How to Make the Internet a Lot Faster

Last week, Google announced its plans to build an experimental fiber network that would offer gigabit-per-second broadband speeds to up to 500,000 U.S. homes. Among other goals, the company said it wanted to "test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere."
Google hasn't released many details yet, but experts believe that the key to successful very-high-speed broadband doesn't lie in fiber alone. To really speed up the Internet, Google will have to operate at many levels of its infrastructure.

Gigabit-per-second speeds are much faster than, for example, the speed currently offered by high-speed services such as Verizon FiOS. However, Google's network won't be the first to reach such speeds. There are several such deployments internationally, including in Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and Australia. Internet2, a nonprofit advanced networking consortium in the United States, has been experimenting with very-high-speed Internet for more than a decade, routinely offering 10-gigabit connections to university researchers.

Existing applications for very-high-speed Internet include the transfer of very large files, streaming high-definition (and possibly 3-D) video, video conferencing, and gaming. Some experts speculate that accessing large data files and applications through the cloud may also require better broadband.

"Just big pipes alone to an end user does not necessarily guarantee that you can deliver high-end applications," says Gary Bachula, vice president of external relations for Internet2. There are many factors beyond raw bandwidth, Bachula says. For example, an improperly configured router or a university firewall can affect performance and end up acting as a network bottleneck.

"You need to have open networks, you need to publish your performance data, you need to have people troubleshoot your network remotely," says Bachula. In recent years, Internet2 has been researching tools and technologies that can help find and resolve the performance issues that occur on high-speed connections "in a systematic and seamless way." Ideally, he says, consumers as well as network managers would be able to use these tools to diagnose the network.
"If we're really going to realize the vision of some of these high-end applications, it does have to go beyond basic raw bandwidth," he adds.

It's also not enough to build a fast hardware infrastructure, says Steven Low, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Caltech, and cofounder of the network optimization technology company FastSoft, based in Pasadena, CA. Low believes the protocols that move traffic through the network will also need to be updated to make effective use of very-high-speed capabilities.

A Giant Leap for Humanoid Kind [video included]

The next generation of explorers to walk on the moon or Mars could be called robonauts. They may perform similar scientific tasks to astronauts, but wouldn't require any of the life support equipment or shelter. The first robonaut could travel to the space station to work side by side with astronauts in the next three years, if plans at NASA come to fruition.
NASA and General Motors are developing the first of these humanoid robots, called Robonaut2. Unlike NASA's Mars rovers, Robonaut2 is designed to closely mimic the shape, movement, and behavior of a human. This could make it ideally suited to working alongside humans, or for testing human spacecraft and living quarters, but it also presents some unique engineering challenges. GM hopes to use the robots in its manufacturing plants and to incorporate the resulting technology into some of its products, including vehicle safety systems.

The engineers behind Robonaut2 began working on the robot in 2007; its design originated from a version that NASA created more than 10 years ago.

Robonaut2 currently consists of just an upper torso. It weighs about 45 kilograms and is equipped with over 350 sensors. These include tactile sensors on the contact points of the robot's fingers and its palms, and proximity sensors in its arms. Engineers have also built springs and elastic materials in the joints to give the robot better control and flexibility, and to allow it to move at faster, more humanlike speeds. The robot can carry payloads of about nine kilograms--four times more than other humanoid robots.

Rob Ambrose, chief of the Software, Robotics and Simulation Division at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, says the new robot is a significant improvement over its predecessor. "It's designed to operate at a speed and scale similar to humans, and when it encounters people it complies and safely works with them," he says.The technology needed to perceive humans and respond to human action is particularly important, and this is something that researchers all over the world are working on, says Matthew Mason, a professor of robotics and computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Robonaut2 is an important platform for developing and testing such techniques, he adds.

Another key challenge is enabling Robonaut2 to communicate effectively with astronauts. "This is really a new area," adds Bilge Mutlu, an assistant professor in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a member of the human computer interaction lab at CMU. "How does a robot interpret social cues? How does it communicate back? We want robots to be team members, and the new work is a step in that direction." For the moment, Robonaut2 is limited to communicating with humans in simple ways. For example, when it points its head toward something, it is a cue that the human working alongside the robot should look in that direction.

Busting Blood Clots with Sound Waves

An ultrasound device designed to produce highly focused sound waves might one day be used to break up stroke-causing blood clots in the brain without surgery or drugs. So far, the system has only been tested on clots in test tubes and animals, but researchers aim to start human tests by the end of 2011.
Thilo Hoelscher, a neurologist at the University of California at San Diego, is attacking the clots with a device developed by Israeli ultrasound technology company InSightec. The device surrounds the head with an array of transducers that can focus ultrasound beams on a single spot in the brain without damaging the skull.

The technology is already being tested in patients to remove diseased brain tissue, but treating stroke will require a more delicate hand. Hoelscher and colleagues will need to prove that the device can break up a clot without damaging nearby brain tissue.

Strokes are the most common cause of long-term disability in the United States, and the third most common cause of death. Typically, they occur when a blood clot blocks an artery and prevents blood from flowing to the brain. The longer the clot remains, the more brain tissue dies, and the lower a person's chance for survival. "Anything you can do that's going to safely restore blood flow more quickly could have a lot of potential for societal, medical, and economic impact," says Evan Unger, a radiologist at the University of Arizona who is not involved in the research.
Today, only two proven methods are in use to bust clots. A drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) dissolves clots, but it can only be given to certain patients, and it usually must be administered within three hours of the stroke itself. Alternatively, some clots can be physically retrieved through a blood vessel, but few hospitals practice this technique. Overall, perhaps fewer than 10 percent of all patients are candidates for either of these interventions.

InSightec's high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) device is a bit like a helmet, lined with more than 1,000 ultrasound transducers. Each can be focused individually to send a beam into the brain of the person wearing the helmet. The focused beams converge on a spot only four millimeters wide, accurate enough to hit an artery-blocking clot and dissolve it in under a minute. "Outside this focus, the ultrasound energy is completely negligible," Hoelscher says.