Behzad Razavi

Electronic devices have been communicating over the air with ever-increasing fluency, but the growth will top out soon unless engineers can lay hands on more bandwidth.
The problem stems from the growing craze for high-definition video. Already video constitutes a huge chunk of the data flowing on the Internet, and its share is rising by the day, Newswise wrote.
Vendors look forward to products that will beam high-definition video straight from your camcorder to your wide-screen television set; movie distributors plan to funnel full-length feature movies through wireless networks.
To do these jobs in minutes rather than hours requires download speeds in the range of 5 gigabits per second and enough bandwidth to ensure that one download doesn’t step on another one down the hall.
We can find the needed bandwidth way, way above the frequencies commonly used today, in the unlicensed territory around 60 GHz, according to an article in the February issue of IEEE Spectrum.
Behzad Razavi, an Iran-born professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, notes that until now engineers had to use relatively inexpensive and power-hungry gallium-arsenide semiconductors to make chips that receive and transmit at those frequencies.
Now, he argues, breakthroughs in the lab suggest that silicon chips are ready to take over the job, at a fraction of the cost.
One breakthrough has to do with the way antennas are built. The frequencies around 60 GHz tend to be absorbed by the air, and therefore they need to be focused carefully, using arrays of radio emitters and receivers known as adaptive antennas.
Researchers have now demonstrated that they can fashion such an array on a single chip, greatly reducing the cost and the power requirements.
Another advance has to do with the design of circuitry that chops the high frequencies down to size--so they can be processing at slower speeds--and then builds the result up again for transmission.
Because all of these developments can be done using the standard design for today’s silicon chips, known as CMOS, the devices can, in principle, be manufactured very cheaply.
When hundreds of GHz-capable chips can be salted through the electronic devices in a household or office, the network cable will at last go the way of the buggy whip.

Criminals who claim they were not at the scene of a crime can now be betrayed by their hair.
Forensic scientists have developed a technique that allows them to track a person’s movements by analyzing samples of head and body hair, Telegraph.co.uk reported.
The technology relies on the distinct chemical “fingerprint“ of air and water in different countries, and even in different regions of the UK.
Each location has a unique cocktail of atoms known as isotopes in the air and water which get into the body when we eat, drink and breathe.
As hair grows, it incorporates these isotopes, providing a record of where a person has been.
A less sophisticated version of the forensic analysis was used to generate a profile of the killer in an unsolved murder case last year, but this is the first time details have emerged of how suspects’ movements can be tracked with samples of their hair.
It uses techniques that were developed by archeologists studying ancient artefacts and buried remains.
Dr Stuart Black, a senior lecturer in forensic analysis at the Department of Archeology at Reading University, has already used the method to aid police attempting to identify bodies. He has also used it to help profile suspects.
He said: “The isotope composition of water changes around the globe, and people tend to drink locally-derived water, particularly here in the UK.
“If they drink bottled water we can look at other isotopes, such as nitrogen and carbon from food. We can also look for other compounds, such as lead, which tend to come mainly through air pollution and can give us a geographic indication.
“The key is not just looking at a single isotope, but a broad range of isotopes to give us a much more detailed picture.“
Scientists claim that with current techniques they can pinpoint a person’s movements down to regions of the UK, such as Wales or northeast England. As they develop more sophisticated “isotope maps“ of the UK, and the rest of the world, they hope the accuracy will improve.
Researchers at the University of Alaska, in Fairbanks, analyzed samples of head hair, facial hair and urine from Alaskans who had visited Littlehampton, in Sussex. This showed that their isotope profiles retained a record of their visit more than a month after they traveled.
Hair samples, in particular, allow scientists to build up an accurate timeline of the different locations an individual has visited, because the record is retained for months as the hair grows.

