Tag Archives: Future and Emerging Technologies

European consultation on Future and Emerging Technologies

I’ve checked this out and it seems to be open to people from all countries even though it’s a consultation about European research according to the Oct. 30, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

The European Commission is launching a public consultation to identify promising and potentially game-changing directions for future technological research.

The research directions for future and emerging technologies will shape our economy for decades to come. The right strategic choices will mean a better future for all, from protecting our environments to providing better healthcare to Europeans. Therefore the Commission is inviting scientists, researchers, engineers, innovators, artists, entrepreneurs and individuals to submit their ideas before November 30th 2012. Do you have a big idea for the future? Then let us know!

The consultation is structured under two themes: research direction in FET and arguments for the importance of this research. All interested parties can submit their ideas on what this research should be and its expected impact. The contributors to the public consultation are invited to answer a series of concrete questions on FET research and its contribution to some of the great societal challenges of our age, like global warming, energy supply, pollution, ageing of society, global crises, peace or democratic deficit.

I have mentioned the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) funding initiatives previously in my Feb. 13, 2012 posting. This news item mentions a few FET projects I haven’t encountered before,

Examples of how FET is changing the face of European research include:

In 2000, FET launched a major initiative on NEURO-ICT, bringing together for the first time scientists from life sciences and neurophysiology, and computer scientists and engineers to co-develop understanding about the human brain. This work has resulted in a number of new research directions and industrial spin-off companies, for example, in the areas of “machines that think”, or the development of novel clinical tools that can help in the diagnosis and treatment of brain disease.

FET launched ‘Proactive Initiatives’ on Nano technology and Quantum ICT, involving researchers who went on to win two Nobel Prizes for Physics. The initiatives bring together physicists and software and hardware engineers to develop new forms of computer technology.

FET launched a Proactive Initiative on Bio-chemistry-based information technology which has created since 2009 the first research union at the intersection of biology, chemistry and information technologies.

A related FET program, “FET Flagships” is offering €1billion in funding to two projects looking to solve “grand challenges” faced by Europe, with winners to be decided in 2013.

Follow the ‘graphene brick’ road

Today (Oct. 11, 2012), I’m highlighting a second article in Nature. This time it’s a “A roadmap for graphene ” (behind a paywall) in the Oct. 11, 2012 online issue of Nature written by Nobel Prize-winner Professor Kostya Novoselov of the University of Manchester; V. I. Fal′ko Department of Physics, Lancaster University;  L. Colombo, Texas Instruments Incorporated; P. R. Gellert, AstraZeneca; M. G. Schwab, BASF SE; and K. Kim, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology.

If you can get behind the paywall, the article offers excellent insight into the state of graphene research and the state of graphene applications.  The authors cover:

Challenges in Production

Chemical vapour deposition

Synthesis on SiC

Other growth methods

Graphene electronics

Flexible electronics

High-frequency transistors

Logic transistor

Photonics

Photodetectors

Optical modulator

Mode-locked laser/THz generator

Optical polarization controller

Composite materials, paints, and coating

Energy generation and storage

Graphene for sensors and metrology

Bioapplications

You can get more details about the article from the Oct. 11, 2012 news release from the University of Manchester,

The authors estimate that the first graphene touchscreen devices could be on the market within three to five years, but will only realise its full potential in flexible electronics applications.

Rollable e-paper is another application which should be available as a prototype by 2015 – graphene’s flexibility proving ideal for fold-up electronic sheets which could revolutionise electronics.

Timescales for applications vary greatly upon the quality of graphene required, the report claims. For example, the researchers estimate devices including photo-detectors, high-speed wireless communications and THz generators (for use in medical imaging and security devices) would not be available until at least 2020, while anticancer drugs and graphene as a replacement for silicon is unlikely to become a reality until around 2030.

