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| SCIENCE TRIBUNE | Thursday, January 3, 2002, Chandigarh, India |
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Robots,
cyborgs and androids NEW PRODUCTS &
DISCOVERIES
SCIENCE
QUIZ |
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Robots, cyborgs and androids HOW mental phenomenon are related to the physical system of the brain is one of the classic problem of philosophy and psychology. If we see the brain as a very advanced kind of computer, then “mind” is its “software” of ever evolving programmes. Not long ago there was a time when the robots could only be seen in the films. Some of them were lustful, power-hungry and insane while some were nicer than humans...simply noble and loveable! Today robots are present in every field of work. They are used to entertain you like Sony’s teachable robot dog Aibo. In industries they perform welding, riveting, paintingor pick and choose operation. In nuclear installations they handle radioactive or toxic materials. In hospitals they provide nursing care to patients and are also used in remote control surgeries. In military operations they search for explosive and do spying. Then there are robots that serve food in hotels, some look and act like insects, bugs, caterpillars and spiders. Some robots have gone to Mars and other planets on space missions. There are some robots which resemble human body like Honda’s P-series Robots, Hadley and WABIAN of Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. Kismet and Cog of-MIT’s artificial Intelligence lab. We also have some very small nano-metric sized robots — the Nano-machines and some large one like Robonauts and Canadian Robotic arm for International Space Station. They all fall in the first generation of robots. By 2015 the second generation of robots is expected to arrive. They would be truly learning and versatile and soon they would be as intelligent as chimpanzees. On the other hand, cybernetic organisms or in short “Cyborgs” are also cropping up simultaneously. We do tend to make robots more and more human-like but we are also making humans more and more ‘robotic’. Soon the humans would be able to replace defective heart with more dexterous and reliable and self-contained artificial heart, kidneys, fingers, eyes, ears etc of the same size. The dream of transmitting signals direct from the brain to the various electronic systems via artificial nerves of metal wires in fast approaching reality! A good deal of research in being done in field of biocomputing. The notion of connecting human brain into the computer now seems quite possible and it could lead to the development of brain-banks in which a person’s brain would be kept (after his death) nourished and alive giving a man the eternity. The brain would talk to us via an electronic interface while its host body had long been dead! The most horrific vision of science fiction is of the future society in which men gradually dispose of their flesh strips by exchanging them piece by piece for more powerful and longer lasting mechanical replacements, until at the end they become machines, each one facing eternity!! And at last —— the most dramatic possibility of human engineering is the creation of wholly artificial humaniods by means of some technological substitute for the natural chromosome complex!! It is not easy to speculate anything on this kind of imaginary technology. Yes —- they are called “Androids”, the totally independent, artificially intelligent humanoid machine! We may encounter-a rather “crude’ kind of “androids” in the near future. The day will come when most of the families will own an android as they now own a car. They will be so useful that every family will want one. Androids will be entirely capable of assembling copies of themselves if provided with a complete set of components. Today it takes 20 years to train a human being how to behave and function in society—— but fortunately androids will take for less time. Once a single android becomes trained in doing a specific task, it’s “knowledge” would be extracted from the android’s memory bank and stored for inclusion in other android memory. Androids could possess the physical strength of a horse, computing speed of many terabytes per second, could learn and speak all the languages of the world and will work for you 24 hours nonstop with great dexterity! Commander Data in the Television series “Startrek” inspires one such android. But the creation of artificial organic man is very nearly impossible! Even if we could invent a new biochemical coding-system to substitute for DNA, the information necessary to produce an artificial man would presumably be as complicated and as extensive as the information needed to produce a real human being! If a society had the means to do this, it could do many other things as well! Such kind of Androids if made would possibly take birth from human bodies but will have 70% of their body of metal and synthetic super strong materials while rest of the body is “flesh” woven from inside by a diamond fabric. The brain may contain both live nerve cells and electronic or positronic components! But keep faith —— human body is the perfect example of all types of engineering. Man is the masterpiece of god’s creation. He is already learning to use the huge potential of his brain. He now using his talents like “psychometry’ which means studying the past, aided by some antique object and thus history is explored by mind alone and talents like “precognition” i.e. having a foreknowledge of the future! In less than a century we have moved from coal/wood to nuclear fusion; In less than half century from flimsy biplanes to landing of man on moon, In less than 25 years from vacuum tubes to embedded microprocessor technology. We have changed the entire face of this planet earth and that too while using only 9% of the total potential of our brain! Even the highest scholar is only able to use 11% of his brain. We might be knowing even the minutest details of our solar system but how the neurons interact with each other inside our brain and produce a phenomenon we call “mind” is yet unclear to us! We are yet to discover the ways to use the draconian power of our own brain. By gradually trying to use more and more potential of brain till at the end might we become superhuman and merge into godlike islands of pure consciousness. |
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NEW PRODUCTS & DISCOVERIES ALMOST
everyone needs an extra phone jack around the home or office. Whether you want to add an extra jack in your teenager’s room, add a fax machine to your home or office, or even a modem for your computer, there seems to always be a location that needs an extra phone jack. A new and improved device — the RCA Wireless Phone Jack — allows you to add a jack anywhere you have an electrical outlet. It converts your phone signal into an FM signal and then broadcasts it over your home’s existing electrical wiring. Simply plug the transmitter into a phone jack and then into an electrical outlet. Now insert a receiver into any outlet in your home. You’ll be able to move your phone into areas that have never had jacks before. It even uses enhanced filtering for improved sound. Unwanted sounds and static will be removed, giving you crystal-clear reception that far exceeds that of cordless phones and other wireless phone jack devices. Your range extends as far as your electrical outlets: five feet, 500 feet or more. If you have an electrical outlet, you can turn it into a phone jack—no matter the distance. Each jack unit uses one of 2,000 different security codes, so you can be assured that only your receiver will be able to pick up transmissions from your transmitter.