Watching a big soccer match can strain a fan’s heart--not just figuratively, but literally, German researchers reported.
After studying the effects of matches during the 2006 World Cup, they concluded that, for German men, the risk of having a heart attack or some other serious heart problem was more than three times higher on days when their team played. It was 82 percent higher for German women, according to Reuters.
Cardiac emergencies usually occurred within two hours of the start of a match, Dr. Ute Wilbert-Lampen of Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and colleagues found.
“Viewing a stressful soccer match more than doubles the risk of an acute cardiovascular event,“ they wrote in their report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The researchers said other emotionally turbulent sporting events could likely produce the same effect.
To gauge the impact, the Wilbert-Lampen team looked at 4,279 medical records from the seven days the German team played, the 24 days when matches involved teams from other countries, and 242 other days in 2003, 2005 and 2006.
Only Germans found to have some heart problem were included in the tally.
“Six of the seven games in which the German team participated were associated with an increase in the number of cardiac emergencies over the number during the control period,“ they wrote.
The largest number occurred during a June 30 quarterfinal in which Germany defeated Argentina in a dramatic penalty shoot-out. The next game, Germany’s semi-final loss to Italy, produced almost as many heart attacks.
In contrast, Germany’s match against Portugal for third place, produced no spike in heart-related problems. Germany defeated Portugal 3-1.
“Apparently, of prime importance for triggering a stress-induced event is not the outcome of a game--a win or a loss--but rather the intense strain and excitement experienced during the viewing of a dramatic match, such as one with a penalty shoot-out,“ the researchers wrote.
The researchers suggested that doctors might want to consider increasing the doses of some heart drugs and give fans with heart disease some behavioral therapy for coping with stress if a potentially intense sporting event looms.

University of Pennsylvania researchers have used gene therapy to reduce the time it takes to breed large animals capable of producing therapeutic proteins in their milk, such as insulin or those that fight cancer.
This represents a significant milestone in drug development, as current methods involve cloning, which takes more time and generally costs more, ScienceDaily wrote.
“Having an easier way to harness nature’s power to produce large quantities of specific proteins in milk could increase the availability of drugs for people who could otherwise not afford these treatments,“ said Ina Dobrinski, one of the researchers on the study.
The study also is significant because it may also be a new way to eliminate diseases in future generations of animals, such as those used for livestock. Here’s why: To get the goats to produce specific proteins, the researchers used radiation to kill a portion of a male goat’s germ cells (the cells that produce sperm).
Then they used a modified adeno-associated virus (a well studied and tolerated gene therapy vector) to insert a gene in the remaining cells. Once the new gene took hold in the germ cells, a predictable number of female offspring produced the desired protein in their milk.
The advance is immediately valuable for pharmaceutical development and biology research, but a similar approach could be used to bolster the food supply by eliminating genetic disorders in animals over several generations. It is also possible that once perfected, this technique could eliminate disease genes in humans over several generations, assuming ethical concerns can be resolved adequately.
“For thousands of years, people have domesticated cows and goats to make milk, butter and cheese. And for thousands of years dairy products have been used as folk remedies for practically every human illness.
Most have been completely ineffective.“ said Gerald Weissmann, MD, editor-in-chief of The FASEB Journal. “So it is reassuring that modern science would find a way to use the milk we drink to yield of drugs that actually work.“

ÒStarry NightÓ claims to detect snoring with a vibration-detection system automatically articulates sleep position by seven degrees to open the nasal passages.

The latest bed from American bedding component specialist Leggett & Platt is high-tech to say the least. Apart from incorporating a projector, surround sound, wireless Internet and hard disk drive, it also features technology to alleviate snoring.
The bed, which is dubbed “Starry Night“ claims to detect snoring with a vibration-detection system (originally developed for military purposes) and automatically articulates sleep position by seven degrees to open the nasal passages and help alleviate mild to moderate snoring. Once the snoring subsides, the bed returns to its original position, according to Smarthouse.com.au.
Starry Night also uses a vibration sensor and load cell technologies to measure how much a sleeper tosses and turns, and how often they get out of bed during the night.
The same vibration sensor technology detects and monitors rhythmic breathing patterns that indicate relaxation. It compares these movements to a 30-day baseline measure of the sleeper and then provides tips to improve sleep quality.
You can adjust the temperature of each side of the bed to pre-heat or pre-cool it, and its pocketed coil within coil system means it will comfortably support a hefty bodybuilder-type as well as a petite ballerina, the company says.
But the bed provides more than just a good night’s sleep, says its maker.
“Consumers told us they use their beds for much more than sleep,“ says Leggett & Platt group executive vice president of sales and marketing for the bedding, Mark Quinn.
“The bed is a place for reading, watching movies, spending time with the kids, listening to music and even folding laundry.“
Accordingly, Starry Night is equipped with a surround sound system with four eight-inch subwoofers, an audiophile ribbon tweeter, and 2,500 watt RMS Amplification.
The headboard features a 1080p LCD based projector which can be used to project movies, books, music navigation features, the Internet, the bed’s Good Morning screen and even the local daily weather. It also has DVR capability, and an iPod docking station built-in.
Starry Night also provides wireless Internet connectivity and a wireless keyboard. The bed and electronics can be controlled via the Good Morning touch screen or a wireless RF remote via Microsoft’s Media Center.
Storage has not been left out either--the Starry Night features 1.5 terabytes (1,500 gigabytes) of disc storage. Its operating system runs on a solid state hard drive and also offers 4 gigs of ddr2 ram.
The Starry Night will hit the market in the first half of 2009, but will not be cheap at an RRP between $US20,000 and $US50,000, depending on the amount of features desired.

