Human body communication
Dr S.S. Verma

The concept of utilising the human body as a transmission medium has been around for some time. However, putting it into practice has faced challenges such as low reliability resulting from electrical conductivity characteristics that differ from person to person and vary by different parts of the body and sweating stages of an individual.

Matsushita Electric Works (MEW) (Japan) has succeeded in enabling Human Body Communication. A communication system that requires no wiring or radio transmission, only an instant touch with our fingertip can complete data transmission.

This Touch Communication System is a new communication system that transfers data over a weak electric current fed into the human body.

The user can transmit data stored in a wristband communication device by touching electrodes of targeted communication terminal.

Another downsized device employing a dedicated chip allows not only man-machine but also inter-human data transfer as well.

The company has resolved many challenges by incorporating a mechanism that detects and feed back electrical conductivity properties of the human body, which differ in individuals, and developed the basic technique of human body communication in 2001.

The transmission rate at that time was as low as 1,200 bps, which required further R&D activities for its practical application. This has been improved to 3,700 bps and also enhancing the noise tolerance.

Autonomic computing

Work is currently underway at IBM (USA), which is putting forth the concept of autonomic computing of human body. The human body’s self-regulating nervous system presents an excellent model for creating the next generation of computing. Autonomic computing is a comprehensive and holistic approach that should result in a huge improvement in the cost, availability and experience in terms of how people relate to information technology.

It’s motivated by an analogy to the human body that most of the things in our own bodies are taken care of automatically for us. Most of the function our body perform time to time are taken as guaranteed by us due to reliable and automatic electronics of our body.

The autonomic functions of the human body save us a lot of grief and, ideally, allow us time to pursue higher activities viz., our hearts beat by themselves; we needn’t remind ourselves to sweat when it’s hot; our heart rates catch up when we hurry; our eyes eventually adjust themselves to morning; our antibodies antibody all day long without our giving a thought to them; and, except for those of us who look at computer screens the entire day, we don’t have to constantly remind ourselves to moisten our eyes by blinking.

If we pause for a moment and imagine they didn’t do all this themselves, we’d pretty much have the current state of computing. We would like our systems to regulate themselves in the same way.

This kind of technology actually has been used in component form for quite a number of years. Existing examples are load balancing and error checking and intrusion detection.

Efforts are going for a complete system to operate automatically. So rather than having to tell systems what to do explicitly in the face of a certain situation, like a failure or an increase in load, we just tell these systems what we’re trying to accomplish.

Computerising the body

From the ends of fingers to the tips of toes, the human body is a moving, throbbing collection of tubes and tunnels, filled with salty water and all capable of transmitting the lifeblood of the 21st century: information.

The computer software giant Microsoft has been granted exclusive rights to this ability of the body to act as a computer network, which bears the title: Method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body.

The company envisages using the human skin’s conductive properties to link a host of electronic devices around the body, from pagers and personal data assistants (PDA) to mobile phones and microphones.

The technology could usher in a new class of portable and wearable electronic gizmos such as earrings that deliver sounds sent from a phone worn on the belt, and special spectacles with screens that flash up accompanying images and video footage. Linking electronic devices raises other possibilities.

Gadget lovers could use a single keypad to operate their phone, PDA and MP3 music player, or combine the output of their watch, pager and radio into a single speaker.

At its most far-reaching, the technology could combine with chips and sensors fitted around our bodies and clothes to sense and react to the changing circumstances of our everyday lives.

The technology also raises the prospect of an array of sensors fitted around the body to monitor health. Earrings could read pulse rate and a bracelet monitor the composition of our sweat. Together with other medical information this would be sent via the skin to a central chip and instantly transmitted the computer.

A number of different devices could be powered from a single power source strapped to the skin. Different technologies can already link various electronic devices to form a so-called personal area network (PAN).

The body could generate the power needed to run its various attached devices in a similar way to self-winding watches.

Most futuristically, it proposes that the physical resistance offered by the human body can be used in implementing a keypad or other input device in an area of skin.

Human body and its functioning is one of the greatest wonders of nature and it is good that human being trying to learn some of its functioning and trying to put it into practice for industrial purposes.