I notice the lead authors are from the University of Manchester and Lancaster University. These UK educational institutions are part of the FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) GRAPHENE-CA flagship project, which is in competition for one of two prizes of 1B Euros for research. As I’ve noted previously in my Feb. 21, 2012 posting and many others, the UK is leading a tremendous public relations/marketing campaign on behalf of this project and the UK’s own interests. Good luck to them as I believe the announcement of which are the two winning projects from a field of six should be made in the next few months.

The current international infatuation with roadmaps sometimes reminds me of The Wizard of Oz and the Yellow Brick Road,

I always appreciate the optimism shown by the lead character, Dorothy, as she takes off for parts unknown.

Pourable electronics?

A group of scientists at Ruhr Universtät Bochum (RUB) have won a European Union Competition Call for proposals in Unconventional Computing.

A new concept to me, I looked for a description of ‘unconventional computing’ and found this by Susan Stepney in an April 2011 issue of ERCIM [European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics] News,

Despite being formulated post-relativity and post-quantum mechanics, classical Turing computation is essentially based in classical physics. This is understandable given the source of its abstraction, but today’s nano-scale computer components are embodied in the quantum world. …

The Turing model was inspired by a single paradigm: the actions of human clerks. Unconventional computation can be inspired by the whole of wider nature. We can look to physics (from general relativity and quantum mechanics, to annealing processes, analogue computing, and on to fully embodied computation), to chemistry (reaction-diffusion systems, complex chemical reactions, DNA binding), and to biology (bacteria, flocks, social insects, evolution, growth and self-assembly, immune systems, neural systems), to mention just a few.

Here’s a description of the competition that these scientists entered, from the Unconventional Computation (UCOMP) page on the Future and Emerging Technology (FET) website,

Nature (e.g. living cells), and our physical environment in general, show many unconventional ways of information processing, such as those based on (bio-)chemical, natural, wetware, DNA, molecular, amorphous, reversible, analogue computing, etc. These are generally very sophisticated, ingenious and highly effective for specific purposes, but sufficient knowledge (either from a theoretical or an engineering perspective) to properly exploit, mimic, or adapt these systems, is lacking.

Proposals should develop alternative approaches for situations or problems that are challenging or impossible to solve with conventional methods and models of computation (i.e. von Neumann [John von Neumann], Turing [Alan Turing]). Typical examples include computing in vivo, and performing massively parallel computation.

Here’s how the winning project is described in the Aug. 29, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

First place in an EU competitive call on “Unconventional Computing” was awarded to a collaborative proposal coordinated by Prof. John McCaskill from the RUB Faculty of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The project MICREAgents plans to build autonomous self-assembling electronic microreagents that are almost as small as cells. They will exchange chemical and electronic information to jointly direct complex chemical reactions and analyses in the solutions they are poured into. This is a form of embedded computation – “to compute is to construct” – in which for example the output is a particular catalyst or coating needed in the (input) local chemical environment. The EU supports the project within the FP7 programme with 3.4 million Euros for three years. Four research groups at RUB will join forces with top teams across Europe, from Israel and New Zealand.

Bit of a challenge understanding it, eh? The RUB Aug. 29, 2012 press release (it originated the news item on Nanowerk), offers some background information about some of the ideas and work leading to the winning collaboration,

John von Neumann envisioned information devices that can construct more complex machines than themselves, in his theory of self-reproducing automata2, but he did not arrive at a robust architecture for this. Modern initiatives towards Living Technology, exploiting the core properties of living systems to push back this frontier, have been spearheaded by RUB in the past decade. McCaskill cofounded (2004-5) the European Centre for Living Technology in Venice (ECLT), an ongoing multi-university institution of which RUB is a member. He has also helped to link up a world-wide community on Sustainable Personal Living Technology (2010). This initiative requires a fundamental integration of molecular construction and information processing and thereby of chemistry and ICT (information and communication technology). Currently, RUB is assembling a roadmap in an EU coordination action (COBRA) for the area of chem-bio ICT, and indeed this integration is most developed in biological organisms. The MICREAgents project represents the next major research program towards these overarching initiatives, one that could change the level of fine-grained algorithmic control in chemical construction, bringing the important social goal of sustainable personal fabrication one step closer.