Beachgoers should take notice: sitting on the wet sand or swimming in the sea for too long may increase the risk of catching an unpleasant stomach bug, a new study found.
The University of Florida study found that the more time spent on the wet sand or in the water, the greater the chance of suffering from gastroenteritis, AFP said.
While water pollution monitoring is a standard part of “quality control“ in many tourism-dependent cities, the same cannot be said of the sand.
“Our objective was to understand whether beach sand could pose a health risk to beachgoers,“ said Tonya Bonilla, a researcher at the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine’s department of infectious diseases and pathology.
“What we found was that there was no increased health risk due to exposure to sand on the upper beach,“ she said.
But “the longer the period of time people spent in the water and in the wet sand, the higher the probability they would experience some gastrointestinal illness,“ Bonilla said.
Beach sand often has some degree of contamination from seabird waste, or other fecal waste. Microbes concentrate naturally around the waterline, in the water and also are tracked around on bathers’ feet, researchers found.
They looked at three beaches north of Miami: Hobie Beach, Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale.
“There is an increase risk of acquiring gastroenteritis the longer a bather either sits in the wet sand or stays in the water,“ said Jay Fleisher professor College of Osteopathic Medicine-Nova Southeastern University.
“The probability that an individual will become sick increases over expected non-exposure rates from six out of 1,000 people for 10 minutes exposure to aprox. twelve out of 100 people for a two hours stay in the wet sand,“ he said.
“For exposure to water, these rates increase from seven out of 1,000 people affected over expected non-exposure rates for a 10 minutes stay to approximately seven out of 100 people exposed for a 70-minute stay,“ Fleisher added.

A delicate surgery that involves placement of tiny electrodes onto the brainstem is helping some people avoid total hearing loss.
The electrodes, connected to a device known as an auditory brain implant, are being placed in patients who require surgery to remove noncancerous tumors associated with a disorder called neurofibromastosis type II. The tumors are often entwined around the nerves that facilitate hearing. Over time the tumors--or the surgical intervention to remove them, can result in fractional or total hearing loss, ScienceDaily reported.
Only about 500 people have received the implants around the world, but the benefit is substantial, according to Dr. Bradley Welling, chair of otolaryngology at Ohio State University Medical Center and one of the handful of surgeons in the United States trained to implant the devices.
“The primary advantage of the auditory brain implant is that it helps patients lip read and receive environmental sounds, whether it is traffic, warning signals or other alerts,“ said Welling. “It also helps them to modulate their speaking and improve their own voice since it’s very difficult to modulate speech when you are without hearing.“
The implants bypass the damaged nerves and form a direct pathway to the brainstem. The electrodes are positioned against the brainstem and receive signals from a pager-sized processor carried on the belt.
A tiny microphone on the ear sends the sounds to the processor, which converts them to frequencies that are picked up by the brainstem.
Sounds from the implant may not replicate exactly the actual sounds and voices the patient was once accustomed to hearing, but they’re close enough, says Phyllis Lee, who lost her hearing in 1986 due to neurofibromastosis.
“It has helped me step back into life,“ says Lee, who had the device implanted last year. “I can hear my cat and many things that others take for granted, like running water. It’s funny, just the little things you get so excited over, these little sounds,“ she added.
Because the tumors often envelope the auditory nerves or push against other vital nerves around the face, surgeons require a microscope to make the tedious manipulations necessary to remove the tumors and implant the device.
Many people are seeking the implants after years of not being able to hear. For others, like Lee, the auditory brain implants are positioned at the same time the tumors are removed.