is used to transfer data and energy to this implant system. This received data or image patterns are converted into stimulation signals by this system. These signals are interpretable. The nerve cells of the eye start simulating according to these capture images.

The intact cells are stimulated by 3-D electrodes. This innervating system is present against the retina.

The whole arrangement works perfectly like healthy eyes as long as the optic nerve remains safe without any damage. The vision signals received by the implant system are sent to the brain in a perfect manner like a natural eye system.

Hoc Khiem Trieu, who is working in the Franuhofer Institute, said,

“For normally sighted people that may not seem much, but for the blind, it is a major step”

By the invention of this system the blind people will be able to see like normal sighted people. It would be miracle in medical history. The whole system depends on how the nerve cells are simulated.

Trieu remained involved from the beginning of this project and is one of the major scientists of this discovery. This project was fully financed and supported by the education and research ministry of Germany.

Hoc Khiem Trieu translated the information into an implant and chip design, which was given by the medical experts and material scientists working with him in this project. The whole process was carried out by Hoc Khiem Trieu, who was accompanying with two other scientists, Ingo Krisch and DMichael Goertz.

Dr Krisch talked about this experiment in his statement in the following words,

“A milestone was reached when the prosthetic system finally operated wirelessly and remotely controlled”

As this system was desired to be created any external link; therefore it strongly demanded a thorough research work by these scientists.

This system had to be fitted in the eye; therefore the scientists made the design smaller and used more flexible materials having high performance. This last and final creation was more comfortable to fit in the body.

Goertz describes it as;

“The designs became smaller and smaller, the materials more flexible, more robust and higher in performance, so that the implant now fits comfortably in the eye”

For this great milestone discovery, these scientists are nominated for Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize for 2008 and will be given soon.

This was the result of the continuous research work of IBM and Los Alamos engineers on the computer technology.

Turek described their research work in these words;

“We took the basic chip design (of a PlayStation) and advanced its capability”

The whole arrangement of this computing machine occupies 6,000 square feet space; 57 miles of fiber optics which is weighing to 500,000 pounds. Average quality materials and parts are used in this system. The machine is having 6,948 dual-core computer chips and 12,960 cell engines with 80 terabytes of memory. The machine cost is $100

The computer was tested for two-hour on May 25. In this test it achieved speed of “petaflop”. This was a sustained performance, which no other computer had ever achieved. It performed so in different real applications, which also include nuclear weapons applications.

A “flop” is the abbreviation word for floating-point-operations per second. When we say one petaflop; it means 1,000 trillion operations per second.

Turek said just two years ago no device was invented to work with the speed of even 100 teraflops; which is 1/10th of the roadrunner speed. This new advancement is discovered in a very short time. It is a big jump in technology.

This new discovery – Roadrunner computer – is currently working at the IBM research laboratory in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. This computer will be shifted over to Los Alamos in New Mexico in the coming next month.

D’Agostino stated that this new discovery would play a key role along with other supercomputers in our weapon stockpile security and safety arrangement. Its high speed will also enhance the performances of a warhead and would be helpful to scientists in tracking the aging of warhead.

DARPA is going to sign a contract to engineer an unmanned aircraft that would be able to remain in the air for continuous five years; that was a statement given by the officials of Flight Global. The representatives from DARPA gave it the name of “Vulture”. They characterized their creation by saying that it would be having pseudo-satellite features. The aircraft would be able fly over a specific area with full capabilities of communicating and performing analysis for continuous five years in a single flight.

There would be some barriers in the way of achieving this goal. One of them is to design the mechanism of supplying power to this aircraft during its continuous flight mission. One important thing to mention here is that this aircraft will carry a 1000 pound (450 kg) payload in fierce winds at the height of 60,000 to 90,000 feet.

The design of the aircraft would probably be as it shown in the picture; this design is developed by NASA. The work on project began but no specific time period is given by the authorities for the completion of the project.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency hopes to totally change the concept of unmanned aviation and bring this aviation technology up to new levels. This new project of UAV -Unmanned Aircraft Vulture - is the part of their efforts in this regard.