Here’s a description of what the scientists are planning to do (from the RUB press release),

In order to create this programmable microscale electronic chemistry, MICRE-Agents (Microscopic Chemically Reactive Electronic Agents) will contain electronic circuits on 3D microchips (called lablets, diameter ≤ 100 μm) that self-assemble in pairs or like dominos to enclose transient reaction compartments, using the electronics to control chemical access, surface coatings and reactions via physical and chemical processes such as electroosmosis, electrowetting and electrochemistry. Chemicals can be selectively concentrated, processed and released into the surrounding solution, under local electronic control, in a similar way to which the genetic information in cells controls local chemical processes. The reversible pairwise association in solution of electronic surfaces in the nanometer range will also be used to avoid the prohibitive energetic costs of broadcast communication, allowing lablets to transfer information (including heritable information) from one to another. The lablet devices will integrate transistors, supercapacitors, energy transducers, sensors and actuators, involving electronically constructed nanofilms, and will be essentially genetically encoded, translating electronic signals into constructive chemical processing and recording the results of this processing. [emphais mine] Instead of making chemical reactors to contain chemicals, the smart MICREAgents will be poured into chemical mixtures, to organize the chemistry from within. Ultimately, such microreactors, like cells in the bloodstream, will open up the possibility of controlling complex chemistry from the inside out.

I’m far out of my comfort zone with this material so these questions may not be relevant but I wonder how the lablets, which will self-assemble and integrate supercapacitors, transistors, transducers, etc., will be constituted and how they will be produced. No details are offered in the RUB press release but there is this paragraph, which seems to be discussing future applications,

MICREAgents will provide an unconventional form of computation that microscopically links reaction processing with computation in autonomous mobile smart reactors. This corresponds to a radical integration of autonomous chemical experimentation, a very recent research area, and represents a novel form of computation intertwined with construction. The self-assembling smart micro reactors can be programmed for molecular amplification and other chemical processing pathways, that start from complex mixtures, concentrate and purify chemicals, perform reactions in programmed cascades, sense completion, and transport and release products to defined locations. The project defines a continuous achievable path towards this ambitious goal, making use of a novel pairwise local communication strategy to overcome the limitations of current smart dust and autonomous sensor network communication. It will provide a technical platform spawning research in new computing paradigms that integrate multilevel construction with electronic ICT.

Based on the description of the competition, they seem to be working towards integration of electronics with materials in a way that mimics nature/the human body. It almost seems that this work could lead to buildings and other constructions that are sentient in some fashion or other.

Graphene 2012 and the Graphene flagship project

The Graphene Flagship project strikes again, this time at Graphene 2012, the second international conference on graphene. Here’s more about the conference, from the March 20, 2012 news item on Azonano,

Internationally renowned speakers will present the latest trends in the field and the global Graphene technology revolution. The Graphene 2012 program includes more than 100 speakers from all over the World, presentations from both research and industry.

Graphene 2012 [April 10 – 13, 2012 in Brussels, Belgium] is now an established European event, attracting global participants intent on sharing, exchanging and exploring new avenues of graphene-related scientific and commercial developments. Until now, the best, among many others, represented countries are United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Belgium, France and United States.

I checked out the programme and found this front and centre,

Graphene Flagship Session

The consortium of the Graphene Flagship Pilot Action is working to establish the “Graphene Science and Technology Roadmap” which will be presented to the European Commission and Member States to demonstrate the need for securing long term funding, coordinated through a new Graphene Alliance. The Graphene Flagship Pilot Action will take advantage of the International conference Graphene 2012 in Brussels to co-organize a specific session in order to timely deliver to the European community the results of this Roadmap.

