This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Computer Security: The Hacker in Your Hardware
Perspectives: Catastrophic Thinking
Environment: Threatening Ocean Life
Robot Pills: Surgery of the Future?
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The full articles highlighted below are available on the Nature Press Site: http://press.nature.com/press.
[1] Computer Security: The Hacker in Your Hardware (p 82)
Software viruses are not the only enemy of our electronic devices; in fact, the “Trojan horse” of the future could be the very microchips in our cell phones and computers. In the August issue of Scientific American, John Villasenor discusses how components of microchips can be hijacked before they even make it into devices, and examines a few relatively simple methods that industries and the government can use to protect hardware from hackers.
Integrated circuits—or chips—are made of a number of subunits that handle specific tasks. The design of many of these subunits is often outsourced to third-party facilities around the world, where malicious actors may add in designs of their own. A “Trojan” attack hidden in one of these designs could surface long after the circuit has left the factory and lands in the hands of consumers. However, as Villasenor explains, this is not a lost fight: “modern integrated circuits have a number of reconfigurable aspects that, with appropriate steps taken during the integrated-circuit design process, could be utilized to automatically replace parts of hardware that become incapacitated in the event of an attack.”
Author contact:
John Villasenor (University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 310 825 0228
E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Perspectives: Catastrophic Thinking (p 30)
The recent BP oil spill has taught us two lessons: first, that we need more realistic assessments of drilling risks; and second, we need an overhaul of regulatory systems and agencies. As the editors say in this month’s Scientific American, “Accidents may be inevitable, but the chance of catastrophe should be nearly zero.”
In 1979, the Ixtoc 1 drilling rig sank in the Gulf of Mexico, spewing millions of barrels of oil into the oceans before the disastrous leak was stopped. There are too many similarities between the oil spill in 1979 and the recent BP oil spill. For all the criticism and blame that has been around, the real question that needs to be addressed immediately is, “How does an industry organize itself into teams of engineers and technicians across thousands of rigs and dozens of companies, to reach oil trapped in increasingly forlorn places, in a way that is robust enough to tolerate human error?”
Author contact:
Editors at Scientific American are available to comment on this topic; please contact the Press Office
E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Environment: Threatening Ocean Life (p 66)
Ocean acidification—the result of too much carbon dioxide reacting with seawater—is dubbed “the other CO2 problem.” In a feature in the August issue of Scientific American, Marah J. Hardt and Carl Safina discuss the implications of a more acidic ocean for the organisms that live and feed there.
The oceans are intrinsically mildly basic, with a pH of about 8.1 (a pH of 7 is neutral). However, since the industrial revolution, the oceans have absorbed about one third of all CO2 produced by human activities, acidifying the oceans and leading to a pH closer and closer to a neutral 7[it's gone down to 8.1 from a higher level]. This is wreaking havoc on the delicate balance of life that exists in the sea. Even a small increase in acidity can lead to widespread disruption: some species cannot tolerate higher acidity levels; others find their reproductive and immune systems compromised because they need to expend more energy on restoring their internal pH balance. “Reduced strength, growth, immune function or reproduction can cause long-term population declines,” explain the authors. This is “bad news for the victims, as well as for the many other species (including humans) that rely on them for food and even habitat,” the authors write.
Hardt and Safina highlight the need for a National Ocean Policy to coordinate efforts to protect the oceans. And according to the authors, recent ecological disasters, such as the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, give the U.S. government more reason than ever to move away from carbon-emitting fossil fuels and towards safer and cleaner energy sources.
Author contacts:
Marah J. Hardt (OceanInk, Kailua Kona, HI, USA)
Tel: +1 203 293 5590
E-mail: [email protected]
Carl Safina (Blue Ocean Institute, Inc., Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 631 659 3746
E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Robot Pills: Surgery of the Future? (p 62)
Building miniature robots to travel through the digestive system, diagnosing and treating disease, is an engineering challenge, although no longer a science-fiction fantasy, report Paolo Dario and Arianna Menciassi in the August issue of Scientific American.
Patients have been swallowing pill cameras since 2000, allowing doctors to gain views of places within the body which are otherwise difficult to reach. The uses and accuracy of these types of capsules, however, are limited. The authors write that a major issue seems to be the lack of control over capsules, which is a pitfall for any potential diagnostic tool. They state that these pills must instead become tiny robots that can instantly respond to human instruction and have sufficient power to complete tasks over a period of time that stretches to 12 hours.
In recent years researchers have adapted the pill camera concept into an active miniature robot that can be easily controlled by including moving parts such as paddles, legs or propellers. Magnetic fields generated outside of the body could remotely control such capsules. Dario and Menciassi suggest that a combination of internal and external approaches to controlling movement may provide the best solution for both patient comfort and diagnostic reliability.
Author contacts:
Paolo Dario (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy)
Tel: +39 050 883420
E-mail: [email protected]
Arianna Menciassi (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy)
Tel: +39 050 883418
E-mail: [email protected]
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