Israeli group seeks Google Lunar X Prize

The Google Lunar X Prize, an attempt to promote private exploration of space, will pay $20 million to the first privately funded organization to land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon, have that craft travel at least 500 meters across the lunar surface, and send back television pictures. To make it even more challenging, the mission has to take place before the end of 2015. 

An Israeli group called SpaceIL has accepted the challenge and is hoping that its unique approach will enable it to beat out the other 25 registered competitors. Speaking in Silicon Valley the other night, Yariv Bash, the founder and CEO of SpaceIL, explained their approach. First, they won't design their own rockets from scratch. Instead, they'll rent space on a commercial rocket that's already scheduled to lift a satellite into orbit about 22,000 miles above the earth. The very small size of the SpaceIL robot, named "Sparrow", makes this arrangement feasible. It will weigh about 100 kilograms (220 pounds), about 2/3 of which is fuel. Once it's in Earth orbit, it will use its own power to get to the Moon. Rather than traversing the lunar landscape in a wheeled vehicle which is complicated and expensive to build, it will achieve its motion by "hopping" in the light lunar gravity. According to Bash, advanced nanotechnology and high quality electronics will be the keys to its success.

SpaceIL was launched by a tiny group of friends with no real resources or expertise, but because of their inspiration and determination they've gained the support of many of Israel's leading high tech companies and agencies as well as Israel's president Shimon Peres. Still, Bash says the effort will probably cost more than the prize is worth, but even if they don't win the prize, they'll still continue their work until they achieve a lunar landing. He says the real goal is to inspire young Israelis to seek careers in science, as well as to make Israel the third nation, after the U.S. and the (former) Soviet Union to plant its flag on the lunar surface.

Can social networking technology bring peace?

Pakistani and Indian students
getting along

Can social networking tools such as Facebook advance the cause of peace? In order to find out, I recently interviewed two researchers from the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford University. Margarita Quihuis is the Director of the Lab, as well as a social entrepreneur, mentor capitalist, and former head of a Silicon Valley technology incubator for women entrepreneurs. Mark Nelson is a co-founder of the Lab, and head of the EPIC Challenge, which promotes positive social interactions across conflict boundaries. The goal of the Peace Innovation Lab is to create grassroots contacts between people on opposite sides of conflicts in the hope that this may eventually tip the balance of power from war to peace. In addition to discussing the work of the Lab, which includes significant support from Facebook itself, we also touched on the underlying causes of conflict, whether peace or war is the natural condition of Mankind, and whether fostering a global consciousness  can overcome the many divisions pushing the world toward armed conflict. To view the program in its entirety, click here. To see it broken down into three shorter segments, click here.

What's new in neuroscience?

An early conception of the brain

The human brain is one of the most fascinating objects in the universe, and one of the most important to understand, but also one of the most difficult to study. However, a lot of new research is taking place which is opening up our understanding of the mind like never before. The latest Future Talk features a discussion of the latest developments in neuroscience with two guests. Michael Merzenich is a professor emeritus of neuroscience at the University of California at San Francisco who has won many awards and honors for his work, and who is especially well known for his research in brain plasticity. Simon Tan is a clinical neuropsychologist at Stanford Medical Center who also maintains a private practice in neuropsychology.

The discussion includes the differences between "brain" and "mind", common mental impairments and untapped mental potentials. We also talked about the nature of thought, consciousness and intelligence. Although these latter topics are far from understood, just discussing them seems to be a worthwhile exercise in itself that can conceivably lead to new insights.

To watch the show in its entirety, click here, or to watch it as a series of three shorter segments, click here.

How to create a mind

Ray Kurzweil

I went to an interesting talk at the Commonwealth Club a few days ago by Ray Kurzweil, the well known author, inventor and futurist who has spent decades studying human intelligence and machine intelligence and trying to enhance them both, and who is especially known for his work on the "technological singularity". He was discussing his latest book, "How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed", in which he attempts to reverse engineer the human brain to figure out how it works, and then find ways to apply that knowledge to make both men and machines more intelligent than ever before, perhaps merging the two to create a new kind of being altogether. Although he has his critics, Kurzweil's past predictions have proven to be surprisingly accurate, and he's certainly one of today's most interesting and stimulating futuristic thinkers. I'll have more to say when I finish reading his book.

A foldable display in your future?

One of the most perplexing issues for designers of mobile computing devices is how big to make the screen. On the one hand, we want it to be as big as possible so it can contain more information, and on the other hand we want it to be as small as possible so it's easy to carry. Some have suggested that the solution is to create a screen as thin as a piece of paper that you can fold up and put in your pocket, or roll into a tube. Now, researchers at the University of Cincinnati's Novel Devices Lab have demonstrated that it's possible to do just that! In a breakthrough "proof of concept" experiment, using a technology called "electrofluidic imaging film," they've demonstrated that such thin film displays can indeed work. In addition to the advantage of being easy to carry, they can display sharp colors even in bright sunlight, and require very low power and no heavy batteries, since they get their energy directly from ambient light. Of course, there are many issues still to resolve, and it will probably be years before these devices are commercially available. But it's a big step forward.

Mobile Apps and Mental Health

Smartphones have proven to be a terrific platform for enabling us to do all kinds of things we could never do before, and now they're being used in the field of mental health. Though not a substitute for one on one sessions with a doctor, smartphone apps can be a valuable and ever present resource that can help you through difficult times and give you access to additional resources as well. The current Future Talk explores the use of mobile technology in promoting mental health, and features two guests. Julia Hoffman is a clinical psychologist and mobile apps lead at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where she develops apps to help people with post traumatic stress disorder, and Nicholas Chapa is mobile team lead at the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, where the goal is to help people overcome destructive behaviors and replace them with positive healthy ones instead. Even though this entire field of combining mobile technology with mental health is only in its infancy, it's already shown a great deal of promise. If you'd like to view the show in its entirety, please click here. To see it divided into three shorter segments, click here.

Gray Matters

Went to an interesting discussion on the workings of the brain today, titled "Gray Matters",  at Stanford's Maples Pavilion. It was moderated by Juju Chang of ABC News and featured some really interesting panelists, including Bob Woodruff of ABC who went through a long recovery after suffering severe brain injury from a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2006. Brain science is still in its infancy, but more and more people are studying it, addressing questions such as: what are thoughts, how are memories stored, and how can we retain our mental agility. Much of the research is focused on gaining better understanding of ailments of the brain, such as Alzheimer's disease. All of the panelists seemed to feel that the research is moving in the right direction, although there's obviously so much more to be done.