Tentative program

a. “Graphene Flagship: working together to combine scientific excellence and technological impacts”: Jari Kinaret
b. “The Graphene Science and Technology Roadmap”: Vladimir Falko and Andrea Ferrari
c. “Korean Graphene Research and Roadmap”: Byung Hee Hong
d . “Japanese Graphene Research and Roadmap”: Masataka Hasegawa
e. Round Table (tentative): Luigi Colombo, Gabriel Crean, Andrea Ferrari, Albert Fert, David Guedj, Francisco Guinea, Byung Hee Hong, Jari Kinaret, Klaus von Klitzing, and Ken Teo

I have commented previously on GRAPHENE-CA or the Graphene Flagship project, most recently in my Feb. 13, 2012 posting where I discuss the European Union’s Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) funding initiatives. The GRAPHENE-CA consortium is in competition for a 1B Euro research funding prize and they (particularly the UK) have been heroic in their promotional efforts, this new Graphene Alliance being yet another example.

Registration for the conference is here.

Less confused about Europe’s FET (Future and Emerging Technologies programme)

I’ve had problems trying figure out the European Union’s Future and Emerging Technologies programme and so I’m glad to say that the Feb. 10, 2012 news item on Nanowerk offers to clear up a few matters for me (and presumably a few other people too).

From the news item,

Go forth and explore the frontiers of science and technology! This is the unspoken motto of the Future and Emerging Technologies programme (FET), which has for more than 20 years been funding and inspiring researchers across Europe to lay new foundations for information and communication technology (ICT). [emphasis mine]

The vanguard researchers of frontier ICT research don’t always come from IT backgrounds or follow the traditional academic career path. The European Commission’s FET programme encourages unconventional match-ups like chemistry and IT, physics and optics, biology and data engineering. Researchers funded by FET are driven by ideas and a sense of purpose which push the boundaries of science and technology.

They have three funding programmes (from the news item),

To address these challenges, the FET scheme supports long-term ICT programmes under three banners:

  • FET-Open, which has simple and fast mechanisms in place to receive new ideas for projects without pre-conceived boundaries or deadlines;
  • FET-Proactive, which spearheads ‘transformative’ research and supports community-building around a number of fundamental long-term ICT challenges; and
  • FET Flagships, which cut across national and European programmes to unite top research teams pursuing ambitious, large-scale, science-driven research with a visionary goal.

The news item goes on to describe a number of projects including the GRAPHENE-CA flagship pilot currently under consideration, along with five other flagship projects, for one of two 1 Billion Euro prizes. I have commented before (my Feb. 6, 2012 posting) on the communication strategies being employed by at least some of the members of this particular flagship project. Amazingly, they’ve done it again; theirs is the only flagship pilot project mentioned.

You can see the original article on the European Union website here where they have described other projects including this one, PRESENCCIA,

‘Light switches, TV remote controls and even house keys could become a thing of the past thanks to brain-computer interface (BCI) technology being developed in Europe that lets users perform everyday tasks with thoughts alone.’ So begins a story on ICT Results about a pioneering EU-funded FET project called Presenccia*.

Primary applications of BCI are in gaming/virtual reality (VR), home entertainment and domestic care, but the project partners also see their work helping the medical profession. ‘A virtual environment could be used to train a disabled person to control an electric wheelchair through a BCI,’ explained Mel Slater, the project coordinator. ‘It is much safer for them to learn in VR than in the real world, where mistakes could have physical consequences.’

So, PRESENCCIA is a project whereby people will be trained to use a BCI in virtual reality before attempting it in real life. I wish there was a bit more information about this BCI technology that is being developed in Europe as I am deeply fascinated and horrified by this notion of thought waves that ‘turn light switches on and off’ or possibly allow you to make a phone call as Professor Mark Welland at Cambridge University was speculating in 2010 (mentioned in my April 30, 2010 posting [scroll 1/2 way down]). Welland did mention that you would need some sort of brain implant to achieve a phone call with your thought waves, which is the aspect that makes me most uncomfortable.