Freeze-dried
funerals A Swedish ecologist is proposing the ultimate in environmentally-friendly funerals: having your body freeze-dried and then shattered into dust to help fertilise the soil. Susanne Wiigh-Masak, an environmental consultant, has tested her technique on dead pigs and cows, which were lowered in a bath of liquid nitrogen for instant freezing, according to a report in New Scientist. During their immersion, the cadavers were bombarded with ultrasound waves to crack open the tissues to let the nitrogen work right to the core. The frozen bodies shattered into a powder with the tap of a hammer. “What you are left with is a hygienic, odourless powder that is less than 1 per cent water,” Wiigh-Masak says. Her plan is to use the same technique on human bodies. According to her calculation, a human corpse would be reduced to a freeze-dried powder about a quarter of the original weight. It would then be placed in a biodegradable coffin and buried in a shallow grave, where it would quickly provide nutrition for the soil.
PTI
Spider silk to be
used in planes With scientists isolating the gene that enables spiders to produce their web, it is matter of time before spider silk — a material of extremely high strength — finds use in a wide range of applications, a top expert said revealing rapid advances in the biotech sector. “Material scientists in the West have discovered spider silk to be extremely tough and have succeeded in expressing the specific gene in goat’s milk,” AS Kolaskar, Vice Chancellor, University of Pune, said delivering a lecture on cutting edge technologies offered by biosciences. He said the material could be used in the manufacture of degradable aeroplanes, bullet-proof jackets, parachute suspending cables and artificial tendons and ligaments. Elaborating on other areas of research, Kolaskar said researchers are designing nourishing foods like vitamin-rich tomato with four times more beta carotene and golden rice, an area more important for developing countries as malnutrition is essentially a phenomenon that differentiates developing countries from developed one.
PTI |
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SCIENCE QUIZ 1. Name of Indian astronomer who predicted the presence of Pluto in 1911, much before other western astronomers did. 2. This is the only deer in which both sexes have antlers. It is found in Arctic tundra and has broad, flat feet with deeply cleft hooves to enable it to walk easily on snow. Which is this deer that is considered by some as a symbol of Christmas? 3. The dried fruit of this medium - sized deciduous tree is used in medicines in ayurvedic, unani and
allopathic systems. Large quantities of this fruit, called myrobalan commercially, are exported from India every year. The fruit and bark of this tree are also used in tanning and dying. What is the common name of this tree the scientific name of which is terminalia chebula? 4. What type of chemical is injected by a bee into our body when it stings and produces a sensation of burning? 5. OLED is a display device that sandwiches carbon — based films between two charged electrodes, one of which is a metallic cathode and the other a transparent anode (usually glass). What is the full name of OLED which produces electro-luminescent light and thus acts as an emissive device when suitable voltage is applied to it? 6. What is common between “mad cow,” “African swine fever” and “soyabean rust”? 7. Who discovered first of all that the electrical resistance of a conductor vanishes even before absolute zero of temperature is attained? What is this phenomenon called? 8. Our hair and fingernails are largely made of this fibrous protein. This protein also serves as a base material for the claws, feathers and horns of some animals. Name it. 9. This element resembles with both silver and platinum in appearance. Malleable and ductile, it does not tarnish or corrode. Which is this element that is used in alloys for electroplating, surgical instruments, dentistry, jewellery, etc.? 10. The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (West-Bengal), has recently invented and patented a small plant tissue — culture vessel or bioreactor. What is the name of this special type of vessel in which any number of plants can be grown in the liquid medium instead of a solid medium and in which sandalwood, coffee and tea have been mass produced? Answers 1. V.B. Ketakar 2. Reindeer 3. Harar 4. An acid 5. Organic light — emitting diode 6. These are diseases which can infect livestock and contaminate farm produce 7. Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh — Onnes; superconductivity 8. Keratin 9. Palladium 10. Growtek. |
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Sarabjeet Singh
But when the machine intelligence would become as potent as human intelligence then might not we would be demonstrating that the brain itself in no more than a machine?