From the very “glue” that holds together atoms and molecules to the vehicle for thought and communication in the human body, electricity is essential to the existence and life itself.

We can learn more and more from this autonomic network gift of nature and make some inventions for the overall benefit of human beings only without sacrificing its natural functioning.

Caution: Because the body relies so heavily on small voltages for its normal function, it is extremely vulnerable to electricity from outside. It is the current that actually flows through the body, not the voltage that is most important in determining the physiological effect. Passing of a current of 100 mA or more through heart can lead to death.

The writer is currently with the Department of Physics, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia

Trends
Electronic walls

The LED panel can be swapped with other non-lit panels on the electronic wall. RPI’s Lighting Research Center

Electronic walls and ceilings with interchangeable LED panels would allow you to change room lighting at a whim, in a new design. The modular panels snap in and out of an electrical grid so light “fixtures” can be moved anywhere.

“The new concept represents a paradigm shift in the way people think about lighting and the way we build and design interiors,” said Nadarajah Narendran, director of the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

While the public will have some say in whether any paradigms shift, the idea does represent a new twist to Edison’s old bulbs.

The panels use light-emitting diode (LED) technology, which has emerged recently as a viable alternative to the standard white bulb. Colorful LED lights have been around for years. But only lately have scientists figured out how to make them produce the yellowish-white preferred for room lighting.

Cancer gene mapping

US government researchers have launched a pilot project to find all the little genetic changes that cause cancer and hope it can open a whole new world of targeted cancer therapy.

They hope to lay the groundwork for replicating the successes of a few targeted cancer therapies such as Genentech Inc’s Herceptin, useful against one type of breast cancer and Novartis’s a pill that revolutionised treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia.

Scientists know that cancer is a genetic disease, caused by mutations or other changes in the DNA of cells. But no one has done a systematic analysis of all the mutations in various tumors. — Reuters

THIS UNIVERSE
PROF YASH PAL

Please tell me how astronomers determined the shape of our galaxy when we are ourselves within the galaxy.

I suppose we must have used some observations and arguments as below. One thing is clear when we look at the starry sky. Stars are not uniformly distributed around us. There seems to be a concentration along a band we call the Milky Way. From different parts of the earth we see different parts of this Milky Way.

While it is true that sitting inside a room we cannot guess the external architecture of the building in which the room is situated, we can certainly make a map of the room on the inside. For this we might have to measure distances, such as length, breadth and height. We can do the same for our galaxy if we can measure or guess distances of stars and stellar systems.

From the shape of the Milky Way band it is already clear that our galaxy must be a thin disc. By looking at the contours of brightness in the Milky Way we can also discern the spiral arms. We have also found ways of measuring distances of various stars and star clusters by comparing their observed directions from the earth as seen from opposite sides of the earth orbit around the sun; this is possible because we know the diameter of the earth orbit.

We can also estimate the distance of the earth from the centre of the galaxy as also the diameter of the disc in which most of the stars are confined. For doing all this we also get hints from the shapes of other galaxies that we can see.

It is true that we know a great deal about our galaxy, but it would be wrong to know that everything is known. Large parts of the galaxies are hidden by dust clouds and dust lanes. These clouds and lanes have become more transparent as we have learnt to see the galaxy and the universe at many wavelengths besides the visible. It is only during the last decade that it has been more or less established that there must be a massive black hole in the centre of our galaxy.

Incidentally such an assertion also draws on observations of several galaxies face on, or nearly edge on. It is not strange because even our own physiognomy becomes better known when we can see other people.

Are gold and silver present in human blood? What role do they play in human biological chemistry?

I am out of depth here. Of hand it seems that noble metals like these should not have any significant role. I have searched the net and find that modern medicine does not give them any respect. Several researchers have measured the concentrations of gold and silver in human tissue. For silver the amounts are a few parts in a million and for gold a thousand times less.

But I wish I could categorically say that the presence of these noble metals is completely immaterial. Perhaps it is, and the belief of many people practicing Ayurved and some other systems of medicine is misplaced. But in these days when the importance of trace elements in various systems, including electronic systems cannot be overlooked, I refuse to be so categorical. But Ayurveda also uses mercury in specific forms and that definitely frightens me.