“We want to completely change the paradigm of how we think of aircraft”.

This was said by Daniel Newman, who is designated as the project manager of this new Vulture project.

He also said,

“Aviation has a perfect record; we have never left one up there. We will attempt to break that record”.

This new creation would change the whole systematic arrangement of aircraft with its characteristics. Daniel Newman describes this thing in these words.

“The ability to “close the business case” on an aircraft that could be launched and then not maintained or brought home for five years would be a paradigm shift. We would no longer define an aircraft by the launch - recover - maintain - launch cycle,”

Besides the power supply problem scientists are also facing two more major problems in this project. One is aero-structural efficiency which should be maximized. Secondly since the aircraft would stay in air for a long time; it would definitely face the material deterioration problem during its long-period stratospheric flight. Engineers are working to solve both of these problems and doing continuous research work.

The aircraft works much like a satellite and not having orbital mechanics to operate it.

DARPA’s Wade Pulliam said,

“It could be positioned over the battle, at 65,000ft versus 260 miles”

He said that as the aircraft would have a look of satellite and would have stratospheric flight; this would upgrade communication capability with 65dB and also increase onboard sensor resolution to good enough extent.

In the past two to three decades technology has advanced and continues to advance in a rapid way; this momentum doesn’t seem to slow down and continuously speeding up. We are now entering into the world of possibilities from the world of imagination.

World’s fastest supercomputer has been produced. This $100 million machine practically performed 1,000 trillion calculations in one second in repeated and sustained tests for different applications. This big technological discovery has been made by the joint scientific research work of Los Alamos National Laboratory and IBM Corp.

This high-speed computer will be primarily used for nuclear weapons work like simulating nuclear explosions. A part of the software is said to be developed in Austin.

This supercomputer is given a name of Roadrunner. This machine can work twice speedily to the IBM’s earlier release of Blue Gene System, which is working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This Blue Gene System is also tested as three times faster than any other supercomputer of the world. From here you can estimate how speedy is this machine?

Thomas D’Agostino, who is the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that this system is extremely speedy. We would be able to solve big problems by that system. Thomas D’Agostino is currently supervising the nuclear weapons research and maintaining the warhead stockpile.

It is also said that this system could be used in the fields of civil engineering, medicine and science also. This can perform the tasks of making biofuels and engineering and designing of more fuel-efficient cars. This could also be used in the financial industry.

The speed of computer can be illustrated with an example. It is estimated that the amount of work completed by the 6 billion population of the world after 46 years by working 24 hours a day by using a hand-held-computer is equal to the work completed by that computer in one single day. This is extremely high speed.

Introduction:

SilverLight is the enhanced version of ASP.NET AJAX. SilverLight want to compete with Adobe Flash, Adobe Shockwave, Java FX, and Apple QuickTime etc. Now we can develop the more users friendly and rich web applications in ASP.NT. SilverLight Applications look more closly to the Desktop Application (DA).

SilverLight provide us help to develop apps with:

1. Customize buttons, textboxes, labels, forms and panels etc.

2. Animated Asp.Net Application. E.g. http://www.vertigo.com/SlideShow.aspx

3. User Friendly Charts for large organizations.

4. Image Sliders etc.

5. Efficient use of bandwidth.

Installation procedure:

Source: http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/

Download and install the

Microsoft SilverLight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio 2008

Description:

Alpha tool is an add-on for the VS 2008. After installation open the VS 2008 and click on the New Project and then click on the Visual C#. You will see 2 options ‘SilverLight Project’ and SilverLight Class Library. Now you can develop the SilverLight Project or Class Library for SilverLight Project.

SilverLight SDK (Software Development Kit):

Source: http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/

Download the documentation or visit online. If u want to download the documentation and download the “Microsoft SilverLight 1.0 Software Development Kit”

Sample Projects:

Source: http://silverlight.net/community/gallerydetail.aspx

Videos, online SilverLight project (with documentation). Simple download the project and documentation and start develop the next generation application from today.